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DERRIDA, MYTH AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY

OF PHILOSOPHY

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Philosoph

DERRIDA, MYTH AND
THE IMPOSSIBILITY
OF PHILOSOPHY
ANAIS N. SPITZER

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EISBN 978-1-4411-0315-4

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Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spitzer, Anais.
Derrida, myth, and the impossibility of philosophy / Anais Spitzer
Spitzer..
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN: 978-1-4411-1710-6
ISBN: 978-1-4411-0020-7
1. Myth. 2. Philosophy.
Philosophy. 3. Derrida, Jacques.
Jacques. 4. Taylor
Taylor,, Mark C.,
C., 1945– I. Title.
Title.
B2430.D484S65 2010
194–dc22
2010040688
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed and bound in India

For
Eugene and Susan Spitzer

There is no unity or absolute source of myth. The focus
or the source of the myth is alwa
alwaysys shadows and virtualities
which are elusive, unactualizable, and non-existent in the
first place. Everything begins with structure, configuration,
or relationship. The discourse on the acentric structure
that myth itself is, cannot itself have an absolute subject
or an absolute center. It must avoid the violence that
consists in centering a language which describes an
acentric structure if it is not to shortchange the fform
orm and
movement
mov ement of myt
myth.
h.
– Jacques
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Abbreviations xi
Beginning Otherwise xvi
Chapter
Chapter 1 ‘Wha
‘What,
t, after all, of the remain(s) . . .’ 1
Chapter 2 Solici
Soliciting
ting Philos
Philosophy’
ophy’ss Tears 24
Chapter 3 Rend(er)ing the Pharmakon: A Wound
without a Cure 46
Chapter 4 Secreting Myth: Thinking Sa Otherwise 92
Chapter
Chapter 5 Myth and the Gift, If There is Any 121
Epilogue 150
Notes 151
Bibliography 181
Index 189
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Like any meaningful work, this book is the result of a long journey
that catapulted me into it before I even knew it was beginning, reveal-
ing landscapes unanticipated and extraordinary. Along the way, I
have been the fortunate beneficiary of immeasurable guidance, sup-
port and inspiration from mentors, colleagues, family, students and
friends, whose invaluable
invaluable contri
contributions
butions hav
havee not only made this b book
ook
possible, but also immensely enriched it. Their contributions con-
tinue to stir and enliven my thinking. Any shortcomings that persist
(in addition to the inevitable and unintended remains) are entirely
my own.
I am grateful to many colleagues at Hollins University, who wel-
comed me into their vibrant community. First and foremost I remain
indebted to Darla Schumm, who enthusiastically continues to sup-
port all of my eff
efforts.
orts. I also want to than
thankk in parti
particular
cular T
T.. J.
J. Anderso
Anderson,
n,
Jan Fuller, Pauline Kaldas, Marilyn Moriarty, and Alison Ridley for
their generous, unwavering friendship and rousing support of my
work as a scholar, teacher and colleague, which made my time at
Hollins so remarkable. In addition, I remain appreciative of the fac-
ulty research and development grant that I received from Hollins
University, which directly supported this book’s progress. I remain
beholden to my students, whose passions, hard work, curiosity and
support of each other continue to enrich and inspire my teaching,
thinking and way
way of being in the world.
I want to thank the library staff at the College of Santa Fe, most
especially Peg Birmingham and Val Nye for their untiring assistance
and friendship.
I owe my developmen
developmentt as a scholar to a host of outstanding teach-
ers. Most notable among them
the m is David L. Miller
Mille r, who for more than
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
a decade has ceaselessly provoked, inspired, and deranged, guiding

me to unimagined habitations of thought. Ever-directing me to new
sources and ancient ones, ever-questioning the sources and courses
of every path, his exacting feedback on early drafts of the manu-
script was invaluab
invaluable.
le.
My thanks also to Laura Grillo and Richard Kearney for their
comments on early versions. I am grateful to both Betty Sue Flowers
and the late Walt Whitman Rostow for igniting a spark early in my
student
my skillscareer by providing
as a researcher me with unique opportunities to hone
and writer.
It is impossible to express the enormity of my debt to Ed Casey,
whose generosity, erudition and wise counsel remain unparalleled.
Were it not for his rigorous reading, his bottomless well of recom-
mendations and encouragement, and his refusal to allow any
intimation of a ‘fundamental project’, this endeavour could not have
materialized or reached publication. He believed in my work even
when I doubted it. Openhandedly
Openhandedly and unflag
unflaggingly
gingly gi
giving
ving of himself
as mentor, colleague and friend, his presence in my life has been an
extraordinary
extraor dinary gift, offered with no expecta
expectation
tion of return, continuing
its unaccountable bounty beyond all anticipation and intention.
I also wish to express my deep gratitude to Hugh Silverman for his
unhesitatingly enthusiastic interest and engagement in this project,
and most of all, for his indefatigable
indefatigable,, ever-curious, open spirit. I would
also like to thank Steve La
Lavoie
voie for commenting on the final draft.
In addition, I would be remiss if I failed to express my abiding
appreciation to David Avital at Continuum for his steadfast respon-
siveness, his commitment to this enterprise and his legendary patience,
and to Sarah Campell for finally bringing it to print.
The ceaseless demands of teaching, writing and resear research,
ch, as invig-
orating as they may be, invariably create an unintended absence in
the lives of those closest to us.
us. These absences were most acutely felt
(and good-naturedly endured)
endured ) by my partner
partner,, Patrick, who has sh
shared
ared
in my quotidian joys, doubts, disappointments and accomplishments.
accompli shments.
I remain
in ever-gra
ever-grateful
me, which haveteful for his unconditional
sustained and nourished love and unflagging
me throughout, andbelief
con-
tinue to do so. Thank you also to my many friends who have lent
much-needed respite and recharge from the rigorous demands of work.
Although my journey as a scholar, teacher and colleague is still
just beginning,
beginning, its first steps w
were
ere in the home of my parents,
parents, Eugene
and Susan Spitzer, my inaugural teachers, from whom I continue to
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
learn and find

fi nd inspiration. When I was sstill
till quite young, they a
awak
wakened
ened
me to the vibrancy of intellectual life. They set aglow a passion for
questioning and exploration, discouraged me from ever foreclosing
on inquiry, and emboldened me instead to follow my ideas wherever
they led me, even when such pathways and destinations were unfash-
ionable or difficult to endure. They have freely, generously and
inexhaustibly given me their love and support, along with their atten-
tiveness,, insights and suggestions
tiveness suggestions.. This book is dedicated most of all
to them, with inexpressible love and gratitude. Their incalculable
presence remains within and beyond the contours, the possibilities
and the impossibilities of my life.
life.
A. N. S.
August 2009
Santa Fe, New Mexico
ABBREVIATIONS
A Mark C. Taylor, Altarity (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987).
AAR Jean-Pierre Vernant, ‘Ambiguity and reversal: on the enig-
matic structure of Oedipus Rex’, New Literary History 9.3
(1978), 475–501.
AG Mark C. Ta
Taylo
ylorr, After God (Chicago:
(Chicago: University
University of Chicag
Chicago
o
Press, 2007).
APN Maurice Blanchot, ‘Affirmation and the passion of negative
thought’ (1969), in Bataille: A Critical Reader, eds Fred
Botting and Scott Wilson (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1998), 41–58.
APT Michel Foucault, ‘A preface to transgression’ (1977), trans.
Robert Hurley, in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology:
Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, Volume II , ed.
James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1999),
69–87.
AR Mark C. Ta
Taylor,
ylor, About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual
Virtual
Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
ATVM Jacques Derrida, ‘At this very moment in this work here
I am’ (1980), in Re-Reading Levinas, eds Robert Bernasconi
and Simon Critchley
Critchley,, trans. R
Ruben
uben Berezdivin (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991), 11–48.
B Simon Critchley, ‘“Bois” – Derrida’s final word on Levinas’,
in Re-Reading Levinas (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1991), 162–89.
BL John Sallis, Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).
xi
ABBREVIATIONS
CG Mark C. Taylor
Taylor,, Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a
World Without Redemption (Chicag
(Chicago:
o: University of Chicag
Chicagoo
Press, 2004).
D Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (1972), trans. Barbara
Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
DI Nonnos, Dionysiaca, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1940).
DO Jacques
Ja cques Derrida, ‘Deconstruction and the other’, in Debates
in Continental Philosophy: Conver
Conversations
sations with Contemporar
Contemporary y
Thinkers, by Richard
Richard Kearney (New Y
York:
ork: Fordham University
Press, 2004).
DP Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett
(New York: Horace Liveright, 1927).
DR Jacques Derrida, Response to Francis Guibal’s ‘The other-
ness of the other – otherwise: tracing Jacques Derrida’,
Parallax 10.4 (2004), 32–7.
EI Maurice Blanchot, L’Entretien infini [
[ The Infinite Conve
Conversa-
rsa-
tion], trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1993).
EO Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Trans-
ference,
ference, Tr anslation, ed. Christie McDonald, trans. Peggy
Translation
Kamuf
Kam uf (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
Press,, 1985).
F Jacques Derrida, ‘Fors: the Anglish words of Nicolas
Abraham and Maria Torok’, in The Wolf Man’s Magic
C ryptonymy, trans. Barbara Johnson (Minneapolis:
Word: A Cryptonymy
University
Univ ersity of Minnesota Press
Press,, 1986), xi–xlviii.
FL Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of law: the “mystical foundation of
authority”’, trans. Mary Quaintance, Cardozo Law Review
11.5–6 (1990), 920–1045.
FR F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the
Origins of Western Speculation (New York:
York: Harpe
Harperr an
andd Ro
Row
w,
1957).
G Jacques Derrida, Glas (1974), trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. and
Richard Rand
Rand (Lincoln, Nebrask
Nebraska: a: University of Nebraska
Press, 1974).
GP Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Glas-piece: a compte rendu’,
Diacritics 7.3 (1977), 22–43.
GT Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money (1991),
trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992).
xii
ABBREVIATIONS
H Mark C. Taylor, Hiding (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1997).
HA Jacques Derrida, ‘How to avoid speaking: denials’ (1987),
in Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in
Literature and Literary Theory, eds Sanford Budick and
Wolfgang Iser, trans. Ken Frieden (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1989), 3–70.
HP Luc Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical
Interpretation and Classical Mythology (1996), trans. Catherine
Tihanyi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
HTW Jacques Derrida, ‘Proverb: “He that would pun . . .”’ Fore-
word, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr, Glassary, by John P. Leavey,
Jr. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 17–20.
I Thomas A. Carlson, Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming
of God (Chicago:
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
IA Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strang
Strangee Loop (New York: Basic
Books, 2007).
IAD Martin Heidegger
Heid egger,, Identity and Differ ence (1957), trans.
Difference t rans. JJoan
oan
Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1969).
ID Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), trans.
James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1998).
IE Georges Bataille, Inner Experience (1954), trans. Leslie Anne
Boldt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988).
INS Hugh J. Silverman, Inscriptions: After Phenomenology and
Structuralism (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Universit y Press,
1997).
IS Mark C. Taylor, ‘Introduction: system . . . structure . . .
difference . . . other’, in Deconstruction in Context: Litera-
ture and Philosophy, ed. Mark C. Taylor
Taylor (Chi
(Chicago:
cago: University
of Chicago
Chicago Press, 1986), 1–34
1–34..
K Ned Lukacher, ‘K(Ch)ronosology’, Sub-Stance 8.4 (1979),
55–73.
LE Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence (1953), trans. Leonard
Lawlor and Amit Sen (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1997).
M William Doty, Mythogr
Mythography:
aphy: The Study of Myths and Rituals
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000).
MB Jacques Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portr
Self-Portrait
ait and
Other Ruins (1990), trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael
Naas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
xiii
ABBREVIATIONS
MC Mark C. Ta
Taylor,
ylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Net-
work Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
MP Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (1972), trans. Alan
Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
MPA Lawrence Hatab, Myth and Philosophy: A Contest of Truths
(La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1990).
N Mark C. Ta
Taylor,
ylor, Nots (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993).
O Francis Guibal, ‘The otherness of the other – otherwise:
tracing Jacques Derrida’, Parallax 10.4 (2004), 17–41.
OG Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (1967), trans. Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1976).
ON Jacques Derrida, On the Name (1993), ed. Thomas Dutoit,
trans. David Wood, John P. Leavey Jr. and Ian McLeod
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
OTG
OTG Jacques Derrida, On the gift: a discussion between Jacques
Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion’, in God, the Gift, and Post-
modernism, eds John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 54–78.
P Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicag
Chicagoo Press, 1981).
PH Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Stephen Scully (Newburyport, MA:
Focus Philosophical Library, 2003).
PM Luc Brisson, Plato the Myth Maker, trans. Gerard Naddaf
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
PS G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), trans.
A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
PSI Jacques Derrida, ‘The pocket-size interview with Jacques
Derrida’, By Freddy Tellez and Bruno Mazzoldi, trans.
Tupac Cruz, Critical Inquiry 33.2 (2007), 362–88.
PT John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida:
Religion Without Religion (Bloomington
(Bloomington:: Indiana University
Press, 1997).
PTS Jacques Derrida, Points . . . . (1992), ed. Elisabeth Weber,
trans. Peggy Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1995).
S Mark C. Taylor, ‘Skinscapes’, in Pierced Hearts and True
Love: A Century of Drawings for Tattoos (New York: The
Drawing
Dra wing Cent
Center
er,, 1995), 29–45.
xiv
ABBREVIATIONS
SGM Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters (London:

Routledge, 2003).
SL G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic (1812), trans. A. V. Miller
(New York:
York: Human
Humanity
ity Bo
Books,
oks, 1969).
SM Raymond
Ra ymond Kliban
Klibansky
sky,, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Saturn
and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philoso-
phy,, Religion, and Art (New York: Basic Books, 1964).
phy
SP Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena (1967), trans. Da David
vid
B. Allison (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1973).
T Mark C. Taylor, Tears (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1990).
TH Hesiod, Theogony , trans. Richmond Lattimore (Ann Arbor:
University
University of Michigan Press
Press,, 1968).
TM Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and
Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
TS Jacques Derrida, ‘I have a taste for the secret (1997)’, in
A Taste for the Secret, eds Giacomo Donis and David WWebb
ebb,,
trans. Giacomo Donis (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), 1 92.
TSN Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond (1973), trans.
Lycette Nelson (Albany: State University of New YYork
ork Press,
1992).
U Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (1919), trans. David Mclin-
tock (New York: Penguin Books, 2003).
VP John Sallis, The Verge of Philosophy (Chicago
(Chicago:: University of
Chicago Press, 2008).
WD Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (1967), trans. Alan
Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
xv
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
I have never had a ‘fundamental project.’ And ‘deconstructions,’

which I prefer to say in the plural, has doubtless never named a
project, method, or system. Especially not a philosophical system.
In contexts that are always very determined, it is one of the possible
names for designating, by metonymy in sum, what happens or doesn’t
doesn’t
happen to happen, namely,
namely, a certain dislocation that in fact is regu-
larly repeated
repeated – and wherev
wherever
er there is something rather than nothing:
in what are called the texts of classical philosophy,
philosophy, of course and for
example, but also in every text in the general sense that I try to
justify for this wor
word,
d, that is, in experience period, in social, histori-
cal, economic, technical, military, etc., ‘reality.’ . . . These violent
deconstructions are under way, it is happening, it doesn’t wait for
someone to complete the philosophico-theoretical analysis of every-
every-
thing I have just evoked in a word: this analysis is necessary but
infinite and the reading that these cracks make possible will never
dominate the event; that reading only intervenes there,
there, it is inscribed
there.
Jacques Derrida, Points . . .1
Philosophy begins, or so it initially appears, with the dismissal of

myth.. The birth of metaphysics
myth metaphysics – of philosoph
philosophy y as logos – emerges at
the expense of mythos. As metaphysics grows in power and prestige,
mythos is starved into diminution.
d iminution. A ‘logobesi
‘logobesity’
ty’ ensues.
ensues. Plato labours
to distinguish logos from mythos, although his assessment does not
settle the issue.

unfalsifiable, In hisisdetermination,
which mythosthat
not to say, however, is inferior because
it is true. Whereasit is
logos is truth (its status can be conclusively ascertained by the facul-
ties of the intellect), mythos, in contrast, is neither true nor false
false,, and
xvi
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
therefore has no such definitive nature. Mythos’ ambiguity is highly

problematic for philosophy. Since the status of mythos (as either
truth or fiction) cannot be discerned through the powers
powers of reason, it
therefore can be used to persuade, not by logical argumentation, but
instead by appealing
appealing to the lesser faculties of the senses
senses.. In this way,
mythos is opposed both to philosophy and to logos, and is subordi-
nate to both of them.
This antiquated
antiquated privileging of logos has, for
for the most part,
part , remained
unquestioned by both philosophy (a discipline replete with concep-
tions of logos) and religion (a discipline that can never fully avoid
myth
myt h as an intrinsic dynamic of religion). Wheth
Whether er myth is viewed as
a transcendent reality (Mircea Eliade), as relational patterns reveal-
ing an underlying logic of structure (Claude Lévi-Strauss), or as a
site of ‘hermeneutic disclosure’ (Paul Ricoeur), the theorizing and
philosophizing of myth has presupposed a dominant, logocentric
source or configuration. Postmodern discourse is rightfully suspi-
cious of unifying master narra
narratives
tives (‘ grands
grands récits’, as Jean-François
Lyotard calls them). Religion scholars tend to eschew myth as the
healthy person might try to avoid an infectious retrovirus that insidi-
ously installs itself and transforms
transforms all bodily cells from within. Hence
the erroneous conclusion that mythos is itself a master narrative that
represses differences
differences in order to champion a hegemonic, ideological
identity. This line of thinking shares many similarities with philoso
phy’s dismissal of mythos as irrational and therefore inferior. Much
of philosophy
to suppress hashas
it, or leftattempted
mythos out
to of thinking
integrate entirely
it (and by a
therebyattempting
ttempting
attenuate
it) into an expanded reason through a dialectical synthesis in which,
as a penultimate stage in the realization of the purest and highest
logos, mythos still remains secondary to logos. Similarly, those who
stubbornly insist on essentialist accounts of myth, without regard
for the seminal lessons of postmodern, deconstructive insights, are
equally at fault. The New Age reclamation of myth is itself logocentric,
and fundamentally misses not only the disseminative indecidability
of mythos, but also the vital relationship between mythos and logos.
This relation is neither a synthetic unity that subsumes mythos into
logos, nor a binary pairing that values one over the other. Rather, as
we will see, mythos and logos form a ‘non-totalizing’ network.
The founding determination of philosophy,
philosophy, as Jacques Derrida has
pointed out, must be questioned. An other beginning is
i s always already
inscribed within the original beginning, disrupting the founding
xvii
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
presuppositions of the first beginning. One of Derrida’s key decon-

structive realizations is that all structures (whether philosophical,
religious, political, literary, etc.) inevitably construct and fortify
themselves through acts of exclusion, but such exclusions also
unavoidably witness what Sigmund Freud calls ‘the return of the
repressed’. In other words, the excluded elements resurface within
the system to destabilize its very foundations. Every system unwit-
tingly harbours ‘remains’ (scraps or leftovers that it cannot quite
account for, but that nevertheless are basic to it, even though they
threaten it). This other beginning, that haunts the first, continues
to be relatively unexplored in regard to mythos. Mythos is prema-
turely banished from logos only to return as a ghost. It cannot
adequately be rethought in a logos-dominated framework, however.

Such inquiry fails to grasp sufficiently the nature of mythos and the
complexity of itsi ts relation
relationship
ship to logos. Mythos does not simply gather
and collect. It also disseminates and deconstructs. In this way, it ren-
ders philosophy as strictly logos impossible. Yet, at the same time,
without mythos, philosophy itself would would be impossible
impossible..
Mythos forever shadows thinking, demanding that we attend to it
in its irreducible
irreduci ble indecidability (that is, to its oscil
oscillation
lation between truth
and fiction, never reducible
reducible to one of these catego ries).2 The dissemi-
categories).
native
nati ve propert
properties
ies of mythos have been denied and overlooked for far
too long. Myth, apart from its logocentric manifestations, is conspic-
uously absent from discourse, and even its evident form, and its
undeniable relation to logos, have not been amply queried. To date,
no one has rethought mythos in terms
ter ms of deconstructiv
deconstructivee revelat
revelations
ions..
Given the wealth
wealth of insights that deconstru
deconstructive
ctive readings ha
have
ve yielded
in a range of disciplines, and the tremendous influence that these
readings have had on various fields in the humanities, from literary
theory, to philosophy, to religion, the absence of a deconstructive
reading of mythos has left an opening and an invitation, to which
this work directly responds. This gateway beckons us to attend to
mythos not as it has been logocentrically co-opted as a hegemonic
meta-narrative (even when such co-option fails to be recognized as
such), but as a mythos that is inherently ambiguous and forever open.
As such, it escapes all attempts to confine or foreclose it into a syn-
thetic discourse. Mythos eludes the categorization that thinking as
purely doesdemands.
thinkinglogos Derrida’s
not just spring from deconstructions haveground
a possible, thinkable shown (and
that
thereby returns to it), but in fact, arises from that which it cannot
xviii
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
quite grasp. This recognition destabilizes the very foundation of phi-

losophy as logos, and reveals that mythos is, in some way, basic to
philosophic discourse
discourse..
Although focused primarily on Derrida’s texts that allow for a
reframing of the relation of mythos and logos, we shall also consider
the relevant contributions of Mark C. Taylor, one of the most influ-
ential post-Derrida deconstructive thinkers with respect to the study
of religion. Tay
Taylor
lor investiga
investigates
tes the relev
relevance
ance of complex
complexity
ity studies to
philosophical inquiry. Complexity studies explore the nature of the
interconnections and the previously insufficiently acknowledged
organizational dynamics at work in entities from the immune system
to financial markets to ecosystems,
ecosyste ms, re
revealing
vealing them to be neither static
nor chaotic, but generative, adaptive systems, lacking top-down
hierarchies. Derrida’s deconstructions and Taylor’s philosophical
readings of complexity studies provide opportunities for rethinking
structures and systems (including mythos and logos) in ways that
subvert traditional conceptions, while opening new routes to under-
standing, more attuned to the lessons of the increasingly networked
era that we inescapably inhabit.
inhabit. For the most part (although
(al though there are
a few exceptions, which we shall take up at length), both Derrida and
Taylor forbear a sustained engagement with mythos. However, we
will see how the ghost
ghost of mythos forever shadows thinking, haunting
their texts even when they decline to confront it directly. Taylor’s
writings, along with Derrida’s, provide rich resources for tracing the
disseminative operations of mythos and rethinking it deconstruc-
tively,, as well as in terms of current emerging moments of complexity.
tively complexity.
Although Taylor s scholarship has exerted a profound influence on
the study of religion, few have concerned themselves with his later
work that interweaves Derridean deconstructions with complexity
studies in order to re-envision notions of structure and system and,
therefore, remap our understanding of the contemporary world
of endless virtual networks and information streams. We shall inves-
tigate previously unexamined aspects of Derrida’s and Taylor’s
writings with respect to the question of myth. In effect, the lack of
recognition
recog nition of its disruptive presence – in philosophical and religious
deconstructive
deconstru ctive discourse – will be a key theme here. This first requires,
however, that we understand the effective nature of myth as it oscil-
lates ceaselessly between truth and non-truth. It will also lead us to
reconsider the relation between mythos and logos in terms
ter ms of Taylor’
aylor’ss
‘non-totalizing’
‘non-totalizi ng’ netw
network
ork and Derrida’
Derrida’ss notion of ‘the impossible gift’.
xix
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
What emerges is something quite other than Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

What
Hegel’s conception of merging difference within identity. This will
allow us to see the way in which mythos is ‘foundational’ to logos, but
not synthesized into it. W
Wee will examine mythos as it both figures and
disfigures logos, and as it is dangerously misconstrued and misused
when such understanding is lacking. InI n an age bombarded with domi-
nating logocentric master narratives that terrorize and repress, it has
become increasingly clear that such ideologies are not only flawed,
but destructive, and even deadly. Far from revealing the disfiguring
ambiguity at the very root
root of mythos, these master narratives
narratives,, suppos-
edly in the name of myth, deny uncertainty, the multifacets and the
very disfigurations that are an ‘essential’ dynamic of mythos.
Flipping the polarities in order to champion mythos over logos is
just as short-sighted as philosoph
philosophy’y’ss franchising of logos. It is just as
unacceptable to claim that mythos is superior to or more important
than logos as it is to insist that logos reigns supreme. Both positions
ignore the vital, complex dynamic between mythos and logos, and the
insights that an understanding of their actual relation makes possi-
ble. We must think otherwise, without recourse to an unshakeable,
over-arching foundation, without synthesizing mythos to logos and
without privileging mythos over logos, or vice versa. For this reason,
our explorations proceed from the openings articulated by Derrida’s
deconstructions and Taylor’s timely reframings of its lessons. This
task requires what Mark C. Taylor describes as ‘a different reading –
a reading that is neither philosophical nor literary. This neither/nor
makes all philosophers edgy.’3 Philosophy as logos must be put on
edge in order to move beyond its limited and outmoded confines.
Doing so entails a ‘different reading’ that is attuned to the breaks or
fissures in it. These places of interruption expose
expose,, as we shall see, an
irreducibly indecidable mythos that both constructs and deconstructs
philosophy as logos. However, we must be careful not to approach
these gaps in terms of a metaphysics of presence. These ruptures
call into question the very foundation of logos, and by extension,
of philosophy as logos, which is wedded to presence as its prime
directive.4 Such unsettling tremors point to the necessity of a decon-
structively
structive ly attuned theory of mythos to recast our understanding and
assumptions about it and its interplay with logos. By employing these
approaches, we will see how the stabilizing forces of logos are impos-
sible apart from the destabilizing forces
forces of mythos.
xx
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
Any such study of mythos must resist the temptation to impreg-

nate mythos with an overriding presence of logos. It is imperative
to acknowledge the logocentrism that such thinking privileges. The
reader is advised, likewise
li kewise,, to keep such cautions in mind. Our iinquiry
nquiry
cannot be confined to the limits or assumptions of traditional phi-
losophy. The thinking that we are undertaking is already inscribed,
and limited, by internal fissures or gaps that prevent it from ever
fully arriving at that which it attempts to grasp, or from fulfilling the
task of thinking by making the entirety
entirety of the unknown knoknown.
wn. Any
attempt to articulate or to understand a deconstructive theory of
mythos must take
take pains not to seek to reconcile or still the oscillation
of indecidability, nor attempt to master or control the disseminative
operations at play. Nor will it herald play as an end in itself. Instead,
in attempting to adumbrate the complex contours that thought
cannot fully think, our deconstructive inquiry must vigilantly resist
foreclosure, however uncomfortable such an imperative proves to be.
Such figurations unavoidably disfigure. ‘Understanding’, Taylor
reminds us, ‘presupposes
‘presuppose s that which it cannot contain, express, grasp,
or domesticate’ (T , 184). Logos’ reach always, unavoidably, exceeds
its grasp. As an ungraspable, disruptive excess, mythos summons us,
not as an invitation, but as an inescapability, an unacknowledged
imperative, demanding that we finally address its unending, intrinsic
symbiosis with thinkable, graspable logos. We can do so only from
the places of interruption within philosophy as logos. As much as it
(re)figures mythos, this inquiry is also unavoidably disfigured from
within by the inherent deconstruc
d econstructions
tions that are alwa
always
ys already under-
way, whether intended or not. Recognizing the impossibility of pure
logos, this reading intervenes and inscribes itself upon other read-
ings, without recourse to any final, dominating discourse.
Having surrendered foundational prerequisites, we begin with
the scraps and leftovers of philosophic systems (what Derrida calls
‘the text of metaphysics’), with that which ‘falls’ outside of philo-
sophy’s categories and cannot quite be integrated into thought.
Reflecting the classicist Luc Brisson’s argument, that mythos is nei-
ther verifiable nor non-verifiable discourse, through a deconstructive
lens, Chapter 1 affirms mythos as a term of irreducible indecida
indecidability
bility
that forever oscillates between truth and falsehood. Due to this
inherent ambiguity, mythos stands in stark contrast to rational,
argumentative discourse with its rigid logic that presides over its
xxi
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
organization and development. Since Hegel plays such an important

role in the thinking of both Derrida and Taylor, and in twentieth-
and twenty-first-century
twenty-first- century philosophy
philo sophy at large
large,, this chapter summarize
summarizess
the Hegelian notion of ‘otherness’ in order to show how, in the
final analysis, the Hegelian other is not truly other, but merely the
totalizing synthesis of the identity of identity-and-d
identity-and-differen
ifference
ce.. Hegel’s
Hegel’s
other is then contrasted with Derrida’s différance. We then turn
a critical eye to Bruce Lincoln’s Theorizing Myth (1999), a much-
heralded study (with respect to religion) of myth, as an example by
which to demonstrate how recontextualizing the relation of mythos
and logos requires that we understand that their relationship is not
limited to an oppositional or binary one. Lincoln’s study shows how,
historically, the terms mythos and logos hahave
ve switched places. In otheotherr
words, mythos was once used to designate
designate ‘the speech of the preemi-
nent’, and was of ‘high authority, having the capacity to advance
erful truth claims’.5 Logos, on the other hand, ‘denoted not ratio-
powerful
pow
nal argumentation but rather shady speech acts’ (TM , x). However,
Lincoln still equates myth with ‘narrative ideology’, thereby ignoring
its inherent ambiguity that prevents such simple equations from
being adequate. Lincoln’s reduction of mythos to ideology makes
visible that such an understanding is (perhaps unintentionally) logos-
dominated, at its core, because it is focused solely on the constructive
dynamic of mythos, ignoring its deconstructive propensities.
In probing the fissures from which philosophy as logos issues, and
with which it is inscribed, neither Derrida nor Taylor turn the same
blind eye that Lincoln does to the inherently double movement of
discourse. This is perhaps most clearly witnessed in their consider-
ation of
of the homopho
homophonicnic meanings of the wword
ord ‘tears’, which allude
to both lachrymal secretions of the eye, and also refers to ruptures.
When there are tears in the eye, vision is veiled. When there are tears
in discourse, logos is disfigured. Through an examination of the
double movement
movement of tearing, Chapter 2 sets the methodologica
methodologicall stage
for thinking beyond the limits of philosophy as logos, namely, for
thinking in terms of its inherent disruptions.
disruptions. Necessary to this task is
an understanding of how deconstructive discourse works as both
discourse (that, in its engaged critique of a text, intentionally devel-
ops an argument) and dis-course (that always unintentionally strays
from the intended course, opening up other readings, meanings and
possibilities). Derrida’s second essay on Emmanuel Levinas, ‘At this
very moment in this work here I am (1980)’, along with Memoir
Memoirss of
xxii
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
the Blind (1990) introduces us to his conceptualization of tears.

Appropriately and characteristically,
characteri stically, Derrida’s
Derrida’s text works in a dou
double
ble
movement. This movement makes visible an other (beyond all inten-
tionality and synthesis) that always remains in the text, disrupting its
logocentric (and authoritative) functions. The tears that always
already remain in philosophy, thought and language ( logos) are
not simply assimilated and thereby mended by them. Rather, they
operate as a ‘crypt’. We shall investigate how Derrida’s crypt both
preserves and suppresses what it encrypts, which, in this case, are the
remains of philosophy as logos. If these unaccountable others are
incorporated into the system (of philosophy, language and logos)
as a crypt, then it becomes possible to understand how mythos, like
the remaining tears, is within logos, as that which logos both pre-
serves (and requires) and, in an effort to deny it, constrains.
Thisofconstrained
much Plato’ preservation
Plato’ss championing recallsinthe
of logos the pharmakon , upon
Phaedrus rests. which
Derrida
(in his landmark essay ‘Plato’s pharmacy’, included in Dissemination
(1974)) opens a space for a deconstructive reading and engagement
of structures and systems with respect to speech and writing.
Chapter 3 extends beyond the perimeters of Derrida’s argument
by establishing an analogy between pharmakon and mythos, and by
examining significant dislocations
dislocations of logocentric exigenc
exigencies
ies in Plato’
Plato’ss
Phaedrus that Derrida does not touch upon. These dislocations call
into question Plato’s supposed subordination of mythos, which has
subsequently been used to justify philosophy’s exclusion of it. Both
mythos and the pharmakon operate as disruptive indecidables in
Plato’s text, revealing the extent to which logos depends upon that
which it cannot control, domesticate or make fully present. Signifi-
cantly,, a myth is used iin
cantly n the Phaedrus in order to render a pharmakon
so as to argue that speech (logos) is superior to writing. In this case,
the myth itself serves as a pharmakon, but that myth also introduces
a pharmakon in recounting the story of Thoth. Howev However
er,, as indecid-
ables, mythos and the pharmakon cannot so easily be encompassed
into philosophic discourse. Plato’s Phaedrus cannot avoid employing
mythos in order to create and fortify its argument. In this way,
mythos is demonstrated to be basic to logos, setting the discourse of
philosophy into motion. At the same time, however, it unavoidably
deconstructs logos, disrupting philosophy.
Even though its focus is elsewhere, Derrida’s Glas (1974) demon-
strates the crucial dynamic relation of mythos and logos. Reading it

xxiii
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
in consideration of ‘strange loops’, a term coined by neuroscientist

and complexity theorist Douglas Hofstatder to describe anomalous,
unanticipatable,
undiscovered
undiscov open-ended
ered networkin
networking configurations,
g of mythos reveals
ocusingaonpreviously
and logos. Focusing
F Glas and
Derrida’ss use of the myth of Saturn in the text (in which he associa
Derrida’ associates
tes
the god Saturn, written as Sa, with Hegel’s savoir absolu, also tran-
scribed as Sa), Chapter 4 exposes the disseminative operations of
mythos and examines how it both figures and disfigures philosophy
as logos. Glas consists of ‘strange loops’ tha
thatt are not closed, but open.
These loops keep the text in an ever-differentiating oscillation between
possible meanings. The strange loops that are generated by and
emerge from within the wounded, tattooed and breached columns of
Glas prevent savoir absolu from returning to itself. This brings our
attention to a curious structural
s tructural event in the ttext.
ext. T
Tattooed
attooed within the
Sa-Saturn-Saturnalia-Dionysus column in Glas is one that asks,
‘What would it mean not to comprehend (Hegel) the text of Sa?’6
Chapter 4 shows how, by inscribing a philosophical question within
the column of Sa, Derrida, in effect, reveals disseminative mythos.
This question, although philosophical, cannot be answered by phi-
losophy. Instead, the response is played out in the differentiating
polysemia of mythos.
Chapter 5 takes up the resulting challenge of understanding the
relationship of mythos and logos as one that is neither binary nor
dialectical. Taylor’s concept of network, which is an interweave of
deconstruction and complexity studies, offers a new way for us to
understand that not all systems totalize. Networks, for example,
are ‘nontotalizing structure[s] that nonetheless ac[t] as a whole’. 7
This chapter
Derrida’s giftalso recastsTime
(in Given the relation
relation of
(1991)), mythos
which and logos in terms
is ‘aneconomic’, term s of
exceed-
ing the ‘economic’, specular economy that it nevertheless generates.
The gift that interests Derrida is not the one thatthat inscribes itself as a
debt – as a present to be received, noted and therefore reciprocated.
Rather
Ra ther,, he focuses on a gift that surp
surpasses
asses every attempt to locate and
define it, that escapes any counterchange, and which occurs only by
way
wa y of ‘absolute forgetting’. WWee will come to see
s ee how such a gift, that
is not (a) present, is a (dis)figure of the impossible, but not itself
impossible. This requires an examination of the strange relation of
the impossible to the possible, which mirrors
mirrors that of mythos to logos.
The impossible gives rise to the possible, but the possible nonetheless
opens out into the impossible. In this way, they maintain a ‘relation
xxiv
BEGINNING OTHERWISE
without relation’ (as do mythos and logos) in which the impossibility

of the possible is affirmed non-affirmatively, as we will see. Just as
the impossible shadows the possible, mythos shadows logos. Mythos
brings forth logos by invoking the able-to-be-thought, and logos
provides mythos a vehicle by which to find expression.
The impossible sets the possible into motion. So too, the impossi-
bility of philosophy that this work articulates (to the extent that such
articulation
articula tion is possible) is intimately tied to the possibilities inherent
in philosophy’s pre-existing structures and dynamics. The impossibil-
ity of philosophy (as pure logos) is not to be feared or suppressed,
however. Rather, its inescapability summons us as the impossible gift
that can never properly be given, received or even recognized. The
impossible sets our thinking aglow and impassions our thought,
rather than impoverishing it. Mythos makes logos possible, while
simultaneously (dis)figuring it. In this way, it is an impossible inclu-
sion
fromwithin
doomingphilosophy,
us to ‘justwhich we ought
criticism’, not to denyreveal
deconstructions any longer. Far
new, fruit-
ful openings that afford rich possibilities. Such re-examinations of
age-old assumptions and responses to the invitation to rethink them
anew are perhaps perilously overdue. In today’s world, in which a
proliferation of foreclosed, ideological, competing meta-narratives
vie to instantiate their own one-sided vision to the exclusion of all
others, exploring the new avenues of inquiry that issue from a decon-
structive understanding of myth becomes increasingly important.
These partisan perspectives that try to deny the inescapable uncer-
tainty that underlies mythos destabilize and threaten our world in the
most insidious ways. Although instability has the potential to be
productive, allowing for the emergence of creativity, many of today’s
logocentric master narratives, in their fruitless attempts to avoid the
uncertainty and plurality of today’s world and to control that which
is, by its very nature, uncontrollable, are unavoidably destructive.
In attempting to escape the uncertainty and polysemia of today’s
world, and to control that which cannot ultimately be controlled,
they have foreclosed on the future, excluding all possibilities except
the one that they champion, but nevertheless cannot, in the end,
guarantee. To think the impossibility of philosophy (as pure logos) is
simultaneously to think its very possibility, and to affirm the fecund,
groundless ground at the heart of all inquiry, where the ceaseless
rhythms of figuring and disfiguring give to all thinking its opaque
resplendence.
xxv

CHAPTER 1
‘WHAT, AFTER ALL, OF THE REMAIN(S) . . .’ ( G, 1)
TEARING REMAINS, REMAINING TEARS
As the title of this chapter signals, we are proceeding from the scraps
and leftovers of philosophy, from that which philosophy has ignored
as non-philosophical. We begin with what remains to be thought,
with philosophy’s other, mythos. Even though philosophy as logos
declines to take them seriously, these ‘remains’ are significant. In illu-
minating how systems and structures inevitably construct and fortify
themselves through acts of exclusion, Jacques Derrida has high-
lighted the importance of these remains,
remains, of that w
which
hich falls ‘outside’
of philosophy, even though basic to it. As a result of this dynamic,
many
man y founda
foundations
tions assumed to be unassailable are called into question.
It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that logos is no exception
to this. Logos, and therefore philosophy as logos, has secured itself
through marginalizing that which is not, strictly speaking, logical.1
One of these ‘others’ tthat
hat it has shunned is mythos, its ‘bastard’ sibling.
Mainstream discourse in a broad range of disciplines has either
avoided mythos or relegated it to an inferior, inessential position.2
Philosophy, in its concern with logos, and religion often struggle
with unwelcome and ubiquitous intrusions of myth. We shall attend
to the ever-present
ever-present deconstructiv
deconstructivee propensities of mythos, and its dis-
ruptive interplay with logos. Such an endeavour, by its nature, must
move beyond the limitations of philosophy as logos, of most contem contem--
porary theories of myth and of logos itself. It must begin with that
which has been cast out, excluded, suppressed and attenuated.
Remaining with these remains does not unveil a supreme logos domi-
nating mythos. Something other (i.e. irreducibly different) manifests.
This other dismantles the very foundation
foundation of philosoph
philosophy y as logos.
1
1
DERRIDA, MYTH AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY
Derrida opens Glas, his most sustained critique of Hegel’s philo-

sophic system, by addressing the scraps and leftovers of that system.
‘what, after all, of the remain(s) . . .’ (G , 1), he asks. By doing so,
Derrida not only turns attention to the remains themselves, which
have often been overlooked or suppressed by philosophy, but he also
underscores how remains of any system or structure operate. His
examination, in this complexly woven enterprise written in multiple
columns of discordant text, pr proceeds
oceeds from the scraps that are left in
the wake of philosophy’s death knell, as the title of his volume sug-
gests.3 Derrida is concerned with what happens after the closure of
systematic thought, with what remains to be thought and written at
the end-limit of philosophy
philosophy. What, he asks
asks,, (of the) remains of abso-
abso-
lute knowledge? He suspects that the remains are no mere castaways,
but rather the very (un)grounding of philosophy as logos. Derrida’s
works,
wor ks, of which Glas is no exception, are concerned with a philosophic
system that has purportedly reached its completion and attained its
goal, its telos. However
However,, this death knell is not a traditional ending, in
that it founds the very beginning of Glas. In posing the inevitability of
remains at the outset, Derrida indicates that, despite initial appear-
ances, rather than constituting a closure, they open out into a gaping
wound or tear.
tear. Instead of coming full circle to completion, thinking is
disrupted from within by these unincludable scraps.
Philosophy’s ‘end’, or death knell, subverts traditional conceptions
of genesis and closure as well as the circular path of logos. In other
words, something begins at the completion of absolute knowledge.
Something still remains to be thought. Unlike mathematical remainders,
that are still quantifiable leftovers of an equation, remains are scraps
that have escaped the accountability of philosophy as logos; they
cannot be accounted for by any traditional means. 4 As such, they
must be thought and approached in a way other than that by which
philosophy as logos conceives them. Derrida emphasizes this in an
interview: ‘I try to think about the rest in a different way, precisely
not as a simple residue that falls and has no effects, that falls at the
end of an operation, a scrap, a residue that will not be taken into
account from now on. I think that the rest or the remains have to be
taken
taken into account, but not in the form of a substance .’5 The remains
substance.’
lack ‘substance, presence’ or ‘permanence’ ( PSI , 381), and therefore
cannot be approached or thought within the limits of traditional
philosophy. Nonetheless, their disruptive dynamic can no longer be
ignored. Beginning his work with them, Derrida shows that these
2

‘WHAT, AFTER ALL, OF THE REMAIN(S) . . .’
unthought leftovers are foundational to thinking, logos and philoso-

phy, and therefore a fundamental part of them, even though they are
not conceptual presences (and as such, non-foundational).6 Since
they are not conceptual, they
t hey cannot be incorporated into philosophy
phi losophy
as logos. Yet, they are not outside of philosophy, external and extra-
neous to it. Beginning at the ‘end’, with the discarded remnants of
philosophy’s foundation, the very notion of a fixed foundation (with
its recognizable foundational components and without unapprisable
non-foundational elements) and a superior logos (dependant on that
fixed foundation) is rendered questionable.
One begins to recognize that such a foundation is irreparably
faulted. Hence Derrida elaborates:
As for what ‘begins’ then – ‘beyond’ absolute knowledge –

unheard-of thoughts are required, sought for across the memory
of old signs. . . . In the openness of this question we no longer
know. This does not mean that we know nothing but that we are
beyond absolute knowledge (and its ethical, aesthetic, or religious
system), approaching that on the basis of which its closure is
announced and decided. Such a question will legitimately be
understood as meaning nothing, as no longer belonging to the sys-
tem of meaning.7
That which begins ‘beyond’ philosophy’s completion cannot be

apprehended or understood strictly within philosophy as logos,
because it already exceeds
exceeds the limitations
limitations of such a mode of inquiry
inquiry..
The required ‘unheard-of thoughts’ are not of the system proper
because as mute, excluded, non-present cast-offs, they are not right-
fully at home within it and cannot be conceived systematically.
Logos is impotent to translate these ‘unheard-of-though
‘unheard-of-thoughts’.ts’. Although
excluded, they form not only the very basis of Derrida’s inquiry, but
also of philosophy as logos. These ‘unheard’ and unthought remains
elude the order of presence and, therefore, cannot be apprehended
strictly by logos. Attending to the demands of these remains requirerequiress
one to ‘listen’ in a different way, attuning oneself not to the logic of
meaning, but rather to that which has been dismissed as meaningless
and alogical: mythos. Such an act is subversive.8 It must necessarily
transgress the limitations of logos.
Is it possible to transgress the limitations of logos in a way that does
not simply affirm logos? If the relationship between transgression and
3

limit were simply dialectical, then transgression would negate the

limit, putting an end to limits by showing how the limit is limited. 9 In
other words, such transgression is attenuated transgression, and so
would indeed affirm the limit’s limitations. This kind of logos-aligned
transgression affirms the limitations of the limit, demonstrating
that nothing is beyond bounds, and that everything is attainable
and, specifically, thinkable. It ‘introduces’ the ‘crossing of the limit
into every thought’.10 This type of transgression is not truly trans-
gressive, because it affirms that logos has no limits. Instead, it would
be the penultimate stage in a synthetic unity. Although transgression
is impossible apart from the limit that determines it, and the limit is
meaningless apart from transgression, their relationship is neither a
dualistic binarism nor a synthetic
s ynthetic dialectic.
As Michel Foucault observes, the relation between transgression
and limit is more complex than it may at first appear. Limit and
transgression simultaneously affirm and reject each other:
The limitifand
not exist transgression
it were absolutelydepend on each
uncrossable other
and, . . . a limit trans-
reciprocally, could
gression would be pointless if it merely crossed a limit composed
of illusions and shadows. . . . [The limit] serves as a glorification
of what it excludes: the limit opens violently onto the limitless,
finds itself suddenly carried away by the content it had rejected
and fulfilled by this alien plenitude that invades
invades it to the core of its
being.11
At the same moment that the limit acclaims what it bars, the limit
itself is overturned by its own unwitting glorification of the ‘alien’,
foreign, unmasterable ‘plenitude’ that ‘invades’ the system and the
limit ‘to the core of its being’ (TVM , 73). This ‘alien plenitude’ is a
kind of ‘origin’,
‘origin’, since it gives rise to the very system tha
thatt attempt
attemptss to
12
exclude it on the basis of its foreign nature. In Foucault’s view,
transgressive transgression opens the limit to an exorbitant expanse
that it is powerless to delimit or define. In this way, transgression is
excessive. It escapes all definitions and categories:
Transgression does not seek to oppose one thing to another, nor

does it achieve its purpose through mockery or by upsetting
the solidity of foundations; it does not transform the other side
of the mirror, beyond an invisible and uncrossable line, into a

glittering expanse. Transgression is neither violence in a divided

world (in an ethical world) nor a victory over limits (in a dialecti-
cal or revolutionary world); and, exactly for this reason, its role is
to measure the excessive distance that it opens at the heart of the
limit and to trace the flashing line that causes the limit to
arise.
being Transgression contains nothing
– affirms the limitlessness negative,
into which but as
it leaps affirms limited
it opens this
zone to existence for the first time. But, correspondingly, this
affirmation contains nothing positive: no content can bind it,
since,, by definition, no limit can possibly restrict it.13 (APT , 74)
since
The movement
movement of transgression ex exceeds
ceeds the operations of a dialecti-
cal economy. In such an economy, transgression would transform
the other side into a ‘glittering expanse’ through Hegelian negation,
exalting it as achievable, knowable and thinkable, and therefore
within (and not ultimately beyond) the limits of logos. However,
transgression is not violence,
violence, either – the act of opposing itself to one
thing, and remaining
remaini ng divided from it – as in a binary framework. Nor
is it ‘a victory over limits’ (a dialectical relation), which would negate
and put an end to the limit, thereby effectively annulling the trans-
eness of the transgression.14 Foucault situates transgression as
gressiveness
gressiv
something outside the limit and beyond the system that is nonethe-
less also within it.
When understood in terms of Derrida’s remains and Foucault’s
non-dialectical breach, transgression opens the limit (and by exten-
sion logos) to the excessive remains, to the scraps and unthought
cast-offs of philosophy. By revealing the excluded, disruptive
otherness within, transgression affirms – in a manner that is neither
positive nor negative – the ‘limitlessness’ that forever exceeds philo-
sophy as logos. However,
However, as Foucault carefully avers
avers,, ‘this
‘t his affir
affirmation
mation
contains nothing
between these twopositive’
modes, nor negative.
escaping Foucault’s
the limits affirmation
of each. slips
That slippage
is the means by which it transgresses the limitations
limitations of logos without
affirming it. Transgression’s affirmation is not a coming-to-presence
or a conceptualizing of the exorbita
exorbitant.nt. If it were
were,, then it would not be
excessive, since it could ultimately be grasped and conceived purely
within the limits of language
language,, thought (logos) and philosophy
phil osophy proper
proper..
Hence, our affirmation of mythos and its transgression of logos is
non-affirmative, that is, neither positive nor negative. Traditional
affirmation
affirma tion necessarily limits itself by inscribing that which it affirms,

and therefore attempts to grasp, within the constraints of presence

and pure knowability. As Foucault illustrates, transgression is not
bound by the limits of the thinkable and knowable, and as a result,
it cannot be affirmed in any traditional manner. Similarly, Derrida
recognizes the remains of philosophical systems as transgressive
and excessive. Viewed through Foucault’s elaboration, these remains
transgress the limits of philosoph
philosophyy as logos in a way that is not logofi-
able, exposing philosophy’s very limitations. Since philosophy
cannot account for the remains, it attempts to avoid, repress or
domesticate them. Nevertheless, despite philosophy’s efforts to
exclude them, the remains remain. In a non-teleological way, they
give rise to the system itself in their inseparable relation to it. 15 As
unmasterable transgressions, the remains call into question the very
foundation of philosophy as logos,16 even as they are inextricable
ts of it.17
aspects
aspec
These remains reveal that logos’ foundation (the genesis of philo-
sophy) is faulted by an unassimilable plenitude. Philosophy’s ‘end’ in
absolute knowledge is an opening that confounds the possibility of
closure. The inherent

of this unthought tearsmythos
other, in logos.18 point
Thisto the ‘foundational’
unaccountable, nature
exorbitant
fissure within the system does not happen despite the system, as some
sort of error or mistake that is to be avoided, repressed or mended.
Rather, non-knowledge (that which cannot be grasped by logos) is
endemic to knowledge (logos), as Georges Bataille has expressed.
The unknowable is ‘unknowable not on account of the insufficiency
of reason, but by its nature.’19 Reason contains an inherently unrea-
sonable aspect, and logos contains an inherently illogical dynamic.
Hence, reason is transgressed from within by that which cannot be
reasoned. Since ‘illogical’, indecidable mythos cannot be incorpo-
rated into and conceived of in terms of presence by philosophy,
it disfigures and disrupts all logocentric operations. Not present,
‘though not merely absent, the other remains “inside” as an exterior-
ity interrupting all immediacy and dislocating every identity’ ( T , 68).
As just such
s uch an other
other,, mythos operates in a manner similar to Maurice
Blanchot’s ‘nonabsent absence’.
absence’. Bl
Blanchot’s
anchot’s phrase is used to describe,
among other things, the way in which writing is non-writing. Non-
writing is not productive and fails to achieve a specific effect. For
Blanchot, every book, which supposes itself to be a singular entity
delivering an intended message from the author, also contains, to use a
term of Derrida’
Derrida’s,
s, an ‘aneconomic’ aspect tha thatt escapes authorial intent

and is not entirely present to logocentric discourse. The uselessness

of (non-)writing is specifically its usefulness, but this ‘usefulness’ is
useless, because it does not work toward a philosophical telos. This
kind of writing tha
thatt escapes logos is ‘the non-absent absence from out
of which the Book, ha having
ving absented itself from this a
absence
bsence . . . makes
itself legible and comments upon itself . . .’ 20 Such ‘writing remains
foreign to legibility; illegible then . . .’ (EI , 431). Blanchot concludes
that this writing is therefore ‘(pure) exteriority, strange to every
relation
relatio n of presence’ (EI , 431). The ‘illegible’ ‘exteriority’
‘exteriority’ of this non-
writing, although ‘absent from the book’, nonetheless ‘stands in
a relationship of alterity with it’ (EI, 431). Neither present to intelli-
gibility or readability, nor absent in that which is readable and
intelligible, it is a non-absent absence. In a similar way, mythos is an
‘exteriority’ that is foreign to logos’ apprehendable logic, while at the
same time ‘basic’ to logos. Logos’ limits (or what Bataille refers to as
‘insufficiency’) reveal the extent to which logos always already pre-
supposes mythos, but not in a mere dialectical or binary relation. As
we will see, logos is constituted and simultaneously discomposed by
mythos. Mythos gives rise to logos, and in turn, logos makes it possi-
ble for mythos to emerge into thought and speech. Mythos and logos
are interwoven in a relationship that is neither merely binary nor
completely dialectical.
THE DESTABILIZING INDECIDABILITY OF MYTHOS
Western philosophic discourse has a long history of dichotomizing

mythos and logos, as if their relation w
were
ere reducible simpl
simply
y to a binary
or dialectical one. The age-old distinction between mythos and logos
continues
contin ues unquestioned. This habitual blindness to mythos is signifi-
cant, since, as the prior discussion illustrates, that which has been
neglected nonetheless remains to destabilize philosophy’s founda-
tion. Conventional thinking has proceeded along the lines traced out
by a customary reading of Plato and a circumscribed, unambiguous
unambiguous
21
vision of philosophy. The relationship
relationship of mythos and logos has been
inadequately addressed or avoided, keeping logos at the centre and
relegating mythos and logos to their separate roles. Philosophy and
the subsequent welcoming of the dawn of reason were born of this
evasion. Insisting
Insist ing that philosophy had been freed fr
from
om mythos and its
ambiguity allowed for the inauguration of a logos that is uncondi-
tioned by and absolved
absolved of the inconsistencies of mythos.

Classicist Luc Brisson points out that ‘the conflict between “myth”
and “philosophy” reaches its apex with Plato.’22 Plato defines and
distinguishes these two terms, setting them in opposition to one
another. As Brisson explains, ‘the m[ y
y]thos/logos dichotomy [in Plato]
can be interpreted not only as the opposition between falsifiable
falsifiable dis-
course and unfalsifiable discourse . . . but also as the opposition
between narrative discourse – or, more simply, a story – and argu-
mentative discourse’ (HP, 112). In one sense, according to Brisson,
myth is unfalsifiable discourse, since its referent is situated ‘at a level
of reality inaccessible both to the intellect and to the senses.’ 23
In other words, ‘the referent is not susceptible of [to] any precise
description’ (PM , 102). Just as the remains of the philosophic system
are not presences, and therefore elude conceptualization, mythos’
referent is equally absent, rendering mythos just as ungraspable
ungraspable by
both the senses and the intellect. With neither a sensible nor intelli-
gible ground, mythos stands in stark contrast to the purportedly
intelligible foundation of logos
logos.
Importantly, the difference between falsifiable and unfalsifiable is
unavoidably and disturbingly ambiguous. If myth is unfalsifiable, it
24
cannot be either proven or disproven. As neither truth nor fiction,
it oscillates between these two poles. It is neither true nor false. Logos
contains no such ambiguity: it establishes itself as truth. Its status
can be unmistakably ascertained. It does not slip and slide between
opposing categories; its identity is definitive. When understood in
this way, it becomes obvious that mythos is irreducibly indecidable,
since it vacillates between truth and falsehood. As neither true nor
false, mythos cannot be transformed into a tool of logical, arg argumen-
umen-
tative discourse (to which Plato opposes it) with a rational internal
order that presides over its organization and development.25 Any
attempt to categorize mythos one way or the other, as singularly true
or false, is stymied by the disseminating ambiguity
ambiguity of its indecidabil-
ity that renders it at once as neither true nor false.26 Employing the
laws of reason, it is impossible to prove it either true or false. For
philosophy, this is problematic because mythos can wrongly be used
to persuade, not through the powers of reason, but by appealing to
the ‘lesser’ faculties of the emotions and senses. In this view,
view, human-
kind in general, and philosophy in particular, must be unbound from
the irrational, ambiguous grip of mythos. Mythos is therefore rele-
gated to its association with stories, which are not required to adhere
to the rules of logic, and defy empirical and objectiv
objectivee valida
validation.
tion.
Accordingly, logos takes on the opposite connotations of mythos.

It literally means ‘speech’, and becomes associated with reason, falsi-
fiable philosophic discourse, and hence, truth. At its most basic level,
logos is verifiable discourse. As such, its claims are truth claims.
Whereas mythos’ status is neither verifiable
verif iable nor unv
unverifiable
erifiable – its rela-
tion to fact is impossible to determine – logos either validates or
invalidates fact. For this reason, logos is ‘objective’ truth. Its root,
‘leg ’,
’, means to gather and collect. Logos ‘means at once reason, dis-
course, relation, and account’, observes Derrida.27 Specifically, logos
designates argumentative discourse that is verifiable. Unlike mythos,
which does not stand in relation to either truth or falsity (its identity
is indecidable), logos identifies itself as truth. Mythos, however, has
an unknown etymology (HP, 19–20). Its constantly shifting changes
in meaning (between Homer and Plato) is due, argues Brisson, to the
‘increasingly
‘increasingl y important place of logos’ (HP, 19–20). Therefore
There fore,, ‘logos
is heir to . . . mythos’ (HP, 20). From this traditional perspective,
logos triumphs over the inferior
infer ior,, ambiguous, and errant mythos. Plato
sits on the fault line of two different modes of consciousness. His
writing signals the shift from orality to literacy. Since myth is often
associated with
wi th orality, the move to logos is also, in effect, an attempt
to inaugurate and cement the age of literacy. 28
Before continuing further, a few more important qualifications
must be made in considering the subversion
subversion of logos by mythos. In a
deconstructive reading, subversion is not merely inversion, as the
above
abo ve discussi
discussion
on of transgressi
transgressionon and the limi
limitt reveals.
reveals. Mark C. T Taylor
aylor
goes so far as to suggest that the ‘subversive thinker must think what
the tradition has left unthought by writing (on) (on) the margin of neither /
nor’ (T , 242). If one follows Hegelian logic, the subversive – that
which opposes itself to unity, identity, sameness, and so forth –
becomes part of the ‘norm’ through dialectical mov movement.
ement. In the final
analysis, it is merely the penultimate stage to an integrated unity. 29 A
deconstructive reading will show, however, that every foundation
includes a non-foundational aspect that destabilizes it from within.
Therefore,, every apparent closure lays bare a gateway from w
Therefore which
hich tthe
he
formerly repressed emerges to destabilize
de stabilize foundations and unveil new
modes of thinking. Mythos subverts logos. As an indecidable, it
escapes the mode of presence and truth, faulting logos from within. In
keeping with mythos’ indecidable oscillation between neither simple
truth nor simple falsehood,
fals ehood, one must resist the temptation to name or
to identify mythos as a category of presence, as something logofiable.
As an indecidable remains, mythos cannot be accounted for by phi-

losophy as logos. To begin to think mythos is not to think toward a
traditional end. Rather, it is to open thinking to a gaping abyss from
which it proceeds – to an unaccounted for, unthought remains –
and to an ever-differentiating mythos that calls forth logos. This
approach attends
attends to the endles
endlesss tolling between neit
neither/nor,
her/nor, not seek-
ing to translate such rhythms
rhythms into a discourse of presence that wouldwould
render mythos either as truth or falsehood, thereby denying its rest-
less movement between these two. Such disseminative oscillation
cannot be stilled or resolved, even though philosophy has a long his-
tory of attempting to do so. If the repressed always returns to upset
every foundation,
foundation, tthen
hen philo
philosophy’
sophy’ss endeav
endeavours
ours ul
ultimately
timately fail. Neit
Neither
her
philosophical nor non-philosophical,
non-philosophical, our reading of mythos operates
between these two poles.
Mythos, with its shape-shifting indecidability, eludes the hold of
logos. Hence the link with various other indecidables that Derrida
has articulated: for instance, mythos and pharmakon, mythos and the
impossible, mythos and the ‘gift’. These are meant as analogies of
‘relation, not attribution’,30 as Thomas Carlson describes them. Since
mythos and pharmakon, for example, function as indecidables, for-
ever oscillating
oscillating in the margins of neither/nor,
neither/nor, as neither just one thing
nor another (e.g. remedy or poison, falsifiable or unfalsifiable), and
therefore not singularly cemented as unambiguous ‘things’ in the
realm of presence
presence,, it iiss impossible to treat them as apparent, unitary
entities to be analog
analogized.
ized. Analogies of attribution
attribution cannot be drawn.
Their attributes escape all attribution. In his study comparing
Heidegger and Eckhart, John D. Caputo points out that an analogy
of relation concerns ‘a similarity of structures, not of content. It is
not what is related but the how which is comparable.’31 Nonetheless,
this focus on structure is not strictly structural. Just as deconstruc-
tion presupposes the structuralism that it ultimately undermines,
structuralism similarly includes, as a condition of its possibility, that
which exceeds structure. This does not mean that deconstruction is,
in effect, structuralism, and that structuralism is ultimately decon-
struction.32 In his own study, in which he proposes such an analogy,
Thomas Carlson asserts that he is ‘prohibited’ by
the very terms of the analogy, not only from identifying those
terms but also from distinguishing them – for the terms themselves
cannot be given determinate, identifiable content; indeed, lacking
10
the determinacy or identity of any ‘what,’ the terms indicate that

which would remain, in and of itself, unknown and unknowable.
(I , 17)
For instance, mythos and pharmakon cannot be categorized within

the strictures of logos. As indecidables, they are by their very ‘nature’
indeterminate. Thus, a determinate identity of ‘what’ is certainly
impossible, as is any attempt to draw an analogy of attribution. The
degree to which the ‘how’ of any relation can be made is the extent to
which this study develops an analogy of relation. Its use of analogy
is not meant to ground (or structuralize), but rather to destabilize
that which can never be properly grounded.
OTHER DIS-COURSES
Hegel’s Other
Thinking mythos not as a Hegelian

Hegeli an other
other,, but as an other that cannot
be synthesized and that does not return to identity, requires that we
first briefly explore Hegel’s concept of otherness. We can then exam-
ine Derrida’s and Taylor’s rereadings of Hegel’s notion of difference.
Jean-Luc
Jea n-Luc Nancy dubs Hegel ‘the inaugural thinker of the contempo-
rary world.’33 In a 1971 interview, Derrida affirmed the importance
of returning to Hegel’s
Hegel’s texts:
We will never be finished with the reading or rereading of Hegel,

and, in a certain way, I do nothing other than attempt to explain
myself on this point. In effect, I believe that Hegel’s text is neces-
sarily fissured; that it is something more and other than the circular
closure of its representa
representation.
tion. It is not reduced to a content of phi-
losophemes, it also necessarily produces a powerful writing
operation, a remainder of writing, whose strange relationship to
the philosophical content of Hegel’s
Hegel’s text must be reexamined,
reexamined, that
is, the movement by means of which his text exceeds its meaning,
permits itself to be turned away from, to return to, and to repeat
self-identity..34
itself outside its self-identity
The re-examination of Hegel is central to Derrida’s task. Further-

more, he suggests that Hegel’s text is ‘fissured’. That is, tears emerge
from within it. These tears are caused, in part, by the operation of
11
writing that unwittingly creates a ‘remainder’. These remains are elu-

sive, unmasterable excesses that disrupt the philosophic system of
Hegel’ss text from within, derailing its self-identi
Hegel’ self-identity
ty and self-presentation.
Reading the inherent fissures and disruptions within Hegel’s text
reveals not ‘circular closure’, the return of thinking to itself (which
would culminate in absolute knowledge), but rather the impossibility
of closure, self-presence and aabsolute
bsolute knowledge. This calls into ques-
tion the very possibility of a superior, pure and dominant logos.
heTaylor is equally
is attentive to thepreoccupied with rereading
irreparable ruptures Hegel.inLike
that surface Derrida,
the Hegelian
text.35 ‘[T]hose who write after the end of philosophy cannot avoid
Hegel’,36 insists Taylor, because
[o]n the one hand, Hegel’s system is the culmination of the

modern philosophy of the subject that brings the closure of the
‘metaphysics of presence’; on the other hand, Hegelian reason is
fascinated by difference and is irresistibly drawn to the vertiginous
question of the other. (IS , 4)
This echoes Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who declared two decades

earlier that ‘all the great philosophical ideas of the past century . . .
had their beginnings in Hegel; it was he who started the attempt to
explore the irrational and integrate it into an expanded reason, which
remains the task of our century.’37 Both Taylor and Merleau-Ponty
call attention to Hegel’s undeniable fascination with otherness, with
the irrational. In fact, Hegel’s fixation on otherness leaves him unsat-
isfied with earlier and contemporaneous attempts to account for it,
such as those of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. The other drives Hegel
and gives rise to his philosophic system. It is precisely his interest
in the ‘vertiginous’ other that causes him, simultaneously and unwit-
tingly, to preserve it through attenuation and constraint. Hegel’s
obsession with otherness, and his attempt to account for it and syn-
thesize it into thinkers

post-Hegelian identity
thinkers and thinking,
to read provides .aThat
Hegel otherwise pointis,of
forentry
themfor
to
read his work in terms of its inherent disruptions
disruptions..
Both Derrida and Taylor focus on Hegel’s concomitant affirma-
tion and rejection of otherness. They rightly suspect that, despite
Hegel’s attempts to domesticate the other in the name of logos and
identity, some unmasterable excess remains, fissuring his philosophic
12
system from within and rendering it incomplete. Instead of preserv-

ing otherness
othernes s as the unmasterable excess that it is, Hegel’s
Hegel’s philosoph
philosophicic
system attempts to attenuate and rationaliz
rationalizee it by subsuming it under
the fully present and knowable self-identity of the system. However,
as Derrida avers in the Positions interview above, rereading Hegel’s
text reveals that it ‘exceeds its meaning’, ‘that it is something more
and other than the circular closure of its representation’, and that
ultimately, it unwittingly operates ‘outside its self-identity’ ( P, 77–8).
In order to see how it does this, despite Hegel’s efforts to the con-
trary, it is necessary to elaborate what Derrida and Taylor mean by
difference and otherness, and how this contrasts to Hegel’s notion
of them.
At its most basic level, Hegel’s dialectic operates in three stages:
from identity (union) to difference (loss, separation and exile) to
the identity of identity-and-difference (reunion, reconciliation and
synthesis).38 The conversion of identity and difference into each
other is of concern here. The initial identity of the first stage is
pure self-sameness uncorrupted by difference. In order to have an
identity, identity must affirm itself. It does this by placing itself in
contradistinction to difference or otherness. In other words, identity
affirms itself through the act of negation. Hegel declares in the
Phenomenology
contemplates that
how ‘knowing
what is this seeming
is differentiated inactivity which
spontaneously movesmerely
in its
own self and returns into its unity.’ 39 Identity seeks itself and deter-
mines itself by relating to difference, or to an other. The discovery
that its own identity can only be constituted in and through this
other,, that it cannot exist apart from this other
other other,, entails a self-negation.
However, such negation is not final, as Hegel assesses it. The nega-
tion is negated when identity (or self) recognizes that difference
(or the other) is not, in the final analysis, essentially and externally
other.. An influential scholar of Hegel and teacher of Derrida’
other Derrida’s,
s, JJean
ean
Hyppolite, encapsulates this movement with his usual erudition: ‘For
Hegel, identity is being which posits itself, which reflects itself in
itself, therefore
therefore,, which contradicts itself and alienates itself, in order
to posit itself in its self-alienation.’ 40 Such contradiction is internal,
and therefore not ultimately different. Difference is merely a stage in
the movement
movement of logic and in identity’
identity’ss affirmation of itself.
itself.
Within this framework, difference is not truly different. It is not
entirely other. Taylor
Taylor highlights this
th is crucial as
aspect
pect of Hegel’s logic b
by
y
explaining that ‘in this dialectical interplay, difference, the other of
13
identity, is identity’s own other. Such ownership of difference is

essential to identity.’41 In Hegel’s system, identity owns and therefore
presides over difference. Difference merges with identity, forming a
singular unit: the identity of identity-and-difference. Otherness,
although fundamental to identity’s self-recognition (recall here that
identity in the first stage is incomplete without its other, because it
has not yet comprehended itself, and therefore must lose itself in
order to find itself), is nonetheless unified and domesticated within
identity. It appears in the order of presence and thereby becomes
fully known.
known. Identity subsumes otherness under the banner of itself
itself..
Identity ‘ingests’ and integrates the other, uniting difference with
identity as the identity of identity-and-difference. From Hegel’s per-
spective, nothing unaccounted
unaccounte d for is left over.
over. He denies the poss
possibili
ibility
ty
of remains. ‘Rela
‘Relation
tion to “other” ’, emphas
emphasizes
izes Taylor
aylor,, ‘tur
‘turns
ns out to be
self-relation’
self-rel ation’ (A, 16). Likewise difference, too, becomes its own oppo-
site. Hegel elaborates:
Difference in itself is self-related difference; as such, it is the

negativity of itself, the difference not of an other, but of itself
from itself ; it is not itself but its other. But that which is different
from difference is identity. Difference, therefore, is itself and
identity
identit y. Both together consti
constitute
tute difference; it iiss the whole, and its
moment.42
Difference is not only domesticated by identity, but it also domesti-

cates itself in its relation to itself. Identity and differ
difference
ence each house
their own opposites. Each is therefore contradictory in nature. How-
ever, Hegelian inner contradiction is not radical, because ‘each is
mediated
media ted with itself by its other and contains it. . . . it is mediated with
itself by the non-being of its other; hence it is a unity existing on
its own account and it excludes the other from itself’ (SL, 431).43
Difference is internal, secondary and reconcilable. In the final analy-
sis, it is not wholly different, since otherness is negated, opposites are
reconciled, and ultimately, difference is wedded to identity and
thereby attenuated.
the economy For Hegel,
of presence difference
and pure and identity unite within
knowability.
As pointed out earlier, Taylor and Merleau-Ponty credit Hegel
with introducing otherness into identity, reason and thinking, and
with recognizing that difference is inherent within identity. The phil-
osophical tradition prior to Hegel had focused predominantly on
14
identity as that which is identical to itself and not intimately related

to difference. Hegel turns philosophy’s attention to the inherently
self-contradictory nature
nature of identity
identity.. He insists that identity is differ-
ent, that it includes its other. This inclusion, however, is exclusive.
Identity will only welcome an other that has undergone a dialectical
transformation. That is, difference and otherness are taken up into
the house of identity only after they have been domesticated and
mastered. There is nothing excessive or truly different about Hegel’s
other. The opposition between identity and difference is, says Hegel,
‘illusory’, since ‘in grasping and expressing the one, the other also is
immediately grasped and expressed’ ( SL, 6). Hegel’s other can be
conceived and is, in fact, grasped by its other, identity. Taylor sums
up the Hegelian operation of dialectical synthesis: ‘By reuniting
opposites, the negation of negat
opposites, negation
ion returns difference to identity and
rejoins other to the same’ (A, 18).
An Irreducible Other
It becomes clear to Derrida that, despite Hegel’s insistence that dif-

ference return to identity, there is in fact an irreducible, disruptive
difference that remains.44 Such an other cannot be thought or grasped
through the metaphysics of presence and identity, as Hegel attempts
to do. In order to think this difference as difference – that is, to think
difference as neither its identity nor its opposite (i.e. difference) –
Derrida coins the term, différance. Différance is ‘neither a word nor a
concept’.45 The ‘a’ of différance ‘cannot be heard. . . . It cannot be
apprehended
appre hended in speech . . . it also bypasses the order of appre
apprehension
hension
in general’ (MP, 3–4). This disruptive, silent ‘a’ cannot be grasped or
accounted for by logos. The ‘tacit monument’ ( MP, 4) of the ‘a’ of
différance is an unmasterable excess. ‘Différance is not only irreducible
to any ontological or theological – ontotheological – reappropriation,
but as the very opening of the space in which ontotheology – phi-
losophy – produces its system and its history, it includes ontotheology
ontot heology,,
inscribing it and exceeding it without return’ (MP, 6), explains
Derrida. Différance is ‘irreducible’ to identity. Additionally, Derrida
avers that it is basic to that which cannot think, grasp,
gr asp, domesticate or
include it. This différance falls outside
outsi de of Hegel’s dialecti
dialectical
cal economy
economy,,
since it cannot be accounted for or reappropriated by identity or
logos. Différer is drawn from the Latin, differre and carries the double
meaning of to space and to temporize. In the former it is ‘to be not
15
identical’ but,
but, ‘to be other . . . [A]n interval, a distance
distance,, a spacing .
. . .
between the elements other’ (MP, 8). In the latter sense it means
to temporize,
temporiz e, to tak
takee recourse cons
consciously
ciously or uncons
unconsciously
ciously,, in the
temporal and temporizing mediation of a detour that suspends
the accomplishment or fulfillment of ‘desire’ or ‘will,’
‘will,’ and equally
effects this suspension in a mode that annuls or tempers its own
effect. (MP, 8)
The operation of différance is renegade. Instead of returning, full

circle, to identity, it takes a detour (sans retour) and in so doing makes
the completion and fulfillment of Hegel’s route impossible. Hegel
describes the movement of thought as circular, as ‘the circle that
returns into itself, the circle that presupposes its beginning and
reaches it only at the end’ (PS , 488). Différance, however, subverts
this closure and rends the system from within. It is not subsumed
under identity like Hegelian difference. Différance does not unify
u nify,, but
rather, disbands. It cannot be corralled or accounted for by logos.
Différance is ‘irreducibly polysemic’ (MP, 8), and as such is not
limited to the mode of presence tha
thatt structures languag
languagee and thought.
In fact, it disrupts these through a ‘process of scission and division
which would produce or constitute different things or differences’
(MP, 9) as opposed to identities. It does not unify, but rather, cuts.
Since it exceeds
exceeds logos, différance is not a concept. It is radically other,
and as such, destabilizes the very ground
ground of logos, of philosophy. By
acknowledging différance not as representing presence, but as sub-
versively different
one puts into question the authority of presence, or of its simple

symmetrical opposite, absence or lack. Thus one questions the
limit which has always constrained us, which still constrains us –
as inhabitants
inhabitants of a language and a system of thought – to formula
formulate
te
the meaning of Being in general as presence or absence, in the
categories of being or beingness (ousia). (MP, 10)
Différance calls the entire system of logos into question. Because it

cannot be categorized (it is ‘irreducibly polysemic’) and therefore
grasped, it is not even a concept. It is not present, nor is it absent.
Différance’s polysemic irreducibility oscillates between these two
modes. As an other that does not return to identity, it transgresses
16
logos (language, thought, speech). ‘With this A,’ observes Taylor,

‘Derrida attempts to write that which spells the end of every philo-
sophical system based upon the principle of the ONE, which is
otherwise known as Identity, Unity, Being, and Presence’ (T , 25).
Derrida’s ‘A’ reveals an other that disrupts, dismantles and destroys
the reign of synthetic unity. Différance tears the seam of ‘sy’ that
joins together (in a synthesis) the symmetrical system of sameness
and difference. This difference cannot be grasped in terms of identit
identityy.
It is, by its very (non-)nature, différance, an other that cannot be
accounted for by the logical operations of thought. Furthermore,
this other is not simply outside the structure that it disrupts, but
rather is within, as an ‘originary causality’ that simultaneously
inscribes and exceeds it. It is more ‘fundamental’ and more ‘origi-
nary’ than any unity or identity. The unheard ‘a’ rends every binary
opposition and dialectical synthesis.
Logos’ Other
As we have seen, otherness is basic to identity, even if it cannot be

properly identified or synthesized into it. Likewise, logos’ other,
mythos, is fundamental to it, but neither as a Hegelian other that
returns difference to identity, nor as a binary one that marks two
separate, distinct parts. Insofar as mythos is such an irreducible,
unlogofiable other, it operates by way of différance. Its unending
oscillation between possible meanings creates an unbridgeable gap
in logos. This is why tracing the movement of différance within the
philosophic system – within logos – is essential to understanding
the deconstructive dynamic of mythos and the relation of logos and
mythos. Like différance, which is an ‘originary causality’, mythos acts
in a similar fashion, ‘founding’ and disorganizing logos from within.
Deconstruction allows us to understand mythos as an irreducible,
disruptive other that does not, in the end, return to identity or to
logos. Both Derrida and Taylor insist on an unsettling différance
within systems and structures that destabilizes their foundations. To
acknowledge mythos as irreducibly indecidable, and not attempt to
collapse it into ideology or to ignore it as philosophy has done, yields
new possibilities for understanding the very nature of thinking and
of philosophy.
Unfortunately, the deconstructive propensities of mythos have
been overlooked. As cases in point from two different disciplines,
17
philosopher Lawrence Hatab’s Myth and Philosophy: A Contest of

Truths and historian of religion Bruce Lincoln’s Theorizing Myth:
Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship are insufficient precisely because
they do not maintain the ‘essential’, irreducible indecidability of
mythos. Despite their disparate starting points,
points, like other theorists of
myth, both view mythos through the monochromatic lens of logos.
They (perhaps unwittingly) fall into the logocentric temptation to
treat mythos as a definite thing, and as a definable category of pres-
ence. Mythos has ostensibly been domesticated by logos in these
works, even when the authors continue to maintain that they are not
dismissive of myth. This reminds us of Hegel’s insistence that since
the final stage of identity includes difference, it is therefore differ-
ence-saturated. However,
However, as we ha
have
ve seen, this is not entirely accu
accurate
rate,,
since the difference he supposes it to contain is not an irreducible
difference. Likewise, mythos’ irreducible indecidability is not recog-
nized by these authors, and therefore, its relation to logos is not
sweepingly reconsidered, as it needs to be.
In Myth and Philosophy: A Contest of Truths, Hatab argues that
myth and philosophy are two different (but not mutually exclusive)
modes of presenta
presentation.
tion. In characterizing m myth
yth as a ‘mode of presen-
tation’, he retains a logocentric insistence. Following Heidegger’s
phenomenology, Hatab proposes to ‘unconceal’ a pluralistic under-
standing of truth that includes mythos.46 Unfortunately, Hatab’s
plurality does not acknowledge mythos’ indecidability.
indecidability. Furthermore,
Furt hermore,
he is unable to relinquish philosophy’
phil osophy’ss valuation of truth. By uphol
uphold-
d-
ing this philosophic standard in his work on myth, he subjects myth
to logos’ limited parameters. In other words, he still insistently views
mythos from the perspective
perspective of logos. This is evident in his statement
that ‘if langua
language
ge is the key to meaning [a Heideggerian insistence that
that
he maintains], we must listen to the language of a mythical age to
gather its meaning . . .’ ( MP
MPA A, 12). It is clear that Hatab is making
several assumptions that automatically implicate logos, whether he
recognizes it or not. In insisting that language (logos) is the ‘key to
meaning’, he unavoidably places mythos within the realm of speech
(which, we shall not forget, is also literally logos), and therefore, of
presence. Hatab’s study privileges presence, just as philosophy as
logos does. It assumes that mythos is restricted to that, or to any
purely receivable mode. This denies the inherent indecidability of
mythos, which eschews every ‘mode’, a term that denotes something
inherently singular and categorizable. Hatab argues that mythos,
18
therefore, gives itself over to meaning and complete interpretation.

However, as irreducibly indecidable, mythos does not present itself
to these ends. It slips and slides between possible meanings, and
thus is withdrawn from the sphere of pure knowability. In other
words, something always remains to be translated or comprehended.
Hatab overlooks this non-present, but not entirely absent, dynamic
of mythos. To give definitive meaning and interpretation to myth
is always already to engage it as it relates to logos, and therefore
to locate it within logocentric discourse. Whereas Hatab is concerned
with language and interpretation (modes of presence), the point
here is that these are not viable routes to mythos. Instead, the
deconstructive
logos are crucialoperation of mythosHatab
to understanding. and its resultant
misses relation to
the disseminative
nature of mythos that, like Derrida’s gift (see a discussion of this in
Chapter 5), does not give itself over to presence, to language or to
logos.
Bruce Lincoln’s widely acclaimed Theorizing Myth: Narrative,
Ideology, and Scholarship illustrates a similar limitation. Lincoln’s
study is both historical and theoretical. His objective
objective is
to transform a simple, linear plot of development and progress
(‘from mythos to logos’) into one that recognizes the importance
of multiple actors, perspectives, and positions. None of these are
dismissible, none are pure, and none hold a monopoly on truth.
Indeed, the protestations of the principals not withstanding, the
central issue with which they grapple is not truth per se but discur-
sive authority
author ity.. ( TM , 43)
Lincoln’s purpose seems promising, since he appears to be attuned to

the fallacies of logocentric historicizing that marginalizes the other
in favour of a unified discourse. Unlike Hatab, his primary concern
(at least as it initially appears) is not truth, since he admits that no
single position has a ‘monopoly on truth’. He shows that the two
poles of mythos and logos have switched places over the course of
history. Regardless of their positions, however, the weaker, ‘charm-
ing’ and ‘alluring’ speech
speech of ‘dissimula
‘dissimulation’
tion’ – whether in the form of
logos
the prior to
young, Plato and
shrewd or mythos
weak (thereafter – is always
TM , 10). For spoken
the early by w
Greeks,women,
omen,
specifi-
cally Homer and Hesiod, mythos is associated with truth and all that
is today considered the realm of logos, while logos is aligned with
19
‘lies, masquerade, and dissimulation’ (TM , 4). Lincoln underscores

the importance of his historical insight:
These are not words with fixed meanings (indeed, no such words
exist), nor did their meanings change glacially over time, as
the result of impersonal processes. Rather, these words, along
with many
many others, were
were the sites of pointed and highly consequen-
tial semantic skirmishes fought between rival regimes of truth.
(TM , 18)
Lincoln’s point is that the magnetic poles of mythos and logos have
flipped. This, he concludes, leaves ‘the balance of power between
them unresolved’ (TM , 18). This historical analysis of their usage
does not go far enough. Even when mythos is flipped to the other
pole, Lincoln leaves its ambiguous roots unexamined. He does not
address the ramifications of mythos’ indecidability, and its resulting
effect on logos and thinking. For
For him, the relat
relationship
ionship of mythos and
logos remains oppositional and confrontational. In literalizing the
polarities, as he does, he fails to apprise accurately how they relate to
each other. He posits a relation between them, but its complex, non-
oppositional essence eludes him.47
Lincoln’ss message ultima
Lincoln’ ultimately
tely reflects the dominance of the kind of
thinking that he himself employs. Although he claims that none of
the ‘multiple actors, perspectives, and positions’ at stake in his study
‘hold a monopoly
specific ‘discursive on truth’ ( TM
authority’ , 43),
above he nonetheless
all others. For him,champions a
the ‘central
issue’ with which mythos and logos wrestle is ‘discursive authority’
(TM , 43).48 However, Lincoln overlooks the double meaning of ‘dis-
cursive’, unintentionally
unintentionally undermining his own ‘discursive authority’.
Like mythos, the ambiguity of ‘discursive authority’ proves unwieldy.
One meaning of ‘discursive’ is to move coherently , using reasoning.
In this sense it acts visibly and intelligibly, subsuming parts into a
unified whole. This is the usage that Lincoln employs in discussing
the discourse of ‘dissimulation’, which, as he shows, at certain times
in history is referred to as ‘ mythos’, and at others, as ‘ logos’. Dissimu-
lative discourse, Lincoln points out, is often ideological and has the
propensity (as history has demonstrated) to be hegemonic. This is
why myth has often received a bad rap, and why Lincoln urges us to
treat it as potentially dangerous. Focusing on simply the intelligible
aspect
aspe ct of mythos and the logocentric function of the discursive misses
20
a crucial issue. As we have seen, irreducibly indecidable mythos is not

reducible to reason, to logos. Oscillating between
between the poles of neither
falsifiable nor unfalsifiable discourse, mythos slips through the
confines of any singular definition or way of understanding it. Any
discourse that attempts to harness one of these meanings to the
exclusion of the other, will only find itself undermined by mythos’
disseminative, double movement.
‘Discursive’ also means digressing, rambling and moving irregu-
larly from one topic to the next in a disorderly fashion. In this sense,
the discursive operates
operates by wa
wayy of detour (sans retour), like Derrida’s
différance. Taking both of its meanings into account, we see that
the discursive functions in a double movement of gathering and of
49
dispersing. Lincoln ignores (or perhaps attempts to suppress) this
latter operation of the discursive, focusing instead on its coherent,
unifying function. When dispersing, the discursive does not present
itself (or its object) to thinking, languag
languagee or discourse
discourse.. This dissemi-
nating aspect of the discursive ruptures every attempt at reasoned
synthesis. Since the discursive, by its nature, continually oscillates
between gathering and dispersing, it becomes impossible to render
discursive
discur sive authority wi
with
th any certainty.
certainty. Therefore, it is not jus
justt a mat-
ter of logos and mythos flipping poles. The very relation of these
poles – the means by which one attempts to promote itself over the
other by ‘discursive authority’ – must be questioned. This is not a
problem that Lincoln undertakes. He leavleaves
es untouche
untouched d time-honou
time-honoured red
lines in the sand. Such furrows are as ancient as Plato. The contents
may switch, but the polemical distinctions remain. Changing posi-
tions, in other words, does nothing to re-engage the antipodal
structure, or the traditions that stubbornly conceive of structures
only in terms of the both/and or either/or of the dialectical and the
binary.
Lincoln’s satisfaction with the polarity of A and B is further
witnessed in his analysis of Plato. He rightfully acknowledges Plato’s
distrust of mythoi , which ‘Plato categorizes as a form of logos that
possesses
possess es less truth than others [nar
[narratives],
ratives], being “false on the whole
whole,,
but still having some truth in it” ’ ( TM , 39). Lincoln proves this con-
tention by referring to Socrates’ first speech in Phaedrus, wherein
Socrates invok
invokeses mythos in order to aid him in creating an argument.
However, Socrates
offers another logoilater admits
[speech] in that
orderPhaedrus druggedhow
to demonstrate him the
andlatter
thus
is superior to the earlier argument. 50 While mythoi are not entirely
21
useless, they are definitely subordinate to logoi , through which the

philosopher-kings reign supreme. There are a few points of interest
here. The first is that Lincoln’s reading, unlike Derrida’s (analyzed in
Chapter 3), tends to overlook the unsettling dynamic of Plato’s text.
Plato does use mythoi here and elsewhere, such as in the myth of Er
at the end of The Republic, to do logos’ bidding, if only to show
mythos’ inferiority. Even in The Republic, however, as John Sallis
points out, such usage suggests that mythos is not, in fact, inferior:
‘we know that this mythos is not merely a story toldtold at the end of the
dialogue, that it does not merely conclude the Republic as something
added on at the end.’51 Such an ending opens out onto an entirely
different beginning, not only of Plato’s dialogue, but more impor-
tant, of philosophy, of logos. This opening tells a different story
about mythos, suggestively pointing out that it does not simply
conclude logos. Instead, it acts as an excessive leftover. It remains to
destabilize the very foundations of philosophy as logos. Lincoln over-
looks this strange nature
nature of the Phaedrus and the suggestive indication
that mythos is, in some way, basic to logos. Plato’s turning to mythos
in order to conceive logos testifies to this. Since mythos is an excessive
indecidable, what it ‘gives’ to logos always overruns what logos can
control and grasp. Before Derrida’s deconstruction, F. M. Cornford
observed that
[t]he mythical form

form of this whole cosmology is not a poetical dress,
in which Plato arbitrarily chooses to clothe a perfectly definite
and rational scheme, such as modern students set themselves to
discover in it. If Plato could have stated it as a logos
logos,, he would have
done so, only too gladly; but he cannot. 52
There is some aspect of philosophy and of thought itself that eludes

logos. Mythos remains to subvert Plato’s ‘rational scheme’, while
simultaneously revealing the extent to which the establishment of
logos depends upon it. Plato’s use of mythos as a means by which to
ground and elevate logos is not incidental, but pivotal.
Plato’s intended discursive authority, with which Lincoln is con-
cerned, is undermined by another discursivene
discursiveness
ss.. As both Sallis and
Cornford indicate, the ‘discursive authority’ that puts mythos into
play does not simply
simply yield the superiority of logos. Since, as we have
noted, the discursive operates in a double movement of unification
and dispersal, ‘discursive authority’ is unavoidably errant, disrupting
22
every synthetic discourse. The discursive undermines authority and

intention.53 It is innately incapable of being authoritative. Although
Lincoln aims for a synthetic (and authoritative) discourse, the dou-
ble, transgressive movement of the discursive makes that impossible
to achieve. Lincoln ignores the excessive ambiguity of Plato’s own
methodology.. His reading of Plato tries to account
methodology accou nt for Plato’
Plato’ss project
as something fully rational and complete. However, as Derrida’s
deconstructive readings show us, all works – whether Hegel’s, Plato’s
or Lincoln’s – are incomplete, because they always already contain
more than they themselves can account for. Lincoln’s attention to
‘discursive authority’, like his emphasis of myth as ideology, privi-
leges the constructive nature of both the discursive and of mythos,
turning a blind eye to the deconstructive aspects of them both.54 Both
Lincoln and Hatab, like generations of theorists of myth, overlook
the irreducible indecidability
indecidability of mythos that causes it not just to con-
struct, but also simultaneously to deconstruct.
As we have seen, there are always remains. Although ‘inside’
philosophy, these leftovers exceed the economy of presence and tra-
ditional modes of representation and reception, and are therefore
unassimilable ‘outsides’. Already at table setting, these leftovers
become hors d’oeuvres, which literally means ‘outside-of-the-work’,
since they are not synthesized within it. 55 They are appetizing, tanta-
lizing scraps that inherently both follow and precede every possible
entrée. These remains reveal a disruptive other of philosophy that
simultaneously
simultane ously constructs and deconstructs logos, calling its ration
rational
al
supremacy into question. This other is mythos. Its disseminative
propensities fault logos’ stabilizing structure, while simultaneously
making this structure possible. Neither falsifiable nor non-falsifiable,
mythos forever oscillates between these two. Its unsettling slippages
foil every undertaking to limit, categorize and control it. Mythos
resists every attempt to use it exclusively in the service of rational
discourse; it can be counted upon, instead, to stray as dis-course.
Forever sliding between truth and fiction, the ceaseless movement
of mythos simultaneously figures and disfigures the foundation of
philosophy
philoso phy,, ‘grounding’ phi
philosophy’
losophy’ss impossib
impossibility
ility..
23
CHAPTER 2
SOLICITING PHILOSOPHY’S TEARS
As we have seen, mythos is neither falsifiable nor non-falsifiable dis-

course, and is therefore irreducibly indecidable. Its slippage between
these two modes reveals a rupture in the seemingly unambiguous,
rational grounding that philosophy as logos insists upon. Instead of
laying a solid underpinning upon which to establish logos, the inde-
cidable
cida ble dynamic of mythos destabilizes, exposing ‘foundational’ tears
in what would otherwise seem sound and inviolable. It is these tears
within the heart of philosophy to which we now turn in order to
understand how they disruptively inhabit its very structure. A decon-
structive reading must acknowledge the double, homophonic meaning
meani ng
of tears. The term ‘tears’ has a dual implication. It is important not
to still its resonances by a
attempting
ttempting to exclu
exclude
de or privilege one of its
connotations. Tears are simultaneously ruptures, as in a tear in a
piece of fabric,
fabric, and briny pools shed from the eye in times of joy and
sorrow. In reading (and soliciting) philosophy’s irreducible tears we
are able to see how an other reading intervenes, interrupting the
discourse
discourse of logos. Before moving
moving into an analysis of mythos’ decon-
structive propensities (as we do in the chapters that follow), we must
first understand and establish this method of reading otherwise and
soliciting philosophy’s tears.
Philosophy’s tears are not secondary, external scars marking
the sites of now-healed wounds. Like remains, they persist. They are
inextricably basic to philosophy, even though they compromise its
integrity by unsettling its ground, just as a tear in fabric risks causing
an entire piece of clothing to unravel.
unravel. These tears cannot be repaired.
They expose an inherent instability and incompleteness that points
to a non-foundational aspect of philosophy’s foundation. Tears also
24
reveal something important about the very nature of structures.

Foundations presuppose tears, even while these tears render the
completion of foundations impossible. To solicit philosophy’s tears,
therefore, is to address our presuppositions about structure in order
to understand how tears are an inescapable dynamic of philosophy’s
foundation. Understanding the deconstructive aspect of every con-
struction
structi on is simultaneously to af
affirm
firm the construc
constructive
tive (i.e
(i.e.. meaningful)
possibilities of the deconstructive. Thinking mythos in a way other
than philosophy proper has conceived of it requires soliciting phi-
losophy’s tears. Doing so discloses a transformative reveilation: there
is a non-philosophic – a non-logofiable – element within philosophy
that is not merely external to it, but rather a very condition of its
possibility.
At first glance, the use of the verb ‘solicit’ might appear to be
an odd choice. Although its common usage, ‘to urge’ or ‘to entreat’,
has a relatively neutral valence, it can also take on the more nefarious
connotation of enticement into a transgression of some sort. It
derives from the Latin root, solliciter, which means to disturb. What
therefore, does it mean to solicit philosophy’s tears? And by exten-
sion, why must a reconsideration of mythos and its relation to logos
necessarily solicit philosophy’s tears? Derrida provides an explana-
tion in his essay ‘Force and Signification’. Significantly, he addresses
the very essence of structure,
structure, whether philosophical or otherwise:
Structure then can be methodically threatened in order to be com-

prehended more clearly and to reveal not only its supports, but
also that secret place in which it is neither construction nor ruin
but lability. This operation is called (from the Latin) soliciting . In
other words, shaking in a way related to the whole (from sollus,
in archaic Latin ‘the whole,’ and from citare, ‘to put in motion
motion’).’).1
To solicit is to shake the very foundation of, in this case, philosophy.

Soliciting is radical: it interrogate[s] every foundational assumption
through convulsive agitation.2 These agitations are always already at
work, even though philosophy
philoso phy as logos has avoided considering these
inner interruptions.3 Once in motion, this shaking cannot be stilled
or controlled, not even by the agitator. In this way, to solicit philo-
sophy’s tears is also to solicit the tears inherent in any solicitation. 4
Soliciting exposes a structure’s ‘lability’, its internal instability.
25
Lability carries other

oth er important reso
resonances.
nances. It derives from the Latin,
Latin,
labi , which means ‘to slip’. In this sense, ‘to slip’ is to lose traction, to
disengage or to detach from mooring. 5 It is significant that this dis-
engagement from stability, which lability implies, is a transformative
moment. Lability is not merely instability, but importantly, it is also
a continual, unending transformation.6 To be labile is to be open-
ended in such
su ch a wa
wayy that change is not jus
justt possible, but inevitable
inevitable.. In
turn, this change yields even more change. Transience is the ‘norm’,
and not just a passing stage in a process of sta stabilization.
bilization. This unend-
ing change is not to be feared or suppressed.
s uppressed. Not only is it undeniably
un deniably
inherent to every structure, but it also offers creative possibilities for
opening the ways that we think about and live in the world. More
precisely, solici
soliciting
ting and recognizing the lability of ph
philosophy
ilosophy as logos
provides new,
new, fecu
fecundnd pathways for rethinking mythos and its relation
to Deconstruction
logos. solicits. Importantly, however, the deconstructive
act of soliciting exposes ‘neither construction nor ruin but lability’.
In other words, the result of its operation neither erects a new foun-
dation of its own, nor simply dismantles the one in place. The
deconstructive act of soliciting is situated between these two poles.
Neither simply critical nor affirmative, it instead discloses the ‘secret
place’ of lability within all structures, unveiling the transformative
open-endedness of every structure that had once appeared deter-
mined and unchanging. As Derrida shows, structure cannot be fully
understood apart from its destructuring. Therefore, any effort to
comprehend structure that does not solicit, or radically unsettle, its
foundations in order to discover its inherent
in herent lability
lability,, which offers new
possibilities for thinking and understanding, is insufficient. The act
of soliciting exposes that which both gives rise to the structure and
that which also shakes the whole in its entirety, causing the founda-
tions to tremble.7 Like the remains, soliciting reveals a part of the
system that the system itself cannot account for or think. The very
nature of soliciting is intimately and irrevocably bound to the
‘unheard-of thoughts’ and the unthought remains: it shows their
forces of influence within the system. Theref
forces Therefore
ore,, in soliciting philoso-
phy’ss tears, what ffollows
phy’ ollows seeks to reveal and reveil an impli
implicit
cit non-site
non-s ite
or lability at the core of philosophy as strictly logos. Soliciting phi-
losophy’s tears both reveals and reveils the trace of mythos. Such
reveilations, however, are not without their own inherent tears.
26
THE PAS DE DEUX OF

OF TEARS
Philosophy’s tears operate in a double movement – in a pas de deux

– that simultane
simultaneously
ously rev
reveals
eals and reve
reveils
ils (i.e
(i.e.. cov
covers
ers over or conceals).8
over
In the first chapter we came to understand how the discursive
operates in two ways at once. It both gathers together and disperses
or disseminates. In just the same manner, tears both cut apart and
adhere together that with which they come into contact.con tact. Ta
Taylor
ylor offers
this reading in his book Tears, which invokes the homophone, signal-
ling that tears must be read both plaintively and violently as tears (in
a fabric) and lachrymal tears. In recalling Heidegger’s ‘The Origin of
the Work of Art’, Taylor observes that ‘tearing alternates between
two rhythms’ (T , 113). It both joins and separates. He relates tearing
to cleaving, which means ‘both to separate, divide, or split, and to
adhere, cling, or stick’ (T , 113). Tearing, like cleaving, operates in a
double movement.
neous attention to Reading and thinking
both meanings. it always
In soliciting requires simulta-
philosophy’s tears,
the tears entreated are not just those rending and joining tears, but
also those shed from the eye in times of sorrow and joy.
There is something primal about tears. Leaving the womb at
birth, infants enter the world with tears. All healthy newborns cry.
Dismayed by metaphysics’ attempts to think Being as presence,
Heidegger probes the primal nature of tears in order to reveal a
foundational tearing at work in thinking, language and Being. As
Heidegger argues in Identity and Difference, for Hegel, thinking is
‘Being with respect to beings having been thought in absolute think-
ing, and as absolute thinking.’9 Whereas for Heidegger,
Heidegger, ‘the matter of
thinking is the difference as difference’ (IAD, 47). This difference, for
Heidegger, is unavoidable and inextricably connected to thinking,
even if it has not been rigorously pursued: ‘this thing that is called
difference, we encounter it everywhere and always in the matter of
thinking, in beings as such – encounter it so unquestioningly
unquestioningly that we
do not even notice this encounter
encounter itself’
itself ’ (IAD, 63). Heidegger sets out
to question this previously ‘unthought’ foundation by thinking in a
more ‘originary’, ‘nonrepresentational’ fashion, thereby directing
thinking to the realm which the key words of metaphysics – Being
and beings, the ground and what is grounded – are no longer ade-
quate to utter. . . . The origin of the difference can no longer be
thought of within the scope of meta
metaph
physics
ysics.. (IAD, 71)
27
Since he recognizes the necessity to think beyond the limits of meta-

physics,, Heidegger pur
physics pursues
sues this di
difference
fference – or rupture – by examining
the origin of the work of art, which he sees as a recapitulation of an
original tearing. Taylor extends Heidegger’s analysis, observing
that ‘the site of the origin of the work of art is the temple’ (A, 49).
Probing its etymological
et ymological roots, TTaylor
aylor notes that ‘templ
‘temple’
e’ comes from
the Latin templum, which has to do with time, and the Greek temnos,
which means ‘cut’ and ‘designates that which is “cut off” ’ ( T , 112).
The templum itself indicate
indicatess consecrated grground
ound that is cut off from
the non-sacred space around it (T , 112). Taylor points out that
[w]hile the locus of the origin of the work of art is the temple, the
site of the temple . . . is a cleft or cleavage. This cleavage is ‘a tear’
(Riss, whence zerissen and Zerissenheit) that fissures what had
seemed to be a solid foundation. ( T , 112)
The very foundation of the origin of the work of art is a tear. 10 In
other words, the tear is ‘original’
‘ori ginal’ (T , 113). Taylor
Taylor ties this ob
observation
servation
back to art by stating that ‘art works by opening this opening. . . .
This opening marks the boundary or limen where revealing and rev-
eiling repeatedly intersect’ (T , 113). Such an opening is also a site of
lability that remains open to repeated openings.
Although the origin and nature of art are not at stake here,
Taylor’s ‘edgy’ reading of Heidegger assists us in understanding that
this tear is internal and ‘original’, and therefore not external or sec-
ondary, and that tearing operates in a double rhythm that both ‘joins
and separates’ (T , 113). He rereads the ‘essential strife’ of Heidegger’
Heidegger’ss
‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ as a Derridean ‘play of differences’
(T , 113) that is originary, but not in an absolute or predetermined
way. Derrida’s différance does not return to identity, nor is it identi-
ty’s opposite, difference. It is ‘irreducible’, and therefore disruptive.
Primal tears cannot be reduced to identity through Hegelian nega-
tion. Tears,
Tears, in other words, cannot be mended. Nor are they secondary
se condary
to an original unity.
unity. The opening itself is a tear that sta
stages
ges the play of
différance. In the beginning is not, as Hegel believed, being as sheer
immediacy, but rather, the opacity and haunting specter of strife: in
the beginning are tears, and these tears operate in a pas de deux.11
In soliciting tears, however, one risks reducing their otherness to
sameness by bringing them into language and philosophic discourse.
The question remains: how to solicit philosophy’s tears without
28
subjecting them to the fou

foundation
ndational
al principle of philosophy
philosophy as logos,
which is oneness and unity? Tears insist upon remaining torn and
open to further tearing; they resist repair. Confronting this dilemma
in Altarity, Taylor
Taylor attempts to write oth
otherwise,
erwise, and in so doi
doing,
ng, ‘write
the fissure itself by inscribing the remain(s) that Hegel’s oeuvre
“shows” while “conceali ng” ’ (A, 267).12 This kind of writing is
“concealing”
‘devised to write what philosophy has not said and cannot say in
language that is nonetheless philosophical’ (A, 268). To write and
think in this way is to relate to the other as irreducibly other without
attempting to domesticate it. Writing otherwise is characterized by
Derrida as ‘the more difficult, more unheard-of, more questioning
gesture,, the one for which we are least prepared, only
gesture only permits itself to
be sketched, announcing itself in certain calculated fissures of the
metaphysical
metaph ysical text’ (MP, 65). To
To write what philosop
philosophhy is incapable of
saying is to write and think in such a way that does not limit mythos’
voice strictly to the economy of presence, for as we have seen,
mythos’ irreducible indecidability slips through these constraints.
Mythos announces itself through tears. Hence, to solicit these tears is
to listen, but not in any traditional manner, to the unheard, non-absent
absence of mythos. Soliciting this other requires attuning oneself to
‘two texts, two hands, two visions, two ways of listening. Together
simultaneously and separately’ (MP, 65). This is not a dialectical
conjoining, but a simultaneity and a a separateness. Derrida explains:
The relationship between the two texts, between presence in gen-

eral (Anwesenheit) and that which exceeds it . . . such a relationship
rel ationship
can never offer itself in order to be read in the form of presence,
supposing that anything ever can offer itself in order to be read
in such a form. And yet, that which gives us to think beyond the
closure cannot be simply absent. Absent, either it would give us
nothing to think or it still would be a negative mode of presence.
Therefore the sign of this excess must be absolutely excessive as
concerns all possible presence-absence, all possible production or
disappearance or beings in general, and yet, in some manner it
must still signify
si gnify,, in a manner unthi
unthinkable
nkable by m
metaphysics
etaphysics as such.
In order to exceed metaphysics it is necessary that a trace be
inscribed within the text of metaphysics, a trace that continues
to signal not in the direction of another presence
presence,, or another form
of presence, but in the direction of an entirely other text. Such a
trace cannot be thought more metaphysico. No philosopheme is
29
prepared to master it. And it (is) that which must elude mastery.
Only presence is mastered. . . . presence, then, is the trace of the
trace,, the trace of the erasure of the trace
trace trace.. . . . Only on this condi-
tion can metaphysics and our language signal in the direction of
their own transgression. (MP, 65–6)
Writing with two hands at once allows the ‘unheard-of ’ and unthought
to be written, read and thought as the excesses that they are. This
excessiveness is not limited to the either/or of absence and presence,
because even absence contains its opposite
oppos ite – presence – just as Hegel’s
notion of difference contains sameness. Rather, it overflows meta-
physical identification and limitation; it escapes every
every ‘philosopheme’
‘philosopheme’..
Like the remains, this excess cannot be accounted for within the
system of metaphysics, yet is nonetheless a (non-)foundational part
of it, since all foundations are essentially and irreparably ruptured,
and therefore are non-foundational. The excessive trace (the excess
and remains can only ever be traces, since they are neither properly
present nor absent) that is ‘unthinkable by metaphysics as such’
‘signal[s]’ an other other that is itself prodigious
prodigious,, ‘elusive’ and unmas-
terable by any
any ‘philoso
‘philosopheme’.
pheme’. That is, this other cannot be su subjugated
bjugated
or corralled by logos. Thus, language and metaphysics
metaphysics (p (philosophy
hilosophy as
logos) ‘signal in the direction of their own transgression’. They ges-
ture to that which opens the limit in an act of tearing, to that which
exposes the system to the unthinkable excessive remains. This trans-
gression marks and simultaneously rends the limit of metaphysics
and the philosophical system. Without that which exceeds presence,
presence cannot even present itself.
Tears: On the One Hand

Although all of Derrida’s work can be read as soliciting tears, his
most explicit writing on them occurs in an essay dedicated to reading
Emmanuel Levinas, entitled ‘At this very moment in this work here
I am’.13 Derrida wants to honour the Levinasian other as other,
even if Levinas’s own text sometimes unintentionally departs from a
rigorous analysis of other as other. In order to retain the otherness
inherent within the text, Derrida cautions that
that the reader of Levinas
must, in ingratitude, betray authorial intent and thus maintain the
alterity of the text itself. Derrida’s deconstructive reading operates
doubly:
30

first by following or repeating the intentions of a text, in the

manner of a commentary, and second, within and through this
repetition, leaving the order of commentary and opening up the
blind spots or ellipses within the text’s intentionality. It is not for a
double reading to decide between these paths of reading, these two
motifs, but rather, to render such choice undecidable .14
The two texts that result in Derrida’s deconstructive reading remain

irreducibly indecidable. On the one hand, the text is read ‘in the
manner of the commentary’, joining the reading with the textual
intention as fully as possible. On the other hand, it strays from logo-
centric commentary and ‘open[s] up the blind spots’ within the ‘text’s
intentionality’. It attends to the otherness within without trying to
suppress or domesticate it. These two readings are both simultaneous
and separate. Like tears, they gather and cut. Derrida’s la double
séance rend(er)s the meaning of Levinas’s
Levinas’s text (and by extension, all
texts) indecidable and exposes it to the excessive, unmasterable play
of différance.15
Derrida recognizes that every text, his own included, contains
another text. That is, there are always at least two texts: one that
operates as a commentary and an other that, in operating ‘within
and through’ the repetition of commentary, diverges from it and
opens up the text to its internal aporias. Therefore, he both reads and
writes doubly. As Simon Critchley observes, Derrida’s text is not
‘monological’.16 Derrida emphasizes the repetitions within Levinas’s
work in order to expose an otherness within. Levinas’s (and even
Derrida’s) repetition of ‘at this very moment’ ‘has wholly other
consequences’ (B , 175). ‘Is it through the act of repetition’, poses
Critchley, whose question also provides an answer, ‘that one gains
access to the wholly other?’ (B , 187). Repetition does not yield same-
ness, but difference. One reading echoes the text’s intentions and,
observes Critchley, is ‘performed by the voice of the Same (a mascu-
line reader)’ and as such ‘engages in a repetition of the Levinasian
text, where the reader produces a commentary which says the same
as Levinas and shows how his work works’ (B , 171). The other read-
ing strays from this path and opens up the blind spots, soliciting an
other. This reading, ‘performed by the voice of the Other (a woman
reader), of the Levinasian text, interrupts the intentions and shows
how his work does not work’ (B , 171–2).17 Derrida’s ‘texting’ operates
between these two moments of joining and separating, ‘repetition
31

and interruption, Sameness and Otherness’ (B , 172). The relation

between these two is not oppositional or binary. Otherness is not
returned to sameness, nor does it remain as a distinct rival. The reader
is forced to continue to oscillate between these two. That vibration
cannot be stilled or resolved. Irreducibility and indecidability are
maintained throughout Derrida’s essay. Synthesis and identity that
result from dialectical movement are never achieved. They are con-
tinuously disrupted
disrupt ed and deferred.
defer red. ‘ “
“At
At this very mome
moment”
nt” is possessed
of a dehiscence that allows it to resonate with an alterity which
must not be reduced to the logic of the proper’ ( B , 171). ‘At this very
moment’ is indeed at least two moments. It works by opening the
opening, by tearing.
In tracing the intentions of Levinas’s text, Derrida solicits tears,
the traces of an other within, which produces an entirely different
reading. He demonstrates that in order to move toward understand-
ing, these tears must be attended to. They must not be repressed or
avoided. As a result, ‘[o]ne must therefore negotiate, deal with, trans-
act with marginal effects ( les effets de bord ).
). One must even negotiate
what is nonnegotiable and which overflows all context.’ 18 Remains
remain. They must be dealt with and thought through. It is not
possible to do this by translating them into a sheer immediacy or by
subjugating them. These remains are ‘nonnegotiable’ within the lim-
ited confines of metaph
metaphysics,
ysics, because they cannot be thought, written
or said properly, and therefore always ‘overflo[w]’ authorial inten-
tionality. The excessive ‘marginal effects’ haunt the text, disrupting
and destabilizing any reading, thereby effectively preventing any
exclusive reading or meaning to prevail. This ‘other’ reading inter-
rupts the former. These breaches stymie all attempts at synthesis by
interrupting the weaving of our language and then by weaving

together the interruptions themselves, another language comes to
disturb the first one. It doesn’t inhabit it, but haunts it. Another
text, the text of the other, arrives in silence with a more or less
regular cadence, without ever appearing in its original language,
to dislodge the language of translation, converting the version,
and refolding it while folding it upon the very thing it pretended
pretende d to
import. It disassimilates it. (ATVM , 18)
There is always more than one text. In this way, every reading is
at least double. One text comes to disturb the work of the other,
32

unsettling and haunting it. This silent disruption ‘disassimilates’ an

and
d
cannot be subsumed under a unifying identity. Like the ‘a’ of dif-
ance, and no less unsettling, this disruption is neither absent nor
férance
fér
present. As a result, it rends and transforms the text. It tears the
weave. Incorporating it back into the fabric by creating sameness
amid difference or conjoining differences is impossible. In weaving
together the disparate interruptions, the text is not mended or uni-
fied. Instead, the tears are maintained. However, this does not mean
that they are domesticated. Rather, the text is forever dislocated and
haunted by an other that it cannot incorporate. No seam can mend
or reinforce the tattered edges of this tearing, because that other
continues to unravel the threads, even as they are resewn.19
For Derrida, the transgression that solicits the other is not a tran-
scendent step beyond (in a metaphysical sense) language or logos. It
is, instead, an inner disruption that still carries within itself the very
limits that it dislocates. Derrida illustrates this by stating that ‘[ l ]ogos
remains as indispensable’ (ATVM , 20). In other words, deconstruc-
tion is not the jettisoning of metaphysics and logos. Indeed, that
would be both impossible and undesirable. Rather, deconstructive
soliciting issues forth from within them, exposing through its graft-
ing, folding and tearing a (non-negotiable) other within that disrupts
and discomposes them. Playing off Levinas’s pivotal phrase, ‘at this
very moment’, Derrida solicits the lability of Levinas’s text: ‘ “at this
very moment” would constitute the enveloping form or web of a
text resuming without end all its tears within itself ’ (ATVM , 21). The
resumption ‘without end’ of the tears within stages the uncontrolla-
ble play
play of différance, thereby foiling
foiling every attempt (whether authori
authorial al
or otherwise) to return difference to identity:
The same ‘at this very moment’ seems to repeat itself only to be
dis-lodged without
with out return. The ‘same’ ‘very’ (le ‘m
‘m̂ ‘mê me’)20
ˆ eme’ du ‘même
of the ‘at this very moment’ has remarked upon its own alteration,
one which will have ever since opened it up to the other. The ‘first’
one, which formed the element of reappropriation in the contin-
uum, will have been obligated by
by the ‘second,’ the other one, the
one of interruption, even before being produced, and in order to
be produced. It will have constituted a text and context with the
other, but only within a series where the text coheres with its own
(if this may still be said) tear. The ‘at this very moment’ only
coheres with itself by means of an immeasurable anachrony
33

incommensurable
incommensurab le with itself
itself.. The singular textuality of this ‘series’
does not enclose the Other but on the contrary opens itself up to
it from out of irreduci
irreducible
ble difference . . . before an
any
y present moment,
before anything we think we understand when we say ‘at this very
moment.’ (ATVM , 22)
Within ‘this’ moment (of ‘at this very moment’), there is an other
moment that is not overtly present, yet neither is it absent. It haunts
the first moment as a non-absent absence, forever fissuring and
shadowing the ‘present moment’, thereby revealing that such a pres-
ence is impossible apart from another moment that is not properly
present. By repeating ‘at this very moment’ throughout his text,
Levinas creates a repetition with différance that dislocates and pre-
vents reappropriation or the return of the same. The ‘same’ is never
the same, but forever estranged from itself. The movement, therefore
t herefore,,
is not circular like Hegel’s model, but errant. The tears are exposed:
no mending can sew them together and join them as the same.
In fact, the ‘first’ is ‘obligated’ to the errant, transgressive ‘second’.
The two moments
moments are out of joint. Any seeming ‘coherence’
‘coherence’ is in fact
an incommensurable anachrony. A fissure remains, which separates
and displaces what was once held together in alignment, and now
sets their incongruous parts next to each other in disjunction. Such
incommensurable anachrony is a wound that never heals.heals. This repet
repeti-
i-
tion is a violent tearing that does not and cannot ‘enclose’ the other,
but rather opens the text to an ‘Other’ that exceeds categorization
and appropriation, much as indecidable mythos does.
These two moments simultaneously join and separate in a pas
de deux. However, how this double movement will unfold is not con-
trollable or anticipatable. It opens out into irreducible difference and
otherness that are excessive outcasts of the logocentric system of
presence and unity.

disseminative As Derrida
operation writes
within what heto E.L., acknowledging
himself the
writes, ‘dislocation
will have taken place, there is nothing
not hing you can do about it, and unwit-
tingly you will have read what will have made only possible, from
out of the Other, what is happening “at this very moment” ’ (ATVM ,
25).21 Dislocating tears are always already within the text, and by
extension, within thinking, language, philosophy and logos. They are
basic to logos even if they escape every philosopheme’s attempt to
comprehend and master them. ‘By definition,’ this disturbance, avers
34

Derrida, ‘is not a controllable disturbance, it is not readable within

the inside of logic’ (ATVM , 25). Such a disruption is outside of inten-
tionality and the order of presence that is also the order of absence.
As uncontrollable, it cannot even be read, thought, heard or written
by logos. This disturbance must be read otherwise than from ‘within
the inside of logic’. To read otherwise is to invoke unlogofiable
mythos.22 Soliciting philosophy’
philosophy’ss tears exposes the uncertain limits of
philosophy as logos, opening them up to a foreign plenitude of an
other (of philosoph
philosophy),
y), mythos. This other gives rise
r ise to the former, b
but
ut
not in a teleological way:
The first ‘moment’ gave its form or its temporal place, its ‘pres-
ence,’ to a thought, a language, a dialectic ‘sovereign in regard to
that Relation.’ So what will have happened – probably, perhaps –
is this: the second ‘moment’ will have forced the first toward its
own condition of possibility, toward its ‘essence’ . . . It will have
in advance – but after the fact within the serial rhetoric – torn
the envelope. But that very tear would not have been possible
without a certain
and a sort hookingcontamination
of analogical back (échancrure ) of the the
between second
two,moment
mom ent
a rela-
tion between two incommensurables . . . (ATVM , 26)
The excessive and errant moment (that is not properly present)

gives to the present moment its condition of possibility, while at
the same time rendering its self-contained, unadulterated unity
and presence impossible. This ‘series’ of events is not linear or
chronological. The second disrupts the first, but ‘in advance’. The
transgressive
transgressi ve tear (‘torn envelope’) is neither the result nor the begin-
ning. Like the remains that remain at the end but are also always
already ‘present’ at the beginning, this tear contaminates the system
from within always already.23 Furthermore, although not exactly
joined in unison, the two ‘moments’ a are
re not entirely separate either
either..
Rather, each contaminates the other. They continuously disrupt and
dislocate each other, maintaining a relation that is neither binary
nor dialectic. Instead, this rela
relation
tion is ‘incommensura ble’.24 One must
‘incommensurable’.
solicit philosophy’s tears with (at least) two hands and in (at least)
two ways
ways at once. ‘This’ moment is neither here nor there, neither this
nor that, neither simply present nor absent. It is always already
already at least
two,, rupturi
two rupturing
ng the monolithic
monolithi c foundation upon which logos rests.
35

Double movement tears the envelope, as Derrida indicates. An

envelope can be, in addition to a set of limits or parameters, an
enclosing covering (like a membrane), or a wrapping. Tears not only
compromise that membrane, they also contaminate the inside by
rupturing the outer covering, exposing the protected contents to a
foreign outside. Each ‘moment’ spills onto the other; each intervenes
by disrupting the operation of the other. Neither ‘moment’ remains

absolutely singular nor pure. The threads of these interruptions
must be re-examined, since one begins to suspect that weaving
them together (as Derrida suggests in the quote above) cannot entail
mending in any traditional sense. According to Critchley, the retied
threads do not mend the text or close the gaps. Instead they create
knots, or aporias, in the weave:
[T]he interruptions of discourse, although retied into the thread,

are preserved as knots in the thread . . . Thus the two heteroge-
neous instances of the en ce moment même, linked together through
a dislocating act of repetition, are related and tied together
through
throug h the metaphor of the retied thread. (B , 175)
The relation to which Critchley refers is not a traditional relation

that presupposes presence. This relation is more like a ‘relation
without relation’, since the terms of comparison remain beyond
the sphere of absolute knowability.25 Indeed, ‘the fabric of the text
is both bound and unbound’, it both rends and mends ( B , 177). In
‘retying the thread’, the fabric is not mended. Instead the knots cre-
ate a supplement. ‘[W]ithin the knot’, which is itself an interruption
or an ‘ate
‘atexture’,
xture’, ‘there persists an irreducible supplement to the knot
which is the very interruption of interruption’ ( B , 177). The two
incommensurable ‘moments’ constitute an accretion contaminated
by unceasing tearing and retearing. The knots that populate the
‘fabric of the text’ become ‘nodal point[s] of supplementarity’

(B , 177). Each supplement marks a lack. Yet, it is simultaneously an
absence and a surplus. ‘[T]he supplement adds itself, it is a surplus,
a plenitude enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of pres-
ence’ (OG , 144), explains Derrida. At the same time, however, ‘it is
not simply added to the positivity of a presence
presence,, it produ
produces
ces no relief,
its place is assigned in the structure
struct ure by the mar
mark
k of an emptiness’ (OG ,
145). This emptiness is not the opposite of presence
presence.. The supplement
36

‘is neither presence nor absence’ ( OG , 154). In this way, it cannot be
categorized or comprehended by logos.
Each ‘moment’ (of ‘at this very moment’) both adds to and dis-
rupts the other moment(s). Différance is already at work from the
very first. The weave of these two is constituted as such: ‘[W]hat is
unbound, nonthematizable and wholly other to ontology and logo-
centrism can only be articulated through a certain repetition of
ontological or logocentric language, a repetition that interrupts that
language’ (B , 178). When we apply this understanding to the relation
of mythos and logos, we begin to realize that they do not and cannot
exist apart from one another. Mythos is ‘articulated’ through logos,
through a ‘repetition’ of ‘logocentric language’. Nonetheless, logos’
articulation of ‘unbound, nonthematizable’ mythos occurs through a
repetition that does not merely repeat and witness the return of the
same. Rather, this repetition cuts, destabilizes and interrupts logos.
The act of soliciting takes place from within, divulging the unsutur-
able tears that simultaneously construct and deconstruct logos. This
weave is not fabricated with uninterrupted threads that neatly inter-
lock between warp and woof. Instead, it consists of broken threads
(torn by the transgressions within and the tension between two
incommensurables) that in being retied, create impenetrable, disrup-
tive knots or aporias. The threads both bind and unbind, rend and
mend. Although the aporetic knots are tied together, ‘the interrup-
tions “remain” ’ (ATVM , 28). This enchainment is not logocentric.
Rather, the enchained discontinuities are out of joint. It is never a
matter of picking up where one left off. Continual interruption makes
doing so impossible. In the resumption of tears, the text’s breaches
are not restored, nor are they appropriated into a unity. ‘[R]esump-
tion’, explains Derrida,
Derrid a, ‘is not any more logical than the interr
interruption’
uption’
(ATVM , 27). It does not close
cl ose the gap.
gap. Therefore it is not the conti
continu-
nu-
ation of the same, nor is it a synthesis between once disparate parts.
Tears cannot be mastered or anticipated. In soliciting tears, one
has no control over what they will reveal and reveil in their errant
operations. Any attempt to patch these tears inadvertently divulges
the ruptures. Therefore, ‘The tear must be saved, for which one must
play off seam against seam’ (emphasis added, ATVM , 26), cautions
Derrida. Applying this to our focus here suggests that, although phi-
losophy as logos may desire to master the tears by sewing them
together into a seamless whole, any mending that a attempts
ttempts to interlace
37
‘both texture and atexture’ fails to unite. Every undertaking to tie up

the loose threads by incorporating untamable heterogeneity into the
unity of the fabric inadvertently exposes the gap that it is trying to
cover. When we extend Derrida’s ‘texting’ to our analysis of mythos,
we see that the irreducible indecidability
indecidability of mythos remains as aporetic
knots in the fabric of logos. These interruptions not only disrupt
logos, but also simultaneously
simultaneous ly give to logos its possibilit
poss ibility
y. To ‘play off
seam against seam’, therefore, is to read, write and think with two
hands at once in a pas de deux, and to open these openings to dif-
ance. This play is inseparably bound to the tears that are maintained
férance
fér
as part of the very fa bric itself.26
fabric
Tears: On the Other Hand
Tears have a cryptic quality that relates to the disseminating a of dif-

ance. This a in place of e is ‘purely graphic’. Although present
férance
fér
graphically, it is absent phonetically, and therefore is neither simply
present nor simply absent. For this reason it cannot be fully grasped
by logos. The a of différance ‘remains silent, secret and discreet as
s is’ (MP, 4).27 Tombs, therefore, contain a disruptive
a tomb: oik ēē sis
component. By linking the silent a of différance to a tomb, Derrida
suggests that tombs encrypt, that is, obscure. As monuments mark-
ing absences with their presence,
presence, crypts entreat another kind of tears,
tears,
those shed for the dead. Tombs fall [ tomber] between two kinds of
ground. They commemorate and preserve (and thereby consecrate),
while simultaneously housing remains, forever constraining and
locking them
the m a awa
way y from the senses and the light of the outsid
outsidee world.
When serving as monuments that memorialize the entombed, tombs
join the observer with the deceased. They function doubly doubly,, since at
the same time they also increase the separation between the observer
and the remains of the absent other by making this absence more
palpable, serving as painful reminders that the departed is no longer
among the living. Crypts bring tears to the eyes for those whose
absence is acutely felt in the presence of the crypt that houses their
remains, disrupting and thus transmuting vision. These tears trans-
form the eye, causing one to see otherwise, just
just as the a of différance
causes one to write and think otherwise:
Now if tears come to the eyes, if they well up in them, and if they
can also veil sight, perhaps they reveal, in the very course of this
38
experience, in this coursing of water, an essence of the eye, of

man’s eye . . . Deep down, deep down inside, the eye would be
destined not to see but to weep. For at the very moment they veil
sight, tears would unveil what
what is pr
proper
oper to the eye
eye.. . . . only man
knows how to go beyond seeing and knowing [savoir], because
only he knows howhow to weep.
weep. . . . Only man knows ho how w to see this
[voir ça] – that tears and not sight are the essence of the eye. . . .
Contrary to what one believes one knows, the best point of view
(and the point of view will have been our theme) is a source-point
and a watering hole, a water-point – which thus comes down to
tears.28
Whereas the Western philosophic tradition has privileged presence

and sight, the eye’s tears disclose an other vision at work, one not
simply of knowing [savoir]. It is a vision in which tears – not sight –
are the very ‘essence’ of the eye/I. They bestow vision by distorting it.
Veiling works by unveiling ‘what is proper’ (presence), revealing an
other way of ‘seeing’. Such seeing goes beyond simply knowing
(savoir). It is not an apprehension of presence or a knowing within
the limits of metaphysics, but the ability to ‘see’ (through tears)
the ‘purely graphic’ and silent mark of différance that is disruptive.
Seeing otherwise is to see (voir) without knowing (savoir). It is to see
through a veil of tears with a vision that does not have ( avoir), and
cannot have, mastery of the mute trace of différance. This seeing
(voir) is without knowing (sans savoir); it is literally not aligned with
savoir absolu (Sa).29
Tears ‘see’ otherwise by attuning themselves to the ‘blind spots’, or
knots in
i n the weave
weave,, and to the ‘unheard-of thoughts’. Lach
Lachyrmal
yrmal tears,
like the Heideggerian rupture, or Riss, are the site of an opening.
When understood in this way, the veil of tears creates a visionary
blindness:
[T]he blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens
vision. . . . the blindness that reveals the very truth of the eyes,
would be the gaze veiled by tears. It neither sees nor does not see:
it is indifferent to its blurred vision. (MB , 126–7)
Blindnes s is not aloofnes

Blindness aloofness,s, nor is it a celebration of ignorance. R
Rather
ather,,
it is indifferent. Its goal is neither to see, nor to not see. Blindness has
no stake in the outcome of vision. The ‘gaze veiled by tears’ oscillates
39
between making visible and occluding in a restive double movement.

Losing one’s sight is not literally losing one’s eyes. Rather, it is the
discovery
discovery of the very ‘essence’ of one’
one’ss eyes
eyes.. Sight blurred by tears iiss
attuned to the fissures inherent in thinking, knowing and seeing.
‘Only then does man begin to think the eyes’ (MB , 128). However,
this thinking is no longer thinking within the order of presence,
within the limits of logos. In Derrida’s formulation, eyes blinded by
tears attempt to ‘see’ the remains that logos has left out.
out . John Caputo
characterizes this blindness (in his book devoted to the prayers and
tears of Derrida) as ‘a structural non-knowing’, designating that
which ‘is structurally heterogeneous to knowledge’.30 To thi
this,
s, he adds,
‘Our eyes are always, structurally, veiled, and above all veiled with
tears’ (PT , 313). Tears are always already there. Blindness (and voir
sans savoir) is inescapable. As Andrew Marvell poses in a poem fit-
tingly entitled ‘Eyes and Tears’: ‘These weeping eyes, those seeing
tears’ (qtd in MB , 129). The seeing of ‘those seeing tears’ is not, ho
how-
w-
ever, associated with the senses. It is like the inaudible, silent a of
différance that can only be read, not registered by the ear. One must
‘think the eyes’, but this thinking is not tied to intelligibility. The
‘point of view’ offered by Derrida is one in which ‘the difference
marked in the “differ( )nce” between the e and the a eludes both
vision and hearing . . . But neither can it belong to intelligibility’
(MP, 5).31 This silent monument exceeds the traditional limitations
of sensibility and intelligibility. Therefore, it must be approached
otherwise. ‘Those seeing tears’ do not see through the spectacles of
logos and metaphysics that would insist on sensibility and intelligibil-
ity as presences to be mastered. Rather, ‘those seeing tears’ ‘see’ by
blinding.
CRYPTIC REMAINS
It is significant that Derrida uses the Greek word oik ē s is, which
ēsis
means residence, when he describes the a of différance as ‘secret and
discreet as a tomb: oik ēē sis
s is’. Oikos is a house,
hou se, and the word ‘economy’
is derived from the same root. 32 Derrida describes the site of this
s is as ‘the familial residence and tomb of the proper in which is
oik ēē sis
produced, by différance, the economy of death. This stone – provided
that one knows how to decipher its inscription – is not far from
announcing the death death of the tyrant’ (MP, 4). The ‘economy of deat death’
h’
is the hidden underside – the remains – of the economy proper; it is
40
improper and taboo. Soliciting causes the foundations to tremble,

exposing a hidden crypt that harbours the ‘economy of death’. This
crypt remains cryptic. It cannot be grasped or even apprehended by
the metaphysics
metaphysics of presence
presence,, because it is neither sensible nor intelli-
gible. Yet, it is nonetheless a ‘familial residence’. Although within
and ‘familial’, it also falls ‘outside’ of the econom
economy y because it cannot
be deciphered by it. This house housed within requires one to think
and ‘see’ otherwise. Within the
the halls of logos, this crypt is indecipher-
able andfar
are ‘not una
unavoidab
voidably
from ly mysterious.
announ
announcing Further
Furthermore,
cing the death of more, these crypt
the tyrant’, cryptic
logosic remains
. Since the
remains cannot be read, thought or apprehended by philosophemes
(that is, by logos), the supremacy of philosophy as logos is question-
able.. The remains threaten to blind the panoptic eye of the philosop
able philosopher
her
33
who claims to see all in savoir absolu. Perhaps the sovereign philoso-
pher is the tyrant whose death, Derrida warns us, is at hand.
Philosophy’s No-Place
As we have seen, crypts remain cryptic because they are inaccessible

to traditional modes of reception. Derrida affirms that ‘[n]o crypt
presents itself. The grounds [lieux] are so disposed as to disguise and
to hide: something, always a body in some way. But also to disguise
the act of hiding and to hide the disg uise: the crypt hides as it holds .’34
disguise:
Crypts elude the simple opposition between presence and absence
(much like the trace) since they mask a presence while at the same
time saving and preserving it. The place of the crypt is not a tradi-
tional space. It is an inner chamber, ‘an enclosure, an enclave’ that is
‘isolated from general space by partitions’ (F , xiv). As a space within
a space, ‘comprehended within another but rigorously separate from
it’ (F , xiv), the crypt is hidden and not readily accessible. It is not an
extension of our natural habitat. Like the remains that are not pres-
ent and cannot be apprehended
apprehended as such, the crypt is part of the very
system that seeks to exclude it on the grounds that it cannot be
accessed or accounted
that it cannot for. With
be accounted themore
for, but crypt,importantly,
however, it that
is not
itssimply
whole
purpose is to hide something that one cannot confront or prefers
not to have to acknowledge. Within the forum of the crypt, explains
Derrida, is yet another ‘more inward forum like a closed rostrum or
speaker’s box, a safe: sealed, and thus internal to itself, a secret inte-
rior within the public square, but, by the same token, outside it,
41
external to the interior’ (F , xiv). This forum within a forum ‘is (a)
safe, an outcast outside inside the inside’ ( F , xiv). As an outside that
is inside, it is neither external, nor internal. The ‘cryptic enclav[e]’
serves ‘to isolate, to protect, to shelter from any penetration, from
anything that can filter in from outside along with air, light, or
sounds, along with the eye or tthe
he ear
ear,, the ges
gesture
ture or the spoken word’
(F , xiv). The inner, cryptic safe remains obscure. Nothing can pene-
trate it. It remains untouched by light (such as logos, the light of
reason), by the philosopher’s eagle eye (which cannot see inside), and
by the ear of the philosopher (which is deaf to the ‘unheard’ mute-
ness deep within).35 Logos cannot decrypt the inner safe.
It is important to understand tha
thatt the inner safe is not synthesized
into the outer, more public space as a seamless aspect of it. Encryp-
tion does not entail the swallowing – or ‘digestion’ – of difference by
identity.36 Derrida carefully distinguishes two kinds of entombing:
introjection and incorporation. Introjection is Hegelian assimilation
in which the other is taken into the self for the purposes of enlarging
the self and attaining absolute, undifferentiated self-consciousness
that eventually results in absolute knowledge. In introjection, differ-
ence is returned to identity by merging the other with the same. By
contrast, in incorporation, a term Derrida borrows from Freud’s
‘Mourning and not

Difference does melancholy’,
return to the foreign
identity. cannot be involves
Incorporation assimilated.
the
double movement
movement of protect
protecting
ing and inhibiting. That which is placed
in safekeeping and maintained is, at the same time, pushed away,
restrained and suppressed.
suppressed. On the one hand, the object of incorpora-
tion is cherished to such an extent that it is safeguarded. On the
other hand, the object is held in check and access to it is restricted.
The other is preserved
prese rved as foreign. F
For
or this reason, the ssystem
ystem attempts
to exclude it and shut it off from itself, just as white blood cells
engorge and isolate an invading virus. In this scenario, the ‘foreign
body’ is simultaneously excluded and ‘preserved as foreign’ (F , xvii).
Philosophy as logos nonetheless attempts to attenuate the crypt:37
What speculative dialectics means (to say) is that the crypt can
still be incorporated into the system. The transcendental or the
repressed, the unthought or the excluded must be assimilated by
the corpus, interiorized as moments, idealized in the very negativ-
ity of their labor
labor.. (G , 166)
42
Incorporation, however, exposes the failure of speculative dialectics

to assimilate the other into itself. Instead, deep within the internal
chambers of the system, irreducible otherness is preserved. These
silent, cryptic others are the tears within that rend every attempt at
identity and unification, and foil every panoptical gaze. Like the a
of différance, the crypt disrupts and dislocates, leading logos astray,
preventing the eternal return of the same. The crypt destabilizes the
system precisely because it is an outside that is inside and an inside
that is outside. This foreign outside within is included, but cannot be
comprehended. It derails every attempt at synthesis, unification and

identification.
identif ication. F
Forever
orever restricted and veiled, the crypt
cryptic
ic enclav
enclavee eludes
the panoptic gaze of the philosopher
philosopher..
Every system unwittingly includes an undialecticizable kernel
(crypt) that both figures and disfigures it from within. Just as remains
proved to be basic to the system that attempts to exclude them, and
just as tears are always already, the crypt is the scar that marks the
impossibility of savoir absolu and of philosophy proper. Cryptic
remains cannot be assimilated or digested. Despite efforts to cut off
this unnaturalized foreigner by locking it away in a safe hidden deep
inside, the threat it poses to logos’ reign cannot be ameliorated. The
system includes, as the very condition of its possibility, that which
escapes systematization.
systematization. As a result, the crypt is an impossible inclu-
sion.38 It is impossible to decrypt
decr ypt or to incorporate, and yet the system
cannot exist without it. As such, it is a destabilizing excess that is a
condition of the system’s stabilizing structure. Derrida explains that
‘[t]he topograph
topography y of the crypt follo
follows
ws the line of a fracture tha
thatt goes
from this no-place, or this beyond-place, toward the other place’
(F , xxi). This ‘no-place or non-place’ is the locus of ‘a fracture’, and
of veiled vision. One can imagine the blinded eye as a ‘no-place’,
since it can no longer perceive presence and therefore provide a
proper point of view. This ‘no-place’ is also a source point of tears.
These tears occlude the vision of philosophy as logos. In avoiding
these blind spots, philosophy unwittingly reinforces them.
Soliciting philosophy’s tears exposes the crypt within philosophy
that bothNor
losophy. constructs and deconstructs
is it to accept philosophyit.
asThis is not toitself
it represents go beyond phi-
externally.
Rather, philosophy’s aporias must be ‘seen’ through blinding tears.
Unlike Hegelian difference, which is strictly internal and therefore
contains identity within it (as an ‘inner contradiction’), logos’ other
43
is irreducible, and in this sense ‘external’, even though it is within.

As an outside within, and an inside without, this irreducible other
requires us to reconsider, as Derrida does, the very nature of decon-
struction’s relation to metaphysics, and to the point at hand, the
relation of philosophy’s other (mythos) to philosophy as logos.
Derrida explains this in an interview aptly titled ‘Deconstruction and
the other’:
[T]he logical rapport between inside and outside is no longer

simple. Accordingly, we cannot really say that we are ‘locked
into’ or ‘condemned to’ metaphysics, for we are strictly speaking,
neither inside nor outside. . . . It is simply that our belonging to,
and inherence in, the language of metaphysics is something that
can only be rigorously
rig orously and adequately thought about from another
topos or space where our problematic rapport with the boundary
of metaphysics can be seen in a more radical light. Hence my
attempt, to discover the nonplace or non-lieu which would be the
other of philosoph
philosophyy. This is the task of deconstruction.39
Mythos is such an ‘other of philosophy’. Neither falsifiable nor

non-falsifiable, neither outside philosophy nor within it, the echoes
of its irreducible ambiguity continua
continually
lly interrupt and disfigure logos.
As philosophy’s other, mythos constitutes philosophy as logos while
nonetheless destabilizing it. Mythos can only be approached by
soliciting philosophy’s tears. This soliciting exposes an incorporated
crypt that cannot be assimilated, and that therefore remains obscure.
We will see in Chapter 3 how mythos in Plato’s Phaedrus is such a
crypt. As an unlogofiable other, mythos is neither subordinated to
nor synthesized with logos. This non-philosophic other is what phi-
losophy as logos has largely avoided. Nevertheless, this avoiding
inescapably ‘say[s] without saying’, haunting logos with the cryptic
trace of an other. The undead dead calls out from within, contami-
nating the space of the living. As such a non-absent absence, mythos
disturbss ph
disturb ilosophy..40
philosophy
The crypt remains cryptic. It hides what it holds. Perhaps these
remains have something to do with a ‘familial residence’, as Derrida
suggests. But whose body is housed within the crypt? Who or what is
it that the philosopher-king attempts
attempts to repress? If one knows how to
decipher the stone’s inscription, one might be able to hear the mute
remarks within that are ‘not far from announcing the death of the
44
tyrant’. Certainly such decryption cannot be carried out strictly by

means
mea ns of logos alone. To solicit philosophy’s tears and thereby read,
write and think otherwise, is to begin to see through a veil of tears
by entreating (in an improper manner that is neither philosophical
nor non-philosophical) an irreducible other whose interruptions dis-
figure our notions of philosophy.
45
CHAPTER 3
REND(ER)ING THE PHARMAKON :

A WOUND WITHOUT
WITHOUT A CURE
It is only a step further to the mystical trance . . . in which thought

is swallowed up in the beatific vision of the absolute One, above
being and abo
above
ve knowledge, ineffable
ineffable,, unthi
unthinkable
nkable,, no llonger
onger even
a Reason, but ‘beyond Reason’ . . . – ‘the escape of the alone to the
alone.’ In this ecstasy, Thought denies itself; and Philosophy folds
her wings and drops into the darkness whence she arose – the gloom
gloomy y
Erebus of theurgy and magic.
FR, 263 (emphasis added)
Myth is not only characterized b by

y its polysemy and by the interloc
interlock-
k-
ing of its many different codes. In the unfolding of its narrative and
the selection of the semantic fields it uses, it brings into play shifts,
slides, tensions and oscillations between the very terms that are dis-
tinguished or opposed in its categorical framework; it is as if, while
being mutually exclusive these terms at the same time in some way
imply one another. Thus myth brings into operation a form of logic
which we may describe, in contrast to the logic of noncontradiction
of the philosophers, as a logic of the ambiguous, the equivocal, a
logic of polarity. How is one to formulate, even formalise, the bal-
ancing operations which can turn one term into its contrary while
yet, from
from other points of view
view,, keeping the tw
two
o ffar
ar apart?
apart? Ultimately
the mythologist has to admit to a certain inadequacy as he is for forced
ced
to turn to the linguists, logicians and mathematicians in the hope
that they may provide him with the tool that he lacks, namely the
structural model of another kind of logic: not the binary logic of
yes or no but a logic different
different fr
from logos.1
om that of the logos.
46
REND(ER)ING THE PHARMAKON : A WOUND WITHOUT A CURE
REPLAYING PLATO
Deconstruction recognizes that every text exceeds its intended

meaning. Every text is i s at least two texts, as we have
have seen. One readi
readingng
functions as a commentary, repeating the author’s intentions. The
other reading, attentive to the internal tears and aporias, interrupts
and disturbs the first reading. These two readings are not synthetic.
In fact, they remain irreducibly
i rreducibly indecidable.
indecidable. In this chapter we will look
at Derrida’s commentary on Plato’s Phaedrus, which concerns itself
with reading Plato otherwise, revealing the internal gaps in Plato’s
text. However, in considering Derrida’s commentary on Plato’s
Phaedrus, we will also depart from it, pursuing some aporias inherent
in his text, all the
th e while inviting the reader to engage the aporias in my
own. It is significant that, although the disruptive trace of mythos
emerges throughout Derrida’s critique, the relation of mythos and
logos is incidental to his analysis of speech and writing. In order to
understand the significance of mythos in Plato’s Phaedrus as well
as in Derrida’s commentary on Plato, we must first gain a grasp of
Derrida’s analysis. Our reading proceeds doubly. On the one hand, it
is a commentary on Derrida’s comentary, so that we can see how
Derrida unsettles Plato’s text and opens it up to another reading. On
the other hand, our reading will diverge from this commentary and
follow the inherent aporias and fissures within both Plato’s text and
Derrida’s. Reading in this way will expose the ways in which mythos
is a ‘foundation’ of logos.
As discussed in the first chapter, Plato extols logos as the pre-
eminent form of discourse. He dismisses mythos as inferior because
it appeals not to the intellect, as logos does, but to the baser, untrust-
worthy senses. In Plato’s view, in order to make way for reason,
mythos must be confined to fanciful narrativ
narratives
es.. Howev
Howeverer,, if as Derrida
suggests, every text unavoidably exceeds its intended meaning, then
Plato’s is no exception. Another text disturbs the first. This other
disrupts logos from within, revealing a disseminative polysemy where
there at first appeared to be a single unity. Reading Plato’s Phaedrus
otherwise unmasks a fissure in the foundation
foundation of philosoph
philosophy y as logos.
This other, ‘ambiguous logic’ (to which Vernant refers in the quote
above) is not the logic of logos. Rather, it is the illogical ‘logic’ of
mythos. Mythos, Vernant reminds us, ‘brings into play’ (a play that is
not within the order of presence
presence,, or therefor
therefore,
e, of logos), ‘shifts, slides’
and ‘oscillations’ that disrupt and discompose not just the text, but
47
more importantly, logos itself. Derrida initiates an other reading of

Plato’s Phaedrus (in his seminal essay, ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’), which we
will extend to explore its crucial implications for
for mythos. By reading
otherwise, Derrida discloses a once-silent voice of an other whose
speech (logos) is not that of the logos of philosophy proper. Even
though Derrida opens doors for rereading and rethinking Plato, he is
interested foremost in the opposition between speech (which Plato
privileges) and writing. In his analysis he does aver that ‘this meshing
of the mythological and the philosophical points to some more
deeply buried necessity’ (D, 86). It is this ‘necessity’ to which we will
turn in order to develop it even further, picking up what Derrida
pointed
rethinkingto,thebut did not
relation engage.and
of mythos Thelogostantalizing possibilities
created by the doors forhe
opens are pursued in what follows. In reading Plato otherwise, an
other ‘logic’ surfaces that makes logos possible, while simultaneously
rendering its hegemony impossible. This other is the trace of mythos,
which, strikingly, is used both to introduce the pharmakon and, as we
shall see, is itself a pharmakon. As a trace, mythos operates as a non-
absent absence that eludes conceptualization, and therefore effaces
itself. Our first concern
con cern in this chapter is
i s how to read Plato’
Plato’ss text (and
in turn, Derrida’s) otherwise. Only then can we turn our attention to
the association between pharmakon and mythos, and thence to their
operations within both the text and logos itself.2 As indecidables,
mythos and pharmakon destabilize the very foundation of philosophy
as logos, demonstrating that logos has not, in fact, freed itself from
mythos, which both grounds and ungrounds the discourse of logos.
The implications of thinking within this realization are the focus of
this chapter.
Derrida is certainly not the first, nor the last,
l ast, to query the inherent
ambiguity of Plato’s texts.3 In 1912 F. M. Cornford’s study, From
Religion to Philosophy, sought to delinea
delineate te the ‘unreasoned intuitions
of mythology’
mythology’ (FR, v) inherent and repressed within the tradition of
philosophy
philoso phy.. Cornford argues that in striving
st riving to be a pure scie
science,
nce, phi-
losophy takes flight from its mythico-religious roots. He concludes
by suggesting that there is an other reading of Plato tha thatt destabilizes
the primacy of logos. As discussed in Chapter 1, Cornford observes
that logos alone is not up to the task of articulating the Platonic
constellation
constellatio n of knowled ge..4 No matter how single-mindedly Plato’s
knowledge
intended text (and its reader-commentators, eager to follow the logo-
centric thread) wants to rely solely on logos – an approach honoured
48
as both flawless and superior – it is incapa

incapable
ble of doing so. In calling
upon mythos, logos inadvertently discloses its own incompleteness
and its reliance upon (and unintended alliance with) mythos. Cornford
points out that Plato must draw upon mythos to make his argument
and fortify logos. In order to iterate and construct logos, Plato relies
on and introduces mythos, which having slipped into the text, disrup-
tively exceeds its intended use. Despite his logocentric efforts to
controll and solely constitute his text in terms of logos, and to silence
contro
any
an y other reading, this other reading nonetheless surfaces within the
first, interrupting it and illustrating how mythos is basic to logos, and
thus to philosop
philosoph
hy.
John Sallis is equally interested in opening the ‘play of question-
ing’5 present
presented Plato’ss texts. His readings, which are attuned to ‘an
ed in Plato’
unheard-of-Platonism, an exorbitant Platonism’ (VP, 108), reveal
an inherent ambiguity and excessive remains within Plato’s writings.
He seeks to free the reader from the presumptuous ways in which
Plato’s dialogues have been studied, and to open them to a reading
that is rigorously attuned to their inherent displacements and ambi-
guities – to the very aspects that are supposedly non-philosophical.
In doing so, he shows that logos itself becomes pro problema
blematic:
tic:
The unity running through these diverse types [of logoi ],

], that is,
the determination of logos in that specific form which we vaguely
indicate (but also decisively conceal) when we speak of ‘rational
discourse,’ is not something

initially a problem . (BL, 15) that is clear in advance but rather is
The unity and superiority of logos, from the outset, is questionable.

Although Plato’s Phaedrus seems to set specific limits regarding
speech (logos), at the same time it introduces that which inescapably
transgresses those limits (mythos). Sallis observes that, in Plato, mythos
is not simply in binary opposition to logos, nor is it taken up into it
by a dialectical synthesis.
synthesis. It is not a subordina
subordinated
ted stage of logos to be
6
perfected later by a dialectical reversal. Sallis underscores the impor-
tance of reading mythos not with Platonic blinders, but otherwise:
[W]hat is of utmost importance initially is that mythos not be

taken, in advance, as merely an inferior kind of logos, as a meager
substitute for something else intrinsically more desireable, as a
mere compromise between knowledge and the logos appropriate
49
to it, on the one hand, and sheer ignorance and its inevitable silence
on the other hand. The contrast betwee
between
n logos and mythos is not a
contrast between a perfected and an imperfect discourse. ( BL, 16)
The foundational distinction between mythos and logos, on which

philosophy has depended and constituted its own discourse, is called
into question and ruptured by its own ambiguous genesis. Mythos is
not imperfect discourse, inferior to logos. Sallis intimates
in timates that the two
have
ha ve a commonalit
commonality y – that mythos is, in some
so me way
way,, basi
basicc to logos, and
yet not itself
itself logofiable.
Derrida’ss reading of Plato’
Derrida’ Plato’ss Phaedrus plays along with its dramatic
turns, irony
irony and mythic speech in order to give voice to an other ‘logic’
at work
work
must within
depart thatmetaphysics
from stages the play
andoflogos
différance. To
To takefrom
by straying this path, one
the text’s
intended commentary and opening up the text to its inherent tears
and displacements. Doing this entails
entai ls reading two texts at once, with-
out desiring to master or synthesize those readings. In undertaking
this, one must simply (yet rigorously) play as if nothing (within the
domain of presence, i.e. logos, philosophy and thinking) is at stake.
Thus, this other (often hidden) path cannot be undertaken within the
traditional space
sp ace of philosophy
philosophy.. Rather
Rather,, the er
errant
rant possibil
possibility
ity emerges
only within the aporias and tears that scar the core of philosophy.
Alogos
Play is vital, not merely incidental, to reading Plato and to under-
standing the fundamentally deconstructive nature of mythos and
pharmakon. Derrida shows that a text (his and Plato’s, and by exten-
sion, all texts) is, in fact, some sort of game
game.. This game has something
to do with the iinterpla
nterplayy of presence/a
presence/absence
bsence,, secret/disclosure:
A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the
first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game.
A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its law and its
rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret;
it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into any-
thing that could rigorously be called a perception. ( D, 63)
All texts are, to some extent, ‘forever imperceptible’, that is, cryptic.
However, equally important is the fact that there is no code for
50
decryption. The cryptic remains cryptic. ‘[T]he law of its composi-

tion and the rules of its game’ are hidden from the text itself as well
as from the reader. This is not because the text safeguards them as
a secret to be deciphered. Rather, it is because these rules and laws
do not occur within the domain of presence. They exceed authorial
intentionality. They are, therefore, not graspable, perceivable or
accountable (as one might record an expense on an accounting led-
ger) by the logocentric reader or philosopher. Neither present nor
absent, they are of another order. How is one to play such a game
when the rules cannot be fully apprehended because they do not
occur within the domain of presence? Derrida proprovides
vides an answer
answer::
There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology

of any criticism that might think it had mastered the game, sur-
veyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to
look at a text without touching it, without laying a hand on the
‘object,’ without risking – which is the only chance of entering
into the game, by getting a few fingers caught – the addition of
some new thread. (D, 63)
As Derrida indicates, his reading does not purport to master the

game, that is, to read only in terms of that which is present (‘all the
threads at once’). The only possibility of ‘entering in’ requires
requires risking
‘the addition of some new’ undisclosed (other) threads. One is always
already within the complex, cryptic interplay of the text(s). Every-
thing is risked in the disseminative game of textual play. This game
does not involve confirming mastery, calculation or presence. Nor
is it about guaranteeing non-mastery, the incalculable or absence.
Rather, it engages that which exceeds the simple oppositions of all
of these. Derrida underscores the unanticipatable aspect of play by
proclaiming, ‘I know very well that, once you enter this game, one
can never be sure of not confirming mastery.’ 7 In other words, one
cannot be certain about the game or its outcome, about whether the
result is masterable or unmasterable. The outcome cannot be rigged
or anticipated in advance. The game’s conclusion, and the reading
of two texts at once, is irreducibly indecidable. Such an enterprise is
risky precisely because the effect is always otherwise than one might
foresee or wager.
wager. The game, which is to say
say,, the read
reading,
ing, overflows all
expectation and mastery. Fingers will be caught and bets will be lost.
There will be expenditure without return.8 One must ‘follow . . . the
51
hidden thread’ (D, 63), rather than just the threads present that lead
to synthesis and unity. One must ‘ge[t] a few fingers caught’ in the
complex weave of the text. Such an operation is an altogether differ-
ent kind of reading.
Reading in this way requires a double movement that both joins
and separates, exposing (as faulty) the ‘successfully’ mended and
reinforced seams philosophers have sewn to integrate writing with
speech and, for present purposes, mythos with logos. In other words,
reading doubly, by paying attention to the aporias within the text,
exposes these neatly mended seams for the fictions that they are.
It involves a ‘hidden thread’ that has slipped by the calculating eyes
of the philosopher unseen. The seams holding together,
together, in dialectical
relation, speech and writing, and logos and mythos ‘must rip apart’
(D, 64), and necessarily rip apart, whether such an outcome is desired
desi red
or not. When the philosopher declares, always to the detriment of
mythos, that ‘logos is truth’, the is that weds logos to truth constitutes
such a reinforced seam. Derrida’s point from the outset is that the
relationship between speech and writing, and as a consequence,
between logos and mythos, is not merely one of opposition, nor one
of sameness, either. Their identities, and therefore their relationship,
are fissured and called into question.
It is helpful, in our attempt to grasp the vital role of mythos in
Plato’s Phaedrus, to extend Derrida’s insight to recognize not just
writing, but more importantly, mythos, as a supplement. These supple-
ments refigure all oppositional relations.
relations. A supplement simultaneously
represents an excess and an emptiness, a plenitude and a shortage. It
‘is neither presence nor absence’ ( OG , 145). Oppositional relation-
ships, such as that
that of speech and writing, and mythos and logos, occur
within the mode of presence. Presence, however, is incapable of taking
into account the supplement, which oscillates between presence and
absence without inhabiting either one. How, therefore, is one to read
these supplements? Derrida provides an answer to this by suggesting
that they ‘must be rigorously prescribed, but by the necessities of a
game, by the logic
logic of play’ (D, 64), rather than byby the logic of logos. In
this game, as we have
have seen, all bets are off. It is impossible to anticipate
from the outset how things will play out. Thus, reading doubly and
thinking doubly must occur within the ‘logic of play’ – a logic that
also marks the supplement that, in turn, disfigures and refigures the
relationship between mythos and logos. This play that follows the hid-
den thread, and which can only be located through a veil of tears,
52
engages the simultaneous rhythms

rhythms of joining and separating that never
result in synthesis, in seams that hold or align perfectly. This double
movement must be played out in order to uncover (to the extent that
it is possible) the operation of the pharmak
pharmakonon and the unsettling tears
(which mark the incompleteness of thought and the impossibility of
pure presence) that reveal themselves in logos.
Therefore, one must read Plato not as philosophy as logos has
read him, but with this double movement. His text must be compre-
hended through the (illogical) ‘logic’ of the pharmakon and the
(illogical) ‘logic’ of play. This logic is other. As other, it escapes the
eagle eye of the philosopher because it is neither properly present,
nor simply absent. When put into play, this other reveals a rupture
deep within logos and the economy of presence. Derrida’s ground-
breaking essay ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the
Human Sciences’ radically rereads the notion of play. He demon-
strates how play fissures logocentric discourse, since the rules of the
game intrinsically exceed those of logos and presence. Whereas
other theorists of pla
play
y are concerned with presence and tend to view
play economically – that is, as undertaken toward a specific deter-
minable (and anticipatable) end – Derrida recasts play as ‘the
disruption of presence. . . . Play is always play of absence and pres-
ence, but if it is to be thought radically, play must be conceived of
before the alternative of presence and absence’ (emphasis added,
WD, 292).9 As Taylor
Taylor points out, the p
play
lay Derrida refers to ‘ann
‘announces
ounces
a “rupture” within the entire economy of presence and representa-
tion’ (T , 136). Read in terms of Derrida’s notion of play, therefore,
the other logic at work in Plato’s text is neither present nor absent,
but in fact comes before (as a strange ‘origin’) the very ‘alternative of
presence and absence’. Within this other logic, presence becomes
impossible. If presence is impossible, then play is nothing (and
not even the opposite
opposite of something) in terms of philosophy as logos.
For Derrida, play is not determinable. Play is errant. It is ‘ alogos’.
Derrida explains:
Either play is nothing (and
(and that is its only chance); either it can give
place to no activity, to no discourse worthy of the name – that
is, one charged with truth or at least with meaning – and then
it is alogos or atopos. Or else play begins to be something and its
very presence lays
lays it open to some sort of dialectical confisca
confiscation.
tion.
(D, 156)
53
If pla
play
y occurs in order to arrive at meaning, then it becomes dialecti-
cal or hermeneutical. Its telos is logos, meaning and presence. Alogos,
in contrast, carries the silent, disseminating mark of the a of dif-
ance. Presence is impossible within this chiasmic order of play.
férance
fér
Non-originary play, like the tear, opens an opening through which
the diverting operations of the text’s other logic are revealed.
This other logic destabilizes and questions Plato’s text and the
entire philosophical project because it disrupts presence and closure,
rendering them impossible. It is precisely this other logic (or other
reading) that is allied with the pharmakon and, more importantly,
with mythos. Both of these indecidables operate (as will be elabo-
rated) through an other logic that
that stages the play of différance, thereby
disrupting logos. Even though Plato’s Phaedrus appears to relegate
and ‘send off’ myths, mythos is – by necessity – included. Derrida
uncovers a ‘kinship of writing and myth
uncovers myth’,’, since both appear to distin-
guish themselves from logos and dialectics (D, 75). Plato’s discourse
is concerned with the pursuit of knowledge – that is, with the path
of logos – so he begins by giving myths, in the words of Derrida,
a ‘send-off: a salute,10 a vacation, a dismissal’ (D, 68) in order to
prepare an uncontaminated venue for the preeminent form of ratio-
nal discourse, logos. Derrida underscores Plato’s use of the word
‘khairein’, which, according to Sallis, ‘means not only to send off but
also to welcome’ (VP, 88). The vibrations of khairein’s double mean-
ing disruptively
disrupt ively oscillate in the pages of Plato’s
Plato’s text. On the one hand,
this farewell to mythos occurs ‘in the name of truth : that is, in the
name of knowledge’ (D, 69). On the other hand, the dismissal is
also a welcoming, since Plato will, more than once, take up mythos
in order to espouse logos. Mythos is often placed ‘in service to
self-knowledge’ (VP, 89), where it nonetheless remains – by its very
nature – as an undialecticizable otherness that ruptures logos from
within. While Plato vanquishes mythos, he greets it anew via the
speech of Socrates, who calls upon myth to do his bidding in the
name of logos. Importantly, myths come back from vacation at
the time and in the name of writing’ (D, 69), Derrida notes. Even as
Plato deprecates writing in favour of speech, thus aligning it with
logos’ inferior
inferi or,, mythos, he is unable to elevate logos without the aid of
mythos. This observation echoes Cornford’s, calling attention to the
fact that Plato’s philosophic discourse requires mythos. Philosophy
must ha
have
ve recourse to mythos, which, once introduced, cannot be con-
trolled, domesticated, suppressed or entirely expelled by philosophy’s
54
preferred, ‘superior’ tool, logos. Plato must write the dialogues

dia logues to for-
tify ‘superior’ speech (logos). Logos contains that which, on the one
hand, constructs it, and on the other hand, deconstructs it. Already
an association between these demeaned others – writing, myth and
pharmakon – begins to surface. Derrida’s assessment of the pharma-
kon and its alignment with writing allows us to extend this analysis
even further in order to see how mythos functions as a pharmakon
in Plato’s text, forging a ‘kinship’ between these two. It becomes
obvious that, notwithstanding attempts to the contrary, Plato’s logos
emerges from mythos. Instead of being free from its ‘subordinate’
other, logos is in fact inescapably inhabited by it.
Re-Covering Play
Before
on play,turning to Plato’s
delivered text, it is necessary
at a conference to revisit
focused on Derrida’s
the interplay essay
between
structuralism and post-structuralism,
post-structuralism, in order to explore his insights
into their relationship. How are they related, if not linearly or dialec-
tically? The same question applies to the relationship of logos and
mythos. In order to appr
approach
oach this question otherwise, Derrida begins
with this key realization:
Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of

structure that could be called an ‘event,’ if this loaded word did
not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural
– or structuralist – thought to reduce or to suspect. Let us speak
of an ‘event,’ nevertheless, and let us use quotation marks to serve
as a precaution. What would this event be then? Its exterior form
would be that of a rupture and a redoubling. ( WD, 278)
Throughout this book we have been probing just these ‘event[s]’,

these ‘rupture[s]’ and ‘redoubling[s]’. The ‘event’ that Derrida cau-
tiously characterizes
characteri zes in order to protect it from being appropriated by
structure, meaning and presence refers to the event of play discussed
above. This event of play is neither present nor absent. It is nothing.
As a dynamic of alogos, it is without synthesis. This rupture is an
‘origin’ that is fundamental to structure itself, but not in any system-
atic or dialectical way. In other words, structure presupposes this
disfiguring event, and presence or logos presupposes structure. This
is, indeed, a strange, other sort of rela
relationship
tionship and organization.
organization.
55
As Derrida suggests, we cannot even conceive of or speak of the

event in any proper way, because it escapes these very methods of
thought refers
Derrida and logos
is, as we
(speech). Furthermore,
have noted, thestructure.
no ordinary structureThe
to ‘struc-
which
turality of structure’, as Derrida calls it, is in fact not configured in
any traditional structuralist way, although it is always under assault
by that process.
process. It iis,
s, in itself, astructural. This ‘structurality of
of struc-
ture’ has
always been at work, has always been neutralized or reduced, and

this by a process of giving it a center or of referring it to a point
of presence, a fixed origin. The function of this center was not
only to orient, balance, and organize the structure – one cannot in
fact conceive of an unorganized structure – but above all to make
sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit
what we might call the play of the structure. By orienting and
organizing the coherence of the system, the center of a structure
permits the play of its elements inside the total form. And even
today the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the
unthinkable itself . (emphasis added, WD, 278–9)
This ‘structurality of structure’ is a non-structure

non-structure,, and not reducible
to a structuralist understanding. It is improper, which is to say,
unthinkable by philosophy as logos and unspeakable through logos.11
From the perspective of structuralism or philosophy as logos, an
organizing principle must be imposed that would order the system
from the top down. In essence, the rules stemming from the ‘fixed
origin’ stands
model would predictably
would gov
govern
ern
in stark contrast tothe entire
enti re system.
a centreless, Thi
Thiss ‘struct
‘structuralist’
unorganized uralist’
structure.
As Derrida indicates, such an astructure is inconceivable and there-
fore unacceptable to philosophy as logos. A ‘coherent’ system tries
to ‘limit’ play. It cannot remain playful. There is a lot at stake in
this insistence. As noted earlier, if play is nothing, then wagers will
be lost. Therefore, from the perspective of philosophy as logos (or of of
structuralism), there can be nothing at stake. In other words, bets
must be hedged. Rather than governing and thereby limiting play,
the structurality of structure is instead put into play by an event
that disrupts structure and organization. Derrida’s last sentence pin-
points the way in which thought presupposes structure, and since
structure presupposes this radical ‘event’, thought necessarily includes
56
the unthinkable ‘event’ as a condition of its possibility. To recast this

in terms of this study: logos includes as a condition of its possibility
that which eludes it – that which is alogos, mythos . Thus, the centre is
‘paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. . . . The center
is not the center’ (WD, 279). There is no centre as such. The disrup-
tive ‘event’ that makes structure possible is therefore effectively
disorganizing and astructural. This ‘eventful’ operation stems from
a rupture, from a groundless, disseminating non-locus that is a play
of nothingness.
Extending the significance of Derrida’s insight to the relation
of mythos and logos allows us to recognize and reframe their
dynamic as that which is neither binary nor dialectic. In Derrida’s
(non-)structure, the parts are neither dialectically related, nor posited
as binaries. His point is not that one can jettison structuralism. On
the contrary, the ‘event’ can only be approached through structure.
However, that cannot

forth structure approach is limited
be properly because the
represented ‘event’
by the that itself.
structure calls
This is precisely the ‘logic’ governing the relation of mythos and
logos. Mythos functions as a disfiguring ‘event’, rupturing logos. In
this way
way logos necessarily presupposes mythos. Yet, at the same time,
without logos there can be no presence,
presence, as such, and no possibility of
‘re-covering’ mythos, the ‘event’.12 ‘Event’ calls forth structure, and
structure calls forth ‘event’. Mythos calls forth logos (in order to
presence itself) and logos calls forth mythos (in order to be, as the
DNA of its existence). Each implicates the other; they mutually
emerge within and affect each other. However, this inter play (which
is Derridean play, and as such, inescapable) is neither merely binary,
nor dialectical.
This astructure of mythos and logos (structuralism and post-
structuralism, speech and writing, etc.) is emergent. Emergence is a
component of complex adaptive systems. In contrast to linear sys-
tems, whose causes and effects are teleological, and can therefore be
calculated in advance, emergence in complex systems is unpredict-
able, unanticipatable and internally self-governing. Order is not
imposed from without, but rather emerges from within through the
‘eventful’ operation of play.13 As Taylor points out, ‘structures are
not eternal or permanent but are emergent. The eventuality of struc-
ture entails a strange temporality that dislocates every present and
disrupts all presence’ (AG , 304). Emergent structures are labile. They
are inherently open and constantly transforming. By merging insights
57
from the field of complexity studies with Derrida’s critique of struc-

ture and play in this way, Taylor effectively opens up Derrida’s ideas
into fresh territory. This new framework of emergence is invaluable
to re-examining and articulating the relation of mythos and logos.
It becomes possible, for example, to look at Derrida’s ‘events’, which
are governed by the ‘logic’ of play and are therefore unanticipatable
and uncontrollable, in terms of biologist John H. Holland’s notion
that ‘emergence
‘emergence . . . occurs only whe
whenn the activities of the parts do not
simply sum to give the activity of the whole.’ 14 In other words, not
only are such ‘events’ (‘the parts’) unforeseeable, but they are also
excessive. ‘This eventual emergency’, Taylor double entendre s, ‘is
the incomprehensible excess that decenters structures by repeatedly
displacing originary presence’ (AG , 304). The emergence of these
‘events’, of this ‘excess’, creates a crisis in traditional thinking,
‘repeatedly displacing’ origins and the illusion that they are fixed in
presence. This insight destabilizes philosophy as logos.
Remains (i.e. mythos) always inhabit the system. They are neces-
sary to its constitution, and yet at the same time, they are impossible
inclusions. As an excess that decentres, mythos is not incomplete
and imperfect logos awaiting transformation. Just as the relation
between mythos and logos is not merely dialectical, neither is the rela-
tion between system and excess (i.e. remains). Taylor thinks these
otherwise by recasting them through the ‘logic’ of complex adaptive
systems:
[S]ystem and excess are not opposites but are codependent: there
can no more be a structure apart from the supplementary excess
that disrupts it than there can be an event of disruption without
the stabilizing structures it dislocates. This excess is never present

as such but emerges by withdrawing at the precise moment the
system of structures seems to achieve closure. Recovery is always
a re-covering and, therefore, inevitably remains incomplete. In this
way, closure dis-closes without revealing the openness of every
foundational base. (AG , 304)
The remains are not secondary, but primary and, significantly,

codependent.. Extending Ta
codependent Taylor’s
ylor’s insight about the codependent rela-
tionship of system and excess to logos and mythos, we can see how
58
logos ‘can no more’ exist apart from mythos, an excess that disrupts
it, than mythos (the ‘event of disruption
disruption’)
’) can exist without logos, ‘the
stabilizing
stab ilizing structure[e] it dislocates’. Mythos is, therefore,
therefore, not a pri
primi-
mi-
tive form of imperfect logos, but an event that calls forth logos, just
as logos calls forth mythos in order to represent itself. Mythos and
logos are unavoidably codependent. The emergent complexity of sys-
tem and excess simultaneously stabilizes and destabilizes Plato’s
dialogue. Recovery
Recovery,, as Taylor points out, can only ever be re-covering,
resurfacing rather than returning as Hegel was wont, to an ‘original’
form. The supposed closure of the system ‘dis-close[s]’ by att attempting
empting
to cover over the openings that are the ‘events’ of mythos. Such
closure discloses the tears that forever remain, faulting logos.
Let us imagine Plato at the edge of the abyss of this ‘eventual
emergence’. He is standing at a chasm he cannot see, at the cross-
roads of two traditions: the oral and the written. Is it any wonder
that he attempts
attempts to tighten down the hub at the centre of the wheel of
structure, anxious to ensure against any unpredictable play, to secure
an unmoving centre so that philosophy will proceed on the firm
ground of undislodgable presence? On the one hand, Plato enlists
logos in an attempt to ensure certitude ‘beyond the reach of play.
And on the basis of this certitude anxiety can be mastered’ ( WD,
279). Plato tries to recover (and produce) a history of presence and
of philosophy that never properly existed. The desire to accomplish
this drives the text. While at the same time, because that desire springs
from an inherent insufficiency (and anxiety) rather than from the
certainty that it hopes to express, this lack must be suppressed, lest it
reveal that genesis. On the other hand, Plato also invariably seeks
recourse in mythos. In spite of itself, philosophic discourse cannot
exclude it. The dialogue uses the disruptive playfulness of mythos in
its recovery,
recovery, creating an ‘emergency’. Within the emergent network of
Plato’s text, two readings surface: one, desirous of a fixed structure,
‘dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin which escapes play’ (WD,
292). The other, ‘which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms
play’ (WD, 292). The text denies play in order to affirm it, and affirms
it in order to deny it.15 It is not a matter of choosing between these
two texts. The choice is impossible; the two are always already at play.
The reader is inevitably caught in the midst of an emergency,
emergency, situated
within this ‘eventful’ opening between two texts and two Platos.
59

WITH/IN THE PHARMACY’S ABYSS
Atopos
Plato’s Phaedrus begins with an encounter outside of the city between

Phaedrus and Socrates. It is a remarkable beginning, since Socrates
rarely – if ever – travels beyond the limits of the polis. Initially, the
setting is nonspecific: ‘under a plane-tree,
plane-tree, by the banks of the Ilissus’.
The scene occurs beyond
beyond the regulated and known parameters
parameters of the
city. After listening to speeches ( logoi ) all morning, Phaedrus, whose
name means ‘bright’, ‘beaming’ and ‘radiant’ (BL, 106), which sug-
gests presence and aligns him with logos, takes a walk outside the
city as a respite from his fatiguing immersion in logos. It is here that
he encounters Socrates, who rightly suspects that Phaedrus has actu-
ally left the city in order to practice the logoi that he learned within it.
Socrates opens the dialogue by asking Phaedrus to identify ‘whence
come you, and whither are you going . . .’ . ’16 Phaedrus explains that he
was listening to Lysias deliver a ‘feast of discourse’ ( DP, 227b) near
the temple of Zeus.17 Unknown to Socrates, Phaedrus has brought
along written speeches that he has concealed underneath his cloak.
Thus, the dialogue begins outside of the city limits and with an an act of
concealment.
It is significant that the dialogue opens out into the aporetic space
of mythos. Socrates and Phaedrus station themselves in a mythical
spot along the Ilissus. Phaedrus identifies it as near the place where
Boreas (the north wind) kidnapped Orithyia, and asks Socrates to
confirm this. Never one to give a straight answer, and ever-deferring
the question, Socrates replies that the actual place where Boreas
carried off Orithyia is further down the bank. The exact location and
details remain hidden.18 This mythic ‘foundation’ serves to open and
disrupt what follows. It is also worth noting, as Sallis points out, that
‘however little Socrates is acquainted with the country outside the
walls, he does seem rather well-informed about those features that
have some connection with the kind of things told in myths’ ( BL,
114). Insofar as Phaedrus is associate
associatedd with the logoi delivered within
the confines of the city
city,, Socrates is an outsider and, up to this point,
is aligned with the occult and ambiguous nature
nature of mythos.
The myth of Orithyia serves in Plato’s text as a mythic ‘ hors
d’œuvre’, which Derrida playfully describes as something served
before a meal (before a ‘feast of discourse’), and as that which is
outside the text (the entrée) as a sort of remains that is nevertheless
60

within as a part of the meal. It functions as a ‘little stitch or mesh

(macula) woven into the back of the canvas’ (D, 70). Macula also
means a dark or blind spot. Read in this way, this mythic stitch is the
blind spot of Plato’s text (and to a certain extent, that of Derrida’s)
that simultaneously founds and unfounds his discourse. By using
mythos as a ‘foundation’ and in introducing the pharmakon, Plato
puts mythos and the pharmakon into play simultaneously. They
open the dialogue together. While playing with
with Pharmacia, Orithyia
is caught by Boreas and thrown into the abyss, where she is then
carried off by Boreas.19 Derrida observes that, ‘[t]hrough her games,
Pharmacia has dragged down to death a virginal purity and unpen-
etrated interior’ (emphasis added, D, 70). The abduction (or
seduction) occurs within the context of play. Summoning play dis-
rupts discourse, presence and logos, simultaneously marking and
erasing the unlogofiable origin from which the dialogue proceeds.
The myth discloses the dubious genesis of logos, instead of eluci-
dating and
and clarifying the ‘pure’ origin of logos, as intended. Through
her play,
play, Orithyia (the ‘‘unpenetrated
unpenetrated interior’
in terior’)) is th
thrown
rown into an a
abyss
byss
or aporia. The unpenetrated becomes, therefore, impenetrable.
impenetrable. In other
othe r
words, the myth does not explain, but rather renders, the discourse
cryptic. From the perspective of philoso
philosophy
phy,, logos is an ‘unpenetra
‘unpenetrated
ted
interior’, in its purity, unviolated and inviolable. Inescapably, how-
ever, logos is contaminated from the beginning. Its contaminant is
the pharmakon that is introduced both in terms of the myth itself
(since the myth does not simply serve as a remedy to cure logos of
ambiguity) and also in the figure of Pharmacia, Orithyia’s mischie-
vous playmate. Pharmacia, Derrida observes, ‘is also a common
noun signifying the administration of the pharmakon, the drug: the
medicine and/or poison’ (D, 70).20 In opening the dialogue with
mythos, and in particular, with Pharmacia, Plato constructs his
discourse on the ‘foundations’ of mythos and the pharmakon. The
pharmakon is an unstable, unlogofiable basis, since it serves as both
poison and remedy
re medy.. It is iinherently
nherently dupl
duplicitous.
icitous. Like mythos, it is irre-
ducibly indecidable, and as such, eludes the order of presence, of
logos. The pharmakon ‘remains itself withdrawn from the sphere that
is taken to define Platonism’ (VP, 94), while nevertheless giving rise
to Plato’s matrix and that of philosophy as logos. This opening
opens, revealing that philosophy’s
philosophy’s ground is not, in fact, a bedrock of
‘logos’, as
a s one may hahave
ve assumed. Mythos and pharmakon appear on
the scene together from the very beginning, staging an incalculable,
61

uncontrollable and disruptive play that continues throughout Plato’s

Phaedrus.
Logos-aligned (or perhaps maligned) Phaedrus wants to hear what
Socrates thinks of such a myth: could it in fact be true? 21 Socrates’
response is as duplicitous as the myth itself:
If I disbelieved, as the wise men do, I would not be out of place;

then I might contrive and say that while the maiden was at play
with Pharmacia a blast of Boreas pushed her off the neighboring
rocks and that when she had died in this manner she was said to
have been carried off by Boreas. (qtd in BL, 114)
Sallis calls attention to the use of the word ‘contrived’

‘contrived’ in Greek, and
its double meaning of both ‘devis[ing]’, as for example, ‘skillfully
composing an explanation’, ‘deceiv[ing]’ and ‘play[ing] subtle tricks’
(BL, 114). It also shares the same root as ‘wise men’ ( BL, 114). The
wise men conceal the real import of this myth. First, they transform
transform
natural things into mythical things. The wind becomes Boreas. Then
they hide the true meaning of the myth, which has to do with love.22
According to some versions, Boreas loved Orithyia. When her father
rejected him, Boreas swept her away and married her. Together they
bore children. The wise men’s myth
conceals, as it were, whatever love may have had to do with her

fate. It might be said that the only result which the ‘wise men’
can see in Oreithyia’
Orei thyia’ss being loved by a god and playing with things
like sorcery (which is not unrelated to madness) is a descent into
death; they suppress the alternative
alter native of which the myth speaks, that
the outcome might be an ascent into the company of the gods.
(BL, 115)
It would appear that Socrates is contriving to contrive (i.e. explain

and conceal) precisely what the ‘wise men’ contrive to contrive, and
that mythos is the tricky medium through which this takes place. In
this context, mythos’ disclosure is also its dis-closure. Its immediate
alignment with the administration of a pharmakon suggests that a
remedy (to fortify logos) may also very well be a poison, and vice versa.
Even Socrates’ explanation must be questioned. If revealing conceals
and concealing reveals, then something other than the intended mes-
sage (whether intended by the wise men, Socrates or even Plato) is
62

being delivered. The maddening ambiguity, duplicity and trickery are

already present at the very beginning of the dialogue, luring not only
Socrates, but also the reader, beyond the walled city of reason. This
evidences that not even reason can begin from within the fortress of
logos. It proceeds instead from a cleft marking the errant operations
of mythos
and andbeginning
play. This
play. the pharmakon
aults .logos
ffaults Reason’s genesis threatening
from within, is that of ‘sorcery’
its very
framework and supremacy.
Socrates’ response to Phaedrus’ inquiry regarding the ‘truth’ of the
myth further reveals logos’ affinity with mythos, despite the fact that
such an intimacy has been concealed
conceal ed by philosophy as logos. Although
Derrida overlooks this part of Plato’s Phaedrus, it provides us with
another crucial insight into the way in which logos is unsettled by the
trace of mythos. Initially, as Socrates defines his own relation to
mythos, it seems as though he is speaking from the position of logos.
However, in so doing, he actually speaks in terms of and identifies
himself with mythos, but not for the purpose of demonstrating its
inadequacy. Rather, his purpose is to show its inescapable primacy.
He invokes the Delphic Oracle, insisting that he cannot speak of
mythical things unless he first knows himself.23 It is at this point that
he summons the many-headed monster, Typhon:
For me, the question is whether I happen to be some sort of

beast even more complex in form and more tumultuous than
the hundred-headed Typhon, or whether I am something simpler
and gentler, having a share by nature of the divine and the
unTyphonic.24
This occurrence plays a pivotal role, even though Derrida does not
mention it in his analysis. Socrates’ self-knowing (which is essential
to logos) offspring
frightful potentially has earth,
of the something to dowith
a monster with Typhon,heads
a hundred ‘the most
who
rose up against the gods, who was, as a result, killed by Zeus’s thun-
derbolt, and whose defeat marked the securing of the reign of Zeus’
(BL, 116). As head of the Olympic hierarchy, Zeus represents order.
He is also aligned with the panoptic, eagle eye of the philosopher.
Typhon is Zeus’ enemy. In an attempt to overthrow Zeus, Typhon
stole Zeus’s
Zeus’s thunderbolts, stripping him of his very power and iden-
tity – of that which makes him Zeus. Through trickery, the mortal
prince Cadmus charms Typhon with song, allowing Zeus to reclaim
63

his sinews (which Typhon had savagely ripped from the slain Zeus)
and defeat Typhon.25
Typhon is no ordinary monster, but the most monstrous of
monsters.26 He is a prodigious other, whose many-headed complexity
threatens
threa tens the unifying reign of all-seeing Zeus Zeus.. As such, he shakes the
very foundations
foundations of logos and philosophy as logos, undermining them.
However, even Typhon harbours a strange ambiguity and indecid-
ability.. Althoug
ability Although h clearly monst
monstrous,
rous, some of Typhon’
yphon’ss heads appeared
otherwise. ‘But while some of his voices cried like savage animals,’
explains Richard Kearney, ‘others were so “wonderful to hear”
(thauma akouein) that they were immediately understood by the gods
and seduced both mortals and immortals alike.’ alike.’27 Certainly Socrates is
seduced. The many-headed Typhon Typhon is a figure of the indecidable: god
or monster? He is both at once once.. Typhon cannot be reduced to a single
identity
identi ty.. He illustrates
ill ustrates how monst
monstrosity
rosity is also
al so hybridity
hybridity.. F
Forever
orever osci
oscil-
l-
lating between categories, a monster is neither simply one thing, nor
another, and thus inhabits the liminal margin of neither/nor. In his
chapter on monstrosity in the theory of narrative, Andrew Gibson
posits that ‘monstrosity

bolic boundaries, transgresses
the boundaries thedetermine
that metaph
metaphysics
ysics
all underlying sym-
those categories
and classifications that separate
separate kinds of being off from one another .’28
another.’
By looking to Typhon to know himself, Socrates intimates that to
know oneself is inescapably to encounter the indecidable. To know
oneself is therefore to open knowledge and thinking to an unmaster-
able, excessive polysemy that escapes reason’s categorizations.
Socrates invokes Typhon in order to question whether he himself
is monstrous – and as such, an uncanny transgressor of the laws of
logos – or rather, if he is un-Typhon-like, and therefore a proponent
of the reign of logos and philosopher-kings.29 It is as if either nature
depends upon and includes the other, but not in a dialectical relation
to be reconciled and synthesized under the Hegelian identity of
identity-and-difference. The otherness of Typhon remains within
knowledge, philosophy and logos. Kearney points out that even after
Zeus exiled the Titans from heaven, ‘Typhon stayed on as a reminder
of our wild terrestrial origins’ (SGM , 13). As a ‘reminder’, Typhon is
an undialecticizable remains. He memorializes the fact that philoso-
phy’s source is an experience of alterity ‘in terms of wonderment
(thaumazein ) and terror (deinon)’ (SGM , 13).30 In fact, ‘by thus linking
the origin of philosophizing to a certain pathos of wonder and awe
64

(thaumazein/deinon), Plato appears to acknowledge that if Reason is

predicated upon the expulsion of its monstrous Other, it is never
wholly rid of it’ (SGM , 14). Socrates’ summoning of Typhon reveals
an alterity that remains within the dialogue, speech and logos,
destabilizing (and monstrosizing) them. Instead of returning to
itself, self-knowledge is barred from that celebratory homecoming.
Self-knowledge becomes a stranger to itself. Typhon remains as a

reminder to ‘the logic of the Same that it always carries traces of its
spectral origin and that this origin can never be fully purged or con-
trolled. In short, Socrates can never step entirely out of his shadow’
(SGM , 14). Nor can Plato. Typhon is not merely a shadow, but a
monstrous enigma within, forever pointing to an untamable other
that inhabits self-knowledge and logos. Typhon, the unwieldy multi-
tudinous transgressor, marks the impossibility of synthesis, and in
so doing inscribes logos with a hundred-headed excessiveness that
forever prevents its closure and self-recognition. Self-knowledge
does not return to itself, but always opens out onto an irreducible
other. The Delphic imperative, therefore, points to a rogue, complex
monstrosity, not to a dialectical movement of truth that unites differ-
ence and identity under the banner of logos. Typhon elides Plato’s
logos, revealing an undomesticated excess playing just beneath the
surface of the text. The whole affair is monstrous.31
The dialogue begins by introducing yet another concealment, an
additional pharmakon, in the written texts that are literally hidden
underneath Phaedrus’ cloak. The hidden logoi that that Phaedrus carries
are identified by Socrates as a drug – a pharmakon – when he chides
Phaedrus, ‘you seem to have discovered a drug [ pharmakon
pharmakon] to entice
me into walking outside the city’
cit y’ (PH , 230e). This pharmakon seduces
Socrates into straying beyond his customary track, carrying him fur-
ther beyond the city walls. Derrida points out that a full and present
speech (logos) – which is ultimately impossible, just as presence has
been rendered
the same effect impossible by Derridean play – would not have had
on Socrates:
If a speech could be purely present, unv

unveiled,
eiled, naked, offered
offered up in
person in its truth, without the detours of a signifier foreign
foreign to it,
if at the limit an undeferred logos were possible, it would not
seduce anyone. It would not draw Socrates, as if under the effects
of a pharmakon, out of his way. (D, 71)
65

There is already something foreign and non-present in speech itself,
despite appearances to the contrary. It is precisely this non-absent
absence that tempts Socrates, like a drug, causing
causi ng him to wander,
wander, and
to wonder about the very nature of logos. The pharmakon has the
power to lure him away from the customary track of thinking and
logos, and leads Socrates astray, causing him to exceed his usual path
within the security of the city that
that is the domain of the philosophers
philosophers,,
of logos. It draws Socrates outside of himself (like a drug) in such a
way that he is no longer certain who or what he is.
As irreducibly indecidable, the pharmakon is not a substance, and
cannot be conceived of or grasped in such terms. Derrida elab elaborate
oratess
on the nature and powers
powers of this dynamic seducer:
This pharmakon, this ‘medicine,’ this philter, which acts as both

remedy and poison, already introduces itself into the body of the
discourse with all its ambivalence. This charm, this spellbinding
virtue, this power of fascination,
f ascination, can be – alternately or simultane-
ously – beneficent or maleficent. The pharmakon would be a
substance – with all that tha
thatt word can connote in terms of mat
matter
ter
with occult virtues, cryptic depths refusing to submit their ambiv-
alence to analysis, already paving the way for alchemy – if we
didn’t have eventually to come to recognize it as antisubstance
itself: that which resists any philosopheme indefinitely exceeding
its bounds as nonidentity, nonessence, nonsubstance; granting
philosophy by that very fact the inexhaustible adversity of what
funds it and the infinite absence of what
what founds it. (D, 70)
The pharmakon is irreducibly indecidable, and therefore rather

tricky:: it can be remed
tricky remedy
y or poison, harmful or beneficial, in turns or
at the same time. As such, it thwarts philosophy’s attempts to limit
and define it one way or another. It is cryptic and ‘refus[es]’ any
attempts to ‘submit’ its ambivalent depths ‘to analysis’. Therefore, it
is dangerous to introduce the pharmakon into the heart of discourse.
The precarious pharmakon shuns any singular identity; it cannot
be controlled. Since it ‘resists any philosopheme’, it will not simply
do logos’ bidding. Oftentimes it disruptively works against logos. As
‘antisubstance’ it is not properly present and, as such, is alogos. The
pharmakon, as a non-philosopheme and an ‘infinite absence’, is
‘outside’ (as a non-synthetic inside) of any tradition or category. It
‘founds’ philosophy, but not in the way philosophy as logos assumes.
66
That is, it does not work only in the way in which it is intended.
Neither present nor absent, and simultaneously excess and lack, this
‘foundation’ is non-foundational. As such, the unwieldy pharmakon,
by figuring philosophy with an excessive nothingness (an ‘infinite
absence’) simultaneously disfigures philosophy and logos.
Although it is irreducibly indecidable, in Plato’s Phaedrus the
pharmakon marks the ‘passage into philosophy’,32 into logos. Its
duplicitous meaning and effect are as unwieldy as Typhon’s many
heads, and cannot be mastered by any language or concept. Only
through ‘skewing, indetermination, or overdetermination’ (D, 71) is
the pharmakon translated (logoscribed) as ‘remedy’, ‘recipe’, ‘poison’,
‘drug’, ‘philter’, and so forth. In choosing to translate it one way (i.e.
as either remedy or poison), one is suppressing its other, simultane-
ous meaning. Not only does the disseminating multitude
multitude of possible
translations point to the strange, other logic ofof the pharmakon, but it
also demonstrates how philosophy as logos has concealed, ‘masked,‘masked,
obliterated, and rendered’ (D, 72) this unconceptualizable other.
Philosophy is founded on the ‘violent difficulty in the transference
of a nonphilosopheme into a philosopheme’ ( D, 72). This ‘violent
difficulty’ is not merely a problem of language, but the very root
problem of a philosophical tradition that desires to locate presence,
instead of looking through a veil of tears (voir sans savoir), and
sees instead with an eagle eye attuned only to savoir (absolu). Non-
philosophemes (like monsters), though, cannot be domesticated
and transformed into philosophemes by dialectical operations. They
reside within philosophy, as part of its ‘foundation’. Whatever the
attempt, the disruptive alogical always remains.
In many ways
ways,, the tradit
tradition
ion of philoso
philosophy
phy as logos has been one
one of
translation. It has defined itself in terms of the promise of presence
and the masterability that translation provides. 33 Translatability
Translatability iis,
s, in
this way, an origin of philosophy. In this scenario, ‘meaning has
the commanding role, and consequently one must be able to fix its
univocality or, in any case, to master its plurivocality’ (EO, 120). The
assumption, therefore, is that it is always possible to put everything
into words.
words. There would be no phi philosophy
losophy without transl
translation.
ation. When
confronted with mastering the indecidable pharmakon, however,
philosophical discourse is impotent. Thus, any translation is always
‘an essential loss. . . . marking the limit of philosophy as translation’
(EO, 120). This limit is una
unavoida
voidably
bly transgressed the moment that Plato
introduces the pharm
pharmako n and mythos into the bedrock of discourse.
akon
67
Importantly, the pharmakon is utilized

utiliz ed in order to reveal logos and its
pre-eminence. Yet,
Yet, ironically
i ronically,, the very same pharmakon and, by exten-
sion, mythos reve
reveal
al instead the limitations of logos. Their pluriv
plurivocality
ocality
cannot be excreted or contained; they are inexorably indeterminable
and disruptive. As opposed to philosophical discourse, which seeks
dialectical recourse in mythos and the pharmakon, they are, on the
one hand, an ‘inexhaustible adversity’ that funds philosophy’s and
logos’ identity.
identity. Y
Yet,
et, on the other
o ther hand, tthey
hey are an ‘inf
‘infinite
inite absence of
what founds it [philosophy]’ because they embody a primal and sup-
plementary insufficiency, an emptiness (nothingness) that can never
be comprehended or fulfilled by logos or the philosophy of presence.
Even though the pharmakon is ‘withdrawn’ from Platonism (because
its irreducible indecidability
indecidability is not a presence in the traditional sense),
it is nonetheless inescapably a ‘foundation’ of Platonism, of the
entire project of metaph
metaphysics.
ysics. Proceeding from this abyss
abyss,, philosophy
philos ophy
is inscribed by these tears from the very beginning. Its ‘origin’, the
‘ground’ of its possibility, is as a result, linked to its own impossibility.
Dénégation and the Palinode
Another significant rupture in Plato’s Phaedrus (that Derrida fails to

note) occurs within, and as a violation
violation of the purported structur
structuree of
the text. The dialogue concerns itself with love. Although a discus-
sion of love is not germane to the task at hand, the structural – or
rather, astructural – implications of the speeches ( logoi ) about love
are. Plato declares through Socrates that
every speech like a living creature should be put together with its
own body so that it is not without
witho ut a head or without
wit hout a foot but has
a middle and extremities, written in such a way that its parts fit
together and form a whole. (PH , 264c)
Hence, Plato’s Phaedrus consists of three main parts that, accor

according
ding
to Socrates’ proclamation, must form a coherent whole and culmi-
nate in a synthetic unity.34 The middle section of the text – before
before the
detour to Thoth, which is dealt with shortly – consists of an unusual
unusual
form of discourse palinode..35 A palinode is, as the name suggests,
discourse,, a palinode
an ode of retraction, recantation or disa
d isavow
vowal
al of what wwas
as previously
written. The palinode’s origin is credited to Stesichorus (Standing-
Chorus), who was struck blind by the gods for slandering Helen in
68
a poem in which he blamed her for the Trojan War. 36 Stesichorus
regained his sight when he recanted by means of the palinode.37
Importantly, a palinode is always written using poetic language.
Significantly, this distinguishes it from the usual rational speech that
philosophic discourse demands, and that characterizes the rest of
Plato’s dialogue. Its inclusion
Plato’s inclus ion prevents the text from stric
strictly
tly following
the internal logic required
required of logos, of philosophic discourse
discourse,, as Plato
himself enumerates it. It is as if the middle of the living body of his
speech was a chimera’s torso instead of a human’s. Socrates uses the
palinode in order to recant his first speech, which served as a false
speech about love and slandered Eros, the god of love. After the
untruthful speech, Socrates
Socrates proclaims: ‘I am ashamed . . . and in fear
of Eros himself. I wish to wash away such bitter and brackish speech
with sweet, fresh words’ (PH , 243d). Socrates aspires to negate his
former speech by utilizing the ‘fresh words’ of the palinode. Plato
writes the palinode in order to recant the lie that he told through the
mouth of Socrates. From Plato’s perspective, the antidote to the
poisoned, ‘bitter and brackish speech’ is to negate it dialectically by
employing the palinode, which will in effect ‘wash away’ Socrates’
slander. Thus,
Thus, the palinode is used not only in the service of truth, but
also to achieve synthesis dialectically by negating what came before.
Therefore, the palinode is essential to the structure of the text. It
holds the beginning and ending parts of the dialogue togethertogether,, while
also performing a necessary
necess ary negation. Its inclusion,
inclusi on, however
however,, disrupts
the closure of Plato’s text. While Plato introduces the palinode to
enact a dialectical reversal by negating the previous speech and thus
bringing closure to his text, this intended result is not achieved. As
noted earlier
earli er,, T
Taylor
aylor insists tthat
hat system and excess are ‘codepen
‘codependent’,
dent’,
and that a system or structure cannot exist apart from the ‘supple-
mentary excess that disrupts it’ (AG , 304). By the same token,
disruption (by the excess) is impossible without ‘the stabilizing struc-
tures it dislocates’. As soon as it appears that the system might
effectively achieve closure, a strange, untamable excess emerges, rup-
turing the structure and preventing synthesis. Plato’s palinode is that
excess. Instead of enacting the closure it was called forth to produce,
it leaves a gaping, supplementary excess in the centre of the text,
decentring the dialogue and preventing it from having the symmetry
that Socrates insists upon, and that logos requires. As a negation that
does not properly negate, and therefore fails to complete the dialecti-
cal movement, the palinode functions as a dénégation .
69
Dénégation is a term that Derrida uses, in his essay ‘Comment ne

pas parler’, in responding to a question concerning deconstruction
and negative theology.38 It is drawn from Freud’s term Verneinung ,
which refers to a simultaneous operation of repression and affirma-
tion.39 Taylor points out that the etymology of Verneinung conveys
‘removal, loss, stoppage, reversal, opposite, using up, expenditure,
continuation to the end, alteration’, thus portraying ‘both the
presence and absence of negation . . .’ (N , 36). Dénégation (like the
pharmakon
between two ) cannot be meaning
poles. Its adequately translated,
is double. In it,since it oscillates
‘affirmation and
negation are conjoined without being united or synthesized’ (N , 36).
Far from fulfilling its summoned role as antidote, as simple negation,
the palinode affirms not merely writing (which the dialogue itself
denounces), but also mythos and poeisis – two other ‘inferiors’ that
Plato has already execrated. The palinode affirms as it denies, and
denies as it affirms.
affirms. Instead of uniting the two parts of the dialogue,
dialogue,
the palinode tears them apart while simultaneously holding them
together in a non-synthetic synthesis. To close the palinode, Plato
includes a prayer to the god Eros. This plea to an other who is not
present as such, and who will not respond in kind to Socrates’ logos,
fails, therefore, to ensure the success of the recantation. It has the
opposite effect, destabilizing and unravelling the text from within.
The astructural palinode renders completion of the dialectic impos-
sible by affirming, via a prayer, a structure and force that make
closure impossible.
impos sible. Whereas
Whereas the palino
palinode
de is employed to point to and
to mirror the origin of philosophy, in which love gives way to true
philosophy, it instead marks an excessive gaping aporia at the very
core of Plato’
Plato’ss philosophical discourse. As a poetic plea to a god, the
palinode is an undialecticizable kernel faulting the system of logos
from within. Something cryptic still remains at the close of the
palinode’s prayer. Outside of the city there is an other logic at work,
one that operates duplicitously, like the pharmakon. Summoned as
remedy, the palinode instead contaminates from within, exposing a
rupture where
wholeness the system
anticipated of logos does not close, rather than the
and pursued.
Putting the Joker into Play
The myth of Thoth that Socrates tells in order to show how the ori-
gin of writing is dubious
dubious,, in contrast to that of speech, also unwittingly
70
operates as a pharmakon in Plato’s text. Although comprising only

a small section in the Phaedrus (274–5), this piece is of pivotal
importance. As a scrap, it remains to rend(er) Plato’s text and logos
otherwise. Derrida is focused on the employment of the pharmakon
in this myth, but what he does not point out is that because the myth
is used as a remedy, to fortify speech (logos), the myth recounting the
story of
of the pharmakon is itself a pharmakon. In other words, in this
context, Plato employs myth as a remedy, which points to the neces-
sity for myth. Mythos is used to strengthen logos, and ironically,
logos’ case against writing, which like mythos, is a bastard discourse.
However, since both mythos and pharmakon are indecidables, they
contaminate the text doubly. Furthermore, the various significations
of this particular myth itself have unintended consequences, as
Derrida points out, causing even further disruptions. Astoundingly,
notes Derrida, Plato introduces a ‘foreign mythology’, in the figure
of the Egyptian god of writing and of the dice game. Thoth’s func-
tion is ‘to work at the subversive dislocation of identity’ ( D, 86). It is
precisely his role as the god of disruptive, unpredictable and incalcu-
lable play that makes him the perfect figure to
open onto the general problematic of the relations between the
mythemes
myth
logos .emes
Thatand the
is to philosophemes
say, of a history –that lie at the
or rather, oforigin of –western
History which
has been produced in its entirety in the philosophical difference
between mythos and logos, blindly sinking down into that differ-
ence as the natural obviousness
obviousness of its own element. (D, 86)
Thoth’s presence in the text – as, among other things, the god of play –
refigures and disfigures
disfigures the relation of mythos and logos. His otherness
is so disruptive that it unsettles the presupposed relationship of
mythemes to philosophemes, and mythos to logos, calling for a new
understanding that recognizes the suppressed affinity between them.
The foreign mythology of Thoth becomes a ‘foundation’ for Plato’s
own speech (logos) on writing. This outside (foreign mythology) that
is inside the text disturbs logos from within. In thi
thiss way
way,, Thoth’s pres-
ence in the text calls into question the very relation of mythos and
logos, and consequentially, that of mythos and philosophy.
At first glance it may appear that Thoth has a lot in common with
reason and philosophy
philoso phy as logos because his father is the all-seeing sun
god, Ammon-Ra. However, Thoth is subordinate to his father, and
71
therefore is not simply aligned with logos or hegemony.40 Thoth is

a messenger, but the message that he carries is often cryptic. 41 As a
result, he is the medium through which communication fails to com-
municate. Derrida describes him as ‘the author of difference’ ( D, 89),
who ‘introduces difference into language and it is to him that the
origin and plurality of languages
languages is attributed’ (D, 88). As the god
god of
the creative word, who is second in command to his all-powerful
father, his establishment of language occurs not in the usual manner,
but instead ‘by violent subversion’ (D, 89). In this way, Thoth dis-
rupts presence,
Thoth and supplants
is in league his medicine,
with magic, sun-father, Ammon-Ra.
science and death.42 He is
‘marked by this unstable ambivalence. . . . He is the god of magic
formulas that calm the sea, of secret accounts, of hidden texts’
(D, 93). Neither simply sorcerer nor scientist, Thoth’s identity is
irreducibly indecidable. He wields the pharmakon, the remedy and
poison. He is, as Derrida concludes, its god (D, 94). Thoth’s unset-
tling presence tears the text. The myth of Thoth (who is himself a
pharmakon) introduced in Plato’s text functions as a pharmakon. This
is because Thoth
cannot be assigned a fixed spot in the play of differences. Sly,

slippery, and masked, an intriguer and a card, like Hermes, he is
neither king nor jack, but rather a sort of joker, a floating signi-
fier, a wild card, one who puts play into play. (D, 93)
Just as the pharmakon is neither simply remedy nor poison, but even

both at once, and just as its double movement cannot be arrested and
held in place by logos, Thoth escapes
esc apes simple equivocation and always
seems to slip by the calculative eyes of logos. He is irreducibly inde-
cidable. By putting ‘play into play’, he disrupts the relation between
opposites, and in mimicking dialectical movement through the
operation of play (with différance), he foils it. Derrida elaborates on
Thoth’s disruptive maneuvers:
Thoth
orient, is opposed
etc.), but asto its which
that other at
(father, sun, life, speech,
once supplements origin or
and supplants
it. Thoth extends or opposes by repeating or replacing. By the
same token, the figure of Thoth takes shape and takes its shape
from the very thing it resists and substitutes for. But it thereby
opposes itself , passes into its other
othe r, and this messenger-god is truly
tr uly
72
a god of the absolute passa

passage
ge between opposites.
opposites. . . . he is precisely
the god of nonidentity . . . In distinguishing himself from his
opposite, Thoth also imitates it, becomes its sign and representa-
tive, obeys it and conforms to it, replaces it, by violence if need bebe..
(D, 92–3)
As a disruptive supplement, he adds to the thing he imitates while

inscribing his ‘own’ (improper) excessive emptiness and otherness
onto that very thing, faulting what he supplements and therefore
supplants. He enacts a repetition with and of différance, which bars
the return of the same, and therefore the self-completion of logos.
He is simultaneously ‘other than’ and ‘the same as’, although this
‘sameness’ is what Derrida describes as a ‘nonidentity’. Like a phar-
makon that is also an odorless perfume base into which a scent is
infused, Thoth ‘takes shape’ through the very thing that he mimics.43
This is not traditional mimicry
mimi cry within the order of presence, how
however
ever..
Thoth’s doubling is altogether differ(a)nt. He usurps from the inside
as a foreigner within, yet he does not do so through the dialectical
movement of opposition.44 Rather, he steals into the thing that he
both ‘resists and substitutes for’, assuming its identity in order to
‘supplemen[t] and supplan[t] it’. He ‘has neither a proper place nor a
proper name’ (D, 93). As irreducibly indecidable, his ‘floating inde-
termination’ and ‘unstable ambivalence’ ( D, 93) stages Derridean
play. To invoke Thoth, as Plato does, in the name of logos – in the
name of philosophy proper – is to conceal, while attempting to
repress, and thereby unwittingly to reveal the
the disseminative force of
his irreducible indecidability.
In unintentionally unsettling his text with mythos and pharmakon,
Plato unknowingly puts the uncontrollable, undermining powers of
the indecidables
indecidables of mythos and pharmakon into play play.. As indecidables,
they cannot be mastered. They rupture philosophy as logos by expos-
ing a prodigious alterity from which it arises. ‘Indeterminate’ and
‘slippery’, Thoth cannot be properly conceived. Instead of securing
Plato’ss philosophi
Plato’ philosophical
cal project, Thoth’s inclusion faults it. Thoth ‘would
be the mediating movement of dialectics if he did not also mimic it,
indefinitely preventing it, through this ironic doubling, from reach-
ing some final fulfilment or eschatological reappropriation. Thoth is
never present. Nowhere does he appear in person’ (emphasis added,
D, 93). Neither present in the text (he does not make an appearance),
nor absent (since he exerts an influence as if he were in fact there),
73
Thoth cannot be comprehended by the system of presence that he

nonetheless constitutes and deconstructs. Philosophy as logos in
Plato’s text is dependent upon mythos, pharmakon and Thoth. Its
reliance on these irreducible indecidables unsettles philosophy’s
foundation, revealing it to be other than it presents itself. Philosophy
as logos has not in actuality ‘cured’ itself of ambiguous mythos.
In fact, philosophy as logos arises from within the cryptic abyss of
the pharmacy whose medicine is simultaneously remedy and poison
at the hand of the mythic Thoth, w who
ho is neither present nor absent.
Along with Thoth, mythos and pharmakon are simultaneously
preserved and suppressed. Like the crypt that safeguards what the
system itself prohibits access to, this conservation is not dialectical,
because that which is unwittingly preserved (indecidable mythos)
remains unaccountable, threatening the very agent of its suppression
(logos). Thus, from the beginning, mythos and pharmakon are incor-
porated into the system of philosophy and logos as a crypt. This crypt,
Derrida reminds us, us, announces the death of a tyrant.45 The tyrant is
not Thoth, but philosophy as logos, which had enlisted the indecid-
ables of Thoth, pharmakon and mythos as trump cards to establish
logos. Once these cards (mythos, Thoth and pharmakon) have been
played, even if they turn out to be jokers, they cannot be withdrawn.
Plato cannot opt out of the game that these indecidables put into
play. In rendering pharmakon one way (as either remedy or poison)
and refusing to tolerate ‘such passages between opposing senses of
the same word’ – oppositi
oppositions
ons that are ‘something quit
quitee different from
simple confusion, alternation, or the dialectic of opposites’ – its
translation by philosophy (whether by Plato or someone else) ‘is thus
as violent as it is impotent: it destro
destroys
ys the pharmakon but at the same
time forbids itself access to it, leaving it untouched in its reserve’
(D, 99), as a crypt. This ‘untouched’ ‘rese
‘reserve’
rve’ is a remains of philoso-
phy as logos that unsettles philosophy’s foundations by revealing
irreducibly indecidable mythos as a ‘foundation’ of logos. Such an
unsuspected affinity dismantles our assumptions about the very
nature of philosophy.
Bastard Dis-Courses
Thoth is summoned in Plato’s Phaedrus by Socrates, who recounts

the story in order to ‘say’ something about logos (to give an account)
that logos alone cannot ‘say’.
‘ say’. In Socrates’ story
story,, Thoth comes to show
74
King Thamus of Egypt his inventions, w which

hich Thoth beli
believes
eves will ben-
46
efit society
society.. He offers a pharmakon – that is, writing – as a gift to the
king.47 The king rejects the gift on the grounds that it is mischievous
(in other words,
words, indecidable) and useless
useless.. He is suspicious of writing
not only because it is alien and comes from afar, and not simply
because it is opposed (or so the king believes) to logos, which is imme-
diate and therefore ‘living’, unlike writing, but more importantly
because it is a pharmakon, that is, a remedy that is really a poison.
King Thamus accuses Thoth of concealing the truth about writing
and professing the opposite of what it really does. From the king’s
perspective, writing produces forgetfulness – which is anathema to
living logos – and Thoth
Thot h has produced not a remedy for memory, but
48
for reminding. Writing is an unnecessary crutch that distorts the
truth instead of supporting it. Therefore, the king denounces it as
treachery. However, the king’s statement assumes the inherent ambi-
guity of the pharmakon. He denies the pharmakon because it is the
opposite of how it appears. Thoth presents it as a remedy, but the
king perceives
perceives it as a poison. Derrida notes the striking (unintended)
irony: ‘It is precisely this ambiguity that Plato, through the mouth of
the King, attempts to master, to dominate by inserting its definition
into simple, clear-cut oppositions: good and evil, inside and outside,
true and false,
fals e, essence and appearance’ (D, 103). When Plato (through
the speech of the king) equates the pharmakon with poison, he sup-
presses an alternative translation: that the pharmakon is also a
remedy.. The duplici
remedy duplicitous
tous pharmakon cannot be wrangled into a singu-
lar category, because it is irreducibly indecidable. Once its ambiguity
has been introduced, the pharmakon cannot be domesticated by
Plato, philosophy or the king. Its outcome cannot be controlled.
Plato acknowledges this ambiguity, but only insofar as it furthers
the project of logos, insofar as it works towards an employable end.
The problem is that once it is introduced, and thereby unleashed, the
pharmakon resists every attempt to be identified or harnessed, as
Plato intended, in one speci
specific
fic way
way.. As an indeci
indecidable
dable,, it fiss
fissures
ures logos
from within, foiling its operations, however much Plato wills it to
further logos’ effectiveness.
Strikingly, when King Thamus accuses Thoth of ambiguous
deception, Thoth does not says ay a word . He is silent. It is easy to imagine
that Thoth would
would be incline
inclinedd to speak in order to defend his creation.
Yet he is mute. Plato assumes that speech (logos) is pre-eminent, in
part because it is fully present and is able to explain and defend itself,
75
and therefore immune to misuse. This scene reveals just the opposite:
‘Here is a silence walled up in the violent structure of the founding
act. Walled up, walled up within, because silence is not exterior to
language.’49 King Thamus’ accusation is just such a founding act
that serves to ground and constitute Plato’s discourse and the reign
of logos. Silence is inside language, and by extension, speech (logos).
It is not a secondary exteriority, but basic to logos. This absence of
speech speaks volumes. The presence (or more precisely, non-absent
absence) of this hiatus is disruptive
disruptive.. It does just the opposite of wha
whatt
Plato intends. He seeks to put an end to mythos (and writing), to
subordinate them to logos’ establishment. Howev
However er,, tthrough
hrough Thot
Thoth’
h’ss
silence Plato unwittingly contaminates his logocentric intentions.
This muteness faults all speech (logos):
the silence encrypted in language hollows

hollows it out as if from within,
within,
thereby rendering language unavoidably cryptic. Forever doubled
by an other it cannot express, language is irreducibly duplicitous.
In speaking, one inevitably speaks not, or speaks the not that
allows one to speak. Language, therefore, indirectly witnesses
altarity, which it never knows. ( N , 90–1)50
King Thamus’ words to Thoth summon this ‘not’ by speaking, and

therefore inevitably open themselves to an undomesticated ‘altarity’
that cannot be known directly. This other represented by Thoth does
not speak. Its response, rather
rather than being in the realm of presence
presence,, is
the absence of speech. Thoth’s
Thoth’s silence rends logos from within.
Plato privileges speech and logos because, unlike mythos and
writing, logos is immune to abuse by women, Sophists and children.
According to Plato,
Plato, the father of speech is alwa
always
ys present to utter it,
whereas the father of writing is absent. Writing, therefore, is con-
nected to the lack of a father, to the absence of logos (D, 77). This
makes writing dangerous because it can be ‘whirled about every
which way, picked up as well by those who understand as by those
who have no business reading it’ (PH , 275e). As we have seen, from
Plato’ss perspect
Plato’ perspective
ive,, mythos shares in this weakness because it can be
used to persuade, not by the powers of reason and intellect, but by
the seductive powers of the senses, the lesser faculties. Furthermore,
that mythos can be neither proven nor disproven adds to its
untrustworthiness.
un trustworthiness. The contrast between mythos and logos becomes
undeniably clear in this formulation: logos is conclusive, whereas
76
mythos is insistently inconclusive. For this reason, logos is decisively

superior. Just as Derrida declares that, from Plato’s perspective,
writing is
i s ‘an outl
outlaaw, a pervert, a bad seed, a vagrant’ (D, 143), mythos
likewise possesses the same impropriety, forever oscillating between
falsifiable and non-falsifiable discourse. In the Platonic formulation,
both writing and mythos are bastard dis-courses, forever straying
from identifiable truth. Let us u s not forget that fr
from
om the very beginning
of the Phaedrus, it is Plato who, through the mouth of Socrates,
accuses mythos of being unable to defend itself and, as a result, is
subjected
subject ed to the ab
abuses
uses of the Sophists, who conceal and ‘whirl about’
its ‘true’ meaning.
From Plato’s
fatherless, point and
logos-less) of view, an is
mythos
therefore an orphan
errant, (in other
illegitimate words,
dis-course,
which threatens to undo the paternalistic power of logos. Mythos is
not fit to share the throne with logos. As an outlaw
o utlaw,, it iiss forever barred
from philosophy as logos, a tradition that insists on purity and legiti-
mate paternity, despite that, as we have seen, it requires mythos in
order to establish itself. As mythos and the pharmakon expose, the
kingship of logos depends upon the very thing that undermines its
reign. Philosophy attempts to exclude its own bastard beginnings:
that it arises out of mythos and must secure its supremacy through
mythos and the pharmakon. Mythos and the pharmakon rend(er) the
presence of the paternal line impossible. For Plato, the antidote to
the pharmakon and mythos is dialectics,
dialecti cs, which allow ffor
or the medicin
medicinal
al
triumph of reason and logos. However, the unstable pharmakon
cannot be controlled. Its remedy is poison and its poison is remedy.
In playing with the pharmakon, Plato is playing with matches. In this
game, wagers will be lost. Derrida elaborates:
This philosophical, dialectical mastery of the pharmaka that

should be handed down from legitimate father to well-born son is
constantly put in question by a family scene that constitutes and
undermines at once the passage between the pharmacy and the
house. ‘Platonism’ is both the general rehearsal of
of this family scene
and the most powerful effort to master it, to prevent anyone’s
ever hearing of it, to conceal it by drawing the curtains over the
dawning of the West. (D, 167)
Writing is an opening that opens, a tear from which dialectics con-

structs itself as remedy
remedy.. This violent opening fissures the speculative
77
economy of philosophy as logos. The movement between the phar-

macy and the house does not yield synthesis; the pharmakon is not
mastered. Instead of eleva
elevating
ting logos, this foiled passa
passage
ge rehearses the
continual
contin ual displacement of it. In order to conceal his slsleight-of-han
eight-of-hand,
d,
in which Plato employs the ‘magic’ of the pharmakon in order to
transform mythos to work in the service of logos, he ‘draw[s] the
curtains’ to cover the prodigious abyss that is the ‘foundation’ of phi-
losophy. Beginning with the pharmakon hidden beneath Phaedrus’
cloak, Platonism attempts to conceal this other dis-course through-
out the dialogues. However, closure is impossible, since undertaking
it always unwittingly dis-closes. A dynamic disrupts the abode of
logos. This disrupter appears to be that which the royal house has
attempted to prohibit: irreducibly indecidable mythos.
MYTHOS AS NON-FOUNDATIONAL FOUNDATION OF LOGOS
Forces of Resistance
By ‘drawing the curtains’, philosophy’s founding act is one of resis-

tance. As we have seen, it attempts to suppress and control the
ambiguous indecidables from which it emerges. Given this, it is
possible for us to recognize that philosophy as logos actively resists
that upon which it nonetheless depends. What exactly is Plato resist-
ing? Francis Guibal, incorporating Derrida, suggests an answer:
In Plato, desire for truth accompanies the anxiety facing a world

that has broken
broken with and is subject to the vertiginous prospects of
erring. The ideal is that of living and full presence, of a ‘memory
with no sign, [t]hat is with no supplement’, which escapes all dupli-
cation, simulation, and possible deceit. Turned towards this lost
origin, the Platonic logos deploys all its strategic skill to exclude
and thwart the threats of exteriority left to itself, thus trying to
facilitate the return to the Good-Sun-Father. 51
Situated at an historic threshold – at an interface – Plato resists ‘the

vertiginous prospects of erring’ that threaten his world and, through
dialectics and repression, attempts to overcome the tears that fault
logos and threaten
threaten to undermine the ideal of ‘living and full presence’.
Philosophic discourse (logos) musters its forces
forces of resistance in order
to suppress the anxiety-stirring alternative. It deploys ‘a militant
78
Logic of the Same against the menacing Other’ ( O, 23). However,

this strategy necessarily fails, because it depends upon the invention
of the ‘truth’ of ‘absolute reappropriation’.52 As we have already
witnessed, ‘absolute reappropriation’ is impossible. There are always
remains (such as mythos in Plato’s Phaedrus) that cannot be accounted
for by logos. Despite efforts to expel or reconcile them, these irreduc-
ible others remain inassimilable by the system. Thus, philosophy as
logos is revealed ‘to be the myth of absolute
absolute reappropriation,
reappropriation, of self-
presence absolutely absolved and recentered’ (G , 221). In Derrida’s
quote, ‘myth’ denotes a falsehood or illusion. Logos invents its truth,
that there is complete reappropriation, in order to secure itself. How-
ever, notes Guibal, ‘such a myth, dream or illusion is constantly,
unwillingly, thwarted byand

completely “sublated”, the which
forces work
of resistance that can
and displace thisnever be
alleged
mastery of the logos surreptitiously’ (O, 23). These other ‘forces of
resistance’ that counteract philosophy’s efforts at ‘absolute reappro-
priation’ are the remains, that is, they are mythos and the pharmakon,
which linger as ambivalent scraps that cannot be synthesized into the
system that they simultaneously constitute and destabilize. These
forces of resistance, of mythos itself, rend(er) the fable of absolute
reappropriation otherwise.
Resistance is more complex than it may initially appear because it
is not just the rejection of something. Extending this insight allows
us to understand how, in resisting indecidable mythos, philosophy as
logos affirms it. First we must recall how Hegel’s dialectic assimilates
difference, uniting it with identity. From this point of view, resistance
is ultimately pointless, since difference (resistance) is merely a passing
stage that is eventually negated. When negation is negated, resistance
becomes affirmation. However, from an alternative vantage point,
the dialectic is a response to resistance. In order to mitigate uncer-
tainty and otherness, it is designed to reconcile and domesticate these
upsetting others in order to welcome them, not as contraventions,
but as part of a whole. As we have seen, however, the dialectical
movement is incomplete. Its efforts at reconciliation can never com-
pletely disarm these opposites in order to remed
remedyy the unsettling tears
within itself. These others cannot be synthesized and attenuated in
the name
name of logos or identity. As much as they do not ‘belong’ to the
system, they are

in remaining, integral
they to it, and
also threaten theare therefore
system preserved
from within. byexplains
This it. Yet,
explai ns
the need to constrain them, to keep them at bay, even while they defy
79
such restriction. In a chapter aptly titled, ‘Not just resistance,’ Taylor

explores this dilemma:
From one point of view, the ‘No’ of resistance is a negation or

an avoidance of affirmation – two gestures that are not the same.
But resistance is not merely negative; nor does it simply avoid
affirmation. To resist is also to affirm – even when it is not clear
what is being affirmed. A certain affirmation . . . inhabits the
negation
nega tion of resistance as an anteriority that can never be escaped
or erased . . . Resistance, after all, is secondary and, as such, is a
response to that which it follows. . . . As the re- of resistance
implies, resistance reinscribes what it resists. Thus, resistance
involves an unavoidable duplicity: it affirms what it seems to
deny, and denies what it seems to affirm. Resistance needs, and,
therefore, inevitably repeats, what it nonetheless cannot sanction.
Though resistance remains exterior to what it resists, there is
(impossibly) nothing outside resistance. ( N , 73)
If resistance were a ‘merely negative’ exteriority it would affirm that

which it denies. It would not, therefore, truly resist. 53 Derrida under-
stands this, and marshals
marshals the internal contradictions of the Hegelian
system as resistances that are already in place and not, therefore,
simply external.54 More important, however, is Taylor’s observation
that a ‘certain affirmation . . . inhabits the negation of resistance as
an anteriority that can never be escaped or erased.’ In order to say
‘no’ to something, the something must first be acknowledged or

affirmed. In othother
er words, resistanc
resistancee unin
unintentional
tentionally
ly,, but u
una
navoidab
voidably
ly,,
affirms that which it resists. Therefore, resistance is never primary,
but always secondary and, as Taylor
Taylor obs
observes,
erves, re-inscribes that which
it resists. In the current context, in order to resist mythos, philosophy
as logos must unwittingly affirm and reinscribe it. This is precisely
what Plato’s Phaedrus does. In marshalling his forces of resistance
(by attempting to employ the pharmakon as remedy or poison, to the
exclusion of its other meaning) in order to ‘cure’ his discourse and
logos of mythos , Plato unavoidably affirms ambiguous mythos. In
doing so he unintentionally, but inescapably, poisons the logocentric
intentions of the discourse he aspires to protect. Logos’ resistance (to
mythos) both affirms and denies mythos as that which it cannot, at all
costs, confront, lest the resisted undermine the resister. This is, of
80
course, exactly what happens. Harboured within logos’ resistance to

mythos is an unintended affirmation – a preservation
preservation – of mythos.
In an effort to uphold the ‘myth of absolute reappropriation’, phi-
losophy resists that which it does not deem proper, mythos. In so
doing, it inevitably affirms an indecidable other that it attempts
to deny. This is the duplicitous operation of resistance that Taylor
illuminates. Elements set against each other owe their identities, in
part, to their mutual opposition. In holding the line against and
attempting to deny that which it opposes, ‘resistance reinscribes what
it resists’, and thereby ‘needs’ and ‘inevitably repeats, what it none-
theless cannot sanction’. This prescribes the relation of logos and
mythos in Plato’s Phaedrus. Philosophy’s attempt to resist and deny
mythos preserves it instead. This preservation both conserves and
undermines from within. Philosophy’s efforts to ring the death knell
of mythos una
unavoidab
voidably ly bot
bothh re
reaffirm
affirm mythos’ vital dynamic and keep
alive an agent of logos’ own undoing and instability. Although resis-
tance ‘remains exterior
exteri or to whawhatt it resists, there is (impossibly) nothing
outside resistance’, as Taylor points out. As we will recall, from a
Hegelian perspective, nothing escapes sublation: everything can
be accounted for, swallowed up and converted into the Absolute.
However, as we have also seen, there are scraps and leftovers that
remain unaccounted for, that are not simply transformed through
negation.
nega tion. Given this
this,, it is precisely the inside – the interiority of resis-
tance – that contests and thereby fissures the Absolute. What
resistance reinscribes is always already inside, as an irreducible other
that it futilely disputes. This ‘outside’ within philosophy as logos is
mythos.
Resistance presupposes a multitude of forces. The s of ‘forces’
marks their disseminating plurality. We have come to understand
that différance is never unitary, but always plural. In differing and
deferring from itself, it never returns to itself, and thus continually
multiplies and errs. Building on this idea, Taylor observes that ‘there
can never be merely one force; for there to be one force, there must
always already be at least two forces. Force presupposes resistance,
which is not simply the other of force but is another force’ ( N , 84).
Force and resistance do not comprise a synthetic unity, however.
Resistan
esistance
ce alwa
always
ys posits the existen
existence
ce of another force
force.. Further
Furthermore,
more,
resistance is not simply force’s other. If it were, then it would be mas-
terable and always on the way to being tamed by the dominance of
81
force. In the end, resistance would succumb, as a result. It could not

persist in its defiance. However, explains Taylor, ‘force inevitably
resists and resistance is unavoidably forceful. Since there can never
be only one force, duplicity or multiplicity is not secondary to an
original unity’ (N , 84). Excessive polysemy, as Typhon’s presence
demonstrates, is always already on the scene. Although metaphysics
is constructed to ‘draw the curtains’ over the founding fissure of
multiplicity, unity inescapably presupposes duplicity. In the begin-
ning are tears. The duplicity of force ‘inevitabl
‘inevitably
y resists’ and resistance
is ‘unavoidably forceful’. This relation between force and resistance
is neither binary nor dialectical. Resistance presupposes force, and
force presupposes resistance.
resistanc e. They co-emerge, just as logos and mythos
in Plato’s Phaedrus. Wounds cannot be cured and tears cannot be
mended. The disseminative
disseminative ambiguity of mythos is not secondary to
logos’ synthetic unity. It is basic to it.
Resistance presupposes and reinscribes radical alterity, as Taylor
suggests. Both pharmakon and mythos demonstrate that philosophy
proper depends upon,and has constructed its own identity on,the
exclusion of this alterity. Philosophy as logos relies on this suppres-
sion. However,
However, at the same time, this act of exclusion is ‘an (impossible)
(i mpossible)
inclusion of what cannot be included’ ( N , 86). In the Phaedrus,
mythos summons logos. Logos, in turn, requires mythos and the phar-
makon in order to construct and fortify itself. For this reason, logos
also tries to protect itself and the philosophical project against
contamination by these indecidable others by dominating them.
However, as indecidable forces, mythos and pharmakon unsettle logos.
In all of their ambiguity, they cannot possibly be dominated or even
accounted for, and thus cannot be contained within the domain of
presence, that is, within the domain of logos. Yet, they have already
been introduced into the heart of discourse as necessary inclusions,
even though they cannot be included. In this way, mythos serves as
a non-foundational foundation of logos.55 As inescapably basic
to logos, it is the ‘ground’ from which philosophy as logos arises,
and is, therefore, ‘foundational’ to it. Yet mythos is effectively not
foundational. Not only is it incomplete, but because it is irreducibly
indecidable (neither verifiable nor non-verifiable), it cannot be
entirely present either. No traditional system can be constructed
upon it, because its non-foundational dynamic resists attempts to
structure or govern it. Just as Derrida marks off ‘event’ with quotes
in his discussion of play in order to prevent reappropriating it into
82
traditional, structural, anticipatable play, so too must ‘foundation’

be set off to mark it as a non-foundation that does not comply with
the principals of philosophy as logos, which would attempt to sys-
tematize this unsystematic ‘foundation’. Such a non-foundational
foundation simultaneously decomposes as it composes, and decon-
structs as it constructs.
In resisting mythos as ambiguous and inferior, philosophy as
logos refuses to confront its
it s own ‘foundation’.
‘foundation’. Important
Importantlyly,, this resi
resis-
s-
tance is ‘not’. That is, it is not simply a dialectical negative that
harbours presence, affirmation and mastery. This resistance is abys-
sal. It exposes logos to its inherent aporetic fissures, tearing it open to
the irreducible indecidability
indecidability of mythos that is necessarily included in
logos’ identity, just as the multi-headed, irreducible other, Typhon, is
included in Socrates’ identity. It could even be said that philosophy
as logos perpetuates its own myth (i.e. a falsely constructed account)
of ‘absolute reappropriation’. As we have seen in exploring mythos,
pharmakon, Typhon and the palinode in Plato’s Phaedrus, logos is
incomplete, and therefore cannot possibly encompass this fabled
‘absolute reappropriation’, even if it would like for us to believe
otherwise. In attempting to conceal mythos as a non-foundational
foundation, logos nevertheless discloses it as such. Resistance, there-
fore,, in the words of Taylor
fore aylor,, is not just resistance. There is no escaping
indecidable mythos (or pharmakon). Exclusion is impossible inclu-
sion. Denial is affirmation.
Terminal Displacement
As we have seen, as indecidable forces, mythos and pharmakon

construct and constitute Plato’s philosophic discourse while simulta-
neously disrupting and deconstructing it. These irreducible others
give rise to the system that is powerless to control or synthesize them.
In this way, mythos and pharmakon are a grounding that is, at the
same time,
time, not the least bit grounded.
grounded. It is just this aspect of mythos
and pharmakon that Plato’s text also attempts to dominate and
banish. The ‘counterspell, the exorcism, the antidote, is dialectics’
(D, 121). Yet, as Derrida shows, once the pharmakon is introduced,
its ambivalent powers play out beyond control. What was remedy
may become poison, and what was poison may become cure. ‘The
element of the pharmakon’, states Derrida, ‘is the combat zone
between philosophy and its other. An element that is in itself , if one
83
can still say so, undecideable’ ( D, 138). Although inside the system,
indecidables function as outsiders that ‘can no longer be included
within philosophical
philo sophical (bi
(binary)
nary) oppositi
opposition,
on, but which, howe
howeverver,, inhabit
philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganizing it, without ever
constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in
the form of speculative dialectics’ (P, 43). The philosophical system
seeks to dominate them because it cannot account for their unending
oscillation and deferral between significations. They are neither sim-
ply one thing, nor another, slipping between all possible categories.
Nonetheless, these indecidables are at the core of the system, giving
rise to it even as they rupture it.
Plato cannot control the indecidability of the pharmakon. Unable
to know for sure whether he is encountering remedy or poison, and
unaware that these two are inextricable, Plato administers the phar-
makon to develop and fortify logos. He fails,
fail s, how
however
ever,, despi
despite
te his best
efforts,
efforts, to ‘send off ’ mythos and to contain its ambiguity from spilling
over into his philosophical discourse because ‘sperm, water, ink,
paint, perfumed dye: the pharmakon alwa alwaysys penetrates like a liqu
liquid,
id, it
is absorbed, drunk, introduced into the inside . . . soon to invade
it and inundate it with its medicine, its brew, its drink, its potion, its
poison’ (D, 152). The ambivalent
ambivalent powers of the pharmakon permeate
the text. Its indeterminate excess contaminates logos, foiling all
attempts at domination and synthesis. Even though Plato tries to
cure the textual pharmakons by administering salubrious pharmakons
(such as the myth of Thoth), the defiling, oscillating excess (of pos-
sible meanings) cannot be arrested or banished. Through the figure
of the king, Plato attempts to dispense his cure, to engineer the
ambiguity of the pharmakon. Such a cure might be effective if the
pharmakon were simply exterior. If it were, it would pose not a termi-
nal threat, but a temporary one that could ultimately be remedied.
However, the pharmakon (which is specifically, in this context, the
myth of Thoth that Plato has Socrates tell) is not external, but inter-
nal. It is a groundless ground, an unmasterable cryptic core, from
which the entire dialogue
d ialogue emerges. Recognizing
Recognizing that mythos gives rise
to logos, just as the pharmakon gives rise to the entire dialogue, dra-
matically alters our conception of logos and philosophic discourse,
as Derrida suggests:
[I]f one got to thinking that something like the pharmakon – or

writing – far from being governed by these oppositions, opens up
84
their very possibility without letting itself be comprehended by

them; if one got to thinking that it can only be out of something
like writing
between – and
inside or the pharmakon
outside – that
can spring; the strange one
if, consequently, difference
got to
thinking that writing as a pharmakon cannot simply be assigned a
site within what it situates, cannot be subsumed under concepts
whose contours it draws, leaves only its ghost to a logic that can
only seek to govern it insofar as logic arises from it – one would
then have to bend [ plier
plier] into strange contortions what could no
longer even simply be called logic or discourse. (D, 103)
Just as Derrida describes, the pharmakon, and by extension mythos,

form the matrix from which these logically constituted opposites
derive, without themselves being governed by the logic of opposi-
tion.56 They are withdrawn from the very sphere that they themselves
nevertheless give rise to. As a dis-course that is a non-foundational
foundation of logos, mythos sets logos and discourse into motion.
Plato tries to transform mythos into logos – to make mythos work in
the service
service of logos – but his attempt to control and arrest this inde-
cidable is foiled by its excessive
excessive oscillation
oscil lation between possible meani
meanings.
ngs.
Mythos and pharmakon slip and slide, deceive and sunder, refusing
any singular identification or translation. Their disturbing ‘presence’
undoes every foundation that logos attempts to establish.
By opening up the possibility of opposition while nonetheless
eluding engagement in it, mythos and pharmakon simultaneously
‘participat[e] in participation and non-participation’ (TS , 5). Such
participation
participa tion ‘in no case allows itself to be reappropriated
reappropriated by partici-
pation, and thus

this-nor-that andbythis-and-that’
a philosophical
of system’
mythos (TS
, 6).
and theThe ‘neither-
pharmakon
designate their ‘absolute heterogeneity’, which
resists all integration, participation and system, thus designating

the place where the system does not close. It is, at the same
time, the place where the system constitutes itself, and where this
constitution is threatened by the heterogeneous, and by a fiction
no longer at the service of truth. ( TS , 5)
Mythos’ and the pharmakon’s non-participatory participation, which
‘resists all integration’, marks the rupture where the system does
not close.57 This is, at the same time, ‘the place where the system
85
constitutes itself’ and is threatened all the while by the ‘absolute

heterogeneity’
hetero geneity’ of mythos and the pharmakon. This non-participatory
heterogeneity, in the (dis)figure of mythos and the pharmakon, is
the groundless ground of Plato’s discourse. The heterogeneous is not
external. Nor is it secondary. Rather, it is at the core of the philo-
sophic system as an inassimilable remains or undialecticizable kernel,
constructing and deconstructing logos from within. Although mythos
and the pharmakon constitute logos, they simultaneously threaten it
with their non-synthetic indecidability. The perpetual oscillation
between remedy/po
remedy/poison
ison and, in the case of mythos, neither truth/nor
falsehood, stages the play of participa
participation
tion and non-participation. As
‘absolute heterogeneity’, mythos and pharmakon do not participate
in a logocentric circuit. Ambiguous and indeterminate, they are
not and cannot be properly present. Their participation and non-
participation is that of unbridled play. As such, it inscribes both
the philosophic system’s

of completion, void and
and disclosing theexcess, marking
aporias the impossibility
that remain to fissure
philosophy as logos. Philosophy’s own ‘myth’ (i.e. falsehood) of
‘absolute reappropriation’ is inescapably undermined by inappropri-
ate mythos.
The pharmakon (the myth of Thoth), introduced as remedy, like-
wise disrupts and transmutes the dialectic. Foreign to the system,
and yet nonetheless within it, the myth of Thoth as pharmakon gives
rise to the system. Plato’s text employs the pharmakon as ‘antidote’
and ‘counterspell’, using it to ‘exorcis[e]’ the indecidability, ambigu-
ity,, and aleatory play
ity pl ay inherent in mythos and the pharmakon. In other
words, Plato administers the pharmakon, in the form of a myth,
which is yet another slippery
sl ippery indecidable, in order to treat the indecid-
ability of the pharmakon. Such a move is playing with jokers, since
one can never anticipate the results with any certainty. ‘Sly’ and
‘slippery’, the foreign pharmakon as dialectical antidote discloses
the non-dialecticizable aspects of the text. Thus, that which consti-
tutes the dialectic is also that which forbids
forbids its completion:
Precisely that which,

which, not being dialectical, makes dialectic impos-
sible is necessarily retaken by the dialectic that it relaunches. . . .
What we have then, is a concept of the dialectic that is no longer
the conventional one of synthesis, conciliation, reconciliation,
totalization, identification with itself; now, on the contrary, we
86
have a negativ
have negativee or infini
infinite
te dialecti
dialecticc that is the movement of synthe-
sizing without synthesis. (emphasis added, TS , 32–3)
This refiguration (and disfiguration) of the dialectic subverts and

transforms the philosophical project. The pharmakon, which ‘does
not let itself be dialecticized’, makes the dialectic impossible while,
at the same time, ‘relaunch[ing]’ it. In just this way, mythos and the
pharmakon synthesize without synthesis. They confound the
dialectic and yet activate it. They remain as unintegrated ‘outsiders’
that cannot properly be thought dialectically, but without which the
dialectic would be impossible. This undialecticizable aspect of the
dialectic that does not result in ‘synthesis, conciliation, reconcilia-
tion, totalization, identification with itself’, and yet generates an
open-ended ‘dialectic’ without synthesis, cannot be properly catego-
rized as dialectic because its movement is that of ‘synthesizing
without synthesis’.
A ‘synthesizing without synthesis’ is, likewise, at the heart of
Taylor’s open-ended non-foundational foundation. Taylor extends
and rewrites Derrida’s pharmacological matrix into what he calls a
‘non-foundational foundation.’ Discussing the way in which infor-
mation is processed by the brain, Taylor reveals that the relationship
between mind and matter is not binary or dialectical, as it has been
traditionally conceptualized. Rather, it is ‘an open structure’ that
‘would create the possibility of nonreductive explanation, which
would leave space for aleatory events.’ 58 He designates such a struc-
ture ‘a nonfoundational foundation’. Simply put,put , T
Taylor
aylor understands
that structural relationships are, in fact, governed by a kind of ‘logic’
that is not reductive or calculable. Instead, relations (including, we
should add, those of mythos

tainty, indecidability, and logosand
unmasterability ) arechance.
superintended by uncer-
Taylor recognizes
the extent to which the dialectic’s success depends upon its failure.
It includes that which it attempts to exclude, and cannot logically
include. For Taylor, operating within the non-foundational founda-
tion is exactly what Derrida describes as a ‘dialectic without
synthesis’, of which the mechanism of action is displacement rather
than replacement, and the result of which is a non-synthetic third
that ‘bends back on itself to inscribe the margin of differ
difference’
ence’ betw
between
een
term A and term
ter m B
B.. Each ter
termm (i.e. mythos and logos) is ‘co-originary’
(CG , 322, 111). In this framework, ‘nothing is either simple or
87
self-identical because everything is parasitic upon something other

than itself. . . . Identity, therefore, is always differential; to affirm one
is always already to affirm an other’ (CG , 323). This describes what
we have already discovered about the relation of mythos and logos.
Logos depends upon the same ambiguity that it also seeks to exclude
through mastery. By introducing this unmasterable indecidability
into the foundation of discourse, logos unwittingly affirms mythos,
and their inescapable co-identity and co-dependence. Logos’ identity
presupposes an other – mythos – that it cannot fathom, account for,
or properly communicate, and on which it depends, even as mythos
surreptitiously disfigures and refigures logos from within, subverting
that very identity. By the same token, mythos requires logos in order
to structure and present itself, to the extent that it is representable.
The limits of logos constrict (and in a certain sense, disfigure) that
presentation, even as it makes any presentation possible. Mythos and
logos are inescapably co-originary and codependent, although their
parasitism is not synthetic.
From the perspective of philosophy as logos, mythos is inferior. As
we recall, Plato denounces it because, in his view, it appeals to the
senses, and not to the intellect. Therefore it contradicts the purpose
of philosophical discourse. It is considered a primitive stage before
formalized logic. In this scenario, ‘the mytheme will have been only a
prephilosopheme offered and promised to a dialectical Aufhebung .’ .’59
Dialectics is the antidote prescribed to non-logical, ambiguous
mythos in order to rid it of its impurities and subsume it under the
banner of perfected, rat
rational,
ional, ‘truthful’, philosophical logic. That is,
is,
‘philosophy becomes serious’ only ‘after having abandoned, or let us
rather say sublated, its mythic form: after Plato, with Plato’ wherein
‘philosophical logic comes to its senses when the concept wakes up
from its mythological slumber’ (ON , 100). Yet, as we now under-
stand, logos can never independently awaken; it never fully shakes
this slumber
slumbe r. Mythemes do not simply transform into philosophemes.
phil osophemes.
Rather, they are succubi, emerging from the dream world to haunt
the waking world, bringing the netherworld of mythos into the
‘clear-eyed’ realm of logos. The dream of reappropriation is con-
ceived by a philosophy that has yet to awaken to a mythos that, as
a non-cognizable non-philosopheme, always already infiltrates the
interior of philosophy as logos. Such a mythos cannot simply be
negated, or reasoned through in the daylight of presence, nor can it
be exorcised or cured by speculative dialectics. Neither Plato nor his
88

text can control, via logos, this mythos that lacks both form and pres-
ence. Mythos is interior and ‘foundational’. The aporetic fissures of
mythos in Plato’s Phaedrus expose these scraps and leftovers as the
very possibility and ‘ground’ of the philosophic system, and mark
the impossibility of logos’ reappropria
reappropriation
tion of itself, of its ever achiev-
ing closure. Thus, the ‘philosophical locus’ is also, at the same time,
the locus of philosophy’s impotence, inscribing both its possibility
and impossibility in one forceful act. On the one hand, the inclusion
of mythos makes the purity and supremacy of logos impossible,
because that which is undialecticizable and unassimilable is, nonethe-
less, included within the system as a condition of its possibility. On
the other hand, this impossible inclusion enables
enables the very possibility
of discourse,
discourse, even as iits
ts inclusion si
simultan
multaneously
eously renders dis-course.
dis-course.
Therefore, it is impossible to forego mythos or to operate without it.
Philosophy proceeds from a rupture beyondbeyond the walled city of reason.
This procession is improper, errant and bastardly. Sallis calls atten-
tion to the fact that ‘in Athenian usage a bastard was the child of a
citizen father and an alien mother’:60 an outside that is inside. This
bastard is mythos – an ambiguous, ‘foreign’ strangeness that cannot
be entirely governed or assimilated by the father-son-king- logos.
Mythos simultaneously founds and unfounds philosophy as logos.
Prayers and Tears
Plato’s Phaedrus begins with mythos in order to overcome it. How-

ever,, as we ha
ever have
ve seen, the di
dialogue
alogue is unable to free its
itself
elf from mythos.
Instead, Plato unwittingly discloses the ‘foundational’ nature of
mythos, despite his efforts to execrate it from philosophy altogether.
In making logos possible, mythos also makes (pure) logos impossible.
From its inception, Plato’s text is contaminated by mythos. The play
enacted at the outset (literally by the myth of playful Pharmacia,
which serves to align mythos and pharmakon) defers and disfigures,
even as it simultaneously figures. This undermines the supreme
authority of the ‘rational’, logocentric discourse that follows. The
inclusion of mythos (with the pharmakon and, as with the myth of
Thoth, as pharmakon) causes Plato’s dialogue to stray from its path
as exclusively logos. Socrates’ alignment with the excessive Typhon
reveals a radical alterity inhabiting identity that, to a certain extent,
unintentionally foreshadows the way in which irreducible mythos
comes to overrun logos. Mythos serves to construct not just the
89

opening of the dialogue

dialogue,, but also its ending. It has the first words and
the last.
The dialogue ends with Socrates’ recitation of a prayer to the
mythic god Pan. When read otherwise, it becomes clear that this
ending interrupts
interrupt s and disfigures Plato’s philosophic
philoso phic discourse, instead
of concluding and allowing for logos to return full circle. Socrates
prays to ‘beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place’ to
grant him ‘beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and
inward man be at one’ ( DP, 279c). Why break with the conventions
of the rest of the dialogue by ending with a prayer? Furthermore, if
philosophy and reason mark the end of the mythic age of the gods,
why address this prayer to Pan? Examining Socrates’ supplication at
face value shows that he is asking an outside force to ensure that his
inward self (his soul
soul)) is in accord wit
withh his outward identi
identity
ty.. Howev
However
er,,
when read in terms of the disruptive interplay of mythos, it becomes
apparent that this is an impossible request. The many heads of
Typhon that lurk beneath the surface of Socrates’ identity belie any
such resolution. Despite its multiple attempts
attempts at synthesis, the text is
littered with pluralities,
pluralities, whether they are the oscillating meanings of
pharmakon and mythos, or the hundred-headed Typhon. As we have
seen, logos and, by extension, philosophic discourse, contain ‘some-
thing’ that they cannot account for or synthesize. Like Socrates, they
contain an inside that cannot be reconciled with their outside per-
sona. Socrates’ questioning of his own identity reveals an excessive,
heterogeneous alterity that inhabits self-knowledge. In this way,
Socrates
Socra tes acknowledg
acknowledges es that his identity is not in accord or unified. If
it were otherwise, he would not need a prayer to grant him oneness,
because he would already possess it. Socrates uses prayer to summon
what he does not inherently have. His identity contains something
other that he cannot constellate or reconcile. It is not one (the logic
of the Same), but always already opened out onto an irreducible
other that is, in this case, a many-headed monster. When he endeav-
ours to know himself, he is therefore forced to confront différance –
to come to terms with an alterity that he cannot assimilate. Socrates’
identity crisis presupposes multi-sided complexity. His prayer to
counteract différance seeks the unattainable unification of that mul-
tiplicity, and for this reason, is inherently unfulfilable
unfulfilable.. Arising out of
that very impossibility, his entreaty cannot, as a result, be realized.
What he beseeches is unachievable. No wonder he enlists divine
power to accomplish it!
90

That prayer at the end of the text further exposes an otherness

within. The rest of the text is a dialogue between Socrates and
Phaedrus. Each is present to the other, and each receives the speech
of the other and then returns it in the form of another speech. 61
Unlike Phaedrus, Pan does not respond to Socrates. In other words,
Socrates addresses his words to an other who is not present. Prayer is
not ordinary dialogue. In a provocative reading of Anselm’s Proslo-
gion, which begins as a prayer to God, Taylor argues that in prayer,
‘to address this Other is always already to be addressed by the Other’,
and that this discourse of the Other ‘eludes the very linguistic struc-
tures . . . it nonetheless
nonethe less makes possible’ (N , 23). A prayer presupposes
its receipt by the other to whom it is addressed. Importantly, this
other is neither present (Pan does not make a literal appearance)
nor entirely absent (since this other is invoked through prayer he is
‘present’ in the prayer itself). In this way, it eludes the simple distinc-
tions between the two, and escapes the order of presence, which is the
domain of speech (logos).62 Prayer ‘is forever haunted by an Other
that language can neither include nor exclude’ ( N , 23). In addressing
itself to this other, language opens itself to an unassimilable other
that is not merely without, but more importantly, as Socrates discov-
ers, within. ‘The words of prayer’, avers Taylor, ‘point toward
(without referring to) an exteriority that is “within” language itself’
(N , 23). Just as Platonic logos (speech) is never fully present to itself
and, for this reason, lures Socrates to stray beyond the city, the final
words of the dialogue are also inhabited by an external other that is
nevertheless interior, and which eludes presence and synthesis. The
ending prayer to Pan affirms the exteriority that haunts the text and
logos. This prayer, which also evokes mythos in addressing itself to
the mythic god Pan, exposes the incurable wound of différance.
Two texts both at once, yet separately, play beyond the limits of
philosophy as logos. These two are nonetheless a simultaneity, a frac-
tured ‘one’ without synthesis, without relation, and without progeny.
Each already affirms an other that is not oppositional. Poison or
remedy, remedy or poison, the antidote itself is impossibly cryptic.
These forces (of resistance) elude mastery or control. Instead of
‘curing’ philosophy
philosophy of mythos, they contaminate it from within. The
unsuspected affinity between logos and mythos tolls the death knell
of philosophy
philosophy as ‘pure’ logos.
91

CHAPTER 4
SECRETING MYTH: THINKING SA OTHERWISE
TOLLING GLAS AND (DE)CONSTRUCTING NONUMENTS
In the previous chapter, we saw how logos is haunted by an exteriority

that disrupts it from within. This unlogofiable outside is mythos,
which gives rise to logos.1 We have come to recognize that mythos is
inescapably basic to logos, and so, in that sense, is ‘foundational’ to it.
Yet, its co-emergence (with logos), as well as its unlogofiable nature,
render it non-foundational. We have therefore described it as a non-
foundational foundation that simultaneously figures and disfigures
logos. Yet, if mythos eludes logos, and therefore philosophic dis-
course, which is to say, the category of presence, then how are we
to apprehend it? Certainly our acceptance of the (non-)presence
of indeterminate mythos cannot – and should not – proceed by
blind faith. Embedded within this question lies another one: how
can mythos and logos co-emerge in a non-foundational dynamic?
Chapter 3 demonstrates that they do, and that mythos is a ‘founda-
tion’ of logos. Nonetheless, it may, at this juncture, be difficult to
imagine how that might play out beyond Plato. Furthermore, it may
be equally hard to envision how we are to read, write and think with-
out foundations. If every ‘foundation’ has a non-foundational aspect
intrinsic to it, then understanding the non-foundational nature of
thinking becomes a pressing issue, extending well beyond the param-
eters of mythos and logos. Furthermore, if knowledge is always
faulted by non-knowledge, logos disfigured by mythos, and thinking
ruptured by the unthinkable, then, as Derrida has repeatedly pointed
out, meaning as savoir absolu (complete self-consciousness anchored
within presence) is impossible. Therefore, philosophy as logos,
92

divorced from mythos, is equally impossible. Derrida’s masterful, but

often neglected, Glas tolls the death of philosophy as logos while
simultaneously ringing in the birth of a new beginning. When read
in a manner that oscillates between the philosophical and non-
philosophical,
philoso phical, without privileging either
either,, Glas provides an opportuni
opportunity
ty
to witness how mythos and logos are mutually implicated, and can be
apprehended, in an ever-emergent network of complexity.
Distyles
With its strange textual configurations, Glas eludes mastery as well

as conventional reading and thinking even more than most texts.
Therefore, how is one to approach it? It
I t present
presentss a quagmire for many
philosophers, even those attuned to deconstruction. As a case in
point, the philosopher Rodolphe Gasché, who is customarily a pro-
ponent of Derrida’s work, dismisses Glas as ‘literarily playful’
and therefore not ‘philosophically discursive’.2 This rejection echoes
Plato’ss denigration of myths
Plato’ myths as inferior and imperfect foforms
rms of logos.
The
sake implication
that does not is purposefully
that, in the eyes
alignofitself
philosophy, play for as
with philosophy its logos
own
(and play that discourse cannot readily control) is as inconsequential
as mythos. However, as we have seen, Plato’s dismissal of mythos
also inescapably marks his preservation of it. He simply cannot do
without it. It
I t grounds while simultaneously ungroun
ungrounding
ding his Phaedrus.
Given this, one begins to recognize that Gasché’s privileging of
Derrida’s ‘philosophically discursive texts’ is his vane attempt to pre-
serve some semblance of philosophy as logos, and to cut off some
degree of deconstruction’
deconstruction’ss errant discursivity.
discursivity. Despite an ever-gro
ever-growing
wing
fissure that deforms the self-reflexivity of absolute knowledge and
faults the project of philosophy as logos, Gasché still strives to safe-
guard an attenuated
attenuated fform
orm of deconstr
deconstruction
uction that clings to logocentric
imperatives.
Glas is Derrida’s attempt to read, write and think otherwise, rather
than in the way that philosophy as logos traditionally does. It neces-
sarily fails to achieve the absolute knowledge promised by Hegelian
dialectics. Glas is not just a fancifully playful literary text. It is an
‘event’ that warrants rigorous consideration. As Gasché’s dismissal
illustrates, philosophy as logos does not even consider this ‘event’
(of play) meaningful.3 Nonetheless, as we have seen, play is in fact a
93

serious game, even if its dynamic cannot be fully comprehended or

its end anticipa
anticipated.
ted. Glas is ‘neither philosophical nor nonphilosophi-
cal’ (A, 268). It oscillates between these two ( entre-deux ) in the
fissured columns that comprise the text. Written in multiple columns,
novelist Jean Genet,4 and another
one of the poet, playwright and novelist another of
Hegel, Derrida works doubly:
If I write two texts at once, you will not be able to castrate me. If
I delinearize, I erect. But at the same time I divide my act and my
desire. I – mark(s) the division, and always escaping you, I simu-
late unmyself – I remain(s) myself thus – and I ‘play at coming’
je ‘joue à jouir
[ je jouir’]. (G , 65)
Glas is at least two texts at once, and often even more than two. It
plays without an eye toward a proper philosophical end. The textual
erections (this is a double entendre since the columns of text appear
phallic) play at coming, but as Derrida shows us, they can never
arrive at an all-encompassing meaning.5 Furthermore, the columns
of Genet and Hegel are inscribed and tattooed with(in) other col-
umns, other texts and other tongues. ‘[O]ne is never enclosed in the
column of one single tongue. If there is a system of the tongue, that
system never has the form
form of this cylindric closure.’6 Absolute trans-
closure.’
lation is impossible since the ‘system’ of Glas’s tong
tongues
ues remains open.
Embedded within the columns are phrases in other languages, such
as German and French, which remain untouched by the translator’s
pen, as untranslata
untrans latable
ble aporias. This does not mean that ‘Glas belongs,
in its so-called original version, to the element of the French tongue’
tongue’
(HTW , 17). On the contrary, not confined to a single language,
‘translation devours Glas, which exhibits in a way a passion for the
foreign tongue’ (HTW , 17).7 This ‘passion for the foreign tongue’ is
also a passionate solicitation of the other – an other that cannot be
read,
opensthought
out intooran
spoken in anythat
other space traditional language
recalls the or manner.
‘foundational’ Glas
ground
of mythos in Plato’s Phaedrus. In the preface to the English transla-
tion, Derrida describes his work
work not only as a construction, but also
as a simultaneo
simultaneous
us deconstruction:
Now this book presents itself as a volume of cylindric columns,

writes on pierced, incrusted, breached, tattooed cylindric columns,
on them then, but also around them, against them, between them
94

that are, through and through, tongue and text. Kulindros always
names a round body, a conveyor roller for displacing stones, for
example in the construction of monuments, pyramids, or obelisks,
of other columns . . . Kulindros is also occasionally a rolled manu-
script, a parchment scroll. (HTW , 17)
Entre-deux, on, around, tattooed, Glas’s columns are, as kulindros,

the conveyor that displaces stones used in the erection of ‘monu-
ments, pyramids, or obelisks’. Instead of building monuments
to philosopher-kings to commemorate the superiority of logos,
Derrida is playing with the remains – the rubble and marginalia –
that dot the landscape, marking the impossibility of unity and
synthesis.
Glas begins with remains, with the inassimilable leftovers of the
philosophic system: ‘what, after all, of the remain(s), today, for us,
here, now, of a Hegel?’ ( G , 1). Derrida acknowledges their crucial
role, ‘the incalculable has to be part of the game’ ( PTS , 17). As
discussed in the first chapter, these remains construct, while simulta-
neously deconstructing, the very system that cannot synthesize them,
and which therefore attempts to exclude or domesticate them. They
are unlogofiable remnants of philosophy as logos. Although they
cannot be accounted for by it, they nevertheless remain as disruptive
resources that give rise to it. Like mythos in Plato, they are marginal-
ized effects that strangely generate, while deconstructing, philosophic
discourse. In Glas, one cannot ignore the other column to the right
that is in interplay with the left one: ‘ “what remained of a Rembrandt
regular squares and rammed down the shithole ” is
torn into small, very regular
divided in two. As the remain(s) [ reste]’ (G , 1). Even the remains are
remains of remains, ‘torn’ into morsels. The remains are presented
as two ‘distyles’, each scrapbooks of waste – of excrement – stuck
together to form fissured columns. They are the garbage that the sys-
tem attempts to repress and to hide. Yet, they resurface in the bowels
of Glas to subvert the texts of Hegel, Derrida and Genet, as well as
the goal of philosophy as logos. These remains ‘find no reception
whatsoever’, and ‘escape from the criteria of receivability’ ( PTS , 17).
They cannot be read, spoken or thought by philosophy as logos
because they fall outside of all of the logocentric requirements of
these acts. In this way, they cannot be properly received. In the
‘distyle’ of the columns, if and when language speaks, it does so
‘against the grain of, any intended communication . . .’ 8
95
These columns of distyles are, in effect, nothing. Such a nothing

exceeds the alternatives of presence and absence. It is not the oppo-
site of something: ‘The column is nothing, has no meaning in itself.
A hollow phallus, cut off from itself, decapitated . . . it guarantees the
innumerable passages of dissemination and the playful displacement
of the margins’
margins’ (D, 342). The columns have lost their heads; they are
without reason.9 Instead of sowing the seeds of logos, they dissemi-
nate. Whereas most columns serve as stable, foundational supports,
Derrida’s destabilize: ‘the column is wounded, otherwise it would not
be a column. It is truncated, marked, covered with scars and legends’
(G , 239). These wounds cannot be healed either by the reader or
by the antidote of dialectics. Glas is not a legend to be utilized by
logicians.. Its legend is that of another. Efforts
logicians Efforts (on behalf of the read-
er-philosopher) notwithstanding,
notwithstanding, ‘gl remain(s) gl’ (G , 119). Gl is not
a word in the French or English lexicon. It is not proper discourse.
Instead it is a ‘mute or mad sound, a kind of mechanical automato
automaton n
that triggers and operates itself without meaning (to say) anything’
(G , 9–10).10 The unintelligible, meaningless sound sticks in the back
of the throat. Gl is not speech, nor is it a sound preceding speech. It
is incomprehensible. Encrypted within the wounded distyles, it can-
not be decrypted.
decr ypted. How
How,, therefore, are the columns to be apprehend
apprehended?
ed?
In the left column, Derrida poses a possible response to this
question:
Two unequal columns, they say distyle [dissent-ils], each of

which – envelop(e)(s) or sheath(es), incalculably reverses, turns
inside out, replaces, remarks, overlaps [ recoupe] the other.
The incalculable of what remained calculates itself, elaborates
all the coups [strokes, blows, etc.], twists or scaffolds them in
silence,
silenc e, y
you
ou would wear yourself
yourself out even faster by counting them.
Each little square is delimited, each column rises with an impas-
sive self-sufficiency
self-sufficiency,, and yet the element of contag
contagion,
ion, the iinfinite
nfinite
circulation of general equivalence relates each sentence, each
stump of writing (for ex example
ample,, ‘ je
je m’éc . . . ’) to each other, within
each column and from one column to the other of what remained
infinitely calculable.
Almost.
Of the remain(s), after all, there are, always, overlapping each
other,, ttwo
other wo function
functionss.
96
The first assures, guards, assimilates, interiorizes, idealizes,

relieves the fall [chute] into the monument. There the fall main-
tains, embalms, and mummifies
mummifies itself,
its elf, monumemorizes and names
itself – falls (to the tomb(stone)) [ tombe]. Therefore, but as a fall,
it erects itself there.
The other – lets the remain(s) fall. Running
Running the risk of coming
down to the same. (G , 1–2)
‘Unequal’, each column ‘incalculably reverses, turns inside out’ the

other, ‘almost’ relating the stumps of writing from one column to
those in the next. Almost. The interplay of the columns creates an
indecidable, contaminating excess. It is difficult to read either one
separately,, but there is no simp
separately simple
le transferen
transference
ce between the two, either.
The silent scaffolding of the echoes of homophones resonates
throughout the text. Je nais, Genet or genêt (a Spanish horse or a
simultaneously.11 In this wa
flower)? It is all of these simultaneously. way
y, the term
ter m is irre-
ducibly indecidable. The operation of columnal remains is double.
On the one hand, there is an attempt at dialectical preservation: the
fall is relieved and ‘erect[ed]’ in the name of something, toward an
end; the fall is penultimate. In this context, each loss is turned into a
gain.12 Hence, the fall is relieved and reversed, and ultimately
‘erected’.13 On the other hand, the remains fall, they do not work
toward any end. Instead, they tumble to no avail. They lack purpose.
At the moment in which they appear to ‘run’ the greatest risk of
‘coming down to the same’ (i.e. of synthesis and closure), they stay as
inassimilable remains, diverting and disrupting.
Glas works in a double movement. The columns both join and
separate. This action of uniting and dividing staged within the text
must also be performed by the reader. Words are often broken up
mid-sentence only to continue several pages later amid the rubble of
marginalia. Passages are often inserted suddenly, sometimes without
identifying the sources of their citation. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
recounts the pas de deux that must be executed by the reader of Glas:
‘Having coped with the break, the reader must perform a joining,
go back to the cut, put the word back together, and continue the
sentence.’14 The double movement of cutting and agglutinating dis-
rupts logos and the scene of the Hegelian seam. Glas’s motion does
not follow the prescribed path of Hegelian logos in which thinking
always returns to itself. The incompleteness and indecidability that
97
remain always already within the system are staged in ‘the going-
and-returning from one column to the other (round trip without
circularity and without perfect specularity)’ (HTW , 20). Inasmuch as
Glas is a cut, a rending and a death knell, it is also a gluing and
adherence. ‘This text’, explains Derrida, ‘induces by agglutinating
rather than demonstrating, by coupling and decoupling, gluing and
ungluing [en accolant et en décollant] rather than by exhibiting
the continuous, and analogical, instructive, suffocating necessity of a
discursive
discurs ive rhetoric’ (G , 75). Glas’s operation is renegade and iimproper
mproper..
Instead of follo
following
wing the ‘necessity of a discursive rhetoric’, it proceeds
via the alogos of discursivity’s etymological root, which stipulates
both gathering and joining, and dispersing
dispersing and scattering.
Glas’s fissured columns turn inside into outside and outside into
inside in such a way that it is hopeless to determine which is which.
This continual reversal and displacement make Glas an indecidable
text. It short circuits any attempt to follow a singular path, or to
arrive at a point. This exce
excess
ss of possibilities continuall
continually
y confronts the
reader. One column intervenes in another column. The complexity
is maddening. Such slips, breaks and agglutinations disrupt logos. In
this disseminative dynamic, savoir absolu is
dragged onto the stage, into the play of forces where it no longer
holds the power to decide, where no one ever holds that power,
where the undecidable forces one to release one’s hold, where one
can’t even hold onto it – the undecidable. ( PTS , 23)
The ‘play of forces’ resists dec

decidability
idability,, like the pharmakon, which for-
ever oscillates between remedy and poison, or mythos, which resonates
between falsifiable and non-falsifiable discourse. Emergent, aleatory
play disrupts logocentric thought from within. The ‘heterogeneous’
columns ‘deceive and play’ (G , 224) like the joker Thoth. There is no
simple relation between them. Derrida introduces ‘heterogeneous
forces’ into Glas by way of remains, marginalia, citations and the
cutting and joining of columns into the text (of Hegel, of Genet, of
Derrida) in order to show how ‘one cannot resist these forces, or
rather one resists them, but in such a way that the resistance creates
a symptom and is set to work on the body, transforming, deforming
it and the corpus from head to toe’ ( PTS , 16–17). The corpus is
sick, beyond cure even with a pharmakon, contaminated with inde-
cidable, aleatory (and parasitic) forces. Through ‘displacements,
98
grafts, parodies, and multiplications,’ Glas exposes ‘a certain de-

clinging of the dual or dialectical unity . . . the relation without relation
of the two columns’ (emphasis added, PTS , 17). The two columns
(although there are always more than two) are not in dialectical
relation. In other words, the Hegel column is not the sublation of
Genet/Je nais, nor is it unconnected to it, either, since there is an
interplay between the two. Therefore, the columns exist in a ‘relation
without relation’.15 The ‘without’ indicates that Glas’s distyles lack
propriety
of relation.
relation.and
Thepresen
presence.
ce. They
contra-rhythm
contra-rhy thm doofnot lend themselves
joining to any
and separating thaeconomy
thatt allows
aleatory alogic to emerge is the movement of Glas that disrupts
Hegel’s logic and the speculative work of logos. Glas both sews and
tears, revealing that tears join and sewing ruptures. It works at the
limits of a different kind of seam: ‘For‘For sea
seams
ms [coutures], this must be
stressed, do not hold at any price. They must not be, here, for exam-
ple, of a ffoolproo
oolprooff solidity.
solidity. . . . Sewing [couture] then betrays, exhibits
what it should hide, dissimulacras what it signals’ ( G , 209). Taylor
suggests that
that the double writing of Glas is ‘duplicitous’,
‘duplici tous’, but he doesn’
doesn’tt
fully substantiate his use of this term ( A, 268). It is possible to read
Taylor’s
aylor’s ‘duplic
‘duplicitous’
itous’ otherwise, in terms of tears that se seww and sewing
that tears. Duplicitous writing is not only double, but also unwit-
tingly deceptive, rather like a crypt that hides what it holds while
simultaneously revealing it. In this case, tears prompt the reader to
try to sew the text together. However, this joining undertaken by the
reader discloses what the seam has been constructed to conceal.
Instead of mending, these seams rend. Like a carefully guarded secret
that slips out by virtue of its very secrecy (by admitting thatthat one has
a secret, the secret is no longer fully concealed), sewing divulges the
unsuturable tears in logos, exposing mythos.
Glas cannot but recall the bell that tolls it. Just as the clapper
clapper of a
bell moves between the two sides of a chamber, ‘ Glas strikes between
the two’ (G , 71). It ‘is written neither one way nor the other’ (G , 71).
Neither philosophical nor non-philosophical,
non-philosophi cal, it oscillates between the
two, just as the reader must reverberate – like the clapper of a bell –
between the columns of the text. This oscillation (between neither/
nor, philosophy/non-philosophy, logos/mythos) is unwieldy, disrup-
tive, and unmasterable. According to Taylor, ‘oscillum, originally
designated a mask of Bacchus, hung from a tree in a vineyard that
swung in the wind’ (A, xxx).16 Glas vibrates uncontrollably, disfigur-
ing and refiguring
refiguri ng Hegel’
Hegel’ss Bacchanali
Bacchanalianan revel ‘in which no member is
99
not drunk’ (PS , 27), generating an other reading, one that is irreduc-

inde cidable..17 It makes
ibly indecidable makes impossible closure of the Hegelian circle of
thought and of the dialectic. Just at the moment that it appears that
the circle might (and where it insistently
i nsistently must) close
close,, it is
i s disrupted and
dislocated, suspended entre-deux. Taylor warns against misreading Glas
with one Cyclopean eye toward decidability or unity: ‘A duplicitous
text written with (at least) two hands at once cannot be approached
single-mindedly’ (A, 274). One must oscillate entre-deux , and read with
one’s ear and tear-ful(l) eye attentive to a non-synthesizable other. The
continual flux between the columns erects while it simultaneously
deconstructs meaning, forbidding foreclosure. Such an irresolution
slips and slides,
sli des, pla
plays
ys at coming (to a point, perhaps a pyramidal point),
but never arrives. It conceals as it reveals, and reveals as it conceals.
Instead of monuments, as Derrida shows, there is only debris.
Sa’s Strange Loops
The oscillation between the wounded

wounded columns of Glas cannot achieve
closure.. As a result, the operat
closure operation
ion of savoir absolu is foiled. As we sa
saw
w
in Chapter 1, in speculative dialectics, logos must attempt to think the
unthought, and identity must approach difference. Its rules necessi-
tate this. Hegelian

assimilate them anddialectics
arrive at must confrontsynthesis.
its promised these others in so,
To do order to
how-
ever, it transforms these others by forcing them to work in the service
of the concept. Speculative philosophy attempts to render the uncon-
scious conscious, the unthought thought, mythos as logos, difference
as the identity of identity-and-difference. It insists that the circle
must close, the promise must be fulfilled and consciousness must
return to itself. What if, however, at the very moment when the sys-
tem is poised to complete itself and secure its closure, it is disrupted
from within by the remains that it has attempted, unsuccessfully, to
repress and exclude? Rather than circularity
circulari ty,, the system
syste m would gener-
ate instead strange loops that are ‘self-reflexive circuits, which,
though appearing to be circular, remain paradoxically open’ ( MC ,
75). These strange loops haunt the logic of savoir absolu, and create
in Glas ‘complex, self-organizing systems whose structure does not
conform to the intrinsical
intr insically
ly stable systems that ha
have
ve gov
governed
erned thought
and guided practice for more than three centuries’ (MC , 78). Instead
of fo
fore
reclosing,
closing, strange loops
l oops remain open. The very unanticipata
unanticipatability
bility
100
and indecidability
indecidability of the strange loops of complex, emer
emergent
gent systems
(such as the text of Glas) constantly displace the accountability of
speculative dialectics.
At first glance it might appear that Glas is a self-reflexive, closed
loop since it both begins with the remains in its first fragmented sen-
tence and ends with them in its last. However, when understood in
terms of complexity theory’s strange loops, it is obvious that this is
not the case. Rather, ‘a caesura or hiatus prevents what in effect
resembles such a band or strip from turning back on itself’ ( PTS ,
18
51). A gap
Although opens
the end up that
would averts
appear the eternal
to resemble return of the
the fragmentary same.
remains
of the beginning, an aporia or abyss disfigures the circle, preventing
the beginning from figuring the end and the end from fulfilling the
beginning. The loop is not circular, but strangely deformed. Cogni-
tive scientist Douglas Hofstadter uses the example of the familiar
Morton’s Salt box, which contains an image of a girl with an open
umbrella in her right hand and a blue box of Morton’s Salt in her
left hand, to explain the deceptive uncanniness of strange loops.
Hofstadter elaborates:
You may think you smell infinite regress once again, but if so, you
are fooling yourself! The girl’s arm is covering up the critical spot
where the regress would occur. If you were to ask the girl to
(please) hand you her salt box so that you could actually see the
infinite regress on its label, you would wind up disappointed, for
the label on that box would show her holding yet a smaller box
with her arm once again blocking that regress.19
Just where the loop appears to close and reappropriate and repeat
the image, there is an aporia that renders closure and the return of
the same, or the ‘infinite regress’ that Hofstadter is concerned with,
impossible. The circle does not close, because the abyss, or gap, pre-
vents it from doing so. The image of the image on the Morton’s Salt
box is a blind spot, and not, as is commonly inferred, a mirror dis-
20
playing infiniteatrepetition.
strange loops work, loopsHofstadter’s familiar mistakenly
that are sometimes example illustrates
consid-
ered closed and therefore not strange. 21 These strange loops are
generated by and emerge within the wounded, tattooed and breached
distyles
distyles of Glas.
101
SOUNDING SA
On the Other Side
The odd logic of strange loops haunts the concept of savoir absolu,
which Derrida recasts
recasts in the siglum of Sa. In the first line tattooed on
the Hegel column in Glas, Derrida transcribes savoir absolu in an
unusual ‘equation’: ‘Sa from now on will be the siglum of savoir
absolu’ (G , 1). There is more to this interplay than meets the eye.
Hegel considered his encyclopedic book, Phenomenology of Spirit
(cited throughout Glas), to be a tome of absolute knowledge. As
such, in Derrida’s words, ‘all finite books would become opuscules
modeled after the great divine opus . . . so
s o many tiny
tiny mirrors catching
a single grand image.
image. . . . a book of absolute knowledge that digested,
digested ,
recited, and substantially ordered all books’ ( D, 46). Savoir absolu/Sa
is the culmination of this enterprise and the fulfilment of philosophy
philosophy.
However, since this task is carried out in writing, it is always open to
being read and understood not as Hegel intended, but otherwise.22
Therefore, it is impossible to declare savoir absolu/Sa unequivocally.
Sa is also, at the same time, the Saussurian signified ( signification
absolue), sa the singular, feminine possessive pronoun, as well as a
homophone of ça, the Freudian id. John P. Leavey points out that
Derrida’s ‘tachygraph
‘tachygraphy y begins it
itss own disruptio
disruptionn of the tachygraphic.’ 23
tachygraphic.’
That is, Derrida’s shorthand launches disturbances and disruptions
of transcription. Sa plays, generating strange loops of indecidability.
The term carries this multiplicity of significations within it simulta-
neously. Its polysemia renders its meaning indecidable, since no one
translation can capture all of its resonances. In reverberating it with
the other side, that of ça of the Freudian unconscious, and therefore
disrupting the ‘sense certainty’ of the here and now with which Hegel
begins his encyclopedia, Derrida writes, ‘it (ça) does not accentuate
itself here now but will already have been put to the test on the other
side’ (G , 1).24 Ça is not contained within the
the self-consciousness of Sa/
savoir absolu, but is necessarily involved in Sa, which cannot be con-
ceived without
with out it
it.. However
However,, unl
unlike
ike Hegel’s savoir absolu, which thinks
the other and merges it with identity, this Sa/ça cannot be properly
apprehended, since in its ever-deferring multiplicity and indecidabil-
ity, it is never present as such. The unthought remains of Hegel are
inscribed into the Genet column, but that column ne génére pas Sa.
Far from presenting Sa in thought, nothing is generated within the
102
strange loops of the two columns,

columns, one of which encloses the column
inscribed as Sa.
Sa’s operation mimics that of the oscillation between the columns
of Glas. It works in a double movement. Instead of tolling the
closure of philosoph
philosophyy, it opens out into a space that is neither philo-
sophical nor non-philosophical. Derrida explains the a of Glas and
Sa in the following way: ‘The detached remain(s)
remain(s ) collared thereby
th ereby,, by
the glue of differa
differance
nce,, by the a. The a of gl agglutina
agglutinates
tes the detached
differentiae. The scaffold of the A is gluing’ ( G , 167). Sa is the double
movement
mov ement of cutting and adhering. The ‘scaff
‘scaffold
old of the AA’’ of Sa (and
Glas) glues, while the S of Sa simultaneously disseminates. The S,
after all, is the ‘the “disseminating” letter par excellence’ (P, 96). Sa
adheres and cuts as it gathers and
an d tears. W
Whereas
hereas the a of Glas and of
Sa ‘agglutinates’, causing the remains to stick together in a heap of
‘detached differentiae’, the s disseminates, scatters, cuts, and errs.
The ‘fallen s’ also ‘[c]over[s] the space between [ l’entre-deux] the lips
or displaced letters – in (the) pyramidal nonument [ monumanque
amidale]’ ( G , 34). Like a sheath, the ‘fallen s’ is a strange ‘nonu-
pyramidale
pyr
ment’ between the alternatives of presence and absence. It is an abyss
(like the one between the lips) that cannot be thought or spoken by
philosophy as logos.
Sa has yet another resonance. Derrida introduces the myth of
Saturn into the text, associating Sa (with all of its signification
significations)
s) with
the god Saturn, whom he also demarks as ‘Sa.’ In the Hegel column,
Derrida recounts part of the story of Sa-Saturn-Kronos. With the
help of his mother-queen, Gaia (earth), Saturn castrates his father,
Uranus (sky), to become king. Yet, his kingship is as ill-fated as his
father’s,
father’s, doomed to end violently (in not quiquite
te a repetition, but rather
in more like a strange loop). Warned that one of his children would
depose him, Sa swallows each of them at birth.25 However, Gaia
hides the baby Zeus when he is born, and presents Sa with a rock
dressed as a baby instead, which he mistakes for Zeus and ingests.
By tricking him into entombing this supplement in his bowels, Gaia
induces Sa to ‘take a pharmakon that forced him to vomit all the
children he had eaten’ (G , 232). By means of this pharmakon, Sa is
then deposed and castrated, like his father, Uranus.
Derrida’s association of Sa (savoir absolu) and the myth of Sa-
Saturn-Kronos incorporates other resonances. In Hesiod’s account,
Uranus’ refusal to allow Gaia to give birth precipitates her creation
103
of the sickle that Saturn/Kronos uses to castrate his father ( TH ,

lines 161 and 175).26 The sickle, a farming tool that Gaia crafts
for Saturn, links him to agriculture.27 In addition, Saturn ‘enters
the Roman pantheon through an identification with the obscure
Sicilian god, Saturnus, about whom little more is known than that
he was also a harvest deity.’28 Kronos’ identity is ‘distinguished by
a marked internal contradiction or ambivalence’ ( SM , 134). He is
described simultaneously as ‘of crooked counsel’ and as ‘the benevo-
lent god of agricultu
agriculture’
re’ (SM , 134). The equation of the Greek Kronos
with the Roman Saturn arrested this ambiguity by emphasizing the
positive traits and adding attributes such as ‘guardian of wealth,
overseer of a system of counting by weight and measure and inven-
tor of coin-minting’ (SM , 135).29 However, Klibansky et al. quote
Abu Masar as saying that Saturn, who oversees a system of count-
ing, also presides over blindness. The blind spot is built into Sa’s
system! Sa, the panoptical eye that can account for everything, is
simultaneously connected with blindness, and thus accounts for
nothing. In this way, seeing is a not-seeing or seeing ‘through a veil of
tears’.
Historically
Historic ally,, Saturn/Kronos evokes multiple associations, evidence
of the open-ende
open-ended d indecida
indecidability
bility of mythos itself. In both The States-
man and The Laws, Plato recalls the ‘Golden Age of Kronos’ as a
utopian era of plenitude, when people were ‘pro
‘provided
vided with everything
30
in abundance and without any effort on their part’ (Laws 713a).
Plotinus then elevates Kronos by associating him with Intellect
(Νοΰς), while Zeus, on the other hand, symbolized Soul. Therefore,
the myth of Satu
Saturn
rn ‘devouring his children could be interpreted so as
to mean that the intellect, until it brings forth the soul, retains its
offspring within itself’ (SM , 153). Lukacher points out that Socratic
wordplay and Platonic irony in the Cratylus are responsible for the
neo-Platonists’ interpretation. This understanding, however, is then
‘transferred from Athens to Rome as the Nous went from Kronous to
Satur-nous (“abundant intellect”)’ (K , 59). Lukacher also observes
that Augustine ridicules this formulation, dismissing it as pagans
equating the deity with time (i.e. of Saturn with time: Father Time
becomes father of the gods; K , 59). Even though scholars such as
Taylor have suggested that the etymology of Saturn is linked with
time, chronology, chronicle, and so forth, Lukacher’s examination
of historical usage reveals that this is a false and misplaced origin
(K , 58–9).31
104
Freud cannot resist the lure of Saturn, either

Freud either.. In The Interpretation
of Dreams, ça and Sa-Saturn unintentionally interweave and tangle
together when he retells part of the myth: ‘Kronos devoured his
children, just as the wild boar devours the sow’s litter; while Zeus
emasculated his father and made himself ruler in his place.’ 32 It is
notable that Freud recounts the myth erroneously
er roneously,, portraying Saturn
as castrated, but not
n ot as a cas trator..33 Lukacher views
castrator vi ews Freud’
Freud’ss analysis
of castration as an ‘illusory reconciliation of opposites . . . The slid-
ing signification of terms into which contradictory positions and
their illusory synthesis are the conditions which determine the struc-
ture of Freud’s discourse on castration’ ( K , 69). Lukacher rewrites
this strange (non-)structure as ‘K(Ch)ronosology’, which ‘decon-
structs a text’s decidedness and reconstructs the conditions of its
indecidability’ (K , 69). He further explains: ‘What K(Ch)ronosology
suggests is that writing always contains an excess, a difference, in
which castration and non-castration are enmeshed in interminable
indecidability’ (K , 69).34 This focus on the indecidable
indecidable structure of cas-
tration – castration as a prescriptive operation rather than a descriptive
one – reveals yet another strange loop within the text’s significations
and meanings. Lukacher’s reading may itself be reread to reveal
Saturn as a non-synthetic synthesis. Sa does not reconcile opposites.
It instead brings together what it holds apart, and holds apart what it
brings together.
together. Cutting (such as the cutting inv
involved
olved in castration) is
sewing (sowing and seminating), and sowing is cutting. Semination
automatically calls forth dissemination, and dissemination seminates
strange loops that are not the least bit seminal. Mythically, this is
played out when Uranus’ spilled blood spawns monsters and uncanny
improper others (the Erinnyes) who are outside of the accepted hier-
archical order, and excluded from ruling atop Olympus.
In addition to the ceaseless play of Sa that calls forth the ever-
deferring significations of Sa, Derrida sets up an interplay between
Sa-Saturn and Dionysus. The node of this connecting tendril is
agriculture:
So Saturn would be a deposed father whose Latin reign had

nevertheless left the memory of a mythic golden age. He had
become the god of agriculture and more precisely, armed with a
sickle and a billhook, he used to preside at the pruning of the vine
vine..
Like Dionysus-Bacchus, he was intimately bound up with wine.
He would also be considered the god of the underw
underworld.
orld. (G , 232)
105
Although their shared relationship to the vine, and thus to agricul-

ture, is apparent, what is their underworld connection? Derrida’s
association unknowingly echoes a myth recorded in Nonnos’ multi-
volume fifth-century text, Dionysiaca. As Nonnos recounts it,
Demeter hides Persephone in a cave to prevent her from marrying
any of the gods. Upon discovering her, Zeus transforms himself into
a dragon, and seduces Persephone. The result is the birth of Zagreus,
who is later reborn as Dionysus.
Dionysus. The precocious infant ‘climbed
‘cl imbed upon
the heavenly throne of Zeus and brandished lightning in his little
hand . . . But he did not hold the throne of Zeus for long.’35 Bent on
destroying the upstart, Hera and the resentful Titans disguised
themselves by smearing their faces with chalk. While the baby
Zagreus-Dionysus is enraptured by his own image in a mirror given
to him as a toy, they cut him to pieces ( sparagmos). Playing exces-
sively for the sake of play, and distracted by his reflection in the
mirror’s dis-play, Dionysus fails to recognize the disguised Titans. In
Vernant’s account, ‘this duplication which removes him from himself
is the occasion for the Titans to cut him in pieces . . . fragmenting
unity.’36 This cutting, rebirth and transformation spawn a multitude
of identities for Zagreus-Dionysus. One of these is as ‘ancient
Cronos’ (DI , 6.171). The baby Zagreus-Dionysus, who whimsically
usurped the throne of Zeus (temporarily displacing Zeus’s panoptic
eagle eye, and ushering in aleatory play in its stead), regenerates
himself after his dismemberment into the form of Kronos/
Saturn. Hence the association of Sa-Saturn-Dionysus. The interplay
Saturn.
is maddening, but it is not the self-negating
se lf-negating revelry of Hegel’
Hegel’ss preface.
This festivity is otherwise.
Disseminating Festivities
Transgressive rituals known as Saturnalias, which were often akin to

Bacchanalias,
Bacchanali as, w
were
ere held to commemorate Saturn/Sa. James G. Frazer
discusses the Roman Saturnalia as an event
popularly supposed to commemorate the merry reign of Saturn,

the god of sowing and of husbandry, who lived on earth long
ago as a righteous and beneficent king of Italy, drew the rude and
scattered dwellers on the mountains together, taught them to till
the ground, gave them laws, and ruled in peace. 37
106
Frazer’s description reveals the Saturnalia as a uniting harvest festi-

val to a ‘righteous and beneficent king,’ aligned with peace and order
and the agricultural rhythm of the sown and sprouting seed. This is
quite a divergence from the despot who castrated his father and
ate his children, sowing disorder, and wastefully scattering (dissemi-
nating) seed that drips from the ‘ploughshare’ he scythed from his
father. In its weave, Glas figures and disfigures the thread of the
Saturnalia, attentive to the multi-faceted complexity of Saturn:
So saturnalia corresponded with a rhythm of season, a word that

comes no doubt, like Saturn, from sata, the fruits of the earth and
seeds, from serere, to sow, or from satus, son. Sowing time [semai-
son] is a season [saison]; serere would have the same semantic
origin as semen, seminare. . . . During saturnalia, order was over-
turned; the law transgressed itself: time of debauchery, of
licentiousness,, of drunke
licentiousness drunkenness
nness,, spasmodic revolution in the course
of which, says an anachronistic treatise of mythology, ‘the social
classes were topsy-turvy,’ slaves of their slaves that they then serve
at table. The bad turn of seasons coming to put the history of
spirit out of order
order,, Sa’s saturnalia would thethenn be inti
intimately
mately bound
up with a disordering [dérèglement] of the seminarium. To play
with the four seasons: this play,
play, this evil of Sa, opens this play
pl ay w
with
ith
a gap that no longer assures it of being ab able
le to reappro
reappropriate
priate itself
in the Trinitarian circle. This season disorder [ mal de saison] nei-
ther destroys
formed only thenor paralyzes
negative absolutely
of this concept,,the
concept infinite
it would yetconcept.
confirm If it
that
concept dialectically. Rather, it puts that concept out of order,
stops it, jams [ grippe
grippe] it inconceivably. (G , 232–3)
Although related to agriculture and to sowing seeds – operations that

attempt to ensure a return on one’s investment – the Saturnalia is a
wastefull expenditure without return. This description stands in stark
wastefu
contrast to Frazer’s tame soirée. In Glas’s Saturnalia, seeds are
filched, order overturned, ‘the law transgressed itself.’ This ‘debauch-
ery’ and ‘drunkenness’ are not ultimately stilled and subsumed in
Hegel’s ‘transparent repose’. The Saturnalia is not the inversion of
Hegel’s master-slave dialectic that would have the master prevail in
the end, to return home to an ordered house
house of ‘repose’. Instead, the
Saturnalia of Sa is a ‘bad turn of seasons coming to put the history
107
of spirit out of order’. It disorders and disseminates (dérèglement du

seminarium). Sa does not play to a specific, dialectical end. If Sa’s
festive play were negative, or if the effects of this play were merely
negative, then Sa would affirm savoir absolu and assure logos’
closure. As we have seen, such disavowal in the speculative economy
only works to affirm that economy. Negation is negated and turned
into a positive. Through a dialectical confirmation of the concept,
losses are turned iinto
nto gains. Instead h
howev
owever
er,, Sa ‘opens this play with
a gap’, barring reappropriation. Sa and its saturnalia are a mal de
saison whose aporetic fissures prevent closure or a return to pre-
festival order. Neither simple avowal nor simple disavowal of the
concept, Sa’s saturnalia ‘puts ththat
at concept out of order
order,, stops it, jjams
ams
[ grippe
such] conception:
grippe
of it inconceivably.’
‘The In this way,
triangle Sa announces
or the the impossibility
circle can remain open when
when
Sa arrives at the text. The text then will be what Sa cannot always
give itself, what happens [arrive] to Sa, rather than Sa arriving there
itself’ (G , 229). The course is not circular and closed, but loopy, open
and strange. Unable to reappropriate itself, to return to itself for-
itself, and so complete
complete itself in savoir absolu, to which its fulfilment is
bound, logos and the dialectic are put out of order by a gap, unwit-
tingly self-imposed. This dysfunctional state is not the ‘repose’ of
which Hegel spoke, but a transgression and sickness. It is a wound
without a cure that discomposes and unavoidably disfigures philoso-
phy as logos.
In these disseminative festivities, the pharmakon returns once
again, in yet another guise, as a pharmakos, which is a scapegoat or
a ‘contaminated criminal’ who must be expelled from the Greek
city-state in order to cleanse the polis. In his study of Oedipus Rex,
Jean-Pierre Vernant discusses Oedipus as a hero-king, who is also
simultaneously a pharmakos. Vernant’s insights further disfigure and
refigure Sa-Saturn-Dionysus. Citing research by other classicists,
Vernant points out that in many Greek cities, and Athens in particu-
lar, there was an annual rite involving the pharmakos. Its aim was
to ‘expe[l] the contamination accumulated in the course of the past
year.’38 One female and one male pharmakos were paraded through
the city, where
where ‘they were stru
struck
ck on the genital
genitalss with squil
squilll bulbs, figs,
and other wild plants,
plan ts, then they were eexpelled’
xpelled’ (AAR, 487). Motifs
Motifs of
(not domesticated
(not
wild
the genitals or agricultural)
of the pharmakoi vegetationof
vegetation
by the inhabitants
by and
thethe striking
city of
echo the
themes of castration, sowing and disseminating.39 Additionally, as
108
‘jailbirds designated by their misdeed, their physical ugliness, their

base condition, their vile
vi le and repugnant occupation, as inferior beings,
degraded, phauloi , the rejects of society’, the pharmakoi represent
what Vernant designates as the ‘dregs of the population’ ( AAR, 487).
As ‘dregs’, they are the cast-off remains of the polis. Howev Howeverer,, these
remains are elevated as saviorsviors,, since their transgressions are redeemed
through the act of their expulsion as pharmakoi . These insiders are
tossed out to assure the city’s health, to keep the inside
insi de pure. As we have
have
seen, affirmation and negation are inextricably bound together. together. There-
foree the expulsion of the pharmakos also unwittingly preserves some
for
element that the polis, at the same time ti me,, disav
disavows
ows.. The elevation of the
pharmak
phar os is also simultaneously its suppression, and the base nature of
makos
the pharmak
pharmakos os is precisely that which elevates it and renders it salvific.
Vernant also notes that sometimes, as in the case of Oedipus, the
king is the disease plaguing the polis. As a result, he must be ritually
sacrificed. In these situations,
situations, a member of the community is selected
as a doppelgänger to stand in for the king. Vernant explains:
Such is the pharmakos: double of the king, but in reverse, like those

sovereigns at carnival crowned at holiday time, when order is set
upside down, social hierarchies reversed: sexual prohibitions are
lifted, theft becomes legal, the slaves take their masters’ place, the
women trade their clothes with men; then the throne must be
occupied by the basest, ugliest, most ridiculous, most criminal of
men. But, the holiday
holiday once ended, the counter-king is expelled or
put to death, dragging with him all the disorder which he incar-
nates and of which the community is purged at one blow.
blow. (emphasis
added, AAR, 489–90)
Akin to the Saturnalia, the rite of the pharmakos – like the pharma-

kos himself – is transgressive, wasteful and mad. By turning the
natural order inside out, the pharmakos crea
creates
tes a reve
revelry
lry of dis-ease
dis-ease..
Reason loses its head. This is not Hegelian inversion, however. Like
Sa’s Saturnalia, the rite of the pharmakos is the riotous interplay of
multiple seeds of dissemination. The play of these significations
imposes a gap. It puts the ‘concept [savoir absolu] out of order
order,, stops
it, jams it inconceivably.’ This revelry cannot be tamed or retired the
day after the festivities. Despite elaborate prescribed rituals created
to get rid of them, these transgressive outsiders within can never be
completely expelled to the outside. Not only does the inside rely on
109
the transgressive pharmakoi for its purity – for its supposed reappro-

priation of order and well-being – but significantly these inassimilable
inassimilable
outsiders must come from within. They are part of the very polis that
cannot quite do with them or without them. Like the crypt, they are
necessarily both preserved and suppressed. The pharmakos ceremony
involves simultaneous affirmation and denial. These forces of resis-
tance – as marginalia, citations, remains, pharmakoi – create a
symptom in the corpus (of the text, of the polis, of the philosopher-
king) that deform
deform and transform it. This symptom of dis-ease requires
the pharmakon or pharmakos to cure it, but the pharmakon/ pharma-
pharma-
kos needed to heal and purify it also comprises the very poison that
it is employed to cure.
cure. The polysemia of Glas, as that of the pharma-
kon/ pharmakos
pharmakos and Sa/ça-Saturn-Dionysus, is irreducibly
irreduci bly indecidable
indecidable..
There is no awakening from this madness, no ‘transparent repose’
to be found. Instead, there is a constant tolling and unending defer-
ral oscillating (like
(like the clapper of a bell) entre-deux: preserving while
suppressing, keeping while expelling, affirming while denying, out-
side while inside. Resounding ceaselessly, the sound of philosophy’s
death knell also rings in a beginning that opens out – like a cut or
tear – from the already broken promise of savoir absolu. This gaping
fissure opens out into the complex network
network of mythos and logos.
Incorporating the Pharmakon
Just as the polis relies on the pharmakos to ensure its health, even
while expelling it, the pharmakon (the stone) that Gaia cunningly
convinces Saturn to swallow is not incorporated either. Instead of
digesting and assimilating the pharmakon, Saturn vomits it, along
with all of his children that he had dev
devoured.
oured. The pharmakon is that
which is ‘neither-swallowed-nor-rejected, that which remains stuck in
the throat as other, neither-received-nor-expulsed’ (PTS , 43). Ingest-
ing the pharmakon is not a case of assimil
assimilating
ating difference, w
where
here what
was other and previously foreign becomes integrated. This recalls the
distinction between introjection and incorporation elaborated in
Chapter 2. Introjection mimics the Hegelian dialectic, where differ-
ence is merged with identity as the identity of identity-and-d
identity-and-differen
ifference
ce..
Incorporation, on the other hand, is not assimilation. Rather, the
other is preserved as other, but is at the same time prohibited, much
like the pharmakos. Glas’s pharmakon also recalls the crypt that is
incorporated into the system. 40 As an outside that is inside, the crypt
110
simultaneously suppresses that which the system cannot account for

or confront, while at the same time, unwittingly preserving and
guarding it. Conservation and rejection work in a double movement,
oscillating
oscill ating between disav
disavowal
owal and avow
vowal.
al.
As we have seen, attempts to reject Hegelian savoir absolu
unwittingly affirm it. In the Hegelian system, negation affirms, and
affirmation necessarily negates. Derrida, therefore, must incorporate
Hegel and Hegel’s system into Glas. If he rejects it outright then
Glas’s unlogofiable aspects will only have been a momentary detour
on the path to logos. In other words, Glas would work to affirm phi-
losophy as logos. However, this is not what it does. Glas’s operation
(as a written text to be read, but confounding any customary or
familiar route of doing so) incorporates Hegel’s system by engorging
and then disgorging it:
The text
text of Aufhebung is
is properly read by aufheb-ing it,
it, destroying
it to preserve it. . . . Derrida will come (almost) to eat Hegel as
Saturn (almost) ate Jupiter [Zeus] and thus try to change Hegel’s
Seminar (a seed-plot, a school for turning the son into a father)
into a Saturnalia, where master and slave exchange places provi-
sionally. By a stroke of his autobiographical D, he would change
semination into dis-semination, sowing into scattering. Paradoxi-
cally, to eat Father thus is not merely to scatter but in-corporate.
(GP, 23)
Derrida almost digests Hegel, just as Saturn almost ate Zeus . . .

almost. This is not the action of introjection
introjection,, but rather
rather of incorpora-
tion. Unlike introjection, which synthesizes, incorporation disfigures,
but only after adding the other to itself as irreducibly other. In
showing how the Hegelian dialectic works, Derrida is also pointing
out precisely how it does not work as promised. Although savoir
absolu attempts to swallow the other (to introject the other) in its
dialectical movement of Aufhebung , something indigestible remains.
These remains are the ‘vomit of the system’ that prevents complete
unification, or introjection. Instead, there is ‘in-corporation’ of the
pharmakon that is simultaneously both remedy and poison. These
remains impose a gap, and prevent closure, thereby disfiguring savoir
absolu. As Derrida underscores, in the form of a question: ‘Isn’t
there always an element excluded from the system that assures the
system’s space of possibility?’ (G , 162). The vomit of the system is
111
not ‘intrinsic to the system’ (G , 162), but it is unavoidable. Its exis-
tence reveals
reveals that thro
through
ugh the act of incorporation,
incorporation, the system of Sa
depends upon something that it cannot include, but that nevertheless
‘assures’ the system of its possibility. This inclusion is nonetheless
impossible since this other within as an outsider is unaccountable
and unlogofiable. By its unavoidable and necessary inclusion, this
‘outside’ deconstructs the system from within. Yet it cannot be
excluded, since this other gives rise to the system. There can be no
system without it. The pharmakon, like mythos, is an inescapable
necessity that contaminates savoir absolu.41 It gives Saturn a belly-
ache, and induces vomiting. In Glas, ‘the taste for and the handling
of poison are declared throughout
throughout the text. The text is nourished by
them. . . . glas is a kind of poisoned milk’ (G , 15). ‘Poisoned milk’, as
Derrida so aptly delineates it, is a pharmakon. Mother’s milk, the
primordial source of nourishment, gro growth
wth and health, carries poison
that undermines, even as it fortifies.
Although Sa cannot incorporate this foreign element into itself, it
unwittingly preserves it as a crypt that is too cryptic for logos to deci-
pher and assimilate by means of specula speculative
tive dialectics or logocentric
discourse. In Glas, Sa announces the impossibility of fully realiza realizable
ble
thought, of closure
closure.. When thought ceases to return to itself, the glas
of Sa (as savoir absolu) is sounded as an indecidable excess inscribed
within the columns of Glas. Glas announces a tolling that opens
out.42 It is an oscillation of nothing that nevertheless disrupts. Even
Glas is barred from closing on itself, from synthesis, since each text
encounters the other text as inassimilable, just as philosophy or Sa
finds the pharmakon indigestible. This poisoned milk (that can also
be salubrious) may indeed come from the (m)other, from mythos.
As Derrida suggests, to read Hegel, or follow after him, is to do
so otherwise through simultaneous negation and affirmation. Glas
attempts to probe the fissures that rupture Sa. In incorporating
Hegel, but failing,
fail ing, inevitabl
inevit ably
y, to diges
digestt him complet
completely
ely,, these ttears
ears are
exposed. Glas alternates between affirmation and denial, and sounds
this strange loop: ‘But the operation is not negative, it affirms with
a limitless yes, immense, prodigious, inaudible. And the operation
constructs, a kind of solid transverse, in order to suspend the bell
between two towers’ (G , 228). The affirmation is as ‘inaudible’ as the
a of différance, yet it nevertheless resounds with a ‘limitless yes’. 43
Unable to be conventionally heard, it is not ‘present’, yet undeniably,
neither is it absent.Glas harbours an inherent indecidability that can
112
never be resolved. To ingest Hegel, mythos and the pharmakon

is to deny them, and to attempt to transform them to work in the
service of philosophy as logos. Incorporating them, as Derrida does
Hegel, and Plato’s Phaedrus does mythos and pharmakon, affirms
their inescapable importance, even if these authors do not digest
them fully. As philosophy as logos denies and denigrates mythos, it
affirms its essential role. Glas, through Sa, demonstrates this crucial
dynamic relation of mythos and logos, even though its focus is
elsewhere.
SECRETING MYTHOS
Encrypting
Having examined the column dedicated to Sa-Saturn-Saturnalia-

Dionysus, it is necessary to explore the other column curiously
in interplay with this one. Tattooed within the larger Sa-Saturn-
Saturnalia-Dionysus column is another that begins (although one
gets the sense that this ‘beginning’ is a continuation of something
that never ended) by posing a question: ‘what is it not to read Hegel
or to read him badly, or rather the text Sa? Is this negativity compre-
hended, included, and at work in the text Sa?’ (G , 231).44 This query
is followed by yet another: ‘What would it mean not to comprehend
(Hegel) the text Sa?’ (G , 231). Inscribing this question in bold print
within the Sa-Saturn-Dionysus column suggests that this inscription
is primary, and not secondary. In other words, the column of Sa-
Saturn-Dionysus is introduced as if to answer the questions engraved
within it, while at the same time, it looks as if it was always already
there, even before the questions were asked. It appears that this
inquiry falls directly in the domain of philosophy. Only philosophy
as logos can address this conundrum about
about the comprehension of Sa.
However, by inscribing these philosophical questions within the col-
umn of Sa-Saturn-Dionysus, Derrida is in effect saying: this inquiry,
although philosophical, cannot be solved or responded to by phi-
losophy as logos.
The fact that these questions are tattooed on the Sa-Saturn-
Dionysus column is equally significant. The transgressive art of
tattooing ‘slips between’ structural polarities such as inside/outside
and differentiation/unification.45 Taylor explains that ‘by repeatedly
alternating between unreconcilable opposites, tattooing (dis)figures a
113
boundary that cannot be fixed. Forever superficial, even when its

wounds are deep, the tattooed body is the incarnation of a cut that
never heals and

umn (tattoo) is aneither
seam that never
simply mends’
inside nor (outside;
S , 39). The encrypted
it ‘slips col-
between’.
Derrida’s tattooed question forever ‘(dis)figures’ the boundary
between logos and mythos. The tattooed (dis)corpus is a wound that
continually afflicts philosophy as logos. The response played out in
the other column, that of Sa-Saturn-Dionysus, is by way of some-
thing non-philosophical. Specifically, the answer to this question
of and to logos is mythos. The configura
configuration
tion of Derrida’
Derrida’ss page visual-
izes logos arising from mythos, from an incomprehensibility that
forever faults it, opening it to that which it cannot grasp. This failure
inscribes logos with the impossible that cannot be broached philo-
sophically, that is,
is, by means of logos. As a (dis)figure of the impossible,
impossible,
mythos figures logos while simultaneously disfiguring it from with-
in.46 Such questions force logos to transgress its limits, exposing it
to that which gives to it its contours, but remains, nonetheless, non-
logofiable. Therefore, not to comprehend and to comprehend Hegel
and savoir absolu is always already to approach Sa, in all of its inde-
cidable deferrals. It is to approach mythos.
Derrida explores the text of Sa, which is both the excessive Sa
played out in the other column, and the ça of non-knowing,
non-knowing, in order
to discover whether
whether the disruptive dissemina
dissemination
tion of Sa is merely the
result of an anticipated detour that is ultimately corrected by Sa
itself. He asks:
What recourse would the text Sa have, and before what authority
[instance]orcould
reading, it seductions,
all the lead this nonreading or this bad
drifts, perversions, preliminary
neither real nor
fictive, neither true nor false, that would entrain the text Sa out-
side itself, without subjecting themselves to its [sa] jurisdiction?
(G , 231)
In other words, is a ‘bad’ reading or ‘nonreading’ possible? Accord-

ing to the logic of the dialectic, savoir absolu always has recourse to
the last word. The negative is foreseen, sublated, taken up into the
movement of the Aufhebung , transformed and synthesized into it. If
savoir absolu is truly an absolute synthesis,
synthesis, then the text of Sa would
always be fully comprehended. Any failure to do so would only be
momentary, finite, already anticipated. This ‘finite failure’ would be
114
‘in advance included, comprehended in the text’ ( G , 232). However,

Derrida is seeking that which ‘would entrain’ Sa outside itself with-
out subjecting the erring, and that which causes the wandering, to Sa
as savoir absolu. Philosophy as logos cannot answer this question,
because it is already caught within Sa, within the economy of pres-
ence, always
always toili
toiling
ng to that end. It construc
constructs
ts discour
discourse
se at the expense
of dis-cour
dis-course.
se. It alwa
always
ys works towar
toward d Sa’s end, where thinki
thinking
ng comes
to a point, to an apex, presencing itself and taking account of all of
its movements, presenting itself as a unity, as One. Philosophic dis-
course is the discourse of logos. Philosophy as logos must say and
think something : ‘there cannot be an absolutely negative discourse: a
logos necessarily speaks about something; it is impossible for it to
refer to nothing.’47 Hence, philosophic discourse is always oriented
toward making this something present, knowable and graspable.
Even the negative is rendered speakable and thinkable. In the dialec-
48
tic
thisitquestion,
is transf
transformed
ormed into answer
he cannot someer
answ thing . Therefore,
it strictly when
by means of Derrida
logos or poses
Sa as
savoir absolu. Instead, he must invoke an other Sa, one whose dis-
seminative operations are outside of, yet simultaneously within,
logos-Sa . Derrida must let his hypothesis of a bad reading (which is
a hypothesis made within philosophic discourse, which assumes a
singular, correct reading) ‘fall [tomber], in the margin or epigraph, as
a remain(s) about which one does not know if it works, in view or in
the service of whom or what’ (G , 232). It is a philosophical question
put to philosophy that philosophy cannot answer. The hypothesis
remains unprovable
unprovable as a resu
result.
lt. Therefore, one must let it fall or drop,
‘as a remain(s)’. Since the remains are not governed by the economy
that they nevertheless form, they cannot be judged by it, because
they are ultimately unaccountable. They are not to be counted on
or accounted for by philosophy as logos. The fragmentary
fragmentary ending of
Glas signals its own undocumentable operations: ‘But it runs to its
ruin [ perte
perte], for it counted without [sans]’ (G , 262). Counting is
an operation that assumes an underlying binary structure that is
added to in a quantifiable way. Counting without – counting sans
counting – is, therefore, not counting in a quant
quantifiable
ifiable way
way.. The un
unac-
ac-
countable is unaccountable. Philosophy must let the question and
hypothesis fall. Nonetheless, the question itself, and what
what remains of
it, are disruptive.
The tattooed column is itself inscribed with a curious citation.
After inconclusively
inconclusively concluding that the hypothesis
hypothesis of a bad reading
115
must fall as remains, and be allowed to play to no end, only for the
sake of play, Derrida cuts and pastes the following into his text: ‘like
such a note at the bottom of the page of the Concluding Unscientific
Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments’ (emphasis added, G , 232).

Derrida lets his reading fall, along with Kierkegaard’s. The two
tangle together. Kierkegaard’s work also ruminates on the margins
and remains of Hegel’s philosophic system, and on the means by
which such fragments
fragments upset knowledge and the appearance of truth.
Writing under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard
employs indirect communication in order to expose the gaps in
Hegel’s system. He, like Derrida over a century later, recognizes that
the question of philosophy – of savoir absolu – cannot be approached
directly. Doing so only reinscribes the system that one seeks to sub-
vert. Derrida quotes Kierkegaard as follows:
It is presumably the witchery of this ever continuing process which

has inspired the misunderstanding that one must be a devil of a
fellow in philosophy in order to emancipate himself from Hegel.
But this is by no means the case. All that is needed is sound com-
mon sense, a fund of humor, and a little Greek ataraxy. 49 Outside
the Logic, and partly also within the same, because of a certain
ambiguous light which Hegel has not cared to exclude, Hegel and
Hegelianism constitute an essay in the comical. (cited in G , 232)
By using this lengthy citation from Kierkegaard, Derrida hints at the

impossibility of a philosophical response to the question that he
himself poses about Sa. One possible response is humour. Laughter
remains..50 Within the system, laughter is,
is an excess of the system, a remains
in the
and words of
therefore Bataille, ‘nothing’
unphilosophical, the (comic
IE , 111). Discarded
is improper. as unserious
Unlike knowl-
edge, which as Bataille says, ‘works’, laughter is désoeuvrement, that
is, it ‘unworks’
‘un works’ (IE , 111). Kierkegaard encourages the reader to oscil-
late between reading straight (working and philosophizing) and
reading crooked (unworking and laughing). The certain ‘ambiguous
light that Hegel has not cared to exclude’, and which, we have seen,
is included by virtue of all effort to exclude it, both constructs and
deconstructs the Hegelian system. This is the fissure in savoir absolu
that Derrida recasts as Sa-Saturn-Dionysus by telling a story, a myth.
If Hegelianism is ‘an essay in the comical’, then a philosophical
response is ridiculous and improper. Logos cannot fully account for
116
itself, even if it tries tto

o do so. Such an act is laughable
laughable.. In other words,
it is not to be taken seriously. The other column of Glas must answer
Sa’s question by refiguring it through the ever-deferring, indecidable
Sa of Glas. Derrida responds by invoking mythos, by telling a story.
What philosophy as logos cannot think is approached by way of
mythos.
Taylor is also instinctively drawn to mythos when he faces the
‘nonspace’, or locus of the ‘religious imagination’, despite his disin-
terest in the significance of mythos. He begins Chapter Chapter 6 of Tears by
soliciting the ‘abysmal silence of the crypt’ that ‘open[s] a radically
altered nonspace’ (T , 73). Taylor
Taylor continues, ‘T ‘To
o approach this space,
which disallows every arrival, I begin (again) with a story – a story
about an event or nonevent that might have taken place a terribly
long time ago . . . Once upon up on a time . . . ’ (T , 73). Like Derrida he then
proceeds
procee ds to (re)tell the story of Saturn and the Titans Titans,, which he later
connects to Derrida’s retelling in Glas, in order to establish an ‘anach-
ronism’ (that he falsely links to Kronos) of the ‘nonspace’ of which
he speaks. This non-space, ‘which disallows every arrival’, is reminis-
cent of the opening site of Plato’
Plato’ss Phaedrus, which begins with mythos
and as a consequence, prevents logos from returning full circle to
itself. Taylor’s storytelling is telling. Like Plato, he is compelled to
turn to story, to mythos, in order to approach
approach a locus of logos. There
is no other avenue
avenue.. The impossibi
impossibility
lity of Sa’s completion, it
itss muteness
in the face of the gap imposed upon it by that part of it which is
non-knowing, is attested to and broached only by mythos, which
simultaneously
simultane ously figures and disfigures thinking. Even if the wellspring
of thought ‘is unthinkable, it/id lends at least a contour to the able-
to-be-thought’ (PTS , 52). These contours are adumbrated, but never
fully conceptualized, by mythos. As Taylor points out, the story he
recounts took place outside of time proper. It is therefore anachro-
nistic, out of joint and beyond the boundaries. As a result, while it
calls forth logos and structure,
structure, it is itself not fully encompassed within
these. Logos as a structure is not complete. It is incapable of fully
answering on its own the question of philosophy as logos: how is Sa
to be comprehended, to be read? The response, it would seem (and
here, perhaps, a burst of laughter breaks out) is that savoir absolu,
and by extension, philosophy as logos, can only be understood
through an unending oscillation with mythos. As a non-foundational
foundation, mythos calls forth logos, and logos gives mythos a form
in which it can begin to contour the ‘able-to-be-thought’ (logos).
117

However, the existence of either one – mythos or logos – uncontami-

nated by the other, is impossible and inexpressible.
Secretions
Mythos can never be fully present. It recalls a time not properly

present, a ‘once upon a time’ that is always past. In addition, due to
its irreducibly indecidable nature, it unavoidably disrupts and dis-
seminates. The myth of Saturn, and Derrida’s use of it, illustrates
this. The story at once summons resonances that, although not com-
pletely present, are not absent either. These echoes appear to come
from the other side of sense certainty, from ça, the underworld and
the fruits rooted in the dark womb of the earth, from Dionysus, and
from the pharmakon. As mythos gathers these in, it also disseminates
them, forever opening out into an excess of possibilities, reverberat-
ing between meanings and significations. Mythos both gathers and
disperses. Many scholars of myth have missed the profound signifi-
cancee of mythos being neither falsifiable nor non-falsifiable discourse.
canc
As discussed in the first chapter,
chapter, Brisson establishes the definition of
mythos as discourse that is neither true nor false. It is on this basis
that philosophy as logos views it as inferior, even irrelevant. Since its
status cannot be determined, it is discounted by philosophy. As we
have established, however, looking through the eyes of deconstruc-
tion instead, we see that it cannot be devalued or excluded. Mythos
gives rise to logos, even as it also breaches, tears and deconstructs
logos. It is precisely these aporias that make logos both possible and
impossible. These questions that philosophy as logos cannot answer
can only be approached by means of mythos, whether this mythos is
the pharmacological playground from which the Phaedrus proceeds
and to which the text repeatedly returns, or the Sa played out in the
other column of Glas.
As we have seen, Glas blurs the distinction between inside and
outside. One cannot tell which column is within, and which one is
without. Furthermore, the questions of philosophy tattooed on the
Sa-Saturn-Dionysus column further displace the boundaries. There
is no demarcation or discrepancy between an outside that is inside
and an inside that is outside. The oscillation between these seemingly
incompatible positions is the very point: both are always already
simultaneously and continuously in play. In Glas, there is a strange
118

co-emergence of these columns and interplay between them.

Similarly, mythos in relation to logos is both an outside within, and
an inside that is outside. ‘Secretions’, Taylor observes, ‘are always
entre-deux. While a secret is an outside that is inside, a secretion is an
inside that is outside’ (T , 190). By attempting to exclude, repress
and conceal mythos, philosophy as logos unwittingly both preserves
and reveals it. The excluded core (indecidable mythos) is encrypted
within logos, and returns by that route to destabilize the very struc-
ture (philosophy as logos) that attempted to prohibit it and that
secretes it as unwanted extraneous contamination. The diseased cor-
pus (of Glas, of philosoph
philosophyy proper
proper,, of the philosopher-king), secretes
the sickness that prevents the closure of savoir absolu, hoping to
expel it, to engorge the destabilizing contaminant with antibodies
to constrain it, in order to close the gap and heal the wound. How-
ever, the cure ( pharmakon) cannot be counted on. It is duplicitous,
simultaneously remedy and poison. Dialectics cannot remedy this
indecidability. Logos is never entirely free from mythos, and is there-
fore not ‘pure’. It unwittingly secretes mythos, not as a by-product
left after savoir absolu, but as an inescapable non-foundational foun-
dation that gives rise to philosophy as logos.
Similarly, mythos also begins to be lost as ‘pure’ mythos (as Sa/ça)
when it appears in the form of this strange unbidden secretion. Its
play must
must be arrested, ttoo some extent, in order for it to be recognized,
because it must
must aavail
vail itself of the langua
language
ge of logos in order to appear
at all. Yet mythos is not entirely present, because the language of
logos is inadequate to express it fully. Mythos can never be fully pres-
ent precisely because it is, by nature, an excessive, inexpressible
oscillation of multiplicities
multiplicities.. Language and thought (logos), which are
always oriented toward unity and presence, and therefore limited to
expressing the determinate, cannot capture such heterogeneity. Thus
mythos, like a secret, only appears in beginning to be lost.51
This elusive secretion warrants closer examination. William Doty
explains that the Indo-European root, ma, which imitates a ‘child’s
cry for the breast’, associating it with mother, is similar to the Proto-
Indo-European root, mu, from which mythos is derived.52 Ma and
mu are homonyms, pronounced the same, and homologous, corre-
sponding in value and function ( M , 6). Ma (to coin a siglum that
refers to both mythos and mama or [m]other) is always on the
scene as a non-absent absence and engendering ‘origin’, unsettling Sa
119

from within. Ma is the remains that the system, in its self-generating
and self-sustaining coupling of fathe
father-king-son,
r-king-son, attem
attempts
pts to exc
exclude
lude
and repress as inconsequential and untrustworthy. As remains
[t]he mother is behind. . . . As she follows absolutely, she always

survives – a future
futu re that will never hav
havee been prese
presentable
ntable – wha
whatt she
will have engendered, attending, impassive, fascinating and pro-
voking; she survives the interring of the one whose death she has
foreseen. (G , 116–17)
The mother ‘always survives’, she remains to rend and fissure Sa.
‘And to remain, or to lealeave
ve last, when no one will h ha
ave any more time.
What can a mother do better?’
better ?’ (G , 117). Ma is a (m)other, ‘attending,
impassive, fascinating and provoking’,
provoking’, that simultaneously
simultaneo usly constructs
and deconstructs the logic
logic of Sa. ‘The mother (whatever forename of
pronoun she may be given),’ explains Derrida, ‘stands beyond the
sexual opposition. This above all is not a woman. She only lets her-
self, detached, be represented
repre sented by the sex’ (G , 134). Ma is an unsettling
‘presence’ that is not a woman, since it is ‘beyond’ sexual dynamics.
Just as the pharmakon seduces Socrates
Socrates to stray outside of the walled
city of reason, Ma draws Sa beyond its customary course, forever
displacing it. Ma interrupts Sa’s intentionality. It foils Sa’s home-
coming. Ma fails to work (to an employable
employable end). It is the laughter
laugh ter of
the system, its désoeuvrement. Ma remains: already.
To think Sa otherwise is to toll the glas that simultaneously rings
in a beginning that illustrates how mythos is basic to logos. We We strai
strain.
n.
It is difficult to hear this clearly, and to see mythos secreted through
philosophy’s tears. These tears open the eyes by blinding and blind
by opening. However, these tears do not arrive simply in response to
philosophy’s death knell. They emerge from mythos, which appears
only in beginning to be lost, but which nonetheless brings to our
thinking its contours, depth and complexity.
120

CHAPTER 5
MYTH AND THE GIFT, IF THERE IS ANY
. . . it must be understood that possibility is not the sole dimension of

our existence, and that it is perhaps given to us to ‘live’ each of the
events that is ours by way
way of a double relation. W Wee live it one time as
something we comprehend, grasp,grasp, bear and master (even if we do so
painfully and with difficulty) by relating
relating it to some good or to some
value, that is to say, finally, by relating it to Unity; we live it another
time as something that escapes our very capacity to undergo it, but
whose trial we cannot escape. Yes, as though impossibility, that by
which we are no longer able to be able, were waiting for us behind all
that we live, think and say – if only we have been once at the end of
this waiting,
waiting, without ever ffalling
alling short of what this surplus of empti-
ness, of ‘negativity’, demanded of us and that is in us the infinite
heart of the passion of thought.1
IMPOSSIBLE INCLUSIONS
The preceding chapters have unwaveringly responded to the avoid-

ance of mythos by both philosophy and religion. Since philosophy as
logos views mythos as un-philosophical, and therefore as inferior, it
denies and ignores mythos, refusing to give it any serious consider-
ation, denigrating it, or omitting it altogether from discourse. The
works of Taylor and Derrida serve as valuable resources and provide
sufficiently radical and nuanced methodologies for thinking mythos
as a non-foundational foundation of logos. However
However,, neither of these
thinkers actually undertakes a sustained examination of mythos
and its relationship to logos. Derrida confines himself to alluding to
mythos indirectly, although these intimations are themselves fruitful,
121

as we ha
h ave seen. For the most par
part,
t, Ta
Taylor
ylor avoids mythos. When he does
address it, he does so with the same preconceptions that ha have
ve plagued
both religion and philosophy. These assumptions stem from a key
misconception that mythos simply constructs. What is overlooked is
that it also disseminates and deconstructs. This latter dynamic is
ignored by proponents of mythos who idealize its constructive func-
tions. This study has been borne along by the urgency of re-engaging
traditions that would
would prefer not to speak of mythos or
or,, if they must, to
do so from the privileged position of a logos that remains blind to its
intimate, inescapable relation to mythos, as if that w
were
ere possible
possible.. These
avoidances perpetuate the belief that mythos exists in an inferior dia-
lectical relation to logos. Restricting mythos in this way makes it
possible, and even preferable, to deal only with logos to the exclusion
of mythos. The two are understood as separate or dialectical, rather
than as co-emergent. In this limited view, only logos is fit for reasoned,
philosophical discourse, and mythos must be cured of its mythicity
mythicity,, of
its ambiguity.
ambiguity. TTo
o this end, a philos
philosophical
ophical antidote iiss administered to
usher in the light of reason by rremoving
emoving all of the shadows of mythos.
Even
logos,when philosoph
philosophy
it only y recognizes
acknowledges mythosthat
as the identity of
an inferior. mythos
Logos is tied
is unity to
and
identity; the result of the dialectic is One. Difference is subsumed
under the banner of identity, just as mythos is relegated to logos.
As we have witnessed, the work of Derrida calls this logic into
question by rigorously re-examining Hegel and Plato. In doing so,
Derrida, and Taylor in his wake, reveal the tears inherent within the
dialectic and logos. In approaching a limit that it cannot think or
account for, the system nonetheless includes this limit within it as an
outside that is inside. This incommensurable outside within ruptures
savoir absolu. Instead of the eternal return of the same (i.e(i.e.. conscious-
ness returning to itself and therefore becoming fully conscious of
itself in the self-presencing of itself to itself), there are strange loops
that never quite close, continually disrupting every logical operation.
The excessive remains that the system attempts to exclude forever
fault it from within. These exterior interiors generate the system that
nonetheless cannot synthesize them. An other other, and a different
difference
differe nce remain. Identity is not simply the identity of identity-and-
difference. Rather, identity always contains and, in fact, is generated
by a non-identity, synthesis by a non-synthesis, foundation by a non-
foundation. While these ‘non’-entities are not exactly present, neither
are they absent. These non-absent absences
absences and non-present presences
122

are themselves impossible inclusions.2 They simultaneously construct

and deconstruct logos.
Derrida’ss recognition of the impossible inclusion that gives rise to
Derrida’
the Hegelian system was undoubtedly influenced by the observation
of his teacher, Jean Hyppolite, that the logical conclusion of Hegel’s
system is not the comprehensible unity of savoir absolu, but rather,
an aporetic
‘What makes fissure
Hegelinsimultaneously
which savoir absolu disruptsirrationalist
the greatest and subvertsanditself.
the
greatest rationalist who has ever existed’ is, according to Hyppolite,
that logos must ‘thin[k] the non-thought. It thinks sense in its relation
relation
to non-sense, to the opaque being of nature’ (LE , 102). Logos
unavoidably summons non-sense and non-thought, and must relate
to them. They are necessary to the system’s dialectical progression
toward savoir absolu. Logos ‘reflects this opacity into its contradiction.
It raises thought, which would be only thought, over itself by oblig-
ing it to contradict itself; it
i t turns this contradiction into the speculative
means by which to reflect the Absolute itself’ ( LE , 102). Logos, and
by extension, the Absolute, then necessarily contain ‘opacity’ inte-
grally,, but not merely as an inner contradiction,
grally cont radiction, a sublated other. The
opaque always remains to rend thought and logos. Thought can only
‘reflect the Absolute itself’
itself ’ w
when
hen it ‘contradicts itself’.
itself ’. F
For
or Hegel, this
contradiction is the ‘speculative means’ by which logos reflects the
Absolute.3 Hyppolite calls attention to the fact that, in approaching
that which it cannot think, account for or contain, the dialectic nec-
essarily includes, as a condition of its own possibility, that which
fissures,, disrupts and dissemina
fissures disseminatestes savoir absolu. Savoir absolu, there-
fore, cannot be an all-encompassing absolute. Rather, it exists in a
strange, non-totalizing relation to that which remains unthinkable
and unknowable.4 Despite what Plato and Hegel may wish to say
about the capabilities of logos, it depends upon the un logofiable,
unthinkable and nonsensical. In approaching these other others, and
attempting to
inescapably include them
incorporates through
that whichsublation,
it cannot logos unwittingly
account and
for or think.
As we have seen, the foundation of logos is inextricably built upon
this ‘foundation’, and is, as a result, not foundational. The ground is
unexpectedly groundless. The excessive nonsense of sense-certainty
tears every seam, including the one attempting to sew together the
identity of identity-and-differen
identity-and-difference
ce and the logos of logos-and-mythos.
In the wake of differential remains, where every relation is a non-
relation,
relation, the symbiotic dynamic
dynamic of thought to unthought, knowledge
123

to non-knowledge, and most importantly for our purposes, logos to
mythos must be understood otherwise.
To frame this as Blanchot does in the epigraph that opens this
chapter, the relation between the two incommensurables, which are
nonetheless intimately connected to one another, is a ‘double rela-
tion’. Blanchot poses this in terms of life, bu butt it is equally a
applica
pplicable
ble
to thought and logos, both undeniable
undeniable aspects of life itself. As Blan-
chot insists, ‘possibility is not the sole dimension of our existence.’ 5
Unquestionably
Unquestiona bly,, possibility is part of our existence as the aspect of it
that seeks to ‘comprehend, grasp, bear and master’ by ‘relating’ it to
‘Unity’. However, it is not the only aspect. There is another simulta-
neous dynamic. The task of relating to unity, mastering, gathering
and grasping is clearly the work of logos in its progression toward
savoir absolu. This aligns with logos’ etymological root, ‘to gather’.
Nonetheless, the possible only occurs in ‘relation’ to another aspect.
This other is the nonsensical, ungraspable and unknowable dimen-
sion that is not present as such, and can only appear ‘as something
that escapes our very capacity to undergo it, but whose trial we can-
not escape.’ It is the impossible because it is not fully present, and
therefore cannot be thought, experienced, grasped or apprehended
in any singular, comprehendible form. An unthought summons and
shapes thought, non-knowledge invokes knowledge, and mythos
gives rise to logos. Both Derrida’s idea of gift and Taylor’s under-
standing of network provide resources for thinking the relation of
mythos and logos other than in a traditional dialectical or binary
fashion. Conceptualized in terms of Taylor’s network and Derrida’s
gift, the relation of mythos and logos can be better understood as a
non-relation, and as a ‘nontotalizing structure that nevertheless acts
as a whole’.6
WEBBING TEARS AND TEARING WEBS
Poly-Seamy Webs
Kierkegaard’s spider, confronting his web in Either/Or, offers an apt

starting point from which to consider networks and worldwide webs:
What portends? What will the future bring? I do not know, I have
no presentiment. When a spider hurls itself down fr
from
om some fixed
124
point, consistently with its nature, it always sees before it only an

empty space wherein it can find no foothold however much it
sprawls.7
Instead of a solid foothold and foundation (the possible), the

spider is confronted with empty space and a lack of ground (the
impossible). Its supposed foundation (as fixed point) reveals the lack
of foundation before it, where ‘no foothold’ can be found, and
where no assurances can be granted. The spider spins its web within
the groundlessness of empty space. In this way, its web is a non-
foundational foundation. As the environment and surroundings
change, so too will the spider’s web, ever adapting to the flux and
flow of the space it inhabits. Unlike the construction of a building,
which is fixed in the landscape (sometimes imposingly so), the
spider’s web emerges and evolves in relation with and response to
its ever-changing environment. Where a degree of permanence and
inflexibility underlies much human architecture, the spider’s web is
defined by its adaptability.
The network of the World Wide Web is analogous to the non-
foundational foundation that characterizes
characteriz es the spi
spider’s
der’s we
web
b. It is easy
to identify some initial resemblances. Jacked-in as we are to a world
where images are images of images and signs are signs of signs, it
becomes increasingly
increasingly difficult to find a foothold, and to identify the
vital from the peripheral or the real from the virtual. As interesting
as the culture of simulacra or the ‘desert of the real’ may be, our
focus is on reframing this postmodern spider’s web in terms of a
network. Such a network is the current milieu. This network milieu
provides a fecund environment in which to re-examine the relation-
ship of mythos to logos. These ever-expanding webs, spun by this
‘implied spider’ constitute what Taylor terms ‘network culture’.8 The
network has become a defining paradigm of the emerging ‘moment
of complexity’ in which we live. ‘What distinguishes the moment of
complexity is not change as such but rather the acceleration of the
change’ (MC , 3). This ‘moment’ is ‘betwixt and between a period
that seemed more stable and secure’ ( MC , 3). In the ‘irreducible’ and
‘inescapable’ (MC , 3) ‘moment of complexity’, the structure and
logic of the network is not closed, sequential or linear. It is instead
open, distributed and constantly in unanticipatable flux. In his book
Hiding (itself
(itself an interfacing of text and image circuitry that forms
125
networks within networks), Taylor describes the non-foundational

foundation
foundation of the netwo
network
rk in the age of complexity
complexity::
Neither totalizing structures that repress differences nor opposi-
tional differences that exclude commonality are adequate in the
plurality of worlds that constitute the postmodern condition. To
think what poststructuralism leaves unthought is to think a non-
totalizing structure that nonetheless acts as a whole. Such a structure
would be neither a universal grid organizing opposites nor a dia-
lectical system synthesizing opposites but a seamy web in which
what comes together is held apart and what is held apart comes
together. . . . In the postmodern culture of simulacra, we are
gradually coming to realize that complex communication webs
and information networks, which function holistically but not
totalistically, are the milieu in which everything arises and passes
away. These webs and networks are characterized by a distinctive
logic that distinguishes them from classical structures and dialecti-
cal systems. (emphasis added, H , 325)
As Taylor
Taylor makes pl
plain,
ain, the network is the inescapable milieu in which
we find ourselves. He observes that the non-totalizing network is
something like an unthought remains of post-structuralism. In
the wake of post-structuralism, the ‘seamy web’ that remains to be
thought stages a double movement that simultaneously gathers and
disperses, seminates and disseminates, in which, as Taylor puts it,
‘what comes together is held apart and what is held apart comes
together.’ The ‘relation’ in such a ‘system’ is neith
neither
er binary (‘a
(‘ a univer-
sal grid organizing opposites’)
opposites’) nor the synthesizing of opposites into
a unity. The non-totalizing network slips and slides between these
two. Such a ‘system’ operates ‘holistically’, but not ‘totalistically’.
There are always remains that are integral to constituting the system
(and are therefore ‘foundational’) that nevertheless elude being
accounted for fully
ful ly by it (and are therefore non-foundational). Taylor
forcefully argues, first in Hiding , then in The Moment of Complexity:
Emerging Network Culture (a wide-lens exploration of the field of
complexity studies), and most recently in After God , that not all
systems and structures ‘necessarily totalize and inevitably repress’
(MC , 65). The ‘distinctive
‘di stinctive logic’ that governs the network reveals that
the network is ‘a nontotalizing structure that nonetheless acts as a
whole.’ According to Taylor, such structures have yet to be seriously
126
considered by philosophy and religion, which still operate, for the

most part, according to outmoded conceptions of systems and
structures, and are, therefore, constantly struggling with the limited
alternatives of repressive identity and oppositional difference.
Tayloring Myth and Network
The current milieu of the non-totalizing network that acts as a

whole, but nevertheless does not totalize, urges a re-examination of
our assumptions
assumptio ns about systems and structures. It is crucial to reframe
the relation of mythos and logos in this context. The neglect and
denigration of mythos that stem from an outdated understanding
of systems and structures is unacceptable. Instead, the relation of
mythos and logos can be more fully understood in terms of the
dynamics
dyna mics of open, adaptiv
adaptivee systems (of the sort Ta
Taylor
ylor is concerned
with) that continually figure and disfigure everything
everythi ng from biology to
economic markets. Unfortunately, while Taylor’s insights into such
dynamics are cogent to this task, his own brief discussion of myth
still bears the marks of dated structuralist presuppositions. Taylor
contributes a vital realignment by revealing the prescriptive (rather
than simply descriptive) nature of complex, adaptive, self-organizing
networks, and by including myth in his discussion. Nonetheless, he
falls back into upholding traditional prejudices against myth,
myth, failing
to conceive it with the prescriptive ‘logic’ of non-foundational,
complex, adaptive systems that he insists upon. 9 In this failing, he
privileges logos, reinscribing age-old (and, as we have seen, errone-
ous) assumptions about myth. His traditionalist presuppositions
about mythos remain as an untouched crypt crypt at the core of his think-
ing. Such remains continually disfigure his ‘creative’, ‘alternative’
figurations.
As noted, Taylor seeks to think what post-structuralism has left
unthought. His nuanced
nuanced revisioning of complexity studies through
through a
Derridean lens is piv
pivotal
otal to twenty-first-c
twenty-first-century
entury thought. This proj-
ect shares, to some extent, Taylor’s objective. However, he stipulates
that ‘deconstructive criticism is not enough – it is also necessary to
articulate alternative structures that can inform creative cultural pro-
duction and effective sociopolitical transformation’ (AG , 11). Taylor
considers deconstructive analysis insufficient precisely because it is
‘impossible for poststructuralists to move beyond the moment of
criticism
criticis m to fashion new structures that promote creativity’ (AG , 12).10
127
As the discussion of Derrida’

Derrida’ss gift llater
ater in this chapter will elucidate
elucidate,,
this study does not share Taylor’s assessment of deconstruction as
only criticism that, by its nature, disallows the emergence of new
dynamics of thought. Taylor is equally critical of structuralism and
recognizes its
it s failures. Structurali
Structuralism’
sm’ss adherence to fixed forms leaves
it unable to ‘explain how these structures emerge and change over
time’ (AG , 12). Therefore, from his perspective, it is requisite that any
new theory, whether of religion, politics, economics or, in this case,
myth,
plagued must avoid
both falling victim
structuralism and,to
tothe same
some shortcomings
extent, that have
post-structuralism.
In response to this imperative, Taylor reconceives religion as a com-
plex, adaptive system that does not necessarily totalize and repress,
the figuration of which includes, as a condition of its possibility,
disfiguration. This purposeful re-evaluation is seminal to the twenty-
first century study of all structures
structures,, whether of religion, philosoph
philosophyy,
thought and so forth. The study of myth is no exception. This project
is driven by a similar insistence: unbiased by historical habituation,
we are called to re-evaluate
re-evaluate the relation of mythos and logos in order
to understand it otherwise. The ‘logic’ of open, non-totalizing struc-
tures, such as Derrida’s
De rrida’s gift and Taylor’s
Taylor’s network, are important tools
for reconstellating our understanding of mythos and its relationship
to logos.
Taylor astutely observes that the complexity of the network is
inescapable. In other words, this ‘nontotalizing structure that
nonetheless acts as a whole’ is the means by which human beings
experience the world and process that experience (or, in Taylor’s
terms, ‘screen information’). In introducing myth, he enforces this
inescapability: ‘While there are many ways to weave meaning from
the multiple strands of experience, two are particularly important:
theory and myth’ (MC , 210). He continues by asserting that myth
(along with theory) is comprised of ‘networks of networks of sym-
bols’ (MC , 210). Furthermore,
Furthermore, ‘just as networks of symbols comprise
myths, so different myths form networks . . . Constituting a structure
bordering on the fractal, myths are networks of networks made up
of nodes within nodes’ (MC , 212). Importantly, Taylor recognizes
that myths are ‘networks of networks’. Since Taylor demonstrates
that networks are ‘nontotalizing structures’
st ructures’,, then it follows that m
myth,
yth,
as a non-totalizing network, both figures and disfigures, as all net-
works do. However
However,, thi
thiss is not what Taylor
Taylor cconcludes.
oncludes. He pres
presents
ents h
his
is
128
‘distinctive logic’ in order to underscore his argument’s critical line

of thought, but he fails to extend it to myth.11
Taylor insists – in both The Moment of Complexity and After God – –
that myths are ‘networks of symbols’. Yet, by neglecting the network
dynamic of myth, and equating m myth
yth with symbol, he inste
instead
ad upholds
the traditional Platonic distinctions between mythos and logos, rein-
scribing outmoded assumptions about their relation. This effectively
favours logos and ignores the indecidability
indecidability of mythos. As we ha
h ave seen,
however, mythos is inherently neither verifiable nor non-verifiable,
forever oscillating between the two. Additionally,
Additionally, it is not simply
s imply con-
tained within logos and united with it in synthesis, nor is it entirely
separate from it either, as a binary opposite. This is why myth, as
understood within the parameters laid out in the previous chapters,
cannot simply be aligned with or explained by symbols. As its ety-
mology implies, a symbol throws things together. 12 Its action is to
gather and unite. Such an activity mirrors the operation of logos as it
moves toward savoir absolu. In contrast, we have seen that mythos,
while also gathering, works in a double movement simultaneously
dispersing, even as it collects. Many theorists of myth have ignored
these disseminative
dis seminative aspects
aspects.. Mythos both constructs and deconstructs,
just as the text of Glas, for example, both cuts and pastes. While
mythos shares with disseminates

it also irrepresibly symbol the taskandofdisrupts
gathering elements
those together,
very elements.
Unlike symbols, which only configure, mythos intrinsically both fig-
ures and disfigures. It resists every attempt to reduce it to symbol, to
the sole act of uniting, as we have seen in our exploration of Plato’s
Phaedrus and Derrida’s Glas. Taylor, like generations of theorists
before him, glances at mythos through a logocentric lens, ignoring its
disseminative aspects. Consequently, he considers mythos only in
terms of the singular act of figuring, turning a blind eye to the disfig-
uring that is also inescapably in play. Restricting mythos in this
manner allows it to be infused with dangerous ideologies that con-
struct and reinforce repressive neo-foundationalisms. 13
When Taylor
Taylor corresponds myth to symbol in just this way
way,, it is clear
that the mythos he refers to is one that has been, in his own vernacular
vernacular,,
‘screened’ through logos. Taylor
Taylor defines
def ines ‘‘screening’
screening’ as follows:
A screen, then, is more like a permeable membrane than an

impenetrable wall; it does not simply divide but also joins by
129
simultaneously keeping out and letting through. As such, a screen

is something like a mesh or net forming the site of passage thr
through
ough
which elusive differences slip and slide by crossing and crisscross-
ing. . . . The duplicity of the screen is captured in the verb: to
screen means both to conceal and to show. ( MC , 199–200)
Filtered (screened) through logos, mythos is represented in language

as decidable and unitary, concealing the ever-differentiating and dis-
seminating dynamic of mythos. Logos has no option but to keep
mythos out,
Allowing whilethrough
mythos simultaneously
does notand inescapably
merge letting
it with logos intoitathrough.
totality
totality..
Mythos retains its ‘elusive differences’. Taylor does not extend his
use of screen to his considera
consideration
tion of my
myth.
th. As a result, mythos, as he
views it, has been arrested. He does not
n ot acknowledge it as the indecid-
able excess that it inescapably is.14 He attends only to its ability to
integrate and synthesize, ignoring its deconstructive
deconstruc tive propensities alto-
gether. His configuration fails, therefore,
therefore, to enc
encompass
ompass the complexity
and inescapability of a much more originary, radically unknowable
and indeterminable mythos that constructs and deconstructs logos.
It is noteworthy that Taylor, who demands rigor in thinking the
complex, disseminative
disse minative non-f
non-foundational
oundational foundation of the network,
does not apply similar rigor to thinking myth. This is all the more
surprising since he recognizes myth as a network. Perhaps this is
just a slip in The Moment of Complexity, a faux pas pas? However, since
Taylor’s After God exhibits
exhibits the same fault, it is clear that a skewered
integration
integra tion of his own insight is at work
work.. In After God , just as in The
Moment of Complexity, he seems intent on cementing the possibility
of myth to the exclusion and outright denial of its impossibility.
While Taylor
Taylor typically pur
pursues
sues (unl
(unlike
ike many w who
ho work hard to deny)
the underbelly of thought and the tears in thinking, he uncharacter-
istically avoids re-examining myth through the lens that he has
painstakingly crafted. Instead, he falls back into the age-old philo-
sophic presupposition that
that views myth onlonly
y in terms of logos. That is,
only in terms of its capacity to gather and synthesize toward a spe-
cific
shares(and sometimes
similar ities (andideological)
similarities imitations) end.
llimitations) Such anatten
with Hegel’s attenuated
attenuated mythos
uated difference
that has been subsumed within identity.
Taylor’s discussion of myth in the figuring operation of schemata
offers another window into his logocentric blind spots in viewing
mythos. Early in After God he declares that:
130
Religion is an emergent, complex, adaptive network of symbols,

myths,
myth s, and rituals that, on the one hand, figure schema
schemata
ta of feel-
ing, thinking, and acting in ways that lend life meaning and
purpose and, on the other, disrupt, dislocate, and disfigure every
stabilizing structure. (AG , 12)
At first glance, it appears that Taylor is insisting on a simultaneous

double movement of figuring and disfiguring without privileging
either aspect (i.e. figuration or disfiguration). Furthermore, it seems
that he attributes this double movement not only to religion, but also
to myth (along with symbol and ritual). However, despite his ambig-
uous use of the plural verb (‘figure’), it becomes abundantly clear a
few pages later that he is not referring to myth in terms of disfigur-
ing. In addition, he decidedly privileges, at times, the constructive
(as opposed to deconstructive) aspects of schemata, including his
schema of religion. Taylor desires to schematize the operations of
complex, adaptive systems. To this end, he provides an actual figure
of a ‘symbolic/cognitive network’ (AG , 19), and neatly positions
myth inside it. This is used
use d to illustrate that myth is not just explained
by the symbolic and cognitive, but is also located within it. Just a few
pagess earlier (amid another set of diagr
page diagrams),
ams), he prefaces the ‘symbolic/
cognitive’ diagram by pointing out that ‘myths and symbols function
as schemata’ (AG , 16). Taylor places myths at the ‘highest level of

schematization’ because they ‘integrate
schematization’ ‘ integrate sense experience, information,
and knowledge into patterns that provide meaning and purpose’
(AG , 19). This inadequate conclusion inadvertently provides several
important clues,
clues, exposing his single-lensed, scotomic view of mythos.
According to Taylor, myths ‘integrate’ and ‘provide meaning and
purpose’. In other words, their sole function is to collect and synthe-
size. Any
Any consideration of their inherent deconstructive propensitie
propensitiess
is overlooked. Once again, Taylor equates myth and symbol. His
one-sided perspective
perspective disregards the vital disfiguring aspect of mythos
and its irreducible indecidability, like so many thinkers before him.
Although Taylor insists upon the need to consider the inherent
deconstructive potentialities of religion (while giving lip service to
the disfiguring aspects of schemata), his blinders render him unable
to recognize that the same disruptive dynamic inhabits mythos. He
continues to envision myth as a master narrative
nar rative that gathers,
gathers, synthe-
sizes and constructs, and rightly recognizes that myth defined by
such a limited function often instates just the sorts of constrictive
131
ideologies and neo-foundationalisms he exposes in the pages of his

analysis. What he fails to recognize, however, is that such a vision
of mythos is seriously flawed in just the ways he himself is quick to
spot and insist upon elsewhere
elsewhere.. Construction is only part of mythos’
dynamic; it simultaneously
si multaneously dec
deconstru
onstructs.
cts. As noted previous
previously
ly,, T
Taylor’
aylor’ss
schematization
schema tization is not the work of mythos as mythos, but is rather that
of mythos as screened through and in relation to logos. Such a view is
logocentric
logocent ric because iitt grants logos the ultimate authority over mythos,
repressing and ignoring the inescapable indecidability of mythos,
along with its disseminative action, which continually undermines
every formulation and foundation.
Schemata are models used to ‘make useful predictions’ ( AG , 13),
and as such, are descriptive. This descriptive model arises from the
desire to attain savoir absolu, to calculate, generalize and make a sys-
tematic map. Furthermore, it assumes that it is possible to represent
every aspect that comprises it. This limits its contents only to those
things that are recognizably present and fully expressible
expressibl e in language.
Therefore, the nature of such schemata depends upon the assump-
tion that all information is already made accessible through logos.
Taylor reinvokes and reifies what he had subverted in Hiding by
assuming that mythos only integrates and synthesizes to achieve
meaning and purpose, and thus he fails to acknowledge
ack nowledge the meaning-
lessness and purposelessness that, in shaping both meaning and
purpose, nevertheless remain to rend and fissure any attempt simply
to integrate and schematize. Such endeavours neglect to recognize
the inherent impossibility of every figuration.
figuration. The gagathering
thering of logos
is always,
always, to some extent, foiled by the disseminating action of mythos
that gives rise to logos, faulting it from within as a non-absent
absence.
In After God , Taylor oscillates between the prescriptive and
descriptive
descript ive.. However,
However, he eleleva
evates
tes the d descript
escriptive
ive in his eeff
fforts
orts to delin-
eate a schema of religion, which he nonetheless insists operates
prescriptively
prescript ively.. In
I n Ta
Taylor’s
ylor’s words
words,, ‘descrip
‘ descriptive
tive represe
representations
ntations p provide
rovide
models of the world that serve as models for activity in the world’
(AG , 17). He also asserts that his work is prescriptive, declaring in
The Moment of Complexity that ‘we are, in effect, incarnations of
worldwide webs and global networks’ ( MC , 17) and, in After God ,
that religion is network, and that ‘you cannot understand the world
today if you do not understand religion’ ( AG , 1).15 Yet he fails to
extend that analysis to myths as networks. His engagement with myth
132
is strictly and restrictively descriptive. Instead of positing that myths

are networks, his descriptive framework claims that it is as if myths
are networks. As Taylor
Taylor demonstrates, despite his oversight, networks
can only be properly understood prescriptively, not descriptively.
Mythos is network, and network is the current milieu.
Taylor clearly underscores, in The Moment of Complexity, that he
is not just providing a metaphor or model for understanding
unders tanding when he
adamantly declares that ‘we are . . . incarnations’ of complex, adap-
tive networks (MC , 17). However, as if in an attempt to disrupt his
own descriptive line of analysis, After God ’s ’s schemata return to an
impossible impasse that they nonetheless attempt
attempt to surmount in the
subsequent pages. Descriptive figures, schemata, models and maps
are imperfect and insufficient.16 Taylor explains:
Insofar as every figure presupposes the process of figuring, it

includes as a condition of its own possibility something that can-
not be figured.
figured . That is to ssay
ay,, figures ‘‘include’
include’ but do not iincorporate
ncorporate
something that can be neither represented nor comprehended.
Figures, therefore, are always disfigured as if from within. (AG , 20)
When Taylor writes ‘as if’, he collapses his prescriptive imperative

into a descriptive one. Therefore, the statement should be rewritten
in order to express what we have come to see about the relation of
figuring and disfiguring: figures are always disfigured from within
(omitting the conditional, descriptive as if ).
). Just as thought presup-
poses what it cannot think, every figure prefigures the impossibility
of figuring. Arising from within them, even though not properly
present, are always already elements that cannot be mapped, schema-
tized, represented or incorporated. Taylor sometimes appears to get
lost in his models. His understanding of myth and its exclusive
connection to meaning arrives through logos and the possible, the
schema, and not through the impossible and the ever-oscillating
indecidability of mythos. Mythos and logos are intimately tied to the
possibility and the speaks.17 Thought
the impossibility of which Blanchot speaks
arises out of and exists in an inescapable relation to that which is
unable to be thought. The unable to be thought is the very condition
of thought; it summons it. Nonetheless, thought does not eradicate
what it cannot conjure. An unable-to-be-thought always remains. To
probe that which underlies thought and provides its contours is not
to sketch out a schema, but to trace the very impossibility by which
133
thinking and experiencing is possible. Such an action is disfiguring,

not scheming. The result, therefore, is not a schema or a map, but
rather a network, replete with aporetic fissures, that resists schemati-
zation and disfigures every attempt to figure it. For this reason, the
relation of mythos and logos can much more accurately be conceptu-
alized in terms of a network as network (and not as schemata), and
as a gift that is, as I suggest below, a (dis)figure of the impossible. In
a relation understood in this way, mythos both figures the impossible
and, in so doing, impossibly disfigures.
THE GIFT, IF THERE IS A GIFT

Without a Present
Within the emerging

emerging ‘moment of complexity’,
complexity’, the relation of mythos
and logos must be thought otherwise. Mythos and logos are not in a
binary or dialectical relationship,
relationship, but instead, exist in a ‘double rela-
tion’, a relation that is, in effect, a relation without relation. Mythos
and logos form a network, a ‘nontotalizing structure that nonetheless
acts as a whole’, as we have
have established. Such a structure is impossible
impo ssible
to figure, at least in any conventional manner. Network, as Taylor
portrays
portra ys it, and gift, as Derrida represents it, are figures of the impos-
sible, and disfigurations of the possible. They provide, therefore, a
means by which
which to (dis)figure the relation of mythos and logos.
The gift, as Derrida would have it, exists in relationship to the
economy. Even though the gift, as will become clear, is aneconomic,
it is by definition always already inextricable from the economy. This
relation is not dialectical or binary. Like that of mythos to logos, it is
otherwise. In the beginning of his analysis of gift, Derrida notes the
etymological root of economy, which connects it to law ( nomos) and
home (oikos).18 The economic is also specular, or mirror-like. Such a
‘motif of circulation can lead one to think that the law of economy
is the – circular – return to the point of departure
departure,, to the origin, also
to the home’ (GT , 7). The circularity of Hegel’s system re-emerges,
for similarly, that motif leads one to think that thought always
\returns – full circle – to itself. It becomes present to itself, finally
achieving savoir absolu. Derrida designates such structures ‘odyssean’:
‘odyssean’:
‘Oikonomia would always follow the path of Ulysses’ ( GT , 7) who
returns home after his long journey. As encountered previously,
the unity of savoir absolu can only be achieved by leaving home.
134
Identity must seek itself elsewhere – in difference – in order to find

itself and return home matured into its full identity, completed now
by carrying difference within it. That is, oikonomia always seeks a
homecoming, a return to itself. Its journey is but ‘a provisional exile
longing for reappropriation’ (emphasis added, GT , 7). The economic
gift shares that circular economy because in giving a gift, one accrues
a debt for which a counter-gift or repayment is expected. By fulfilling
that ‘obligation’, the gift giver and receiver return to their original
starting point, each enriched by appropriating the other’s contri-
bution. This dynamic mimics the operation of the dialectic in its
movement toward savoir absolu, as it asassimilates
similates d
difference.
ifference. Howe
However
ver,,
as we now understand, complete reappropriation and return (savoir
absolu) is not ultimately achievable.
The gift is an aspect of this economic circulation that is not eco-
nomical, and yet nonetheless puts the economy into motion. It is this
gift that interests Derrida, the one that ‘would no doubt be related to
economy’, but ‘also that which interrupts economy’ ( GT , 7). Such a
gift, ‘in suspending economic calculation, no longer gives rise to
exchange’ and tears ‘open the circle so as to defy reciprocity or
symmetry . . . so as to turn aside the return in view of the no-return
no-return’’
(GT , 7). Yet, this gift cannot properly be deemed a ‘gift’, since it
eludes exchange. It is not present, and therefore cannot be intention-
ally given (or withheld). A ‘gift’ such as this must ‘not come back to
the giving . . . It must not circulate, it must not be exchanged’ (GT , 7).
‘[T]here must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, counter-gift, or
debt. . . . whether this restitution is immediate or whether it is
programmed
pro grammed byby a complex calculation of a long-term deferral or dif-
ference’ (GT , 12).19 A gift such as the one Derrida refers to is not
limited by economy, because it is not exchanged per se, and therefore
is not given with the expectation of reciprocation. In other words, it
is ‘aneconomic’ (GT , 7). As ‘aneconomic’, the gift ‘remains foreign to
the circle’ (GT , 7). Nonetheless,
Nonetheles s, ‘it must
must keep a relation of for
foreignness
eignness
to the circle, a relation without relation of familiar foreignness’
(emphasis added, GT , 7). There is, therefore, a relation, albeit an
improper one, between economy and the non-economic gift. gi ft. In keep-
ing ‘a relation of foreignness’, it is ‘outside’ the circular economy,
and not properly related
related to it. This exteriority ‘sets the circle going, it
is the exteriority that puts the economy in motion. It is this exterior-
ity that engages in the circle and makes it turn’ (GT , 30). Therefore,
the circle depends upon this exteriority that nonetheless disrupts
135
circularity, relation, reciprocity and reappropriation. Just as thought

includes – and is in fact summoned by – that which it cannot think,
the circle and the economy are founded on and engendered by that
which is foreign to the circle and tthus
hus resis
resists
ts economy
economy.. The gift main-
tains a ‘relation without
wi thout relation’ to the economy that cannot account
for it. This ‘relation without relation’ is not that of the identity of
identity-and-difference, precisely because the aneconomic gift is not
(a) present, it does not offer itself up for comparison
comparison..
For just this reason, Derrida speaks of the gift hypothetically
hypothetically with
the condition, ‘if there is a gift’. To do so otherwise (to posit the gift
as given, which is impossible since it is not present as such) would
annul the gift, reinscribing it within the limits of a speculative
economy. The ‘ “present” of the gift, is no longer thinkable as a now,
that is, as a present bound up in the temporal synthesis’ (GT , 9).20
Lacking presence, it cannot be received (as a gift). Neither present
nor absent, it ruptures every economy of presence and circular
exchange. Therefore, the gift can never be given (for what could be
given if nothing presents itself), nor received, nor given back in
return. ‘If there is any’ simultaneously maintains, as we shall see, the
impossible of the gift (the means by which it is possible), and that
which prevents the gift from ever being (a) present.
(Dis)figures of the Impossible
Since the gift

Therefore, it isisanot (a) present,
(dis)figure of theitsimpossible.
giving cannot
‘Forbe apprehended.
there to be gift,’
says Derrida, ‘it is necessary that the gift not even appear, that it not
be perceived or received as gift’ ( GT , 16). This requires tha
thatt both the
donor and recipient
not perceive or receive the gift as such, have no consciousness of

it, no memory, no recognition; he or she must also forget it right
away [à l’instant] and moreover this forgetting must be so radical
that it exceeds even the psychoanalytic categoriality of forgetting.
(GT , 16)
There is no gift, as Derrida speaks of it, without absolute fforgettin

orgetting.
g.
As absolute, this forgetting ‘unbinds absolutely’ (GT , 16) and loosens
136
the gift from memory,

memory, consciousness
conscious ness and even thinking. Nonet
Nonetheless,
heless,
absolute forgetting is not a void either, as Derrida explains:
Even though it must leave nothing behind it, even though it must
efface everything, including the traces of repression, this forget-
ting, this forgetting of the gift cannot be a simple non-experience,
forgetting
a simple non-appearance, a self-effacement that is carried off with
what it effaces. (GT , 17)
Such forgetting is not an either/or, but a neither/nor: neither experi-

ence nor non-experience. It oscillates entre deux. Absolute forgetting
is not nothing, which, as the opposite of something, is itself a categ
category
ory,,
a something.
bered, that theNor
mindis can
this illuminate
forgetting and
something thatthe
bring into canclear
be remem-
light of
conscious memory. As neither/nor, the gift event is improper and out
of joint because, as Derrida elucidates, it comes about, it happens
in an instant, in an instant that no doubt does not belong to the

economy of time, in a time without time, in such a way that the
forgetting forgets, that is it forgets itself , but also in such a way
that this forgetting, without being something present, presentable,
determinable sensible or meaningful, is not nothing . (emphasis
added, GT , 17)
Neither nothing nor a presentable something, the gift event operates

between the simple alternatives
alternatives of presence and abse
absence
nce.. The gift of
this forgetting (which, of course, cannot be recognized as a gift) is
that it ‘give[s] us to think . . . something other than a philosophical
. . . category’
c ategory’ (GT , 17). In opening up philosophy
phil osophy to ‘something other’
than the philosophical – to that which philosophy cannot receive,
give or think – the gift, which is ‘foreign’ to philosophy, simultane-
ously makes philosophy possible. The impossible gives rise to the
possible, but the possible, nonetheless, opens out into the impossible.
There is a curious double movement between these two. Although a
(dis)figure of the impossible, the gift is not impossible. Le don, s’il y
en a is not (possibly) (a) present. But it exists nonetheless.
Even though the gift event is anachronistic, aneconomic and not
fully present, a trace of it nonetheless remains within the economy
137
and logos. This remaining, however, is not recollectable or presentable.

Instead, it remains as a non-absent absence, which is not to say as a
memory of forgetting, which would be a forgetting that remembers.
As Derrida suggests:
[A]t stake in this forgetting that carries beyond any present is the
gift as remaining [restance] without memory, without permanence,
without consistency, without substance or subsistence; at stake is
this rest that is without being (it), beyond Being, epekeina tes
ousias. The secret of that about which one cannot speak, but which
one can no longer silence. (emphasis added, GT , 147)
There is a crucial distinction here between ‘the impossible’ and

‘impossible’. The gift is a (dis)figure of the impossible, but it is not
impossible. In other words, it does exist, but does not have Being.
Derrida explains this often misunderstood point: ‘I never said that
there is no gift. No. I said exactly the opposite.’ 21 If the gift were
impossible, it could never come about in any fashion. It could not
exist. Derrida underscores s’il y en a. He is not after a ‘revelation or
unveiling or adequation’ (OTG , 72); he is not seeking an ontological
category
catego ry.. Rather
Rather,, the impossible of the gift, which is not impossible, is
precisely that it escapes these categories (i.e. economy and presence)
that make it abundantly possible to language, thought, and philoso-
phy as logos. Importantly, the impossible ‘is not simply an impossible
experience’ (OTG , 72), which, as it suggests, occurs (or does not
occur) within‘an
tion behind theimpossible
categoriesexperience’
of possibility. Thesuch
is that underlying assump-
an experience is
ultimately possible. The gift eludes all such categoriality.
Thomas Carlson draws out this important subtlety in his study
of the phenomenology of the gift in Jean-Luc Marion and Derrida.
Carlson observes that there is a notable difference between that
‘about which one cannot speak’ and that ‘which one can no longer
silence’ (I , 226). On the one hand, it is impossible to speak of the gift,
since it does not present itself to thought and speech. Yet, on the
other hand, the silence
si lence enshrouding the gift becomes deafening. It is,
therefore, impossible not to speak of it. In fact, the gift event gives
rise to thought and speech. As Carlson explains,
‘the impossible’ articulates this double bind: it engenders

thought, speech, and desire that remain oriented around what,
138
precisely, thought, speech, and desire can never attain. Indeed, the
impossible might well engender thought, speech, and desire to
the very extent that it announces itself and yet remains inaccessible.
inaccessible.
(I , 226)
Mythos is both what logos cannot speak about, and what logos can
no longer silence. It is the impossible, like the gift, that ‘engender[s]
thought, speech, and desire to the very extent that it announces
itself and yet remains inaccessible.’ In this way, the gift maintains a
simultaneous relation (albeit, of no conventional sort) to both the
impossible and the
the possible. It moves between these two. Just as the
impossible ‘might well engender’ logos while nonetheless remaining
inaccessible to it, mythos (as an event) gives rise to logos, even while
remaining inaccessible (in other words, unlogofiable) to it. Logos and
mythos are co-emergent. We must be careful not to oversimplify their
relation
relation by attemptin
attempting g to delineate it in terms of the founde
founderr ( mythos)
and the founded (logos). There cannot be one without the other. As
we saw in regard to the emergence of the event of play in Chapter 3,
the emergence
emergence of logos from mythos is not a linear process paradigm.
Mythos and logos, like the impossible
impossible and the possible of the gift, are
always
alwa ys already in relation. Since this rela
relation
tion is not an ordinary rela-
tion in the economy of presence, it is a relation ‘without’ relation.
The ‘without’ marks the impossibility of presence and serves as a
reminder of the fact that the gift is not (a) present.
Relations
As we have seen, the purpose of deconstruction is not to escape
or transcend structure or philosophy. It maintains an intimate, but
non-dialectical and non-binary, relation to structure. As Taylor
expresses it: ‘the codependence of figuring and disfiguring shows
why neither structuralism nor poststructuralism (i.e. deconstruction)
taken by itself is adequate’ (AG , 308).22 The nontotalizing network
of mythos and logos demonstrates just that. Such a non-totalizing
structure always maintains a relation to traditional structure, even
though it is not limited to it, just as mythos always preserves a rela-
tion to logos, and logos to mythos. In regard to the gift, escaping
or transcending circularity or economy is impossible. Such a desire
is an unfulfilable, errant fantasy. Derrida affirms this in speaking of
the gift:
139
One should not necessarily flee or condemn circularity as one

would a bad repetition, a vicious circle, a regressive or sterile pro-
cess. One must, in a certain way of course, inhabit the circle, turn
around in it, live there
there a feast of thinking, and the gift, the gift of
thinking would be no stranger there. (GT , 9)
Even though the gift is the impossible and, as such, does not present
itself to thought or speech, or occur in an apprehendable time, it
nonetheless makes the presentable actions of thought and speech
possible, thus inhabiting them without being limited and defined by
them. The kinship between the impossible and the possible can only
occur as a ‘relation without relation’, which escapes all attribution,
and cannot be related to the possible in any traditional way. This
‘relation without relation’ lacks a definable identity that would allow
one to draw a simple analogy, for example. Therefore the ‘without’
signals that intangible dynamic that prohibits collapsing the relation
of the impossible and the possible, or mythos and logos, into a
straightforward kinship. Yet, the impossible and the possible, like
mythos and logos, nonetheless stand in vital relation to each other.
Carlson elucidates the nature of this ‘relation without relation’:
relation’:
[T]he impossible is not simply cut off from and opposed to the
possible (which might be realized in knowledge or experience).
Rather, the possible circles around the impossible. The impossible
sets the circle of the possible moving, and thus stands with it in a
‘relation without relation’. (I , 227)
The impossible, which cannot be entirely grasped or conceptualized,

engenders the possible – that which we think, experience, grasp and
know. The impossible ‘sets’ the possible into motion, even while
remaining itself withdrawn from the sphere of the possible. However,
remaining itself withdrawn from the sphere of the possible. However,
this does not imply tha
thatt the impossible is sensu stricto impossible. As
Carlson explains it:
If the gift were simply impossible, rather than the impossible, it

could not maintain the relation that it does with possible thought,
language, and desire. It remains, after all, possible to think of,
speak about, and desire the impossible. But such possible thought,
language, and desire occur as such only in relation to the impos-
sible that feeds them; their fulfillment or actualization – their
140
conversion into ‘philosophy, science and the order of presence’ –

would be their annulment. It is precisely the impossible that
remains to be thought, spoken, or desired; it remains in what is not
yet thought, spoken, or desired, in what might still remain possible
poss ible
for thought, language, and desire. (I , 227)
The impossible always remains, but these remains are not present. It
calls forth the possible and is always within it, giving to the possible
its contours
contou rs and depth. To convert the impossible into that which can
be spoken, thought and actualized is to annul it by turning it into the
possible. However, as with difference that always remains despite
dialectical synthesis,
synthesis, in spite of attem
attempts
pts to annul the impossible, the
impossible still always remains. This is true
tr ue on two counts
counts.. First, there
t here
is always that which has not yet been thought or spoken, and so
therefore remains. Second, there is the extent to which the impossible
forever remains as the impossible because there is that which cannot
be said, thought, actualized or given over to presence or receivability.
Not even savoir absolu has recourse to the impossible remains. The
impossible (gift), therefore, simultaneously figures and disfigures
the possible.
Mythos functions as the impossible gift even
event,
t, figuring and disfig-
uring logos. It gives, no thanks to giving. Its involuntary giving is
improper and without purposeful intentionality. The economy of
logos is set into motion by the mythos -gift event that always already
exceeds the economy it engenders, even as it participates in it. Just as
there can be no gift without the economy that it transgresses, and no
economy without the gift-event that exceeds it and puts it into play
(even as the gift-event simultaneously undermines the circular, eco-
nomic path), there can be no logos apart from the unforeseeable
irruption and interruption
interruption of mythos. Reciprocally, mythos cannot be
made visible (to the extent that it can be expressed) without logos. As
we have seen, mythos gives rise to logos, and logos, in turn, makes
some presence of mythos possible. Nonetheless, this presencing still
exceeds the limitations of representation. Once mythos makes itself
present – necessarily and inescapably by means of logos – it is no
longer purely mythos. In other words, it has been screened through
logos, and is inextricably bound to it. The mythos-gift event calls
forth structure, discourse and relation (logos), even while it destabi-
lizes these very elements.23 In this dynamic, when mythos is actualized
and made present (to the extent that it can be) through logos, it is no
141
longer merely a (dis)figure

(dis)figure of the impossible
impossible,, but also a figuration of
the possible that nonetheless perpetually disfigures and disrupts.
Mythos and the gift point to the impossibility (of which Blanchot
speaks) that underscores all possibility. They elude the capacity of
philosophy to properly conceptualize them. Therefore, they are not
philosophical; they are what Derrida refers to as ‘nonphilosophem
‘nonphilosophemes’. es’.
However, just as mythos gives rise to logos, that which is the impos-
sible for philosophy is also that which makes philosophic thought
possible. Without mythos, philosophy would be impossible. At the
same time, with mythos, philosophy as pure logos is impossible,
that is, untenable. Mythos ‘contaminates’ philosophy’s expression
with unacceptable components, such as indecidability. Understand-
ing mythos as the impossible
impossi ble gift again elucidates in ananother
other way ho
howw
mythos always already inhabits the possible, or logos, from within, as
an outside that is inside, simultaneously figuring and disfiguring
logos and the possible. If, like the gift, mythos is the impossible, it is
not impossible. On the contrary, mythos is behind (but not in any
linear fashion) thought, speech and experience. It sets these into
motion, giving life and thought the very fathomless contours that
drive and impassion it. Just as the impossible
impossi ble gift is spoken of, desired
and thought only in relation to the possible,
poss ible, mythos can be approached
only in its relation to logos. Mythos and logos co-emerge and shape
each other. Mythos gives rise to logos, and in turn, logos gives expres-
sion to mythos, enabling some of its aspects to be realized. The gift,
says Derrida,
is another name of the impossible

impossible,, we still think it, we name it, we
desire it. We intend it. And this even if or because or to the extent
that we never encounter it, we never know it, we never verify it, we
never experience it in its present existence or in its phenomenon.
(GT , 29)
Just as the impossible always shadows the possible, mythos always

shadows logos.24 Although its full phenomenon cannot be appre-
hended, it is present
p resent nonetheless as an absence that cannot be erased.
As we have seen, this ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ both slip between the
traditional modes of presence and absence
absence.. It is impossible to extricate
logos from mythos or mythos from logos. They co-emerge and exist
in a ‘relation without relation’. Thus, the gift event is mythos-logos .
Each always
always already summons the other. Our thinking is impassione
i mpassioned d
142
and set aglow by that which it cannot quite think. The impossible
always remains and gives, no thanks to giving, to the possible its
richness, engendering
The gift, like mythosits very not
, does possibility.
‘give’ in a traditional sense. It does
not give anything . How, therefore, is one to affirm the gift of mythos?
Although mythos inescapably shadows thinking and logos, it is not
explicitly apprehendable. That is, it is not rationally ‘thinkable’. Its
irreducible indecidability makes it too elusive for us to grasp fully
within the limitations of logos. This gives mythos an irreconcilably
ambiguous quality. Therefore, to affirm mythos in all of its excessive
irreducible indecidability is to acknowledge it in a way that takes this
elusiveness into account. It requires an unusual affirmation that is,
at its core, non-affirmative. This affirmation is not the customary
affirmation of something . Rather, non-affirmative affirmation ‘con-
sists not in affirming, upholding and withstanding what is’ because
it ‘does not answer to ontology any more than to the dialectic’
(APN , 48). It affirms ‘only by an excess of affirmation and, in this
surplus, affirming without anything being affirmed – finally affirm-
ing nothing. An affirmation by way of which everything escapes and
that, itself escaping, escapes unity’ (APN , 49). To affirm mythos
in this manner (that does not assert a thing or a totality), is thus
to disfigure logos by acknowledging that which both escapes and
engenders it.
Far too often we see myth affirmed and theorized without this
acknowledgment.
acknow ledgment. Such strict one-sidedness either heralds or demon-
izes it. All too easily we slip into this temptation, much as Plato
did in ignoring the simultaneous multiple meanings of pharmakon.
When sought
affirmative within the order of presence and metaphysics, the non-
affirmation
always runs the risk in placing itself in the service of force, of . . .

becoming an instrument of his domination, going so far as appear-
ing to grant to an ‘I’ who thinks it has attained it the arrogant
right to call itself hencef
henceforth
orth the great Affirmer
Affirmer.. ( APN , 49)
Historically mythos has been misidentified as a ‘great Affirmer’,

transformed into a surrogate for reason, ideology and logos. In this
guise it has been misused, and continues to be misused as a mandate
for conflicts and religious wars waged in the name of ‘truth’, or as
support for ideologies, like the master race of Nazism, for example.
143
These errant viewpoints, supposing themselves to be upheld by

mythos (as ‘The One’ truth), fail to recognize that, despite efforts to
control it and impose logocentric structures on it, neither falsifiable
nor non-falsifiable mythos disrupts and disseminates, undoing every
structural imposition from within. Left unexamined (as it continues
to be by much
much of philosophy and religious studies), the non-totalizing
non-totalizi ng
network of mythos will persist in i n being mistaken as a fixed structure
that only constructs. Depending upon one’s perspective, such con-
struction is either salvific or apocalyptic. Content will continue to
dictate relationship
relationship,, figuring every system. In this mode of thinking,
disfiguring is just a route towards figuring (after the model of
bringing difference into the fold toward savoir absolu). This way of
thinking is not
n ot tenable
tenable.. Instead, as we hav
havee seen, disfiguring
disf iguring is iimpos-
mpos-
sibly included (neither excluded nor absorbed) in figuring, which
nonetheless cannot delineate these disfigurations. Although we have
focused concerned
equally our attention
withonthe
philosophy’s denigration
error and perils of mythos
of the reverse,
reverse , we are
, upholding
mythos over logos. The assumption underlying either perspective is
that mythos is a singular, solely constructive entity. Such thinking
turns a blind eye to an irreducibly indecidable mythos that simul-
taneously figures and disfigures the complex network of mythos -
logos. The indecidability
indecidability of mythos prev
prevents
ents successful co-option and
closure, however determined the proponents of either side are to
deny that.
Affirming and thinking through mythos involves accepting that
doing so is incompatible with traditional pathways of thought. It
requires thinking without any expectation of arriving somewhere
certain. In this respect, being non-affirmative, it retains an inherent
emptiness. It takes into account the unaccountable, maintaining a
relation to the non-logofiab
non-l ogofiable,
le, the indecidable
indecidable,, and the n
non-dialectical
on-dialectical
components of thought. In contrast, ‘comprehensive thinking’ (beyond(beyond
being impossible since comprehension always harbours the incom-
prehensible) is unaware of its own unlogofiable aspects, its blind
spots.. It strives to synthesize and unify each aspect of thinking into a
spots
seamless whole. This stark difference perhaps explains how mythos
often comes to be equated with ideology. When mythos is ‘compre-
hended’ as ideology, or even as symbol (as Taylor constructs it), it
is co-opted by logocentric exigencies. Such ‘understanding’ fails
to acknowledge the network that brings mythos and logos together
as a non-synthetic and non-totalizing ‘whole’, while also holding
144
them apart. When mythos is understood solely in terms of its con-

structive aspect, it functions as a way of seeing. In this view, mythos
is not the eye that blinds (with tears), but the eye that imagines it sees
with absolute
of myth
my th are, incertainty. In thiswith
effect, aligned way,logos
many espousers
-insistent and proponents
philosophers, even
though they might like li ke to imagine themselves as profoundly different.
Both fail to acknowledge the indecidability of mythos and its
deconstructive actions. They erroneously assume that traditional,
structuralist models can sufficiently represent mythos and its relation
to logos. Each side’s limited perspective affirms one over and against
the other: either mythos (although not in its full indecidable ‘essence’)
over logos, or logos over mythos.25 These perspectives miss the ‘essence’
‘essenc e’
of mythos that both constructs and deconstructs logos, co-emerging
with it to form a non-synthetic network.
NO THANKS TO GIVING
It is impossible to speak
speak of mythos except in (and through) logos, and
it is precisely the gift-network that not only makes the mythos-logos
dynamic visible, but also allows access to mythos, as it is already
alre ady sum-
moned by logos. As demonstrated earlier, there can be no economy
without gift, and no gift without economy. Therefore, gift and econ-
omy come together (as a gift and not a present). In the same way,
mythos and logos figure and disfigure one another. They co-emerge
always
alwa ys already in a ‘rel
‘relation
ation without rel
relation’.
ation’. The gift-net
gift-network
work gives,
gives,
no thanks to giving. If it comes about with the express intention
of giving or of receiving thanks, it would no longer be the gift
that engenders
engenders the passion of thought and a ‘fea ‘feast
st of thinking’. ‘The
event and the gift,

unmotivated – forthe example,
event as gift, t he gift as event
the
disinterested’ (GT ,must be irruptive,
123), confirms
Derrida. Otherwise, such a ‘gift’ would be economic, intentional a
present, and not a true gift at all. The economic present acts not as
an enrichment, but more as a poison, because its presentation with
the expectation of a counter-‘gift’ imposes an indebtedness.
Mythos’ calling forth of logos is disinterested to the extent that
it bears no intended message to be communicated. This event (i.e.
mythos engendering logos) happens. It is neithor a teleological neces-
sity nor something that can be anticipated in advance. Tellingly,
Derrida’s reflections on the
th e gift are summoned by a narrative,
narrative, Charles
Baudelaire’s short story ‘Counterfeit Money’ ( La fausse monnaie).
145
In this tale, the narrator’s friend (unbeknown initially to the narra-

tor) passes off counterfeit money to a beggar on the street as an
apparent gift of generosity. Admitting this sets off the narrative.
Derrida’s discourse on the gift is founded on his insight
in sight that the event
of the aneconomic gift ( which we ha have
ve expre
expressed
ssed in terms of mythos)
happens unconditionally. It is not planned:
The gift, like the event, as event, must remain unforeseeable, but
remain so without keeping
keeping itself. It must let itself be structured by
the aleatory; it must appear chancy or in any case lived as such,
apprehended as the intentional correlate of a perception that is
absolutely surprised by the encounter with what it perceives,
beyond its horizon of anticipation – which already appears phe-
nomenologically impossible. . . . a gift or an event that would
be foreseeable, necessary, conditioned, programmed, expected,
counted on would not be lived as either a gift or as an event, as
required by necessity that is both semantic or phenomenological.
That is why the condition common to the gift and the event is a
certain unconditionality. (GT , 122–3)
The ‘condition of event’ is unanticipatable. It happens by chance. Its

condition is precisely that it is unconditional. Otherwise, it ‘would
not be lived as either a gift or an event’, but rather as an unremark-
able expectation. A programmed necessity (of the event or of the
gift) would annul the event, and reduce the would-be gift into noth-
ing but a present.
present. The gift of mythos, therefore, does not come about
out of some engineered necessity
necessity,, insistence or intention. Instead, the
gift of mythos emerges. Networks, explains Taylor, drawing upon
recent developments in complexity studies, are ‘never fixed’ and
‘neither programmed nor planned’ (MC , 213). Likewise, in networks
ne tworks,,
‘new meanings are rarely planned or programmed’, but rather,
are emergent (MC , 214). Such a structure is open, non-totalizing,
non-foundational and indeterminate. There is no centre, no master
blueprint, no foreseen purpose. In this way, networks stage the play
of différance. In this play, wagers are lost; there is expenditure with-
out return.
Mythos gives, no thanks to giving, and its giving event is always
already with and to logos. As we saw earlier, mythos does not give
specific, unified meaning, because it slips and slides, seminates and
disseminates, disrupting any attempt to singularize it. On the one
146

hand, mythos gives rise to logos as a non-foundational foundation.

And yet, on the other hand, mythos makes logos, as savoir absolu,
impossible.. Even though the event of mythos calls forth the structure
impossible
of logos, mythos tears the very fabric
fabric of logos that it nevertheless calls
for. ‘The gift and the event obey nothing, except perhaps principles
of disorder
disorder,, that is, principles without principles’ ( GT , 123). Not even
the coup de don can be controlled. In this network, all play is inter-
play, all relation interrelation. The gift-network is not accountable.
It exceeds the economy that it nevertheless puts into motion. Mythos
overruns logos while simultaneously calling it forth.
ABSOLUTE INTERPLAY
When all play is interplay, as it is in the network of mythos-logos, the

absolu of savoir absolu and philosophy proper must be reconsidered.
As we have seen, mythos and logos are always already in a relation-
ship that is neither binary nor dialectical. Understanding this allows
us to envision them in terms of the network and the gift, where the
foundation is non-foundational and the structure is ‘nontotalizing’,
yet holistic. The ‘parts’ of this ‘whole’ do not form a singular har-
mony. They disperse and gather, seminate and disseminate. While
joining they reach out, and in reaching out, join.When system and
excess are understood to be co-emergent, then the absolute of abso-
lute knowledge, of logos, is disfigured. Such disfiguring solicits
figuring
figurin g anew
anew..
‘Absolute’ derives from the Middle French ‘ absolut’ and Latin
‘absolutus’, which is a participle of ‘absolvere ’. As the similarity indi-
cates, ‘absolvere’ is the derivative of ‘absolve’, which, means to loose
from or set free (i.e. acquit). The absolute, therefore, is that which is
freed, separated,
separated, loosened, detached or disengaged.
disengaged. In a philosophi-
cal sense, it can also mean that
that which is unconditioned or unqual
unqualified.
ified.
It is, in other words, that which is free from conditions, much like
the gift-event. This latter usage is what Hegel has in mind when he
sets out in pursuit of a knowledge that is knowable and ascertainable
for human beings and yet, at the same time, unconditioned. Hegel
resolves to solve what Kant was unable to, by laying out a method of
inquiry that would lead finite beings to an unconditioned, absolute
knowledge. According to Hegel, this knowledge must be grasped
through the Concept, and the Concept would eventually lead to a
knowledgee of reality as it is iin
knowledg say,, unconditioned).26
n itself (that is to say
147

For Hegel, savoir absolu is not affected from the outside, nor
context-dependent. In this sense, it is ‘loosed’ and ‘set free’ from con-
ditionality, corresponding instead to the absolute truth (to God, the
One), to that which is not dependent upon the changeable and finite
(for example, nature and the human). However, upon closer exami-
nation, we see that the Hegelian absolute is dependent upon (and
therefore tied down to) rendering difference in terms of identity. The
other must (by force, if necessary) be taken up into identity. Hegel’s
theory postulates that, in the final analysis, the unknown and
unthought is transformed
transformed and brought into the fold of thought. The
underlying assumption is that nothing unthinkable or unknowable
therefore remains. Hegel’s Concept is conditional, despite his best
efforts, because it depends on that assumption, an assumption that
cannot be upheld. Even the absolute bids us to think it otherwise.
Taylor does just this in Confidence Games: Money and Markets in
a World Without Redemption . Drawing on the etymological root of
‘absolute’, Taylor fractures savoir absolu and recasts it as ‘absolute
relativity’ (CG , 326). ‘If ’, as Tay
aylor
lor posits, ‘being is relat
relational,
ional, there is
nothing that is absolute in the traditional sense of the term because
there is nothing that is not relative. Relativity is what makes every-
thing what it is and as such is absolute’ ( CG , 326–7). This absolute is
a ‘virtual matrix, which is neither precisely inside nor outside the
economy’ (CG , 327). ‘Nothing’
‘Nothi ng’ is ‘not relative’ and yet, when ‘absolute’
is placed together with ‘relativity’, a strange paradox opens up.
‘Relativity’ relates and brings together, while ‘absolute’ sunders and
pulls apart. Together, these two operate in yet another double move-
ment. Taylor’s ‘absolute’ is not an infinite God, but relativity itself
– a relati
relativity
vity tha
thatt is no
nott simpl
simplyy rela
relational,
tional, beca
because
use it is a
absolute
bsolute in the
sense of ‘unfettered’, ‘freed fro from’,
m’, ‘unconditional’. His analysis must
be refigured even further. If, as Taylor suggests, the network is the
current milieu ‘in which everything arises and passes away’, then all
relations, and specifically that of mythos and logos, must be under-
stood in that context. The prescriptive nature of this understanding
reframes our conception of savoir absolu and philosophy as logos.
Savoir absolu, therefore, becomes savoir de savoir: a knowledge about
one’ss knowing.27 This knowledge is intimately
one’ inti mately tied to non-knowledge,
not in a traditional relation of presence, which would make non-
knowledge into a kind of knowledge, but as we have come to
understand, in a ‘relation without relation’, in which the impossible
resides within and sets the possible into motion. To think the abso-
148

lute is to let loose, to keep alive th

thee play that plays for play’
play’ss sake, and
to resist all temptations to tighten up or rigidify. As with a bicycle
wheel, if there is too much plaplayy in the spokes,
spokes, the wheel is useless. If
the spokes are over-tightened, the wheel risks failing under its own
strain. The tension on the spokes must be calibrated somewhere
between too little and too much. Taylor explains that self-organizing
systems emerge ‘between order and chaos’ (MC , 24), and like the net-
works that comprise them, function at the edge, somewhere between
order (fixity) and disorder (laxity). When Sa is re-envisioned in terms
of absolute relativity, the gift of mythos can be affirmed and recog-
nized as a disruption and disfiguration necessary to creation and
figuration.
Although not present, and therefore not entirely logofiable,
mythos calls forth logos, and gives to thinking and understanding
their contours without ever being fully present to these activities.
Irreducibly indecidable mythos is the impossible inclusion within
logos. It is the impossible that is always already in interplay with the
possible, and with logos. Without mythos, therefore, philosophy
would not be possible. Mythos gives to philosophy, no thanks to giv-
ing, philosophy’s very possibility, depth and contours. It impassions
thought, calls it forth, and stirs us to think that which, inevitably to
some extent, always remains veiled. The disfigurations of mythos
make possible the very figurations of logos, and of lived experience.
In this way, mythos is both the impossibility, and the possibility, of
philosophy.
149

EPILOGUE
Books are ventures into arranging, joining and extending thought,

striving on occasion, even, for the con-sequential . As such they are
processes, habitations of logos. Deconstructions, as Derrida would
have them, however, align with no process. They arise on the sudden
through dislocations and disruptions. We come upon them already
happening. Furthermore, these deconstructions are necessary, but
never sufficient. An epilogue attempting to characterize, summarize
or conclude these interruptions of mythos unavoidably inclines
toward peril.
Such peril exposes
expose s the gaping wound plaguing
plaguing an epilogue. Instead
of the possibility of closure and synthesis, tears emerge. These rup-
tures expose us to the impossible, to an irreducible other that does
not lend itself to discourse or disclosure. We are left, instead, with
recourse to dis-course, to the errant detours
deto urs that prevent us from ev
ever
er
returning full circle.
circle. The disfiguring operations of mythos simultane-
ously construct and deconstruct logos. This is the interplay that
emerges, always
always already
already.. These in
inescapable
escapable deconstructio
deconstructionsns of mythos
summon us, not as an unsettling dynamic to be feared or suppressed,
but as the
or even impossible
recognized (it gift that
is not (a)can never Yet
present). properly be given,
this gift, if therereceived
is any,
makes possible our thought and experience, while simultaneously
(dis)figuring the impossibility from which thought and experience
emerge, and with which they are forever in relation. Without mythos,
philosophy would be impossible. To acknowledge the impossibility
of philosophy is also to affirm its very possibility, and to delight in
the disfiguring rhythms that figure our thinking and experience, even
as we struggle to figure these disfigurations.
150

NOTES
PREFACE
1
Jacques Derrida, Points . . . , Elisabeth Weber (ed.), trans. Peggy Kamuf
(Stanford: Stanford University Press,
Press, 1992), 356. Henceforth cited as PTS .
2
Indecidables
Indecida bles are important ‘concepts’ in deconstruction and are discussed
at greater length in the following chapter. I am grateful to Hugh J.
Silverman, who has pointed out that the French term ‘indécidable
‘indécidable’’ is better
rendered as ‘indecidable’ in English, since ‘indecidable’ preserves the
oscillation
oscillation between opposing poles
poles.. Undecidable denotes (although this is
certainly not how Derrida construes it, but is rather due to linguistic
associations in English)
gests an ambiguous statussomething
that defiesimpossible,
any singularwhereas
category
category,indecidable sug-
, not something
impossible. Therefore, ‘indecidable’ is used throughout in place of ‘unde-
cidable’. An indecidable (such as mythos mythos)) cannot be reduced to one
meaning or the other (truth or fiction), nor is it even possible to decide
the degree to which it participates in either one. Thus it is ‘irredicibly
indecidable’. See for instance, Hugh J. Silverman, Textualities: Between
Deconstruction (New York and London: Routledge,
Hermeneutics and Deconstruction
1994), 46, where he writes: ‘Deconstruction goes to the place of indecid-
ables,
ab les, such as communica
communication tion (oral presentation/transm
presentation/transmission
ission of messages),
écriture (speaking/writing), difference (distinction/deferral), pharmakon
écriture pharmakon
(poison/remedy),
(poison/remed y), trace (footprint/imprint), correspondence (exchanged of
letters/matching of similarities), supplement (additions/repl
(additions/replacement),
acement), and
so forth. . . . the deconstruction of texts requires the elucida
elucidation
tion and ela
elab-
b-
oration indecidables and their indecidability.’
3
Mark
1990), C.
100.Taylor, Tears,,cited
Tears
Henceforth (Albany:
as T . State University of New York Press,
4
See Hugh J. J. Silverman, ‘The limits of logocentrism’
logocentrism’,, in Inscriptions: After
Structuralism (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univer-
Phenomenology and Structuralism (Evanston,
sity Press, 1997), 281–93. Henceforth cited as INS .
5
Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship Scholarship
University of Chicago PressPress,, 1999), x. Henceforth cited as TM .
6
Jacques Derrida, GlasGlas,, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand
(Lincoln, Nebraska: University
University of Nebraska PressPress,, 1974), 231. Henceforth
cited as G .
7
Mark C. Taylor, Hiding (Chicago:
(Chicago: University of Chicago PressPress,, 1997), 325.
151

NOTES
CHAPTER 1
1
Philosophy, which substantiates itself as embodying logos
Philosophy logos,, and legitima
legitimates
tes
itself in terms of logos
logos,, unavoidably shares in the attributes as well as the
omissions of logos
logos,, its virtues as well as its sins. Logos
Logos is the ground of
philosophy, and the ground of logos logos is also the ground of philosophy.
Therefore, throughout this text, ‘philosophy as logos logos’’ is used on occasion
in place of ‘philosophy’ as a reminder of that essential equivalency.
Likewise, discussions of the foundation of logos are simultaneously dis-
logos are
cussions of the foundation of philosophy. Derrida reminds us that ‘[a]ll
the metaphysical
metaphysical determinates of truth, even the one beyond metaph metaphysical
ysical
ontotheology . . . are more or less immediately inseparable from the
instance of the logos
logos,, or of a reason thought wiwithin
thin the linea
lineage
ge of the logos
logos,,
in whatever sense it is understood’. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology,
Grammatology,
trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press,, 1976), 10. Henceforth cited as OG .
Press
2
Increasingly, vital indecidable, unclosable paradoxes seem to lie at the
heart of inquiry for a num
number
ber of disciplines
disciplines.. It has been routine procedure
in college physics labs for decades that fresh, young observers re-examine
with ever-sophisticated tweaking Thomas Young’s two-hundred-year-old
Double-Slit experiment exposing the essential, puzzling nature of light.
Because light’s indecidably dual, simultaneously particle/wave behaviour
is really not unlike mythos
mythos’’ indecidability and the resulting dilemma of
how to ‘think’ mythos
mythos,, it is noteworthy that physics students are typically
confronted with light’s indecidability before exploring quantum mechan-
ics in its more sweeping complexity.
3
Glas is the French word for ‘death knell’ or ‘passing bell’. Geoffrey
Glas
Hartman notes its further significance: ‘[Glas
‘[ Glas]] is endlessly “joyced” by the
author, to suggest that voice has no monument except in the form of a
rattle in the throat covered or sublimed by the passing bell. The sound
reverberates in the labyrinth of writing and, in dying, lights it up.’ Geoffrey
Hartman, Saving the Text: Literature/Derrida/Philosophy (Baltimore:
Johnss Hopkins University Press, 1981), 5–6. The various ‘sounds’ of Glas
John
are explored in Chapter 4.
4
Derrida is not the first to consider remains. In Ideas Pertaining to a Pure
Philosophy , Edmund Husserl
Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy,
seeks to think the remains; that is, what is excluded in cogitarecogitare.. Husserl
posits that ‘consciousness
‘consciousness has, in itself, a being of its own which in its own
exclusion. It there-
absolute essence, is not touched by the phenomenological exclusion.
fore remains as the “ phenomenological residuum
residuum,”,” as a region of being
which is of essential necessity quite unique and which can indeed become
the field of a science of a novel kind: phenomenology.’ Husserl, First
Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten
Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology,
(Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983), 65.
Although Husserl’s study begins with the remains, it nonetheless reduces
them to a science and a metaph
metaphysics
ysics of presence
presence.. F
For
or this reason, his read-
ing stays within the traditional limits of philosophy, unlike Derrida’s.
152
NOTES
5
Jacques Derrida, ‘The pocket-size interview with Jacques Derrida’, by
Freddy Tellez and Bruno Mazzoldi, trans. Tupac Cruz. Critical Inquiry
33.2 (2007), 381, 362–88. Henceforth cited as PSI .
6
The field of mathema
mathematics
tics came to accept this situation when Kurt Kurt Gödel,
after Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s Principia Mathe-
matica (1910, 1912, 1913),
1913), realized that there are ‘remains’ inh inherent
erent to the
foundation
founda tion of the system of mathema
mathematics tics that could not be pro
proved
ved math-
ematically (i.e. by applying any of its proces
processes,
ses, operations, or assumptions).
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem argues, in essence (contra Russell and
Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica),
Mathematica), that it is ‘impossible for a system to
be both consistent
consistent (i.e. free of contradictions) and complete.’ Mark C.
Taylor, Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Redemption (Chicago:
Redemption Press,, 2004), 115. Henceforth
cited as CG . See also Gödel, Kurt. ‘On formally undecidable propositions
in Principia Mathematica
Mathematica and related systems,’ trans. B. Meltzer. http://
www.csee.wvu.edu/~xinl/library/papers/math/Godel.pdf. For the most
part, mathematics accepted that these remains ungrounded and destabi-
lized the whole system on which all its work was based, recognizing the
limits of what could be established by its proofs. Philosophy as logoslogos,, how-
ever, has not yet caught up with mathematics. It still resists any such
ever,
acceptance of the limits of what can be established by logos logos..
7
Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, Phenomena, trans. David B. Allison
(Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 102–3. Hence-
8 forth cited as SP
SP..
As we will learn in Chapter 2, thinking the unthought does not mean
bringing it into full presence and knowability. Since it eludes categories
and systems of meaning, it can never be fully conceived or apprehended.
Nonetheless, it remains, not in the mode of presence, but rather, as a nei-
ther-entirely-absent
ther-entirel y-absent nor-entirely-present ghost haunting logos
logos..
9
Later in this chapter we will explore Hegel’s notion of otherness, in
which identity must transgress its limits in order to recognize itself in the
other.
10
Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond , trans. Lycette Nelson (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1992), 27. Henceforth cited as TSN .
11
Michel Foucault, ‘A preface to transgression,’ in James D. Faubion (ed.),
Aesthetics,, Method, and Epistemology: Essential W
Aesthetics Works
orks of Foucaul
Foucault,
t, 1954–
1984, Volume II , trans. Robert Hurley (New York: The New Press, 1999),
73, 69–87. Henceforth cited as APT .
12
A more thorough discussion of the outside that is inside as a ‘foreign
plenitude’ within occurs in Chapter 2.
13
Non-affirmative
Non-affirma tive affirmation is a topic cover
covered
ed in Chapter 5.
14
This connects to a Hegelian understanding of the relationship between
difference and identity, which will be discussed later in the chapter.
15
Through the course of this study it will become clear that ‘giving rise to’
does not imply a continuous process paradigm. This statement does not
denote a teleological process. ‘Gives rise to’ must be read as that which
keeps a constant relation to the inherent disruptions and transgressions.
153
NOTES
16
As a consequence of philosophy’s alignment with logoslogos as a means of
expression and self-identification, what faults logos
logos consequently faults
philosophy.
17
In his essay, Foucault further states that ‘we experience not the end of
philosophy but a philosophy that regains its speech and finds itself again
only in the marginal region that borders its limits’ (APT ( APT , 78). We will see
how the ‘marginal region’ that remains within philosophy, despite the fact
that philosophy cannot properly think it, is that of logos logos’’ other, mythos
mythos,,
which is inescapably disruptive and deconstructive.
18
‘Foundation’ is set off by quotation marks in order to mark it off from a
traditional foundation.
foundation. Such a foundation is in fact non-foundational, as
the rest of this study shows
shows..
19
Georges Bataille, Inner Experience,
Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1954), 109. Henceforth cited as IE .
20
Maurice Blanchot, L’Entretien infini [The Infinite Conversation],
Conversation], trans.
Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 431.
Henceforth cited as EI . Chapters 3, 4 and 5 each develop mythos as a non-
absent absence.
21
Customary readings of Plato ignore the indecidability of mythos and the
mythos and
role that mythos plays in his texts.
22
Luc Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation
Mythology, trans. Catherine Tihanyi
and Classical Mythology, Tihanyi (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press,
Press, 2004), 11. Henceforth cited as HP HP..
23
Luc Brisson, Plato the Myth Maker,
Maker, trans. Gerard
Gerard Naddaf (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press
Press,, 1998),
1998), 102. Henceforth cited as PM .
24
Brisson does state that, at
at times, the truth of mythos is, in part and accord-
ing to Plato, dependent on whether or not it accords with philosophical
discourse on the same subject. Even in this case, logos is the supreme met-
logos is
ric against which all else is measured. For more on Brisson’s argument see
PM , 91–111.
25
Chapter 3 underscores Plato’s insistence on this internal logic for argu-
mentation and philosophic discourse and demonstrates how elements
within his Phaedrus effectiv
effectively
ely render such synthesis impossible
impossible..
26
This argument regarding the deconstructive propensities of indecida indecidables
bles is
further elaborated in Chapter 3, in a discussion of pharmakon and
mythos..
mythos
27
Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 35. Henceforth cited as GT .
28
A discussion of this can be found in the ‘Translator’s Introduction’ to PM ,
xii–xxvi.
29
The full import of this as it pertains to Hegel’s dialectic is the topic of
the next subsection.
30
Thomas A. Carlson, Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God
University of Chicago PressPress,, 1999), 16. Henceforth cited as I .
31
John D. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought (Athens:
Thought (Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1978), 144.
32
Relation is of critical importance to us, and is dealt with throughout
in many different ways. One example of a relation of structure to
154
NOTES
non-structure is Derrida’s gift that is an excessive, ‘aneconomic’ structure

that nonetheless exists in relation to the economy that it exceeds. With
the gift, Derrida effectively demonstrates that structure and astructure
astructure
presuppose one another. Like mythos and logos logos,, structure and that
which is not the least bit structural are interwoven together non-
synthetically.
33
Jean-Luc Nancy, Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative,
Negative, trans. Jason
Smith and Steven Miller (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2002), 3.
34
Jacques Derrida, Positions
Positions,, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press,
Press, 1981), 77–8. Henceforth cited as P.
35
However, as Chapter 5 illustrates, Taylor departs from Derrida in crucial
ways. Although Taylor agrees that deconstruction is inescapable, he
ultimately believes that ‘deconstruction
‘deconstruction changes nothing . While exposing
systems and structures as incomplete and perhaps repressive repressive,, deconstruc-
tion inevitably leaves
leaves them in place. . . . Instea
Insteadd of sshowing
howing how totaliz
totalizing
ing
structures can actually be changed, deconstruction demonstrates that the
tendency to totalize can never be overcome and, thus, that repressive
structures are inescapable.’ Taylor coins this struggle ‘Sisyphean’. Mark C.
Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emergi Emerging
ng Network Culture (Chicago:
Culture (Chicago:
University of Chicago PressPress,, 2001), 65. Henceforth cited as MC . Although
Taylor’
aylor’ss argument about the limits of deconstruction is itself argua arguable
ble,, we
are concerned
concer ned with applying Derr Derrida’s
ida’s and T
Taylor’
aylor’ss key insights to a recon
recon--
sideration of the relation of mythos and logos in order to propose a new
way of conceiving of mythos and its relationship to logos that will create
logos that
fecund possibilities that are both theoretical and practical.
36
Mark C. Taylor, ‘Introduction: system . . . structure . . . difference . . .
other” in Mark C. Taylor (ed.), Deconstruction in Context: Literatur
Literaturee and
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Philosophy (Chicago:
Philosophy Press,, 1986), 4, 1–34. Hence-
forth cited as IS .
37
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Nonsense,
Nonsense, trans. Patricia Allen Drey-
fus (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
Press, 1964), 63. Merleau-P
Merleau-Ponty
onty
reiterated this importance of Hegel in his last course (1960–61), entitled
‘Philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel”, translated by Hugh J.
Silverman in his Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Merleau-Ponty
Merleau-Ponty
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997). See also Hugh J.
Silverman, ‘Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger: interpreting Hegel”, in INS ,
108–22.
38
I am indebted to Taylor’s excellent scholarship on Hegel’s notion of other-
ness in Altarity
Altarity,, 3–33, which has guided my own reading of Hegel, along
with Jean Hyppolite’s instructive Logic and Existence.
Existence.
39
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit,Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 490. Henceforth cited as PS .
40
Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence,
Existence, trans. Leonard Lawlor and Amit
Sen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 89. Henceforth
cited as LE .
41
Mark C. Taylor, Altarity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987),
Altarity (Chicago:
emphasis added, 16. Henceforth cited as A.
155
NOTES
42
G. W.
W. F
F.. Heg
H egel,
el, Science of Logic,
Logic, trans.
tra ns. A. V
V.. Mill
Miller
er ((New
New YYork:
ork: HuHumanity
manity
Books,, 1969), 417. Henceforth cited as SL
Books SL..
43
Radical
Radical implies something that escapes presence and synthesis synthesis,, something
untamed and undomesticated. What is meant by radical difference and
otherness will become more evident shortly in the discussion of Derrida’ Derrida’ss
and Taylor’s conceptions of difference and otherness.
44
Derrida is not the only thinker who is concerned with Hegel s domestica-
tion of difference. Heidegger recognizes an ‘unthought’ (other) in the
Hegelian system that he calls ‘the difference between Being and beings’.
From Heidegger’s perspective, this difference cannot be thought in terms
of presence, as Hegel attempts to do. Others, such as Bataille, Merleau-
Ponty, Blanchot, and Emmanuel Levinas, to name but a few, are equally
concerned with an other (a difference) that cannot be reduced to identity
identity..
45
Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosoph
Philosophy y, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press
Press,, 1982), 3. Henceforth cited as MPMP..
46
Lawrence Hatab, Myth and Philosophy: A Contest of Truths Truths (La Salle,
Illinois: Open Court, 1990), 10–11. Henceforth cited as MP MPA A.
47
Mythos and logos remain, perhaps, in an unusual bi-polar disorder.
48
The remaining chapters of Lincoln’s book focus on the ‘return’ to myth in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which occasioned Romanticism,
nationalism and Aryan triumphalism. This ‘return’ is to myth as an ideol-
ogy, and therefore ignores the deconstructive dynamic of mythos that
destabilizes
destabil izes any such totalizing structure. T Taking
aking up the banner of myth in
this fashion focuses solely on the structuring aspect of myth, not on its
simultaneous deconstructive aspect.
49
Chapter 2 includes a further discussion of Derridean double movement.
movement.
50
Importantly, Socrates is drugged with a pharmakon
a pharmakon,, which is irreducibly
indecidable. This is discussed in Chapter 3.
51
John Sallis, The Verge of Philosophy
Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press,, 2008), 28. Henceforth cited as VP
Press VP..
52
F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of
Speculation (New York:
Western Speculation (New York: Harpe
Harperr and Row
Row,, 1957)
1957),, emphasi
emphasiss added,
260–1. Henceforth cited as FR FR.. Chapter 3 deals with these very issues.
53
This parallels Derrida’s idea of play, which operates beyond and without
intention. See Chapter 3.
54
As noted earlier, ideology implies masterability. One of Lincoln’s points,
with which few (if any) of us would ar argue,
gue, is tha
thatt mythos can be dangerous
because it can be used, adapted and fashioned into a political or ideologi-
cal weapon. Lincoln points out how genocides, for example, have been
justified and carried out via the ababuse
use of mythos
mythos.. However, this overlooks
the ‘fundamental’, deconstructive aspect of mythos mythos.. Just as he misses
mythos’’ irreducible indecidability, he also ignores the ‘dis’ of dis-course,
mythos
which disseminates and resists every attempt at synthesis.
55
This recalls Derrida’s playful subtitle, ‘hors
‘hors d’oeuvre’,
d’oeuvre’, that begins Dissemi-
nation,, thereby deconstructing the very function of a preface by inscribing
nation
that which ‘will not have been a book’ (D (D, 3). This also brings to mind
Blanchot’s non-absent absence of writing, which simultaneously con-
structs and deconstructs every book.
156
NOTES
CHAPTER 2
1
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference,
Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press
Press,, 1978), 6. Henceforth cited as WD WD..
2
Derrida first uses soliciting in ‘Différance
‘ Différance’’ in a discussion of the privileging
of presence in metaph
metaphysics:
ysics: ‘This privilege is the ether of metaph
metaphysics
ysics,, the
element of our thought that is caught in the language of metaphmetaphysics
ysics.. One
can delimit such a closure today only by soliciting the value of presence
that Heidegger has shown to be the ontotheological determination of
Being; and in thus soliciting the value of presence, by means of an inter-
rogation
the essay whose status
he picks thismust be completely
up again: ‘It is the exceptional’
domination (MP
(of
MP, , 16). that
beings Laterdif-
in
ance everywhere comes to solicit, in the sense that
férance
fér that sollicitare,
sollicitare, in old
Latin, means to shake as a whole, to make tremble in entirety’ ( MP MP,, 21).
3
As Derrida reminds us, in speaking of Heidegger’s avoidance of Geist Geist,,
which Heidegger does in order to try not to get stuck in its traditional,
metaphysical limitations, ‘all of those modalities of “avoiding” . . . come
down to saying without saying, writing without writing, using words with-
out using words.’ Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegg
Heidegger Question,,
er and the Question
trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989), 2. In other words, these ‘modalities of avoiding’ do
not successfully avoid. Instead, through this ‘avoidance’, the ‘avoided’ ele-
ment reappears to subvert that which had tried to avoid it. To pay heed to
the disruptions that are always already underway is to witness the ways in
which philosophy’s avoidance of mythos has unwittingly reinscribed and
mythos has
4 re-marked
As mentionedmythos in logos
in the . this
logos.
preface, reading is not final or totalizing either.
this reading
These ideas will be explored shortly in regard to Derrida’s reading of
Levinas.
5
As opposed to other usages, such as to slip into bed or to slip (by stealth)
into the room.
6
For example, biology identifies constantly dividing cells as labile.
7
Note that the use of the phrase, ‘gives rise to’ parallels the usage of the
phrase in regard to mythos and logos (mythos gives rise to logos ). This
logos).
phrase does not imply a continuous process paradigm or a teleological
necessity. Rather, logos emerges through the unforeseeable ‘event’ of
mythos,, and mythos emerges (in terms of presence) through the structures
mythos
of logos
logos.. For more on this, see the discussion of emergence in Chapter 3
and the analysis of Derrida’
Derrida’ss gift-event in Chapter 5.
8
‘Pas de deux’ must
deux’ must also be read doubly as both ‘two-step’ and ‘not ‘not two’.
two’.
‘Not’
as willisbecome
not a negation. The pas Johnson,
The pas
clear. Barbara de deux isthe simultaneous
bothtranslator and separate
separate,,,
of Dissemination
Dissemination,
uses this term in her introduction to describe ‘both a dance of duplicity
and an erasure of binarity’ (xxvii).
9
Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference,
Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New
York: Harper and Row, 1969), 47. Henceforth cited as IAD IAD..
10
Taylor further adds to his reading of Heidegger by commenting on the sig-
nificance of the cleavage on which the temple is situated: ‘The alternating
157
NOTES
strife of world and earth forms the “tear” (Riss

(Riss)) that lies in the midst of
Being and beings’ (A (A, 50). Taylor takes this yet a step further by
suggesting that ‘cleaving’ has a double meaning (just as tearing does): it
is both to divide and to adhere, simultaneously joining and separating (A
both to ( A, 48;
T , 113).
11
In Face of the Deep,
Deep, Catherine Keller tantalizingly opens her ‘pre/face’
with the following: ‘What if beginning – this beginning, any beginning,
The Beginning – does not lie back, like an origin, but rather opens out?
“To begin” derives from the old Teutonic be-ginnan
be-ginnan,, “to cut open, to open
up,” cognate with the Old English ginan
English ginan,, meaning “to gape, to yawn,” as a
mouth or an abyss’. Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: A Theology of
Becoming (Routledg
(Routledge:e: New YYork,
ork, 200
2003),
3), xv. In arguing for creation ex pro-
fundis as opposed to creation ex nihilo,
nihilo, Keller begins with a tear that opens
out. This ‘beginning’ is in fact a gaping cut.
12
A painting by Mark Tansey, suggestively entitled Doubting Thomas, Thomas, pref-
aces Taylor’s book. It depicts a car that has come to a stop in the middle
of a highway
highway.. The passenger door is open and not far from it, in the fore-
front of the painting, is a man (a postmodern version of St. Thomas, as
the title suggests) kneeling over the road as if in the process of bending
down in the act of prayer. His left hand is outstretched and probes the
great crack that has opened across the macadam (that has perhaps origi-
nated from a rocky cleft at the margins of the road’s surface, although
the true origin of the fissure remains elusive), scarring and disrupting it.
The chasm-like crack has dislocated
dislocated the centre line of the road along with,
one might infer, Thomas’s faith. It is also worth noting that ‘Altarity’
is spelled with an ‘a’, not an ‘e’, which simultaneously resonates with
Derrida’ss ‘a’ of différance
Derrida’ différance,, makes visual reference
ref erence tto
o the ‘‘A
A’ of the Hege
Hegelian
lian
pyramid that houses a crypt and recalls a religious altar. altar.
13
Many writers refer to this essay as a piece of Festschrift Festschrift.. However, a
Festschrift is done in gratitude. It blindly assumes that the text being
read is limited to the author’s intent. Derrida insists on reading Levinas
not in gratitude, but in ingratitude. The title of Derrida’s piece comes
from a phrase of Husserl’s, ‘im ‘im selben Augenblick ’ (‘at that very moment’).
Derrida considers Husserl’s phrase in Speech and Phenomena Phenomena (see 49ff)
and in this piece on Levinas picks it up again.
14
Robert BeBernasconi
rnasconi and Simon Cr Critchley,
itchley, ‘Editor’
‘Editor’ss Introduct
Introduction’,
ion’, in R
Robert
obert
Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (eds), Re-Reading Levinas Levinas (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991), xii, xi–xviii.
15
In his consideration of ethical Saying ((le Dire) in contrast to the ontologi-
le Dire)
cal language of the Said (le (le Dit),
Dit), Levinas is concerned with intentionality
(and by extension, decidability), which implies a metaphysical presence.
16
Simon Critchle
C ritchley
y, ‘ “Bois” – D Derrida’s
errida’s final word on Levinas’ in Robert
Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (eds), Re-Reading Levinas (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press,
Press, 1991), 171,162–89. Henceforth cited as B .
17
This double movement between masculine/Same and feminine/Other is
paralleled by Sa and Ma in the analysis of Glas in Chapter 4.
18
Jacques Derrida, ‘At this very moment in this work here I am’, in Robert
Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (eds), Re-Reading Levinas, Levinas, trans.
158
NOTES
Ruben Berezdivin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 12,

11–48. Henceforth cited as ATVM .
19
A seam that mends is one in which the thread is constantly returned to the
place where the needle first introduced it to the fabric. This implies a
circularity and return. The difference between Derrida’s notion of seam
(to be introduced shortly) and edge is significant. In traditional construc-
tions, an edge is the end of a plane, a border (or even the formation of a
border or enclosure), the point where two planes intersect, or the cutting
side of a blade
blade.. Derrida’
Derrida’ss seam, on the other hand, is aporetic
aporetic.. In addition
to the sewing or joining together of two pieces (of cloth or leather), a
seam is also a scar or a weak and susceptible gap. Derrida’s use of seam
would suggest
lose their that in
edginess most traditional
because philosophical
they are too constructions,
easily subjected edges
to the simple
oppositions of presence and absence. Unlike a seam, an edge does not
simultaneously
simultaneou sly join and separate. Its movement is not double. Edges main-
tain one kind of reading, thinking or writing, but not two at once. Taylor’s
use of edge defies traditional notions of it, and is later informed by the
idea of edge that emerges in complexity studies
studies,, in which edge connotes a
between that is neither simply one thing nor another (i.e. between order
and chaos is neither order nor chaos).
20
Derrida inserts a circumflex over the first ‘m’ of the first ‘meme’, thereby
indicating a silent yet important graphic difference between these two
words.
word s. Not only does this emphasize that repetition is not merely the reit-
eration of the same, but it also underscores the importance of this silent,
unusual (since ‘m’s don’t normally have a circumflex) mark that is not
properly
properl y present (it cannot be dete
detected
cted by the ear nor spoken – it can only
be read). This
of différance
différance. . anticipates a discussion later in this chapter of the mute ‘a’
21
E.L. does not simply refer to Emmanuel Levinas. Since an examination
of this alone could comprise a chapter, a few suggestive remarks here
will have
have to suffice. In striving to maintain the non-themetiza
non-themetizability
bility of the
subject, Levinas uses the Latin term, ‘ille ‘ille’.
’. Taylor notes that it ‘includes
the third person, singular
singular,, il . “Illeity”
“Ille ity” links up with “Ot
“Other,
her,”
” “Infinite,” and
“Alterity” to form a metonymic chain of signifiers intended to evoke what
cannot be designated. . . . illeity is irreducibl
illeity is irreducibly y “nonphenomenal” and thus
escapes every phenomenology’ (A (A, 204–5). In Critchley’s reading in his
essay ‘Bois
‘Bois’,
’, he refers back to the woman reader (who recall, is one of
the voices in Derrida’s essay) in order to argue that, in Derrida’s essay, the
woman reader replaces the pronoun ‘Il’ with ‘Elle’ and that therefore ‘con-
stitutes an act of effacement or erasure’ (B , 185). Thereby, ‘ethical alterity
is maintained because the fault . . . is still preserved and therefore the text
22 is
We returned
will see to “Elle”
“Elle
this ” and
carried outnot
into “E
“E.L.”
the .L.” ’ (B
chapters(B ,that
185).
follow.
23
‘Always already’ has precedence in Heidegger’s ‘schon ‘ schon da’
da’ and Merleau-
Ponty’s ‘toujours
‘toujours déjà là’.
là’.
24
As discussed in Chapter 1, in Hegel’Hegel’ss dialectic, identity and difference are
indeed commensurable, and eventually united as the identity of identity-
and-difference.
159
NOTES
25
This relates to the discussion of analogies of relation, as opposed to those
of attribution, in Chapter 1. Also, for a discussion of ‘relation without
relation’ see Chapter 5.
26
This is no ordinary play. play. See the discussion of Derridian play in Chapter 3.
27
sis is examined in the next section.
Oik ēē sis is
28
Jacques Derrida, Memoir Memoirss of the Blind: The Self-Portr
Self-Portrait Ruins,,
ait and Other Ruins
trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press,
Press, 1993), 126. Henceforth cited as MB .
29
Chapter 4 is devoted to an in-depth exploration of Sa as it appears in
Derrida’s Glas Glas.. In the beginning of Glas
Glas,, Derrida states that ‘Sa from now
on will be the siglum of savoir absolu’absolu’ (G
(G , 1). This siglum refers to Hegel’
Hegel’ss
idea of Absolute Knowledge
Knowledge,, which marks the completion of philosophphilosophy y.
Sa as savoir absolu
absolu sees and therefore knows all. Its gaze accounts for
everything. Nothing remains unseen and therefore unknown. The notion
of a seeing not alig aligned
ned with sa is playing off
sa is off of the French verbs
verbs,, where ‘to
see’ (voir
(voir)) literally lacks the sa of savoir
savoir.. Such linguistic play refigures
knowing and knowledge.
30
John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion
Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 312.
Without Religion
Henceforth cited as PT .
31
In a footnote, the translator notes that ‘a play on words has been lost in
translation . . . the difference between the e and the a of différence/dif-
férance
fér can neither be seen nor heard. It is not a sensible – that is, relating
ance can relating
to the senses – difference. But, he [Derrida] goes on to explain, neither is
this an intelligible difference,
difference, for the very names by which we conceive of
objective intelligibility are already in complicity with sensibility. Theōrein rein
– the Greek origin of “theory” – literally means “to look at, at,”
” to see
see;; and
the word Derrida uses for “understanding” here is entendement
entendement,, the noun
form
form of entendre
entendre,, to hear
hear’’ (MP
MP,, 5). Derrida’s
Derrida’s use of language demonstra
demonstratestes
the degree to which sensibility and intelligibility are mutually implicated.
They are accomplices in their perpetuation of logocentrism
logocentrism,, and each
this presence – a presence that the senses are enlisted to attune
assumes this
assumes
themselves to, even to the exclusion of all other modes of reception – as
the very foundation
foundation of theoretical understanding.
32
Chapter 5 includes a discussion of the economic circle that alwa alwaysys returns
home from whence it departed. Recall that in Hegelian thought, thinking
must come back, full circle, to itself in order to achieve absolute
knowledge. Différance
Différance,, on the other hand,
ha nd, works by disseminating. Always
errant, it forever wanders, disrupting and deferring presence, thereby pre-
venting the return of difference to identity, and rendering all knowledge
(and logos
logos)) incomplete. This other operation is not the least bit economic
because losses (negations) are not always turned into gains. It leaves unac-
countable remains. Economic systems (like Hegel’s), on the other hand,
strive to transform losses into gains by negating the original negation.
Their goal is to leave nothing unaccounted for by returning difference to
identity. As we have seen, this operation cannot exist apart from the
remains that are within the system. Therefore, the circle is always already
160
NOTES
breached, interrupted and incomplete

incomplete.. In this way
way,, the economic contains
an uneconomic aspect.
33
The all-seeing father is also known as Zeus, who ‘is explicitly depicted in
Homer as being “of broad vision,
vision,”
” thus “all-seeing” ( panoptés).
panoptés). . . . [L]ike
an eagle, he can spot anything that is happening on earth below him. He
literally “oversees” the deeds of mortals: he sees everything they do,
whereas they can only rarely detect his presence (for example,
example, in the thun-
derboltss he throws w
derbolt when
hen he is angry, like so many angry looks
looks).
). . . . Zeus
is in effect an enormous
enor mous sky-eye; or let us say that, by his presence, the sky
itself becomes a gigantic eye.’ Edward S. Casey, The World At A Glance
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
Press, 2007), 187. As we will see in the
next chapter, although Zeus is not directly invoked in Plato’s Phaedrus
Phaedrus,,
Socrates’ conjuring
steals Zeus’s
Zeus’ of Typhon
s thunderbolts, threa questions
threatening
tening his reign. Monstrous
the dominance Typhon
of panoptés.
panoptés.
34
Jacques Derrida, ‘Fors
‘Fors:: the Anglish words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria
Torok’, trans. Barbara Johnson, in Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok,
Cryptonymy (Minneapolis: University of
The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy (Minneapolis:
Minnesota Press, 1986), emphasis added, xiv, xi–xlviii. Henceforth cited as
F . The significance of ‘ fors’
fors’ will
will become more obvious in the course of this
discussion. The translator notes that the French word is ‘derived from the
Latin foris
Latin (“outside, outdoors”), and is an archaic preposition meaning
foris (“outside,
“except for, barring, save.” In addition, fors
addition, fors is
is the plural of the word for for,,
which, in the French expression le for intérieur,
intérieur, designates the inner heart,
“the tribunal of conscience,” subjective interiority. The word fors fors thus
“means” both interiority and exteriority’ (F (F , xi–xii).
35
Referencing Hegel’s derogatory statement that young Israelites cannot,
unlike their Christian counterparts,
counterparts, obtain the ‘lofty status’
s tatus’ of the soaring
(Christian-philosopher)
pher’ of Hegel’
Hegel’ss system aseagles, Taylor
one with referseye’
an ‘eagle to the
(A, ‘panoptical
(A 19–23). Notphiloso-
missing
a beat, Derrida, among others, has associated Hegel with the eagle, since
the French for
for eagle (‘aigle’) is a homophone of ‘Hegel’.
36
‘Swallowing’
‘Swallo wing’ becomes particularly suggestive in Chapter 4 where it applies
to Saturn’s literal ingestion of his children. For now, the term designates
the relationship between incorporator and incorporated. As explained in
Chapter 1, in the Hegelian system, identity takes up difference into itself,
domesticating and uniting difference
difference with identity as the identity of iden-
tity-and-difference.
37
Attenuation is domestication. Domestication has specific resonances, as
Taylor points out in his discussion of Hegel in Altarity
Altarity:: ‘The etymology
etymology of
“domesticate” suggests further dimensions of the circularity of this famil-
ial economy. “Domesticate” derives from the Latin word domus domus,, which
means house or home. In Italian, duomo duomo refers to the house of God. A
dome is “a rounded
and having vault
a circular, forming
elliptical, or the roof of base.”
polygonal a building or chief part
Furthermore, of it,
“dome”
can be used to designate a cathedral church. Economy and domesticity of
domestication are closely related. “Economy,”
“Economy,” which derives ffrom
rom the Greek
oikonomos:: oikos
oikonomos house + nomos
oikos house nomos,, to manage, control, means “management
161
NOTES
of a house; the art or science of managing a household.” Such manage-

ment is, of course, primarily concerned with expenses or, more precisely,
with controlling expenditure. In contrast to the “immanent trinity,” which
describes the internal life of the godhead, the “economic trinity” refers to
the way in which God deals with the world and His people. Within this
context, the economic trinity depicts different phases in the process of
salvation.
salva tion. The economic relationship of the Fa
Father
ther and Son in and through
the Spirit is all-encompassing. Nothing is left out. When Son returns to
Father in Spirit, the fall is overcome and no remains are left in the tomb.
The resurrection of the Son is the ultimate return on the Father’s invest-
ment. This return finally closes the family circle’ (A, 32). Before
B efore this, Ta
Taylor
ylor
points out that for Hegel, ‘the philosopher is not nomadic. . . . To the con-
trary, the philosopher is the prodigal son who faithfully returns to the
home of the father. Within this father’s house, the son who saves rather
than the son who spends is rewarded. The father of speculativ
speculativee philosophy
runs a profitable domestic economy in which there must be a return on
every investment. With the System, profitless expenditure
expenditure,, senseless prodi-
gality, and excessive loss cannot be tolerated and therefore must be
excluded or repressed’ (A(A, 31–2). Many of these threads are picked up in
subsequent chapters. Chapter 3 further explores the ‘familial circle’ and
the relationship of Father to (well-born) Son as it is represented in Plato s
and contrasted to the bastard sibling, mythos
logos and
logos mythos.. Chapter 5 looks at the
how the specular economy is put into motion by that which is prodigal,
excessivee and ‘aneconomic’.
excessiv
38
Chapter 5 includes a discussion of mythos
mythos as as an impossible inclusion.
39
Jacques Derrida, ‘Deconstruction and the other’, in Richard Kearney,
Debates in Continental Philosophy: Conversations with Contemporary
Thinkers (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 143–4, 139–156.
Henceforth cited as DO DO..
40
In the same interview, Derrida insists that ‘[n]o matter how rigorous an
analysis I bring to bear on such texts, I am always left with the impression
that there is something moremore to be thought’ (DO(DO,, 145). Later he adds,
‘identity presupposes
‘identity presupposes alterity’ (DO
(DO,, 149) and that ‘from the very beginnings
of Greek philosophy the self-identity of the Logos is already fissured and
Logos is
divided’ (DO
(DO,, 148). This last statement is precisely what Chapter 3 builds
on in order to illuminate how mythosmythos is a non-foundational foundation
of logos
logos..
CHAPTER 3
1
Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece,Greece , trans. Janet
Lloyd (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press Inc., 1980),
239–40.
2
Shortly after this chapter was completed, John Sallis’s Verge of Philosophy
was published. Strangely echoing what this chapter sets out to do, Sallis
writes,, ‘one could envisa
writes envisage
ge still another discourse that would complement
162
NOTES
“Plato’s Pharmacy,”
Pharmacy,” eveven
en if at some point it might prove to be at odds with
it. This discourse, too, would
would be a kind of companion piece piece,, one following
still the lines of the Phaedrus but now focused on myth – hence a λόγος
on µύθος, literally a mythology’ (VP( VP,, 86). However, even a mythology
mythology,, as
the word suggests, is logos aligned. As I have suggested, any serious con-
sideration of mythos must resist all logocentric imperatives.
3
Specifically, this chapter will engage – as does Derrida’s essay – the
Phaedrus.. For a study that is imaginatively attuned to the ambiguities
Phaedrus
inherent within Plato’s dialogues, see John Sallis’s Being and Logos: Read-
Dialogues. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).
ing the Platonic Dialogues.
4
The quote cited in the first chapter is as follows: ‘The mythical
mythical form of this
whole cosmology is not a poetical dress
dress,, in which Plato arbitrarily chooses
to clothe a perfectly definite and rational scheme, such as modern students
set themselves
would have done toso,
discover in gladly;
only too it. If Plato
but could have’ (emphasis
he cannot’
cannot stated it asadded,
a logos,FR
he,
FR,
260–1).
5
John Sallis, Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues.
Dialogues . Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, 1996), xiii. Henceforth cited as BL BL..
6
For Hegel, ‘sensuous’ myth is inferior to the ‘purity of thought’ of logos logos::
‘The myth is always a mode of representation which, as belonging to an
earlier stage, introduces sensuous images, which are directed to imagina-
tion, not to thought; in this, howe
however
ver,, the activity of thought is suspended,
it cannot yet establish itself by its own power, and so is not yet free. The
myth belongs to the pedagogic stage of the human race, since it entices
and allures men to occupy themselves with the content; but as it takes
awa
wayy from the purity of thought through sensuous forms, it cannot express
the meaning of Thought. When the Notion attains its full development,
development, it
has no more need of the myth.’ G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History
of Philosophy
(Atlantic Volume
Highlands, II , Jersey:
New trans. E. S. Haldane
Humanities andInc.,
Press, Frances H.20.
1974), Simson
7
Jacques Derrida, Response to Francis Guibal’s ‘The otherness of the
other – otherwise: tracing Jacques Derrida,” Parallax 10.4 (2004), 33,32–7.
Henceforth cited as DR
DR..
8
This stands in stark contrast to Hegel’s dialectic wherein all ‘loss’ is
negated, and transformed and returned as profit.
9
Although others, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, have theorized play at
length, Derrida’s analysis is far more incisive and radical. As a case in
point, Gadamer’s theory of play, unlike Derrida’s, is based on ‘a funda-
mental ground’. Derrida recognizes that play exceeds the structures that it
both founds (as an unanticpatable event) and unfounds. Play, for Derrida,
does not happen in the realm of presence
presence.. In contrast to Gadamer’
Gadamer’ss theory
of play, Derrida’s play does not lend itself to self-reflexive hermeneutical
usage. Taylor elaborates this point in Tears in his examination of Richard
Rorty’s appropriation
play wherein of Gadamerian
‘play is impossible play. what
apart from Taylor also describes
Hegel revisits Hegelian
as “the
labor of the negative” ’ and ‘the other is not simply other but is at the
same time also one’s own self’ (T
(T , 132), and connects it to Gadamer’s
163
NOTES
assertion that play is ‘really limited to representing itself ’ (qtd in T , 133).
For Derrida, play does not yield sself-representa
elf-representation.
tion. In fact, it ruptures the
possibility of self-representation, rev revealing
ealing that this is is,, in fact, impossible
impossible..
Derrida’s analysis effectively tears the very fabric of Gadamer’s. Although
Derrida’s (dis)seminal insights on play may not yet be fully appreciated,
Taylor’
aylor’ss erudi
erudite
te analysi
analysiss in Tears (see 127–36) does assist in illustratin
illustrating
g the
significance of Derrida’s work on play.
10
‘Salute’ is used playfully by Derrida, since Plato’s dismissal of myth is, at
the same time, an affirmation
affirmation of it.
11
Such a non-totalizing structure without a fixed centre or ground repre-
sents a network, as discussed in Chapter 5.
12
I am indebted to Taylor’s wordplay that suggests that re-covery, far from
regathering and re-collecting, conceals and hides hides.. It recov
recoversers as an uphol-
sterer would. ‘Recovery’, says Ta Taylor,
ylor, ‘is always a re-covering and, th therefore,
erefore,
inevitably remains incomplete. In this way, closure dis-closes without
revealing the openness of every foundational base’ . Mark C. Taylor, After
God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 304–5. Henceforth
cited as AG .
13
Chapter 5 includes a more detailed analysis of Taylor’s understanding of
complex adaptive systems (from which the concept of emergence arises)
in order to demonstrate how such a framework allows for a fruitful
re-examination of the relation of mythos and logos logos..
14
John H. Holland, Emerg
Emergence:
ence: From Chaos to Order (Reading, Massachusetts:
Order (Reading,
Addison-Wesley, 1998), 14.
15
This previews a discussion of dénégation that occurs later in this chapter.
dénégation that
This affirmation of play is non-affirmative. That is, without any stake in
the outcome.
16
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato,
Plato, trans. Benjamin
Benja min Jowett (New Y York:
ork: Horac
Horacee
Liveright, 1927), 227a. Henceforth cited as DP DP..
17
Zeus, the panoptical father of Olympus, is aligned with logos logos and the
project of philosophy. See Chapter 2’s brief discussion of Zeus and his
subsequent association with Hegel’s savoir absolu.
absolu.
18
The topos of mythos is never present as such and is therefore impossible to
identify. As we will see, mythos is in fact atopos
atopos..
19
Orithyia, an Athenian princess, was kidnapped by Boreas, who carried her
off to Thrace, where she later bore him two daughters and two sons. In
Histories,, Herodotus notes that this is why the Athenians invoked the for-
Histories the for-
god, Boreas, to assist them
eign god,
eign th em in battle; they cconsidered
onsidered hhim
im a son-in-law
son-in-law..
Herodotus, Histories
Histories,, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt (New York: Penguin
Books, 1954), 7.189.
20
At first glance it may seem hard to fathom that a a pharmakon
pharmakon is both simul-
taneously and separately remedy and poison. LSD is a ready modern-day
example. Scientist Aldous Huxley and religion scholar Huston Smith
testified to the way in which it opened ‘the doors of perception
perception’’ to genuine
religious experience. Yet many people became unhinged under its influences.
Timothy
Timoth y Leary is proof of this
this.. Good and bad trips, unpredicta
unpredictably
bly,, uncon-
trollably and even simultaneously resulted from its use. It can be an elixir
of wonder and/or a fatal potion.
164
NOTES
21
In his translation of the Phaedrus
Phaedrus,, Stephen Scully comments that
Socrates is punning on Phaedrus’ name and that Phaedrus is anything but
a ‘Bright-Counsel’, and instead, is ‘dim-witted and undisciplined in aes-
thetic or philosophical judgment’. Stephen Scully
Scully,, ‘Interpretative essay’, in
Plato’s Phaedrus
Phaedrus (Newburyport, Massachusetts: Focus Philosophical
Library, 2003), 78, 73–99. The oppositions staged in Plato’s text are ironic
and ambiguous.
22
Indeed, the entire dialogue is also about love and bonds. Of course,
the other logic at work in the text calls into question every perceived
intimacy while simultaneously revealing unsuspected ones, such as the
non-oppositional affinity between logos and mythos
mythos..
23
For Hegel, Socrates ‘carried out the command of the God of knowledge,
“Know Thyself,” and made it the motto of the Greeks, calling it the law
of the mind, and not interpreting it as meaning a mere acquaintanceship
with
lishedthe particular
in the place ofnature of man.
the Delphic Thus
oracle
oracle, Socrates
, the is the
principle thathero
manwho
mustestab-
look
within himself to kn
know
ow what is Truth.’ G
G.. W.
W. F
F.. Hege
Hegel,
l, Lectures on the His-
tory of Philosophy, Volume I , trans. E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson
(Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, Inc., 1974), 435. In
Hegel’s analysis, the Delphic injunction urges Mind to know itself, and
through a dialectical movement, come into contact with the underlying
unity of the Absolute (savoir
(savoir absolu).
absolu). Mythos and pharmakon (along
with Typhon),
Typhon), however
however,, mark the impossibility of such fulfilment, as this
study reveals.
24
Plato, Phaedrus
Phaedrus,, trans. Stephen Scully (Newburyport, Massachusetts:
Focus Philosophical Library, 2003), 230a. Henceforth cited as PH .
25
For a thought-
thought-pro
provoking
voking retelling of Cadmus’ defeat
defeat of Typhon see Roberto
Calasso s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,
Harmony, trans. Tim Parks (New
York: Vintage Books, 1994), 377–89. Cadmus is responsible for introduc-
ing
whothe Greek
figures alphabet. This
predominantl
predominantly alignss him
y in ‘Plato’
‘Plato’s with the
Pharmacy’ Egyptian
and god,
is a ssource
ource of Thoth,
discus-
sion later in this chapter. Cadmus, although identified as Greek, was not
born in Greece. He, too, is a foreigner, although it appears that he under-
goes a process of domestication that Thoth does not. When Typhon
defeats Zeus, the Olympians flee to Egypt. Calasso refers to Cadmus’ g gift
ift
of the alphabet as ‘ “gifts of the mind”: vowels and consonants yok yoked
ed
together in tiny signs,
signs, “etched model of a silence that speaks” – the alpha-
bet. With the alphabet the Greeks would teach themselves to experience
the gods in the silence of the mind and no longer in the full and normal
presence, as Cadmus himself had the day of his marriage’ (390–1). As
Calasso suggests, the invention of writing (which concerns Derrida in
Plato’s Phaedrus
Phaedrus)) also marks the withdra
withdrawal
wal of the gods. Their disruptiv
disruptivee
trace (which is neither absent nor present) is inscribed within the alphabet,
within writing.
26
‘Monster’
verb derives
monstrare,
monstrare frommeans
, which the Latin monstrum
to ‘show’ which, in
monstrum which,
or ‘reveal’. A turn, is related
monstrum,
monstrum to the
, therefore,
is a message that comes from afar, improperly entering into the regulated
order as an undomesticated stranger
stranger.. Monsters disclose dis-closure.
165
NOTES
27
Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters Monsters (London: Routledge,
2003), 13. Henceforth cited as SGM . In TheogonyTheogony,, Hesiod describes the
hundred snake heads of Typhon as each sending forth a different voice:
‘and inside each one of these horrible heads / there were voicesvoices / that threw
out every sort of horrible sound / for sometimes
sometimes / it was speech such as the
gods / could understand, but at other / times, the sound of a bellowing
bull, / proud-eyed and furious / beyond holding, or again like a lion /
shameless in cruelty,
cruelty, or again it was like the barking of dogs
dogs,, / a wonder to
listen to, / or again he would whistle so the tall mountains re-echoed to it.’
Hesiod, Theogony
Theogony,, trans. Richmond Lattimore
Lattimore (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1968), lines 829–34. Henceforth cited as TH .
28
Andrew Gibson, Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative (Edinburgh:
Narrative (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 237.
29
Sigmund Freud’s seminal essay on das das Unheimliche
Unheimliche,, or the uncanny, iden-
tifies it as that which is simultaneousl
simultaneously y das Unheimliche and das Heimliche.
Heimliche.
That is, it is both ‘unknown and unfamiliar’ and ‘familiar’, ‘intimate’ and
‘homely.’ It is that which is ‘familiar’ and ‘concealed and kept hidden’.
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny,
Uncanny, trans. David
David Mcli
Mclintock
ntock ((New
New Y York:
ork: Pengu
Penguinin
Books, 2003), 132. Henceforth cited as U . The uncanny, therefore, is ‘the
frightening element . . . that has been repressed and now returns’ ((U U , 147).
Something ‘that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it
only through being repressed’ is now revealed and brought out into the
open (U
(U , 148). Freud sees modernism as uncanny
uncanny,, since it stages the return
of the previously repressed ‘primitive’. The similarities between mythos mythos
and the uncanny are developed in the course of this chapter.chapter.
30
See also Mary-Jane
Ma ry-Jane Rubenstein’
Rubenstein’ss Strange Wonder:
Wonder: The Closure of Metaphys-
ics and the Opening of Awe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008),
we (New
which makes a similar point. She argues that philosophy’s genesis is
thaumazein,, which ‘arises when understanding cannot master that which
thaumazein
lies closest to it – when, surrounded by utterly ordinary concepts and
things, the philosopher suddenly finds himself surrounded on all sides by
things,
aporia. . . . Wonder, then, comes on the scene neither as a tranquilizing
force nor as a kind of will-tow
will-toward-epistemologi
ard-epistemological
cal domination, but rather
as a profoundly unsettling pathos. . . . the philosopher’s wonder marks his
inability to ground himself in the ordinary as he reaches toward the
extraordinary; it indicates, in fact, that the skyward reach has rendered
uncanny the very ground on which the philosopher stands. . . . it leaves
thinking thus ungrounded’ (3–4).
31
The Typhonic, unnamable other is perhaps the result of the play of dif-
ance.. This echoes Derrida’s final words in ‘Structure, sign, and play in
férance
fér
the discourse of the human sciences’: ‘Her
‘Heree there is a kind of question, let
us still call it historical, whose conception
conception,, formation
formation,, gestation
gestation,, and labor
labor
we are only catching a glimpse of today. I employ these words, I admit,
with a glance toward the operations of childbearing – but also with a
glance toward those who, in a society from which I do not exclude
myself, turn their eyes away when faced by the as yet unnamable which is
proclaiming
proclaim ing itself and which can do so, as is necessary whenever a birth is
in the offing, only under the species of the nonspecies, in the formless,
166
NOTES
mute, infant,
Plato often andtoterrifying
refers form
Socrates as of monstrosity’
a ‘midwife’. When read (WD,
(WD , 293). Tellingly,
through Derrida’s
notion of play, we can see that Socrates is not attending to the births of
philosopher-kings (those aligned with all-seeing Zeus, with logos ). He is
logos).
instead superintending the ‘species of the nonspecies, in the formless,
mute,, infant, and terrifying form of monstrosity’, the other that infiltrates
mute
logos from the outset. This monstrous infant calls into question the
logos
supremacy and assumed primogeniture of logos logos.. In releasing Typhon
into the dialogue, Socrates is delivering monsters. Traditional conception
is rendered impossible. For Hegel, conception is the telos of the dialectic,
telos of
of philosophy. Here, though, there is only ever the (mis)conception of
uncanny monsters.
32
Jacques Derrida, The Ear of o f the Oth
Otherer:: Otobio
Otobiography
graphy,, Transference, Tr
Trans-
ans-
lation,, trans. Peggy Kamuf, ed. Christie McDonald (Lincoln: University
lation
of Nebraska Press
Press,, 1985), 119. Henceforth cited as EO EO.. See also D, 72.
33
For another
On Time and discussion
tranof
Being , trans. this
oan issue
s. JJoan S see Heidegger’s
Stambaugh
tambaugh (New Y ‘Time
York:
ork: Ha and and
Harper
rper being’
Rowin,
Row,
1972), 1–24.
34
Note how the many-headed Typhon does not adhere to this schema
either.
35
See sections 243e–257b
243e–257b..
36
For more on the history of the palinode, see Leonard Woodbury’s ‘Helen
and the palinode’. Phoenix 21.3 (1967): 157–76.
Phoenix 21.3
37
See 243a–b and Scully’s discussion of the conventions of the palinode
in his interpretive essay, 80–1. Although written, the palinode is related
to speech, since as Scully states, Stesichorus’ father is ‘Good-Speech’
(Euphemos), from the Land of Desire (Himera).
38
See Derrida’s ‘How to avoid speaking: denials.’ Also, see Taylor’s argu-
ment on the mistranslation of ‘dénégation
‘ dénégation’’ as
as ‘denials’ in Nots (Chicago:
Nots (Chicago:
Press,, 1993),
1993), 36. Henceforth cited as N .
39
See
“no”Freud’s
in the essay, ‘Negation’.
unconscious and As Freud
that concludes,
recognition of ‘we
the never discoverona
unconscious
the part of the ego is expressed in a negative formula.’ Sigmund Freud,
‘Negation’, trans. James Strachey, in James Strachey (ed.), The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological W orks of Sigmund Freud , Volume 19
Works 19
(London: Hogarth Press, 1924), 239, 233–9. For Freud, affirmation and
negation and Eros and Thanatos are mutually implicated. Taylor rightly
suggests that Freud’s term has not been properly translated so as to por-
tray its double meaning. See N , 36.
40
As a sun god, Ammon-Ra is the all-knowing light of reason. Bataille notes
that ‘the eye is without any doubt the symbol of the dazzling sun’, and
connects the sun and eye to the eagle: ‘the ancients attributed to the
eagle as solar bird the faculty of contemplating the sun face to face.’
Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–39,
1927–39, trans.
Allan Stoekl with Carl Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie, Jr. (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota
known to produce Press,blindness
temporary 1985), 74.and
Staring at thethought
was once sun, however, is
to result
in madness. (See also a link between staring at the sun and blindness in
167
NOTES
Plato’s Phaedo
Phaedo,, 99d, in contrast to his discussion of beholding the sun
directly in the Republic
Republic,, 516b.)
516b.) The associations between eye-sun-eagle
suggest not merely an elevated seeing, but more importantly, reveal that
this vision is really an inability
inability to discern in ter
terms
ms of presence
presence.. Instead it is
blindness or madness. See also Taylor’s compelling web of associations
with Bataille’s blinding sun and Hegel’s speculative system in Altarity
115–19. Furthermore,
Further more, R Ronna
onna Burger indicates that Ammon is tthe he Egyptian
name for the panoptical father, Zeus. Ronna Burger, Plato’s Phaedrus: A
Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing (Tuscaloosa:
(Tuscaloosa: University
University of Alabam
Alabama a
Press, 1980), 94.
41
This role bears a similarity to that of monstrum or monsters. For a study
monstrum or
of the role of monsters as other-worldly messengers
messengers,, see Timothy K. Beal’s
Beal’s
Religion and Its Monsters (New York: Routledge, 200
Monsters (New 2002).
2).
42
In the underworld, Thoth is stationed opposite Osiris. Derrida points out
that, although he is the god of writing, Thoth does not just record the
weight of the dead souls. He enga engages
ges in an ‘economy’ of death, in a cryptic
arithmetic that defies mere logic.
43
Derrida explains that ‘ pharmakon
pharmakon is also a word for perfume. A perfume
without essence, as we earlier called it a drug without substance’ (D (D, 142).
44
Recall the discussion of Hegel in Chapter 1, for whom opposition is not
really antipodal, but rather the penultimate stage in the movement to syn-
thesis and identity.
45
In their study, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, Greece, Jean-Pierre Vernant
and Pierre Vidal-Naquet point out that a tyrant, (turannos (turannos)) ‘accedes to
royalty via an indirect route, bypassing the legitimate line . . . his qualifica-
tions for power
power are his actions and exploits. He reigns by virtue not of his
blood but of his own qualities; he is the son of his works
works and also of Tuchē
[chance]. The supreme power that he has succeeded in winning outside the
ordinary norms places him, for better or for worse, above other men and
above the law
law.. . . . Euripides and Plato both speak of the turannos isotheos,
isotheos,
tyranny that is the equal of a god in that it is the absolute power to do as
one wishes, to do anything one wants.’ Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre
Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece,
Greece , trans. Janet Lloyd
(New York: Zone Books, 1990), 127. There are a few significant points
here. The first is that tyrants are not kings by blood. If Plato s project is
read as an attempt to solidify the reign of philosopher-kings (displacing
that of the gods), it is notable that philosophy’s ascendency to the throne
matches that of tyrants, as described by Vernant and Vidal-Naquet. In this
view, logos is illegitimate, the result of ‘exploits’. Although logos attempts
to demonstrate a proper ‘blood’ relation and lineage, its tyranny is achieved
by an ‘indirect’ route, not a ‘rightful’ route of paternity, despite its claims
to the contrary. If logos
logos’’ very reign takes place via pharmak
via pharmakon and mythos
on and mythos
(which open the dialogue and make possible logical discourse), then there
is nothing the least bit proper about the rule of logos logos.. Only mythos and
pharmakon
pharmak could claim a ‘proper’ place, but since they fall outside of the
on could
order of presence and are therefore improper, it is not even possible to
designate them as heirs, unless such a lineage is one of (dis)rule.
168
NOTES
46
In his translation,
tran slation, Ste
Stephen
phen Scul
Scully
ly calls Thamus ‘‘Ammon’
Ammon’ and gives the fol-
lowing explana
explanation:
for theon tion:According
(“god”). ‘I accept Postgate’
Postgate’s
s emendation
to Herodotus (2.42), of thamoun
Ammon (Thamus)
thamoun (Thamus)
also known
as the sun god Ra, is the Egyptian name for Zeus; This god-king differs
from a philosopher-king in that he pronounces, more in the manner of
a prophet (cf. 275c8), than of a philosopher exploring the truth of a
statement’ (PH
(PH , 64).
47
In GT , Derrida turns the notion of gift on its head. See Chapter 5, which
analyzes Derrida’s
Derrida’s notion of the gift in terms of mythos
mythos.. Thoth’s gift to the
king is not (simply) (a) present. In other words
words,, this is no ordinary present,
but one that ruptures the very economy of presence
presence..
48
See PH 274e–275b.
49
Although referring to the mystical foundation of law, this description
encapsulates Thoth’s refusal to invoke logos as a response. Jacques
Derrida, ‘Force
‘Force of lalaw:
w: the “mystical founda
foundation
tion of authority” ’, trans.
Mary Quaintance, Cardozo Law Review 11.5–6 (1990), emphasis added,
50 943, 920–1045.
The full import Henceforth cited as FL
of Taylor’s statement FL.. the ways in which alterity (or, as
and
Taylor rewrites it, ‘altarity’) infects the entire dialogue are examined at the
end of this chapter in an analysis of the Phaedrus
Phaedrus’’ closing prayer to Pan.
51
Francis Guibal, ‘The otherness of the other – otherwise: tracing Jacques
Derrida’, Parallax
Parallax 10.4 (2004), 22, 17–41. Henceforth cited as O. For
another thought-provoking
thought-provoking consideration of Plato’Plato’ss good, see VP
VP,, 29–52.
52
In this sense, the project of philosophy could be considered a mythology.
That is, a fiction.
53
See the discussion of Hegel’
Hegel’ss inner contradiction in Chapter 1.
54
Derrida confirms this abiding understanding in an interview
interview,, proclaiming,
‘it was not a question of opposing a dialectic. Be it opposition to the dia-
lectic or war against the dialectic, it’s a losing battle. What it really comes
down to is thinking a dialecticity of dialectics that is itself fundamentally
not dialectical.’ Jacques Derrida, ‘I have a taste for the secret’, trans.
Giacomo Don is, in Giacomo

Donis,
(Cambridge:
Secret (Cambridge:
Secret Donis
Polity, 2001), 33,and David
1–92. W
Webb
ebb (eds),
Henceforth citedAasTaste
Taste for tthe
TS . This he
is
what we have attempted to do throughout.
55
In part, Taylor derives his term, ‘nonfoundational foundation’, from
Derrida’s essay, ‘Force of law’. Derrida describes a ‘mystical foundation’
that is before the law and other to it, and thus grounds and ungrounds the
law itself. This ‘foundation’ constructs the law that it nevertheless escapes:
‘Its very moment of foundation or institution . . . the operation that con-
sists of founding, inaugurating, justifying the law (droit(droit),
), making law,
would consist of a coup de force,
force, of a performati
performative
ve and therefore interpre-
tive violence that
that in itself is neither just nor unjust and that no justice and
no previous law with its founding anterior moment could guarantee or
contradict or invalidate’ (FL
(FL,, 941–3).
56
This matrix is akin to the network or gift examined in Chapter 5.
57
In resisting structure, they also unwittingly reinscribe it, lending to a
simultaneous construction and deconstruction. This is illustrative of our
169
NOTES
earlier discussion about the codependence of system and excess, and struc-
turalism and post-stucturalism.
58
Mark C. Taylor, About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture
Culture
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 83. Henceforth cited as AR
AR..
59
Jacques Derrida, On the Name,
Name, Thomas Dutoit (ed.), trans. David Wood,
John P. Leavey Jr. and Ian McLeod (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1995), 100–1. Henceforth cited as ON .
60
John Sallis, Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s ‘Timaeus’ (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1999), 120.
61
Recall here as well that for Plato, speech is superior because, unlike
writing, it is present.
62
Given Derrida’s concern with speech and the privileging of presence in
Plato’s Phaedrus
Phaedrus,, it is curious that he did not address the ending prayer
in his analysis of the text.
CHAPTER 4
1
As mentioned earlier, ‘gives rise to’ does not connote a linear process.
Mythos and logos are co-emergent in the same way as event and structure
structure,,
which were analyzed in the previous chapter. This is discussed in greater
detail in Chapter 5.
2
Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 4. As dis-
Reflection (Cambridge,
Reflection
cussed in the first chapter, discursive carries a double meaning of both
gathering and dispersing. Gasché’s use of the term unintentionally puts
both of these meanings into play, thereby subverting his own privileging
of a logocentric discursiveness
discursiveness..
3
In The Moment of Complexity,
Complexity, Taylor suggests that the ‘combinatorial
play’ of networks encoura
encourages
ges us to reconsider meaning as playful ‘interac-
tive events’: ‘Rather than viewing events as meaningful, meaning must
be understood as an event.’ Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity:
Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001),
Emerging Network Culture (Chicago:
214. Henceforth cited as MC .
4
Genet’s name also echoes the homophones, je nais nais,, meaning ‘I generate’
and genêt
and genêt,, a flower.
5
Castration emerges
emerges as one of many themes in the text. La Later
ter in the chapter
this thread
threa d is picked up in relation to Saturn. For Jacques
Jacques Lac
Lacan,
an, the threat
of castration marks the entrance of the child into the symbolic order,
which is also the paternal order of logos
logos,, of language. Derrida, however,
refuses to submit to this genealogy. That is, he will not write or think
exclusively
exclusively within the domain of the father-son-(philosopher-)king.
father-son-(philosopher-)king. At the
same time, Derrida cannot but be castrated by his text whose fissured col-
umns of writing construct and deconstruct beyond his own intentions.
This double effect of conservation and suppression is a reoccurring motif
in Glas
Glas,, and is examined later in the chapter. For studies on the theme of
castration in Glas
Glas see Gregory Ulmer, ‘Sounding the unconscious’ in
170
NOTES
Glassary, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Glas-piece: a compte rendu’, and

Glassary,
Ned Lukacher, ‘K(CH)ronosology’.
6
Jacques
Jr., DerP
Derrida,
in John P.rida,
. Le ‘Proverb:
Leavey
avey,
, Jr., “He that
J r., Glassary would p
(Lincoln:
Glassary (Lincoln: pun
un . . .” ’ trans.
University John P
P.. Leavey
of Nebraska Leavey,
Press,,,
Press
1986), 17, 17–20. Henceforth cited as HTW .
7
Derrida’s own relationship to the translatability of Glas is double-edged:
‘By betting on this untranslatability of gl of gl , whose effects are innumerable
and everywhere mediatized I have doubtless responded to a first desire:
not to let this text pass into a foreign tongue
tongue.. But at the same time, double
bind , I have done what
what I could so that this desire fails and the book repub-
lishes itself [se
[se réédite],
réédite], thus is published for the first time in a foreign
tongue’ (HTW
(HTW , 20).
8
Gregory L. Ulmer, ‘Sounding the unconscious’, in John P. Leavey, Jr.,
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
Glassary (Lincoln:
Glassary Press,, 1985), 25, 23–129.
9
This also brings to mind Socrates’ statement in the Phaedrus that discourse
should, like a living creature, have its own body that is not without a head.
In the Phaedrus
Phaedrus,, the implication is that mythic discourse, as opposed to
philosophic
Chapter discourseis
discourse,
3. Derrida , isnot
headless anda therefor
writing therefore
proper ephilosophical
imperfect andtext,
inferior.
but See
an
improper
improp er one. In the wake of philosoph
philosophy’ y’ss death knell, such dis-course is
the only re-course possible.
10
In this tattooed distyle Derrida argues that ‘[t]he opposition (language/
discourse) denounces itself, itself
itself and all others without the conception of
the concept, it is a dead language, writing and defunct speech, or reso-
nance without signification. (Klang and not Sprache.)’Sprache.)’ (emphasis added,
G , 8–9). The Klanging
Klanging of the bell of Glas produces,, instead of conception,
Glas produces
a ‘mute or mad sound’ without meaning. It does not toll for the sake of
reception. Here Derrida claims ‘an affinity’ between ‘Klang ‘ Klang and writing.
Insofar as the Klingen of Klang resists,
resists, withstands conception’ (G (G , 9), logos
logos
cannot ascertain, process or govern it. It is merely ‘gl’, an unintelligible
gurgling from the back of the throat, a ‘death-rattle’.
‘death-rattle’.
11
There are many homophonic sounds throughout, such as voler (meaning
voler (meaning
theft and
lating flight),a which
between require
plurality one to hear
of meanings. otherwise
One as sa
of these, well,
ça,,forev
/ça
sa/ forever
er oscil-
is discussed
later in the chapter.
12
‘Relieved’ refers to the reliever
reliever of Hegel’s dialectic, where difference is
negated and raised up to positivity. In other words, the fall is relieved
because it ensures resurrection. This echoes Hegel’s Christian-centric
alignment of the movement of logos with Jesus Christ. Christ’s fall made
logos with
his resurrection possible. The resurrection symbolizes the death of death
and the ultimate triumph of (Absolute) Spirit. With it, death is defeated.
Therefore the first death through crucifixion is not a finality
Therefore finality,, but a neces
sary movement to the beatific realization
realization of Absolute Spirit, which issues
in the synthesis of the divine and human, subjective and objective, mate-
rial and spiritual, flesh and word. See G. W. F. Hegel, Early Theological
Writings,, trans. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Writings
Press, 1975).
171
NOTES
13
Derrida translates Hegel’s Aufhebung a a bit playfully as relève
relève,, which means
both to lift up (as Hegel’s Aufhebung does) and to relieve (i.e. to relieve
of a burden). Derrida’
Derrida’ss relève is inscribed with the disseminating mark of
relève is
14
différance.
différance.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Glas-piece: a compte rendu,” Diacritics 7.3
Diacritics 7.3
(1977), 29–30, 22–43. Henceforth cited as GP GP..
15
The ‘relation without relation’ of the columns of Glas Glas mirrors the
relationship between mythos and logos logos.. Chapter 5 includes a discussion
of the relation of these two as a ‘relation without rela
relation’.
tion’.
16
As it turns out, Saturn/
Saturn/Sa is associated with Dionysus
Sa is Dionysus.. This connection is
explored later in the chapter.
17
In his preface to Phenomenology of Spirit,
Spirit, Hegel describes philosophical
truth in the following way: ‘The True is thus the Bacchanalian revel in
which no member is not drunk; yet because each member collapses as
soon as he drops out, the revel is just as much transparent and simple
repose’ (PS
(PS , 27). Hegel’s preface is necessary in order to explain his large
and wide-ranging work, which
which includes topics as seemingly divdiverse
erse as the
family and an academic critique of Kant’s categorical imperative, with
styles varying from parables to philosophic discourses. In other words,
without the introduction, the Phenomenology ceases to make perfect sense,
Phenomenology ceases
to be entirely logical. Therefore, Hegel must write his preface in order to
explain his work. (See Derrida’s
Derrida’s critique of Hegel’
Hegel’ss necessity for a preface
that automatically acts as an excessive exterior within Hegel’s work, dis-
rupting its intentions
int entions and prevent
preventing
ing logic’s
logic’s closure in ‘Outwork, prefacing’
in Dissemination
Dissemination,, 1–60.) Furthermore
Further more,, the entire Phenomenology is itself
itself a
preface to Hegel’s Science of Logic.
Logic. The ‘revelry’ of Hegel’s Bacchanalia is
the seemingly disjointed, chaotic moments of the dialectic that may appear
to be drunk and out of control (if one focuses sim simply
ply on a sna
snapshot
pshot of one
movement, such as the movement into otherness before consciousness is
for-itself). However, in the final analysis (which takes into consideration
the end point of the dialectical mov
movement
ement and therefore the movement
movement as
a whole), there is ‘transparent and simple repose’. As Hegel states imme-
diately after what is quoted above, ‘Judged in the court of this movement,
the single shapes of Spirit do not persist any more than determinate
thoughts do, but they are as much positive and necessary moments, as
they are negative and evanescent’ (PS
( PS , 27–8). The ‘single shapes of Spirit’
are ‘necessary moments’ – as Bacchanalian as they may be – but in the
end, philosophical truth recollects itself in order to repossess and return to
itself as savoir absolu.
absolu. The movement arrives at the identity of identity-
and-difference. This is the ‘transparent and simple repose’ that Hegel
speaks of. The road travelled to get to this point has moments that,
although they may appear errant, such as the movement into difference,
into otherness before consciousness returns to itself in order to exist
for-itself, actually stage the return of difference to identity. They enact
a homecoming to a peace of mind from the disruptive and disorderly
conduct under the influence of drunken ‘thoughtlessness’. However, in
recalling the wayward opening movements of Plato’s Phaedrus
Phaedrus,, one is
172
NOTES
reminded that something always remains that cannot just be assimilated,

resolved or taken up into the unity of savoir absolu.
absolu.
18
Interestingly enough, in a 1977 interview
interview,, Derrida invok
invoked
ed the image of a
Möbius
strip is astrip in order
powerful to argue
figuration of that Glas is not
the economy, of one, since
the law of ‘the Moebius
reappropria-
tion, or of a successful mourning-work that can no longer, in the writing
of Glas
Glas,, toll a knell [sonner
[sonner un glas]
glas] which is its own (its glas
glas)) without
breakage [bris
[bris]] and debris’ (PTS
( PTS , 51). Almost 30 years later, Taylor uses
the Möbius strip, but in a completely different way, recasting it through
the new science of complexity: ‘W ‘What
hat if matter/f
matter/form,
orm, materiality/imma
materiality/immate- te-
riality, substance/matter, mind/body, and so on are not opposites, which
confront each other, but are mutually implicated in such a way that each
folds into the other like a Möbius strip, which never quite closes on itself ?’
(MC , 224). A Möbius strip differs from a circle or globe in that the bound-
ing edge must be traversed twice before returning to itself. The figure of
the Möbius strip is precisely the point upon which Taylor’s theories and
methods loop away from strictly Derridean deconstruction. Although
Taylor’s own scholarship is strongly influenced by Derridean deconstruc-
tion, his more recent forays into complexity studies stray, ever-so-slightly,
from it. Taylor expresses this in After God : ‘[P]oststructuralism provides a
necessary corrective to structuralism. But deconstruction is so preoccu-
pied with the task of criticism that it cannot provide the constructive
gesture so desperately needed to respond to today’s raging neofoundation-
alism’ (AG
(AG , 309).
309). For Taylor, this does not entail a departure from
deconstruction, but a necessary refiguring
refiguring of it in terms of the relationsh
relationshipip
between, for example, system and excess, and by extension, structuralism
and post-structuralism. Taylor rightly maintains that these relations are
not merely binary, nor dialectical, and that as such, they must be envi-
sioned as a ‘nontotalizing structure that nevertheless acts as a whole’.
Taylor’s imaginative interweaving of complexity theory and Derridean
deconstruction provides an important resource for rethinking all systems
and structures, including
including that of mythos and logoslogos..
19
Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strang Strangee Loop (New York:
Loop (New York: Basic Books, 2007),
144. Henceforth cited as IA IA..
20
Bataille is fascinated with the eye’s blind spot and the operation of the
blind spot in Hegel’s specular system. For Bataille, this non-place gener-
ates an image (or knowledge) while simultaneously inscribing it with an
unknowable, unseeable aspect. Of the blind spot, Bataille writes, ‘it is no
longer the spot which loses itself in knowledge
knowledge,, but knowledge which loses
itself in it. In this way existence closes the circle, but it couldn’t do this
without including the night from which it proceeds only in order to enter
it again. Since it moved from the unknown to the known, it is necessary
that it inverse
inverse itself at the summit and go back to the unknown. . . . Even
within the closed completed circle (unceasing) non-knowledge is the end
and knowledge the means. means. TTo o the extent that it takes itself to be an end, it
sinks into the blind spot’ (IE (IE , 110–11.). Unlike Hegel’s conception of
knowledge that ends in the pure transparency of savoir absolu,
absolu, Bataille
173
NOTES
proposes that because of the blind spot of Hegelianism, the dialectic

instead culminates in the ab
abyssal
yssal darkness of non-knowledge
non-knowledge..
21
As Hofstadter says, we infer that the picture is self-referential, even though
our logical inference does not hold up to greater scrutiny. His point is
that meaning depends upon ‘unspoken mappings’mappings’ whi
which
ch are, in the case of
the Morton’s Salt girl, a case of ‘self-reference without infinite regress’
(IA
IA,, 145). Hofstadter also uses the example of Escher’
Escher’ss two hands drawing
in order to illustrate a strange loop. Both hands are drawing, so negation
does not play an essential role; one hand is not erasing the other. Or, as
Hofstadter figures it, ‘ “Not” is not the source of strangeness’ ( IA IA,, 159).
He continues: ‘In this book, a loop’s strangeness comes purely from the
way in which a system can seem to “engulf itself” through an unexpected
twisting-around, rudely violating what we had taken to be an inviolable
hierarchical order’ (IA(IA,, 159).
22
As we saw, this is precisely Plato’s criticism of writing and why he consid-
ers it inferior to speech (logos
(logos).
).
23
John P.P. Le
Leavey
avey Jr., Glassary (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
Glassary (Lincoln: Press,, 1986),
38. It appears that neither Derrida nor any of the translators or commen-
tators were aware
aware of another referent for SaSa.. In the Diné (Navajo) creation
story, Sá is ‘Old Age Woman’, one of the monsters that the hero twin,
Sá is
Monster Slayer (Naayéé
(Naayéé neizghání ), ), sets out to rid the world of. Sá ‘slowly
Sá ‘slowly
saps strength with the passing years. She devours life so gradually that
from one day to the next you cannot feel yourself being consumed.’ Paul
G. Zolb
Zolbrod,
rod, Diné bahane’: The Navajo Creation Story (Albuquerque: Uni-
Story (Albuquerque:
versity of New Mexico Press, 1984), 263. It is notable that the hero does
not ultimately kill Sá, because he realizes that this other force is necessary
Sá, because
for the balance and harmony (hózhó
( hózhó)) of the cosmos – a balance that is not
just synthetic in Diné cosmology
Diné cosmo logy.. In The Main Stalk: A Synthesis of Navajo
Philosophy,, John R. Farella
Philosophy Farella argues against a dualistic interpretation of the
Navajo universe, espoused by many early ethnographers and translators,
whom he argues, (often unwittingly) transcribed their own (Christian)
dualistic understanding of good and evil into the Navajo cosmos. As
Farella observes, ‘On whatever basis Navajos bound an entity, it is not in
terms of homogeneity. Wholes seem to be composed of two parts which
are in a sense complementary and in another sense opposed.’ (T (Tucson:
ucson: The
University of Arizona Press, 1984), 176. 176. Also notable is that the Navajo
is associated with devourin
Sá is
Sá devouringg and consumption, which is analyzed later
in this chapter in terms of Saturn (Sa ( Sa)) and savoir absolu (Sa ).
Sa).
24
In the Phenomenology
Phenomenology of Spiri
Spiritt, Hegel divides his study of consciousness
into three sections, the first of which is ‘sense certainty’, followed
followed by ‘per-
ception’, and then ‘force
‘force and understanding’. In sense certainty the object
is given, but without any conceptualization or qualificati
qualification.
on. The object is
strictly external, without any recognized
recognized relation to the subject. The medi-
ation and reconciliation of subject and object occurs later through
successive dialectical movements. From consciousness, Hegel proceeds to
self-consciousness,, to reason, to spirit, to religion, and finally
self-consciousness finally,, to absolu
absolute
te
knowing (savoir
(savoir absolu).
absolu).
174
NOTES
25
Saturn’s swallowing of his children parallels the movement of the dialec-
tic, where difference is ‘ingested’ by identity.
26
Note the strange similarity here between Uranus and Ra, who tried to
prevent Nut from giving birth. Thoth creates an excess of days so that
Nut can give birth.
27
Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melan-
Art (New
choly: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (New
York: Basic Books, 1964), 135. Henceforth cited as SM .
28
Ned Lukacher, ‘K(Ch)ronosology’, Sub-Stance Sub-Stance 8.4 (1979), 59, 55–73.
Henceforth cited as K .
29
There are some notable similarities between Sa /Saturn and Thoth. First,
Sa/Saturn
there is an inherent ambiguity
ambiguity,, an ‘internal contradiction’, associated with
Kronos/Saturn
Kronos/Sa turn that, like the translation of pharmakon
pharmakon,, appears to be put
to rest by fixing its character as if no such duplicity exists. As we hahave
ve seen,
however, the repressed returns. In other words, this ambiguity disrupts
’s identity, despite the fact that the Romans attempted to render it one
Sa’s
Sa
way as opposed to another. Furthermore, in this move, the Romans asso-
ciate Sa with a system of counting and money. Thoth, too, is associated
Sa with
with weights and measures (see Chapter 3). The connection of Saturn
with money and a system of exchange and accounting cannot but bring
to mind Hegel’s savoir absolu,
absolu, which is a system par
system par excellence,
excellence, set up to
account for everything.
30
Plato, The Laws,
Laws, trans. Trevor J. Saunders (New York: Penguin Books,
1970), 713a. The section in the Statesman is is 269a–274d.
31
Taylor’s discussion of Sa hinges on the element of time. See Tears
Sa hinges Tears,, 74–5
(playing
(playi ng off of chronos as time
time,, the chapter is entitled, ‘The anachronism
of a/theology’) and Altarity
Altarity,, 293–5. This false origin does not undo the
relevance of Taylor’s argument. In fact, it works as an anachronism, caus-
ing Taylor’s
Taylor’s work to sstray
tray into philosophy’s ab abyss
yss in ways that Ta
Taylor
ylor had
not envisioned or intended. Richard Kearney, citing Heidegger’s Saturn
(which Heidegger also falsely links with time), suggests that there is a
‘ “chronolo
“chronological”
gical” character . . . captured in Kronos’ threef threefold
old act of
devouring,
devouri ng, substitution and castration, each of which represents a funda-
mental aspect of time. . . . In this reading, cyclical time which seeks to
return to itself gives way to chronological time which acknowledges
the ineluctability of historical transience and mortality’ (SGM (SGM , 170).
Kearney’ss analysis suggests that Saturn marks the rupture of the circle, of
Kearney’
cyclical time, and thrusts finite beings into ‘the ruptures of mortal exis-
tence’ (SGM
(SGM , 170). In his reading, Saturn’s monstrous qualities emerge.
Perhaps like Typhon, Saturn inscribes the tears or fissures that make clo-
sure,, whether of self-knowledge or of time
sure time,, impossible
impossible..
32
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Dreams, trans. James Strachey
(New York: Avon Books, 1998), 290. Henceforth cited as ID ID..
33
See Freud’s account of the myth in terms of a fourteen-year-old male
patient in The Interpretation of Dreams,
Dreams, 657–8, where he misrecollects it. it.
Lukacher provides a thought-provoking analysis of this (Freudian) slip.
Freud’s error inscribes his own pathology into his theory of castration,
175

NOTES
which takes root in The Interpretation of Dreams.

Dreams. In his association
association of the
myth with his patient,
patient, Freu
Freudd is interested in how ‘long-repressed memories
and derivatives from them which had remained unconscious slipped into
consciousness by a roundabout path in the form of apparently meaning-
less pictures’ (ID
(ID,, 658). Freud’s own relationship to his father, who died
while he was writing The Interpretation of Dreams,Dreams, is, according to
Lukacher, coded into Freud’s own theory. Pathos becomes theoria in this
theoria in
instance (or,
(or, theory is mythicized and myth theorized). Freud later realizes
his mistake (of Saturn as simply castrated) and acknowledges it in the
preface to the second edition. Nonetheless, as Lukacher points out,
‘Freud’s text is fraught with contradictory impulses. He would both sup-
press and celebrate the father as castrator’ (K ( K , 67). This paradoxical
suppression-celebration has a lot in common with Derrida’s cryptonymy
discussed in Chapter 2.
34
Immediately after this he adds, ‘Freud’s practice (rather than his theory)
demonstrates that castration never succeeds in suppressing itself’ (K ( K , 69).
This idea of failed suppression emerges in the discussion of the pharma-
the pharma-
later in this chapter.
kon later
kon
35
Nonnos, Dionysiaca
Dionysiaca,, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press,
Press, 1940), 6.168–9. Henceforth cited as DI .
36
Jean-Pierre Vernant, ‘One . . . two . . . three: er ōs’, in David M. Halperin,
John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (eds), Before Sexuality: The Con-
struction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient World , (Princeton: Princeton
University Press,
Press, 1990), 468, 465–78.
37
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion Religion
(New York: Macmillan, 1943), 583.
38
Jean-Pierre Vernant, ‘Ambiguity and reversal: on the enigmatic structure
of Oedipus Rex’,
Rex’, New Literary History 9.3
History 9.3 (1978), 486, 475–501. Henceforth
cited as AAR
AAR..
39
Vernant also explains that this rite took place ‘on the first day of the
holiday of the Thargelia, the sixth of the month Thargeli ōn’ (AAR (AAR,, 486),
and that the Athenian Thargelia included another aspect. After the expul-
sion of the pharmakoi , on the seventh day of the month they would
dedicate to Apollo
Apollo ‘the first fruits of the earth in the form of the Tharg ē
l os,
ēlos,
a cake and a pot filled with seeds of all kinds’ (AAR
(AAR,, 487). Here Apollo is
linked not just to the pharmakoi
the pharmakoi , but also to agriculture and the seeds of
the earth, recalling not only Saturn and the Saturnalia, but also Dion
Dionysus
ysus..
While Dionysus
Dionysus is recognized as the opposite of Apollo
Apollo,, these associations
suggest that he is also an aspect of Sa -Saturn. This unusual oscillation
Sa-Saturn.
between supposed opposites and the relationship between these two (re)
figures many of the strange loops of this chapter
chapter.. As we ha
have
ve seen, oppo-
sites do not simply collapse into dialectical relation where the negative is
merely negated and the positive simply affirmed. Instead they co-emerge,
giving rise to one another, while each unavoidably dénégates
dénégates the other.
Dionysus would therefore form something like the non-foundational
non-foundationa l foun-
dation of Apollo w who
ho – through the light of reason – gives structure to the
unbounded matrix of Diony
Dionysus,
sus, while Dion
Dionysus
ysus simultaneously disfigures
176

NOTES
the midday transparency [savoir[savoir absolu]

absolu] of Apollo with his lurking
shadows of non-knowledge
non-knowledge..
40
See the discussion in Chapter 2 on the crypt, incorporation and
introjection.
41
All of this resonates with the appearance of mythos in Plato’s Phaedrus Phaedrus
discussed in Chapter 3.
42
Listening to this tolling recalls Jean-Luc Nancy’
Nancy’ss insight that to listen is ‘to
be at the same time outside and inside, to be open from
open from without and from
and from
within, hence from one to the other and from one in the other.’ Jean-Luc
Nancy, Listening , trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York: Fordham Univer-
sity Press, 2007), 14.
43
This ‘prodigious’ yes recalls Socrates’ alignment with Typhon in Plato’s
Phaedrus elaborated in Chapter 3. The many-headed Typhon affirms a
prodigious other
ot her within Socrates’ identit
identityy. As uncanny
uncanny,, TTyphon
yphon is ssimulta-
imulta-
neously das Heimliche and das Unheimlic
Unheimliche he..
44
To further emphasize the fragmentary, partial nature of this inscription,
Derrida does not capitalize the first word of the first sentence, ‘what’. ‘what’.
45
Mark C. Taylor
Taylor,, ‘Skin
‘Skinscapes’,
scapes’, in Pierced Hearts and True Love: A Century
of Drawings for T Tattoos (New York:
attoos (New York: The Drawing Cent Centerer,, 1995)
1995),, 39, 29–4
29–45.
5.
Henceforth cited as S .
46
Chapter 5 includes a discussion of the relation between disfiguring and
figuring and of mythos and the gift as (dis)figures of the impossible
impossible..
47
Jacques Derrida, ‘How to avoid speaking: denials’, trans. Ken Frieden, in
Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser (eds), Languages of the Unsayable: The
Play of Negativi ty in Literature and Literary Theory (New York:
Negativity York: Co
Columbia
lumbia
University Press,
Press, 1989), 34, 3–70. Henceforth cited as HA HA..
48
This is a rich debate, the full scope of which exceeds the bounds of this
discussion. For more on how negativity is positive (particularly in regard
to apophatic or negative theology), see Derrida’s ‘How to avoid speaking’
apophatic or
and Taylor’s Nots
Nots..
49
‘Ataraxia’ literally means ‘without cacare’,
re’, and was coined by the Pyrrhonists
Pyrrho nists
who were extreme sceptics. The term ‘ataratic’ refers to drugs ( pharmakoi ), ),
namely tranquilizers,
tranquilizers, which induce non-caring.
50
Freud views laughter as an excess of energy
energy.. In Jok
Jokes
es and Their Relation to
Unconscious he uses the example of a child who is learning to write
the Unconscious he
and in so doing, ‘follows the movements of his pen with his tongue stuck
out.’ The adult finds this comic, precisely because ‘in these associated
motions we see an unnecessary expenditure of movem movementent which we should
spare ourselves if we were carrying out the same activity.’ The surplus of
energy emerges as laughter. Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to
Unconscious, trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton and
the Unconscious,
Company, 1960), 235.
51
As Derrida says of the secret, it ‘cannot even appear to one alone except
in starting to be lost, to divulge itself, hence to dissimulate itself, as secret,
in showing itself: dissimulating its dissimulation’ (HA ( HA,, 25–6). In order to
have
ha ve a secret, one must reveal the secret (at least to oneself) and so there is,
therefore, no such thing as a ‘secret secret’. Thus, ‘the secret as such, as
177

NOTES
secret, separates and already institutes a negativity; It is a negation that

secret,
denies itself. It de-negates itself. This denegation does not happen to it by
accident; it is essential and originary’ (HA(HA,, 25). An integral quality of
both a secret and mythos is this dissimulation.
mythos is
52
Doty, William, Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals Rituals
(T
(Tuscaloosa:
uscaloosa: University of AlabAlabama
ama Press, 2000), 5–6.
CHAPTER 5
1
Maurice Blanchot, ‘Affirmation and the passion of negative thought’, in
Fred Botting and Scott Wilson (eds), Bataille: A Critical Reader (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers,
Publishers, 1998), 47, 41–58. Henceforth cited as APN .
2
In gemmology, an inclusion is a tiny flaw or marking within the gem itself.
It is a visible, interior fissure included within. I thank Ed Casey for point-
ing this out to me.
3
See Chapter 1 for an analysis of inner contradiction.
4
This anticipates a reading of absolute that occurs later in the chapter, in
which the absolute is viewed in terms of its etymological roots, linking it
to that which is ‘loosed’ and absolved.
5
Blanchot’ss statement is also a critique of Heidegger’
Blanchot’ Heidegger’ss existential analysis in
Being and Time that views ‘being toward death’ as the possible.
possible. Critical of
Heidegger’s one-sided promotion of possibility, Blanchot and Derrida
both re-envision it otherwise.
6
Mark C. Ta Taylor,
ylor, Hiding (Chicago: University
Press,, 1997), 325.
Henceforth cited as H .
7
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or Volume I , trans. David F. Swenson and
Lillian Marvin Swenson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 24.
8
Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty likens myth to an ‘implied spider’ in her study
The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth (New York: Columbia
University Press,
Press, 1998). Although she examines questions of identity and
difference that plague any methodological study of myth in the post-
modern era, her work does not pursue these issues with any philosophical
rigor.. It is not the relation of mythos and logos that interests her. She views
rigor
myth solely in terms of its capacity to construct narratives, thus ignoring
the indecidable,
indecidable, disseminativ
disseminativee aspects of mythos
mythos..
9
Taylor dev
devotes
otes a small ssegment
egment of the chapter entitled ‘Screening informa-
tion’ in MC , 201–14, to myth and summarily touches on the role of myth
in terms of the network in AG , 16–32.
10
This perspective, although clearly articulated in After God , was confirmed
in a conversation when
when Ta
Taylor
ylor insisted that, if deconstruction has any sort
of ‘essence’ or ‘foundation’, it would be the act of criticism – of writing –
itself. However, it is possible to take issue with this perspective insofar
as Derrida showed himself to be concerned with sociopolitical issues.
Derrida’s later work on friendship and hospitality, for example, demon-
strates that he is occupied with some practical aspects of lived experience
experience,,
as well as with criticism. Certainly deconstruction does articulate alterna-
tive structures by demonstrating that no structure is as it seems, and that
178

NOTES
there is always another

another aspect to it. That core realization opens an invita-
tion to see and to proceed other wise. Derrida’s abiding generosity towards
otherwise.
generations of students, collea colleagues
gues and friends alike further suggests that
his work did not comprise just negative criticism, but also practice – a
practice that influenced many to see beyond the limitations of a structur-
alist world. Taylor is one such beneficiary. Taylor’s own works emerge
from the creative possibilities articulated by Derrida. Derrida’sDerrida’s important
insights on structures and systems unquestionably promoted creativity
and offered new potentialities. It is only by discovering how to disassemble
a wall, by ascertaining its permeability, that it becomes conceivable to see
over or beyond it it.. Ta
Taylor’s
ylor’s After God would have been unimaginable apart
from the possibilities that came about as a result of both Derrida’s criti-
cism and guidance. Inasmuch as After God may diverge – in some crucial
ways – from Derrida, it also undeniably emerges from within the creative
openings he articulated.
art iculated.
11
See The Moment of Complexity, Complexity, 11–12, where he uses his statement
from Hiding in order to ‘anticipate the argument of The Moment of
Complexity’.
Complexity ’.
12
Syn means ‘together’ and ballein ‘to throw’. Symbols, therefore, throw
things together.
13
This explains why criticism born of a limited understanding of mythos
suspiciously links it it to master narratives, and therefore thinks that myth
should be avoided at all costs.
14
Taylor’s oversight is similar to translating ‘ pharmakon’
pharmakon’ as either ‘remedy’
or ‘poison’. He fails to acknowledge the inherent slippage and indecidabil-
or ‘poison’.
ity of mythos
mythos..
15
For more on how religion is network, see After God , 12–33.
is network,
16
In Confidence Games (which
Games (which falls between The Moment of Complexity and
After God ),
), Taylor is intent on maps. He asserts that ‘[i]n this uncharted
territory, maps matter’
matter’ (CG , 329) and in effect, as a cartographer, he draws
a new network of religion and culture culture.. Certainly the territory is ‘uncharted’.
However, these maps are not always subjected to the rigor that Taylor has
elsewhere prescribed.
prescribed. The dissimulati
dissimulative ve and deconstructive aspects of the
network disfigure every map. In his book Representing Place: Landscape
Maps Edward S. Casey examines mapmaking as an enter-
Painting and Maps
prise which ‘pass[es] over places in their [maps’] zeal to represent the
totality of the world.’ He also notes that ‘[t]he power of maps to incorpo-
rate contiguous and ever more inclusive parts of the earth in carefully
delineated representations . . . is at the same time a weakness with regard
to the representation of subregional localities, which are conspicuously
neglected by these maps that purport to furnish a world picture.’ In
other words, maps – by their very nature – totalize and thus inevitably
repress particularities and complexities. For Casey, landscape paintings, as
opposed to maps, are attuned to the ‘subtle specificity’ of a place, and
‘resituat[e] these spots and vistas, these discrete endroits and lieux lieux.’.’ Edward
S. Casey, Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps (Minneapolis:
Maps (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 241. When Taylor calls for maps
and schemata, posing his entire project in these terms, he is undertaking
179

NOTES
an inherently calculative
calculative activity that works – in the economy of presence –
toward
towar d bringing the myriad features into a unified representation. This,
This, of
course, leaves
leaves out that which does not lend itself to such representation.
17
A discussion of the impossible and the possible occurs later in this chapter.
18
See the discussion of economy in Chapter 2.
19
There is an interesting resonance between gift and pharmakon
and pharmakon.. A gift that
puts the other in debt (a gift that is, in Derrida’s vocabulary, a present and
not a gift)
gif t) can ea
easily
sily,, in that way
way,, be trans
transformed
formed from a bles
blessing
sing to a ccurse.
urse.
This is because a gift places the recipient in debt to the giver. A counter-
gift is now owed. As Derrida
Der rida says, ‘W‘Wee know that as good
good,, it [the ec
economic
onomic
gift] can also be bad, poisonous
poisonous (Gift
Gift,, gift), and that giving amounts to
gift),
hurting, to doing harm’ (emphasis added, GT , 12). In other words, what
was originally intended as a benevolent act (perhaps given with the
expressed intention to heal), becomes, at the same time, a harmful one one.. In
this way, the gift as present is both a remedy and a poison. Like the phar-
makon,, it slips and slides between these two; it is never simply one but
makon
always already both beneficial and harmful. har mful. In ‘Plato’s Pharma
Pharmacy’ cy’ Derrida
cites Marcel Mauss, who states that ‘Kluge and other etymologists are
right in comparing the potio, “Poison,” series with gift’ and also references
another article linking the etymology of gift to the Latin dosis dosis,, which
means a dose of poison (qtd D, 132). See also GT , 36.
20
Note the play on the word ‘present’ and the slippage between its two
21 meanings.
Jacques Derrida, ‘On the gift: a discussion between Jacques Derrida and
Jean-Luc Marion’, in John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (eds), God,
the Gift, and Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1999), 60, 54–78. Henceforth cited as OTG .
22
See Taylor’s discussion of structuralism and post-structuralism in After
God , 300–8, and The Moment of Complexity,
Complexity, 47–9.
23
In Given Time
Time Derrida captures a multiplicity of resonances of logos logos::
‘logos
logos,, to stay with this injunction of the Greek term, which means at once
reason, discourse, relation, and account’ (GT ( GT , 35).
24
In Chapter 4, the reading
reading of Sa as a (dis)figure
Sa as (dis)figure of mythos demonstrates the
mythos demonstrates
extent to which mythos always remains as a never fully accountable inde-
mythos always
cidable, as a disseminating, non-absent absence.
25
As Bruce Lincoln’
Lincol n’ss historic st
study
udy delineates, in ancient Greece, mythos and
logos changed places. This helped to set the stage for their historic rivalry
rivalry..
26 See Chapter 1.
From
Fr om Hegel’
Hegel’ss perspective, the Concept itself must be unconditional.
27
I am particularly grateful to David L. Miller for his insightful comments
on ‘absolute’ and his remarks on the epistemologi
epistemological
cal (as opposed to onto-
logical) significance of savoir absolu.
absolu.
180

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DERRIDA, MYTH AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY

Philosophy, Aesthetics and Cultural Theory

The Philosophy, Aesthetics and Cultural Theory series

War, Sean Gaston

© Anais N. Spitzer, 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Eugene and Susan Spitzer

a decade has ceaselessly provoked, inspired, and deranged, guiding

learn and find

H Mark C. Taylor, Hiding (Chicago: University of Chicago

SGM Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters (London:

I have never had a ‘fundamental project.’ And ‘deconstructions,’

Philosophy begins, or so it initially appears, with the dismissal of

settle the issue.

therefore has no such definitive nature. Mythos’ ambiguity is highly

presuppositions of the first beginning. One of Derrida’s key decon-

adequately be rethought in a logos-dominated framework, however.

quite grasp. This recognition destabilizes the very foundation of phi-

What emerges is something quite other than Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

Any such study of mythos must resist the temptation to impreg-

organization and development. Since Hegel plays such an important

the Blind (1990) introduces us to his conceptualization of tears.

strates the crucial dynamic relation of mythos and logos. Reading it

in consideration of ‘strange loops’, a term coined by neuroscientist

without relation’ (as do mythos and logos) in which the impossibility

‘WHAT, AFTER ALL, OF THE REMAIN(S) . . .’ ( G, 1)

TEARING REMAINS, REMAINING TEARS

DERRIDA, MYTH AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY

Derrida opens Glas, his most sustained critique of Hegel’s philo-

‘WHAT, AFTER ALL, OF THE REMAIN(S) . . .’

unthought leftovers are foundational to thinking, logos and philoso-

As for what ‘begins’ then – ‘beyond’ absolute knowledge –

That which begins ‘beyond’ philosophy’s completion cannot be

DERRIDA, MYTH AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY

limit were simply dialectical, then transgression would negate the

Transgression does not seek to oppose one thing to another, nor

glittering expanse. Transgression is neither violence in a divided

and therefore attempts to grasp, within the constraints of presence

closure. The inherent

and is not entirely present to logocentric discourse. The uselessness

THE DESTABILIZING INDECIDABILITY OF MYTHOS

Western philosophic discourse has a long history of dichotomizing

DERRIDA, MYTH AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY

‘WHAT, AFTER ALL, OF THE REMAIN(S) . . .’

Accordingly, logos takes on the opposite connotations of mythos.

DERRIDA, MYTH AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY

As an indecidable remains, mythos cannot be accounted for by phi-

‘WHAT, AFTER ALL, OF THE REMAIN(S) . . .’

the determinacy or identity of any ‘what,’ the terms indicate that

For instance, mythos and pharmakon cannot be categorized within

Thinking mythos not as a Hegelian

We will never be finished with the reading or rereading of Hegel,

The re-examination of Hegel is central to Derrida’s task. Further-

DERRIDA, MYTH AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY

writing that unwittingly creates a ‘remainder’. These remains are elu-

[o]n the one hand, Hegel’s system is the culmination of the

This echoes Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who declared two decades

thesize it into thinkers

‘WHAT, AFTER ALL, OF THE REMAIN(S) . . .’

system from within and rendering it incomplete. Instead of preserv-