Critical Theory A Reader

Critical Theory
A Reader
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Critical Theory
A Reader
Edited and
introduced by
DOUGLAS TALLACK
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published1995 by HarvesterWheatsheaf
Published2013 by Routledge
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Douglas Tallack 1995
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Contents
Introduction: Critical Theory: Canonic Questions 1
1: Structuralism and Post-Structuralism 9
Introduction 11
1.1 Roland Barthes Myth T oday 27

1.2 jacques Derrida Positions 43
1.3 julia Kristeva From Revolution in Poetic Language 51
1.4 Michel Foucault Truth and Power 5
1.5 Paul de Man The Resistanceto Theory 78
1.6 j. Hillis Miller Reading Unreadability: de Man 88
2: PsychoanalyticTheory 97
Introduction 99
2.1 Philip Rieff The Emergenceof PsychologicalMan 108

2.2 Herbert Marcuse From Eros and Civilization: A philosophical
inquiry into Freud 120
2.3 Kate Millett Freud and the Influence of PsychoanalyticThought 128
2.4 jacques Lacan The Mirror Stageas Formative of the Function of the
I as Revealedin PsychoanalyticExperience 135
2.5 Naomi Schor Female Paranoia:the casefor psychoanalyticfeminist
criticism 141
2.6 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari Psychoanalysisand Capitalism 153
3: Feminism 173
Introduction 175
3.1 Heidi Hartmann The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism:

towards a more progressiveunion 183
v
vi Contents
3.2 He:ltme Cixous Sorties: Out and Out: attacks/waysout/forays 200

3.3 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Feminism and Deconstruction,Again:
negotiations 212
3.4 Trinh T. Minh-ha Difference: 'A special Third World women issue' 231
3.5 Monique Wittig The Straight Mind 246
3.6 Carol Gilligan From In a Different Voice: Psychologicaltheory and
women'sdevelopment 253
4: Marxism 265
Introduction 267
4.1 Walter Benjamin Theseson the Philosophy of History 278
4.2 Theodor W. Adorno Cultural Criticism and Society 287
4.3 Louis Althusser Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses(Notes
towards an investigation) 298
4.4 Raymond Williams Dominant, Residual, and Emergent 314
4.5 Fredric Jameson The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology 319
4.6 Sebastiano Timpanaro Considerationson Materialism 330
4.7 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe From Hegemonyand Socialist
Strategy 340
5: Post-FoundationalEthics and Politics 355
Introduction 357
5.1 Richard Rorty The Priority of Democracyto Philosophy 369

5.2 jUrgen Habermas Questionsand Counterquestions 388
5.3 Seyla Benhabib CommunicativeEthics and the Claims of Gender,
Community and Postmodernism 401
5.4 Jean-Fran~oisLyotard From The Differend: Phrasesin dispute 417
5.5 Emmanuel Levinas Ethics of the Infmite 434
5.6 Luce Irigaray Why Define Sexed Rights? 442
5.7 Martha C. Nussbaum Human Functioning and Social Justice: in
defenseof Aristotelian essentialism 449
Bibliography 473
Acknowledgements 493
Index 495
Introduction:
Critical Theory:
Canonic Questions
Although there is no ideal moment to produce a Critical Theory Reader, the

selectionof texts can at least be informed by an estimateof the current intellectual
situation. Critical Theory is patentlyno longer the up-and-comingfield it was when
the first post-New Criticism anthologiesappearedin the early 1980s. In spite of
damagingfunding cuts and constraints,there has been a marked growth of theory
and theory-relatedcoursesover the past fifteen years, with academicappointments
(though not enough)to staff them. Indeed,as Perry Andersonand then Christopher
Norris have observed,there is probably a relationship betweenhard political times
and the flourishing of theory (see Anderson, 1979; Norris, 1990). But - less
sceptically - publishers' lists convey the remarkable extent and high level of
intellectual activity as well as the increasing interest in theory on the part of
undergraduates and postgraduates, and beyondhigher educationas well. And, most
revealingly,the minor genreof anti-theorypolemicshas taken a turn which suggests
that it is the traditional disciplines or sections of those disciplines which feel
embattled.In sum, Critical Theory is on the way to becomingestablished- so much
so that its radical credentialsare being challengedby a revived Cultural Studies,as
well as by doubts that even a structuralist, post-structuralist,Marxist, psycho-
analytic, feminist loop cannotcontain current theorisationsof, for example,gender
and race. It soundsalmost heretical to say so, but there is the basis for a canon in
'Critical Theory', itself now the most acceptable,if imprecise,generic name for a
body of texeswhich reflects critically upon claims for disciplinary knowledgewhile
occupying an (almost) indispensableposition in a number of humanitiesand social
sciencedisciplines.
The first important publications of Roland Barthes, JacquesDerrida, Michel
Foucault and Louis Althusser are now thirty to forty years old, while versions of
JacquesLacan's'The Mirror Stageas Formativeof the Function of the I' (Reading
2.10) date from the mid-1930s. And what gets called contemporary Western
Marxism still relies in good part on the work of Benjamin and Adorno from the
1930s. Only an editor with a polemical agendawould omit thesefigures, or indeed
- to hazard a guess - much more than a third of the theorists included in this
2 Introduction
Reader. There are bound to be omissions, of course, though in some instances

(Mikhail Bakhtin standsout) finding a manageable,mostly self-containedtext was
more of a deciding factor than any identifiable and consistent agenda. But this
Introduction should not be given over to the usual assuagingof the editor's guilt at
omissions,so it is important to draw a few conclusionsfrom the texts which have
been reprinted. To admit, and then seek to reflect, the authority of Theory, rather
than to argue for it as earlier collections have neededto, can be a way of posing
important questionsinsteadof dodging them. This Introduction is kept deliberately
short to allow for longer Introductions to each of the five Sectionsto follow, but
there is spaceto broach a few questions.And since textbooks and anthologiesare
signs of their times, thesequestionsprobably have a relevancebeyond the specific
problemsof selection and organisationwhich provoked them.
If many of the theorists select themselves,the choice of texts to representthem
and the larger movementsand schoolscan still allow important points to be made;
as just two examplesindicate. In the context of Section 1, the choice of a 'classic',
such as Roland Barthes's'Myth Today' (1957; Reading 1.1), demonstrateshow
difficult it is to separatestructuralismfrom post-structuralism,and either of these
categoriesfrom ideological analysis. The secondissue, at least, remains live, and
many of the most absorbing current debatesare clarified by fully recognisingthe
significanceof structuralism.Its diagrammaticsand oppositionalgrids now seemas
dated as existentialistdilemmas and New Critical exegeses,but 'Myth Today' is a
reminder of just how crucial structuralismhas been to so much of what followed.
The trajectory of Barthes'sown career confirms the intimacy of the relationship
betweenthe early semiologicalventuresand the later pleasurein textuality, though,
arguably, the political edge which is so apparent in the later sections of 'Myth
Today' gets diffused in Barthes'swork even as it has proved enormouslyinfluential
in Cultural Studies and aspectsof Marxist theory, where the argumentsbetween
structureand history are no lessvital than they were for Sartreand Levi-Strauss.The
secondexample is Luce Irigaray's 'Why Define Sexed Rights?' (Reading 5.6). To
include this 1988 interview, and not the more familiar This sex which is not one'
or 'When our lips speaktogether' (both 1977), and to position Irigaray's work to
one side of the expectedfeminist or psychoanalyticframeworks, is to questionthe
categorisingimperativein canon-formation,even as the statusof Irigaray is rightly
endorsed. But, more interestingly, 'Why Define Sexed Rights?' points to the
important effect upon a leading theorist'swork when she enterspublic debatemore
directly. One of the directions to be discernedin theoretical discourseis towards
such engagement- either directly, as when Irigaray writes on AIDS, or Jacques
Derrida commentson ethnic and nationalistdisputesin post-communistEurope;or
through a changing vocabulary in which ethics, the law and politics receive more
prommence.
Acknowledging the (near) canonical status of Critical Theory can usefully
spotlight some of its constituentelements,the widely recognisedcategorieswhich
are still the site of fiercer argumentsthan thosewhich now attendTheory in general.
Theseargumentsare yet anotherreminderthat the 1990s are one of those periods
Introduction 3
when categories and the metanarrativesthey generate seem to be especially

vulnerable. But while the threat to Marxism (to take the obvious example) has
historical causeswhich culminated in the collapse of communism,there is also a
logic within post-1960stheory which should not be discountedas an explanatory
causeof what is probablytoo loosely called postmoderndispersaland differentiation.
One way to generaliseabout Critical Theory is to see it as a set of theoretical
discoursesvariously predicatedupon the following highly unstabletendenciesand
preoccupations:fIrst, ground-breakingmethodologicaladvances,as in structuralism,
which deliberatelybracket hermeneuticquestionsbecausethey are thought to rely
too simplistically on traditional basesfor knowledge,only for content-questionsto
return to haunt the whole project; second,deconstructiveself-reflexivity; third, an
increasingly immanent form of critique as the best option for inhabiting yet
distancingoneself from a capitalism which is no longer thought to be defInitively
located; and, fourth, the substitution of power for truth as the primary focus for
analysis. This anti-foundationalist, anti-essentialistlogic in most contemporary
theory makes'Theory' a rather odd overall designation- but no less indispensable,
as the work of ChristopherNorris demonstrates(seeespeciallyNorris, 1985, 1990).
His project, stretchingback to a primer on deconstructionand coming through to
his emergenceas a theorist in his own right, is instructive precisely becauseof its
consistentdefenceof Theory (Derrida, in particular, but also Paul de Man) in the
service of philosophic rigour and truth. For Norris, there is an
ambivalenceabout 'theory' as practised by post-structuralists,post-modernistsand

other fashionable figures on the current intellectual scene. That is to say, their
'radicalism' has now passedover into a speciesof disguisedapologeticsfor the socio-
political statusquo, a persuasionthat 'reality' is constitutedthrough and through by
the meanings,values or discoursesthat presently composeit, so that nothing could
count as effective counter-argument,much less a critique of existing institutions on
valid theoretical grounds. (Norris, 1990, pp. 3-4)
The explanatory value of some of the chief categoriesof Critical Theory are
equally at stake. For substantivereasons,having to do with intellectual debts (one
theorist to another) and the need for political cohesion(notably in the instanceof
feminism), it remainseither necessary,or at least worthwhile, to retain thefamiliar
organising concepts of structuralism, post-structuralism,psychoanalytictheory,
feminism and Marxism. Nevertheless,the contentsof each of the fIrst four Sections
of this collection strain the limits of categoriesor - more positively - extend their
purview. It is illuminating, as well as disconcerting,when theoristscannoteasily be
containedby categories;for instance,the impossibility of understandingAlthusser
other than in the competing and overlapping contexts of structuralism, psycho-
analytic theory and Marxism.
As a pedagogicaltool, diagramsusually help the teacherrather than the students,
but it may assistreadersof this collection at least to mention that its ground-plan
was a bewildering diagram of criss-cross,one-way and two-way solid and broken
4 Introduction
arrows, and therefore quite different from the ordered list of Contents. The
respectivepros and cons of section categoriesand permeableboundariescan be
illustrated by taking the designation'feminism', and consideringhow and why the
feminist theorists in this collection could be differently located along a spectrum
between concentration (in a single and much larger section which confirms
commonality) and dissemination (for strategic, interventionist purposes). In a
different, case-study-based collection, the politics of theory could be demonstrated
in situ, as it were; here, the politics of theory may be mapped according to the
respectiveallegiancesto position and critique. The exampleof feminism is a salutary
warning not to relegatecategoriesto starting points or mere orthodoxies.Both can
be spurs to action and can provide the framework for some of the most vital
arguments, since these often occur where there is common ground. The
Introductionsto the five Sectionsof the book will deal with such argumentsfor
instance, between commonality based upon difference or upon sameness,or
between those with degreesof allegiance to a linguistic model stemming from
Saussureor an economicmodel deriving from Marx, and the extent to which these
diverge.
Starting points for recent and current debatesunderstoodin a different sense-
that is, as the foundationaltexts of Marx, Freud and Saussure,amongothers- pose
a considerableproblem for a collection such as this. Given the aim of reprinting
examplesof the latest theorisingalongsidecanonicstatementsby the generationof
Derrida and Foucault, seminal nineteenth-and early-twentieth-centurytexts have
not been included, though someattempt is madeto outline their importancein the
Section Introductions. Another practical reason for restricting coverage is a
forthcoming Reader in the same series devoted to the founding texts of Critical
Theory. But there are intellectual reasons,too, most importantly that theorists
createtheir own starting points: Althusser'sMarx is different from Adorno's; Kate
Millett's Freud and Philip Rieff's and JacquesLacan'sare barely recognisableas the
samefigure. This is probably the point to explain that, in an effort to move some
of the discussionsalong, structuralismis underplayedin theseReadings.I hope that
this shortcomingis also partially compensatedfor by a lengthy Introduction which
would otherwiseseemout of proportion, though a further justification is that ideas
do have a history - one of Michel Foucault's more polemical pronouncements
notwithstanding- and structuralistand post-structuralistideasconsistentlyinform
the other sectionsof this Reader.
Even at the macro-levelof broad categories,it is hard to contain the centrifugal
tendencyin the most recent theorising, and so the luxury of a wild card has been
claimed. The final Section,Section5, on Post-FoundationalEthics and Politics, lays
out one broad area of debate, which is neither immune from postmodern
developmentsnor a mere symptom. The Section title does not imply what would
be a silly assumptionthat post-structuralistsor Marxists, for instance,are not
political or ethical - though one of the aims of the concludingpart of this Reader
is to return to ChristopherNorris's themeand reflect upon the continuing effects of
Derrida's work and the loss of old certaintieswithin Western Marxism. Readings
Introduction 5
5.4 and 5.5, by Jean-Fran<;oisLyotard and EmmanuelLevinas, indicate that there

are other, very different, responsesto the current crisis in theory from Norris's;
while Richard Rorty's 'The Priority of Democracyto Philosophy' (1988; Reading
5.1) is an eloquentanti-crisisstatement.The inclusion in Section5 of piecesby Seyla
Benhabib, Martha Nussbaum and Rorty, and the accompanyingdiscussion of
Hannah Arendt, also reinforce a claim implicit in the selection, elsewherein this
collection, of work by Philip Rieff (2.1), Kate Millett (2.3), Carol Gilligan (3.6),
Heidi Hartmann (3.1) and Raymond Williams (4.4). That claim is for a less
exclusively continental canon (or one heavily influenced by French and German
theory) and for more recognition of Anglo-American (mostly American) engage-
ments with common issues.This kind of rapprochementwould have beenfrowned
upon fIve or ten yearsago, so sharply did much Critical Theory defIne itself against
the Anglo-American tradition. A further consequenceof achieving hard-won
recognitionis that theoristsmay feel more inclined to look again at fIgures like Rieff,
Millett, Gilligan and also Herbert Marcuse (Reading 2.2) and Sebastiano
Timpanaro (Reading 4.6), but also at Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, Alasdair
MacIntyre, Erich Auerbach.... If Section 5, in particular, of this Readeris any
guide, it looks as though Critical Theory is reachingcanonical statusonly for the
controversieswhich have primarily defIned it to be shifting ground. And there are
other changesof orientation. To use ChristopherNorris as an exampleagain, it is
interestingthat he has recently changedhis academicaffiliation from a Department
of English to a Department of Philosophy in the same institution, presumably
becausehe feels that that is where the argumentsare to be conducted.This is not
to say that theoreticalargumentsdo not physically take placein literatureor English
departments;rather, that the important breakthroughshave already been made
there,evenif there is still plenty of resistance,and that the crisis of 'English Studies'
is no longer so pressingfor most theorists.The fInal Sectionof this Readersuggests
that some of the most important engagementscould be with fIgures in political
theory and, in the longer term, with policy studies.
One of the consequences, then, of the perceivedauthority of Critical Theory is
that it has largely subsumedLiterary Theory. Theorists with very literary-critical
projectsor training (J. Hillis Miller [1.6], Paul de Man [1.5], Gayatri Spivak [3.3],
Naomi Schor [2.5], Raymond Williams [4.4] and Fredric Jameson [4.5] are
examplesfrom this collection) becomepart of larger enquiries into representation
and history; some,it can be assumed,will thereforeappearin their own right in the
history of ideasin the late twentieth century. Therefore,one step which this Reader
can take is to move on from the narrowly literary concernswhich have dominated
most collections since the impact of structuralism was felt. Many of the more
literary-theoreticalcollectionsare still in print, so there is now no compellingreason
to include extractsby the RussianFormalists,the Arnold-Eliot-New Critical line,
and the ReaderResponsetheorists. And there is no need to look for an explicit
literary or aestheticconnectionwhen deciding what to include from a theorist such
as Michel Foucault(Reading1.4). Studentsin 'English', just as much as thosein the
Social Sciences,are served better by an extract from Power!Knowledge, which
6 Introduction
identifies the conditions of knowledge in any regime of discourse, than by yet

another reprinting of 'What is an author?'. Literary Theory and aestheticsmore
generally are undoubtedlyamong the most important sourcesof ideas and issues,
and HerbertMarcuse(Reading2.2), Julia Kristeva (Reading1.3), Adorno (Reading
4.2), Derrida (Reading1.2), and Paul de Man (Reading1.5), in different ways, find
in a carefully guardedformalism, and perhapsin aestheticstoo, significant positions
of distanceand critique. But it does not follow that an attempt must be made to
demonstratethe relevance of this or that theoretical position to the study of
literature or, for that matter, any other distinct 'object' or even practice.
A related and probably more contentiousstep which this Readercan take is to
make an unashamedcase for ideas in a rather old-fashionedsense, and for the
necessityfor theoreticalspeculationas a vital stagein any kind of practice. Readers
from different academicbackgroundsdo come together over ideas that transcend
specific situations,and only some take their agreementsand disagreementsback to
their own situations. Others find that theoretical speculation reveals different
problems,obscuredby situatedness.If all educationis caught up with institutions,
then Critical Theory is no exception,especiallyas it becomesmore established.But
this does not mean that the discussion of theoretical texts in an educational
institution is not enlighteningin the broadestsense-a concessionwhich Foucault
readily makesin Reading1.4, but which thoseenamouredof dominationtheory and
obsessedwith only the positivistic elements in Enlightenment thinking tend to
overlook. Theory can provoke reflection upon and intervention in existing
disciplines (including literary studies or 'English'), but it can also assist in the
formulation of broadly political/philosophicalpositions which operatebeyond, as
well as within, institutions. It can thereforeusefully checkas well as stimulateaction
until more is known and understood.If there is one Readingin this collection which
illustrates this last point while also serving as an instance of the kind of old-
fashioneddiscussionof ideas which Critical Theory can now afford to recognise,it
is the chapterfrom Philip Rieff's Freud: The mind of the moralist (1959; Reading
2.1).
The precedingremarkssuggestthe potential for a rift betweenCritical Theory and
Cultural Studies, with the editors of a recent collection entitled Cultural Studies
claiming that 'Through the last two decades,when theory has sometimesseemeda
decontextualizedsceneof philosophical speculation,cultural studies has regularly
theorized in response to particular social, historical, and material conditions'
(Grossberget al., 1992, p. 6). A Critical Theory Readeris not a contextualising
exercise, however: indeed, no anthology can successfully be a sociology of
knowledge, and even Cultural Studiestends towards theoretical speculation,since
its texts must bear some transplantingif they are to have any commonality. There
is a positive politics to commonality as well as to difference. A Critical Theory
Reader can, though, encourageanother kind of questioning of the autonomy
implied in the word Theory: namely, that texts - theoreticaltexts as much as any
other - interrelate; they are, in some formulations, inescapablyintertextual, and
sometimesexplicitly so. Every editor hopesthat somereaderswill go from cover to
Introduction 7
cover and, in the caseof this collection, pick up the explicit interconnections,among
them Habermasrespondingto Rorty, Kristeva to Derrida, Spivak to Cixous, and
Miller to de Man. The last of these connectionsis the most revealing, becausein
this highly specialised(even precious) encounterbetween two literary critics are
indications that literary deconstructionis more aware of its professionalisedself-
preoccupation.Perhapsthe criticisms of Critical and Literary Theory from the
Cultural Studiesside are primarily about their 'establishment'feel, ratherthan about
the ideasinvolved. If so, the impetusbehindCultural Studies,though not necessarily
its situatedness,is a cue for theorists to expand the range of debates and ask
some tough questions about the relationship between being 'critical' (through
deconstructionor critique) and being constructive, possibly to the point when
theorists who admit to the inadequacyof utopianism as a plan for the future (it
continuesas critique, of course),or acceptthe metaphoricalstatusof determinate
theories of history, have to contemplatethe adjacent spheresof policy studies,
political theory and ethical philosophy,and to resist the temptationsto prejudgethe
respectiveclaims of radicalism and reform.
To recognisea canonic aspectto Critical Theory is, finally, to be obliged to ask
what elseis going on in an increasinglycentralintellectualfield which is itself defined
by critiques and displacementsof centrist positions, by an avant-gardistinterest in
the new, and by a commitmentto the marginal and the excluded. The position of
this mainstreamReaderalongsidetwo companionvolumes(Postmodernism,edited
by ThomasDocherty; and Colonial Discourseand Post-Colonial Theory, edited by
Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman) makes this last task even more urgent.
Rather than meet the problem by including sections on such fields as post-
colonialism and the latest twists in the postmodernistdebate,or by subdividing
existing categories, the impact of newer developmentsis reflected by choosing
Readings which are, in many instances, already caught up in cross-boundary
discussions,and by locating contentioustexts in establishedcategories:for example,
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's postmodern rethinking of politics (Reading
4.1) and Trinh T. Minh-ha's essayon Third World difference (Reading 3.4). So
quickly do -isms becomeestablishedthat the final Sectionof this Readermight also
be regardedas adopting a critical position with referenceto postmodernism.
No one could honestly claim to have expertise across a field which, for all its
importance,is so difficult to define, whether substantivelyor by referenceto what
it is not. It would simply not have been possibleto have put this Readertogether
without the experience,stretchingback to 1980, of teaching,supervisingand doing
researchin the School of Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham. With the
exceptionof one specific acknowledgementin the final Section of the collection, it
would be invidious to identify certainstaff and students.I hope,however,that those
who have helped me with particular suggestions,or 'over the years', will recognise
their assistance.It will only confirm my high regard for them if they all think that
they would have done the job better themselves.
1 DStructuralism and
Post-Structuralism
Introduction
Few texts can convey the crucial insights of structuralismwhile, at the sametime,
anticipatingthe reaction againstit, loosely termed post-structuralism,and defending
structuralismagainstthe chargethat it is simply a more scientific formalism and, as
such, just as apolitical. Roland Barthes's'Myth Today' (Reading 1.1) meets these
requirementsso successfullythat it is hard to accept 1957 as the publication date
for Mythologies,the book which collects a numberof casestudiesof contemporary
culture and rounds them off with such a stunning theoretical excursus.
In a Readerwhich seeksto update some of the theoretical debatesof the past
thirty-to-forty years,and in which all the Readingsin Section 1 are departuresfrom
or, more accurately,departuresfrom within structuralism,it is tempting to relegate
the movementwhich so dominatedintellectual life in the 1960sand 1970sto some
kind of pre-history of what is now termed Critical Theory. It is as well, therefore,
to devote extra spaceto structuralismand take a cue from Bartheswho, early in
'Myth Today', defInes the central concepts, 'signifier', 'signified' and 'sign', and
summarisesthe vital contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure,while adding that
'semiology has not yet come into being' (Barthes, 1972b, p. 111). In Elementsof
Semiology,publishedin 1964, Barthesmaintainsthat semiologycan bestprosecute
its ambition to be a scienceof all signs by adoptingthe model of language,because
linguistic signshave beenmore systematicallyexaminedthan any other sign system.
The particular system or discipline can then be investigatedand its semiological
functioning laid bare as never before, at the sametime as a methodologyis put in
place which encouragesinterdisciplinary analysis,on the groundsthat signification
is what is commonto different social and cultural activities. The tendencyin Anglo-
American intellectual life during the 1970swas to carryoverstructuralistadvances
primarily into literary theory becauseof literature'spatently linguistic character(it
was precisely this notion of a lowest common denominator which provoked
predictableresponsesfrom many literary critics). Consequently,the indiscriminate
quality of Mythologiesneedsto be emphasised.For all its claims to facilitate close,
system-specificanalysis,structuralismcrossedboundariesas much as it established
them. In the 1960sSaussure'smodel of languagebecameparadigmaticfor a number
of important structuralist ventures which sought to analyse as systemsof signs
fashion, advertising, narrative and poetry, and whole cultures, as in Barthes's
Empire of Signs (1970). Evidence of how wide-ranging was the structuralist
endeavourmay be found in JacquesEhrmann'sStructuralism(1970; first published
as a specialissueof Yale French Studiesin 1966), a collection which rarely appears
on reading lists now but was an interdisciplinary educationto many readers.
II
12 Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
In the Course in General Linguistics (first published in 1916), reconstructed

posthumouslyfrom lecturesdeliveredbetween1907 and 1911, Saussureemergesas
one of the great modern systematisers,adamantthat any field of enquiry requires
a synchronicratherthan a diachronicor developmentalanalysis.Although the move
towards synchronicity,if instituted as a theoreticalprinciple rather than treatedas
a methodological manoeuvre,stored up problems for later theorists, who were
persuadedby structuralism'sinsights but committed to historical/political projects,
the benefitswere none the lessconsiderable,and can be appreciatedin a few classics
of structuralistanalysis:ClaudeUvi-Strauss's'The structuralstudy of myth' (1955);
A.]. Greimas'sSemantiquestructurale (1966); TzvetanTodorov's The Fantastic: A
structural approach to a literary genre (1970); and Gerard Genette'sNarrative
Discourse (1972).
Hayden White's Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth-century
Europe (1973) is one of the most sophisticated American products of the
structuralistrevolution in thought. White pursuesthe disagreementbetweenLevi-
Straussand Jean-PaulSartreover structureversushistory by directing the linguistic
and synchronicturn againsthistorical explanationitself. He arguesthat the histories
written by Michelet, Ranke,Tocqueville and Burckhardtare narrativeemplotments
rather than recordsof facts. As linguistic and structural entities, thesehistoriescan
be distinguishedby tropological preferences;Barthesis more forthright still in 'The
discourseof history' (1967): 'the fact can only have a linguistic existence,as a term
in a discourse,and yet it is exactly as if this existencewere merely the "copy", purely
and simply, of another existence situated in the extra-structuraldomain of the
"real'" (Barthes, 1981, p. 17). Hence the polemical intent of Barthes'sessaytitle,
'Myth Today', as a justification for his explanationof how it is that such cultural
practicesas wrestling matches,advertisementsand menussignify eachtime they are
enactedwithin a recognisedsystem,which the proverbial visitor from Mars would
have to learn 'today'.
The usual stopping place for theoristswho have worked off Saussure'sCourse is
this statement:
in languagethere are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally

implies positive terms betweenwhich the differenceis set up; but in languagethere are
only differenceswithout positive terms. Whether we take the signifted or the signifter,
languagehas neitherideasnor soundsthat existedbefore the linguistic system,but only
conceptualand phonic differencesthat have issuedfrom the system.The idea or phonic
substancethat a sign containsis of less importancethan the other signs that surround
it. (Saussure,1974, p. 120)
Saussure'sinsight leads off in a number of directions. The idea of a differential

relationship betweensigns is an affront to a literary criticism and an aestheticsin
generalderiving from Romanticism,becauseit is at the root of the claim that there
is an arbitrary relationshipbetweenthe signifier (phonic or graphic)and the signified
(the mental concept). Structuralism, as it developed out of Saussure'swork,
Introduction 13
contestedthe assumptionthat there is a natural meaning inherent in a sign, or at

least in certain signs sometimesdesignatedpoetic signs. For an indication of the
challengewhich the notion of the arbitrary sign posedfor the hope or assumption
that words could be reattachedto things and to an original design, and that
in authenticity in language could be checked, Saussurecan be put against the
American RomanticHenry David Thoreau.For Saussure,arbitrarinesswent all the
way down to the individual letter, as JonathanCuller explains in his Introduction
to Coursein GeneralLinguistics: 'one may write t in numerousways, so long as one
preservesits differential value. There is no positive substancewhich defines it; the
only requirementis that one keep it distinct from other letters with which it might
be confused,such as I, j, b, i, k' (Saussure,1974, p. xix). For Thoreau,however,
writing about a thawing bank of sand in his book Walden (1854):
No wonderthat the earth expressesitself outwardly in leaves,it so laborswith the idea

inwardly.... The overhangingleaf seeshere its prototype. Internally, whether in the
globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especiallyapplicableto the liver
and lungs and the leavesof fat (' ... globus, lobe, globe; also lap, £lap, and many other
words); externally, a dry thin leaj, even as the j and v are a pressedand dried b. The
radicals of lobe are lb, the soft massof the b (single-lobedor B, double-lobed),with
the liquid I behind it pressingforward. (Thoreau, 1980, p. 204)
Saussurean structuralisminstituted a gap betweenthe world of signs and the world

of objects or referents, though even to put it this way points to the tenacity of a
referentialmodel of signification (and to a hesitancywhich post-structuralistthinkers
exploited). The point, though, is that without a natural relationshipbetweensignifier
and signified - to which Thoreaugives hyperbolicexpression- the only way meaning
can be explainedis within the context of the systemof language.It follows, then -
and Saussuresays as much in the statementabove - that meanings,too (the sphere
of the conceptor signified), are relational. Before inspectingthis conclusion,a second
ramification of Saussure'sdiacritical model should be looked at.
By adoptinga differencerather than referencemodel of language,Saussure- less
dramaticallythan Darwin, Marx and Freud - underminesa consciousness-centred
philosophy. To transfer attention from causal and originating explanationsfor
meaningto structural explanationsrevealsthat any sign is intelligible not by virtue
of a self-consciousintenderbut through its differential relationswith other signs in
the linguistic system. The identity of an elementin the linguistic systemis arrived
at negatively, accordingto how it differs from other elementsin the system. This
diacritical form of explanationprovokes the radical idea that nothing is complete
in itself. Securelimits and boundariesget transgressed:wheredoesthe self begin and
end if, as Emile Benvenisteinsists in Problems in General Linguistics (1966), the
personal pronoun'!' cannot be defined outside the linguistic reality in which it
manifestsitself?
Not surprisingly, given the large-scale reaction against phenomenologyand
existentialismunder way in Francesince the 1960s,certain pronouncementswere
trumpeted as the clarion call of the structuralist (and then post-structuralist)

revolution. Barthes'sexpression'the death of the author', or Derrida's 'the ends of
man', were taken out of context and, in the furore, the valuable journeyman
dimension of structuralism (particularly the work of Genette, Greimas and
Todorov) received less credit than it deserved.More importantly, in context, the
anti-humanism of the Saussureanmodel can be seen as potentially richer in
intellectual contentthan transcendentalviews of the self because,arguably,it is not
anti-humanistat all. Take, as an instanceof the kind of statementwhich has been
regularly misunderstood,Foucault'sannouncementin The Order 0/ Things (1966):
It is comforting, however, and a source of profound relief to think that man is only
a recent invention, a fIgure not yet two centuriesold, a new wrinkle in our knowledge,
and that he will disappearagain as soonas that knowledgehasdiscovereda new frame.
(Foucault, 1970, p. xxiii)
Foucaultis setting asidethe transcendental,eventheological, self dating back to the

late eighteenthcentury as precisely that -a historical concept which is no longer
an adequate explanatory principle for the 'systems of regularities' which his
archaeologicalapproachreveals:
If there is one approachthat I do reject, however, it is that (one might call it, broadly
speaking, the phenomenologicalapproach) which gives absolute priority to the
observingsubject,which attributesa constituentrole to an act, which placesits own
point of view at the origin of all historicity - which, in short, leadsto a transcendental
consciousness. It seemsto me that the historical analysisof scientifIc discourseshould,
in the last resort, be subject, not to a theory of the knowing subject but rather to a
theory of discursive practice. (Foucault, 1970, p. xiv)
The problem is not with the deathof theological'man' because- quite conceivably
- that figure has impeded understandingof the human world, at least during the
pastcentury,when it haslaggedbehindintellectualand technologicaldevelopments.
The problem is with the lack in structuralismand someunguardedversionsof post-
structuralism,of a theory of agencyand a way of talking about changeover time.
After all, looking at the workings of a modern society with a suitable scepticism
about the more extreme formulations of the ideology of the sovereign self, of
individualism, one can arrive at the quite sensible conclusion that the system is
simply that which gives meaningto the individuals within it; it is the water that fish
swim in. It is - in Foucault'sterms when he writes about epistemes- that which
allows senseto be made. And this, after all, is the key structuralist insight into
intelligibility, though Foucaultprotestsagainstany structuralistaffiliations even as
he memorably describesthe conditions of knowledgewithout making referenceto
a transcendentalknower. Once the relationship between structuralism and post-
structuralismhas been clarified, the question of agency and historical changecalls
for some further discussion, since it reappearsin all the other Sections of this
Reader.
Introduction 15
In tensionwith Saussure'saim of marking out an areafor study - in his case,the

systemof languageis the potential for instability in the notion of difference,which
does not respectboundariesand underminesthe self-sufficiency of any entity. It is
this tension which partly explains the sensein which structuralismis inhabited by
its supposedsuccessor,post-structuralism.The chronology of the two movements
also warns against any strict separation.Derrida's'Structure,sign, and play in the
discourseof the human sciences'was delivered as a conferencepaper in 1966 and
reprintedin Writing and Differencein 1967, the year of publication for Speechand
Phenomenaand Of Grammatology,which containshis deconstructionof Saussure's
theory of the sign. Foucault came to prominence with The Order of Things,
publishedin the heyday of structuralism,while JacquesLacan'sroute to a version
of post-structuralismhas its starting point in the 1930s controversieswithin the
psychoanalyticprofession. What is apparent,though, especially in Derrida and
Foucault, is the way in which certain aspectsof structuralismare accentuatedto
striking effect. First, Derrida - bearing in mind, of course, that his position is
developedand refined in relation to other figures and movementsbesidesSaussure
and structuralism;notably, from the modernperiod, Hegel, Nietzsche,Freud, and
Husserlian phenomenology. Derrida's relations with structuralismare particularly
acute,however,becausestructuralism,far from advancingany kind of metaphysical
simple (the self, reality, truth, God, history), seemsto mark the break from such
thinking. Yet the first sentenceof 'Structure,sign, and play', the essaywhich brought
Derrida wide attention, producesa tremor in the structuralist project:
Perhapssomethinghas occurred in the history of the conceptof structurethat could

be called an 'event', if this loaded word did not entail a meaningwhich it is precisely
the function of structural - or structuralist- thought to reduce or suspect.(Derrida,
1978, p. 278)
Derrida's hesitation over the word 'event' is a reminder that in his concern to
complicatethe conceptof structure,he remainsequally scepticalaboutthe other side
of the debate between structure and history, as is noticeable in the extract from
'Positions' (Reading 1.2). In 'Structure, sign, and play', however, his target is
structureand the way in which the use of the conceptby, presumably,structuralists
has ruled out what he calls 'the structurality of structure',and what Roland Barthes
rightly refers to as 'the structuralistactivity'. In somerespects,Derrida'salternative
to the stability of 'structure'is unfortunate,since the notion of 'free play' is at odds
with the carefulnessof his readingof texts, and has also encouragedaccusationsof
frivolity or - more damagingly in the long run - of an easy-goingrelativism.
Derrida's more telling contribution is apparentelsewherein the sameessay:
If totalization no longer has any meaning, it is not becausethe infmitenessof a fIeld

cannotbe coveredby a fInite glanceor a fInite discourse,but becausethe natureof the
fIeld - that is, languageand a fInite language- excludestotalization. This fIeld is in
effect that of play, that is to say, a fIeld of inEtnite substitutionsonly becauseit is Etnite,
that is to say, becauseinstead of being an inexhaustible field, as in the classical

hypothesis,instead of being too large, there is somethingmissing from it: a center
which arrests and founds the play of substitutions. One could say ... that this
movement of play, permitted by the lack, or absenceof a center or origin, is the
movementof supplementarity.(Derrida, 1978, p. 289)
'Supplementarity' refers back to the differential relationship between signs in

Saussureand the claim that no sign (and no entity, for that matter) is completein
itself but dependsupon and, in turn, supportsother signs. But 'held' recalls the
attempt by Saussureand structuralist theorists to establish a held of analysis,
whetherit be languageas a totality or a localised cultural myth. And it is this held
which, Derrida points out, cannotbe framed, becauseoncethe turn to languagehas
been accepted,then what is being framed by languageis language,with its logic of
supplementalrelations. The 'event' of structuralismis quite blatantly a linguistic
event. It had been thought (and still was being thought when Derrida deliveredhis
paper) that structuralismhad introducedsuch a radical epistemologicalbreak with
the shift to synchronic analysis and all that followed that this would permit the
constitutionof a scientihcdiscourse.The epistemetherebyinaugurated- the age of
structuralism- would be epistemologicallyprivileged, and so able to overlook all
other sign systems.Foucaultneatly isolatesthe problemwhich this ambition entails:
'The human sciences,when dealing with what is representation(in either conscious
or unconsciousform), will hnd themselvestreating as their object what is in fact
their condition of possibility' (Foucault, 1970, p. 364).
In his essay 'Differance', published in 1968, Derrida quotes Saussure on
differencesin languageto conhrm how dependenthe is upon Saussure,and then
adds:
The first consequenceto be drawn from [Saussure'sstatement] is that the signified

conceptis neverpresentin itself, in an adequatepresencethat would refer only to itself.
Every concept is necessarilyand essentiallyinscribed in a chain or a system, within
which it refers to anotherand to other concepts,by the systematicplay of differences.
Such a play, then - differance - is no longer simply a concept,but the possibility of
conceptuality,of the conceptualsystemand processin general.(Derrida, 1973, p. 140)
Respectfulof Saussure'sgreat contribution in bringing languageto the fore rather

than, say, the economicbasein Marx, Derrida none the less seeksto explain why
Saussurehnds it necessaryto set limits to his 'general'linguistics. He asks what it
is that permits Saussureto carry out his descriptive work on language and, by
extension,what permits the various structuralistanalysesof sign systems.What has
to be excludedfor any system to appearcomplete, and therefore capableof being
the model for other systems? Derrida demonstratesthat Saussure's'general'
linguistics should more accuratelybe called a 'restricted'linguistics - two terms he
foregroundsin an importantessayfrom 1967, 'From restrictedto generaleconomy:
a Hegelianism without reserve'. He concludes that Saussure'svital distinction
between signiher and signihed, and his insight into the arbitrarinessof the sign,
Introduction 17
dependupon an initial exclusionof 'writing'. 'Writing' is understoodin the common-

sensemeaningof not-spoken-but-written,but also as the worldly, the cultural, the
historical, the institutional, the public; indeed,as the systemof differencesthat each
elementin the systemcarries with it as a 'trace'.
Derrida shows that the analytic tools provided by linguistics are but another
institutionalisation of metaphysics.In this connection, however, he insists that
Saussuregoes further, thereby revealing the powerful hold which a traditional
metaphysics of reference and unity has upon any thinker. Having stressed
arbitrarinessand then outlawed symbolic writing, Saussureallows that there are
somesignswhich are of a different order and which possessa 'natural bond between
the soundand the sense':the sign as symbol, and as spokennot written. It is at this
point that Derrida'sdeconstructionof Saussure- an anti-phenomenological thinker
- intersectswith his readingof Husser!, in whosework there is a decisiverecourse
to the supposedirreducibility of a moment of interior communication,or hearing
oneself speak. Quite remarkably, then, Saussure appearsin Derrida's reading as
nostalgicfor a pre-Iapsarianfullness of meaning,embodiedin a privileged sign, not
so far from Coleridge, Wordsworth, Emerson, Thoreau and other Romantic
theoreticiansof language.Saussureresists his own insight and, in his exclusion of
written language,resorts to melodramaticformulations, as Derrida observes:
The contaminationby writing, the fact or the threat of it, are denouncedin the accents
of the moralist or preacherby the linguist from Geneva.The tone counts; it is as if,
at the moment when the modern scienceof the logos would come into its autonomy
and its scientilicity, it becamenecessaryagain to attack a heresy.(Derrida, 1976,p. 34)
Derrida'spassingcomparisonwith John Calvin is quite apt, since Calvinism and its

institutionalised successor,Puritanism, both inauguratedmodernity through their
break with the assumedtotality of the human and the divine, but then sought to
repressthe 'freedom' which their methodologyfor interpreting texts set loose.
In terms of Derrida's own project, his reading in OJ Grammatology turns
Saussure's'difference' into 'differance'. Signs - which, Saussureargues,should be
understoodas part of a system - turn out to have a temporal dimension as well.
Paul de Man - whoseearly essaysparallel and even precedeDerrida'swork, but in
the more specialisedsphereof Romantic and Modernist literary theory - calls this
'the rhetoric of temporality' to suggestthat signs not only differ from each other in
their generationof meaningbut also defer meaning(de Man, 1983, pp. 187-228).
Derrida puts this nicely, almost in everyday terms:
When we cannot take hold of or show the thing, let us say the present, the being-
present,when the presentdoes not presentitself, then we signify, we go through the
detour of signs. We take up or give signs; we make signs. The sign would thus be a
deferredpresence.Whether it is a questionof verbal or written signs, monetarysigns,
electoral delegates,or political representatives,the movement of signs defers the
momentof encounteringthe thing itself, the momentat which we could lay hold of it,
consumeor expend it, see it, have a presentintuition of it. (Derrida, 1973, p. 138)
It is Saussure'sinsight still, but pursuedaccordingto a deconstructivelogic which

is capableof transformingthe structuralistsysteminto the familiar post-structuralist
image of the labyrinth which closes and yet, through a mise en abime, opens up
Derrida's reading of Husserl in Speechand Phenomena:
Everything has, no doubt, begun in the following way [he then quotesfrom Husserl's
Ideas I]:
A nameon being mentionedremindsus of the Dresdengallery.... We wander

through the rooms.... A painting by Teniers ... representsa gallery of
paintings. ... The paintings of this gallery would representin their turn
paintings, which on their part exhibited readableinscriptions and so forth.
Certainly nothing has precededthis situation. Assuredly nothing will suspendit. It is

not comprehended,as Husser! would want it, by intuitions or presentations.Of the
broad daylight of presence,outside the gallery, no perceptionis given us or assuredly
promisedus. The gallery is the labyrinth which includesin itself its own exits. (Derrida,
1973, p. 104)
The broaderpoint of Derrida'sreadingof Saussure'sCoursein GeneralLinguistics

is that no methodology is free from that for which it seeks to account. Even a
systematic account of language such as Saussureinitiates cannot generate a
metalanguageadequate to itself, though it would be Derrida's claim that a
scrupulousdeconstructivereading can generateknowledgeof that impossibility by
working within and againstthe conceptuallanguageof any enclosure.And so, in
his close reading of Saussure,Derrida concludes that even Saussureoverlooks
languagein the processof looking it over.
Before tracing the relationship betweenstructuralistand post-structuralisttenets
and practicesin two other French theorists,Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva, it
may be helpful to commenton what may seemto be simply a literary parallel in the
work of Paul de Man and J. Hillis Miller, but which introduces the cross-
disciplinary notion of 'reading' and its ramifIcations. As already noted, de Man's
early essays in many respectsrun alongside, and sometimespredate, Derrida's
concentrationupon the structureof the individual sign in Speechand Phenomena
and the section on Saussurein Of Grammatology.In The intentional structureof
the Romantic image' (1960) and 'The rhetoric of temporality' (1969), de Man's
single-mindedpreoccupationis with the interpretive gap which opens up in the
supposedlyautonomoussymbol or image which is the fulcrum of Romantic and
Modernist aesthetics.In The rhetoric of temporality' this gap is explainedthrough
a skilful rewriting of literary history which reveals the persistenceof allegorical,
interpretive modes of thinking well into the period of Romanticism, which had,
apparently,left such labouredmodesbehind. De Man conductsa similar argument
against the dominanceof organicist theory in the 1950s under the aegis of New
Criticism, and in both essayshe subjectsthe assumptionsof periodisationto careful
scrutiny. The essayon the New Criticism is reprintedin the first edition of Blindness
Introduction 19
and Insight (1971), and this coupling is an indispensableelementin de Man's and

also Miller's efforts to underpin canonicalliterary and theoreticaltexts by reading
them agonistically, rather than dutifully. Thus, de Man maintains that in spite of
a theoretical'blindness'which keepsthe New Critics weddedto the idea of a self-
containedpoetic form, it is the very stringency of their methodsof close reading
which leads to the insight that no totality is immune to the play of languageor -
in de Man's vocabulary- to the intentionality of rhetoric. Through his reading of
Nietzschein Allegories of Reading,publishedin 1979, de Man revitalisesthe nearly
forgotten skills of rhetorical analysis, to such an extent that texts become a
battlegroundof competing tropes.
In J. Hillis Miller's literary criticism there is a similar emphasis upon what
languagecan do when it is freed from a metaphysicsof form, authorial intention,
narrative, theme, and periodisation. Miller, especially in the subdiscipline of
criticism of fiction and narrative, consistently subjectstraditional literary-critical
preoccupationsto the rigour of a batteryof new close readingtechniquesto ask, for
example, what a deconstructive literary history might be. What - to be more
specific, still - remainsof period and genredemarcationswhen a classicnineteenth-
century realist novel like Middlemarch is read against the grain of its controlling
assumptionsthat signsrefer to things, and that narrativeleadsto conclusionswhich
reinforce the acceptedteleology of history? More generally,Miller's work is highly
instructive for those who wish to identify the impact of a diacritical model of
language in a theoretically informed literary criticism. The differences between
Miller's first appraisalsof his mentor, GeorgesPoulet (Miller, 1963, 1966) and his
reappraisalafter Derrida and de Man's work had become more widely known
(Miller, 1970) serveto exposethe shortcomingsof a phenomenologicalcriticism of
identification, notably the assumptionthat languagecan bring about the unity of
authorial intention and reader'sperception.
The logic of Miller's detailed readingsleads to the idea of text as labyrinth. In
'Ariadne's thread' (1976), reading becomesa retracing, which is yet a form of
writing. The narrativewhich resultsbearsan allegoricalrelationshipto the 'original'
narrativein the text to be read, constructingthat original as it is dutifully followed.
The temporal-spatialconundrumswhich Miller's readingsthrow up are akin to the
logic which Derrida identifies in the movementof 'differance'. Nietzscheis also at
the back of much of Miller's criticism, in particular the notion that in naming the
truth (a definitive interpretationof a text or event or person)the play of metaphor
is necessarilyinvoked and so the readernecessarilyerrs, meaningboth to mistake
and to err or wander as signs refer to signs. In Miller and de Man - as well as in
Harold Bloom's A Map of Misreading, from the sameperiod - thereis an insistence
on the necessityof misreading.
In retrospect, it would seem that many literary critics have been too easily
enthralled by the ideas of close misreading and the text as an infinite web of
signification - possibly because,in tandem, they offered a way of learning from
structuralismwhile resistingits scientific aspirations.Deconstructivecriticism, in a
curious fashion, restoredto literature its special quality, its inability to be closed
down or limited. All the time that the New Critics, Romanticaestheticsand an old-
fashioned authorial criticism remained the adversaries,literary deconstruction
retained its radical, unsettling edge; but as the theoretical agendachanged,so the
open text and the power to misread the text threw up new problems. In this
connection,J. Hillis Miller's work is just as instructiveat the 1990sendof the debate
as it was when structuralismand post-structuralismso dramaticallyaffectedthe idea
of reading in the 1970s. If Miller's own reaction againstphenomenology- almost
a remakingof himself as a literary critic after a successfulcareerworking in and off
phenomenologicalapproaches- at hrst blunted his awarenessof the implications
of deconstructionwhen carried overinto the held of literary theory and criticism (he
was not alone in this!), his work since the mid-1980s reveals an acute self-
consciousness of two old problemswhich deconstructivereadingformulatesin new
ways: history and ethics.
In 'Defacing It: Hawthorneand History', a long essaypublishedin 1991 which
concentratesupon Hawthorne's'The Minister's Black Veil', Miller faces up to the
charge that deconstructionis a new New Criticism in its obsessionwith textual
ambiguities - renamed aporias or moments of undecidability - and equally
incapableof engagingwith history and its claims to determinetextual boundaries.
De Man is forthright on this point:
In literary studies, structuresof meaningare frequently describedin historical rather

than in semiological or rhetorical terms. This is, in itself, a somewhat surprising
occurrence,since the historical nature of literary discourseis by no meansan a priori
establishedfact, whereasall literature necessarilyconsistsof linguistic and semantic
elements.(de Man, 1979, p. 79)
Miller also takes the offensive, arguing that it is historical cntIclsm which
supposedlytries to respectthe influence of historical factors in literary texts, but
which actually neutraliseshistory and renders it an inert theme in Hawthorne's
explicitly historical short story: 'historical events ... becomehistory when ... signs
are read' (Miller, 1991, p. 114). Reading, for Miller, is an intervention which is
caught up in 'the heterogeneityof a historical happening,its differentiation within
itself, its contaminationby an other than itself that is not outside in opposition to
it but within' (Miller, 1991, p. 118). In the courseof this argument,Miller derives
support from de Man's assertionthat
the linguistics of literarinessis a powerful and indispensabletool in the unmaskingof

ideological aberrations, as well as a determining factor in accounting for their
occurrence. Those who reproach literary theory for being oblivious to social and
historical (that is to say ideological) reality are merely stating their fear at having their
own ideological mystifIcations exposedby the tool they are trying to discredit. They
are, in short, very poor readersof Marx's German Ideology. (de Man, 1982, p. 11)
The extractreprintedfrom The Ethics of Reading(1987; Reading1.6) could easily

have appearedin Section 5, Post-FoundationalEthics and Politics, except that it is
Introduction 21
valuableto see Miller's concernwith ethics as a reflection upon the route from the
security of a structuralist enclosure,in which a limited, if innovative, agendaof
explanatoryexpositionsof contemporaryculture kept larger questionsat bay, to the
releaseof interpretive energiesin post-structuralism;but also to see this concern
arising from a microscopicengagementwith anotherclose reader,Paul de Man. As
Miller sees it, the question of ethics is not a matter of returning to the 'ethical
content' of books. Ethics is reading. However, it is the power of deconstructive
reading to constructa text which precipitatesquestionsabout its ethics, its limits,
the restrictionsit shouldacknowledgeupon 'play'. The transgressingof limits which
deconstructionenables,and which has provoked the objection that it is nihilistic,
leads Miller to conclude that 'if the response[to a text] is not one of necessity,
groundedin some "must", if it is a freedom to do what one likes, for example to
make a literary text meanwhat one likes, then it is not ethical' (Miller, 1987a,p. 4).
'Reading',Miller announces,'is extraordinarilyhard work. It doesnot occur all that
often' (p. 3); and when it does occur, it is more fundamental than the use of
literatureimplied by a phrasesuch as 'the politics of interpretation'(p. 4): 'No doubt
"reading" spreadsout to involve institutional, historical, economic, and political
"contexts",but it beginswith the words on the page'and the readingsituation. The
echoesof the New Criticism and the scaling down of the wider context probably
jar and smack of a retreat from a political agenda,though de Man does not see it
this way:
The ensuing foregroundingof material, phenomenalaspectsof the signifier createsa

strong illusion of aestheticseduction at the very moment when the actual aesthetic
function has been, at the very least, suspended .... Literature involves the voiding,
rather than the affirmation, of aestheticcategories.(de Man, 1982, p. 10)
Miller's essayon Paul de Man is part of a determinedeffort to identify 'the ethical

moment' in any text, in which claims are madewhich cannot be avoided and leave
the readeralone with her/his text.The timing of this essayis awkward, to say the
least, becausein 1987 the news broke of de Man's wartime collaborationist
journalism(seede Man, 1988; Hamacheret al., 1989). Miller's subsequentdefence
of de Man depends - rather lamely, it seems - upon a distinction between
journalism and genuinewriting, and the reading which each generates.During his
contribution to the controversy,however, Miller makesthe requestthat de Man's
wartime essaysbe really 'read',togetherwith his later work; and presumably,Miller
would argue that in this encountersome insight into de Man's blindness in his
journalism of fifty years agomay be obtained.
In the broader arena, away from professionalliterary-critical disputes, Miller
demandsattention through the modesty and literality of his case for reading. For
reading and talking about reading is what theoristsand studentsof theory do, and
it is the basis for any broader applications they might advocate - political
applicationsin particular. If there is a moment when reading, in Miller's senseof
the word, should stop, and action take over, it is not a moment which should be
unambiguouslywelcomed.
In a 1968 interview with Derrida, Julia Kristeva anticipates,through a seriesof
questionson language,one of the directions of her own research,at least up to
Revolution in Poetic Language (1974). There is a similarity between Derrida's
identification of a radical disseminatingforce in the formality of a languagesystem
and Kristeva's understandingof the 'semiotic' dimension; indeed, far from being a
neutral descriptiveterm, the 'semiotic', for Kristeva, is the dynamic and subversive
quality in language,whereassemiology or structuralismis what one is left with if
a purely spatial and synchronic view of languageis adopted. Kristeva does not
reinstatean evolutionary, developmentalunderstandingof language;instead, she
rethinks Lacan's account of the Imaginary and the Symbolic orders to posit a
dynamic interplay betweenthe semiotic and the symbolic, out of which comesthe
formation of the subject as a speakingsubject. The semiotic and the symbolic are
'two modalitiesof what is ... the samesignifying process'(Kristeva, 1984,pp. 23-4)
rather than self-contained positions within language. And these modalities are
associated,respectively,with the pre-oedipaland oedipal stages.
But Kristeva's is no mere typology, though it does permit generic distinctions
which have been of use to innovative literary critics interested in the (shifting)
boundariesof narrative,poetry, theoreticaldiscourse,and so forth. The importance
of her work on language is most apparent in psychoanalysisand feminism.
Revolution,which representsan important stagein Kristeva's assimilationand use
of psychoanalysis,could as easily be a key sourcefor the next Sectionof this Reader;
while extracts from About Chinese Women or the essays 'Stabat mater' and
'Women's time' would be important - albeit difficult to categorise- additions to
Section 3, Feminism. However, the extractsthat have been reprinted (see Reading
1.3) show where Kristeva is coming from, and how she works through current
researchin linguistics to define her own terminology. Kristeva locatesthe sourceof
resistanceto the formalism of languageand its rationali sing order in what she calls
- in a modification of Plato's term - the semiotic chora, 'a nonexpressivetotality
formed by the drives and their stasesin a motility that is as full of movementas it
is regulated' (Kristeva, 1984, p. 25). In effect, the repressionof the marginal in
languageconstructsthe chora as the 'place' of negativity. With the entry of the
subject into what Lacan calls the Symbolic Order the chora becomesan 'extremely
provisional articulation' within languageand, as such, disruptive and radical. This
is an important reorientation of Lacanian thought in which the Symbolic Order
carriesthe weight of the Law of the Father,and is the reasonwhy Kristeva'ssemiotic
shouldnot be preciselyequatedwith Lacan'sImaginary. Signification dependsupon,
rather than is annulled by, the attemptedand partial repressionof the chora, and
so, too, does the identity of the subject. The chora remains a 'live' source of
negativity or heterogeneity,recognisable,for instance,in the apparentdisorder of
modernistliterature. Hencethe importanceof emphasisingthat the semioticand the
symbolic are not fixed positionsor essences within languagewith which Kristeva can
be categorically identified. It is interesting to observeKristeva as a fairly neutral
Introduction 23
interviewer of Derrida (in one of the interviews reprinted in Positions) before

turning to Revolution in Poetic Language, where she pointedly distinguishesthe
semioticfrom the grammatologicalin his work, maintainingthat the latter doesnot
allow for either the energy of the semiotic or the production of the subject.
Kristeva picks up Mallarme's 'The mystery in literature', and continues:
'Indifferent to language,enigmatic and feminine, this spaceunderlying the written
is rhythmic, unfettered,irreducible to its verbal translation'(Kristeva, 1984, p. 29).
Yet it should not be assumedthat for Kristeva, the semiotic and that which is pre-
and also different, and therefore other, in any system is essentially and always
feminine, and that she is thereforesympatheticto ecriture feminine. The security of
the pre-oedipalis available to baby boys and girls, though it is em-bodiedin the
mother - just as, in principle, the symbolic is not the patriarchalorder, though in
practiceit is. Rather,the feminine is associatedwith the marginaland the suppressed
in language,and gains its strength from this association,as in poetry; while the
masculineis associatedwith the principle of order and rationality in the symbolic.
But this is a product of how the relationswithin any systemhave becomedisposed,
and it is here that the importance of Kristeva's approach through a broadly
structuralist understandingof language is so important. The feminine and the
masculineare modes of language,not modesof self, and the semiotic is therefore
inseparablefrom the symbolic. Revolution in Poetic Language is, among other
things, a promotion of the Modernist avant-gardeof language - Mallarme and
JamesJoyce, for instance.Not surprisingly, becauseof this wider perspectiveand
her vital theorising of the semiotic and symbolic dimensions of language - to
constitutewhat she calls signifiance - the claims which can be made for language
are so much greaterhere than within a structuralistparadigm. In Kristeva, there is
an important - albeit familiar - claim that the marginal and the avant-gardecan
shakethe foundationsof the establishedpower elite; and, by extension,that radical
readings of texts can achieve similar ends. In less careful hands, an uncritical
acceptanceof movementor processmight have difficulty distinguishingbetweenthe
formal dynamic of change,even in commodity differentiation, and the radicality
which Kristeva claims on behalf of the semiotic. And such a theoreticalperspective
might not give sufficient attention to the economicand institutional reasonswhich
- for theoristslike Jean-PaulSartre,in What is Literature?, and Georg Lukacs, in
some of the essaysin Writer and Critic - explain the distance from utilitarian
languagein Modernism.
Chris Weedon voices the dangers of this expanded view of language's
revolutionary potential and the speakingsubject:
In making femininity and masculinity universal aspectsof language,rather than the

particular constructsof specifically historically produceddiscourses,Kristeva's theory
losesits political edge.Moreover, to equatethe feminine with the irrational, even if the
feminine no longer has anything to do with women, is either to concederather a lot
to masculinity or to privilege the irrational, neither of which is very helpful politically.
(Weedon, 1987, pp. 89-90)
In fairness,the extract from Revolutionin Poetic Language(Reading1.3) and the

book as a whole need to be read alongside Kristeva's efforts to give languagea
political, even an economic,context, though there is still a tendencyin her work to
make one revolution (that of the Modernist avant-garde)interchangeablewith
another(for example,the feminist revolution). And with languageas the arenafor
revolution, the way is also openfor a further step towardsan anarchicsubjectivism,
the constantreorientatingand realigningof positionsin the semioticmodality which
underminesthe (more) fIxed positions which exert control but can also provoke
responsesbased upon common ground, whether of class, gender, region, or
whatever.
And now to Michel Foucault,and how he relatesto the categoriesof structuralism
and post-structuralism.A different set of problemsarise, and a different vocabulary
must be learned,but there are certain similarities to the above accounts.Notwith-
standinghis annoyanceat being called a structuralist,The Order of Things - where
he protests his innocence - is still Foucault's most structuralist work, one in
which he slices across a traditional history of ideas to identify and then investi-
gate, in minute - if highly selective - detail, broad fields of knowledge. Yet
Foucault's route out of a structuralist 'archaeology of knowledge' and into
genealogicalanalysis is signalled in some of the methodologicalevasionsof The
Order of Things.
Just as Saussurechoosesnot to emphasisethe developmentalside of linguistics,
so Foucault refuses to theorise the mechanismof change from one epistemeto
another. All we have are gnomic, even Romantic, observations- for instance,the
one which concludes the Preface to The Order of Things, and announcesa
postmodernepisteme:
In attemptingto uncover the deepeststrata of Westernculture, I am restoring to our

silent and apparentlyimmobile soil its rifts, its instability, its flaws; and it is the same
ground that is once more stirring under our feet. (Foucault, 1970, p. xxiv)
An observationsuch as this cannot but draw attention to the position from which
Foucaultis able to proposeand then carry out archaeologicalwork. In the light of
his own rhetoric, it is appropriateto ask where Foucault standsin relation to that
which he describes.Either this is a non-question,becausehistory movesas the plates
of the earth'scrust move, massivelyand under their own volition - in which case
the 'deathof man' must be taken much lesshistorically than Foucaultsurely intends,
and Foucault can be criticised for showing no interest in agency, or in asking the
question: Why does knowledge so disposeitself in the classical or modern era? -
or Foucault - like other structuralists - has posed the question of the self and
agency,history and change,much more urgently than his serenemethodologywill
allow, and an internal rethink is necessary;indeed, in Foucault, is under way even
before the structuralistenterprisehas run its course.The latter is a more productive
tack to adopt, and by the end of The Order of Things Foucault, looking to
Introduction 25
Nietzsche, is opening up his already ambitious project to deal with one of the
recurring problemsof modernthought: how to describethat of which one is a part:
... a philological critique, by means of a certain form of biologism, Nietzsche

rediscoveredthe point at which man and God belongto one another,at which the death
of the secondis synonymouswith the death of the first, and at which the promise of
the supermansignifies first and foremost the imminenceof the death of man. In this
Nietzsche,offering this future to us as both promise and task, marks the threshold
beyond which contemporaryphilosophy can begin thinking again ... it is no longer
possibleto think in our day other than in the void left by man'sdisappearance. For this
void does not createa deficiency; it does not constitutea lacunathat must be filled. It
is nothing more, and nothing less, than the unfolding of a spacein which it is oncemore
possibleto think. (Foucault, 1970, p. 342)
Interestingly, near the end of Speechand Phenomena,Derrida happensupon a

similar image of movement:'It remains,then, for us to speak,to make our voices
resonatethroughoutthe corridors in order to make up for [suppteerJ the breakup
of presence'(Derrida, 1973, p. 104).
In the interview with AlessandroFontanaand PasqualePasquino(Reading1.4)
Foucaultreflects upon the limitations of The Order of Things, admitting that more
attentionto the 'internal regime of power' within a discourseis needed,and that he
had been overly focusedupon 'systematicity,theoreticalform, or somethinglike a
paradigm'.It seemsto have been Foucault'spost-1968reaction againstthe existing
monolithic theories of power which, from Right or Left, totalised power that led
him to micro-political analysis, 'the genealogy of relations of force, strategic
developments,and tactics'within 'the fme meshesof power' in institutions,however
local. It is in this changeof perspectiveand acceptancethat the structuralistmodel
- any model, perhaps- could not effect an epistemologicalbreak which would
ensureobjectivity that Foucault offers a cautious account of agency and political
resistance:
What makespower hold good, what makesit accepted,is simply the fact that it doesn't
only weigh on us a force that says no, but that it traversesand producesthings, it
inducespleasure,forms knowledge, producesdiscourse.(Foucault, 1980, p. 119)
Here also, however, is the nub of a problem which has made Foucault such an
important point of referencein the kinds of debatescovered in Section 5, for if
Foucaultescapesfrom totalising positions and the temptationsof structuralism,he
is then accusedof failing to explain why wrongs should be righted. In Charles
Taylor's view, Foucault is damagedby one of the influenceswhich so liberateshis
thinking: 'a Nietzschean-derivedstanceof neutrality betweenthe different historical
systemsof power' (Taylor, 1986, p. 79). The very successof Foucault's micro-
analyses, and his preference for power over truth as a central concept, only
underline the lack of the kind of synthesiswhich can be found in a book like C.
W right Mills' The Power Elite (1956), itself a responseto an earlier period when
totalising explanations went out of favour. For Mills, the local dimension of
political action had certainly grown busierand more heterogeneous, but this was not
the spherewhere the big decisionsof the modern world were made, and made on
the basis of economicsand class interest.
Finally, back to Roland Barthes. The direction he takes out of structuralism,
through SI Z (1970) and The Pleasureof the Text (1973), needsless commentthan
does the political dimension of Mythologies. If Barthes's book is taken as a
representativestructuralisttext, then it is clear that for all its supposedexclusionof
the diachronic dimension,structuralismdoes not wall itself off from historical and
political concerns;it rethinks them - or, at least, its methodologicalmovesgive the
capacity for such rethinking. Barthesrecognisesthat what Saussuredid was not to
cut us off from history but to discreditnineteenth-centuryassumptionsabouthistory
as straightforwardlyexplanatoryand neutralin its configurationof events.Barthes,
following Saussure'sproject for a semiology, concentratesupon the way the sign
moves from the arbitrary to the necessary,in the senseof what is necessaryin a
situation for communicationto occur. The questionwhich Barthesasks- but much
structuralism,especiallyliterary structuralismwhich had its own agenda,did not
ask - is: Why is a structureconstructedthis way rather than that? This is a question
which Foucaultasks as genealogistrather than as archaeologist,and as power and
knowledge are linked in his thinking. It is in this context that Barthes'scasual
remark that 'around 1954' he decided to combine Saussureand Brecht is so
important in linking the laying-bareof a system'sworkings with a critique of that
system'ssolidity, its seemingnaturalnessunder certain circumstances.
However, in one of the less-discussedpassagesin 'Myth Today', Barthesleaves
unresolvedquestionswhich would be askedonly when structuralism,and then post-
structuralism, had become more widely known, even institutionalised. Barthes
acceptsthat in so far as what he is doing in Mythologies is a critique of ideology,
not a neutral exposition, then it is specifIcally a critique of bourgeoismyths. The
matter of left-wing myths is not approachedwith Barthes'scharacteristiccare, but
becomesa justifiable target in certain strandsof postmodernand liberal political
theory in the 1980s and 1990s.
1.1 Myth Today
Roland Barthes
What is a myth, today? I shall give at the outset a first, very simple answer,which
is perfectly consistentwith etymology: myth is a type of speech.l
Myth is a type of speech
Of course,it is not any type: languageneedsspecial conditions in order to become

myth: we shall seethem in a minute. But what must be firmly establishedat the start
is that myth is a systemof communication,that it is a message.This allows one to
perceivethat myth cannotpossibly be an object, a concept,or an idea; it is a mode
of signification, a form. Later, we shall have to assignto this form historical limits,
conditionsof use, and reintroducesociety into it: we must neverthelessfirst describe
it as a form.
It can be seenthat to purport to discriminate among mythical objects according
to their substancewould be entirely illusory: since myth is a type of speech,
everythingcan be a myth providedit is conveyedby a discourse.Myth is not defined
by the object of its message,but by the way in which it utters this message:there
are formal limits to myth, there are no 'substantial'ones. Everything, then, can be
a myth? Yes, I believe this, for the universeis infinitely fertile in suggestions.Every
object in the world can passfrom a closed, silent existenceto an oral state, open
to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which
forbids talking about things. A tree is a tree. Yes, of course.But a tree as expressed
by Minou Drouet is no longer quite a tree, it is a tree which is decorated,adapted
to a certaintype of consumption,ladenwith literary self-indulgence,revolt, images,
in short with a type of social usage which is addedto pure matter.
Naturally, everythingis not expressedat the sametime: someobjectsbecomethe
prey of mythical speechfor a while, then theydisappear,otherstake their place and
attain the status of myth. Are there objects which are inevitably a source of
suggestiveness,as Baudelaire suggestedabout Woman? Certainly not: one can
From Barthes,R., Mythologies, trans. A. Lavers, JonathanCape, London, 1972, pp. 109-31.
27
28 Roland Barthes
conceiveof very ancientmyths, but there are no eternalones;for it is humanhistory

which converts reality into speech, and it alone rules the life and the death of
mythical language. Ancient or not, mythology can only have an historical
foundation,for myth is a type of speechchosenby history: it cannotpossiblyevolve
from the 'nature' of things.
Speechof this kind is a message.It is therefore by no meansconfined to oral
speech.It can consist of modes of writing or of representations;not only written
discourse, but also photography,cinema, reporting, sport, shows, publicity, all
thesecan serveas a supportto mythical speech.Myth can be defined neither by its
object nor by its material, for any material can arbitrarily be endowed with
meaning: the arrow which is brought in order to signify a challengeis also a kind
of speech.True, as far as perceptionis concerned,writing and pictures,for instance,
do not call upon the sametype of consciousness;and even with pictures, one can
use many kinds of reading: a diagram lends itself to signification more than a
drawing, a copy more than an original, and a caricaturemore than a portrait. But
this is the point: we are no longer dealing here with a theoretical mode of
representation:we are dealing with this particular image, which is given for this
particular signification. Mythical speechis made of a material which has already
been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication:it is becauseall the
materialsof myth (whetherpictorial or written) presupposea signifying conscious-
ness, that one can reason about them while discounting their substance.This
substanceis not unimportant:pictures,to be sure,are more imperativethan writing,
they impose meaningat one stroke, without analysingor diluting it. But this is no
longer a constitutive difference. Pictures becomea kind of writing as soon as they
are meaningful: like writing, they call for alexis.
We shall thereforetake language, discourse,speech,etc., to meanany significant
unit or synthesis,whether verbal or visual: a photographwill be a kind of speech
for us in the sameway as a newspaperarticle; even objects will becomespeech,if
they meansomething.This genericway of conceivinglanguageis in fact justified by
the very history of writing: long before the invention of our alphabet,objects like
the Inca quipu, or drawings, as in pictographs,have beenacceptedas speech.This
does not mean that one must treat mythical speechlike language; myth in fact
belongsto the province of a generalscience,coextensivewith linguistics, which is
semiology.
Myth as a semiological system
For mythology, since it is the study of a type of speech,is but one fragment of this
vast scienceof signs which Saussurepostulatedsomeforty yearsago underthe name
of semiology.Semiology has not yet come into being. But since Saussurehimself,
and sometimesindependentlyof him, a whole sectionof contemporaryresearchhas
constantlybeenreferredto the problem of meaning:psychoanalysis,structuralism,
eideticpsychology,somenew typesof literary criticism of which Bachelardhasgiven
Myth Today 29
the first examples,are no longer concernedwith facts except inasmuchas they are
endowedwith significance. Now to postulatea signification is to have recourseto
semiology. I do not mean that semiology could account for all these aspectsof
researchequally well: they have different contents.But they have a commonstatus:
they are all sciencesdealingwith values.They are not contentwith meetingthe facts:
they define and explore them as tokens for somethingelse.
Semiology is a scienceof forms, since it studies significations apart from their
content. I should like to say one word about the necessityand the limits of such a
formal science.The necessityis that which appliesin the caseof any exactlanguage.
Zhdanov made fun of Alexandrov the philosopher, who spoke of 'the spherical
structure of our planet.' 'It was thought until now', Zhdanovsaid, 'that form alone
could be spherical.'Zhdanovwas right: one cannotspeakabout structuresin terms
of forms, and vice versa. It may well be that on the plane of 'life', there is but a
totality where structuresand forms cannot be separated.But sciencehas no use for
the ineffable: it must speakabout 'life' if it wants to transform it. Against a certain
quixotism of synthesis,quite Platonic incidentally, all criticism must consentto the
ascesis, to the artifice of analysis; and in analysis, it must match method and
language.Less terrorized by the spectre of 'formalism', historical criticism might
have beenless sterile; it would have understoodthat the specific study of forms does
not in any way contradict the necessaryprinciples of totality and History. On the
contrary: the more a systemis specifically defined in its forms, the more amenable
it is to historical criticism. To parody a well-known saying, I shall say that a little
formalism turns one away from History, but that a lot brings one back to it. Is there
a betterexampleof total criticism than the descriptionof saintliness,at once formal
and historical, semiologicaland ideological, in Sartre'sSaint-Genet?The danger,on
the contrary, is to consider forms as ambiguous objects, half-form and half-
substance,to endow form with a substanceof form, as was done, for instance,by
Zhdanovianrealism. Semiology, once its limits are settled, is not a metaphysical
trap: it is a scienceamongothers,necessarybut not sufficient. The importantthing
is to seethat the unity of an explanationcannotbe basedon the amputationof one
or other of its approaches,but, as Engels said, on the dialectical co-ordinationof
the particular sciencesit makesuse of. This is the casewith mythology: it is a part
both of semiology inasmuchas it is a formal science,and of ideology inasmuchas
it is an historical science: it studies ideas-in-form.2
Let me therefore restatethat any semiology postulatesa relation betweentwo
terms, a signifier and a signified. This relation concernsobjects which belong to
different categories,and this is why it is not one of equality but one of equivalence.
We must here be on our guard for despitecommonparlancewhich simply saysthat
the signifier expressesthe signified, we are dealing, in any semiologicalsystem,not
with two, but with three different terms. For what we grasp is not at all one term
after the other, but the correlation which unites them: there are, therefore, the
signiner, the signified and the sign, which is the associativetotal of the nrst two
terms. Take a bunch of roses: I use it to signify my passion.Do we have here, then,
only a signiner and a signified, the roses and my passion?Not even that: to put it
30 Roland Barthes
accurately,there are here only 'passionified'roses.But on the plane of analysis,we

do have three terms; for these rosesweighted with passionperfectly and correctly
allow themselvesto be decomposedinto rosesand passion:the former and the latter
existed before uniting and forming this third object, which is the sign. It is as true
to say that on the plane of experienceI cannotdissociatethe rosesfrom the message
they carry, as to say that on the plane of analysis 1 cannot confuse the roses as
signifier and the rosesas sign: the signifier is empty, the sign is full, it is a meaning.
Or take a black pebble: 1 can make it signify in severalways, it is a mere signifier;
but if 1 weigh it with a definite signified (a death sentence,for instance, in an
anonymousvote), it will becomea sign. Naturally, there are betweenthe signifier,
the signified and the sign, functional implications (such as that of the part to the
whole) which are so close that to analysethem may seemfutile; but we shall see in
a moment that this distinction has a capital importancefor the study of myth as
semiological schema.
Naturally thesethree terms are purely formal, and different contentscan be given
to them. Here are a few examples:for Saussure,who worked on a particular but
methodologicallyexemplary semiological system - the languageor langue - the
signified is the concept,the signifier is the acousticimage (which is mental) and the
relation betweenconceptand image is the sign (the word, for instance),which is a
concreteentity.3 For Freud, as is well known, the human psycheis a stratification
of tokens or representatives.One term (I refrain from giving it any precedence)is
constituted by the manifest meaning of behaviour, another, by its latent or real
meaning(it is, for instance,the substratumof the dream); as for the third term, it
is here also a correlation of the first two: it is the dream itself in its totality, the
parapraxis (a mistake in speech or behaviour) or the neurosis, conceived as
compromises,as economieseffectedthanksto the joining of a form (the first term)
and an intentional function (the secondterm). We can see here how necessaryit is
to distinguishthe sign from the signifier: a dream,to Freud, is no more its manifest
datum than its latent content: it is the functional union of these two terms. In
Sartreancriticism, finally (I shall keep to these three well-known examples),the
signified is constitutedby the original crisis in the subject (the separationfrom his
mother for Baudelaire,the naming of the theft for Genet); Literature as discourse
forms the signifier; and the relation betweencrisis and discoursedefinesthe work,
which is a signification. Of course,this tri-dimensional pattern, however constant
in its form, is actualizedin different ways: one cannot thereforesay too often that
semiology can have its unity only at the level of forms, not contents;its field is
limited, it knows only one operation: reading, or deciphering.
In myth, we find again the tri-dimensional pattern which I have just described:
the signifier, the signified and the sign. But myth is a peculiar system,in that it is
constructedfrom a semiologicalchain which existed before it: it is a second-order
semiologicalsystem.That which is a sign (namely the associativetotal of a concept
and an image) in the first system,becomesa mere signifier in the second.We must
here recall that the materialsof mythical speech(the languageitself, photography,
painting, posters,rituals, objects, etc.), however different at the start, are reduced
Myth Today 31
to a pure signifying function as soon as they are caughtby myth. Myth seesin them
only the sameraw material; their unity is that they all come down to the statusof
a merelanguage.Whetherit dealswith alphabeticalor pictorial writing, myth wants
to seein them only a sum of signs, a global sign, the final term of a first semiological
chain. And it is precisely this final term which will becomethe first term of the
greatersystemwhich it builds and of which it is only a part. Everything happens
as if myth shifted the formal systemof the first significationssideways.As this lateral
shift is essentialfor the analysisof myth, I shall representit in the following way,
it being understood,of course,that the spatializationof the pattern is here only a
metaphor:
1. Signifier I 2. Signified
Language 3. Sign
I SIGNIFIER II SIGNIFIED
MYTH
III SIGN
It can be seen that in myth there are two semiological systems,one of which is
staggeredin relation to the other: a linguistic system, the language(or the modes
of representationwhich are assimilatedto it), which I shall call the language-object,
becauseit is the languagewhich myth gets hold of in order to build its own system;
and myth itself, which I shall call metalanguage,becauseit is a secondlanguage,
in which one speaks about the first. When he reflects on a metalanguage,the
semiologistno longer needsto ask himself questionsabout the compositionof the
language-object,he no longer has to take into accountthe details of the linguistic
schema;he will only needto know its total term, or global sign, and only inasmuch
as this term lends itself to myth. This is why the semiologistis entitled to treat in
the sameway writing and pictures: what he retains from them is the fact that they
are both signs, that they both reach the thresholdof myth endowedwith the same
signifying function, that they constitute, one just as much as the other, a
language-object.
first from an observationby V alt~ry.

It is now time to give one or two examplesof mythical speech.I shall borrow the
4
I am a pupil in the secondform in a French
lycee. I open my Latin grammar, and I read a sentence,borrowed from Aesop or
Phaedrus:quia ego nominor leo. I stop and think. There is somethingambiguous
about this statement:on the one hand, the words in it do have a simple meaning:
becausemy nameis lion. And on the other hand, the sentenceis evidently there in
order to signify somethingelse to me. Inasmuchas it is addressedto me, a pupil in
the secondform, it tells me clearly: I am a grammaticalexamplemeantto illustrate
the rule about the agreementof the predicate.I am even forced to realize that the
sentencein no way signifies its meaning to me, that it tries very little to tell me
somethingabout the lion and what sort of name he has; its true and fundamental
]2 Roland Barthes
signification is to impose itself on me as the presenceof a certain agreementof the

predicate.I concludethat I am faced with a particular,greater,semiologicalsystem,
since it is co-extensivewith the language: there is, indeed, a signifier, but this
signifier is itself formed by a sum of signs, it is in itself a first semiological system
(my name is lion). Thereafter,the formal pattern is correctly unfolded: there is a
signified (I am a grammaticalexample)and there is a global signification, which is
none other than the correlation of the signifier and the signified; for neither the
naming of the lion nor the grammaticalexample are given separately.
And hereis now anotherexample:I am at the barber's,and a copy of Paris-Match
is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a Frenchuniform is saluting, with
his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning
of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me:
that Franceis a great Empire, that all her sons,without any colour discrimination,
faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answerto the detractors
of an allegedcolonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called
oppressors.I am therefore again faced with a greatersemiological system: there is
a signifier, itself alreadyformed with a previoussystem(a black soldier is giving the
French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposefulmixture of Frenchnessand
militariness); finally, there is a presenceof the signified through the signifier.
Before tackling the analysisof each term of the mythical system,one must agree
on terminology. We now know that the signifier can be looked at, in myth, from
two points of view: as the final term of the linguistic system,or as the first term of
the mythical system.We thereforeneedtwo names.On the plane of language,that
is, as the final term of the first system,I shall call the signifier: meaning(my name
is lion, a Negro is giving the French salute); on the plane of myth, I shall call it:
form. In the caseof the signified, no ambiguity is possible:we shall retain the name
concept. The third term is the correlation of the first two: in the linguistic system,
it is the sign; but it is not possibleto use this word again without ambiguity, since
in myth (and this is the chief peculiarity of the latter), the signifier is alreadyformed
by the signsof the language.I shall call the third term of myth the signification. This
word is hereall the betterjustified since myth hasin fact a double function: it points
out and it notifies, it makes us understandsomethingand it imposesit on us.
The form and the concept
The signifier of myth presentsitself in an ambiguousway: it is at the same time

meaningand form, full on one side and empty on the other. As meaning,the signifier
already postulatesa reading, I grasp it through my eyes, it has a sensory reality
(unlike the linguistic signifier, which is purely mental), there is a richnessin it: the
namingof the lion, the Negro'ssaluteare crediblewholes,they haveat their disposal
a sufficient rationality. As a total of linguistic signs, the meaningof the myth has
its own value, it belongsto a history, that of the lion or that of the Negro: in the
meaning,a signification is alreadybuilt, and could very well be self-sufficientif myth
Myth Today II
did not take hold of it and did not turn it suddenlyinto an empty, parasiticalform.
The meaning is already complete, it postulatesa kind of knowledge, a past, a
memory, a comparativeorder of facts, ideas, decisions.
When it becomesform, the meaning leaves its contingency behind; it empties
itself, it becomesimpoverished,history evaporates,only the letter remains. There
here a paradoxicalpermutationin the reading operations,an abnormalregression
from meaning to form, from the linguistic sign to the mythical signifier. If one
enclosesquia ego nominor leo in a purely linguistic system, the clausefinds again
there a fullness, a richness, a history: I am an animal, a lion, I live in a certain
country, I have justbeenhunting, they would have me sharemy prey with a heifer,
a cow and a goat; but being the stronger,I award myself all the sharesfor various
reasons,the last of which is quite simply that my nameis lion. But as the form of
the myth, the clause hardly retains anything of this long story. The meaning
containeda whole systemof values: a history, a geography,a morality, a zoology,
a Literature. The form has put all this richness at a distance: its newly acquired
penury calls for a signification to fill it. The story of the lion must recedea great
deal in order to make room for the grammatical example, one must put the
biographyof the Negro in parenthesesif one wants to free the picture, and prepare
it to receive its signified.
But the essentialpoint in all this is that the form doesnot suppressthe meaning,
it only impoverishesit, it puts it at a distance,it holds it at one's disposal. One
believesthat the meaningis going to die, but it is a deathwith reprieve;the meaning
loses its value, but keeps its life, from which the form of the myth will draw its
nourishment.The meaning will be for the form like an instantaneousreserveof
history, a tamedrichness,which it is possibleto call and dismiss in a sort of rapid
alternation:the form must constantlybe able to be rooted againin the meaningand
to get there what natureit needsfor its nutriment; aboveall, it must be able to hide
there. It is this constantgame of hide-and-seekbetweenthe meaningand the form
which defines myth. The form of myth is not a symbol: the Negro who salutesis
not the symbol of the French Empire: he has too much presence,he appearsas a
rich, fully experienced,spontaneous,innocent,indisputableimage. But at the same
time this presenceis tamed, put at a distance,made almost transparent;it recedes
a little, it becomesthe accompliceof a conceptwhich comesto it fully armed,French
imperiality: once made use of, it becomesartificial.
Let us now look at the signified: this history which drains out of the form will
be wholly absorbedby the concept.As for the latter, it is determined,it is at once
historical and intentional; it is the motivation which causesthe myth to be uttered.
Grammaticalexemplarity, French imperiality, are the very drives behind the myth.
The concept reconstitutesa chain of causesand effects, motives and intentions.
Unlike the form, the concept is in no way abstract: it is filled with a situation.
Throughthe concept,it is a whole new history which is implantedin the myth. Into
the namingof the lion, first drainedof its contingency,the grammaticalexamplewill
attract my whole existence:Time, which causedme to be born at a certain period
when Latin grammar is taught; History, which sets me apart, through a whole
34 Roland Barthes
mechanism of social segregation, from the children who do not learn Latin;
paedagogictradition, which caused this example to be chosen from Aesop or
Phaedrus;my own linguistic habits, which see the agreementof the predicateas a
fact worthy of notice and illustration. The same goes for the Negro-giving-the-
salute: as form, its meaning is shallow, isolated, impoverished;as the conceptof
French imperiality, here it is again tied to the totality of the world: to the general
History of France,to its colonial adventures,to its presentdifficulties. Truth to tell,
what is investedin the conceptis less reality than a certain knowledgeof reality; in
passingfrom the meaningto the form, the image loses some knowledge: the better
to receivethe knowledgein the concept.In actual fact, the knowledgecontainedin
a mythical conceptis confused,madeof yielding, shapelessassociations.One must
fIrmly stressthis open characterof the concept;it is not at all an abstract,purified
essence;it is a formless, unstable, nebulous condensation,whose unity and
coherenceare above all due to its function.
In this sense,we can say that the fundamentalcharacterof the mythical concept
is to be appropriated: grammaticalexemplarityvery preciselyconcernsa given form
of pupils, Frenchimperiality must appealto such and such group of readersand not
another.The conceptclosely correspondsto a function, it is defined as a tendency.
This cannotfail to recall the signified in anothersemiologicalsystem,Freudianism.
In Freud, the secondterm of the systemis the latent meaning(the content) of the
dream,of the parapraxis,of the neurosis.Now Freud doesremark that the second-
order meaning of behaviour is its real meaning, that which is appropriate to a
completesituation, including its deeperlevel; it is, just like the mythical concept,
the very intention of behaviour.
A signified can have several signifIers: this is indeed the case in linguistics and
psychoanalysis.It is also the casein the mythical concept: it has at its disposal an
unlimited massof signifIers: I can find a thousandLatin sentencesto actualizefor
me the agreementof the predicate,I can find a thousandimageswhich signify to
me French imperiality. This meansthat quantitively, the concept is much poorer
than the signifier, it often does nothing but re-presentitself. Poverty and richness
are in reverseproportion in the form and the concept: to the qualitative poverty of
the form, which is the repository of a rarefIed meaning, there correspondsthe
richness of the concept which is open to the whole of History; and to the
quantitativeabundanceof the forms there correspondsa small numberof concepts.
This repetitionof the conceptthrough different forms is preciousto the mythologist,
it allows him to decipherthe myth: it is the insistenceof a kind of behaviourwhich
revealsits intention. This confirms that thereis no regular ratio betweenthe volume
of the signifIed and that of the signifIer. In language,this ratio is proportionate,it
hardly exceedsthe word, or at leastthe concreteunit. In myth, on the contrary, the
conceptcan spreadover a very large expanseof signifier. For instance,a whole book
may be the signifIer of a single concept;and conversely,a minute form (a word, a
gesture,even incidental, so long as it is noticed) can serve as signifier to a concept
filled with a very rich history. Although unusual in language,this disproportion
betweensignifier and signified is not specific to myth: in Freud, for instance,the
Myth Today 35
parapraxisis a signifier whose thinness is out of proportion to the real meaning

which it betrays.
As I said, there is no fixity in mythical concepts:they can come into being, alter,
disintegrate,disappearcompletely.And it is preciselybecausethey are historical that
history can very easily suppressthem. This instability forces the mythologist to use
a terminology adaptedto it, and about which I should now like to say a word,
becauseit often is a causefor irony: I meanneologismThe conceptis a constituting
element of myth: if I want to decipher myths, I must somehow be able to name
concepts.The dictionary suppliesme with a few: Goodness,Kindness,Wholeness,
Humaneness,etc. But by definition, since it is the dictionary which gives them to
me, these particular conceptsare not historical. Now what I need most often is
ephemeralconcepts,in connectionwith limited contingencies:neologism is then
inevitable. China is one thing, the idea which a French petit-bourgeoiscould have
of it not so long ago is another: for this peculiar mixture of bells, rickshaws and
opium-dens,no other word possible but Sininess.5 Unlovely? One should at least
get some consolationfrom the fact that conceptualneologismsare never arbitrary:
they are built accordingto a highly sensibleproportional rule.
The signification
In semiology, the third term is nothing but the associationof the first two, as we
saw. It is the only one which is allowed to be seenin a full and satisfactoryway,
the only one which is consumedin actual fact. I havecalled it: the signification. We
can seethat the signification is the myth itself, just as the Saussureansign is the word
(or more accurately the concrete unit). But before listing the charactersof the
signification, one must reflect a little on the way in which it is prepared,that is, on
the modesof correlation of the mythical conceptand the mythical form.
First we must note that in myth, the first two terms are perfectly manifest(unlike
what happensin other semiologicalsystems):one of them is not 'hidden'behind the
other, they are both given here (and not one here and the other there). However
paradoxicalit may seem,myth hides nothing: its function is to distort, not to make
disappear.Thereis no latencyof the conceptin relation to the form: thereis no need
of an unconsciousin order to explain myth. Of course, one is dealing with two
different types of manifestation:form has a literal, immediatepresence;moreover,
it is extended.This stems- this cannotbe repeatedtoo often - from the natureof
the mythical signifier, which is alreadylinguistic: sinceit is constitutedby a meaning
which is alreadyoutlined, it can appearonly through a given substance(whereasin
language,the signifier remainsmental). In the caseof oral myth, this extensionis
linear (jar my name is lion); in that of visual myth, it is multidimensional(in the
centre, the Negro's uniform, at the top, the blacknessof his face, on the left, the
military salute,etc.). The elementsof the form thereforeare related as to place and
proximity: the modeof presenceof the form is spatial. The concept,on the contrary,
appearsin global fashion, it is a kind of nebula,the condensation,more or lesshazy,
]6 Roland Barthes
of a certain knowledge. Its elements are linked by associative relations: it is

supportednot by an extensionbut by a depth (although this metaphoris perhaps
still too spatial): its mode of presenceis memorial.
The relation which unites the conceptof the myth to its meaningis essentiallya
relation of deformation.We fmd hereagaina certainformal analogywith a complex
semiologicalsystemsuch as that of the various types of psychoanalysis.Just as for
Freud the manifestmeaningof behaviouris distortedby its latent meaning,in myth
the meaningis distorted by the concept. Of course,this distortion is possibleonly
becausethe form of the myth is already constitutedby a linguistic meaning. In a
simple systemlike the language,the signified cannotdistort anything at all because
the signifier, being empty, arbitrary, offers no resistanceto it. But here, everything
is different: the signifier has,so to speak,two aspects:one full, which is the meaning
(the history of the lion, of the Negro soldier), one empty, which is the form (for
my name is lion; Negro-French-soldier-saluting-the-tricolour).What the concept
distorts is of coursewhat is full, the meaning: the lion and the Negro are deprived
of their history, changed into gestures. What Latin exemplarity distorts is the
naming of the lion, in all its contingency;and what French imperiality obscuresis
also a primary language,a factual discoursewhich was telling me about the salute
of a Negro in uniform. But this distortion is not an obliteration: the lion and the
Negro remain here, the concept needs them; they are half-amputated,they are
deprived of memory, not of existence: they are at once stubborn, silently rooted
there, and garrulous,a speechwholly at the service of the concept. The concept,
literally, deforms,but doesnot abolishthe meaning;a word can perfectly renderthis
contradiction: it alienatesit.
What must always be rememberedis that myth is a double system;there occurs
in it a sort of ubiquity: its point of departureis constituted by the arrival of a
meaning.To keep a spatial metaphor,the approximativecharacterof which I have
alreadystressed,I shall say that the signification of the myth is constitutedby a sort
of constantlymoving turnstile which presentsalternatelythe meaningof the signifier
and its form, a language-objectand a metalanguage,a purely signifying and a purely
imagining consciousness. This alternationis, so to speak,gatheredup in the concept,
which uses it like an ambiguous signifier, at once intellective and imaginary,
arbitrary and natural.
I do not wish to prejudgethe moral implications of such a mechanism,but I shall
not exceedthe limits of an objective analysisif I point out that the ubiquity of the
signifier in myth exactly reproducesthe physique of the alibi (which is, as one
realizes,a spatial term): in the alibi too, there is a place which is full and one whICh
is empty, linked by a relation of negativeidentity (,I am not where you think I am;
I am where you think I am not'). But the ordinary alibi (for the police, for instance)
has an end; reality stopsthe turnstile revolving at a certain point. Myth is a value,
truth is no guaranteefor it; nothing preventsit from being a perpetualalibi: it is
enough that its signifier has two sides for it always to have an 'elsewhere'at its
disposal.The meaningis always there to presentthe form; the form is always there
to outdistancethe meaning. And there never is any contradiction,conflict, or split
Myth Today 37
betweenthe meaningand the form: they are never at the sameplace. In the same
way, if I am in a car and I look at the scenerythrough the window, I can at will
focus on the sceneryor on the window-pane.At one moment I grasp the presence
of the glass and the distance of the landscape;at another, on the contrary, the
transparenceof the glass and the depth of the landscape;but the result of this
alternation is constant: the glass is at once present and empty to me, and the
landscapeunreal and full. The samething occurs in the mythical signifier: its form
is empty but present,its meaningabsentbut full. To wonder at this contradiction
I must voluntarily interrupt this turnstile of form and meaning,I must focus on each
separately,and apply to myth a static method of deciphering,in short, I must go
againstits own dynamics: to sum up, I must passfrom the state of readerto that
of mythologist.
And it is again this duplicity of the signifier which determinesthe charactersof
the signification. We now know that myth is a type of speechdefined by its intention
(I am a grammaticalexample)much more than by its literal sense(my nameis lion);
and that in spite of this, its intention is somehowfrozen, purified, eternalized,made
absentby this literal sense(The French Empire? It's just a fact: look at this good
Negro who salutes like one of our own boys). This constituent ambiguity of
mythical speech has two consequencesfor the signification, which henceforth
appearsboth like a notification and like a statementof fact.
Myth has an imperative, buttonholing character: stemming from an historical
concept,directly springing from contingency(a Latin class, a threatenedEmpire),
it is I whom it has come to seek. It is turned towards me, I am subjectedto its
intentional force, it summonsme to receiveits expansive ambiguity.If, for instance,
I take a walk in Spain, in the Basquecountry,6 I may well notice in the housesan
architecturalunity, a common style, which leads me to acknowledgethe Basque
houseas a definite ethnicproduct. However,I do not feel personallyconcerned,nor,
so to speak,attackedby this unitary style: I seeonly too well that it was here before
me, without me. It is a complex product which has its determinationsat the level
of a very wide history: it doesnot call out to me, it doesnot provokeme into naming
it, exceptif I think of inserting it into a vast picture of rural habitat. But if I am in
the Paris region and I catch a glimpse, at the end of the rue Gambettaor the rue
Jean-Jaures,of a natty white chalet with red tiles, dark brown half-timbering, an
asymmetrical roof and a wattle-and-daubfront, I feel as if I were personally
receivingan imperiousinjunction to namethis object a Basquechalet: or evenbetter,
to seeit as the very essenceof basquity. This is becausethe conceptappearsto me
in all its appropriativenature: it comesand seeksme out in order to oblige me to
acknowledgethe body of intentions which have motivated it and arrangedit there
as the signal of an individual history, as a confidenceand a complicity: it is a real
call, which the owners of the chalet send out to me. And this call, in order to be
more imperious,has agreedto all mannerof impoverishments:all that justified the
Basquehouseon the plane of technology - the barn, the outside stairs, the dove-
cote, etc. - has beendropped;there remainsonly a brief order, not to be disputed.
And the adhominationis so frank that I feel this chalet has just beencreatedon the
38 Roland Barthes
spot, for me, like a magical object springing up in my presentlife without any trace
of the history which has causedit.
For this interpellant speechis at the sametime a frozen speech:at the moment
of reachingme, it suspendsitself, turns away and assumesthe look of a generality:
it stiffens, it makes itself look neutral and innocent. The appropriation of the
conceptis suddenlydriven away once more by the literalnessof the meaning. This
is a kind of arrest, in both the physical and the legal senseof the term: French
imperiality condemnsthe saluting Negro to be nothing more than an instrumental
signifier, the Negro suddenlyhails me in the name of French imperiality; but at the
samemomentthe Negro'ssalutethickens,becomesvitrified, freezesinto an eternal
reference meant to establish French imperiality. On the surface of language
somethinghas stoppedmoving: the useof the signification is here,hiding behindthe
fact, and conferring on it a notifying look; but at the sametime, the fact paralyses
the intention, gives it somethinglike a malaise producing immobility: in order to
make it innocent, it freezesit. This is becausemyth is speechstolen and restored.
Only, speechwhich is restoredis no longer quite that which was stolen: when it was
brought back, it was not put exactly in its place. It is this brief act of larceny, this
momenttaken for a surreptitiousfaking, which gives mythical speechits benumbed
look.
One last elementof the signification remainsto be examined:its motivation. We
know that in a language,the sign is arbitrary: nothing compelsthe acousticimage
tree 'naturally' to mean the concept tree: the sign, here, is unmotivated. Yet this
arbitrarinesshas limits, which come from the associativerelationsof the word: the
languagecan producea whole fragmentof the sign by analogywith other signs (for
instanceone says aimable in French, and not amable, by analogywith aime). The
mythical signification, on the other hand, is never arbitrary; it is always in part
motivated, and unavoidablycontainssome analogy. For Latin exemplarityto meet
the naming of the lion, there must be an analogy, which is the agreementof the
predicate;for French imperiality to get hold of the saluting Negro, there must be
identity betweenthe Negro's salute and that of the French soldier. Motivation is
necessaryto the very duplicity of myth: myth plays on the analogybetweenmeaning
and form, there is no myth without motivated form'! In order to grasp the power
of motivation in myth, it is enough to reflect for a moment on an extremecase. I
have here before me a collection of objects so lacking in order that I can find no
meaningin it; it would seemthat here, deprivedof any previousmeaning,the form
could not root its analogy in anything, and that myth is impossible. But what the
form can always give one to read is disorder itself: it can give a signification to the
absurd,make the absurditself a myth. This is what happenswhen common sense
mythifles surrealism, for instance. Even the absence of motivation does not
embarrassmyth; for this absencewill itself be sufficiently objectified to become
legible: and finally, the absence of motivation will become a second-order
motivation, and myth will be re-established.
Motivation is unavoidable.It is none the less very fragmentary.To start with, it
is not 'natural': it is history which supplies its analogiesto the form. Then, the
Myth Today 39
analogybetweenthe meaningand the conceptis neveranythingbut partial: the form

drops many analogousfeaturesand keepsonly a few: it keepsthe sloping roof, the
visible beamsin the Basquechalet, it abandonsthe stairs, the barn, the weathered
look, etc. One must even go further: a completeimage would exclude myth, or at
least would compel it to seizeonly its very completeness.This is just what happens
in the caseof bad painting, which is wholly basedon the myth of what is 'filled out'
and 'finished' (it is the opposite and symmetrical case of the myth of the absurd:
here, the form mythifies an 'absence',there, a surplus). But in generalmyth prefers
to work with poor, incompleteimages,where the meaningis alreadyrelieved of its
fat, and ready for a signification, such as caricatures,pastiches, symbols, etc.
Finally, the motivation is chosenamongother possibleones: I can very well give to
French imperiality many other signifiers besidea Negro's salute: a French general
pins a decorationon a one-armedSenegalese,a nun hands a cup of tea to a bed-
ridden Arab, a white schoolmaster teaches attentive piccaninnies: the press
undertakes every day to demonstrate that the store of mythical signifters is
inexhaustible.
The nature of the mythical signiftcation can in fact be well conveyed by one
particular simile: it is neither more nor less arbitrary than an ideograph.Myth is a
pure ideographicsystem,where the forms are still motivated by the conceptwhich
they representwhile not yet, by a long way, covering the sum of its possibilitiesfor
representation.And just as, historically, ideographshave gradually left the concept
and have becomeassociatedwith the sound, thus growing less and less motivated,
the worn out state of a myth can be recognized by the arbitrariness of its
signiftcation: the whole of Moliere is seen in a doctor's ruff.
Reading and deciphering myth
How is a myth received?We must here once more come back to the duplicity of its
signifier, which is at once meaningand form. I can producethree different typesof
reading by focusing on the one, or the other, or both at the same time.8
1. If I focus on an empty signifter, I let the conceptfill the form of the myth without
ambiguity, and I ftnd myself before a simple system, where the signification
becomesliteral again: the Negro who salutesis an exampleof French imperial-
ity, he is a symbol for it. This type of focusing is, for instance, that of the
producerof myths, of the journalist who startswith a conceptand seeksa form
for it. 9
2. If I focus on a full signifier, in which I clearly distinguish the meaning and the
form, and consequentlythe distortion which the one imposeson the other, I
undo the signiftcation of the myth, and I receive the latter as an imposture: the
salutingNegro becomesthe alibi of French imperiality. This type of focusing is
that of the mythologist: he deciphersthe myth, he understandsa distortion.
40 Roland Barthes
3. Finally, if I focus on the mythical signifier as on an inextricable whole made

of meaning and form, I receive an ambiguoussignification: I respond to the
constituting mechanismof myth, to its own dynamics, I become a reader of
myths. The salutingNegro is no longer an exampleor a symbol, still lessan alibi:
he is the very presenceof French imperiality.
The first two types of focusing are static, analytical; they destroy the myth, either
by making its intention obvious,or by unmaskingit: the former is cynical, the latter
demystifying. The third type of focusing is dynamic,it consumesthe myth according
to the very endsbuilt into its structure: the readerlives the myth as a story at once
true and unreal.
If one wishes to connecta mythical schemato a generalhistory, to explain how
it correspondsto the interestsof a definite society, in short, to passfrom semiology
to ideology, it is obviously at the level of the third type of focusing that one must
place oneself: it is the reader of myths himself who must reveal their essential
function. How does he receive this particular myth today? If he receivesit in an
innocentfashion, what is the point of proposingit to him? And if he readsit using
his powersof reflection, like the mythologist,doesit matterwhich alibi is presented?
If the readerdoesnot seeFrench imperialityin the salutingNegro, it was not worth
weighing the latter with it; and if he seesit, the myth is nothing more than a political
proposition,honestlyexpressed.In one word, either the intention of the myth is too
obscureto be efficacious, or it is too clear to be believed. In either case, where is
the ambiguity?
This is but a false dilemma. Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts;
myth is neither a lie nor a confession:it is an inflexion. Placedbefore the dilemma
which I mentioneda moment ago, myth finds a third way out. Threatenedwith
disappearanceif it yields to either of the first two types of focusing, it gets out of
this tight spot thanks to a compromise - it is this compromise. Entrusted with
'glossing over' an intentional concept, myth encountersnothing but betrayal in
language,for languagecan only obliteratethe conceptif it hides it, or unmaskit if
it formulates it. The elaborationof a second-ordersemiologicalsystemwill enable
myth to escapethis dilemma: driven to having either to unveil or to liquidate the
concept, it will naturalize it.
We reach here the very principle of myth: it transformshistory into nature. We
now understand why, in the eyes of the myth-consumer,the intention, the
adhominationof the conceptcan remain manifest without however appearingto
have an interestin the matter: what causesmythical speechto be utteredis perfectly
explicit, but it is immediately frozen into somethingnatural; it is not read as a
motive, but as a reason.If I read the Negro-salutingas symbol pure and simple of
imperiality, I must renouncethe reality of the picture, it discreditsitself in my eyes
when it becomesan instrument. Conversely,if I decipherthe Negro's salute as an
alibi of coloniality, I shatterthe myth even more surely by the obviousnessof its
motivation. But for the myth-reader, the outcome is quite different: everything
Myth Today 41
happensas if the picture naturally conjured up the concept,as if the signifier gave
a foundation to the signified: the myth exists from the precisemomentwhen French
imperiality achievesthe natural state: myth is speechjustified in excess.
Here is a new examplewhich will help understandclearly how the myth-reader
is led to rationalize the signified by meansof the signifier. We are in the month of
July, I read a big headline in France-Soir: THE FALL IN PRICES: FIRST INDICATIONS.
VEGETABLES: PRICE DROP BEGINS. Let us quickly sketchthe semiologicalschema:the
example being a sentence,the first system is purely linguistic. The signifier of the
second system is composedhere of a certain number of accidents, some lexical
(the words: first, begins, the [fall]), sometypographical(enormousheadlineswhere
the readerusually seesnews of world importance).The signified or conceptis what
must be called by a barbarousbut unavoidableneologism: governmentality,the
Government presented by the national press as the Essence of efficacy. The
signification of the myth follows clearly from this: fruit and vegetableprices are
falling becausethe governmenthas so decided.Now it so happensin this case(and
this is on the whole fairly rare) that the newspaperitself has, two lines below,
allowed one to seethrough the myth which it had just elaborated- whetherthis is
due to self-assuranceor honesty.It adds(in small type, it is true): The fall in prices
is helped by the return of seasonalabundance.'This exampleis instructive for two
reasons.Firstly it conspicuouslyshows that myth essentially aims at causing an
immediateimpression- it doesnot matter if one is later allowed to seethrough the
myth, its action is assumedto be strongerthan the rational explanationswhich may
later belie it. This meansthat the reading of a myth is exhaustedat one stroke. I
cast a quick glance at my neighbour'sFrance-Soir: I cull only a meaningthere, but
I read a true signification; I receive the presenceof governmentalaction in the fall
in fruit and vegetableprices. That is all, and that is enough. A more attentive
reading of the myth will in no way increaseits power or its ineffectiveness:a myth
is at the same time imperfectible and unquestionable;time or knowledgewill not
make it better or worse.
Secondly, the naturalizationof the concept, which I have just identified as the
essential function of myth, is here exemplary. In a first (exclusively linguistic)
system,causalitywould be, literally, natural: fruit and vegetableprices fall because
they are in season.In the second(mythical) system,causality is artificial, false; but
it creeps, so to speak, through the back door of Nature. This is why myth is
experiencedas innocentspeech:not becauseits intentionsare hidden - if they were
hidden, they could not be efficacious - but becausethey are naturalized.
In fact, what allows the reader to consumemyth innocently is that he does not
see it as a semiological system but as an inductive one. Where there is only an
equivalence,he seesa kind of causalprocess:the signifier and the signified have, in
his eyes, a natural relationship. This confusion can be expressedotherwise: any
semiological system is a system of values; now the myth-consumertakes the
signification for a systemof facts: myth is read as a factual system,whereasit is but
a semiologicalsystem.
42 Roland Barthes
Notes
1. Innumerableother meaningsof the word 'myth' can be cited againstthis. But I have tried
to define things, not words.
2. The developmentof publicity, of a national press,of radio, of illustrated news, not to
speakof the survival of a myriad rites of communicationwhich rule social appearances
makesthe developmentof a semiologicalsciencemore urgent than ever. In a single day,
how many really non-signifying fields do we cross? Very few, sometimesnone. Here I
am, before the sea; it is true that it bearsno message.But on the beach,what material
for semiology! Flags, slogans,signals, sign-boards,clothes, suntan even, which are so
many messagesto me.
3. The notion of word is one of the most controversialin linguistics. I keep it here for the
sake of simplicity.
4. Tel Quel, II, p. 191.
5. Or perhapsSinity? Just as if Latin/latinity = Basque/x,x = Basquity.
6. I say 'in Spain' because,in France, petit-bourgeoisadvancementhas causeda whole
'mythical' architectureof the Basquechalet to flourish.
7. From the point of view of ethics, what is disturbing in myth is preciselythat its form is
motivated. For if there is a 'health' of language,it is the arbitrarinessof the sign which
is its grounding. What is sickening in myth is its resort to a false nature, its
superabundance of significant forms, as in theseobjectswhich decoratetheir usefulness
with a natural appearance.The will to weigh the signification with the full guaranteeof
nature causesa kind of nausea:myth is too rich, and what is in excessis precisely its
motivation. This nauseais like the one I feel before the arts which refuse to choose
betweenphysisand anti-physis,using the first as an ideal and the secondas an economy.
Ethically, there is a kind of basenessin hedging one's bets.
8. The freedom in choosing what one focuseson is a problem which does not belong to
the province of semiology: it dependson the concretesituation of the subject.
9. We receive the naming of the lion as a pure exampleof Latin grammarbecausewe are,
as grown-ups,in a creativeposition in relation to it. I shall come back later to the value
of the context in this mythical schema.
1.2 Positions
Jacques Derrida
Interview with
Jean-LouisHoudebine
and
Guy Scarpetta
[...J
Scarpetta: Perhapswe could come back to what you have said about history.
I am thinking of the text in OJ Grammatologyin which you say: 'The word "history"
doubtlesshas always been associatedwith the linear consecutionof presence.'Can
you conceiveof the possibility of a conceptof history that would escapethis linear
scheme?Can you seethe possibility of what Sollerscalls, for example,'monumental
history', that is, history conceivedno longer as a linear scheme,but as a stratified,
differentiated, contradictory practical series, that is, neither a monistic nor a
historicist history?
Derrida: Of course. What we must be wary of, I repeat, is the metaphysical
conceptof history. This is the conceptof history as the history of meaning,as we
were just saying a momentago: the history of meaningdevelopingitself, producing
itself, fulfilling itself. And doing so linearly, as you recall: in a straight or circular
line. This is why, moreover,the 'closure of metaphysics'cannot have the form of
a line, that is, the form in which philosophy recognizesit, in which philosophy
recognizesitself. The closure of metaphysics,above all, is not a circle surrounding
a homogeneousfield, a field homogeneouswith itself on its inside, whose outside
then would be homogeneousalso. The limit has the form of always different faults,
of fissures whose mark or scar is borne by all the texts of philosophy.
The metaphysical character of the concept of history is not only linked to
linearity, but to an entire systemof implications (teleology, eschatology,elevating
and interiorizing accumulationof meaning,a certaintype of traditionality, a certain
concept of continuity, of truth, etc.). Therefore it is not an accidental predicate
From Derrida, J., Positions, trans. A. Bass, University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 1981, pp. 56-67,
104-06.
43
44 Jacques Derrida
which could be removedby a kind of local ablation,without a generaldisplacement

of the organization,without setting the entire systemto work. It has happenedthat
I have spoken very quickly of a 'metaphysicalconcept'. But I have never believed
that there were metaphysicalconcepts in and of themselves.No concept is by
itself,l and consequentlyin and of itself, metaphysical,outside all the textual work
in which it is inscribed. This explains why, although I have formulated many
reservationsabout the 'metaphysical'conceptof history, I very often use the word
'history' in order to reinscribe its force2 and in order to produceanotherconceptor
conceptual chain of 'history': in effect a 'monumental, stratified, contradictory'
history; a history that also implies a new logic of repetition and the trace, for it is
difficult to see how there could be history without it.
Neverthelesswe must recognizethat the conceptof history, by the force of the
systemof predicatesI just mentioned,can always be reappropriatedby metaphysics.
For example: we must first distinguish betweenhistory in general and the general
concept of history. Althusser's entire, and necessary,critique of the 'Hegelian'
conceptof history and of the notion of an expressivetotality, etc., aims at showing
that there is not one single history, a generalhistory, but rather histories different
in their type, rhythm, mode of inscription - intervallic, differentiated histories. I
have always subscribedto this, as to the concept of history that Sollers calls
'monumental'..>
[ ...J
That being said,the conceptof history, no more than any other, cannotbe subject
to a simple and instantaneous mutation,the striking of a namefrom the vocabulary.
We must elaboratea strategyof the textual work which at every instant borrows
an old word from philosophy in order immediately to demarcateit. This is what I
was alluding to just now in speakingof a double gestureor double stratification.
We must first overturn the traditional concept of history, but at the same time
mark the interval, take care that by virtue of the overturning, and by the simple
fact of conceptualization,the interval not be reappropriated. Certainly a new
conceptualizationis to be produced, but it must take into account the fact that
conceptualizationitself, and by itself alone, can reintroduce what one wants to
'criticize'. This is why this work cannot be purely 'theoretical' or 'conceptual'or
'discursive',I meancannotbe the work of a discourseentirely regulatedby essence,
meaning, truth, consciousness,ideality, etc. What I call text is also that which
'practically' inscribesand overflows the limits of such a discourse. There is such a
general text everywhere that (that is, everywhere) this discourse and its order
(essence,sense,truth, meaning,consciousness,ideality, etc.) are overflowed, that
is, everywherethat their authority is put back into the position of a mark in a chain
that this authority intrinsically and illusorily believesit wishes to and does in fact,
govern. This general text is not limited, of course, as will (or would) be quickly
understood,to writings on the page. The writing of this text, moreover, has the
exterior limit only of a certain re-mark. Writing on the page, and then 'literature',
are determinedtypes of this re-mark. They mustbe investigatedin their specificity,
Positions 45
and in a new way, if you will, in the specificity of their 'history', and in their
articulation with the other 'historical' fields of the text in general.
This is why, briefly, I so often use the word 'history', but so often too with the
quotation marks and precautionsthat may have led to the attribution to me of
(I am going to abusethis expression,which will lead me to prefer another: 'good
style') a 'rejection of history'.
I... J
Houdebine: II]t seemsto us that the itinerary of a deconstructionof logocentric
discourse inevitably encounters the materialist text, which has long been the
historical text repressed-suppressed by logocentricdiscourse(idealism,metaphysics,
religion) taken as the discourseof a ruling ideology in its different historical forms.
Do you agreewith us aboutthe necessityof marking out this encounter?And could
you tell us why this necessityhas been marked in your work, up to now, either in
a marginal fashion (I am thinking most notably of severalnotesin 'La doubleseance'
which bear witness, moreover,to the necessityyou felt at that time of strategically
- and even politically - regulating the implications of your discourse),or in a
lacunaryfashion, as in the passageof 'La differance'where you speakof putting into
question 'the self-assuredcertitude of consciousness'and refer to Nietzsche and
Freud, leaving in suspense(but this suspenseitself is perfectly legible) any reference
to Marx, and along with Marx to the text of dialectical materialism?But it is true
that in Marx, as in Engels and Lenin, the putting into questionof the self-certainty
of consciousnessis not 'basedon the motif of differance', and that anothergeneral
economy is at stake here (has been at stake for a long time), according to the
conceptualseriesbriefly enunciatedjust now, and to which we would have to add
the Marxist conceptof 'ideology'.
Derrida: Naturally, I cannotanswerthesequestionsin a word. Where to begin?
In effect, there is what you call this 'encounter', which has seemedabsolutely
necessaryto me for a long time. You can imagine that I have not been completely
unconsciousof it. That being said, I persist in believing that there is no theoretical
or political benefit to be derived from precipitating contacts or articulations, as
long as their conditions have not been rigorously elucidated. Eventually such
precipitationwill have the effect only of dogmatism,confusion,or opportunism.To
impose this prudenceupon oneselfis to take seriously the difficulty, and also the
heterogeneity,of the Marxist text, the decisive importanceof its historical stakes.
Whereto begin then?If one wished to schematize- but truly this is only a schema
- what I have attemptedcan also be inscribed under the rubric of the 'critique of
idealism'. Therefore it goes without saying that to the extent that dialectical
materialism also operatesthis critique, it in no way incurs my reticence,nor have
I ever formulated any on this subject.
Do me the credit of believing that the 'lacunae'to which you alluded are explicitly
calculatedto mark the sites of a theoreticalelaborationwhich remains,for me, at
least, still to come. And they are indeedlacunae,not objections;they have a specific
and deliberate status, I even dare say a certain efficacity. When I say for me,
46 Jacques Derrida
I understandthis: the conjunctionbetweenthe work I attempt-a limited work, but

with its own field and framework, a work possible only in a historical, political,
theoretical, etc., situation that is highly determined - and the entire text and
conceptualityof Marxism cannot be immediatelygiven. To believe so would be to
erasethe specificity of thesefields and to limit their effectivetransformation.Now
in both cases,shall we say, to proceedquickly, in questionare 'fields' that inscribe
the possibility and opening of their practical transformation.And when I say 'still
to come', I am still, and above all, thinking of the relationship of Marx to Hegel,
and of the question we were speaking of just now (dialectics, difference,
contradiction, etc.). Despite the immense work which already has been done in
this domain, a decisiveelaborationhasnot yet beenaccomplished,and for historical
reasonswhich can be analyzed,precisely,only during the elaborationof this work.
In what I have begun to propose,I attempt to take into account certain recent
acquisitionsor determinedincompletionsin the orders of philosophy, semiology,
linguistics, psychoanalysis,etc.... Now, we cannot consider Marx's, Engels'sor
Lenin's texts as completely finished elaborationsthat are simply to be 'applied' to
the current situation. In saying this, I am not advocating anything contrary to
'Marxism', I am convinced of it. These texts are not to be read according to a
hermeneuticalor exegetical method which would seek out a finished signified
beneatha textual surface.Readingis transformational.I believe that this would be
confirmed by certain of Althusser'spropositions.But this transformationcannotbe
executed however one wishes. It requires protocols of reading. Why not say it
bluntly: I have not yet found any that satisfy me.
No more than I have dealt with Saussure'stext, or Freud's, or any other, as
homogeneousvolumes (the motif of homogeneity, the theological motif par
excellence,is decidedly the one to be destroyed),I do not find the texts of Marx,
Engels,or Lenin homogeneous critiques. In their relationshipto Hegel, for example.
And the mannerin which they themselvesreflectedand formulatedthe differentiated
or contradictory structure of their relationship to Hegel has not seemedto me,
correctly or incorrectly, sufficient. Thus I will have to analyze what I consider a
heterogeneity,conceptualizingboth its necessityand the rules for decipheringit; and
do so by taking into accountthe decisive progresssimultaneouslyaccomplishedby
Althusserand thosefollowing him. All this posesmany questions,and today I could
tell you nothing not already legible in the lacunaeor notes to which you alluded,
at least for anyonewho wishes to pursue their consequences. Above all they refer
to the generaleconomy whose traits I attemptedto outline basedon a reading of
Bataille.4 It follows that if, and in the extent to which, matter in this general
economy designates,as you said, radical alterity (I will specify: in relation to
philosophical oppositions),then what I write can be considered'materialist'.
As you may imagine, things are not so simple. It is not always in the materialist
text (is there such a thing, the materialist text?) nor in every materialist text that
the conceptof matter has beendefined as absoluteexterior or radical heterogeneity.
I am not even sure that there can be a 'concept'of an absoluteexterior. If I have
not very often used the word 'matter', it is not, as you know, becauseof some
Positions 47
idealist or spiritualist kind of reservation. It is that in the logic of the phase of

overturning this concept has been too often reinvestedwith 'logocentric' values,
valuesassociatedwith thoseof thing, reality, presencein general,sensiblepresence,
for example,substantialplenitude, content, referent, etc. Realism or sensualism-
'empiricism' - are modifIcations of logocentrism.(I have often insisted on the fact
that 'writing' or the 'text' are not reducible either to the sensibleor visible presence
of the graphic or the 'literal'.) In short, the signifIer 'matter' appears to me
problematicalonly at the momentwhen its reinscription cannotavoid making of it
a new fundamentalprinciple which, by meansof theoretical regression,would be
reconstitutedinto a 'transcendentalsignifIed'. It is not only idealism in the narrow
sense that falls back upon the transcendentalsignifIed. It can always come to
reassurea metaphysicalmaterialism.It then becomesan ultimate referent,according
to the classical logic implied by the value of referent, or it becomesan 'objective
reality' absolutely'anterior'to any work of the mark, the semanticcontentof a form
of presencewhich guaranteesthe movementof the text in generalfrom the outside.
(I am not sure that Lenin's analysis, for example,does not always give in to this
operation; and if it does so strategically, we must first reelaborate - in a
transformationalwriting - the rules of this strategy. Then there would be no
reservationsto be made.) This is why I will not say that the conceptof matter is
in and of itself either metaphysicalor nonmetaphysical.This dependsupon the work
to which it yields, and you know that I have unceasinglyinsisted, as concernsthe
nonidealexteriority of writing, the gram, the trace,the text, etc., upon the necessity
of never separatingthem from work, a value itself to be rethought outside its
Hegelian affiliation. What is announcedhere, as I tried to indicate in 'La double
seance'(double science,double sense,double scene),is again the operationof the
double mark or the re-mark. The concept of matter must be marked twice (the
others too): in the deconstructedfIeldS - this is the phaseof overturning - and in
the deconstructing text, outside the oppositions in which it has been caught
(matter/spirit, matter/ideality, matter/form, etc.). By means of the play of this
interval between the two marks, one can operate both an overturning decon-
struction and a positively displacing, transgressive,deconstruction.
Rigorously reinscribed in the general economy (Bataille)6 and in the double
writing of which we were just speaking,the insistenceon matter as the absolute
exterior of opposition,the materialistinsistence(in contactwith what 'materialism'
has representedas a force of resistancein the history of philosophy) seemsto me
necessary.It is unequally necessary,varying with the sites, the strategicsituations,
the practical and theoreticalpoints advanced.In a very determinedfIeld of the most
current situation, it seemsto me that the materialist insistencecan function as a
meansof having the necessarygeneralizationof the conceptof text, its extension
with no simple exterior limit (which also supposesthe passagethrough metaphysical
opposition), not wind up (under the influence of very precise interests, reactive
forces determinedto lead work astray into confusion), not wind up, then, as the
definition of a new self-interiority, a new 'idealism',if you will, of the text. In effect,
we must avoid having the indispensablecritique of a certain naive relationship to
48 Jacques Derrida
the signified or the referent,to senseor meaning,remain fixed in a suspension,that

is, a pure and simple suppression,of meaningor reference.I believethat I havetaken
precautionson this matter in the propositionsthat I have advanced.But it is true,
and the proofs are not lacking, that this is never sufficient. What we need is to
determineotherwise, according to a differential system, the effects of ideality, of
signification, of meaning,and of reference.(We also would have to make room for
a systematicanalysisof the word 'effect' which is usedso frequently today - not an
insignificant fact - and for the new conceptwhich it marks in still rather undecided
fashion. The frequency of this usage multiplies by virtue of this active
indetermination.A conceptin the processof constitutingitself first producesa kind
of localizableeffervescencein the work of nomination. This 'new' conceptof effect
borrows its characteristicsfrom both the opposition cause/effectand from the
oppositionessence/appearance - effect, reflect - without neverthelessbeing reduced
to them. It is this fringe of irreducibility that is to be analyzed.)
Of course we must redouble our prudence in reconsideringthe problem of
meaning and reference.The 'dialectics' of the same and the other, of outside and
inside, of the homogeneousand the heterogeneous,are, as you know, among the
most contorted ones.7 The outside can always become again an 'object' in the
polarity subject/object, or the reassuringreality of what is outsidethe text; and there
is sometimesan 'inside' that is as troubling as the outside may be reassuring.This
is not to be overlookedin the critique of interiority and subjectivity.8 Here we are
in an extremely complex logic. The improvised speech of an interview cannot
substitutefor the textual work.
Notes
Derrida's notes are indicated by his initials, J. D. The editor's notes of the original French
edition are indicated by the abbreviation Ed. N. Translator'snotes are indicated by the
abbreviationT. N.
1. J.
D. See 'La differance', in Marges de fa Phifosophie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit,
1972), p. 11.
2. J. D. An example: 'If the word "history" did not bear within itself the motif of a final
repressionof difference, one could say that only differencescan be, from the outset and
in all aspects,"historical". What is written as differancewill indicate, then, the movement
of play that "produces",in a way that is not simply an activity, these differences,these
effects of difference. This does not mean that the differance which producesdifferences
is before them, in a simple presentthat is itself unmodified, in-different. Differance is the
nonfull, nonsimple"origin", the structuredand differing origin of differences.The name
"origin", therefore, is no longer suitable.... Retaining at least the schema,if not the
content of the demand formulated by Saussure,we will designate as differance the
movementaccording to which language,or any other code, any system of referencein
general, is constituted "historically" as a tissue of differences. "Is constituted", "is
produced","is created","movement","historically", etc., have to be understoodbeyond
the metaphysicallanguagein which they are caught,along with all their implications. We
would have to show why the conceptsof production, like those of constitution and of
Positions 49
history, from this point of view remain in complicity with what is in question here, but
this would take us too far today - in the direction of the representationof the "circle" in
which we appearto be enclosed- and I utilize them here, as I do many other concepts,
only for strategicconvenienceand in order to undertakethe deconstructionof their system
at the point which is currently most decisive.' Ibid., pp. 12-13. Seealso, for example,'La
double seance',in La dissemination(Paris: Seuil, 1972), pp. 235-6. [ ...J
3. J. D. In my improvised response,I had forgotten that Scarpetta'squestion also named
historicism. Of course, the critique of historicism in all its forms seems to me
indispensable.What I fIrst learned about this critique in Husserl (from Philosophyas a
Rigorous Scienceto the Origin of Geometry: Hegel is always the target of this critique,
whether directly or whether through Dilthey), who, to my knowledge, was the fIrst to
formulate it under this heading and from the point of view of theoretical and scientifIc
(especiallymathematical)rigor, seemsvalid to me in its argumentativeframework, even
if in the last analysis it is basedon a historical teleology of truth. On this last question
the issueis to be reopened.The issuewould be: can one criticize historicism in the name
of somethingother than truth and science(the value of universality, omnitemporality,the
infInity of value, etc.), and what happensto sciencewhen the metaphysicalvalue of truth
has been put into question, etc.? How are the effects of science and of truth to be
reinscribed? This brief reminder in order to mention that during the course of our
interview Nietzsche'sname was not pronounced.By chance?On what we are speaking
aboutat this very moment,as on everythingelse, Nietzscheis for me, as you know, a very
important reference.Finally, it goes without saying that in no caseis it a question of a
discourse against truth or against science. (This is impossible and absurd, as is every
heated accusationon this subject.) And when one analyzessystematicallythe value of
truth as homoiosisor adequatio,as the certitudeof the cogito (Descartes,Husserl),or as
a certitudeopposedto truth in the horizon of absoluteknowledge(Phenomenologyof the
Mind), or fInally as aletheia, unveiling or presence(the Heideggereanrepetition), it is not
in order to return naively to a relativist or sceptical empiricism. (See, notably, De la
grammatologie [Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1967], p. 232, and 'La differance' in Marges,
p. 7.) I repeat,then, leaving all their disseminatingpowersto the propositionand the form
of the verb: we must have [il fautJ truth. For those who mystify (themselves)to have it
trippingly on the tongue. Such is the law. ParaphrasingFreud, speaking of the
present/absentpenis (but it is the same thing), we must recognizein truth 'the normal
prototype of the fetish'. How can we do without it?
4. T. N. See'From restrictedto generaleconomy:a Hegelianismwithout reserve',in Writing
and Difference, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
5. ]. D. To summarizethat which marks it within the deconstructedheld, again I will cite
Nietzsche:'Let us renouncethe notions of "subject" and "object", and then the notion of
"substance",and consequentlyall of its diverse modifIcations, for example, "matter",
"spirit", and the other hypothetical beings, "eternity", and the "immutability of matter",
etc. Thus we also get rid of materiality'. I also refer to his Unzeitgemasse... , 2.
6. ]. D. Here I permit myself to recall that the texts to which you have referred (particularly
'La double seance','La dissemination','La mythologieblanche', but also 'La pharmacle
de Platon' and several others) are situated explicitly in relation to Bataille, and also
explicitly proposea reading of Bataille.
7. ]. D. On this subject, and notably on the paradoxesof dissymmetryand alterity, seefor
example'Violence and metaphysics',in Writing and Difference.
8. J. D. Nor is the heterogeneityof 'matter'to be constitutedas transcendence,whetherthe
transcendence of the Law, the Great Exterior Object (constitutive and consolingseverity
of the paternalagency),or ofthe (appeasingand/orcruel) Elementof the mother(seewhat
Freud says about the well-known relationship mother/matterin the passagein which he
makesevidentthat which cannotbe reducedto the variation of linguistic, verbal signifIers.
50 Jacques Derrida
Seelecture 10 of the Introductory Lectureson Psychoanalysis,and also the end of 'Freud

and the sceneof writing' in Writing and Difference). This doesnot imply that matter has
no necessaryrelationship to these agencies,but rather that the relationship is one of
written concatenation,a play of substitutionof differential marks that relate matter also
to writing, to the remainder, to death, to the phallus, to excrement,to the infant, to
semen,etc., or at least to everythingin this that is not subjectto the releve. And requires
thus, that this relationship not be made either into a new essentialdeterminationof the
Being of beings,the centerof a new ontology, or into a new exampleof the master-words,
which Marx, for example, defmitively criticized in the German Ideology.
1.3 D From Revolution
In Poetic Language
Julia Kristeva
The PhenomenologicalSubjectof
Enunciation
We must specify, first and foremost, what we mean by the signifying processvis-a-
vis generaltheories of meaning, theories of language,and theories of the subject.
Despitetheir variations,all modernlinguistic theoriesconsiderlanguagea strictly
'formal' object - one that involves syntax or mathematicization.Within this
perspective,such theories generally accept the following notion of language.For
Zellig Harris, languageis defined by: (1) the arbitrary relation betweensignifier and
signified, (2) the acceptanceof the sign as a substitutefor the extra-linguistic, (3)
its discreteelements,and (4) its denumerable,or even finite, nature.! But with the
developmentof Chomskyangenerativegrammar and the logico-semanticresearch
that was articulatedaroundand in responseto it, problemsarosethat were generally
believed to fall within the province of 'semantics'or even 'pragmatics',and raised
the awkward question of the extra-linguistic. But language [langage] - modern
linguistics' self-assignedobject2 - lacks a subject or tolerates one only as a
transcendentalego (in Husserl'ssenseor in Benveniste'smore specifically linguistic
sense),3 and defers any interrogation of its (always-alreadydialectical because
trans-linguistic) 'externality'.
Two trendsin currentlinguistic researchdo attendto this 'externality'in the belief
that failure to elucidate it will hinder the developmentof linguistic theory itself.
Although such a lacuna posesproblems (which we will later specify) for 'formal'
linguistics, it hasalways beena particularproblemfor semiotics,which is concerned
with specifyingthe functioning of signifying practicessuch as art, poetry, and myth
that are irreducible to the 'language'object.
From Kristeva, j., Revolutionin Poetic Language,trans. M. Waller, Columbia University Press,New
York, 1984, pp.21-30, 140-46.
51
52 Julia Kristeva
1. The fIrst of thesetwo trends addressesthe questionof the so-called'arbitrary'

relation betweensignifIer and signifIed by examiningsignifying systemsin which this
relation is presentedas 'motivated'. It seeksthe principle of this motivation in the
Freudiannotion of the unconsciousin so far as the theoriesof drives [pulsionsl and
primary processes(displacementand condensation)can connect'empty signifIers' to
psychosomaticfunctionings, or can at least link them in a sequenceof metaphors
and metonymies;though undecidable,such a sequencereplaces'arbitrariness'with
'articulation'. The discourse of analysands,language 'pathologies', and artistic,
particularly poetic, systemsare especially suited to such an exploration.4 Formal
linguistic relationsare thus connectedto an 'externality'in the psychosomaticrealm,
which is ultimately reduced to a fragmentedsubstance[substancemorceleel (the
body divided into erogenous zones) and articulated by the developing ego's
connectionsto the threepoints of the family triangle. Sucha linguistic theory, clearly
indebtedto the positionsof the psychoanalyticschool of London and Melanie Klein
in particular, restores to formal linguistic relations the dimensions (instinctual
drives) and operations (displacement, condensation, vocalic and intonational
differentiation)that formalistic theory excludes.Yet for want of a dialectical notion
of the signifying process as a whole, in which signifIance puts the subject in
process/ontrial [en proces], such considerations,no matter how astute,fail to take
into account the syntactico-semanticfunctioning of language. Although they
rehabilitate the notion of the fragmented body - pre-Oedipal but alway-already
investedwith semiosis- theselinguistic theoriesfail to articulateits transitionallink
to the post-Oedipalsubjectand his always symbolic and/or syntacticlanguage.(We
shall return to this point.)
2. The second trend, more recent and widespread,introduces within theory's
own formalism a 'layer' of semiosis,which had beenstrictly relegatedto pragmatics
and semantics.By positing a subject 0/ enunciation (in the senseof Benveniste,
Culioli, etc.), this theory placeslogical modal relations,relationsof presupposition,
and other relationsbetweeninterlocutorswithin the speechact, in a very deep'deep
structure'. This subject 0/ enunciation, which comes directly from Husserl and
Benveniste(see n. 3), introduces,through categorialintuition, both semanticfields
and logical- but also intersubjective- relations, which prove to be both intra- and
trans-linguistic.:;
[... l
To summarizebriefly what we shall elucidatelater, the two trendsjust mentioned
designatetwo modalities of what is, for us, the samesignifying process.We shall
call the fIrst 'the semiotic' and the second'the symbolic'. Thesetwo modalities are
inseparablewithin the sigmfyingprocessthat constituteslanguage,and the dialectic
betweenthem determinesthe type of discourse(narrative, metalanguage,theory,
poetry, etc.) involved; in other words, so-called 'natural' language allows for
different modesof articulationof the semioticand the symbolic. On the other hand,
there are nonverbalsignifying systemsthat are constructedexclusively on the basis
of the semiotic (music, for example).But, as we shall see,this exclusivity is relative,
From Revolution in Poetic Language 53
precisely becauseof the necessarydialectic between the two modalities of the

signifying process,which is constitutiveof the subject.Becausethe subjectis always
both semiotic and symbolic, no signifying system he produces can be either
'exclusively' semiotic or 'exclusively' symbolic, and is insteadnecessarilymarkedby
an indebtednessto both.
The Semiotic Chora Ordering the

Drives
We understandthe term 'semiotic' in its Greek sense: arlltElQJ) = distinctive mark,
trace, index, precursory sign, proof, engraved or written sign, imprint, trace,
fIguration. This etymological reminder would be a mere archaeologicalembellish-
ment (and an unconvincingone at that, since the term ultimately encompasses such
disparatemeanings),were it not for the fact that the preponderantetymologicaluse
of the word, the one that implies a distinctiveness,allows us to connect it to a
precise modality in the signifying process. This modality is the one Freudian
psychoanalysispoints to in postulatingnot only the facilitation and the structuring
disposition of drives, but also the so-called primary processeswhich displace and
condenseboth energiesand their inscription. Discrete quantities of energy move
through the body of the subjectwho is not yet constitutedas such and, in the course
of his development,they are arrangedaccordingto the various constraintsimposed
on this body - always-alreadyinvolved in a semioticprocess - by family and social
structures.In this way the drives, which are 'energy' chargesas well as 'psychical'
marks, articulatewhat we call a chora: a nonexpressivetotality formed by the drives
and their stasesin a motility that is as full of movementas it is regulated.
We borrow the term chora6 from Plato's Timaeusto denotean essentiallymobile
and extremelyprovisional articulationconstitutedby movementsand their ephemeral
stases. We differentiate this uncertain and indeterminate articulation from a
disposition that alreadydependson representation,lends itself to phenomenological,
spatial intuition, and gives rise to a geometry. Although our theoreticaldescription
of the chora is itself part of the discourseof representationthat offers it as evidence,
the chora, as rupture and articulations(rhythm), precedesevidence,verisimilitude,
spatiality, and temporality. Our discourse- all discourse- moveswith and against
the chora in the sensethat it simultaneouslydependsupon and refusesit. Although
the chora can be designatedand regulated,it can never be definitively posited: as
a result, one can situatethe chora and, if necessary,lend it a topology, but one can
never give it axiomatic form. 7
The chora is not yet a position that representssomethingfor someone(i.e. it is
not a sign); nor is it a position that representssomeonefor anotherposition (i.e.
it is not yet a signifier either); it is, however, generatedin order to attain to this
signifying position. Neither model nor copy, the chora precedesand underlies
54 Julia Kristeva
figuration and thus specularization,and is analogous only to vocal or kinetic

rhythm. We must restorethis motility's gesturaland vocal play (to mention only the
aspectrelevant to language)on the level of the socializedbody in order to remove
8
motility from ontology and amorphousness where Plato confines it in an apparent
attemptto concealit from Democriteanrhythm. The theory of the subjectproposed
by the theory of the unconsciouswill allow us to read in this rhythmic space,which
has no thesisand no position, the processby which signifianceis constituted.Plato
himself leads us to such a processwhen he calls this receptacleor chora nourishing
and maternal,9not yet unified in an orderedwhole becausedeity is absentfrom it.
Though deprived of unity, identity, or deity, the chora is neverthelesssubject to a
regulatingprocess[reglementation],which is different from that of symboliclaw but
neverthelesseffectuatesdiscontinuities by temporarily articulating them and then
starting over, again and again.
The chora is a modality of signifiance in which the linguistic sign is not yet
articulated as the absenceof an object and as the distinction between real and
symbolic. We emphasizethe regulatedaspectof the chora: its vocal and gestural
organizationis subjectto what we shall call an objective ordering [ordonnancementl,
which is dictated by natural or socio-historicalconstraintssuch as the biological
differencebetweenthe sexesor family structure.We may thereforeposit that social
organization,always-alreadysymbolic, imprints its constraintin a mediatedform
which organizes the chora not according to a law (a term we reserve for the
symbolic) but through an ordering.IO What is this mediation?
According to a number of psycholinguists,'concrete operations' precede the
acquisitionof language,and organizepreverbalsemiotic spaceaccordingto logical
categories,which are thereby shown to precedeor transcendlanguage.From their
researchwe shall retain not the principle of an operational statel ! but that of a
preverbal functional state that governs the connectionsbetweenthe body (in the
processof constituting itself as a body proper), objects, and the protagonistsof
family structure.12 But we shall distinguishthis functioning from symbolic operations
that depend on language as a sign system - whether the language [langue] is
vocalized or gestural (as with deaf-mutes). The kinetic functional stage of the
semioticprecedesthe establishmentof the sign; it is not, therefore,cognitive in the
senseof being assumedby a knowing, already constitutedsubject. The genesisof
the functions13 organizing the semiotic processcan be accuratelyelucidatedonly
within a theory of the subject that does not reduce the subject to one of
understanding,but instead opens up within the subject this other scene of pre-
symbolic functions. The Kleinian theory expandingupon Freud'spositions on the
drives will momentarily serve as a guide.
Drives involve pre-Oedipalsemiotic functions and energydischargesthat connect
and orient the body to the mother. We must emphasizethat 'drives' are always-
already ambiguous, simultaneously assimilating and destructive; this dualism,
which has been representedas a tetrad14 or as a double helix, as in the
configurationof the DNA and RNA molecule,15makesthe semiotizedbody a place
of permanentscission. The oral and anal drives, both of which are oriented and
structuredaround the mother's body,16 dominate this sensorimotororganization.

The mother's body is therefore what mediatesthe symbolic law organizing social
relations and becomesthe ordering principle of the semiotic chora,l? which is on
the path of destruction, aggressivity, and death. For although drives have been
described as disunited or contradictory structures,simultaneously'positive' and
'negative', this doubling is said to generatea dominant 'destructivewave', that is
drive's most characteristictrait: Freud notes that the most instinctual drive is the
death drive.18 In this way, the term 'drive' denoteswaves of attack against stases,
which are themselves constituted by the repetition of these charges; together,
chargesand staseslead to no identity (not even that of the 'body proper') that could
be seenas a result of their functioning. This is to say that the semiotic chora is no
more than the place where the subject is both generatedand negated,the place
wherehis unity succumbsbeforethe processof chargesand stasesthat producehim.
We shall call this processof chargesand stasesa negativity to distinguish it from
negation, which is the act of a judging subject [ ...J
Checkedby the constraintsof biological and social structures,the drive charge
thus undergoesstases.Drive facilitation, temporarilyarrested,marks discontinuities
in what may be called the various material supports [materiauxJ susceptibleto
semiotization:voice, gesture,colors. Phonic (later phonemic),kinetic, or chromatic
units and differences are the marks of these stasesin the drives. Connectionsor
functions are thereby establishedbetweenthesediscretemarks which are basedon
drives and articulated according to their resemblanceor opposition, either by
slippageor by condensation.Here we flOd the principlesof metonymyand metaphor
indissociablefrom the drive economy underlying them.
Although we recognizethe vital role played by the processesof displacementand
condensationin the organization of the semiotic, we must also add to these
processesthe relations (eventuallyrepresentableas topological spaces)that connect
the zonesof the fragmentedbody to each other and also to 'external''objects'and
'subjects',which are not yet constituted as such. This type of relation makes it
possible to specify the semiotic as a psychosomaticmodality of the signifying
process;in other words, not a symbolic modality but one articulating (in the largest
senseof the word) a continuum: the connectionsbetween the (glottal and anal)
sphinctersin (rhythmic and intonational) vocal modulations,or those betweenthe
sphinctersand family protagonists,for example.
All thesevarious processesand relations, anterior to sign and syntax, have just
been identifIed from a genetic perspective as previous and necessary to the
acquisition of language,but not identical to language. Theory can 'situate' such
processesand relations diachronically within the processof the constitution of the
subjectprecisely becausethey function synchronicallywithin the signifying process
of the subjecthimself, i.e. the subjectof cogitatio. Only in dream logic, however,
have they attractedattention, and only in certain signifying practices,such as the
text, do they dominate the signifying process.
It may be hypothesizedthat certain semiotic articulationsare transmittedthrough
the biological code or physiological'memory' and thus form the inborn basesof the
56 Julia Kristeva
symbolic function. Indeed, one branch of generativelinguistics assertsthe principle

of innatelanguageuniversals.As it will becomeapparentin what follows, however,
the symbolic - and thereforesyntax and all linguistic categories- is a social effect
of the relation to the other, establishedthrough the objective constraints of
biological (including sexual) differencesand concrete,historical family structures.
Geneticprogrammingsare necessarilysemiotic: they include the primary processes
such as displacementand condensation,absorption and repulsion, rejection and
stasis, all of which function as innate preconditions,'memorizable'by the species,
for languageacquisition.
Mallarme calls attentionto the semioticrhythm within languagewhen he speaks
of 'The Mystery in Literature' ['Le Mysteredansles lettres'J.Indifferent to language,
enigmatic and feminine, this spaceunderlying the written is rhythmic, unfettered,
irreducible to its intelligible verbal translation; it is musical, anterior to judgment,
but restrainedby a single guarantee:syntax.
[. . .J
Our positing of the semiotic is obviously inseparablefrom a theory of the subject
that takes into account the Freudian positing of the unconscious.We view the
subject in languageas decenteringthe transcendentalego, cutting through it, and
opening it up to a dialectic in which its syntactic and categoricalunderstandingis
merely the liminary momentof the process,which is itself always actedupon by the
relation to the other dominatedby the death drive and its productivereiteration of
the 'signifIer'. We will be attemptingto formulate the distinction betweensemiotic
and symbolic within this perspective,which was introduced by Lacaniananalysis,
but also within the constraintsof a practice- the text - which is only of secondary
interest to psychoanalysis.
[ •..J
Non-Contradiction: Neutral Peace

Grammatologyretains the essentialfeaturesof a nonsubstantial,nonsemantic,and
nonphenomenaldevicethat might enableus to sort out the logocentricentanglement
of substance,meaning,and phenomena,and indicate its exorbitantmobility. It is,
in our view, the most radical of all the various proceduresthat have tried, after
Hegel, to pushdialectical negativity further and elsewhere.Difference,the trace,the
gramme,writing [ecriture], contain, retain, and harbor this dialectic in a way that,
while avoiding totality, is neverthelessdefInite and very precise;'a certain dialectic',
writes Derrida, echoing Artaud:
The presentoffers itself as such, appears,presentsitself, opensthe stageof time or the

time of the stageonly by harboringits own intestinedifference,and only in the interior
fold of its original repetition, in representation.In dialectics.
... For if one appropriately conceives the horizon of dialectics - outside a

conventionalHegelianism- one understands,perhaps,that dialectics is the indefInite
movementof fInitude, of the unity of life and death,of difference,of original repetition,
that is, of the origin of tragedyas the absenceof a simple origin. In this sense, dialectics
is tragedy, the only possible affirmation to be made against the philosophical or
Christian idea of pure origin, against'the spirit of beginning'.19
It is obvious that grammatologyclears its way [se fraye la route] by attacking

teleology and Hegelian semiology, and does so explicitly. What interestsus here is
the debt to Hegel that makesof 'arche-writing''the movement[emphasisadded] of
the sign-functionlinking a contentto an expression,whetherit be graphic or not',
and not just a schema.2o
Negativity is inscribed in arche-writing as a constitutiveabsence:the 'absenceof
the other', 'irreducible absencewithin the presenceof the trace'; 'differance is
therefore the formation of form'.21 As a result, we recognize in negativity the
economy Derrida speaks of in 'Violence and Metaphysics', that of a 'strange
dialogue betweenthe Jew and the Greek, peaceitself', which he finds in 'the form
of the absolute,speculativelogic of Hegel, the living logic which reconciles formal
tautology and empirical heterologyafter having thought propheticdiscoursein the
preface to the Phenomenologyof Spirit.,zz
Clearly, the grammatologicalfabric's complexelaborationand its chronologically
distendedand topographicallyunevenstrategycannotbe reducedto a homogeneous
system. But from the texts on Husserlor Jabesonward, Derrida takes in [recueille]
and reinvestsHegeliannegativity in the phenomenologicalcorpusin order to expose
and question it. In the courseof this operation,negativity has becomepositivized
and drained of its potential for producing breaks.It holds itself back and appears
as a delaying [retardement], it defers and thus becomes merely positive and
affirmative, it inscribesand institutesthrough retention: 'The institutedtracecannot
be thoughtwithout thinking the retentionof differencewithin a structureof reference
where difference appearsas such and thus permits a certain liberty of variations
among the full terms.' 'Without a retention in the minimal unit of temporal
experience,without a trace retaining the other as other in the same,no difference
would do its work and no meaningwould appear.,23
Through this ingathering [recueillement], the trace absorbsand, in this sense,
reduces- but not phenomenologically(thus we speak of ingathering and not of
reduction) - the 'terms', 'dichotomies',and 'oppositions'that Hegelian negativity
concatenates, reactivates,and generates.The trace that includesits effacement,and
writing that inscribesonly while under protection and by delaying14 - both can be
thoughtof as metaphorsfor a movementthat retreatsbeforethe thetic but, sheltered
by it, unfolds only within the stasesof the semiotic chora. The trace thus expresses
the preconditionsand/or the (fetishistic, maternal)repressedelementof logocentric
reason and, in this sense,grammatologydisturbs logic and its subject. In other
words, grammatologydenouncesthe economyof the symbolic function and opens
up a spacethat the latter cannotsubsume.But in its desireto bar the thetic and put
58 Julia Kristeva
(logically or chronologically) previous energy transfersin its place, the grammato-

logical delugeof meaninggives up on the subjectand must remain ignorant not only
of his functioning as social practice, but also of his chances for experiencing
jouissanceor being put to death. Neutral in the face of all positions, theses,and
structures,grammatologyis, as a consequence, equally restrainedwhen they break,
burst, or rupture: demonstratingdisinterestedness toward (symbolic and/or social)
structure, grammatology remainssilent when faced with its destructionor renewal.
Indeed, since dif/erance25 neutralizesproductive negativity, it is conceivedof as
a delay [retard) that comes before a (pre)condition, a possibility, becoming and
become, a movement preceding the sign, logos, the subject, Being, and located
within every differentiatedentity. It is the path of their becomingand, as such, is
itself a becoming; its Being will be under erasure:'It is thus the delay [Ie retard)
which is in the beginning [originaire).' 'Dif/erance, the pre-opening [emphasis
added] of the ontic-ontologicaldifference... and of all the differenceswhich furrow
Freudian conceptuality, such that they may be organized, and this is only an
example,around the difference between'pleasure'and 'reality', or may be derived
from this difference.' 'Life must be thought of as trace before Being may be
determinedas presence.'26'Without referring back to a "nature", the immotivation
of the trace has always become.In fact, there is no unmotivatedtrace... .' 'It is that
starting from which a becoming-unmotivated of the sign, and with it all the ulterior
positions between physis and its other, is possible.'27Or again, referring to the
trace 'where the relationship with the other is marked', as a possibility always
already oriented toward the sign, toward beings.28 'This formula, beside the fact
that it is the questioningof metaphysicsitself, describesthe structureimplied by the
"arbitrarinessof the sign", from the momentthat one thinks of its possibility short
of the derived opposition between nature and convention, symbol and sign, etc.
Theseoppositionshave meaningonly after the possibility of the trace.'29 Concealed
in Being and all its variations,concealingthe other within itself, and concealedfrom
itself, the trace marks anteriority to every entity and thus to every position; it is the
movementwhoseveiling producesmetaphysicsor, more accurately,metaphysicsis a
trace unknown to itself [qui s'ignore). The grammatologistspeaksto transcendence
and unsettles it becausehe statesits economy: 'The primordial difference of the
absoluteorigin.... That is perhapswhat has always beensaid under the conceptof
"transcendental".... Transcendencewould be difference.'30
If in this way the trace dissolves every thesis - material, natural, social,
substantial,and logical - in order to free itself from any dependenceon the Logos,
it can do so becauseit graspsthe formation of the symbolic function precedingthe
mirror stageand believesit can remain there, even while aiming toward that stage.
Grammatology would undoubtedly not acknowledge the pertinence of this
psychoanalyticstaging [stadialite] , which dependson the categoriesand entities of
beings. Yet to the extent (1) that the psychoanalyticdiscovery pavesthe way, in a
certain sense,for grammatologyitself, and (2) that grammatologydesignatesan
enclosurethat is recognized as insurmountable,we may posit that the force of
writing [ecriture] lies preciselyin its return to the space-timepreviousto the phallic
stage- indeed previous even to the identifying or mirror stagein order to grasp
the becomingof the symbolic function as the drive's deferment [differance] faced
with the absenceof the object.
Although it begins by positing the heterogeneityin which differance operates,
doesn'tgrammatologyforget this heterogeneous elementthe momentit neglectsthe
thetic? Doesn't it indeftnitely delay this heterogeneouselement,thus following its
own systematicand philosophical movement of metalanguageor theory. Indeed
grammatologyseemsto brush aside the drive 'residues'that are not included in the
differance toward the sign, and which return, heterogeneous,to interrupt its
contemplativeretention and make languagea practiceof the subject in process/on
trial. This instinctual heterogeneity - neither deferred nor delayed, not yet
understoodas a becoming-sign- is precisely that which enters into contradiction
with differance and brings about leaps, intervals, abrupt changes,and breaksin its
spacing [espacement].Contradictioncan only be the irruption of the heterogeneous
which cuts short any di/jerance. Indeed, without this heterogeneouselement,
ideationalHegeliancontradiction,which is aimed toward the presenceof Being and
the subject, dissolvesinto differences.
But materialism and Freudian practice - to the extent that the latter is a
materialist practice - show that it is impossible to gather up the heterogeneous
elementinto differance without leaving any remainders.The return of the hetero-
geneous element in the movement of differance (symbolic retention, delayed
becoming-sign-subject-Being),through perception and the unconscious (to use
Freudian categories), brings about the revolution of differance: expenditure,
semantico-syntacticanomaly, erotic excess, social protest, jouissance. This
heterogeneitybreaksthrough the barrier of repressionand censorshipthat writing
entails since, as the trace and its effacement,it is 'the original synthesisof primal
repression and secondary repression, repression "itself". 31 The heterogeneous
elementis a threat to repressionand tossesit aside. Does this mean that it breaks
through 'primal' repressionor repression'itself? Or does it meanthat differance is
instituted only out of the repressionwhich the heterogeneouselement,precisely,
may pass through in the form of the 'residues of primary perceptions'or the
'exceptions'of nondeferredenergy chargesthat can no longer be held in abeyance
and are expended?32
The disturbanceof differance calls into question the distinction between the
'pleasureprinciple' and the 'reality principle' and, with them, the very economyby
which the symbolicis established.If this distinction is 'the original possibility, within
life, of the detour, of deferral(Au/schuh)and the originalpossibility of the economy
of death',33 then what thwarts it, and what takes the exact opposite course, far
from setting up an economyof death, abruptly introducesdeath: this is none other
than the 'principle' of jouissanceas destruction,self-destruction,the return from
'reality' (always symbolico-Iogocentric)to 'matter'. Through the irruption of the
nondeferredand impatient drive charge in differance, all the 'natural', 'cultural',
'physical', 'chemical', 'biological', and 'spiritual' heterogeneitiesare introduced in
logic - heterogeneitiesthat differance effaces but that Derrida recognizes as
60 Julia Kristeva
'absolutelydecisive',markedoff by phenomenologicalreduction,and 'indispensable

to all analyses of being-heard'.34 Yet rejection no longer introduces them as
phenomenologicalbut instead as economic: as nonsymbolized material inside-
outside, as mortal jouissancerenewing the real, shutting down reality itself before
including it in a new becomingof differance.
In this way sustainedenergeticforce, substances,the world, and history, which
the storing up of the negative in a deferred consumption had held back, are
introduced into the semiotic device in the guise of phenomenal stases. This
unleashingof the heterogeneouselement as nonsymbolizedand nonsymbolizable
operatesneitheron the path of becoming-sign-subject-beings, nor in their neutraliz-
ation, but in precipitating- as in a chemicalreaction- the deferringstage [fa scene
differantel in the expenditure of the process of the subject and signifiance. A
heterogeneousenergy discharge, whose very principle is that of scission and
division, entersinto contradictionwith what hasbeentraced [Ie trace], but produces
only flashes,ruptures,and suddendisplacements,which constitutepreconditionsfor
new symbolic productionsin which the economyof differance will be able to fmd
its place as well. But there is no guaranteethat rejection will be able to maintain
the sceneof differance. Its expenditurecould pierce and abolish it, and then all
symbolic becoming would cease,thus opening the way to 'madness'.Similarly,
without rejection, differance would be confined within a nonrenewable,non-
productive redundancy,a mere precious variant within the symbolic enclosure:
contemplationadrift.
Both as a result of investigationssuch as these,and in rereadingthe theory of drives,

one begins to suspect- even in psychoanalysis,where the notion has becomeso
central that it seemsincontrovertiblesince it revolves aroundthe social, Stoic, and
Cartesiansubject- that desirecannotcompletelyaccountfor the mechanismsof the
signifying process.35 In technology and politics but also in art, areas have been
found in which desire is exceededby a 'movement' that surpassesthe stasesof
desiring structurationand displacesthe frameworksof intersubjectivedeviceswhere
phantasmaticidentificationscongeal. Thesediscoveriesmove us closer to a notion
that will prove to be essentialin borderlinefunctionings,which producesocial and
cultural innovations, but more importantly, this notion appears at the very
foundation of the functioning of signifIance. To understandit, we must designate
an eventthat occursbeforeand within the trajectoryof Hegeliannegativity, an event
that lies betweenand beneaththe psychoanalyticdistinction between'desire' and
'need', one that moves through and is inherent in biological and signifying
developmentbut links them together. We could call it scission, separation, or
rejection: 'I am not dead, but I am separated.'36
Notes
1. See Zellig Harris, Mathematical Structures of Language (New York: Interscience

Publishers,1968). See also Maurice Gross and Andre Lentin, Introduction to Formal
Grammars,trans. M. Salkoff (Berlin: Springer-Verlag,1970); M.-C. Barbault and J.-P.

Descles,Transformationsformelles et theories linguistiques,Documentsde linguistique
quantitative, no. 11 (Paris: Dunod, 1972).
2. On this 'object' see Langages(December1971), vol. 24, and, for a didactic, popularized
account, seeJulia Kristeva, Le Langagecet inconnu (Paris: Seuil, 1981).
3. EdmundHusserl, in Ideas: Generalintroduction to pure phenomenology,trans. W. R.
Boyce Gibson (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969), posits this subject as a subject of
intuition, sure of this universally valid unity [of consciousness],a unity that is provided
in categoriesitself, since transcendenceis precisely the immanenceof this 'Ego', which
is an expansion of the Cartesian cogito. 'We shall consider conscious experiences',
Husserl writes, 'in the concretefullness and entirety with which they frgure in their
concretecontext - the stream of experience- and to which they are closely attached
through their own proper essence.It then becomesevident that every experiencein the
stream which our reflexion can lay hold on has its own essenceopen to intuition, a
"content" which can be consideredin its singularity in and for itself. We shall be
concernedto grasp this individual contentof the cogitatio in its pure singularity, and to
describeit in its generalfeatures,excluding everything which is not to be found in the
cogitatio as it is in itself. We must likewise describethe unity of consciousness which is
demandedby the intrinsic nature of the cogitationes,and so necessarilydemandedthat
they could not be without this unity' (p. 116). From a similar perspective,Benveniste
emphasizeslanguage'sdialogical character, as well as its role in Freud's discovery.
Discussingthe I!you polarity, he writes: This polarity does not mean either equality or
symmetry: "ego" always has a position of transcendencewith regard to you'. In
Benveniste, 'Subjectivity in language', Problems in General Linguistics, Miami
Linguistics Series,no. 8, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables, FL: University of
Miami Press, 1971), p. 225. In Chomsky, the subject-bearerof syntactic synthesisis
clearly shown to stemfrom the Cartesiancogito. Seehis CartesianLinguistics: A chapter
in the history of rationalist thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). Despite the
difference between this Cartesian-Chomskyansubject and the transcendentalego
outlined by Benvenisteand othersin a more clearly phenomenologicalsense,both these
notions of the act of understanding(or the linguistic act) rest on a commonmetaphysical
foundation: consciousnessas a synthesizing unity and the sole guaranteeof Being.
Moreover, severalscholars- without renour.cingthe Cartesianprinciples that governed
the frrst syntactic descriptions - have recently pointed out that Husserlian
phenomenologyis a more explicit and more rigorously detailedbasisfor suchdescription
than the Cartesian method. See Roman Jakobson,who recalls Husserl's role in the
establishmentof modernlinguistics, 'Linguistics in relation to other sciences',in Selected
Writings, 2 vols (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 2:655-96; and S.-Y. Kuroda, 'The
categorical and the thetic judgment: evidencefrom Japanesesyntax', Foundations of
Language(November1972), 9(2):153-85.
4. See the work of Ivan F6nagy, particularly 'Basespulsionnellesde la phonation', Revue
Fram;aisede Psychanalyse(January1970), 34(1):101-36,and (July 1971), 35(4):543-91.
5. On the 'subject of enunciation', see Tzvetan Todorov, spec. ed., Langages (March
1970), vol. 17. Formulatedin linguistics by Benveniste(The correlationsof tensein the
Frenchverb' and 'Subjectivity in language',in Problems,pp. 205-16 and 223-30), the
notion is used by many linguists, notably Antoine Culioli, 'A propos d'operations
intervenantdansIe traitementformel des languesnaturelles',Mathematiqueset Sciences
Humaines (Summer 1971), 9(34):7-15; and Oswald Ducrot, 'Les Indefrnis et
I'enonciation', Langages(March 1970), 5( 17):91-111. Chomsky's'extendedstandard
theory' makesuse of categorialintuition but doesnot refer to the subjectof enunciation,
even though the latter has been implicit in his theory ever since Cartesian Linguistics
(1966); see his Studieson Semanticsin GenerativeGrammar, JanuaLinguarum, series
minor, no. 107 (The Hague: Mouton, 1972).
62 Julia Kristeva
6. The term 'chora' has recently been criticized for its ontological essenceby Jacques
Derrida, Positions, annotator and trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press,1981), pp. 75 and 106, n. 39.
7. Plato emphasizesthat the receptacle[inroooXEiov] , which is also called space[xwpa] vis-
a-vis reason,is necessary- but not divine since it is unstable,uncertain,ever changing
and becoming;it is even unnameable,improbable,bastard:'Space,which is everlasting,
not admitting destruction;providing a situation for all things that come into being, but
itself apprehended without the sensesby a sort of bastardreasoning,and hardly an object
of belief. This, indeed,is that which we look upon as in a dream and say that anything
that is must needsbe in someplace and occupy someroom .. .' (Timaeus,trans. Francis
M. Cornford, S2a-b).Is the receptaclea 'thing' or a modeof language?Plato'shesitation
between the two gives the receptaclean even more uncertain status. It is one of the
elementsthat antedatenot only the universe but also names and even syllables: 'We
speak... positing them as original principles,elements(as it were, letters)of the universe;
whereasone who has ever so little intelligenceshould not rank them in this analogyeven
so low as syllables',(ibid., 48b). 'It is hard to say, with respectto anyoneof these,which
we ought to call really water rather than fire, or indeedwhich we shall call by any given
name rather than by all the namestogetheror by each severally, so as to use language
in a sound and trustworthy way.... Since, then, in this way no one of thesethings ever
makesits appearanceas the samething, which of them can we steadfastlyaffirm to be
this - whateverit may be - and not somethingelse, without blushing for ourselves?It
cannot be done' (ibid., 49b-d).
8. There is a fundamentalambiguity: on the one hand, the receptacleis mobile and even
contradictory,without unity, separableand divisible: pre-syllable,pre-word. Yet, on the
other hand, becausethis separabilityand divisibility antecedenumbersand forms, the
spaceor receptacleis called amorphous;thus its suggestedrhythmicity will in a certain
sensebe erased,for how can one think an articulation of what is not yet singular but
is neverthelessnecessary?All we may say of it, then, to make it intelligible, is that it is
amorphousbut that it 'is of such and such a quality', not even an index or something
in particular('this' or 'that'). Oncenamed,it immediatelybecomesa containerthat takes
the place of infinitely repeatableseparability.This amountsto saying that this repeated
separability is 'ontologized' the moment a name or a word replaces it, making it
intelligible: 'Are we talking idly whenever we say that there is such a thing as an
intelligible Form of anything? Is this nothing more than a word?' (ibid., SIc). Is the
Platonic chora the 'nominability' of rhythm (of repeatedseparation)?
Why then borrow an ontologized term in order to designatean articulation that
antecedespositing? First, the Platonic term makesexplicit an insurmountableproblem
for discourse: once it has been named, that functioning, even if it is pre-symbolic, is
brought back into a symbolic position. All discoursecan do is differentiate, by means
of a 'bastard reasoning',the receptaclefrom the motility, which, by contrast, is not
posited as being 'a certain something' ['une tel/e']. Second, this motility is the
precondition for symbolicity, heterogeneousto it, yet indispensable.Therefore what
needsto be done is to try and differentiate, always through a 'bastardreasoning',the
specific arrangementsof this motility, without seeingthem as recipients of accidental
singularities,or a Being always posited in itself, or a projection of the One. Moreover,
Plato invites us to differentiate in this fashion when he describesthis motility, while
gatheringit into the receivingmembrane:'But becauseit was &lled with powersthat were
neither alike nor evenly balanced,there was no equipoisein any region of it; but it was
everywhereswayedunevenly and shakenby thesethings, and by its motion shook them
in turn. And they, being thus moved, were perpetuallybeing separatedand carried in
different directions; just as when things are shaken and winnowed by means of
winnowing basketsand other instrumentsfor cleaning corn ... it separatedthe most

unlike kinds farthest apart from one another,and thrust the most alike closesttogether;
wherebythe different kinds cameto havedifferent regions,even beforethe orderedwhole
consistingof them cameto be ... but were altogetherin such a condition as we should
expect for anything when deity is absent from it' (ibid., 52d-53b). Indefinite
'conjunctions'and 'disjunctions'(functioning, devoid of Meaning), the chora is governed
by a necessitythat is not God's law.
9. The Platonic spaceor receptacleis a mother and wet nurse: 'Indeed we may fittingly
comparethe Recipient to a mother, the model to a father, and the nature that arises
betweenthem to their offspring' (ibid, SOd); 'Now the wet nurseof Becomingwas made
watery and fiery, received the charactersof earth and air, and was qualified by all the
other affections that go with these .. .' (ibid., 52d; translation modified).
10. 'Law', which derives etymologically from lex, necessarilyimplies the act of judgment
whose role in safeguardingsociety was first developed by the Roman law courts.
'Ordering', on the other hand, is closer to the series 'rule', 'norm' (from the Greek
,/,vwp.wv,meaning'discerning' [adj.], 'carpenter'ssquare' [noun]), etc., which implies a
numericalor geometricalnecessity.On normativity in linguistics, seeAlain Rey, 'Usages,
jugementset prescriptionslinquistiques', LangueFranfaise (December1972), 16:5. But
the temporary ordering of the chora is not yet even a rule: the arsenalof geometry is
posterior to the chora's motility; it fixes the chora in place and reducesit.
11. Operationsare, rather, an act ofthe subjectof understanding.[Hans G. Furth, in Piaget
and Knowledge: Theoreticalfoundations(EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1969),
offers the following definition of 'concreteoperations':'Characteristicof the first stage
of operationalintelligence. A concreteoperationimplies underlying generalsystemsor
"groupings"such as classification,seriation,number.Its applicability is limited to objects
consideredas real (concrete)'(p. 260). - Trans.]
12. Piaget stressesthat the roots of sensorimotoroperationsprecedelanguageand that the
acquisition of thought is due to the symbolic function, which, for him, is a notion
separate from that of language per se. See Jean Piaget, 'Language and symbolic
operations',in Piaget and Knowledge,pp. 121-30.
13. By 'function' we mean a dependentvariable determined each time the independent
variableswith which it is associatedare determined.For our purposes,a function is what
links staseswithin the processof semiotic facilitation.
14. Such a position has been formulated by Lipot Szondi, Experimental Diagnostic of
Drives, trans. GertrudeAull (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1952).
15. SeeJamesD. Watson, The Double Helix: A personal account of the discovery of the
structure of DNA (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968).
16. Throughouther writings, MelanieKlein emphasizesthe 'pre-Oedipal'phase,i.e. a period
of the subject'sdevelopmentthat precedesthe 'discovery'of castrationand the positing
of the superego,which itself is subjectto (paternal)Law. The processesshedescribesfor
this phasecorrespond,but on a genetic level, to what we call the semiotic, as opposed
to the symbolic, which underlies and conditions the semiotic. Significantly, these pre-
Oedipal processesare organizedthrough projection onto the mother'sbody, for girls as
well as for boys: 'at this stageof developmentchildren of both sexesbelievethat it is the
body of their mother which containsall that is desirable,especiallytheir father's penis'.
The Psycho-analysisof Children, trans. Alix Strachey(London: Hogarth Press,1932),
p. 269. Our own view of this stageis as follows: Without 'believing' or 'desiring' any
'object' whatsoever,the subject is in the processof constitutinghimself vis-a-vis a non-
object. He is in the processof separatingfrom this non-objectso as to make that non-
object 'one' and posit himself as 'other': the mother'sbody is the not-yet-onethat the
believing and desiring subject will imagine as a 'receptacle'.
64 Julia Kristeva
17. As for what situatesthe mother in symbolic space,we fmd the phallus again (seeJacques
Lacan, 'La Relation d'objet et les structuresfreudiennes',Bulletin de Psychologie,April
1957, pp.426-30), representedby the mother's father, i.e. the subject's maternal
grandfather(see Marie-Claire Boons, 'Le Meurtre du Pere chez Freud', L'Inconscient,
January-March1968, 5:101-29).
18. Though disputed and inconsistent,the Freudian theory of drives is of interest here
becauseof the predominanceFreud gives to the death drive in both 'living matter' and
the 'human being'. The death drive is transversal to identity and tends to disperse
'narcissisms'whose constitution ensuresthe link betweenstructuresand, by extension,
life. But at the same time and conversely,narcissismand pleasureare only temporary
positionsfrom which the death drive blazesnew paths [se fraye de nouveauxpassages].
Narcissismand pleasureare thereforeinveiglings and realizationsof the deathdrive. The
semiotic chora, converting drive dischargesinto stases,can be thought of both as a
delaying of the death drive and as a possible realization of this drive, which tends to
return to a homeostaticstate. This hypothesisis consistentwith the following remark:
'at the beginning of mental life', writes Freud, 'the struggle for pleasurewas far more
intense than later but not so unrestricted:it had to submit to frequent interruptions'.
Beyondthe PleasurePrinciple, in The StandardEdition of the Works of SigmundFreud,
ed. JamesStrachey(London: Hogarth Pressand the Institute of Psychoanalysis,1953),
18:63.
19. Derrida, Writing and Difference,trans. Alan Bass(Chicago: University of ChicagoPress,
1978), p. 248.
20. Derrida, Of Grammatology,trans. Gayatri ChakravortySpivak (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press,1976), p. 60.
21. Ibid., pp. 47, translationmodified, and 63. [For an explanationof the term'differance',
see below, n. 25 - Trans.]
22. Writing and Difference, p. 153; translation modified.
23. Of Grammatology,pp. 46-7 and 62.
24. See 'Freud and the sceneof writing', in Writing and Difference, pp. 196-231.
25. In his introduction to Writing and Difference, Alan Bass explains that Derrida's term,
differance, 'combines in neither the active nor the passive voice the coincidence of
meaningsin the verb differer: to differ (in space)and to defer (to put off in time, to
postponepresence).Thus, it doesnot function simply either as difference(difference)or
as differance in the usual sense(deferral), and plays on both meaningsat once', p. xvi
- Trans.
26. Writing and Difference, pp. 203, 198 and 203; emphasisadded.
27. Of Grammatology,pp. 47 and 48.
28. In their translation of Heidegger'sBeing and Time, Macquarrie and Robinson render
Sein as 'Being' and Seiendesas 'entity' or 'entities'. In keeping with the standardFrench
translationsof the terms ('erre' and 'hant') and the practice of more recent translators,
I have kept 'Being' but use 'beings'(lower case,plural) for the French hant (Seiendes).
- Trans.
29. Of Grammatology,p. 47; emphasisadded.
30. Derrida, Edmund Husserl's 'Origin of Geometry': An introduction, trans. John P.
Leavey, Jr (Stony Brook, NY: Nicolas Hays, 1978), p. 153; translation modified.
31. Writing and Difference, p. 230; emphasisadded; translationmodified.
32. On the notion of expenditure,seeGeorgesBataille, Oeuvrescompletes(Paris: Gallimard,
1970), 1:302-20: 2:147-58.
33. Writing and Difference, p. 198.
34. Of Grammatology,p. 63.
35. 'But culture is yet something else again: it implies a technological and political
developmentwhich partly eludes desire', writes Andre Green, in 'La Projection: De
Lyotard's
I'identification projective au projet', Revue Fran~aise de Psychanalyse(September-
December1971), 35(5-6):958.
36. Artaud, 'The new revelationsof being', in SelectedWritings, trans. Helen Weaver(New
York: Farrar, Strausand Giroux, 1976), p. 414.
1.4 D Truth and Power
Michel Foucault
Interviewers: AlessandroFontana,PasqualePasquino
[ ...J
Q: [WJhat do you think today about this conceptof discontinuity, on the basis
of which you have been all too rapidly and readily labelled as a 'structuralist'
historian?
A: This businessabout discontinuity has always rather bewildered me. In the
new edition of the Petit Larousseit says: 'Foucault: a philosopherwho founds his
theory of history on discontinuity'. That leavesme flabbergasted.No doubt I didn't
make myself sufficiently clear in The Order of Things, though I said a good deal
there about this question. It seemed to me that in certain empirical forms of
knowledgelike biology, political economy,psychiatry, medicine, etc., the rhythm
of transformationdoesn't follow the smooth, continuist schemasof development
which are normally accepted. The great biological image of a progressive
maturation of sciencestill underpinsa good many historical analyses;it does not
seemto me to be pertinent to history. In a sciencelike medicine, for example, up
to the end of the eighteenthcentury one has a certain type of discoursewhose
gradual transformation,within a period of twenty-fIve or thirty years, broke not
only with the 'true' propositionswhich it had hitherto been possible to formulate
but also, more profoundly, with the ways of speaking and seeing, the whole
ensembleof practiceswhich servedas supportsfor medical knowledge. Theseare
not simply new discoveries,there is a whole new 'regime' in discourseand forms of
knowledge.And all this happensin the spaceof a few years.This is somethingwhich
is undeniable,onceone haslooked at the texts with sufficient attention.My problem
was not at all to say, 'Voila, long live discontinuity, we are in the discontinuousand
a good thing too', but to posethe question,'How is it that at certain momentsand
in certain ordersof knowledge,there are thesesuddentake-offs, thesehasteningsof
From Foucault, M., Power/Knowledge:Selectedinterviews and other writings, 1972-1977,trans. C.

Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham and K. Soper, ed. C. Gordon, PantheonBooks, New York, 1980,
pp. 111-28,130-33.
66
Truth and Power 67
evolution, these transformationswhich fail to correspondto the calm, continuist

image that is normally accredited?'But the important thing here is not that such
changescan be rapid and extensive,or rather it is that this extent and rapidity are
only the sign of something else: a modification in the rules of formation of
statementswhich are acceptedas scientifically true. Thus it is not a changeof content
(refutation of old errors, recovery of old truths), nor is it a changeof theoretical
form (renewalof a paradigm,modification of systematicensembles).It is a question
of what governsstatements,and the way in which they govern each other so as to
constitutea set of propositionswhich are scientifically acceptable,and hencecapable
of being verifted or falsified by scientific procedures.In short, there is a problem of
the regime, the politics of the scientiftc statement.At this level it's not so much a
matter of knowing what externalpower imposesitself on science,as of what effects
of power circulate among scientific statements,what constitutes,as it were, their
internal regime of power, and how and why at certain moments that regime
undergoesa global modification.
It was thesedifferent regimes that I tried to identify and describein The Order
of Things, all the while making it clear that I wasn'ttrying for the momentto explain
them, and that it would be necessaryto try and do this in a subsequentwork. But
what was lacking here was this problem of the 'discursiveregime', of the effects of
power peculiarto the play of statements.I confusedthis too much with systematicity,
theoretical form, or something like a paradigm. This same central problem of
power, which at that time I had not yet properly isolated, emergesin two very
different aspectsat the point of junction of Madnessand Civilisation and The Order
of Things.
Q: We need,then, to locatethe notion of discontinuityin its propercontext. And
perhapsthere is anotherconceptwhich is both more difficult and more central to
your thought, the concept of an event. For in relation to the event a whole
generation was long trapped in an impasse, in that following the works of
ethnologists,someof them greatethnologists,a dichotomy was establishedbetween
structures(the thinkable) and the event consideredas the site of the irrational, the
unthinkable,that which doesn'tand cannot enter into the mechanismand play of
analysis, at least in the form which this took in structuralism.
[ ... J
Could you elaboratefrom our presentstandpointon this renewaland reformulation
of the conceptof event?
A: One can agree that structuralism formed the most systematic effort to
evacuatethe conceptof the event, not only from ethnologybut from a whole series
of other sciencesand in the extremecasefrom history. In that sense,I don't seewho
could be more of an anti-structuralistthan myself. But the important thing is to
avoid trying to do for the event what was previously done with the concept of
structure.It's not a matterof locating everythingon one level, that of the event, but
of realising that there are actually a whole order of levels of different types of events
differing in amplitude, chronological breadth, and capacity to produceeffects.
68 Michel Foucault
The problemis at once to distinguishamongevents,to differentiatethe networks

and levels to which they belong, and to reconstitutethe lines along which they are
connected and engender one another. From this follows a refusal of analyses
couchedin terms of the symbolic field or the domain of signifying structures,and
a recourse to analysesin terms of the genealogy of relations of force, strategic
developments,and tactics. Here I believe one's point of referenceshould not be to
the great model of language [langue) and signs, but to that of war and battle. The
history which bearsand determinesus has the form of a war rather than that of a
language:relations of power, not relations of meaning. History has no 'meaning',
though this is not to say that it is absurd or incoherent. On the contrary, it is
intelligible and should be susceptibleof analysis down to the smallestdetail - but
this in accordancewith the intelligibility of struggles, of strategiesand tactics.
Neither the dialectic, as logic of contradictions,nor semiotics, as the structure of
communication,can accountfor the intrinsic intelligibility of conflicts. 'Dialectic' is
a way of evading the always open and hazardousreality of conflict by reducing it
to a Hegelian skeleton,and 'semiology'is a way of avoiding its violent, bloody and
lethal characterby reducingit to the calm Platonic form of languageand dialogue.
Q: In the context of this problem of discursivity, I think one can be confident in
saying that you were the first person to pose the question of power regarding
discourse,and that at a time when analysesin terms of the conceptor object of the
'text', along with the accompanyingmethodologyof semiology,structuralism,etc.,
were the prevailing fashion. Posing for discourse the question of power means
basically to ask whom does discourseserve?
[ ... )
A: I don't think I was the first to posethe question. On the contrary, I'm struck
by the difficulty I had in formulating it. When I think back now, I ask myself what
else it was that I was talking about, in Madnessand Civilisation or The Birth of the
Clinic, but power? Yet I'm perfectly aware that I scarcelyever used the word and
never had such a field of analysesat my disposal. I can say that this was an
incapacitylinked undoubtedlywith the political situation we found ourselvesin. It
is hard to see where, either on the Right or the Left, this problem of power could
then have been posed. On the Right, it was posed only in terms of constitution,
sovereignty,etc., that is, in juridical terms; on the Marxist side, it was posedonly
in terms of the State apparatus.The way power was exercised - concretelyand in
detail - with its specificity, its techniquesand tactics, was somethingthat no one
attemptedto ascertain;they contentedthemselveswith denouncingit in a polemical
and global fashion as it existed among the 'others', in the adversarycamp. Where
Soviet socialistpower was in question,its opponentscalled it totalitarianism;power
in Westerncapitalism was denouncedby the Marxists as class domination; but the
mechanicsof power in themselveswere never analysed.This task could only begin
after 1968, that is to say on the basis of daily strugglesat grass-rootslevel, among
those whose fight was located in the fine meshesof the web of power. This was
where the concretenature of power becamevisible, along with the prospectthat
Truth and Power 69
theseanalysesof power would prove fruitful in accountingfor all that had hitherto
remainedoutside the field of political analysis. To put it very simply, psychiatric
internment,the mental normalisationof individuals, and penal institutions have no
doubt a fairly limited importance if one is only looking for their economic
significance. On the other hand, they are undoubtedly essential to the general
functioning of the wheelsof power. So long as the posing of the questionof power
was kept subordinateto the economicinstanceand the systemof interestswhich this
served, there was a tendencyto regard theseproblems as of small importance.
Q: SO a certain kind of Marxism and a certain kind of phenomenology
constitutedan objective obstacleto the formulation of this problematic?
A: Yes, if you like, to the extent that it's true that, in our studentdays, people
of my generationwere brought up on thesetwo forms of analysis,one in terms of
the constituent subject, the other in terms of the economic in the last instance,
ideology and the play of superstructuresand infrastructures.
Q: Still within this methodological context, how would you situate the
genealogicalapproach?As a questioningof the conditionsof possibility, modalities
and constitutionof the 'objects'and domainsyou have successivelyanalysed,what
makes it necessary?
A: I wantedto see how theseproblemsof constitution could be resolvedwithin
a historical framework, instead of referring them back to a constituent object
(madness,criminality or whatever).But this historical contextualisationneededto
be somethingmore than the simple relativisationof the phenomenologicalsubject.
I don't believe the problem can be solved by historicising the subject as posited by
the phenomenologists,fabricating a subject that evolves through the course of
history. One has to dispensewith the constituentsubject, to get rid of the subject
itself, that's to say, to arrive at an analysiswhich can accountfor the constitution
of the subject within a historical framework. And this is what I would call
genealogy,that is, a form of history which can account for the constitution of
knowledges,discourses,domainsof objectsetc., without having to make reference
to a subject which is either transcendentalin relation to the field of eventsor runs
in its empty samenessthroughout the course of history.
Q: Marxist phenomenologyand a certain kind of Marxism have clearly actedas
a screenand an obstacle;there are two further conceptswhich continue today to
act as a screenand an obstacle,ideology on the one hand and repressionon the
other.
[...J
A: The notion of ideology appearsto me to be difficult to make use of, for three
reasons.The first is that, like it or not, it always standsin virtual opposition to
somethingelse which is supposedto count as truth. Now I believe that the problem
does not consist in drawing the line betweenthat in a discoursewhich falls under
the category of scientificity or truth, and that which comes under some other
category, but in seeing historically how effects of truth are produced within
discourseswhich in themselvesare neither true nor false. The seconddrawbackis
70 Michel Foucault
that the conceptof ideology refers, I think necessarily,to somethingof the order of
a subject. Thirdly, ideology standsin a secondaryposition relative to something
which functions as its infrastructure,as its material,economicdeterminant,etc. For
these three reasons, I think that this is a notion that cannot be used without
circumspection.
The notion of repressionis a more insidious one, or at all events I myself have
had much more trouble in freeing myself of it, in so far as it does indeed appearto
correspondso well with a whole range of phenomenawhich belong among the
effectsof power. When I wrote Madnessand Civilisation, I madeat least an implicit
use of this notion of repression.I think indeed that I was positing the existenceof
a sort of living, voluble and anxiousmadnesswhich the mechanismsof power and
psychiatrywere supposedto havecometo repressand reduceto silence.But it seems
to me now that the notion of repressionis quite inadequatefor capturing what is
precisely the productive aspect of power. In defining the effects of power as
repression,one adopts a purely juridical conceptionof such power, one identifies
power with a law which says no, power is taken above all as carrying the force of
a prohibition. Now I believe that this is a wholly negative, narrow, skeletal
conceptionof power, one which has beencuriously widespread.If power were never
anything but repressive,if it never did anything but to say no, do you really think
one would be brought to obey it? What makes power hold good, what makes it
accepted,is simply the fact that it doesn'tonly weigh on us as a force that saysno,
but that it traversesand producesthings, it induces pleasure,forms knowledge,
producesdiscourse.It needsto be consideredas a productive network which runs
through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose
function is repression.In Discipline and Punish what I wanted to show was how,
from the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries onwards, there was a veritable
technologicaltake-off in the productivity of power. Not only did the monarchiesof
the Classicalperiod develop great state apparatuses(the army, the police and fiscal
administration),but above all there was establishedat this period what one might
call a new 'economy'of power, that is to say, procedureswhich allowed the effects
of power to circulate in a mannerat once continuous,uninterrupted,adaptedand
'individualised' throughout the entire social body. These new techniquesare both
much more efficient and much less wasteful (less costly economically,less risky in
their results, less open to loopholesand resistances)than the techniquespreviously
employed which were basedon a mixture of more or less forced tolerances(from
recognisedprivilegesto endemiccriminality) and costly ostentation(spectacularand
discontinuousinterventions of power, the most violent form of which was the
'exemplary', becauseexceptional,punishment).
Q: Repressionis a conceptusedaboveall in relation to sexuality. It was held that
bourgeoissociety repressessexuality, stifles sexual desire, and so forth. And when
one considers,for example, the campaign launched against masturbationin the
eighteenthcentury, or the medical discourseon homosexualityin the secondhalf of
the nineteenthcentury, or discourseon sexuality in general, one does seem to be
faced with a discourseof repression.In reality, however, this discourseservesto
Truth and Power 71
make possiblea whole seriesof interventions,tactical and positive interventionsof

surveillance,circulation, control, and so forth, which seemto have beenintimately
linked with techniquesthat give the appearanceof repression,or are at least liable
to be interpreted as such. I believe the crusadeagainst masturbationis a typical
example of this.
A: Certainly. It is customaryto say that bourgeois society repressedinfantile
sexuality to the point where it refused even to speak of it or acknowledgeits
existence.It was necessaryto wait until Freud for the discovery at last to be made
that children have a sexuality. Now if you read all the books on pedagogyand child
medicine- all the manualsfor parentsthat were publishedin the eighteenthcentury
- you find that children'ssex is spokenof constantlyand in every possiblecontext.
One might argue that the purpose of these discourseswas precisely to prevent
children from having asexuality. But their effect was to din it into parents'heads
that their children'ssex constituteda fundamentalproblemin termsof their parental
educationalresponsibilities,and to din it into children'sheadsthat their relationship
with their own body and their own sex was to be a fundamentalproblem as far as
they were concerned;and this had the consequenceof sexually exciting the bodies
of children while at the sametime fixing the parentalgazeand vigilance on the peril
of infantile sexuality. The result was a sexualisingof the infantile body, a sexualising
of the bodily relationship betweenparent and child, a sexualisingof the familial
domain. 'Sexuality' is far more of a positive product of power than power was ever
repressionof sexuality. I believe that it is precisely thesepositive mechanismsthat
needto be investigated,and here one must free oneselfof the juridical schematism
of all previouscharacterisations of the natureof power. Hencea historical problem
arises,namely that of discoveringwhy the West has insisted for so long on seeing
the power it exercisesas juridical and negativeratherthan as technicaland positive.
[ ... ]
To pose the problem [of power] in terms of the State meansto continue posing
it in terms of sovereign and sovereignty, that is to say, in terms of law. If one
describesall thesephenomenaof power as dependenton the State apparatus,this
meansgraspingthem as essentiallyrepressive:the Army as a power of death,police
and justice as punitive instances, etc. I don't want to say that the State isn't
important; what I want to say is that relationsof power, and hencethe analysisthat
must be made of them, necessarilyextend beyond the limits of the State. In two
senses:first of all becausethe State, for all the omnipotenceof its apparatuses,is
far from being able to occupythe whole field of actual power relations,and further
becausethe State can only operateon the basis of other, already existing power
relations. The State is superstructuralin relation to a whole series of power
networks that invest the body, sexuality, the family, kinship, knowledge,
technology,and so forth. True, thesenetworksstandin a conditioning-conditioned
relationshipto a kind of 'meta-power'which is structuredessentiallyround a certain
numberof greatprohibition functions; but this meta-powerwith its prohibitionscan
only take hold and secureits footing where it is rooted in a whole seriesof multiple
72 Michel Foucault
and indefinite power relationsthat supply the necessarybasis for the great negative
forms of power. That is just what I was trying to make apparentin my book.
Q: Doesn't this open up the possibility of overcoming the dualism of political
strugglesthat eternally feed on the opposition betweenthe State on the one hand
and Revolution on the other? Doesn'tit indicate a wider field of conflicts than that
of those where the adversaryis the State?
A: I would say that the State consistsin the codification of a whole number of
power relations which render its functioning possible, and that Revolution is a
different type of codification of the samerelations. This implies that there are many
different kinds of revolution, roughly speakingas many kinds as there are possible
subversiverecodificationsof power relations,and further that one can perfectly well
conceiveof revolutionswhich leaveessentiallyuntouchedthe power relationswhich
form the basis for the functioning of the State.
Q: You have said about power as an object of researchthat one has to invert
Clausewitz'sformula so as to arrive at the idea that politics is the continuationof
war by other means.Doesthe military model seemto you, on the basisof your most
recent researches,to be the best one for describing power; is war here simply a
metaphoricalmodel, or is it the literal, regular, everyday mode of operation of
power?
A: This is the problem I now find myself confronting. As soon as one endeavours
to detach power with its techniquesand proceduresfrom the form of law within
which it has beentheoreticallyconfined up until now, one is driven to ask this basic
question:isn't power simply a form of warlike domination?Shouldn'tone therefore
conceiveall problemsof power in terms of relations of war? Isn't power a sort of
generalisedwar which assumesat particular momentsthe forms of peaceand the
State?Peacewould then be a form of war, and the State a meansof waging it.
A whole range of problems emerge here. Who wages war against whom? Is it
betweentwo classes,or more? Is it a war of all againstall? What is the role of the
army and military institutions in this civil society where permanentwar is waged?
What is the relevanceof conceptsof tactics and strategyfor analysingstructuresand
political processes?What is the essenceand mode of transformation of power
relations?All thesequestionsneedto be explored. In any caseit's astonishingto see
how easily and self-evidently people talk of warlike relations of power or of class
strugglewithout ever making it clear whethersomeform of war is meant,and if so
what form.
[ ... J
I believe one must keep in view the fact that along with all the fundamental
technical inventions and discoveriesof the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturies,a
new technology of the exerciseof power also emergedwhich was probably even
more important than the constitutional reforms and new forms of government
establishedat the end of the eighteenthcentury. In the camp of the Left, one often
hears people saying that power is that which abstracts,which negatesthe body,
represses,suppresses, and so forth. I would say insteadthat what I find most striking
Truth and Power 73
about these new technologies of power introduced since the seventeenthand

eighteenthcenturiesis their concreteand precisecharacter,their graspof a multiple
and differentiated reality. In feudal societiespower functioned essentiallythrough
signsand levies. Signsof loyalty to the feudal lords, rituals, ceremoniesand so forth,
and levies in the form of taxes, pillage, hunting, war, etc. In the seventeenthand
eighteenthcenturiesa form of power comesinto being that begins to exerciseitself
through social production and social service. It becomesa matter of obtaining
productive service from individuals in their concretelives. And in consequence,a
real and effective 'incorporation'of power was necessary,in the sensethat power
had to be able to gain accessto the bodiesof individuals, to their acts, attitudesand
modes of everyday behaviour. Hence the signifIcance of methods like school
discipline, which succeededin making children'sbodiesthe object of highly complex
systems of manipulation and conditioning. But at the same time, these new
techniquesof power neededto grapplewith the phenomenaof population,in short
to undertakethe administration,control and direction of the accumulationof men
(the economicsystemthat promotesthe accumulationof capital and the systemof
power that ordainsthe accumulationof men are, from the seventeenthcentury on,
correlated and inseparable phenomena): hence there arise the problems of
demography,public health, hygiene, housing conditions, longevity and fertility.
And I believe that the political signifIcanceof the problem of sex is due to the fact
that sex is located at the point of intersectionof the discipline of the body and the
control of the population.
Q: Finally, a question you have been asked before: the work you do, these
preoccupationsof yours, the results you arrive at, what use can one fInally make
of all this in everyday political struggles? You have spoken previously of local
strugglesas the specifIc site of confrontation with power, outside and beyond all
such global, generalinstancesas parties or classes.What doesthis imply about the
role of intellectuals?If one isn't an 'organic'intellectual acting as the spokesmanfor
a global organisation,if one doesn'tpurport to function as the bringer, the master
of truth, what position is the intellectual to assume?
A: For a long period, the 'left' intellectual spokeand was acknowledgedthe right
of speaking in the capacity of master of truth and justice.1 He was heard, or
purported to make himself heard, as the spokesmanof the universal. To be an
intellectual meant something like being the consciousness/conscience of us all. I
think we have here an idea transposedfrom Marxism, from a faded Marxism
indeed.Justas the proletariat,by the necessityof its historical situation,is the bearer
of the universal (but its immediate,unre£lectedbearer,barely consciousof itself as
such), so the intellectual,through his moral, theoreticaland political choice, aspires
to be the bearer of this universality in its conscious, elaborated form. The
intellectual is thus taken as the clear, individual &gure of a universality whose
obscure,collective form is embodiedin the proletariat.
Some years have now passedsince the intellectual was called upon to play this
role. A new mode of the 'connection between theory and practice' has been
established.Intellectuals have got used to working, not in the modality of the
74 Michel Foucault
'universal',the 'exemplary',the 'just-and-true-for-all',but within specific sectors,at

the precisepoints where their own conditionsof life or work situatethem (housing,
the hospital,the asylum,the laboratory,the university, family and sexualrelations).
This has undoubtedlygiven them a much more immediateand concreteawareness
of struggles. And they have met here with problems which are specific, 'non-
universal', and often different from those of the proletariat or the masses.And yet
I believe intellectuals have actually been drawn closer to the proletariat and the
masses,for two reasons.Firstly, becauseit has been a question of real, material,
everydaystruggles,and secondlybecausethey have often beenconfronted,albeit in
a different form, by the sameadversaryas the proletariat,namely the multinational
corporations,the judicial and police apparatuses, the propertyspeculators,etc. This
is what I would call the 'specific'intellectual as opposedto the 'universal'intellectual.
This new configuration has a further political significance. It makesit possible,
if not to integrate, at least to rearticulate categorieswhich were previously kept
separate. The intellectual par excellence used to be the writer: as a universal
consciousness, a free subject, he was counterposedto those intellectualswho were
merely competentinstances in the service of the State or Capital - technicians,
magistrates,teachers.Since the time when each individual's specific activity began
to serve as the basis for politicisation, the threshold of writing, as the sacralising
mark of the intellectual, has disappeared.And it has becomepossible to develop
lateral connectionsacross different forms of knowledge and from one focus of
politicisation to another.Magistratesand psychiatrists,doctorsand social workers,
laboratorytechniciansand sociologistshave becomeable to participate,both within
their own fields and through mutual exchangeand support, in a global processof
politicisation of intellectuals.This processexplainshow, even as the writer tendsto
disappearas a figurehead,the university and the academicemerge,if not as principal
elements,at least as 'exchangers',privileged points of intersection.If the universities
and education have become politically ultrasensitiveareas, this is no doubt the
reasonwhy. And what is called the crisis of the universitiesshouldnot be interpreted
as a loss of power, but on the contraryas a multiplication and reinforcementof their
power-effectsas centresin a polymorphousensembleof intellectualswho virtually
all passthrough and relate themselvesto the academicsystem.The whole relentless
theorisationof writing which we saw in the 1960swas doubtlessonly a swansong.
Throughit, the writer was fighting for the preservationof his political privilege; but
the fact that it was preciselya matterof theory, that he neededscientific credentials,
foundedin linguistics, semiology,psychoanalysis,that this theory took its references
from the direction of Saussure,or Chomsky, etc., and that it gave rise to such
mediocre literary products, all this proves that the activity of the writer was no
longer at the focus of things.
It seemsto me that this figure of the 'specific' intellectual has emergedsince the
SecondWorld War. Perhapsit was the atomic scientist(in a word, or rathera name:
Oppenheimer)who acted as the point of transition betweenthe universal and the
specific intellectual. It's becausehe had a direct and localised relation to scientific
knowledge and institutions that the atomic scientist could make his intervention;
Truth and Power 75
but, sincethe nuclearthreataffectedthe whole humanraceand the fate of the world,

his discoursecould at the same time be the discourseof the universal. Under the
rubric of this protest,which concernedthe entire world, the atomic expert brought
into play his specific position in the order of knowledge. And for the first time, I
think, the intellectual was houndedby political powers, no longer on accountof a
generaldiscoursewhich he conducted,but becauseof the knowledgeat his disposal:
it was at this level that he constituteda political threat. I am only speakinghere of
Westernintellectuals.What happenedin the Soviet Union is analogouswith this on
a numberof points, but different on many others. There is certainly a whole study
that needsto be madeof scientific dissidencein the West and the socialist countries
since 1945.
[ ... J
It seemsto me that we are now at a point where the function of the specific
intellectual needsto be reconsidered.Reconsideredbut not abandoned,despitethe
nostalgia of some for the great 'universal' intellectuals and the desire for a new
philosophy, a new world-view. Suffice it to consider the important results which
have been achieved in psychiatry: they prove that these local, specific struggles
haven't been a mistake and haven't led to a dead end. One may even say that the
role of the specific intellectualmust becomemore and more importantin proportion
to the political responsibilitieswhich he is obliged willy-nilly to accept,as a nuclear
scientist, computerexpert, pharmacologist,etc. It would be a dangerouserror to
discount him politically in his specific relation to a local form of power, either on
the groundsthat this is a specialistmatter which doesn'tconcernthe masses(which
is doubly wrong: they are already aware of it, and in any caseimplicated in it), or
that the specific intellectual servesthe interestsof Stateor Capital (which is true, but
at the sametime showsthe strategicposition he occupies),or, again,on the grounds
that he propagatesa scientific ideology (which isn't always true, and is anyway
certainly a secondarymatter compared with the fundamental point: the effects
proper to true discourses).
The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn't outside power, or lacking
in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further
study, truth isn't the reward of free spirits, the child of protractedsolitude, nor the
privilege of thosewho have succeededin liberating themselves.Truth is a thing of
this world: it is producedonly by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it
induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general
politics' of truth: that is, the types of discoursewhich it acceptsand makesfunction
as true; the mechanismsand instanceswhich enableone to distinguishtrue and false
statements,the meansby which each is sanctioned;the techniquesand procedures
accordedvalue in the acquisitionof truth; the statusof thosewho are chargedwith
saying what counts as true.
In societies like ours, the 'political economy' of truth is characterisedby five
important traits. 'Truth' is centred on the form of scientific discourse and the
institutions which produce it; it is subject to constant economic and political
76 Michel Foucault
incitement(the demandfor truth, as much for economicproduction as for political

power); it is the object, underdiverseforms, of immensediffusion and consumption
(circulating through apparatusesof education and information whose extent is
relatively broad in the social body, not withstandingcertain strict limitations); it is
produced and transmittedunder the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few
great political and economicapparatuses(university, army, writing, media); lastly,
it is the issue of a whole political debate and social confrontation ('ideological'
struggles).
It seemsto me that what must now be taken into accountin the intellectual is not
the 'bearerof universalvalues'. Rather, it's the personoccupyinga specific position
- but whose specificity is linked, in a society like ours, to the generalfunctioning
of an apparatusof truth. In other words, the intellectual has a threefold specificity:
that of his classposition (whether as petty-bourgeoisin the service of capitalismor
'organic' intellectual of the proletariat); that of his conditions of life and work,
linked to his condition as an intellectual (his field of research,his place in a
laboratory, the political and economic demandsto which he submits or against
which he rebels, in the university, the hospital, etc.); lastly, the specificity of the
politics of truth in our societies.And it's with this last factor that his position can
take on a generalsignificanceand that his local, specific strugglecan haveeffectsand
implications which are not simply professional or sectoral. The intellectual can
operateand struggleat the generallevel of that regime of truth which is so essential
to the structureand functioning of our society. There is a battle 'for truth', or at
least 'around truth' - it being understoodonce again that by truth I do not mean
'the ensembleof truths which are to be discoveredand accepted',but rather 'the
ensembleof rules accordingto which the true and the false are separatedand specific
effects of power attachedto the true', it being understoodalso that it's not a matter
of a battle 'on behalf' of the truth, but of a battle about the statusof truth and the
economicand political role it plays. It is necessaryto think of the political problems
of intellectualsnot in terms of 'science'and 'ideology', but in terms of 'truth' and
'power'. And thus the question of the professionalisationof intellectuals and the
division betweenintellectual and manual labour can be envisagedin a new way.
All this must seemvery confusedand uncertain.Uncertainindeed,and what I am
saying here is above all to be taken as a hypothesis.In order for it to be a little less
confused, however, I would like to put forward a few 'propositions' - not firm
assertions,but simply suggestionsto be further tested and evaluated.
'Truth' is to be understoodas a systemof orderedproceduresfor the production,
regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements.
'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systemsof power which produceand
sustainit, and to effects of power which it inducesand which extend it. A 'regime'
of truth.
This regime is not merely ideological or superstructural;it was a condition of the
formation and developmentof capitalism. And it's this sameregime which, subject
to certain modifications, operatesin the socialist countries (I leave open here the
question of China, about which I know little).
Truth and Power 77
The essentialpolitical problem for the intellectualis not to criticise the ideological
contentssupposedlylinked to science,or to ensurethat his own scientific practice
is accompaniedby a correct ideology, but that of ascertainingthe possibility of
constituting a new politics of truth. The problem is not changing people's
consciousnesses- or what's in their heads - but the political, economic,
institutional regime of the production of truth.
It's not a matter of emancipatingtruth from every systemof power (which would
be a chimera, for truth is alreadypower) but of detachingthe power of truth from
the forms of hegemony,social, economicand cultural, within which it operatesat
the presenttime.
The political question,to sum up, is not error, illusion, alienatedconsciousness
or ideology; it is truth itself. Hence the importanceof Nietzsche.
Note
1. Foucault'sresponseto this fmal question was given in writing.

1.5 D The Resistanceto
Theory
Paul de Man
[ ...J
[WJe know that there has been,over the last fifteen to twenty years,a stronginterest
in somethingcalled literary theory and that, in the United States,this interest has
at times coincided with the importation and reception of foreign, mostly but not
always continentalinfluences.We also know that this wave of interest now seems
to be receding as some satiation or disappointment sets in after the initial
enthusiasm.Such an ebb and flow is natural enough,but it remainsinteresting,in
this case,becauseit makesthe depth of the resistanceto literary theory so manifest.
It is a recurrent strategyof any anxiety to defusewhat it considersthreateningby
magnification or minimization, by attributing to it claims to power of which it is
bound to fall short.
[ ...J
What is it that is being threatenedby the approachesto literature that developed
during the sixties and that now, under a variety of designations,make up the ill-
defined and somewhatchaotic field of literary theory? Theseapproachescannotbe
simply equatedwith any particular method or country. Structuralismwas not the
only trend to dominatethe stage,not even in France,and structuralismas well as
semiologyare inseparablefrom prior tendenciesin the Slavic domain. In Germany,
the main impulses have come from other directions, from the Frankfurt School
and more orthodox Marxists, from post-Husserlianphenomenologyand post-
Heideggerianhermeneutics,with only minor inroads made by structural analysis.
All thesetrends have had their shareof influence in the United States,in more or
less productivecombinationswith nationally rooted concerns.Only a nationally or
personallycompetitiveview of history would wish to hierarchizesuch hard-to-Iabel
movements.The possibility of doing literary theory, which is by no means to be
From de Man, P., 'The resistanceto theory', Yale French Studies,63 (1982), pp. 5, 7-13,15,17-20.
78
The Resistanceto Theory 79
takenfor granted,hasitself becomea consciouslyreflected-uponquestion,and those

who have progressedfurthest in this questionare the most controversialbut also the
best sourcesof information. This certainly includes several of the names loosely
connectedwith structuralism,broadlyenoughdefinedto include Saussure,Jakobson
and Barthesas well as Greimasand Althusser, that is to say, so broadly defmed as
to be no longer of use as a meaningful historical term.
Literary theory can be said to comeinto being when the approachto literary texts
is no longer based on non-linguistic, that is to say historical and aesthetic,
considerationsor, to put it somewhatless crudely, when the object of discussionis
no longer the meaningor the value but the modalitiesof productionand of reception
of meaning and of value prior to their establishment- the implication being that
this establishmentis problematic enough to require an autonomousdiscipline of
critical investigationto considerits possibility and its status.Literary history, even
when considered at the furthest remove from the platitudes of positivistic
historicism, is still the history of an understandingof which the possibility is taken
for granted. The question of the relationship between aestheticsand meaning is
more complex, since aestheticsapparently has to do with the effect of meaning
rather than with its content per se. But aesthetics is in fact, ever since its
developmentjust before and with Kant, a phenomenalismof a processof meaning
and understanding,and it may be naive in that it postulates(as its name indicates)
a phenomenologyof art and of literature which may well be what is at issue.
Aestheticsis part of a universal systemof philosophy rather than a specific theory.
In the nineteenth-centuryphilosophical tradition, Nietzsche's challenge of the
system erected by Kant, Hegel and their successorsis a version of the general
question of philosophy. Nietzsche'scritique of metaphysicsincludes, or starts out
from, the aesthetic,and the samecould be argued for Heidegger.The invocation
of prestigious philosophical names does not intimate that the present-day
developmentof literary theory is a by-product of larger philosophicalspeculations.
In somerare cases,a direct link may exist betweenphilosophy and literary theory.
More frequently, however,contemporaryliterary theory is a relatively autonomous
version of questionsthat also surface,in a different context, in philosophy, though
not necessarilyin a clearerand more rigorous form. Philosophy,in Englandas well
as on the Continent,is less free from traditional patternsthan it sometimespretends
to believe and the prominent,though neverdominant,placeof aestheticsamongthe
main componentsof the systemis a constitutivepart of this system.It is therefore
not surprising that contemporaryliterary theory came into being from outside
philosophyand sometimesin consciousrebellion againstthe weight of its tradition.
Literary theory may now well have becomea legitimate concernof philosophybut
it cannot be assimilated to it, either factually or theoretically. It contains a
necessarilypragmaticmoment that certainly weakensit as theory but that adds a
subversiveelementof unpredictabilityand makesit somethingof a wild card in the
seriousgame of the theoretical disciplines.
The adventof theory, the breakthat is now so often being deploredand that sets
it asidefrom literary history and from literary criticism, occurswith the introduction
80 Paul de Man
of linguistic terminology in the metalanguageabout literature. By linguistic

terminologyis meanta terminologythat designatesreferenceprior to designatingthe
referent and takes into account, in the considerationof the world, the referential
function of languageor, to be somewhatmore specific, that considersreferenceas
a function of language and not necessarily as an intuition. Intuition implies
perception,consciousness, experience,and leadsat once into the world of logic and
of understandingwith all its correlatives, among which aesthetics occupies a
prominent place. The assumptionthat there can be a scienceof languagewhich is
not necessarilya logic leads to the developmentof a terminology which is not
necessarily aesthetic. Contemporaryliterary theory comes into its own in such
events as the application of Saussurianlinguistics to literary texts.
The affinity betweenstructural linguistics and literary texts is not as obvious as,
with the hindsight of history, it now may seem. Peirce, Saussure,Sapir and
Bloomfield were not originally concernedwith literature at all but with the scientific
foundationsof linguistics. But the interestof philologists such as RomanJakobson
or literary critics such as Roland Barthesin semiologyrevealsthe natural attraction
of literature to a theory of linguistic signs. By consideringlanguageas a systemof
signs and of signification rather than an establishedpattern of meanings, one
displacesor even suspendsthe traditional barriersbetweenliterary and presumably
non-literary uses of languageand liberates the corpus from the secular weight of
textual canonization.The resultsof the encounterbetweensemiologyand literature
went considerably further than those of many other theoretical models -
philological, psychological or classically epistemological - which writers on
literaturein questof suchmodelshad tried out before. The responsiveness of literary
texts to semiotic analysis is visible in that, whereasother approacheswere unable
to reach beyond observationsthat could be paraphrasedor translatedin terms of
common knowledge,these analysesrevealedpatternsthat could only be described
in terms of their own, specifically linguistic, aspects.The linguistics of semiology
and of literature apparently have something in common that only their shared
perspectivecan detectand that pertainsdistinctively to them. The definition of this
something,often referredto as literariness,has becomethe object of literary theory.
Literariness,however, is often misunderstoodin a way that has provoked much
of the confusion which dominatestoday's polemics. It is frequently assumed,for
instance, that literariness is another word for or another mode of, aesthetic
response.The use, in conjunction with literariness, of such terms as style and
stylistics, form or even 'poetry' (as in 'the poetry of grammar'),all of which carry
strong aestheticconnotations,helps to foster this confusion,even amongthosewho
first put the term in circulation. Roland Barthes,for example,in an essayproperly
and revealingly dedicatedto Roman Jakobson,speakseloquently of the writer's
questfor a perfectcoincidenceof the phonic propertiesof a word with its signifying
function:
We would also wish to insist on the Cratylism of the name (and of the sign) in Proust.
... Proust seesthe relationship betweensignifIer and signifIed as motivated, the one
copying the other and representingin its material form the signi&ed essenceof the thing
(and not the thing itself) .... This realism (in the scholasticsenseof the word), which
conceivesof namesas the 'copy' of the ideas, has taken, in Proust, a radical form. But
one may well ask whether it is not more or less consciouslypresentin all writing and
whether it is possible to be a writer without some sort of belief in the natural
relationship betweennamesand essences.The poetic function, in the widest senseof
the word, would thus be de&ned by a Cratylian awarenessof the sign, and the writer
would be the conveyorof this secularmyth which wants languageto imitate the idea
and which, contrary to the teachingsof linguistic science,thinks of signs as motivated
signs.1
To the extent that Cratylism assumesa convergenceof the phenomenalaspectsof

language,as sound, with its signifying function as referent, it is an aesthetically
oriented conception; one could, in fact, without distortion, consider aesthetic
theory, including its most systematic formulation in Hegel, as the complete
unfolding of the model of which the Cratylian conceptionof languageis a version.
Hegel's somewhat cryptic reference to Plato, in the Aesthetics, may well be
interpretedin this sense.BarthesandJakobsonoften seemto invite a purely aesthetic
reading,yet there is a part of their statementthat moves in the oppositedirection.
For the convergenceof sound and meaningcelebratedby Barthesin Proust and, as
Gerard Genette has decisively shown,2 later dismantled by Proust himself as a
seductivetemptationto mystified minds, is also consideredhere to be a mere effect
which language can perfectly well achieve, but which bears no substantial
relationship,by analogyor by ontologically groundedimitation, to anythingbeyond
that particulareffect. It is a rhetorical rather than an aestheticfunction of language,
an identifiable trope (paranomasis)that operateson the level of the signifier and
contains no responsiblepronouncementon the nature of the world - despite its
powerful potential to create the opposite illusion. The phenomenality of the
signifier, as sound, is unquestionablyinvolved in the correspondencebetweenthe
name and the thing named, but the link, the relationship betweenword and thing
is not phenomenalbut conventional.
This gives the languageconsiderablefreedom from referential restraint, but it
makesit epistemologicallyhighly suspectand volatile, since its use can no longer be
said to be determinedby considerationsof truth and falsehood, good and evil,
beautyand ugliness,or pleasureand pain. Wheneverthis autonomouspotential of
languagecan be revealedby analysis,we are dealing with literarinessand, in fact,
with literature as the place where this negative knowledge about the reliability of
linguistic utterance is made available. The ensuing foregrounding of material,
phenomenalaspectsof the signifier createsa strong illusion of aestheticseduction
at the very moment when the actual aestheticfunction has been, at the very least,
suspended. It is inevitable that semiology or similarly oriented methods be
consideredformalistic, in the senseof being aestheticallyrather than semantically
valorized, but the inevitability of such an interpretation does not make it less
aberrant.Literature involves the voiding, rather than the affirmation, of aesthetic
82 Paul de Man
categories.One of the consequences of this is that, whereaswe have traditionally

been accustomedto reading literature by analogy with the plastic arts and with
music, we now have to recognize the necessity of a non-perceptual,linguistic
momentin painting and in music, and learn to read picturesrather than to imagine
meamng.
If literarinessis not an aestheticquality, it is also not primarily mimetic. Mimesis
becomesone trope amongothers, languagechoosingto imitate a non-verbalentity
just as paranomasis'imitates' a sound without any claim to identity (or reflection
on difference) betweenthe verbal and non-verbal elements. The most misleading
representationof literariness,and also the most recurrentobjectionto contemporary
literary theory, considersit as pure verbalism, as a denial of the reality principle in
the name of absolute fictions, and for reasonsthat are said to be ethically and
politically shameful.The attackreflects the anxiety of the aggressorsratherthan the
guilt of the accused.By allowing for the necessityof a non-phenomenallinguistics,
one frees the discourseon literature from naive oppositions between fiction and
reality, which are themselvesan offspring of an uncritically mimetic conceptionof
art. In a genuinesemiology as well as in other linguistically oriented theories, the
referentialfunction of languageis not being denied- far from it; what is in question
is its authority as a model for natural or phenomenalcognition. Literature is fiction
not becauseit somehow refuses to acknowledge'reality', but becauseit is not
a priori certain that languagefunctions accordingto principles which are those, or
which are like those, of the phenomenalworld. It is therefore not a priori certain
that literature is a reliable source of information about anything but its own
language.
It would be unfortunate,for example,to confusethe materiality of the signifier
with the materiality of what it signifIes. This may seemobviousenoughon the level
of light and sound, but it is less so with regard to the more generalphenomenality
of space,time or especially of the self: no one in his right mind will try to grow
grapesby the luminosity of the word 'day', but it is very difficult not to conceivethe
patternof one'spastand future existenceas in accordancewith temporaland spatial
schemesthat belongto fictional narrativesand not to the world. This doesnot mean
that fictional narrativesare not part of the world and of reality; their impact upon
the world may well be all too strong for comfort. What we call ideology is precisely
the confusion of linguistic with natural reality, of referencewith phenomenalism.
It follows that, more than any other mode of inquiry, including economics,the
linguistics of literarinessis a powerful and indispensabletool in the unmaskingof
ideological aberrations,as well as a determining factor in accounting for their
occurrence.Those who reproach literary theory for being oblivious to social and
historical (that is to say, ideological) reality are merely stating their fear at having
their own ideological mystificationsexposedby the tool they are trying to discredit.
They are, in short, very poor readersof Marx's German Ideology.
In these all too summary evocationsof argumentsthat have been much more
extensively and convincingly made by others, we begin to perceive some of the
answersto the initial question:what is it about literary theory that is so threatening
that it provokessuch strong resistancesand attacks?It upsetsrooted ideologies by

revealingthe mechanicsof their workings; it goes againsta powerful philosophical
tradition of which aestheticsis a prominentpart; it upsetsthe establishedcanon of
literary works and blurs the borderlinesbetweenliterary and non-literarydiscourse.
By implication, it may also reveal the links betweenideologiesand philosophy. All
this is ample enough reason for suspicion, but not a satisfying answer to the
question. For it makes the tension betweencontemporaryliterary theory and the
tradition of literary studiesappearas a mere historical conflict betweentwo modes
of thought that happento hold the stageat the sametime. If the conflict is merely
historical, in the literal sense,it is of limited theoreticalinterest,a passingsquall in
the intellectual weatherof the world. As a matter of fact, the argumentsin favor
of the legitimacy of literary theory are so compellingthat it seemsuselessto concern
oneselfwith the conflict at all. Certainly, noneof the objectionsto theory, presented
again and again, always misinformedor basedon crude misunderstandings of such
termsas mimesis,fiction, reality, ideology, referenceand, for that matter,relevance,
can be said to be of genuine rhetorical interest.
It may well be, however, that the development of literary theory is itself
overdeterminedby complicationsinherent in its very project and unsettling with
regardto its statusas a scientific discipline. Resistancemay be a built-in constituent
of its discourse,in a mannerthat would be inconceivablein the natural sciencesand
unmentionablein the social sciences. It may well be, in other words, that the
polemical opposition,the systematicnon-understandingand misrepresentation,the
unsubstantialbut eternally recurrent objections, are the displacedsymptomsof a
resistanceinherent in the theoreticalenterpriseitself. To claim that this would be
a sufficient reason not to envisage doing literary theory would be like rejecting
anatomy becauseit has failed to cure mortality. The real debateof literary theory
is not with its polemical opponents but rather with its own methodological
assumptionsand possibilities.Ratherthan asking why literary theory is threatening,
we should perhapsask why it has such difficulty going about its businessand why
it lapsesso readily either into the languageof self-justification and self-defenseor
else into the overcompensationof a progammaticallyeuphoric utopianism. Such
insecurity about its own project calls for self-analysis,if one is to understandthe
frustrations that attend upon its practitioners, even when they seem to dwell in
serenemethodologicalself-assurance.And if thesedifficulties are indeed an integral
part of the problem, then they will have to be, to some extent, ahistorical in the
temporal senseof the term. The way in which they are encounteredon the present
local literary sceneas a resistanceto the introduction of linguistic terminology in
aestheticand historical discourseabout literature is only one particular version of
a question that cannot be reduced to a specific historical situation and called
modern, postmodern,post-classicalor romantic (not even in Hegel's senseof the
term), althoughits compulsiveway of forcing itself upon us in the guise of a system
of historical periodizationis certainly part of its problematicnature.Suchdifficulties
can be read in the text of literary theory at all times, at whateverhistorical moment
one wishesto select. One of the main achievementsof the presenttheoreticaltrends
84 Paul de Man
is to have restoredsomeawarenessof this fact. Classical,medieval and Renaissance

literary theory is now often being read in a way that knows enoughabout what it
is doing not to wish to call itself 'modern'.
We return, then, to the original questionin an attemptto broadenthe discussion
enough to inscribe the polemics inside the question rather than having them
determineit. The resistanceto theory is a resistanceto the use of languageabout
language. It is therefore a resistanceto languageitself or to the possibility that
languagecontainsfactors or functions that cannot be reducedto intuition. But we
seemto assumeall too readily that, when we refer to somethingcalled 'language',
we know what it is we are talking about, although there is probably no word to be
found in the language that IS as overdetermined,self-evasive, disfigured and
disfiguring as 'language'.
[ ..•J
The uncertain relationship between grammar and rhetoric (as opposedto that
between grammar and logic) is apparent, in the history of the trivium, in the
uncertain status of figures of speech or tropes, a component of language that
straddlesthe disputedborderlinesbetweenthe two areas.Tropesusedto be part of
the study of grammar but were also consideredto be the semanticagent of the
specific function (or effect) that rhetoric performsas persuasionas well as meaning.
Tropes,unlike grammar,pertainprimordially to language.They are text-producing
functions that are not necessarily patterned on a non-verbal entity, whereas
grammar is by definition capable of extra-linguistic generalization. The latent
tension betweenrhetoric and grammarprecipitatesout in the problem of reading,
the processthat necessarilypartakesof both. It turns out that the resistanceto
theory is in fact a resistanceto reading, a resistancethat is perhapsat its most
effective, in contemporarystudies,in the methodologiesthat call themselvestheories
of reading but neverthelessavoid the function they claim as their object.
What is meant when we assert that the study of literary texts is necessarily
dependent on an act of reading, or when we claim that this act is being
systematicallyavoided?Certainly more than the tautology that one hasto have read
at least someparts, however small, of a text (or read somepart, howeversmall, of
a text about this text) in order to be able to make a statementabout it. Common
as it may be, criticism by hearsayis only rarely held up as exemplary.To stressthe
by no meansself-evidentnecessityof readingimplies at leasttwo things. First of all,
it implies that literature is not a transparentmessagein which it can be taken for
grantedthat the distinction betweenthe messageand the mean:; of communication
is clearly established. Second, and more problematically, it implies that the
grammaticaldecodingof a text leavesa residueof indeterminationthat has to be,
but cannot be, resolved by grammaticalmeans,however extensivelyconceived.
[ ... J
This undoing of theory, this disturbanceof the stablecognitive field that extends
from grammarto logic to a generalscienceof man and of the phenomenalworld,
can in its turn be madeinto a theoreticalproject of rhetorical analysisthat will reveal

the inadequacyof grammatical models of non-reading. Rhetoric, by its actively
negative relationship to grammar and to logic, certainly undoesthe claims of the
trivium (and by extension,of language)to be an epistemologicallystableconstruct.
The resistanceto theory is a resistanceto the rhetorical or tropological dimension
of language,a dimension which is perhapsmore explicitly in the foreground in
literature (broadly conceived) than in other verbal manifestationsor - to be
somewhatless vague - which can be revealedin any verbal event when it is read
textually. Since grammar as well as figuration is an integral part of reading, it
follows that readingwill be a negativeprocessin which the grammaticalcognition
is undone, at all times, by its rhetorical displacement.The model of the trivium
containswithin itself the pseudo-dialecticof its own undoing and its history tells the
story of this dialectic.
This conclusion allows for a somewhat more systematic description of the
contemporarytheoreticalscene.This sceneis dominatedby an increasedstresson
reading as a theoreticalproblem or, as it is sometimeserroneouslyphrased,by an
increasedstresson the receptionrather than on the production of texts. It is in this
areathat the most fruitful exchangeshave come about betweenwriters and journals
of various countriesand that the most interestingdialogue has developedbetween
literary theory and other disciplines,in the arts as well as in linguistics, philosophy
and the social sciences.A straightforward report on the present state of literary
theory in the United Stateswould have to stressthe emphasison reading,a direction
which is alreadypresent,moreover,in the New Critical tradition of the forties and
the fifties. The methodsare now more technical, but the contemporaryinterest in
a poetics of literature is clearly linked, traditionally enough, to the problems of
reading. And since the models that are being used certainly are no longer simply
intentional and centered on an identifiable self, nor simply hermeneuticin the
postulationof a single originary, pre-figural and absolutetext, it would appearthat
this concentrationon reading would lead to the rediscovery of the theoretical
difficulties associatedwith rhetoric. This is indeedthe case,to someextent; but not
quite. Perhapsthe most instructive aspectof contemporarytheory is the refinement
of the techniquesby which the threatinherentin rhetorical analysisis being avoided
at the very momentwhen the efficacy of thesetechniqueshas progressedso far that
the rhetorical obstaclesto understandingcan no longer be mistranslatedin thematic
and phenomenalcommonplaces.The resistanceto theory which, as we saw, is a
resistanceto reading,appearsin its most rigorous and theoreticallyelaboratedform
among the theoreticiansof reading who dominate the contemporarytheoretical
scene.
It would be a relatively easy, though lengthy, processto show that this is so for
theoreticiansof readingwho, like Greimasor, on a more refined level, Riffaterre or,
in a very different mode,H. R. Jaussor Wolfgang Iser - all of whom havea definite,
though sometimes occult, influence on literary theory in this country - are
committedto the use of grammaticalmodelsor, in the caseof Rezeptionsaesthetik,
to traditional hermeneuticmodelsthat do not allow for the problematizationof the
86 Paul de Man
phenomenalismof reading and therefore remain uncritically confmed within a

theory of literature rooted in aesthetics.Such an argumentwould be easy to make
because,once a readerhas becomeaware of the rhetorical dimensionsof a text, he
will not be amiss in finding textual instancesthat are irreducible to grammaror to
historically determinedmeaning,provided only he is willing to acknowledgewhat
he is boundto notice. The problem quickly becomesthe more baffling one of having
to accountfor the sharedreluctanceto acknowledgethe obvious. But the argument
would be lengthy becauseit hasto involve a textual analysisthat cannotavoid being
somewhatelaborate;one can succinctly suggestthe grammaticalindeterminationof
a title such as The Fall of Hyperion, but to confront such an undecideableenigma
with the critical reception and reading of Keats's text requires some space.
The demonstrationis less easy (though perhapsless ponderous)in the case of
theoreticiansof readingwhose avoidanceof rhetoric takes another turn. We have
witnessed,in recent years, a strong interest in certain elementsin languagewhose
function is not only not dependenton any form of phenomenalismbut on any form
of cognition as well, and which thus excludes,or postpones,the considerationof
tropes, ideologies,etc., from a reading that would be primarily performative. In
somecases,a link is reintroducedbetweenperformance,grammar,logic, and stable
referential meaning,and the resulting theories(as in the caseof Ohman) are not in
essencedistinct from those of avowed grammariansor semioticians.But the most
astutepractitionersof a speechact theory of reading avoid this relapseand rightly
insist on the necessityto keep the actual performanceof speech acts, which is
conventionalratherthan cognitive, separatefrom its causesand effects - to keep,in
their terminology,the illocutionary force separatefrom its perlocutionaryfunction.
Rhetoric, understoodas persuasion,is forcefully banished(like Coriolanus) from
the performative moment and exiled in the affective area of perlocution. Stanley
Fish, in a masterful essay, convincingly makes this point.3 What awakensone's
suspicion about this conclusion is that it relegatespersuasion,which is indeed
inseparablefrom rhetoric, to a purely affective and intentional realm and makesno
allowancefor modesof persuasionwhich are no less rhetorical and no less at work
in literary texts, but which are of the order of persuasionby proof rather than
persuasionby seduction. Thus to empty rhetoric of its epistemologicalimpact is
possibleonly becauseits tropological, figural functions are being bypassed.It is as
if, to return for a moment to the model of the trivium, rhetoric could be isolated
from the generality that grammarand logic have in common and consideredas a
mere correlative of an illocutionary power. The equation of rhetoric with
psychologyrather than with epistemologyopensup dreary prospectsof pragmatic
banality, all the drearierif comparedto the brilliance of the performativeanalysis.
Speechact theories of reading in fact repeat, in a much more effective way, the
grammatizationof the trivium at the expenseof rhetoric. For the characterization
of the performativeas sheerconvention reducesit in effect to a grammaticalcode
among others. The relationship betweentrope and performanceis actually closer
but more disruptive than what is here being proposed. Nor is this relationship
properly capturedby referenceto a supposedly'creative'aspectof performance,a
notion with which Fish rightly takesissue. The performativepower of languagecan

be called positional, which differs considerablyfrom conventionalas well as from
'creatively'(or, in the technicalsense,intentionally) constitutive.Speechact oriented
theories of reading read only to the extent that they prepare the way for the
rhetorical reading they avoid.
But the sameis still true even if a 'truly' rhetorical reading that would stay clear
of any undue phenomenalizationor of any undue grammatical or performative
codifIcation of the text could be conceived - somethingwhich is not necessarily
impossibleand for which the aims and methodsof literary theory should certainly
strive. Such a reading would indeed appear as the methodical undoing of the
grammaticalconstructand, in its systematicdisarticulationof the trivium, will be
theoretically soundas well as effective. Technically correct rhetorical readingsmay
be boring, monotonous,predictableand unpleasant,but they are irrefutable. They
are also totalizing (and potentially totalitarian), for since the structures and
functions they exposedo not lead to the knowledgeof an entity (such as language)
but are an unreliable processof knowledge production that preventsall entities,
including linguistic entities, from coming into discourseas such, they are indeed
universals,consistentlydefective models of language'simpossibility to be a model
language.They are, always in theory, the most elastic theoretical and dialectical
model to end all models, and they can rightly claim to contain within their own
defective selves all the other defective models of reading-avoidance,referential,
semiological,grammatical,performative,logical, or whatever.They are theory and
not theory at the sametime, the universal theory of the impossibility of theory. To
the extent, however,that they are theory, that is to say teachable,generalizableand
highly responsiveto systematization,rhetorical readings,like the other kinds, still
avoid and resist the readingthey advocate.Nothing can overcomethe resistanceto
theory, since theory is itself this resistance.The loftier the aims and the better the
methodsof literary theory, the less possible it becomes.Yet literary theory is not
in dangerof going under; it cannothelp but flourish, and the more it is resisted,the
more it flourishes, since the languageit speaksis the languageof self-resistance.
What remainsimpossibleto decideis whetherthis flourishing is a triumph or a fall.
Notes
1. GerardGenette,'Proustet les noms', in To Honor RomanJakobson(The Hague,1967)

part I, pp. 157 £f.
2. 'Proust et Ie langageindirect', in Figures II (Paris, 1969).
3. StanleyFish, 'How to do things with Austin and Searle:SpeechAct Theory and Literary
Criticism', MLN 91 (1976), pp. 983-1025.See especiallyp. 1008.
Reading
1.6 0
Unreadability: de Man
J. Hillis Miller
Allegories are always ethical, the term ethical designatingthe

structural interferenceof two distinct value systems.In this
sense,ethics has nothing to do with the will (thwartedor free)
of a subject, nor a fortiori, with a relationship between
subjects. The ethical category is imperative (i.e. a category
rather than a value) to the extent that it is linguistic and not
subjective.Morality is a version of the samelanguageaporia
that gave rise to such conceptsas 'man' or 'love' or 'self', and
not the cause or the consequenceof such concepts. The
passage to an ethical tonality does not result from a
transcendentalimperative but is the referential (and therefore
unreliable) version of a linguistic confusion. Ethics (or, one
should say, ethicity) is a discursive mode among others.
(PAUL DE MAN)1
Every construction,every system - that is, every text - has

within itself the ignoranceof its own exterior as the rupture
of its coherencewhich it cannot accountfor.
(HANS-JOST FREy)2
This chapterattemptsto 'read' the passageI have cited from Allegories of Reading
(in defIanceof Paul de Man's assertionthat a critical text, as soon as it is taken as
a text, is as 'unreadable'as any other text). What de Man meansby 'unreadable',
something far different from widespread notions that it has to do with the
'indeterminacy'of the meaningof the text, will be one of my concerns.My choice
of the question of 'ethics' in de Man is meant to further my investigationof what
it might mean to speakof an 'ethics of reading'through the readingof an example
From Miller,]. H., The Ethics 0/ Reading: Kant, de Man, Eilot, Trollope, James,Benjamin,Columbia
University Press,New York, 1987, pp. 41-7, 49-54, 58-9,131-2.
88
Reading Unreadability: de Man 89
drawn from literary criticism or 'theory', after the example from philosophy and
beforethe properly 'literary' onesfrom Trollope, Eliot, and James.My choiceis also
intendedto confront frequentchargesthat de Man's work is 'nihilistic', undermines
the value of all humanisticstudy, reducesthe work of interpretationto the free play
of arbitrary imposition of meaning,nndsin eachtext only what it went thereto look
for, and so on. What de Man actually says is so far from all this that it is a kind
of puzzle to ngure out how such ideas about his work have got around and pass
current as valid intellectual coinage.Perhapssuch ideas are just that, cliches passed
from hand to hand by those who have never botheredto read de Man's work, no
easy task, as I began by admitting.
[ ••. J
By 'the ethics of reading' [ ...J I mean that aspectof the act of reading in which
there is a responseto the text that is both necessitated,in the sensethat it is a
response to an irresistible demand, and free, in the sense that I must take
responsibility for my response and for the further effects, 'interpersonal',
institutional, social, political, or historical, of my act of reading,for exampleas that
act takes the form of teachingor of publishedcommentaryon a given text. What
happenswhen I read musthappen,but I must acknowledgeit as my act of reading,
though just what the'!, is or becomesin this transactionis anotherquestion.To say
that thereis a properly ethical dimensionto the act of readingsoundsodd, as I have
said. It would seemthat the act of readingas such must have little to do with ethics,
eventhough the text read may makethematicstatementswhich haveethical import,
which is not at all the samething. Readingitself would seemto be epistemological,
cognitive, a matterof 'getting the text right', respectingit in that sense,not a matter
involving moral obligation.
Even less would Paul de Man's particular 'theory' of readingseemlikely to have
an ethical dimension.Epistemologicalcategories,categoriesof truth and falsehood,
enlightenmentand delusion, insight and blindness,seem to control the admirable
rigor of his essays.The categoryof ethics or, as he says, 'ethicity', does, however,
somewhatsurprisingly, appearat crucial momentsin de Man's essays,for example
in 'my' passage.The category of ethicity is one version of that insistenceon a
necessaryreferential,pragmaticfunction of languagewhich distinguishesde Man's
work from certain forms of structuralismor semiotics.It also gives the lie to those
who claim 'deconstruction'assertsthe 'free play' of languagein the void, abstracted
from all practical,social, or political effect. Of de Man one can say what he himself
says of Rousseau:'his radical critique of referential meaningnever implied that the
referentialfunction of languagecould in any way be avoided,bracketed,or reduced
to being just one contingentlinguistic property amongothers, as is postulated,for
example,in contemporarysemiologywhich, like all post-Kantianformalisms,could
not exist without this postulate'(AR, 207). Ethicity is for de Man associatedwith
the categoriesof politics and history, though these three modes of what he calls
'materiality' are not the same. My goal here is to account for the presenceof the
90 J. Hillis Miller
word 'ethics' in de Man's vocabulary, and to present thereby a salient example

within contemporaryliterary theory of an ethics of reading.
'Ethicity', like other forms of reference to the extra-linguistic by way of the
linguistic, occursfor de Man not at the beginning,as a basis for language,and not
at the end, as a final triumphant return to reality validating language,but in the
midst of an intricate sequence,the sequentialityof which is of courseonly a fiction,
a conveniencefor thinking as a narrative what in fact always occurs in the tangle
of an 'all at once' mixing tropological, allegorical, referential,ethical, political, and
historical dimensions.The passageI beganby citing and proposein this chapterto
try to 'read'follows in Allegories of Readingon the pageafter one of de Man's most
succinctformulationsof his paradigmaticmodel for the narrativepatterninto which
all texts fall:
The paradigm for all texts consists of a figure (or a system of figures) and its
deconstruction. But since this model cannot be closed off by a final reading, it
engenders,in its turn, a supplementaryfigural superposition which narrates the
unreadability of the prior narration. As distinguished from primary deconstructive
narrativescenteredon figures and ultimately always on metaphor, we can call such
narrativesto the second(or the third) degree allegories. (AR, 205)
This formulation is by no means immediately transparentin meaning. I have

elsewhereattemptedto read it in detail.3 What is most important here is the fact
that the ethical moment, for de Man, occurs toward the end of this intricate
sequence,as primary evidenceof a text's inability to read itself, to benefit from its
own wisdom. First comes the assertionof an unjustified and aberrantmetaphor,
then the 'deconstruction'of that metaphor,the revelationof its aberrancy,then the
'allegory', that is, the expressionin a veiled form of the impossibility of readingthat
revelationof aberrancy.One form that repetition of the first error takesis the mode
of referentiality that de Man calls 'ethicity.'
The first feature of the ethical for de Man, then, is that it is an aspectnot of the
first narrative of metaphoricaldenominationnor of the second narrative of the
deconstructionof that aberrantact of denomination,but of the 'third' narrative of
the failure to readwhich de Man calls 'allegory'. Saysde Man: 'Allegories are always
ethical.' The ethical, or what de Man calls, somewhatbarbarously,'ethicity', is not
a primary category, but a secondaryor in fact tertiary one. 'E thicity' is necessary
and it is not derivative from anything but the laws of language that are all-
determiningor all-engenderingfor de Man, but the ethical does not come first. It
intervenes,necessarilyintervenes,but it occursat a 'later stage'in a sequencewhich
beginswith epistemologicalerror, the error born of aberrantmetaphoricalnaming.
One must remember,however, that the sequentialunfolding of 'earlier' and 'later'
that makes all texts, in de Man's use of the term, 'narratives' is the fictional
temporalization of what in fact are simultaneouslinguistic operations: aberrant
metaphoricalnaming, the deconstructionof that act of nomination,the allegory of
the unreadability of those 'first' two linguistic acts, and so on. Of that allegory of
the impossibility of reading'ethicity' is a necessarydimension,since all allegoriesare
ethical. In this senseethicity is as first as any other linguistic act. It is unconditionally

necessary.
But what does it mean to say that 'allegoriesare always ethical'? It is clear that
the main targetof de Man's attack here is Kant's ethical theory. To put this another
way, the passageabout ethics simultaneously rejects Kant and bends Kantian
languageto anotherpurpose.In order to make an open spacefor his own ethical
theory, de Man has simultaneouslyto reject the Kantian theory and appropriateits
languageto his own uses: 'The ethical categoryis imperative(i.e. a categoryrather
than a value) to the extent that it is linguistic and not subjective.'In order to argue
that ethicity is the product of a purely linguistic necessityde Man has to reject the
notion that it has to do with subjectivity, or with freedom as a feature of selfhood,
or with interpersonalrelations,or with a categoricalimperativecoming from some
transcendentalsource,whether from subjectivity in the form of the transcendental
imagination or from some extrahumantranscendence.'Ethics', says de Man, 'has
nothing to do with the will (thwarted or free) of a subject, nor a fortiori, with a
relationship betweensubjects.'And: 'The passageto an ethical tonality does not
result from a transcendentalimperative.'
Well, if ethics has nothing to do with any of the things it has traditionally been
thoughtto be concernedwith, with what then doesit have to do? The answeris that
ethical judgment and command is a necessaryfeature of human language. We
cannot help making judgments of right and wrong, commanding others to act
according to those judgments, condemning them for not doing so, responding
ourselvesto an ethical demandthat will not be the less categoricaland imperative
for not coming from some transcendentextra-linguistic 'law'.
With the ground clearedof the chief alternativetheoriesof ethics, especiallythe
Kantian one, deMan can asserthis own purely linguistic theory. What, in his case,
does this mean, and how could an ethical judgment or command founded
exclusively on languagehave the authority necessaryin ethics, the 'I mustdo this;
I cannotdo otherwise,and I ought not to do otherwise'?The answeris that ethical
judgmentand commandis a necessarypart of that narrativeof the impossibility of
readingthat de Man calls allegory. But what, exactly, does this mean?The failure
to read, the readerwill remember,takesthe form of a further, secondaryor tertiary,
narrative superimposedon the first deconstructivenarrative. This supplementary
narrative shows indirectly, in the form of a story, someonecommitting again the
'same'linguistic error that the deconstructivenarrative has lucidly identified and
denounced.Only someonewho can read, that is, who can interpret the allegory,
which seemsto say one thing but in fact sayssomethingelse,will be able to seethat
what is really being narratedis the failure to read. But that act of reading will no
doubt commit another version of the sameerror of the failure to read, and then
again, in a perpetualfugacity of final clarity.
[ ..•J
The formulation that 'allegories are always ethical' is therefore completedby a
crucial definitional phrase:'the term ethical designatingthe structural interference
of two distinct value systems'(AR, 206). If the readerstepsback for a momentfrom
92 J. Hillis Miller
the context of de Man's intricate argumentationhe or she will probably agreewith

me that this is an exceedingly odd definition of the term ethical: 'the structural
interferenceof two distinct value systems'!For de Man the categoriesof truth and
falsehoodcan never be reconciledwith the categoriesof right and wrong, and yet
both are values, in the sense of making an unconditional demand for their
preservation.Surely one should want to dwell within the truth, and surely one
shouldwant to do what is right, but accordingto de Man it is impossibleto respond
simultaneouslyto thosetwo demands.A statementcan be true but not right or right
but not true, but not both true and right at once.
Why is this? The answeris given in the four sentencesthat completethe paragraph
I have been trying to read:
The ethical categoryis imperative(i.e. a categoryratherthan a value) to the extentthat

it is linguistic and not subjective. Morality is a version of the samelanguageaporia
that gave rise to such conceptsas 'man' or 'love' or 'seW, and not the causeor the
consequenceof such concepts.The passageto an ethical tonality does not result from
a transcendentalimperative but is the referential (and thereforeunreliable) version of
a linguistic confusion. Ethics (or, one should say, ethicity) is a discursivemode among
others. (AR, 206)
For de Man, as for Kant, the fulfillment of an ethical demandmust be necessary.

It must be somethingI have to do, regardlessof other competing demands. It is in
this sensethat it is a categoryrather than a value. A value is a matter of more or
less, of differential comparisons according to some measuring yardstick. A
categoricalobligation is absoluteand unconditional. We must do it, whateverthe
cost. In de Man's case,however,the necessityis linguistic rather than subjectiveor
the effect of a transcendentallaw. It is a necessityto be in error or at the least
confused,as always happenswhen I attempt to make languagereferential, and I
must attempt to make it referential. I cannotdo otherwise. In the caseof ethics it
is a necessityto makejudgments,commands,promisesaboutright and wrong which
have no verifiable basis in anything outside language.It is in this sensethat ethics
(or ethicity) is a discursivemode amongothers. That is, ethics is not just a form of
language,but a running or sequentialmode of language,in short a story. Ethics is
a form of allegory, one form of those apparently referential stories we tell to
ourselvesand to those around us.
[ ...J
Understandingis not a version of one single and universal Truth that would exist as
an essence,a hypostasis.The truth of a text is a much more empirical and literal event.
What makesa readingmore or less true is simply the predictability, the necessityof its
occurrence,regardlessof the readeror of the author'swishes.'Es ereignetsich aberdas
Wahre'(not die Wahrheit) saysH6lderlin, which can be freely translated,'What is true
is what is bound to take place.' And, in the caseof the readingof a text, what takes
place is a necessaryunderstanding.What matrics the truth of such an understanding
is not some abstract universal but the fact that it has to occur regardlessof other
considerations.It depends,in other words, on the rigor of the reading as argument.
Readingis an argument(which is not necessarilythe sameas a polemic) becauseit has
to go againstthe grain of what one would want to happenin the name of what has
to happen;this is the sameas sayingthat an understandingis an epistemologicalevent
prior to being an ethical or aestheticvalue. This doesnot meanthat there can be a true
reading, but that no reading is conceivable in which the question of its truth or
falsehoodis not primarily involved.
It would thereforebe naive to make a reading dependon considerations,ethical or
aesthetic, that are in fact correlatives of the understandingthe reading is able to
achieve. Naive, becauseit is not a matter of choice to omit or to accentuateby
paraphrasecertain elementsin a text at the expenseof others. We don't have this
choice, since the text imposesits own understandingand shapesthe reader'sevasions.
The more one censors,the more one reveals what is being effaced. A paraphraseis
always what we called an analytical reading, that is, it is always susceptibleof being
made to point out consistentlywhat it was trying to conceal.4
This luminous passageis one of the most important formulations de Man made
about the ethics of reading and its relation to the epistemologicaldimension of
reading. The understandingof a text is prior to its affirmation as an ethical value,
but both are necessary.Both are bound to take place, even though they take place
against the grain of the reader'sor the author's wishes. 'Take place' is de Man's
translation of Holderlin's 'ereignet sich', in the lines from the late hymn,
'Mnemosyne',that he cites, wresting them from their context. It is a context, by the
way, that is extremelyenigmaticand that might take yearsof study and commentary
to begin to 'understand',even though, if de Man is right, the first reading of
Holderlin's poem would cause its understandingto take place as a kind of
foreknowledge.A reading'takesplace' as an event in the real world. Ereignis is the
German word for event. Martin Heidegger has singled out this word in various
placesfor commentaryand analysis in relation, precisely, to that notion of topos
or place. Each event takesplace in a place which its occurrenceas event makesinto
a place, as opposedto a vacant spacewith no meaningor coordinates.The same
thing may be said of eachact of reading. It takesplace as an event in a certain spot
and turns that spot in a certain senseinto a sacredplace, that is, into a placewhich
is inaugural. Readingtoo turns empty spaceinto a locus where somethingunique
and unforeseenhas occurred,has enteredinto the humanworld, and where it will
have such effects as it will have. An act of reading, moreover, takes place, as
somethingwhich is bound to happenas it does happen,to a certain personin a
certainpsychological,interpersonal,historical, political, and institutional situation,
for exampleto a teacheror to a studentin a certain university, or to a readerin a
public library who happensto have taken the book down from the shelf.
Readingsthat 'take place' in this way are 'true' in the special senseof being true
to an implacablelaw of language,that is, the law of the failure to read, not truth
of correspondenceto some transcendentand universal Truth with a capital T.
Though de Man's formulation here is in terms of the necessary'truth' of each
94 J. Hillis Miller
reading, and though what he says makesit sound as if reading is a game in which
we cannotlose, sincewe are boundto get it right, howeverlimited we are as readers
or however muchour presuppositionsabout what the text is going to mean may
seemto foredoom us to get it wrong, the careful readerof de Man, the readerfor
exampleof the passagewhich hasbeenmy main focus, will know that what is bound
to take place in each act of reading is another exemplification of the law of
unreadability.The failure to read takesplace inexorably within the text itself. The
readermust reenactthis failure in his or her own reading. Getting it right always
means being forced to reenactonce more the necessityof getting it wrong. Each
reader must repeat the error the text denouncesand then commits again. By a
strangebut entirely cogentreversalwhich disqualifiesthe binary oppositionbetween
true and false, what de Man calls 'true' (not truth) here is the unavoidableexigency
to be true to the obligation to lie, in the special sensede Man gives to lying. It is
lying in the sensethat one necessarymomentin any act of readingis the referential
turn which draws ethical conclusions,makes ethical judgmentsand prescriptions.
These are unwarrantedbut they must follow the reading of the text. Both that
understandingand the lie of unwarrantedethical affirmations are bound to take
place, since both are inscribedwithin the text as its own failure to read itself. The
reader in his act of reading must be true to that pattern.
The fact that the relation betweenethical statementsand the knowledgelanguage
gives is always potentially aberrantin no way meansthat ethical judgmentsdo not
work, do not sustain society, are not good in their effects. Ethical judgment, or
'ethicity' in general,works in fact in the sameprecariousway as the social contract
in de Man's description of it. Its working is always threatenedby its own lack of
ground. It is sustainedonly by the fact that a group of peoplecan be got to act as
if it had a ground, that is, as if there were absolutejustice in rewardingpeoplefor
certain actions, punishing them for others. 'Finally,' says de Man:
the contractual pattern of civil government can only be understood against the
backgroundof this permanentthreat.The social contractis by no meansthe expression
of a transcendentallaw: it is a complex and purely defensiveverbal strategyby means
of which the literal world is given some of the consistencyof fiction, an intricate set
of feints and rusesby meansof which the momentis temporarilydelayedwhen fictional
seductions will no longer be able to resist transformation into literal acts. The
conceptual language of the social contract resemblesthe subtle interplay between
figural and referential discoursein a novel. (AR, 159)
[. ..J
Since 'Reading',for de Man, includesnot just reading as such, certainly not just
the act of readingworks of literature, but sensation,perception,and thereforeevery
human act whatsoever,in this case my apparently limited topic of the ethical
dimension of reading would include the necessarybut forever potentially aberrant
referentiality of what he calls 'ethicity' in human life generally. For de Man the
ethical is one (necessaryand necessarilypotentially aberrant)act of languageamong
others, taking language in the inclusive sense which he gives It III 'Allegory of
Reading (Profession de foi)'. Kant's concluding formulation in the Grundlegung
would thereforein de Man's casehave to be reformulatedin a way that measures
the difference,the great gulf, betweenthem. De Man might have said: 'And so we
do not indeed comprehendthe practical unconditional necessity of the moral
imperative, nor do we even comprehendits incomprehensibility,since the moral
imperative itself, along with the human reason which strives to comprehendthe
incomprehensibility of its necessity, are both aspects of language, and it is
impossibleto uselanguageas a tool with which to comprehendits own limitations.'
It is impossible to get outside the limits of language by means of language.
Everything we reach that seems outside language, for example sensation and
perception,turns out to be more language.To live is to read, or rather to commit
again and again the failure to read which is the human lot. We are hard at work
trying to fulfill the impossibletask of reading from the moment we are born until
the momentwe die. We struggleto read from the momentwe wake in the morning
until the momentwe fall asleepat night, and what are our dreamsbut more lessons
in the pain of the impossibility of reading, or rather in the pain of having no way
whatsoeverof knowing whetheror not we may have in our discursivewanderings
and aberrancies stumbled by accident on the right reading? Far from being
'indeterminate'or 'nihilistic', however,or a matterof wanton free play or arbitrary
choice, each reading is, strictly speaking,ethical, in the sensethat it has to take
place, by an implacablenecessity,as the responseto a categoricaldemand,and in
the sensethat the readermusttake responsibility for it and for its consequences in
the personal,social, and political worlds. Readingis one act among others, part,
as Henry Jamessayswriting itself is, of the conductof life, howeverunpredictable
and surprising each act of reading may be, since the reader can never know
beforehandwhat it is in this particular caseof readingthat is bound to take place.
Such is the rigor of Paul de Man's affirmation of an ethics of reading. It imposeson
the readerthe 'impossible'task of reading unreadability,but that does not by any
meansmeanthat reading,even 'good' reading,cannottake place and doesnot have
a necessaryethical dimension.
Notes
1. Allegories of Reading (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1979),
p. 206; henceforthAR.
2. 'Undecidability', trans. Robert Livingston, in The Lessonof Paul de Man, Yale French
Studies(1985), 69:132.
3. In '''Reading''Part of a Paragraphof Allegoriesof Reading',forthcoming in ReadingPaul
de Man Reading, a volume of essayson de Man edited by Lindsay Waters.
4. Paul de Man, 'Foreword'to Carol Jacobs,The Dissimulating Harmony (Baltimore, MD
and London: Johns Hopkins University Press,1978), p. xi.
2 D Psychoanalytic
Theory
Introduction
Thereought to be more of a dialoguebetweenthe first three Readingsin this Section

and the rest, but the effect of JacquesLacan'swork has been to createa powerful
intellectual tradition within psychoanalytictheory which is less and less interested
in positions which do not foreground the kind of theorisation of language
representedin Section 1 of this Reader.
Philip Rieffs understandingof languagein a therapeuticcontext is that it does
represent(forbidden topics), but in a highly mediatedmanner, and that - contra
Marx as well as post-structuralism- 'language ... is the essential medium of
consciousness, and thereforethe essentialmeansof liberation' (Rieff, 1979, p. 335).
Apart from this slightly dated but stubbornly persistentview of language,Rieff is
also valuable - particularly when read alongsidemost of the texts reprintedin this
book - preciselybecausehe is a generaliser;that is to say, he wantsto follow Freud
and talk about the human condition, a theory of mind and 'modern man', and is
unfashionablydisinclinedto qualify his categories.As the editor of Freud'sCollected
Papers, however, he is not a generaliser in the sense of eschewing detailed
exposition.
Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959) has an establishedplacein the secondary
literature on Freud, but the consistent developmentof Rieffs subsequentwork
through The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) to Fellow Teachers(1973) has
consolidatedhis position as a leading neo-conservativethinker, alongside such
writers as Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue (1981). In Freud he hasan angle upon
the current concern with modernity and postmodernity- though he does not use
the latter term - and upon ethics. Freud is a central elementin Rieffs own position
becausehe is an inescapablepart of what it meansto be modern: to be bereft of the
consolationsof the past and the future and, accordingly,thrown back upon the self
and a preoccupationwith it: quite a salutary read in a time when a slack
understandingof much contemporarytheory denigratesthe importanceof the self.
Rieffs neo-conservatismis not apparentin any crassor polemical sensebut in the
acceptanceof limits which are constructednot by dominant traditions of thought
(Rieff seemsto approveof Freud'slack of a religious temperament)but out of the
internalisationof a tension within secularsociety betweenpast and present;guilt
and innocence; desire and repression; difference and sameness;and 'fantastic
realities' and 'reasonableappearances'(Rieff, 1979, p. xii). Liberation, in Rieffs
interpretationof Freud, is 'modestbut nonethelesssignificant', and confined to 'the
therapeutichour' (Rieff, 1979, pp. 331, 332) and the patient'ssubsequentprivate
99
100 PsychoanalyticTheory
reflection upon this break with the rationalised, compartmentali sed world so
memorably described by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism. Therapy is to be measuredagainstthe necessityfor control, authority,
and the exerciseof reticence.No relief shouldbe soughtin 'theological'utopias,such
as Rieff seesMarx as entertainingand encouraging,but memory can help to resist
the discontinuitieswhich much contemporarytheory embracesso positively.
The burdenof life can only be shifted, not removed,but sinceit is a 'heavyburden
of knowingnessabout life', a place is at least reservedfor reason:'Reasoncannot
saveus, nothing can; but reasoncan mitigate the cruelty of living, or give sufficient
reasonsfor not living' (Rieff, 1979,pp. xviii, xii). At a time when the Enlightenment
project is under attack for its legacy of cruel unreason,Rieff's is an interestingand
unusual defence, not least becausenear the end of Reading 2.1, he explores the
narcissism which, he believes, is an unfortunate by-product of Freudian self-
preoccupationin a period when the older culture of limits - what Weber calls the
work ethic and Freud calls the reality principle - is waning. Rieff's historical and
sociological account of the culture of therapy gesturestowards certain aspectsof
postmodernism.The excessof candourwhich is a by-product of social modernism
(and which, soon after Rieff's book appeared,took a quantum leap during the
cultural rebellionsof the sixties), combinedwith the self-preoccupationstimulated,
directly and indirectly, by Freudian self-preoccupationto produce an 'emergent
democracyof the sick' in which 'everyonecan to someextent play doctor to others,
and none is allowed the temerity to claim that he can definitively cure or be cured'
(Rieff, 1979, p. 355). Although in some respectsthey are a causeof this state of
affairs, Freud, as he appearsin Rieff's book, and Freudianreasonare none the less
an alternative to modern 'psychologicalman' intent upon 'talking his way into a
moral void', 'every senseoflimit challenged'(Rieff, 1979,pp. xxiv, xxii). Rieff finds
in Freud this maxim (in Rieff's words): 'each freedom at every moment depends
upon the one thing forbidden to it, so all true visions take their direction from the
turning of a blind eye' (Rieff, 1979, p. xxiv). The registeris different - indeed,almost
everythingis different - but Rieff seemsto be where certain post-structuralistsfind
themselves:looking for limits, for a non-theological'must', to set againsttheir own
insights into a post-foundationalworld.
On the questionsof liberation and the needto return the patient to the world of
limits and reticence,Rieff's Freud differs sharply from the Freud who dominates
HerbertMarcuse'sEros and Civilization (1955; Reading2.2). However, both Rieff
and Marcuseendorsethe importancewhich Freud placed on memory, though for
Marcusememory has a utopian potential rarely voiced during the 1950s. It is still
a startling measureof the conformity of the postwaryears in the United Statesthat
Marx is never mentionedin Eros and Civilization, even though the book attempts
to bring Marx and Freud together by historicising one of the poles of Freudian
theory, the reality principle. Marcusewants to take the reality principle beyondthe
sphereof personaldevelopment,in which an infant is made aware of the restraints
upon the desire for pleasure and thereby fitted for society; and - by rereading
Freud'slate work, Civilization and its Discontents(1930), through the lens of his
Introduction 101
basic model of the mind - to ask whetherthe benefitsof subjugationto an ethic of

work, order and progresshave been worth the suffering. The apparentlyuniversal
reality principle becomes, in Marcuse's rereading, a 'performance principle',
representativeof only a particular phaseof Western society. Max Weber - also
missing in name - is implicitly introducedto highlight the extent of technical and
rational dominationin what Marcusewould later call the 'one dimensional'society
and TheodoreRoszakwould populariseas 'the technocracy'in his 1969 book The
Making of a Counter-Culture.Marcuse returnsto Freud'sown theory to insist that
the relationship between pleasureand reality principles is not fixed. The reality
principle should be renamedthe scarcity principle to describe'a specific historical
organizationof human existence'under conditionsof economicneedwhich can be
altered'to createthe preconditionsfor the gradualabolition of repression'(Marcuse,
1966,p. 5). A link with Marxian economicscould be made,but Marcusestickswith
Freud's acknowledgementthat the phaseof pleasuredoes not wholly give way to
reality but 'continuesto exist in civilization itself' (p. 15) and can be reactivated
through memory. Moreover, the struggle is repeatedin each individual, a point
which Marcuse underlines to suggest the potential for revolution even in an
advancedWesternsocietyin which affluenceor the promiseof affluenceaffectsclass
structure. The repressedcan return even if, as Marcuseadmits in later chaptersof
the book, it seemsat presentto find its outlet primarily in phantasyand aesthetics;
on the latter point, he finds plenty of supportin Frankfurt Schoolthinking in general
and Theodor Adorno's work on Modernism in particular.
Although Rieff's Freud does not talk about economic scarcity as such (Rieff
believes it trivialises Freud to read his economic metaphorsliterally), Eros and
Civilization is misunderstoodif it is also read too literally. It needsto be read as a
utopian text which aims to rescue the constituent utopian element in classical
Marxism by linking it with 'the tabooedaspirationsof humanity'in Freud,'the claim
for a statewhere freedom and necessitycoincide' (Marcuse,1966, p. 18). Through
rememberinga past state, a future can be imagined. Moreover, the criticisms of
impracticality and lack of realism which are invariably levelled at Eros and
Civilization are themselvesvulnerableto Marcuse'scritique of realism. This critique
joins a broaderassaulton the Enlightenmentproject in Frankfurt School texts from
Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment(1944) through to
Marcuse's One Dimensional Man (1964), and identifies the impulse towards
practicality and realism as themselvespart of the reality principle and therefore
dependentupon, but failing to acknowledge,their other, the pleasureprinciple.
However, the pessimisticstrand in Frankfurt School thinking reassertsitself in the
'Political Preface'which Marcuseaddedto Eros and Civilization in 1966, in which
the repressivetoleranceof Westernsociety, its 'democraticintrojection' (Marcuse,
1966, p. xv), underminesthe desire for liberation in a supposedlyfree society.
Marxism is introducedexplicitly in the 'Political Preface',but has to be understood
and defended in an international context: 'Historical backwardnessmay again
becomethe historical chanceof turning the wheel of progressto anotherdirection'
(Marcuse, 1966, p. xvii).
Where Philip Rieff includes a straightforwardaccountof Freud'smisogyny but

does not fully incorporateit into the case he makes on Freud's behalf, Marcuse's
anticipationof the sexualrevolution of the 1960slacks any speciflc awarenessof the
political and social organisationof sex. A historicised Freud is rereadto promote
'polymorphous sexuality' rather than genital intercourse, and to reveal that
repressionis surplusto what a societyneedsto progress,and is thereforea political
rather than merely a psychologicalissue. But the context of this rebellion is the
world of work: 'Libido would be releasedand would overflow the institutionalized
limits within which it is kept by the reality principle' (Marcuse, 1966, p. 200).
Male-female relations and their institutionalisation are therefore not directly
addressed,even as the body is 'resexualized'.In contrastto Marcuse,Kate Millett
(Reading2.3) flnds in Freud'swork an intellectual underpinningfor an exploitative
sexualpolitics which outweighs Freud'sradical critique of Victorian repressiveness.
In SexualPolitics, publishedin 1969, Millett explains female discontents(such as
thosedetailedin one of the other modernclassicsof the secondwomen'smovement,
Betty Friedan'sThe Feminine Mystique [1963]) in terms of patriarchy,while Freud
explains the situation of women through a basic, anatomical lack. 'Penis envy'
producesthe strong, if not uniform, tendenciestowardsmasochism,narcissismand
passivity which Freud observedin his casestudiesof women. Women are deflned
in negativeterms (what is missing). The corollary is that male sexual aggressionis
given theoretical support, and becomespart of the life-force.
Millett historicisesFreud, but quite differently from Marcuse.For Millett, Freud's
reasoningderivesfrom the social conditionsof his time, but lacks a clear awareness
of the speciflcity of those conditions. Consequently,the psychic damagehe noticed
in his female patients is rarely traced to the social ills of the time, as it is in the
feminist literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Where
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1892) and her
theoreticaltext Womenand Economics(1898) locate the causeof women'smalaise
in the subtle as well as obviousexerciseof male power, Freud returnsto physiology
and to the family romance which it generates,in which the young female, on
recognising that the lack of a penis is not peculiar to herself, transfers the
responsibility to her mother and to her sex, before seekingto deflne herself with
referenceto her father, who - representingthe male - will provide her with a penis
in the form of a baby, a 'penis-child'. An assertionof female sexuality is similarly
blocked, as in this statementfrom Freud's 'Some psychical consequencesof the
anatomicaldistinctions betweenthe sexes'(quoted by Millett): 'the elimination of
the clitoral sexuality is a necessarypre-conditionfor the developmentof femininity'
(Millett, 1971, pp. 185-6).
Although Millett's literary criticism is not a primary concern here, her nearly
exclusive attention to texts by male writers makes it difficult to appreciatehow
womencan resistthe patriarchalappropriationof the family romance.Thus, Sexual
Politics could be used to situate a text such as Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'
within the exerciseof patriarchalpower, but Millett's work doesnot illuminate the
ways in which the author, narrator and narrator-as-character in Gilman's story
Introduction 10]
exploit the few linguistic and mostly private resources that remain open.
Undoubtedly,Millett's readingsof D. H. Lawrence,Henry Miller, Norman Mailer
and JeanGenetreveal the existenceof a shockingly blatant languageof aggression
and submissionin apparentlyself-conscioustexts; but thesereadingsalso point to
shortcomings in Millett's theoretical approach in general. Whether Lawrence,
Miller, Mailer and Genet are realists or not, Millett readsthem as though a social
context can be straightforwardlyextractedfrom their texts. In Psychoanalysisand
Feminism,Juliet Mitchell classifiesMillett's theoreticalposition on Freud as that of
'social realism', and arguesthat in her efforts to focus attentionupon the sociology,
rather than the physiology, of Freudianism,and to foreground genderrather than
sex as the key term, Millett effectively denies the psychological reality of the
unconscious,and so underplaysthe importanceof sexuality: 'It is not what Freud
says about women and femininity that is the real stake in the battle, but the very
objects of psychoanalysisthemselves,sexuality and the unconscious,that offend'
(Mitchell, 1975, p. 352).
Alternativesto Millett's - but also Rieff's and Marcuse's- interpretationof Freud
can be found in a numberof different strandsof psychoanalytictheory, but Jacques
Lacan's (see Reading 2.4) reading of Freud through structuralist and post-
structuralisttheoriesof languagehas addressedthe aboveproblemsmost effectively,
and has proved to be particularly provoking for feminism's engagementwith
psychoanalysis,as the discussion of Kristeva in the Introduction to Section 1
indicates. Lacan takes off from the very uncertainties,ambiguities and endless
revisions in Freud's work (especially as these bear upon the question of human
identity) which Millett cuts through, but he builds theseinto a systematicaccount
of the unconscious.The unconsciousemergesnot just in slips of the tongueor jokes
but when languageconsistentlyfails to meetdesire(desirefor the object represented
in language,including the subject, the 'I'). Here, Lacan comesparticularly close to
developmentsin linguistics: Saussure, but also Roman Jakobson'sdistinction
betweenmetaphorand metonymy,which Lacanprefersto Freud'scondensationand
displacement,respectively.Any articulation of identity drags with it, in Derrida's
sense,the traces of the systemof which any elementis a part.
However, Lacan, unlike Saussure,has a story to tell, and Reading 2.4 is an
important episodein it. In the phasewhich Lacan calls the Imaginary, the subject
has no senseof identity. At some point within this pre-oedipal, undifferentiated
realm under the rule of the pleasureprinciple, the infant, in Lacan'stelling, receives
a coherentmirror-imagewhich masksthe lack of co-ordinationin the infant. Once
it is recognised,this illusory image sets in motion an economy of desire which
outlaststhe Imaginary as a discretephaseand in which the subjectis caught in an
alienatedrelationshipwith its image,out of which an ego is (mis)constructed.Given
that Lacan's reading of Freud is being loosely set against other readings, the
terminology of id, ego and superegois perhapsinaccurate,since Lacan gives more
attention than do Rieff, Millett and Marcuse to Freud's earlier model of pre-
conscious,unconsciousand consciousphases.Nevertheless,the important point is
that it is the entry into language- into what Lacancalls the Symbolic Order - which
fully links the subjectwith desire,predicatedupon a lack. It is this lack which might
be seenas the unconscious,suggesting,therefore,that the unconsciousis formed as
consciousness is formed, and doesnot pre-existconsciousness as a biological entity.
The symbolic brings a differentiated,rather than an imaginary, conceptof identity.
In the kind of statementwhich could have been quoted in the Introduction to
Section 1, Lacan both explains, and almost succeedsin giving a formal, linguistic
embodimentto, the situatednessof the subjectin language:'I am not whereverI am
the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think'
(Lacan, 1977, p. 166).
Lacan follows Freud in associatingthe Symbolic Order with the rule of the father
becauseit is the father's prohibition which inauguratesit by intervening in the
mother-infantrelationship. More generally, this stageis comparablewith Freud's
reality principle and with social life. However, in the Symbolic - and this is where
Lacan'sterminology is important - it is not the penis which rules but its signifier,
the phallus. Power in positioning subjectsis exercisedthrough discourse,which -
potentially, at least - becomesthe arena for any resistanceto subject positioning.
Since male and female are instances of such positions, it follows that sexual
difference arises out of division, and is not pre-given. In this connection,Freud
himself figures differently from the way he appearsin Kate Millett's very influential
interpretation. In a 1933 essay,'Femininity', Freud remarks that: 'psychoanalysis
does not try to describewhat a woman is - that would be a task it could scarcely
perform - but sets about enquiring how she comes into being' (Freud, 1964,
p. 116). The 'lack' which, in Millett's reading,is seenby Freud as an actual,physical
lack, is, in Lacan'srereading,a lack that is built into languagewhich, by its very
presence,signifies the absenceof the object. In its first manifestationon enteringthe
Symbolic Order, the lack is the absenceof the mother's body.
JacquelineRose claims that 'the history of psychoanalysiscan in many ways be
seenentirely in terms of its engagementwith [the] questionof feminine sexuality'
(Mitchell and Rose, 1982, p. 28). The debatecentreson the Symbolic: the needto
inhabit and claim the Symbolic where social relations are establishedand, with
them, power relations. Not to do so can result in psychosis.Juliet Mitchell, who
collaborates with Rose on Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the 'ecole
freudienne'(1982), advancesthis argumentand it is expandedby Rose,who points
out that while Lacan cannot escapephallocentrism,his account of the dominance
exercisedby the phallus is situatedfirmly in language.She thereforewarns against
recourseto the pre-linguistic and pre-historical. Mitchell and Rose maintain that
Freudand Lacancan be madeuseof by feminism ratherthan, as in Millett's account
of Freud, summarily dismissed,but it is not clear why Lacan - and certainly why
feminists - should concedeso much to the father, even if it is a symbolic father and
a symbolic phallus. To do so largely requiresthat a feminist responsecome from
the margins - the margins of languagein Kristeva, for example. The important
elementin Lacan'saccountof the Symbolic is the interventionof the father, yet this
seemsto be a consequence of social arrangementswhich have no ultimate authority.
It is just that women are assumedto be the rearersof infants.
Introduction 105
Lacan'slinguistic understandingof the unconsciousis important in Kristeva but

also in Helene Cixous and, especially, Luce Irigaray. An extract from Irigaray
appearsin Section 5 (Reading5.6) but her most anthologisedessay,the title essay
in This Sex Which Is Not One (1977), ought to be mentionedhere becauseit offers
a number of possible responsesto Freud and Lacan (dependinghow the essayis
interpretedin the context of her other work). Irigaray turns away from the visual
priority of Freudianism:what can be seenis the penis,so women are the unseenand,
more than this, the unrepresentable in the Symbolic Order. To follow this logic is
to return to the theories of penis envy and female castration,and to accept that
pleasure is necessarilyvisual - an argument which, not surprisingly, has been
advancedand contestedin film theory (see Mulvey, 1989). Irigaray rejects the
priority and uniformity of the look and, in 'This sex which is not one' she puts the
case for touch as a vital sense,and for the doubleness(at least) of female sexual
pleasure:
Woman takes pleasuremore from touching than from looking, and her entry into a
dominantscopiceconomysignifies, again, her consignmentto passivity: sheis to be the
beautiful object of contemplation.(Irigaray, 1985a,p. 26)
And:
As for woman, she touchesherself in and of herself without any need for mediation,
and before there is any way to distinguish activity from passivity. Woman 'touches
herself' all the time, and moreoverno one can forbid her to do so, for her genitals are
formed of two lips in continuouscontact. Thus, within herself, she is already two -
but not divisible into one(s) - that caresseach other. (Irigaray, 1985a, p. 24)
The issue of clitoral and/or vaginal pleasure is the principal aspect of a

psychoanalyticfeminist theory of readingexploredby Naomi Schor (Reading2.5).
Apart from Schor's specific argument, the clarity of which makes summary
redundant,this Readinghighlights two concernsthat are alreadybecomingapparent
in this anthology. The first is the necessityfor interdisciplinarity even as any essay
is situatedin a discipline or tradition of thought. Schor notes,in particular, that in
orderto reada literary text (for its representationof psychoanalyticfeminist themes)
the theoretical point of view must itself be interrogated- that is, read. And the
secondis that theory must - paradoxically- be groundedso that it doesnot float
free in the manner of structuralism: 'the most pervasive and insidious form of
idealismin our time'. Yet to groundfeminist theoryis to lay claim to the very ground
on which is marked women's oppression:the body. Schor'sresponseis a textual
materialism,deriving from Derrida but aware of the uneasyrelationship between
feminism and deconstructiondiscussedby Gayatri Spivak in Reading 3.3 below.
Schor puts it this way:
the usesof deconstructionfor feminism are not limited to the still timely inversion of
the paradigm of sexual difference, they consist also in the homologousinversion of
what I would call the paradigm of significance: essential!accessory.In other words,

theseessays[including the one reprinted below] are written in the spaceopenedup by
the valorizationof woman and the detail deconstructionentails. This is not to say that
I believe that woman as writer or reader possessesan inborn affinity for details, an
essentialistargument I regard as dangerousfor the elaboration of both a feminist
poetics and aesthetics.What I do believe is that a pronouncedattention to details has
traditionally beenconnotedas feminine and hencedevalorized.And, further, that it is
in textual details either overlookedor misprized by male critics that somethingcrucial
about woman's stake in representationis to be found. (Schor, 1985, p. x)
Naomi Schor'shomologousrelationshipbetweenbody and text is a reminderthat

Irigaray has beencriticised for placing too much authority in the body, and thereby
falling into a biological essentialism.However, to take just one other line, Irigaray
can be understood- and evenher most forthright essay,'This sex which is not one',
can be understoodas promoting a strugglewithin the Symbolic. In 'The gesture
in psychoanalysis',for instance,she concentratesupon the Symbolic to argue that
symbolisationof psychoanalytic'events'is itself very selectivein its constructionof
genderdifferencesand ordersof priority. Her more recentwork - of which Reading
5.6 is an example- pursuesthis more social line on a vital psychoanalyticdebate.
Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Lacan's autocratic style have generated
schismsand offshoots.Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari'sAnti-Oedipus:Capitalism
and schizophrenia,fIrst published in 1972 (see Reading 2.6), is a direct reaction
againstLacan, and especially against his theorisationof desire. Guattari attended
Lacan'sseminarsin the 1950sand 1960s,and underwentanalysiswith Lacan in the
1960s,but the experiencesof 1968 provokedhim, in conjunctionwith Deleuze,to
developa more politicised theory of the unconsciouswhich they term schizoanalysis.
Anti-Oedipus revisits many of the conceptstouched on above and examined in
greaterdetail in the Readingsbelow, but with the intention of exposingFreudian
and Lacanian psychoanalysis'sfIxation upon the Oedipus complex as part of
society's structure of repression.Psychoanalysisis an 'institution' of power. It is
through the family romance,within a capitalist society,that desireis controlled and
directedinto the sphereof commodification.The Oedipuscomplex accentuatesthe
importance but also the relative powerlessnessof the subject, thereby fItting an
individual for a similar role under capitalism. Where Herbert Marcuse connects
Freud'sreality principle with the Protestantethic, Deleuzeand Guattaritake account
of the forms of control exercisedin a consumersociety. SpecifIcally, they contest
Lacan's understandingof desire as emanatingfrom lack and argue, instead, for
desire as productive rather than produced. Schizoanalysisseeksto liberate desire,
which Deleuzeand Guattaricharacteriseas incapableof being fInally reducedto any
one principle or limited to any individual. With Lacan's Symbolic Order in mind,
they describedesire as pre-existingthe entry into language,but also as surviving it
to becomea social phenomenonin which bodily and semiotic flows are not to be
distinguished.Desireis positive but, if released,issuesnot into a unifIed self (perhaps
one difference between the Anglo-American and French counterculture)but into
Introduction 107
multiplicities. Guattari'sMarxism has its centrenot in the usual orthodoxiesbut in

the weight he gives to group subjectivities, fluid but none the less significant
associations,quite different from both the subject-basedpreoccupationsof Freudian
psychoanalysis,as Philip Rieff describesthem, and the monolithic preoccupation
with state power that marked the French Communist Party of the 1960s. As a
critique of where power lies, there are similarities with Foucault'srecognition that
power is dispersed;but where all three theoristswork off Nietzsche,only Deleuze
and Guattari fully exploit the anarchicpotential of a will to power. Anti-Oedipus
comes out of 1968 and its aftermath, but in some ways that immediate context
obscuresthe theoreticalproject of the book by associatingit with an anti-intellectual
counterculture.
2.1 The Emergence of
D
Psychological Man
Philip Rieff
The imporrant thing is not to be cured but to live with one's

ailments.
ABBE GALlANl TO MADAME D'E,P1NAY
In a distinctively intimate way, psychoanalysisdefendsthe private man againstthe

demandsmadeby both culture and instinct. Freud beginswhereG. E. Moore leaves
off in the famous last chapterof Principia Ethica that declarespersonalaffections
and artistic pleasuresthe only true goodsl in our experience.The private man
needsto know how to defendhis affections,for the most personalare the most easily
spoiled. Psychoanalytic pedagogy is intended for the student weak in the
understandingof the limited possibilities in life. Freud belongs, therefore, among
those great teacherswho have taken everyone as their potential subject. Seen in
psychoanalyticdepth,no man knows himself so well that he cannotlearn something
of fundamentalimportancefrom this novel enterprisein re-education.Freud speaks
for the modernindividual, elaboratinghis senseof separateness from the world and
from even the most beloved objects in it. Such careful and detailed concentration
on the self as Freud encouragesmay more often producepedantsof the inner life
than virtuosi of the outer one. Yet, in default of other cures,egotismsuits the age,
and Freud's is only one of the most successful,and certainly the most subtle, of
contemporaryideologiesof self-salvation.
Calculation,Newmansaid, has never made a hero; but calculationcan make the
unheroichealthier. The essentiallysecularaim of the Freudianspiritual guidanceis
to wean away the ego from either a heroicor a compliant attitudeto the community.
Here Freud differed not only from the physiciansof establishedfaiths - Catholic
or other - but also from the propagandistsof secular faiths, those socialists and
other radicals still essentially engaged in absorbing the individual into the
From Rieff, P., Freud: The mind of the moralist, 3rd edition, University of Chicago Press,Chicago,
1979,pp.329-32, 334-5, 339-45, 353-7, 423-4.
108
The Emergenceof PsychologicalMan 109
community. He was not impressedby the clerical strategy of confirming faith by

strengtheningthe individual's identification with the community. Whateverflush of
interior health rises on first being receivedback into any community of belief after
the sickness of alienation is quite temporary, Freud held. The old faiths have
themselves produced the sickness they still seek to cure. The psychoanalytic
physician cannot thereforedirect the patient to seek relief by joining 'the catholic,
protestant,or socialist community'. What is neededis to free men from their sick
communities.To emancipateman's'I' from the communal'we' is 'spiritual guidance'
in the best senseFreud could give to the words.2
Yet he also treated the neurotic as a social dilemma, as one unable to relate
himself effectively to the established community. The prevailing image of
psychoanalysisas reintegrating the neurotic, making him again a constructive
memberof society, must be studied very closely, for this does not signify that the
patient gives his assentto the demandssociety makes upon his instinctual life; on
the contrary,the successfulpatienthaslearnedto withdraw from the painful tension
of assentand dissentin his relation to society by relating himself more affirmatively
to his depths.His newly acquiredhealth entails a self-concernthat takesprecedence
over social concernand encouragesan attitude of ironic insight on the part of the
self toward all that is not self. Thus the psychoanalyzedman is inwardly alienated
even if he is often outwardly reconciled, for he is no longer defined essentiallyby
his social relations. Psychoanalysisas a science carries an authentic alienating
implication, from the breaking of the bondagesof the past (advocatedon the
therapeuticlevel) to the critical appraisalof moral and religious beliefs (on the level
of theory). Freud found contemptible Dostoevski's religious and political
conservatism,despitehis admirationfor the writer's insights and experiencesin the
depths." His own insights into the depths didnot lead him to advocatea return to
them, nor to new justifications for authoritariancodes of conduct. Rather, a less
ambivalent freedom from authority is perhapsthe more important motif of his
doctrine, one in which authority is all the more secure.
This variety of belief in freedom makesitself felt most strongly in Freud'sdenial
that psychoanalysisdoescriticize societyor that it hasany 'concernwhatsoeverwith
... judgments of value'. Psychoanalysisneither needs nor desires 'to create a
Weltanschauungof its own'. As a branch of science,subscribingto the scientific
view of the world, psychoanalysisintendsto be no doctrine but only a method: 'the
intellectual manipulationof carefully verified observations'and the denial that any
knowledge can be obtained from 'intuition or inspiration'.3 Here the rational
" Freud notesthat 'after the most violent strugglesto reconcile the instinctual demandsof the individual
with the claims of the community', Dostoevski'landedin the retrogradeposition of submissionboth to
temporal and spiritual authority, of venerationboth for the Tsar and for the God of the Christians,and
of a narrow Russiannationalism-a position which lesserminds havereachedwith smallereffort'. Indeed
the point of Freud'sessayon Dostoevski,from which I am quoting, is not to examineDostoevski'sartistic
endowmentbut to find out why he changedpositions - why he 'threw away the chanceof becominga
teacherand liberator of humanity and madehimself one with their gaolers'(Coil. PapersV, 223). Thus,
subtly, Dostoevski is identified with the position of the Grand Inquisitor.
110 Philip Rieff
method - working upon the irritational unconscious,which Freud conceivedof as

undercutting the 'proud superstructureof the mind,4 - itself bespeaksa pre-
eminent value. It is only just, when speakingof Freud, to speakof the humanism
of his science.For after all his afftrmationsof the irrational, he reservesa possibility
for rationality and freedom in science- understanding- itself, particularly in the
method of treatmenthe devised: the creation of representativethought-artwhich,
when interpreted,easesthe patient'sobsessions.On the one hand, then, Freud does
advocatea rational reconciliation to social and cultural authority, granting that
authority itself will under criticism becomemore reasonable;on the other hand,
Freudianismsuppliesthrough its therapeuticstratagemsand theoreticalinsights the
meansfor a modest but none the less signiftcant liberation.
I
Freud's emancipativeintent first expresseditself in his method of treatment. By
waiving the restrictions of conventionallogic and prudery, the therapeutichour
providesthe patientwith a model refreshment.It puts an end to decorum,providing
a private time in which anything may be said - indeed, in which the patient is
encouragedto say everything. The analytic meeting is designedas an oasis in the
desert of reticencein which the patient lives; it is much like those artificial ruins
thoughtfully placedin eighteenth-centuryEnglish formal gardensfor the pleasureof
those who wished to wander imaginatively from the beatenpath.
[.•.J
[AJ quality of the Freudian liberation is the interest taken in emotional
recollectionitself. Freudseesthe therapyas withdrawing the patient from the world
of 'hard reality', with which he has beenunable to cope - though this withdrawal
is only temporary,and its purposeis to return him more realistically equippedto
that very reality. During this period of therapeuticwithdrawal, however, Freud
sanctionsall the tabooedlanguageand the shady topics which are conventionally
proscribed.Memory, daydream,fantasy arewhat the patient is to deal in. He has
total freedomto recall. The patienttries to recapturehis childhood and the nightlife
of dreamsand sexuality; it is chiefly this material which is analyzed,accordingto
the emancipativedialectic, just becauseit is not freely discussedin the ordinary
daytime world.
Memory has a peculiar and central place in Freudiantheory. It is constraining,
since by rememberingour bondagesto the past we appreciatetheir enormity; but
it is also, Freudbelieved,liberating, sinceby rememberingwe understandthe terrors
and pleasuresof the past and move toward masteringthem. The tabooedthoughts
are accredited,raised to the statusof momentousand decisive causes,by Freud's
theory of personality,not only becausethey are explainedas part of an inexorable
sequenceof development,but becausethe patient'sattentionis focusedon them. In
therapeuticexplanationthe taboosdominantsince childhood tend to be weakened.
The Emergenceof PsychologicalMan III
Even though the aims and activities of childhood haveto be suppressed,superseded

by 'reality', a sciencewhich so values the importanceof these things is plainly a
liberating one.
This helps explain Freud's special interest in dreams, which he interpreted as
contemporaneousfragments of the supersededchild life. Dreams themselves,as
Freud saw, have an ambiguously emancipativerole. They indicate a kind of
freedom, becausethey take place when there is a 'slackeningin the strengthof the
5
resistance,. He imagined sleep as the de-individualizedplay time of the instincts,
when we cast off the burdenof being individuals and vent our grossinfantile wishes
and anxietiesin dreams. In sleep all personsbecomefor that brief respite ciphers
of identical emotions,differentiatedonly secondarilyby constitutionand traumatic
accent.On the other hand, dreamsare a kind of betrayal,too, becausethe analyst
(representingthe outer world) uses them to pry out the patient's secrets.On the
whole, however, Freud concededthat the dream was a sanctuaryfor the free play
of the psyche. We cannot be held responsible,Freud argues, for the thoughts
expressedin our dream life. 6 Night thoughts are not our own, in the moral
proprietary sense, but belong to that other self which summons us thereby to
accountfor our day lives.
Talk is therapeuticin itself. By talking aboutthe instincts, Freud says,we do not
cause the instinctual demand to disappear - this 'is impossible and not even
desirable' - but we do accomplish a 'taming' of the instinct'? Through talking
about sexuality, we can control it, so that the healthy man can chooseto express
his sexual appetite and yet not be irrationally driven by it. Self-masterybeing a
function of self-consciousness, by making sexual desiresconscious,saysFreud, we
gain mastery over them to a degreeno system of repressioncan possibly equal.8
Talk - language - is the essential medium of consciousness,and therefore the
essentialmeansof liberation.':.
[..•J
II
[...J
There are good reasonswhy sexuality is for Freud the one really profound subject
matter, the demandsof the instincts the most fundamentaldemands.A sciencethat
recognizesthe instincts is a basic science,examining not this social systemor that
but the systemof civilization as a formed thing in itself. Freudhasmadethe greatest
single contribution to the understandingof civilization - not merely to the
understandingof our own. The incomparablesignificance of sexual life is that,
* CompareMarx: 'All forms and productsof consciousness cannotbe dissolvedby mental criticism, by
resolution into "self-consciousness"
or transformationinto "apparitions","spectres","fancies", etc., but
only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug'
(German Ideology [New York, 1947], pp. 28-9).
112 Philip Rieff
'while art, religion, and the social order originated in part in a contribution from
the sexual instinct',9 civilization is also permanentlyopposedby sexuality. 'Woe, if
the sexual instincts should be set loose! The throne [of civilization] would be
overturned and the [ultimate] ruler trampled under foot'. 10 Yet, even in his
cautious approach to sexuality as a scientifIc subject, Freud advancedthe long-
establishedassaulton the repressions.
Sexualityhas shown, for Freud and relatedfigures of his century, a revolutionary
potential somewhatdiminishedby the newer permissivenessin mannersand speech
which hasfollowed Freud - and owesgreatly to him. The idea of a sexualrevolution
is not new. In the late eighteenthand early nineteenthcenturies,sexuality became
the subject of the most advanced art and politics. The critical philosophy of
industrial civilization, fIrst put forth by Fourier and the Saint-Simonians,and after
them in the literature of the 'young Germans',baseditself on a deliberately anti-
Christianeroticism. The sexualrebellion that was linked with socialism,before the
conservativeKarl Marx broke the connectionon the pejorativeword 'utopian',was
closer to being genuinely revolutionary - i.e. a revolt from below - than we now
can grasp,accustomedas we are by Marxism and its counterfeitsto revolutionsrun
by reason - i.e. from above. The goal of the sexual revolution was never a
harmonious, classlesssociety, but rather happier individuals freed from a false
reverencefor the general advantageof society. The great writers on sex, from de
Sadeto Lawrence,were less interestedin society than in the individual, pressingin
varying degreesfor the freedom of the individual against the burdens of social
morality. ~.
[ ... ]
Yet Freud has none of the enthusiasmthat characterizesthe antinomiantemper.
Civilization, becauseof its discontents,was the basic problem of his psychological
science.The cry for liberty did come from the instinctual depths, but Freud heard
it with the cautious attention of a physician attending an eminent but dangerous
patient. Sexuality for him is a force that permanently prevents any utopian
transformingof the social order. Freud held no hope of transformingcivilization.
On the contrary, the great utopian possibility - in so far as he held to any - is
whether repressivecivilization can permanentlytame the instincts. He took the
traditional position of assuminga conflict betweenman'sanimal and spiritual nature
- the spiritual being a residual quality in the transforming processof repressive
civilization.
Freud found that the sexual scarcity characteristicof all civilizations (embodied
in such institutions as monogamy)concentrateda certain surplus aggressiveness in
". For de Sadeand Lawrencesexuality itself providesa utopianpossibility. They assertmasculinesexuality

as the basisof a revolution againstthe prevailing feminine social order - this especiallymilitates against
political radicalism, since sex becomesan alternative to politics. Thus a new generationof Freudian-
trained conservativesis rising in America. The doctrine of the revolutionary possibilities of sex is the
positive side of the psychoanalyticreduction of the political radical to a special caseof the neurotic.
the unconscious.A freer sexuality -a juster distribution of libido, the fundamental

wealth of civilization - would lower the cost of civilization itself. Such an increase
of sexualrations might go far toward resolving the nervousnessof moderncivilized
behavior. But thus to widen the range of gratification, to relocate the problem of
desirein the historical variety of 'objects',fails to resolvethe psychologicalproblem.
Man createshis own scarcity; the aestheticmechanicsof satisfaction themselves
makegratification chimerical. Any notion that Freud'sdoctrineof scarcesatisfaction
in some way reflects the economic doctrine of scarcity representativeof the best
social thought in his era is to render trivial Freud's point. His use of a quasi-
economic metaphorto discusssexuality gives no warrant for treating the insight
frozen into this metaphoras dated. Nature still seeksa state of balance.Freud'sis
a theory of the equilibrium toward which the emotional life tends after every
disturbance. Sexuality is subject no less completely to Freud's first law of the
emotions than any other element of human existence.Only one way lies open to
escapethe dissatisfactionsinherentin every satisfaction,and that is to grow equable.
When the inner life is not easily disturbedit has achievedwhat is to Freud as nearly
ideal a condition as he can imagine. There is somethingOriental in the Freudian
ethic. The 'Nirvana principle' crops up, now and again, in his later writings,
intimating what is entailed in masteringthe balancesof nature.
Short of Nirvana, if sexuality could conceivably cease to trouble man, his
destructive instincts would trouble him more. His dualism allowed Freud to
maintain simultaneouslya psychologicalversion of the classicalliberal and radical
rationalist dream,that once civilization had reacheda certain level of technological
productivity (read 'reality adequacy')and 'consumption'(read 'satisfactions')the
miseries of its earlier stageswould drop away, and a psychologicalversion of the
equally powerful religious idea - with the redemption fantasy stripped to a
minimum faith in reason.In the therapeuticencounter,reasonand unreasonunite
to createa third force capableof mediating betweenthe clashing instincts. But the
instincts cannot be taught to abide each other; their fusion createstension and the
possibility of abrupt reversals.Besides,were aggressionmerely a responseto the
frustration of some sexual or social need, it could be resolved, or at least
ameliorated,by a specifically social reform of the conditions of frustration. But an
aggressionthat is built in, due to the presenceof a 'death instinct',* cannot be
entirely manipulated,let alone abolished. According to this view, civilization can
never resolve its nervousness,for the principle of ambivalence,more than that of
integration, characterizeshuman nature and society. Happiness can never be
achievedby the panaceasof social permissivenessor sexual plenitude. Order can
neverbe achievedby social suppressionor moral rigor. We are not unhappybecause
we are frustrated, Freud implies; we are frustrated becausewe are, first of all,
unhappy combinations of conflicting desires. Civilization can, at best, reach a
balanceof discontents.
" Thereis a significant parallel in Freud'sidea, advancedin the Three Essays,of a primal repressionprior
to social inhibitions, which is set off by the instinctual processitself.
114 Philip Rieff
Here is no Swinburnianromanceof free sexuality versusthe moral law. Rather,

Freudtakesthe romanceout of sexuality,for romanceis dependentupon taking the
repressionsfor granted,in fact on their remainingentirely unconscious,so that they
may be broken only at the price of guilt. The Freudianattitude, on the other hand,
no longer takes them for granted, and thereforecan no longer take sexuality as a
static ideal, even againstthe presentcrippling incapacitiesof our erotic lives. Freud
might seem to be suggestingan expansive erotic ideal. But any future sensual
permissivenessis renderedsuspectby what he assertsabout the expansiveerotic life
of the past. Freud not only feared that sexual freedom might entail undesirable
sacrificesin culture; he thought it itself a transient accomplishment.Love is not a
final solution for Freud, but a therapeuticone. He acknowledgedthat the establish-
ment of a repressivecode (such as Christianity) might under certain circumstances
(as during the satiety of paganculture) prove beneficent,like an artificially induced
scarcity which revives consumption after a long period of overproduction.11
Thereforehe was confident only of his analysisof our crippled condition, never of
his prognosis.As a psychologistof fulfillment, Freud predicts disappointment:he
seesthe social value of repression,the complex nature of satisfaction.It is only in
the therapeuticcontext - which is, after all, not life - that he rejects repression.
Freud was not hopeful; nor was he nostalgic. Retrospectively,he treasuredno
paganor primitive past. He looked forward to no radically different future. Pagan
antiquity had encouragedtoo much sensual pride and demonstratedthe erotic
illusion no less fully than Christianity, by encouragingspiritual pride, had demon-
stratedthe asceticillusion. Freud disdainedpermissivenessas much as asceticism;
both falsely resolvedthe essentialdualism in human experience,that very dualism
betweenmind and flesh that producesthe misery of the humancondition. What man
suffers from finally is no more the supremacyof spirit over flesh than of flesh over
spirit; it is the dualismthat hurts. Freud'sown attitudetoward a variety of historical
dualisms,including Christianity, was always respectful,for he consideredthat they
were but versionsof a more fundamentaldualism in the nature of man and in the
cosmos. For this reason he never seriously entertainedany utopian aspiration.
Indeed,his own theory 'had always beenstrictly dualistic and had at no time failed
to recognize,alongsidethe sexualinstincts,othersto which it ascribedforce enough
to suppressthe sexualinstincts'Y This dualism Freud describedas between'sexuality'
and the 'ego instincts'; later he distinguishedtwo polar instincts, love and death.•.
':. Freud thoughtthat his version of thesepolar forces, which he called Eros and Thanatosand nominated
as the 'primal instincts', had restored the cosmology of Empedocles ('Analysis Terminable and
Interminable',Call. PapersV, 347-50). But what he ascribesto Empedoclesis commonproperty of the
whole school of transitional thinkers passingout of the mythic stageinto philosophy - Anaximander,
Empedocles,Heraclitus, Parmenides,and finally Plato. Actually, amongtheseneo-mythiccosmologies,
Freud's version more resemblesAnaximander'sthan it does that of Empedocles.(I follow here the
accountof Cornford in From Religion to Philosophy, p. 65.) 'Anaximanderwas more purely rational
than many of his successors.In later systems - notably in those of Parmenidesand Empedocles-
mythical associations and implications [of the love-hate, attraction-repulsion polarity] which
[Anaximanderl has expurgated,emergeagain. In particular, we can discern that the prototype of all
opposition or contrariety is the contrariety of sex'. As late as Plato's Timaeus,a sexual characterstill
clings to the great contrarieties,Form (father) and Matter (mother).
Whatever the terminology, it is important to see that - unlike the Christian or

rationalistconsciousness - Freud deniesany permanenthealingof the 'derangement
of communallife', of the struggle between individualinterest and the economyof
social demands, of the antagonism between binding and destructive forces in
individual and group life. The most one can win against the eternal dualismsis a
rational knowledge of their effects upon one's own life.
Perhapsit might be more accurateto seedepth psychologynot as an emancipation
of sex but as an enfranchisement.Freud recognizedthat in fact the silent vote of the
psychic world never had been silent. He is the Bentham of the unenfranchised
unconscious;what he brought into the realm of legitimacy, he also brought to
responsibility. If one cannot educatethe ruled, then one must educatethe rulers.
This very aim, to educate the ruling ego, is a sure mark of Freud's classical
liberalism. By enfranchisingthe uneducablepopulaceof sexuality, Freud seeksto
bring it into responsiblerelations with the ruling power. To the liberal political
tradition, with its belief that the 'two nations' could be brought together, Freud
offered a supportingparallel in psychologicaland moral theory, for he desired, as
far as possible,to bring the instinctualunconsciousinto the rational community. For
this new art of compromisea new kind of specialistis needed,one who can take
a destiny apart and put it back togetheragain in a slightly more endurableshape.
[... ]
[Section III omitted]
IV
On the cultural significance of the neurotic character,Freud is entirely explicit.

Neurotics are rebels out of weaknessrather than strength; they witness to the
inadequaciesof cultural restraint. But they are unsuccessfulrebels,for they pay too
high a price for their revolt, and ultimately fail, turning their aggressionsagainst
themselves.Instead of being repressedand turned inward as the neurotic is, the
normal personalityis active and outgoing. Expedientnormal attitudeslead to some
active achievementin the outer world. The brisk managerialego of the normal
personalitydevotesitself to aggressionagainstthe environment,to the practical use
of objects;it doesnot fixate upon them. As Freudput it elsewhere:neurotic anxiety
comesfrom a libido which has 'found no employment';therefore,the dream, like
work, has a 'moralizing purpose'.13 Again, the economic metaphor discloses
Freud's ideal of health as well: a fully employedlibido.
In a brilliant passageFreud describesthe normal attitude toward reality as one
combining the best featuresof neurotic and psychotic attitudes:
Neurosisdoes not deny the existenceof reality, it merely tries to ignore it; psychosis
denies it and tries to substitute something else for it. A reaction which combines
featuresof both these is the one we call normal or 'healthy'; it denies reality as little
as neurosis,but then, like a psychosis,is concernedwith effecting a changein it. 14
116 Philip Rieff
Thus the neurotic characteris the unsuccessfulprotestantof the emotional life; in

him inwardnessbecomesincapacity. The normal charactercontinues to protest,
Freud implies, but is 'not content ... with establishing the alternation within
itself'.15 Thus, in Freud'sconceptionof the normal man, there is a certain echo of
the Romanticidea of genius- the ideal man who attainsto the self-expressionthat
other men, intimidated by convention, weakly forgo.
As the passagejust quotedsuggests,Freud did not draw a sharp line betweenthe
conceptsof normal and neurotic. His dictum that 'we are all somewhathysterical',16
that the difference between so-called normality and neurosis is only a matter of
degree,l?is one of the key statementsin his writings. Its meaning is threefold.
First, it declassiheshuman society, creating an essentialdemocracywithin the
human condition. Even the Greek tragedy - the most aristocratic context - was
leveled out by Freud; the unique crime of the tragic hero becomesan intention in
every heart, and in the most ordinary of plots, the history of every family.
Misfortune is not an exceptionalpossibility, occasionedby rare circumstancesor
monstrouscharacters,but is the lot of every person, something he has to pass
through in his journey from infancy to old age. The aristocraticbias of the 'heroic'
myth is replaced,in Freud, by the democraticbias of the 'scientihc'myth: Oedipus
Rex becomesOedipus Complex, which all men live through. It is becauseof the
suppressedtragediesof everydaylife that men respondso fully to the more explicit
tragedieson the stage.But this doesnot meanthat Freudproposeda genuinelytragic
view of life; he was much too realistic for that. Ordinary men compromisewith their
instinctual longings and becomeneurotic; the tragic hero, becausehe suffers and
dies, must be presumedto have carried out his wishes in a way forbidden to most
men.1S
Secondly, to say that all men are neurotic means to imply an injunction to
tolerance. At least Freud's discovery that the commonplaceis saturatedwith the
abnormal, the pathological - that psychopathologyno longer deals with the
exception but with the ordinary man - does somethingto alter establishedhabits
of moral judgment. It lightens the heavier burdensof guilt and responsibility, for
many offensescan be made to appearsmaller if perceivedin sufficient depth.
Third, and more important, this conceptionof neurosis reveals the essentially
ethical natureof Freud'sidea of normality. Normality is not a statisticalconception,
for the majority is no longer normal. Normality is an ethical ideal, pitted against
the actual abnormal. By another name, normality is the negative ideal of
'overcoming'- whateverit is that ought to be overcome.Being essentiallynegative,
normality is an ever-retreatingideal. An attitude of stoic calm is required for its
pursuit. No one catchesthe normal; everyonemust act as if it can be caught. Nor
can the psychologicalman forget himself in pursuit of the normal, for his normality
consistsof a certain kind of self-awareness. Not least of all, the analyststhemselves,
Freud thought, needed to return to analysis every few years to renew their
knowledge of themselves.
The psychologicalideal of normality has a rather unheroic aspect. Think of a
whole society dominated by psychotherapeuticideals. Considerednot from the
individual's but from a sociological point of view, psychoanalysisis an expression

of a popular tyranny such as not even de T ocqueville adequatelyimagined. Ideally,
the democratictyranny which is the typical social form of our era will not have a
hierarchy of confessorsand confessants.Rather, [ ...J everyonemust aspire to be
a confessor.This is the meaningof the psychoanalyticre-educationFreudspeaksof.
In the emergentdemocracyof the sick, everyonecan to someextent play doctor to
others,and none is allowed the temerity to claim that he can definitively cure or be
cured. The hospital is succeedingthe church and the parliamentas the archetypal
institution of Westernculture.
What has causedthis tyranny of psychology, legitimating self-concern as the
highestscience?In part, no doubt, it is the individual's failure to find anything else
to affirm except the self. Having lost faith in the world, knowing himself too well
to treat himself as an object of faith, modernman cannot be self-confident;this, in
a negativeway, justifies his scienceof self-concern.Though the world is indifferent
to him, the lonely ego may here and there win somethingfrom it. For the rectitude
and energeticnaivety of the man who was the ideal type during the middle-class,
Protestantphaseof American culture, we have substitutedthe charactertraits of
husbandedenergy and finessed self-consciousness.The Frank Merriwell of a
psychologicalculture will not, like the moral athlete of Protestantculture, turn his
reveriesinto realities. Rather, he will be mindful to keep realities from turning into
revenes.
v
In this age, in which technics is invading and conqueringthe last enemy - man's
inner life, the psycheitself -a suitablenew charactertype has arrived on the scene:
the psychologicalman. Three characteridealshave successivelydominatedWestern
civilization: first, the ideal of the political man, formed and handeddown to us from
classicalantiquity; second,the ideal of the religious man, formed and handeddown
to us from Judaism through Christianity, and dominant in the civilization of
authority that precededthe Enlightenment;third, the ideal of the economicman,
the very model of our liberal civilization, formed and handeddown to us in the
Enlightenment.This last has turned out to be a transitional type, with the shortest
life-expectancyof all; out of his tenure has emergedthe psychologicalman of the
twentiethcentury, a child not of naturebut of technology.He is not the paganideal,
political man, for he is not committed to the public life. He is most unlike the
religious man. We will recognize in the case history of psychological man the
nervous habits of his father, economic man: he is anti-heroic, shrewd, carefully
counting his satisfactionsand dissatisfactions,studying unprofitable commitments
as the sins most to be avoided. From this immediate ancestor,psychologicalman
has constitutedhis own careful economyof the inner life.
The psychologicalman lives neither by the ideal of might nor by the ideal of right
which confusedhis ancestors,political man and religious man. Psychologicalman
118 Philip Rieff
lives by the ideal of insight - practical, experimentalinsight leading to the mastery

of his own personality.The psychologicalman has withdrawn into a world always
at war, where the ego is an armed force capableof achieving armistices but not
peace. The prophetic egoist of Western politics and ProtestantChristianity who,
through the model with which he provided us, also laid down the lines along which
the world was to be transformed,has been replacedby the sage,intent upon the
conquestof his inner life, and, at most, like Freud, laying down the lines along
which those that follow him can salvage somethingof their own. Turning away
from the Occidentalideal of action leading toward the salvation of others besides
ourselves, the psychological man has espousedthe Oriental ideal of salvation
through self-contemplativemanipulation. Ironically, this is happeningjust at the
historic moment when the Orient, whose westernmostoutpost is Russia, has
adoptedthe Occidentalideal of savingactivity in the world. The West hasattempted
many successivetransformationsof the enemy, the world. It now choosesto move
againstits last enemy, the self, in an attempt to conquerit and assimilateit to the
world as it is. For it is from the self that the troublesome,world-rejecting ideal of
the religious man came forth.
Freudianismclosesoff the long-establishedquarrel of Westernman with his own
spirit. It marksthe archaismof the classicallegacyof political man, for the new man
must live beyond reason - reason having proved no adequateguide to his safe
conductthrough the meaninglessexperienceof life. It marks the repudiationof the
Christian legacy of the religious man, for the new man is taught to live a little
beyond conscience- consciencehaving proved no adequateguide to his safe
conductthrough life, and furthermoreto have addedabsurdburdensof meaningto
the experienceof life. Finally, psychoanalysismarks the exhaustionof the liberal
legacy representedhistorically in economic man, for now men must live with the
knowledge that their dreams are by function optimistic and cannot be fulfi.lled.
Aware at last that he is chronically ill, psychologicalman may neverthelessend the
ancient quest of his predecessorsfor a healing doctrine. His experiencewith the
latest one, Freud's,may fmally teach him that every cure must exposehim to new
illness.
Notes
1. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,1903), Ch. 6.

2. 'Postscriptto a discussionon lay analysis', Collected Papers (London: Hogarth, 1950),
V, 211-12.
3. New Introductory Lectures,pp. 232, 202-3.
4. 'Psychoanalysisand religious origins', Coil. Papers V, 94.
5. Delusion and Dream, p. 86.
6. See 'Moral responsibility for the content of dreams'(1925), Coil. Papers V, 154-7.
7. 'Analysis terminable and interminable',Coil. Papers V, 326.
8. 'Psychoanalysis', in James Strachey, ed., The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols (London: Hogarth, 1953-73);
henceforthSE, XVIII, 252.
9. 'The resistancesto psychoanalysis',Call. Papers V, 169.

10. Ibid., p. 170.
11. Cf. Three Essays,SE VII, 149 fn., on the difference betweenthe love life of antiquity
and our own.
12. 'The resistanceto psychoanalysis',Coil. Papers V, 169.
13. The Interpretation of Dreams, SE IV, 244.
14. 'The loss of reality in neurosisand psychosis',Coil. Papers II, 279
15. Ibid., pp. 279-80.
16. Three Essays,SE VII, 171: Freud cites Moebius, who said 'with justice that we are all
to some extent hysterics'.
17. Cf. 'Analysis terminableand interminable',Coil. Papers V, 337: 'Every normal person
is only approximatelynormal: his ego resemblesthat of the psychotic in one point or
another, in a greateror lesserdegree. '
18. Cf. Totem and Taboo, SE XIII, 156.
2.2 0 From Eros and
Civilization: A
philosophical InquIry
into Freud
Herbert Marcuse
Introduction
SigmundFreud'spropositionthat civilization is basedon the permanentsubjugation
of the human instincts has been taken for granted. His question whether the
sufferingtherebyinflicted upon individuals has beenworth the benefitsof culture has
not beentaken too seriously- the less so sinceFreudhimself consideredthe process
to be inevitable and irreversible. Free gratification of man's instinctual needs is
incompatible with civilized society: renunciationand delay in satisfactionare the
prerequisitesof progress.'Happiness',said Freud, 'is no cultural value.' Happiness
must be subordinatedto the discipline of work as full-time occupation, to the
discipline of monogamicreproduction,to the establishedsystemof law and order.
The methodical sacrifice of libido, its rigidly enforceddeflection to socially useful
activities and expressions,is culture.
The sacrifice has paid off well: in the technically advancedareasof civilization,
the conquestof natureis practically complete,and more needsof a greaternumber
of people are fulfilled than ever before. Neither the mechanizationand standard-
ization of life, nor the mental impoverishment,nor the growing destructivenessof
present-dayprogressprovidessufficient groundfor questioningthe 'principle' which
has governed the progress of Western civilization. The continual increase of
productivity makes constantlymore realistic the promise of an even better life for
all.
From Marcuse, H., Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud, with a new prefaceby
the Author, Beacon Press,Boston, MA, 1966, pp. 3-8, 11-19.
120
From Eros and Civilization 121
However, intensified progressseemsto be bound up with intensified unfreedom.

Throughoutthe world of industrial civilization, the domination of man by man is
growing in scope and efficiency. Nor does this trend appear as an incidental,
transitory regression on the road to progress. Concentration camps, mass
exterminations,world wars, and atom bombs are no 'relapseinto barbarism',but
the unrepressed implementationof the achievementsof modernscience,technology,
and domination.And the most effective subjugationand destructionof man by man
takes place at the height of civilization, when the material and intellectual
attainmentsof mankind seem to allow the creation of a truly free world.
Thesenegativeaspectsof present-dayculture may well indicate the obsolescence
of established institutions and the emergence of new forms of civilization:
repressiveness is perhapsthe more vigorously maintainedthe more unnecessaryit
becomes.If it must indeedbelongto the essenceof civilization as such,then Freud's
questionas to the price of civilization would be meaningless- for there would be
no alternative.
But Freud's own theory provides reasons for rejecting his identification of
civilization with repression.On the groundof his own theoreticalachievements,the
discussionof the problemmust be reopened.Doesthe interrelationbetweenfreedom
and repression, productivity and destruction, domination and progress, really
constitutethe principle of civilization? Or doesthis interrelationresult only from a
specific historical organizationof humanexistence?In Freudianterms,is the conflict
betweenpleasureprinciple and reality principle irreconcilableto such a degreethat
it necessitates the repressivetransformationof man'sinstinctual structure?Or does
it allow the concept of a non-repressivecivilization, based on a fundamentally
different experienceof being, a fundamentallydifferent relation betweenman and
nature, and fundamentallydifferent existential relations?
The notion of a non-repressivecivilization will be discussednot as an abstractand
utopian speculation.We believe that the discussionis justifIed on two concreteand
realistic grounds: fIrst, Freud's theoretical conception itself seems to refute his
consistentdenial of the historical possibility of a non-repressivecivilization, and,
second, the very achievements of repressive civilization seem to create the
preconditionsfor the gradual abolition of repression.To elucidatethesegrounds,
we shall try to reinterpret Freud's theoretical conception in terms of its own
sociohistoricalcontent.
This procedureimplies opposition to the revisionist Neo-Freudianschools. In
contrast to the revisionists, I believe that Freud's theory is in its very substance
'sociological',l and that no new cultural or sociological orientation is neededto
reveal this substance.Freud's'biologism' is social theory in a depth dimensionthat
has been consistently flattened out by the Neo-Freudianschools. In shifting the
emphasisfrom the unconsciousto the conscious,from the biological to the cultural
factors, they cut off the roots of society in the instincts and insteadtake society at
the level on which it confronts the individual as his ready-made'environment',
without questioningits origin and legitimacy. The Neo-Freudiananalysis of this
environment thus succumbsto the mystification of societal relations, and their
122 Herbert Marcuse
critique moves only within the firmly sanctioned and well-protected sphere of
establishedinstitutions. Consequently,the Neo-Freudiancritique remainsin a strict
senseideological: it has no conceptualbasisoutsidethe establishedsystem;most of
its critical ideasand valuesare thoseprovided by the system.Idealistic morality and
religion celebratetheir happy resurrection:the fact that they are embellishedwith
the vocabularyof the very psychologythat originally refuted their claim ill conceals
their identity with officially desiredand advertisedattitudes. Moreover, we believe
that the most concrete insights into the historical structure of civilization are
containedprecisely in the conceptsthat the revisionists reject. Almost the entire
Freudianmetapsychology,his late theory of the instincts, his reconstructionof the
pre-historyof mankind belongto theseconcepts.Freudhimself treatedthem as mere
working hypotheses, helpful in elucidating certain obscurities, in establishing
tentative links between theoretically unconnected insights - always open to
correction, and to be discardedif they no longer facilitated the progressof psycho-
analytic theory and practice. In the post-Freudiandevelopmentof psychoanalysis,
this metapsychologyhas been almost entirely eliminated. As psychoanalysishas
becomesocially and scientifically respectable,it has freed itself from compromising
speculations.Compromisingthey were, indeed,in more than one sense:not only did
they transcendthe realm of clinical observationand therapeuticusefulness,but also
they interpretedman in terms far more offensiveto social taboosthan Freud'searlier
'pan-sexualism'- terms that revealed the explosive basis of civilization. The
subsequentdiscussion will try to apply the tabooed insights of psychoanalysis
(tabooedeven in psychoanalysisitself) to an interpretationof the basic trends of
civilization.
The purposeof this essayis to contributeto the philosophyof psychoanalysis-
not to psychoanalysisitself. It movesexclusively in the field of theory, and it keeps
outsidethe technicaldiscipline which psychoanalysishas become.Freud developed
a theory of man, a 'psycho-logy'in the strict sense.With this theory, Freud placed
himself in the great tradition of philosophy and under philosophicalcriteria. Our
concernis not with a correctedor improved interpretationof Freudianconceptsbut
with their philosophical and sociological implications. Freud conscientiously
distinguishedhis philosophyfrom his science;the Neo-Freudianshave denied most
of the former. On therapeuticgrounds, such a denial may be perfectly justified.
However, no therapeuticargumentshould hamperthe developmentof a theoretical
constructionwhich aims, not at curing individual sickness,but at diagnosingthe
generaldisorder.
[ ...J
The Hidden Trend tn

Psychoanalysis
The concept of man that emergesfrom Freudian theory is the most irrefutable
indictment of Western civilization - and at the same time the most unshakable
defenseof this civilization. According to Freud, the history of man is the history of
his repression. Culture constrains not only his societal but also his biological
existence,not only parts of the human being but his instinctual structure itself.
However, such constraintis the very preconditionof progress.Left free to pursue
their natural objectives,the basic instincts of man would be incompatiblewith all
lasting associationand preservation:they would destroyevenwhere they unite. The
uncontrolledEros is just as fatal as his deadly counterpart,the deathinstinct. Their
destructive force derives from the fact that they strive for a gratifIcation which
culture cannotgrant: gratifIcation as such and as an end in itself, at any moment.
The instincts must therefore be deflected from their goal, inhibited in their aim.
Civilization begins when the primary objective - namely, integral satisfactionof
needs- is effectively renounced.
The vicissitudesof the instincts are the vicissitudesof the mental apparatusin
civilization. The animal drives becomehuman instincts under the influence of the
external reality. Their original 'location' in the organismand their basic direction
remain the same,but their objectivesand their manifestationsare subjectto change.
All psychoanalytic concepts (sublimation, identifIcation, projection, repression,
introjection) connotethe mutability of the instincts. But the reality which shapesthe
instincts as well as their needsand satisfactionis a sociohistoricalworld. The animal
man becomesa human being only through a fundamental transformationof his
nature,affecting not only the instinctual aims but also the instinctual 'values'- that
is, the principlesthat governthe attainmentof the aims. The changein the governing
value system may be tentatively defIned as follows:
from: to:
immediate satisfaction delayed satisfaction
pleasure restraint of pleasure
joy (play) toil (work)
receptiveness productiveness
absenceof repression security
Freud describedthis changeas the transformationof the pleasureprinciple into the

reality principle. The interpretationof the 'mental apparatus'in terms of thesetwo
principles is basic to Freud'stheory and remainsso in spite of all modifIcations of
the dualistic conception.It correspondslargely (but not entirely) to the distinction
betweenunconsciousand consciousprocesses.The individual exists, as it were, in
two different dimensions,characterizedby different mentalprocessesand principles.
The difference between these two dimensionsis a genetic-historicalas well as a
structural one: the unconscious,ruled by the pleasure principle, comprises 'the
older, primary processes,the residuesof a phaseof developmentin which they were
the only kind of mental processes'.They strive for nothing but for 'gaining pleasure;
from any operation which might arouse unpleasantness("pain") mental activity
draws back'.2 But the unrestrainedpleasureprinciple comes into conflict with the
natural and humanenvironment.The individual comesto the traumaticrealization
124 Herbert Marcuse
that full and painless gratification of his needs is impossible. And after this
experienceof disappointment,a new principle of mental functioning gains ascendancy.
The reality principle supersedesthe pleasure principle: man learns to give up
momentary, uncertain, and destructive pleasure for delayed, restrained, but
'assured'pleasure.3 Becauseof this lasting gain through renunciationand restraint,
according to Freud, the reality principle 'safeguards'rather than 'dethrones',
'modifies' rather than denies,the pleasureprinciple.
However, the psychoanalytic interpretation reveals that the reality principle
enforces a change not only in the form and timing of pleasure but in its very
substance. The adjustment of pleasure to the reality principle implies the
subjugationand diversion of the destructiveforce of instinctual gratification, of its
incompatibility with the establishedsocietal norms and relations, and, by that
token, implies the transubstantiationof pleasureitself.
With the establishmentof the reality principle, the humanbeing which, underthe
pleasureprinciple, has beenhardly more than a bundleof animal drives, hasbecome
an organizedego. It strives for 'what is useful' and what can be obtainedwithout
damageto itself and to its vital environment.Under the reality principle, the human
being developsthe function of reason: it learns to 'test' the reality, to distinguish
between good and bad, true and false, useful and harmful. Man acquires the
faculties of attention, memory, and judgment. He becomesa conscious,thinking
subject,gearedto a rationality which is imposedupon him from outside. Only one
mode of thought-activity is 'split off' from the new organization of the mental
apparatusand remains free from the rule of the reality principle: phantasy is
'protectedfrom cultural alterations'and stays committed to the pleasureprinciple.
Otherwise,the mental apparatusis effectively subordinatedto the reality principle.
The function of 'motor discharge',which, under the supremacyof the pleasure
principle, had 'servedto unburdenthe mental apparatusof accretionsof stimuli', is
now employedin the 'appropriatealterationof reality': it is convertedinto action.4
The scopeof man'sdesiresand the instrumentalitiesfor their gratification are thus
immeasurablyincreased,and his ability to alter reality consciouslyin accordance
with 'what is useful' seemsto promise a gradualremoval of extraneousbarriers to
his gratification. However, neither his desires nor his alteration of reality are
henceforthhis own: they are now 'organized'by his society. And this 'organization'
repressesand transubstantiateshis original instinctual needs. If absencefrom
repressionis the archetypeof freedom, then civilization is the struggle againstthis
freedom.
The replacementof the pleasureprinciple by the reality principle is the great
traumatic event in the developmentof man - in the developmentof the genus
(phylogenesis)as well as of the individual (ontogenesis).According to Freud, this
event is not unique but recurs throughout the history of mankind and of every
individual. Phylogenetically,it occurs first in the primal horde, when the primal
father monopolizespower and pleasureand enforcesrenunciationon the part of the
sons. Ontogenetically, it occurs during the period of early childhood, and
submissionto the reality principle is enforcedby the parentsand other educators.
But, both on the generic and on the individual level, submissionis continuously
reproduced.The rule of the primal father is followed, after the first rebellion, by
the rule of the sons, and the brother clan developsinto institutionalizedsocial and
political domination. The reality principle materializesin a systemof institutions.
And the individual, growing up within such a system,learnsthe requirementsof the
reality principle as those of law and order, and transmits them to the next
generation.
The fact that the reality principle has to be re-establishedcontinually in the
developmentof man indicatesthat its triumph over the pleasureprinciple is never
completeand never secure.In the Freudian conception,civilization does not once
and for all terminatea 'state of nature'. What civilization mastersand represses-
the claim of the pleasureprinciple - continuesto exist in civilization itself. The
unconsciousretains the objectivesof the defeatedpleasureprinciple. Turned back
by the external reality or even unable to reach it, the full force of the pleasure
principle not only survivesin the unconsciousbut also affects in manifold ways the
very reality which has supersededthe pleasureprinciple. The return of the repressed
makesup the tabooedand subterraneanhistory of civilization. And the exploration
of this history reveals not only the secret of the individual but also that of
civilization. Freud'sindividual psychologyis in its very essencesocial psychology.
Repressionis a historical phenomenon.The effective subjugationof the instincts to
repressivecontrols is imposednot by nature but by man The primal father, as the
archetypeof domination,initiates the chain reactionof enslavement,rebellion, and
reinforced domination which marks the history of civilization. But ever since the
first, prehistoricrestorationof domination following the first rebellion, repression
from without has been supportedby repressionfrom within: the unfree individual
introjects his masters and their commandsinto his own mental apparatus.The
struggleagainstfreedomreproducesitself in the psycheof man, as the self-repression
of the repressedindividual, and his self-repressionin turn sustainshis mastersand
their institutions. It is this mental dynamic which Freud unfolds as the dynamic of
civilization.
According to Freud, the repressivemodification of the instincts under the reality
principle is enforcedand sustainedby the 'eternalprimordial strugglefor existence,
... persisting to the presentday'. Scarcity [Lebensnot, Anankel teachesmen that
they cannot freely gratify their instinctual impulses,that they cannotlive under the
pleasureprinciple. Society's motive in enforcing the decisive modification of the
instinctual structureis thus 'economic;since it has not meansenoughto supportlife
for its memberswithout work on their part, it must seeto it that the numberof these
membersis restricted and their energiesdirected away from sexual activities on to
their work'. S
This conceptionis as old as civilization and hasalwaysprovidedthe most effective
rationalizationfor repression.To a considerableextent, Freud'stheory partakesof
this rationalization: Freud considers the 'primordial struggle for existence' as
'eternal' and therefore believesthat the pleasureprinciple and the reality principle
are 'eternally' antagonistic. The notion that a non-repressive civilization is
126 Herbert Marcuse
impossible is a cornerstoneof Freudian theory. However, his theory contains

elements that break through this rationalization; they shatter the predominant
tradition of Westernthought and evensuggestits reversal.His work is characterized
by an uncompromisinginsistence on showing up the repressivecontent of the
highest values and achievementsof culture. In so far as he doesthis, he deniesthe
equationof reasonwith repressionon which the ideology of culture is built. Freud's
metapsychologyis an ever-renewedattemptto uncover,and to question,the terrible
necessityof the inner connectionbetweencivilization and barbarism,progressand
suffering, freedom and unhappiness-a connectionwhich reveals itself ultimately
as that betweenEros and Thanatos.Freud questionsculture not from a romanticist
or utopian point of view, but on the ground of the suffering and misery which its
implementationinvolves. Cultural freedom thus appearsin the light of unfreedom,
and cultural progress in the light of constraint. Culture is not thereby refuted:
unfreedomand constraintare the price that must be paid.
But as Freud exposes their scope and their depth, he upholds the tabooed
aspirationsof humanity: the claim for a statewhere freedomand necessitycoincide.
Whateverliberty existsin the realm of the developedconsciousness, and in the world
it has created,is only derivative, compromisedfreedom, gained at the expenseof
the full satisfaction of needs. And in so far as the full satisfaction of needs is
happiness,freedomin civilization is essentiallyantagonisticto happiness:it involves
the repressivemodification (sublimation) of happiness.Conversely,the unconscious,
the deepestand oldest layer of the mental personality, is the drive for integral
gratification, which is absenceof want and repression.As such it is the immediate
identity of necessityand freedom. According to Freud'sconceptionthe equationof
freedom and happinesstabooedby the consciousis upheld by the unconscious.Its
truth, althoughrepelledby consciousness, continuesto hauntthe mind; it preserves
the memory of past stagesof individual developmentat which integral gratification
is obtained. And the past continuesto claim the future: it generatesthe wish that
the paradisebe re-createdon the basis of the achievementsof civilization.
If memory moves into the center of psychoanalysisas a decisive mode of
cognition, this is far more than a therapeuticdevice; the therapeuticrole of memory
derives from the truth value of memory. Its truth value lies in the specific function
of memory to preservepromises and potentialities which are betrayed and even
outlawed by the mature, civilized individual, but which had once been fulfilled in
his dim past and which are never entirely forgotten. The reality principle restrains
the cognitive function of memory - its commitment to the past experienceof
happinesswhich spurnsthe desire for its consciousre-creation.The psychoanalytic
liberation of memory explodes the rationality of the repressedindividual. As
cognition gives way to re-cognition,the forbidden imagesand impulsesof childhood
begin to tell the truth that reasondenies.Regressionassumesa progressivefunction.
The rediscoveredpast yields critical standardswhich are tabooedby the present.
Moreover, the restoration of memory is accompaniedby the restoration of the
cognitive contentof phantasy.Psychoanalytictheory removesthesemental faculties
from the noncommittalsphereof daydreamingand fiction and recapturestheir strict
truths. The weight of these discoveriesmust eventually shatter the framework in

which they were made and confIned. The liberation of the past does not end in its
reconciliationwith the present.Against the self-imposedrestraintof the discoverer,
the orientationon the pasttendstoward an orientationon the future. The recherche
du temps perdu becomesthe vehicle of future liberation.6
Notes
1. For a discussion of the sociological characterof psychoanalyticconcepts, see Heinz

Hartmann,'The applicationof psychoanalyticconceptsto social science',Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, vol. XIX, no.3 (1950); Clyde Kluckhohn, Mirror for Man (New York:
McGraw-Hili, 1949); and Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, and Rudolph M. Lowenstein,
'Some psychoanalyticcommentson "Culture and Personality"', in Psychoanalysisand
Culture: Essaysin Honor of Geza R6heim (New York: International Universities Press,
1951).
2. 'Formulationsregarding the two principles in mental functioning', in Collected Papers
(London: Hogarth, 1950), IV, 14. Quotationsare used by permissionof the publisher.
3. Ibid., p. 18.
4. Ibid., p. 16.
5. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis(New York: Garden City Publishing Co.,
1943), p. 273.
6. ErnestG. Schachtel'spaper'On memory and childhood amnesia'gives the only adequate
psychoanalyticinterpretation of the function of memory at the individual as well as
societal level. The paper is entirely focused on the explosive force of memory, and its
control and 'conventionalization'by society. It is, in my view, one of the few real
contributions to the philosophy of psychoanalysis.Schachtel'spaper is in A Study of
Interpersonal Relations, ed. Patrick Mullahy (New York: Hermitage Press, 1950),
pp.3-49.
Freud and the
2.3 D
Influence of
Psychoanalytic Thought
Kate Millett
[ ...J
In reconsideringFreud'stheories on women we must ask ourselvesnot only what
conclusionshe drew from the evidenceat hand but also upon what assumptionshe
drew them. Freud did not accept his patients'symptomsas evidenceof a justifIed
dissatisfactionwith the limiting circumstancesimposedon them by society, but as
symptomaticof an independentand universal feminine tendency.1 He named this
tendency'penisenvy', tracedits origin to childhood experienceand basedhis theory
of the psychology of women upon it, aligning what he took to be the three
corollaries of feminine psychology, passivity, masochism,and narcissism,so that
each was dependentupon, or related to, penis envy.
As the Freudian understandingof female personality is basedupon the idea of
penis envy, it requires an elaborate,and often repetitious, exposition.2 Beginning
with the theory of penis envy, the defInition of the female is negative - what she
is is the result of the fact that she is not a male and 'lacks' a penis. Freud assumed
that the female'sdiscovery of her sex is, in and of itself, a catastropheof such vast
proportionsthat it haunts a woman all through life and accountsfor most aspects
of her temperament.His entire psychology of women, from which all modern
psychology and psychoanalysisderives heavily, is built upon an original tragic
experience- born female. Purportedly,Freud is here only relaying the information
supplied by women themselves,the patients who furnished his clinical data, the
basis of his later generalitiesabout all women. It was in this way, Freud believed,
From Millett, K. (1971) SexualPolitics, Avon, New York, pp. 179-85.
128
Freud and the Influence of PsychoanalyticThought 129
he had been permitted to see how women acceptedthe idea that to be born female
is to be born 'castrated':
As we learn from psycho-analyticwork, women regard themselvesas wronged from

infancy, as undeservedlycut short and set back; and the embittermentof so many
daughtersagainsttheir mothersderives, in the last analysis,from the reproachagainst
her of having brought them into the world as women insteadof as men.3
Assuming that this were true, the crucial question, manifestly, is to ask why this
might be so. Either malenessis indeedan inherentlysuperiorphenomenon,in which
case its 'betterness'could be empirically proved and demonstrated,or the female
missapprehends and reasonserroneouslythat she is inferior. And again, one must
ask why. What forces in her experience,her society and socializationhave led her
to see herself as an inferior being? The answerwould seemto lie in the conditions
of patriarchal society and the inferior position of women within this society. But
Freud did not choose to pursue such a line of reasoning,preferring instead an
etiology of childhood experience based upon the biological fact of anatomical
differences.
While it is supremelyunfortunatethat Freud should prefer to bypassthe more
likely social hypothesisto concentrateupon the distortionsof infantile subjectivity,
his analysismight yet have madeconsiderablesensewere he sufficiently objective to
acknowledgethat woman is born female in a masculine-dominatedculture which
is bent upon extending its values even to anatomy and is therefore capable of
investing biological phenomenawith symbolic force. In much the samemannerwe
perceivethat the traumatizingcircumstanceof being born black in a white racist
society invests skin color with symbolic value while telling us nothing about racial
traits as such.
In dismissingthe wider cultural context of feminine dissatisfactionand isolating
it in early childhoodexperience,Freudagainignoredthe social contextof childhood
by locating a literal feminine 'castration'complex in the child's discovery of the
anatomicaldifferentiation betweenthe sexes.Freud believed hehad found the key
to feminine experiencein that momentwhen girls discover they are 'castrated'
a 'momentousdiscovery which little girls are destinedto make'.
They notice the penis of a brother or playmate, strikingly visible and of large
proportions, at once recognizeit as the superior counterpartof their own small and
inconspicuousorgan, and from that time forward fall a victim to envy for the penis.4
There are severalunexplainedassumptionshere: why is the girl instantly struck by

the proposition that bigger is better? Might she just as easily, reasoningfrom the
naivety of childish narcissism,imagine the penis is an excrescenceand take her own
body as norm? Boys clearly do, as Freud makesclear, and in doing so respondto
sexualenlightenmentnot with the reflection that their own bodiesare peculiar, but,
far otherwise,with a 'horror of the multilated creatureor triumphantcontemptfor
130 Kate Millett
her,.5 Secondly,the superiority of this 'superiorcounterpart',which the girl is said

to 'recognizeat once'in the penis, is assumedto relate to the autoeroticsatisfactions
of childhood; but here again the child's experienceprovides no supportfor such an
assumption.
Much of Freudiantheory rests upon this moment of discovery and one is struck
how, in the caseof the female, to recapitulatethe peculiar drama of penis envy is
to rehearseagain the fable of the Fall, a Fall that is Eve's alone.6 As children, male
and female first inhabit a paradisiacalplaygroundwhere roles are interchangeable,
active and passive,masculineand feminine. Until the awesomelapsarianmoment
when the female discoversher inferiority, her castration,we are askedto believethat
she had assumedher clitoris a penis. One wonderswhy. Freud believesit is because
shemasturbatedwith it, and he assumesthat shewill concludethat what is best for
such purposesmust be a penis.7 Freud insists upon calling the period of clitoral
autoeroticism'phallic' in girls.
Moreover, the revelation which Freud imagined would poison female life is
probably, in more cases,a glimpse of a male playmateurinating or having a bath.
It is never explained how the girl child makes the logical jump from the sight of
bathing or urination to knowledgethat the boy masturbateswith this novel article.
Even should her first sight of the penis occur in masturbatorygames, Freud's
suppositionthat shecould judge this foreign item to be more conduciveto autoerotic
pleasure than her own clitoris (she having no possible experience of penile
autoeroticismas maleshave none of clitoral) such an assumptionis groundless.Yet
Freud believed that female autoeroticism declines as a result of enlightenment,
finding in this 'yet anothersurprisingeffect of penis-envy,or of the discoveryof the
inferiority of the clitoris. 8 Here, as is so often the case,one cannotseparateFreud's
account of how a child reasonsfrom how Freud himself reasons,and his own
language,invariably pejorative, tends to confuse the issue irremediably. Indeed,
since he has no objective proof of any consequence to offer in supportof his notion
of penis envy or of a female castrationcomplex,9one is struck by how thoroughly
the subjectivity in which all theseeventsare cast tends to be Freud'sown, or that
of a strong masculinebias, even of a rather gross male-supremacistbias.lo
This habitual masculinebias of Freud'sown terms and diction, and the attitude
it implies, is increasedand further emphasizedby his followers: Deutsch refers to
the clitoris as an 'inadequatesubstitute' for the penis; Karl Abraham refers to a
'poverty in external genitals' in the female, and all conclude that even bearing
children can be but a poor substitute for a constitutional inadequacy.II As Klein
observesin her critique of Freud,it is a curious hypothesisthat one half of humanity
should have biological reasonsto feel at a disadvantagefor not having what the
other half possess(but not vice versa).12 It is especiallycurious to imagine that half
the race should attribute their clear and obvious social-statusinferiority to the
crudestbiological reasonswhen so many more promisingsocial factors are involved.
It would seem that Freud has managedby this highly unlikely hypothesis to
assume that young females negate the validity, and even, to some extent, the
existence, of female sexual characteristicsaltogether. Surely the first thing all
Freud and the Influence of PsychoanalyticThought III
children must notice is that mother has breasts,while father has none. What is
possibly the rather impressive effect of childbirth on young minds is here
overlooked,togetherwith the girl's knowledge not only of her clitoris, but of her
vagina as well.
In formulating the theory of penis envy, Freud not only neglectedthe possibility
of a social explanationfor feminine dissatisfactionbut precludedit by postulating
a literal jealousyof the organwherebythe male is distinguished.As it would appear
absurdto chargeadult women with thesevalues,the child, and a drasticexperience
situated far back in childhood, are invoked. Nearly the entirety of feminine
development,adjustedor maladjusted,is now to be seenin terms of the cataclysmic
moment of discoveredcastration.
So far, Freud has merely pursued a line of reasoning he attributes, rightly or

wrongly, to the subjectivity of female youth. Right or wrong, his accountpurports
to be little more than description of what girls erroneouslybelieve. But there is
prescription as well in the Freudian account. For while the discovery of her
castrationis purportedto be a universal experiencein the female, her responseto
this fate is the criterion by which her health, her maturity and her future are
determinedthrough a rather elaborateseriesof stages:
After a woman has becomeaware of the wound to her narcissism,she develops,like

a scar,a senseof inferiority. When shehaspassedbeyondher first attemptat explaining
her lack of a penis as being a punishmentpersonalto herselfand has realizedthat that
sexual characteris a universal one, she begins to sharethe contemptfelt by men for
a sex which is the lesser in so important a respect.13
The female fIrst blames her mother, 'who sent her into the world so insuffIciently
equipped' and who is 'almost always held responsiblefor her lack of a penis'.14
Again, Freud'sown languagemakesno distinction here betweenfact and feminine
fantasy. It is not enough the girl reject her own sex, however; if she is to mature,
she must redirect her self positively toward a masculineobject. This is designated
as the beginning of the Oedipal stagein the female. We are told that the girl now
gives up the hope of impregnatingher mother, an ambition Freud attributesto her.
(One wonders how youth has discovered conception, an elaborate and subtle
processwhich children do not discover by themselves,and not all primitive adults
can fathom.) The girl is said to assumeher female parent has mutilated her as a
judgmenton her general unworthiness,or possibly for the crime of masturbation,
and now turns her anxious attention to her father.15
At this stage of her childhood the little girl at fIrst expectsher father to prove
magnanimousand award her a penis. Later, disappointedin this hope, she learns
to contentherselfwith the aspirationof bearinghis baby. The baby is given out as
a curious item; it is actually a penis, not a baby at all: 'the girl's libido slips into
position by means - there is really no other way to put it - of the equation
Il2 Kate Millett
"penis-child'''.16 Although she will never relinquish somehope of acquiring a penis

('we ought to recognize this wish for a penis as being par excellencea feminine
one')17 a baby is as close to a penis as the girl shall get. The new penis wish is
metamorphosedinto a baby, a quaint feminine-coatedpenis, which has the added
merit of being a respectableambition. (It is interesting that Freud should imagine
the young female'sfears center about castrationrather than rape -a phenomenon
which girls are in fact, and with reason,in dread of, since it happensto them and
castrationdoesnot.) Girls, he informs us, now relinquish someof their anxiety over
their castration, but never cease to envy and resent penises,18 and so while
'impotent' they remain in the world a constanthazard to the well-provided male.
There are overtoneshere of a faintly capitalist antagonismbetweenthe havesand
the have nots. This seemsto account for the considerablefear of women inherent
in Freudianideology and the force of an accusationof penis envy when leveled at
mature women.
The Freudian'family romance',domesticpsychodramamore horrific than a soap
opera, continues.The archetypalgirl is now flung into the Oedipal stageof desire
for her father, having been persuadedof the total inadequacyof her clitoris, and
therefore of her sex and her self. The boy, meanwhile, is so aghast by the
implicationsof sexualenlightenmentthat he at first repressesthe information. Later,
he can absorbit only by accompanyingthe discovery of sexual differentiation with
an overpoweringcontemptfor the female. It is difficult to understandhow, setting
asidethe social context, as Freud'stheory does so firmly, a boy could ever become
this convincedof the superiority of the penis. Yet Freud assuresus that 'as a result
of the discoveryof women'slack of a penis they [females] are debasedin value for
girls just as they are for boys and later perhapsfor men'.19
Conflict with the father warnsthe boy that the castrationcatastrophemight occur
to him as well. He grows wary for his own emblemand surrendershis sexualdesires
for his mother out of fear.20 Freud'sexegesisof the neurotic excitementsof nuclear
family life might constitute,in itself, considerableevidenceof the damagingeffects
of this institution, since through the parents,it presentsto the very young a set of
primary sexual objects who are a pair of adults, with whom intercoursewould be
incestuouswere it even physically possible.
While Freud strongly prescribesthat all lingering hopes of acquiring a penis be
abandoned and sublimated in maternity, what he recommends is merely a
displacement,since even maternal desires rest upon the last vestige of penile
aspiration. For, as she continuesto mature,we are told, the female never gives up
the hope of a penis, now always properly equatedwith a baby. Thus men grow to
love women, or better yet, their idea of women, whereaswomen grow to love
babies.21 It is said that the female doggedly continues her sad phallic quest in
childbirth, neveroutgrowingher Oedipalcircumstanceof wanting a penisby having
a baby. 'Her happinessis great if later on this wish for a baby finds fulfilment in
reality, and quite especiallyso if the baby is a little boy who brings the longed-for
penis with him'. 22 Freudian logic has succeededin converting childbirth, an
impressivefemale accomplishment,and the only function its rationalepermits her,
Freud and the Influence of PsychoanalyticThought 133
into nothing more than a hunt for a male organ. It somehowbecomesthe male
prerogativeeven to give birth, as babies are but surrogatepenises.The female is
bested at the only function Freudian theory recommendsfor her, reproduction.
Furthermore, her libido is actually said to be too small to qualify her as a
constructive agent here, since Freud repeatedly states she has less sexual drive
than the male. Woman is thus granted very little validity even within her limited
existence and second-ratebiological equipment: were she to deliver an entire
orphanageof progeny, they would only be so many dildoes.
Notes
1. Here Freud's procedurewas very different from the liberal and humane attitude he
adoptedtoward patients suffering from sexual inhibition.
2. Seeespecially'Femininity'. After making useof suchpatentlyinvidious terms as 'the boy's
far superior equipment' (p. 126), 'her inferior clitoris' (p. 127), 'genital deticiency'
(p. 132), and 'original sexual inferiority' (p. 132), Freud proposesto his audiencethat
penisenvy is the foundationof his whole theory of femalepsychology,warning them that
should they demur before his hypothesis,they would sabotagethe entire construct: 'If
you reject the idea as fantastic and regard my belief in the influence of lack of a penis
on the contigurationof femininity as an idee tixe, I am of coursedefenceless'(p. 132).
My critique of Freud's notions of women is indebted to an unpublishedsummary by
FrancesKamm.
3. Freud, 'Some charactertypes met with in psycho-analyticwork' (1916), in Collected
Papers of SigmundFreud, ed. Joan Riviere (New York: Basic Books, 1959), vol. IV,
p.323.
4. Freud, 'Some psychical consequences of the anatomicaldistinctions betweenthe sexes'
(1925), Collected Papers, vol. V, p. 190.
5. Ibid., p. 191.
6. Not only hasAdam gracewithin his loins to assurehim he belongsto a superiorspecies,
but even his later fears of castrationwhich come to him after a glimpse of the 'mutilated
creature'causeshim to represshis Oedipal desires(out of fear of a castratingfather's
revenge)and in the processdevelop the strong superegowhich Freud believesaccounts
for what he took to be the male's inevitable and transcendentmoral and cultural
superiority.
7. Becauseshe feels free, equal, and active then, Freud says 'the little girl is a little man'.
'Femininity', p. 118. So strong is Freud's masculine bias here that it has obliterated
linguistic integrity: the autoeroticstate might as well, in both cases,be called 'clitoral'
for all the light shed by these terms. Freud's usage is predicatedon the belief that
masturbationis the active pursuit of pleasure,and activity masculine per se: 'We are
entitled to keep to our view that in the phallic phaseof girls the clitoris is the leading
erotogeniczone'. Ibid.
8. 'Somepsychicalconsequences of the anatomicaldistinctions betweenthe sexes',p. 193.
9. The entirety of Freud'sclinical data always consistsof his analysisof patientsand his
own self-analysis. In the case of penis envy he has remarkably little evidence from
patientsand his descriptionof masculinecontemptand feminine grief upon the discovery
of sexual differences are extraordinarily autobiographical.Little Hans (Freud's own
grandson),a bve-year-oldboy with an obsessiveconcernfor his 'widdler', furnishesthe
rest of the masculinedata. Though an admirabletopic of preciseclinical research,it was
and is, remarkablydiffIcult for Freud,or anyoneelse,to makegeneralizationsabouthow
134 Kate Millett
children first come to sexual knowledge,family and cultural patternsbeing so diverse,

further complicatedby the host of variable factors within individual experience,such as
the number, age, and sex of siblings, the strength and consistencyof the nakedness
taboo, etc.
10. ErnestJonesaptly describedFreud'sattitude here as 'phallocentric'.There is something
behindFreud'sassumptionsreminiscentof the ancientmisogynist postulatethat females
are but incompleteor imperfectmales- e.g. deformedhumans,the male being accepted
as the norm -a view sharedby Augustine, Aquinas, etc.
11. Karl Abraham,'Manifestationsof the female castrationcomplex', International Journal
of Psycho-Analysis,vol. 3, March 1922.
12. Klein, pp. 83-4.
13. 'Somepsychical consequences of the anatomicaldistinctionsbetweenthe sexes',p. 192.
14. Ibid., p. 193.
15. The description of female psychological development is from Freud's Three
Contributions to the Theory of Sex, 'Femininity', 'Some psychical consequences of the
anatomicaldistinctions betweenthe sexes',and 'Femalesexuality'.
16. 'Somepsychicalconsequences of the anatomicaldistinctionsbetweenthe sexes',p. 195.
17. 'Femininity', p. 128.
18. See 'Femalesexuality' (1931), Collected Works, vol. V, pp. 252-72.
20. 'Some psychical consequencesof the anatomical distinctions between the sexes' and
elsewherein connectionwith the Oedipus complex in males.
22. Ibid., p. 128.
2.4 D The Mirror Stage
as Formative of the
Function of the I as
Revealedtn
Psychoanalytic
Experience
Delivered at the 16th International Congressof
Psychoanalysis,Zurich, July 17, 1949
Jacques Lacan
The conceptionof the mirror stagethat I introducedat our last congress,thirteen

years ago, has since becomemore or less establishedin the practice of the French
group. However,I think it worthwhile to bring it againto your attention,especially
today, for the light it sheds on the formation of the I as we experienceit in
psychoanalysis.It is an experiencethat leadsus to opposeany philosophydirectly
issuing from the Cogito.
Some of you may recall that this conception originated in a feature of human
behaviour illuminated by a fact of comparativepsychology. The child, at an age
when he is for a time, however short, outdoneby the chimpanzeein instrumental
intelligence,can neverthelessalready recognizeas such his own image in a mirror.
This recognitionis indicatedin the illuminative mimicry of the Aha-Erlebnis,which
Kohler seesas the expressionof situational apperception,an essentialstageof the
act of intelligence.
This act, far from exhaustingitself, as in the caseof the monkey, once the image
has beenmasteredand found empty, immediatelyreboundsin the caseof the child
From Lacan, j., Ecrits: A selection, trans. A. Sheridan,Tavistock, London, 1977, pp. 1-7.
135
136 Jacques Lacan
in a series of gesturesin which he experiencesin play the relation between the

movementsassumedin the image and the reflected environment,and betweenthis
virtual complex and the reality it reduplicates- the child's own body, and the
personsand things, around him.
This event can take place, as we have known since Baldwin, from the age of six
months, and its repetition has often mademe reflect upon the startling spectacleof
the infant in front of the mirror. Unable as yet to walk, or even to stand up, and
held tightly as he is by some support, humanor artiftcial (what, in France,we call
a 'trotte-bebe'), he neverthelessovercomes,in a flutter of jubilant activity, the
obstructionsof his support and, ftxing his attitude in a slightly leaning-forward
position, in order to hold it in his gaze,brings back an instantaneousaspectof the
tmage.
For me, this activity retainsthe meaningI have given it up to the age of eighteen
months.This meaningdisclosesa libidinal dynamism,which has hitherto remained
problematic,as well as an ontological structure of the human world that accords
with my reflections on paranoiacknowledge.
We haveonly to understandthe mirror stageas an identification, in the full sense
that analysisgives to the term: namely, the transformationthat takes place in the
subject when he assumesan image - whose predestinationto this phase-effectis
sufficiently indicated by the use, in analytic theory, of the ancient term imago.
This jubilant assumptionof his specularimage by the child at the infans stage,
still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence,would seemto exhibit
in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitatedin a
primordial form, before it is objectifted in the dialectic of identiftcation with the
other, and before languagerestoresto it, in the universal, its function as subject.
This form would have to be called the Ideal-I,l if we wished to incorporateit
into our usual register, in the sensethat it will also be the source of secondary
identiftcations, under which term I would place the functions of libidinal
normalization. But the important point is that this form situatesthe agency of the
ego, before its social determination, in a ftctional direction, which will always
remain irreducible for the individual alone, or rather, which will only rejoin the
coming-into-being [Ie devenir] of the subject asymptotically, whateverthe success
of the dialectical synthesesby which he must resolve as I his discordancewith his
own reality.
The fact is that the total form of the body by which the subject anticipatesin a
mirage the maturationof his power is given to him only as Gestalt, that is to say,
in an exteriority in which this form is certainly more constituentthan constituted,
but in which it appearsto him above all in a contrastingsize [un relief de stature]
that ftxes it and in a symmetry that inverts it, in contrast with the turbulent
movementsthat the subject feels are animating him. Thus, this Gestalt - whose
pregnancyshould be regardedas bound up with the species,though its motor style
remainsscarcelyrecognizable- by thesetwo aspectsof its appearance,symbolizes
the mental permanenceof the I, at the same time as it prefigures its alienating
destination;it is still pregnantwith the correspondences that unite the I with the
The Mirror Stage 137
statuein which man projectshimself, with the phantomsthat dominatehim, or with

the automatonin which, in an ambiguousrelation, the world of his own making
tends to find completion.
Indeed,for the imagos - whoseveiled faces it is our privilege to seein outline in
our daily experienceand in the penumbra of symbolic efficacity 2 - the mirror-
image would seemto be the thresholdof the visible world, if we go by the mirror
dispositionthat the imago of one's own body presentsin hallucinationsor dreams,
whether it concernsits individual features, or even its infirmities, or its object-
projections;or if we observethe role of the mirror apparatusin the appearances of
the double, in which psychical realities, however heterogeneous,are manifested.
That a Gestalt should be capableof formative effects in the organismis attested
by a pieceof biological experimentationthat is itself so alien to the idea of psychical
causality that it cannot bring itself to formulate its results in these terms. It
neverthelessrecognizesthat it is a necessarycondition for the maturation of the
gonadof the female pigeonthat it should seeanothermemberof its species,of either
sex; so sufficient in itself is this condition that the desired effect may be obtained
merely by placing the individual within reach of the field of reflection of a mirror.
Similarly, in the caseof the migratorylocust, the transitionwithin a generationfrom
the solitary to the gregariousform can be obtained by exposingthe individual, at
a certain stage, to the exclusively visual action of a similar image, provided it is
animated by movementsof a style sufficiently close to that characteristicof the
species.Such facts are inscribed in an order of homeomorphicidentification that
would itself fall within the larger question of the meaning of beauty as both
formative and erogenic.
But the facts of mimicry are no less instructive when conceived as cases of
heteromorphicidentification, inasmuchas they raise the problem of the signification
of space for the living organism - psychological concepts hardly seem less
appropriatefor sheddinglight on thesemattersthan ridiculous attemptsto reduce
them to the supposedlysupremelaw of adaptation.We have only to recall how
Roger Caillois (who was then very young, and still fresh from his breachwith the
sociological school in which he was trained) illuminated the subject by using the
term 'legendary psychasthenia'to classify morphological mimicry as an obsession
with spacein its derealizingeffect.
I have myself shown in the social dialectic that structureshuman knowledge as
paranoiac3 why human knowledge has greater autonomy than animal knowledge
in relation to the field of force of desire, but also why human knowledge is
determinedin that 'little reality' [ce peu de realite] , which the Surrealists,in their
restlessway, saw as its limitation. These reflections lead me to recognize in the
spatial captationmanifestedin the mirror stage,even before the social dialectic, the
effect in man of an organic insufficiency in his natural reality - in so far as any
meaningcan be given to the word 'nature'.
I am led, therefore,to regardthe function of the mirror stageas a particular case
of the function of the imago, which is to establisha relation betweenthe organism
and its reality - or, as they say, betweenthe Innenwelt and the Umwelt.
138 Jacques Lacan
In man, however, this relation to nature is altered by a certain dehiscenceat the

heartof the organism,a primordial Discord betrayedby the signs of uneasinessand
motor unco-ordination of the neonatal months. The objective notion of the
anatomical incompletenessof the pyramidal system and likewise the presenceof
certain humoral residues of the maternal organism confirm the view I have
formulated as the fact of a real specific prematurity of birth in man.
It is worth noting, incidentally, that this is a fact recognized as such by
embryologists,by the term foetalization, which determinesthe prevalenceof the
so-called superior apparatusof the neurax, and especially of the cortex, which
psychosurgicaloperationslead us to regard as the intraorganicmirror.
This developmentis experiencedas a temporal dialectic that decisively projects
the formation of the individual into history. The mirror stage is a drama whose
internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation - and which
manufacturesfor the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the
successionof phantasiesthat extendsfrom a fragmentedbody-imageto a form of
its totality that I shall call orthopaedic- and,lastly, to the assumptionof the armour
of an alienatingidentity, which will mark with its rigid structurethe subject'sentire
mental development.Thus, to break out of the circle of the Innenwelt into the
Umwelt generatesthe inexhaustiblequadratureof the ego's verifications.
This fragmentedbody - which term I have also introduced into our system of
theoreticalreferences- usually manifestsitself in dreamswhen the movementof the
analysisencountersa certain level of aggressivedisintegrationin the individual. It
then appearsin the form of disjointed limbs, or of those organs representedin
exoscopy,growing wings and taking up arms for intestinal persecutions- the very
same that the visionary Hieronymus Bosch has fixed, for all time, in painting, in
their ascentfrom the fifteenth century to the imaginary zenith of modern man. But
this form is even tangibly revealedat the organic level, in the lines of 'fragilization'
that define the anatomy of phantasy,as exhibited in the schizoid and spasmodic
symptomsof hysteria.
Correlatively, the formation of the I is symbolizedin dreamsby a fortress, or a
stadium - its inner arena and enclosure,surroundedby marshesand rubbish-tips,
dividing it into two opposedfields of contestwhere the subject flounders in quest
of the lofty, remote inner castle whose form (sometimesjuxtaposedin the same
scenario)symbolizesthe id in a quite startling way. Similarly, on the mental plane,
we find realized the structuresof fortified works, the metaphor of which arises
spontaneously,as if issuing from the symptoms themselves, to designate the
mechanisms of obsessional neurosis - inversion, isolation, reduplication,
cancellationand displacement.
But if we were to build on thesesubjectivegivens alone - however little we free
them from the condition of experiencethat makesus seethem as partaking of the
natureof a linguistic technique- our theoreticalattemptswould remainexposedto
the chargeof projectingthemselvesinto the unthinkableof an absolutesubject.This
is why I have sought in the present hypothesis, grounded in a conjunction of
objective data, the guiding grid for a methodof symbolic reduction.
The Mirror Stage 139
It establishesin the defencesof the ego a genetic order, in accordancewith the

wish formulatedby Miss Anna Freud,in the first part of her greatwork, and situates
(as againsta frequently expressed prejudice) hysterical repressionand its returns at
a more archaicstagethan obsessionalinversion and its isolating processes,and the
latter in turn as preliminary to paranoicalienation,which datesfrom the deflection
of the specularI into the social I.
This moment in which the mirror stage comes to an end inaugurates,by the
identification with the imago of the counterpart and the drama of primordial
jealousy(so well brought out by the school of CharlotteBuhler in the phenomenon
of infantile transitivism), the dialectic that will henceforth link the I to socially
elaboratedsituations.
It is this moment that decisively tips the whole of human knowledge into
mediatizationthrough the desire of the other, constitutesits objects in an abstract
equivalenceby the co-operationof others, and turns the I into that apparatusfor
which every instinctual thrust constitutes a danger, even though it should
correspondto a natural maturation - the very normalization of this maturation
being henceforthdependent,in man, on a cultural mediation as exemplified, in the
case of the sexual object, by the Oedipuscomplex.
In the light of this conception,the term primary narcissism,by which analytic
doctrine designatesthe libidinal investmentcharacteristicof that moment, reveals
in thosewho invented it the most profound awarenessof semanticlatencies.But it
also throws light on the dynamic opposition between this libido and the sexual
libido, which the first analyststried to define when they invoked destructiveand,
indeed, death instincts, in order to explain the evident connection between the
narcissisticlibido and the alienatingfunction of the I, the aggressivityit releasesin
any relation to the other, even in a relation involving the most Samaritanof aid.
In fact, they were encounteringthat existential negativity whose reality is so
vigorously proclaimed by the contemporaryphilosophy of being and nothingness.
But unfortunately that philosophy graspsnegativity only within the limits of a
self-sufficiency of consciousness,which, as one of its premises, links to the
meconnaissancesthat constitute the ego, the illusion of autonomy to which it
entrustsitself. This flight of fancy, for all that it draws, to an unusual extent, on
borrowings from psychoanalytic experience, culminates in the pretension of
providing an existential psychoanalysis.
At the culmination of the historical effort of a society to refuse to recognizethat
it has any function otherthan the utilitarian one, and in the anxiety of the individual
confronting the 'concentrational,4form of the social bond that seemsto arise to
crown this effort, existentialismmust be judged by the explanationsit gives of the
subjectiveimpassesthat have indeedresultedfrom it; a freedom that is never more
authenticthan when it is within the walls of a prison; a demandfor commitment,
expressing the impotence of a pure consciousnessto master any situation; a
voyeuristic-sadisticidealization of the sexual relation; a personality that realizes
itself only in suicide; a consciousnessof the other that can be satisfIed only by
Hegelian murder.
140 Jacques Lacan
Thesepropositionsare opposedby all our experience,in so far as it teachesus

not to regard the ego as centred on the perception-consciousness system,or as
organizedby the 'reality principle' -a principle that is the expressionof a scientifIc
prejudicemost hostile to the dialectic of knowledge. Our experienceshowsthat we
should start insteadfrom the function of meconnaissance that characterizesthe ego
in all its structures, so markedly articulated by Miss Anna Freud. For, if the
Verneinungrepresentsthe patentform of that function, its effectswill, for the most
part, remain latent, so long as they are not illuminated by some light reflected on
to the level of fatality, which is where the id manifestsitself.
We can thus understandthe inertia characteristicof the formations of the I, and
fInd there the most extensivedefInition of neurosis - just as the captation of the
subjectby the situation gives us the most generalformula for madness,not only the
madnessthat lies behind the walls of asylums, but also the madnessthat deafens
the world with its sound and fury.
The sufferings of neurosisand psychosisare for us a schoolingin the passionsof
the soul, just as the beam of the psychoanalyticscales,when we calculatethe tilt
of its threatto entire communities,providesus with an indication of the deadening
of the passionsin society.
At this junction of nature and culture, so persistently examined by modern
anthropology,psychoanalysisalonerecognizesthis knot of imaginary servitudethat
love must always undo again, or sever.
For such a task, we place no trust in altruistic feeling, we who lay bare the
aggressivity that underlies the activity of the philanthropist, the idealist, the
pedagogue,and even the reformer.
In the recourse of subject to subject that we preserve, psychoanalysismay
accompanythe patientto the ecstaticlimit of the'Thou art that', in which is revealed
to him the cipher of his mortal destiny, but it is not in our mere power as
practitionersto bring him to that point where the real journey begins.
Notes
1. Throughoutthis article I leave in its peculiarity the translationI have adoptedfor Freud's
Ideal-Ich [i.e. 'je-ideal'], without further comment, other than to say that I have not
maintainedit since.
2. CE. Claude Levi-Strauss,Structural Anthropology,ChapterX.
3. CE. 'Aggressivity in psychoanalysis',p. 8 and Ecrits, p. 180.
4. 'Concentrationnaire',an adjective coined after World War II (this article was written in
1949) to describethe life of the concentrationcamp. In the hands of certain writers it
became,by extension,applicable to many aspectsof 'modern'life [Trans.].
2.5 0 Female Paranoia:
the case for
psychoanalyticfeminist
criticism
Naomi Schor
One can speakin generaltermsof the 'schizoid',but not of 'the

paranoid' in general. Paranoia is always masculine or
feminine....
(PHILIPPE SOLLERS)
As a substitutefor penis envy, identification with the clitoris:

neatestexpressionof inferiority, sourceof all inhibitions. At
the same time [in Case Xl disavowal of the discovery that
other women too are without a penis.
(SIGMUND FREUD)
Even if, under the impact of recent developmentsin France,a growing number of
Americanfeminists haveceasedto view Freudas one of womankind'sprime enemies
and psychoanalysisas a movementto be relegatedto the junk heap of history, the
theoretical foundations of psychoanalytic feminist literary criticism remain
extremely shaky. I would ascribethis theoreticalinstability to a rather simple but
far-reaching situation: those theoreticians who have contributed to articulating
psychoanalysisand feminism are not necessarilyor primarily interestedin literary
criticism (Mitchell, Dinnerstein,Irigaray); conversely,those who have contributed
to articulating psychoanalysisand literature are not necessarily or primarily
feminists (Felman). This leaves those who are attempting to read texts in a
psychoanalyticperspectiveand with a feminist consciousnessin something of a
From Schor, N., Breaking the Chain: Women, theory, and French realist fiction, Columbia University
Press,New York, 1985, pp. 149-62, 182-4.
141
142 Naomi Schor
theoreticalvacuum, straddlingtwo approaches:on the one hand, a psychoanalytic

feminist thematics,centering on the oedipal relationships(mother-daughterand,
less frequently, father-daughter)as they are representedin works of literature; on
the other, a psychoanalytic feminist hermeneutics,involving close readings of
nonliterary texts, essentiallythose of Freud, Lacan, et al., using the techniquesof
literary analysis(Irigaray, Cixous, Gallop). In what follows I shall attempt - in an
admittedly,indeeddeliberatelysketchyfashion - to outline a new feminist thematics
groundedin feminist hermeneutics.In other words: basing myself on a respectful
but, literally, perversereadingof one of Freud'sminor essayson femininity, I shall
proposea psychoanalyticfeminist hermeneuticswhich turns to accountthe specific
contribution of women to contemporarytheory, that is, their militant materialism.
Finally, I shall illustrate my approachthrough a reading of Poe's The Mystery of
Marie Roget. My progressfrom Freud to Poe is, of course,not innocent: it is, as
we shall see, a return to the sceneof the crime.
Female Paranoia
(Female) Paranoiaas (Female) Theory
At first glance Freud's essay 'A case of paranoia running counter to the
psychoanalytictheory of the disease'may seem like a particularly unpromising
Freudian text to enlist in the elaboration of a theoretical model for feminist
psychoanalyticcriticism, for it bears blatant witness to precisely that aspect of
Freud's writings which has most angered his feminist critics: the unexamined
priority and primacy of the male paradigm.As we soon discover,this contradictory
case [eines ... widersprechendenFalles] is a caseof female paranoiawhich seems
at first to call seriouslyinto questionthe universalvalidity of the theory of paranoia
derived from the analysisof a male paranoiac(Schreber).Freud, however, goes to
great lengths to demonstratethat despiteits apparentirregularity, when subjected
to rigorous psychoanalyticinvestigation, even this contrary case conforms to the
masculinemodel. This reductionof the atypical femaleexceptionto the prototypical
masculinerule is a gestureof 'normalization'too familiar to Freud'sfeminist readers
to be belaboredhere. What needsto be stressedis the fact that not only does this
perplexingcase,as we shall soon see,appearto threatena dogmacentral to Freud's
theory of paranoia- namely that the persecutoris, in fact, the object of a repressed
homosexualdesire- but that, in so doing, it threatenstheory itself. By bringing the
seemingly aberrant case of female paranoia under the sway of psychoanalytic
theory, Freud is seeking to make the world safe for that theory which has, as he
repeatedlystates,deep affinities with paranoia.Thus, at the end of his analysisof
the Schrebercase,Freud writes: 'It remainsfor the future to decide whether there
is more delusionin my theory than I should like to admit, or whetherthere is more
truth in Schreber'sdelusionthan other peoplecare to believe,;1 similarly, in his late
Female Paranoia 143
article 'Constructionin analysis',he remarks: 'The delusionsof patientsappearto

me to be the equivalentsof the constructionswhich we build up in the courseof
analytic treatment- attemptsat explanationand cure.'2 But it is Freud'soft-cited
comparisonof paranoiacsand philosophers- 'the delusionsof paranoiacshave an
unpalatable external similarity and internal kinship to the systems of our
philosophers'3- which has led many of his French readers to simply equate
paranoia and theory, thereby minimizing - as Freud invites us to do - the
differencesbetweensocially acceptableand deviant forms of system-building.
Female Paranoia vs. Male Paranoia
What is, then, at stake in Freud'stext is the accuracyof his diagnosis: is there in
fact such a clinical categoryas female paranoia?In other words: the urgent question
posed by this case is not so much: does female paranoia corroborate the
psychoanalytictheory of the disease,rather: can females theorize, albeit in the
caricaturalmodeof the mad?Doesthe homologybetweenmale and femaleparanoia
include the prestigiousintellectual (hyper-)activity associatedwith the male model?
This may strike some readersas a rhetorical question, since the very writing and
publicationof this theoreticaltext atteststo my belief in women'sability to theorize;
nevertheless,it must be raised.For while most authorsdealingwith the subjectseem
to agree that there are female paranoiacs- indeed, Phyllis Cheslerlists paranoia
amongthe 'female diseases,4- at least one prominentFreudianhas suggestedthat
the typical form of female paranoiais decidedly less systematicand elaboratethan
the typical male form of the disease:
The usualpersecutoryparanoia,with its elaborateideation,its excessiveintellectuality,

and its occurrencein individuals with a high power of sublimation, is essentially a
highly organized and masculine psychosis,and is, as a matter of fact, much more
common in men than in women. ... I should like at this point to make a possible
differentiation between two of the types of true paranoia, the jealous and the
persecutory.The latter, as we have seen, is an elaboratepsychosisof an essentially
masculinenature,and is the commonestform of paranoiain men. The jealousform,
on the other hand, is par excellencethe paranoiaof women.... In contradistinctionto
the philosophic, systematizingpersecutoryparanoia,the delusional jealousy is both
feminine and rudimentary and, as it were, closer to the normal and the neurotic.5
These remarks are drawn from an essay entitled 'The analysis of a case of
paranoia'(1929), which Freud cites in 'Femalesexuality' (1931); its author is Ruth
Mack Brunswick, Freud's favorite female disciple in his later years. Though this
essaywas written some fourteen years after the Freud essayunder discussion,and
has no direct bearing on it, it cannot go unmentioned, for it indicates the
tremendousdifficulties and dangersinherent in defining a specifically female form
of paranoia,that is, as I will maintain throughout, of theory.
144 Naomi Schor
The Case for Psychoanalytic Feminist Criticism
At the outset Freud'scasehistory is cast in the traditional narrative mode - 'Some

years ago .. .'6 - but this innocuousopening is almost immediately belied by the
unfolding of a complicatedtwice-told tale. In the courseof their fIrst meeting,the
patientpresentsher caseto Freud, indeedthe entire text turns on a pun on the word
case,Fall, which meansboth legal and medicalcase:the patientbelongsto that class
of paranoiacsknown as querulants, and she is referred to Freud not by another
doctor, but by a lawyer. The facts of her case,as she recountsthem during her fIrst
interview with Freud, are as follows: a fellow worker in the office where she had
worked for years - the patient is a 'singularly attractive and handsome'(p. 151)
thirty-year-old woman - had becomeinterestedin her and had invited her up to his
place. Although she had never beeninterestedin men and lived quietly with her old
mother, and althoughher suitor could not offer marriage,the young woman agreed
to visit his place in the daytime. There, as they were embracing,'she was suddenly
frightened by a noise, a kind of knock or tick' (ibid.). The young man assuredher
that the soundcamefrom a small clock on a nearbywriting desk. As shewas leaving
the house she met two men on the stairs. 'One of the strangerswas carrying
something which was wrapped up and looked rather like a box' (p. 152). On
arriving homethe young woman decidedthat this box-like object was a cameraand
that the sound she had heardwas that of a shutterclicking. She thereuponbecame
convincedthat her lover had beentrying to blackmail her and beganto pursuehim
with her reproaches.Finally she went to consult the lawyer, who brought her to
Freud.
For Freud the questionposed by the patient'snarrative is: does she have a case
or is she a case?What preventsFreud from making up his mind is the fact that
contrary to the psychoanalytictheory of paranoia, the persecutor- that is, the
young man - is not of the samesex as the victim: 'therewas no sign of the influence
of a woman, no trace of a struggle against a homosexualattachment'(p. 153).
Confrontedwith this difficulty, rather than concludethat his theory neededto be
revisedor that the patientdid indeedhavea legitimatecase,Freudhypothesizedthat
if the casedid not fIt the theory, then perhapsthe casehistory was incomplete.He
asks for and is granteda secondinterview with the young woman, who thereupon
producesNarrative II, in which she revealsthat she had visited the young man not
once but twice. The insistent doubling in this text - there are the double frame of
reference,the lawyer and the analyst, the two strangers,the double delusion - is
hardly accidental,as doubling is a characteristicfeatureof paranoia,the persecutor
always being in some sensethe victim's double, if only as a projection effect. Now
what is signifIcant about the disparity betweenNarrative I and Narrative II is not
so much the fact that there are two visits as the fact that somethingcrucial occurred
in the interval separatingthe two encounters.The doubling of the visit opens up
anothertime frame, preciselythe one during which the missingeventtook place: the
day after the uneventfulfIrst rendezvous,the young woman saw her would-belover
talking to her supervisor,an elderly womanwhom shedescribesas havingwhite hair
Female Paranoia 145
and looking like her mother. When she saw the two in conversation,she became
convincedthat they were speakingof her visit, further, that the elderly supervisor
and the young man were lovers. Sheconfrontedher suitor with thesesuspicions,but
he was so successfulin allaying them that she consentedto a secondmeeting. The
conflation of the supervisorand the mother provided Freudwith the information he
neededto confIrm his theory; beneaththe male persecutorstood a female persecutor
and one resemblingthe victim's mother: 'The original persecutor... is hereagain not
a man but a woman' (p. 155). Indeed the daughter'shomosexualbond with her
mother makes it diffIcult, not to say impossible, for her to enjoy a satisfactory
heterosexualrelationship.
Having successfullysurmountedthe principal diffIculty posedby this perplexing
case,Freud proceedsin the secondhalf of the paper to turn his attention to what
turns out to be by far the most striking and enigmaticaspectof the case,the nature
of the sound heard by the patient. This part of the text can itself be divided into
two parts: in the fIrst, Freud seeksto demonstratethat there was nothing accidental
about the noise; rather than triggering the delusion, the delusion latched on to the
noise, becausenoise is an intrinsic componentof the primal scene:'The accidental
noise is merely a stimulus which activatesthe typical phantasyof eavesdropping,
itself a componentof the parentalcomplex'(p. 157). And, accordingto Freud,what
we havehereis a reenactmentof the primal scene,with the patientcoming to occupy
the mother's place'?
But Freud does not stop there: in the second part of his discussion of the
troublesomenoise, in a dramaticthough not atypical changeof venue, he offers a
hypothesiswhich rendersthe entire discussionof the order of eventsacademic:'I
might go still further in the analysis of this apparently real "accident". I do not
believe that the clock ever ticked or that any noise was to be heard at all. The
woman'ssituation justifIed a sensationof throbbing [Klopfen] in the clitoris. This
was what she subsequentlyprojected as a perception of an external object'
(pp. 158-9).
Female Psychoanalytic Theory is a Materialism
If we take Freud'spatient as a paradigmaticfemale paranoiacand her delusion as

an exemplarycaseof female theorizing, then the implications of Freud'saudacious
and quite possiblymad hypothesismust be articulatedand examinedin somedetail.
The fIrst of these implications can be stated quite simply: female theorizing is
groundedin the body. Indeedit may well be that female theorizing involves at least
as much assertingthe body's inscription in languageas demonstratingthe female
body's exclusion from language,a more widely held view. As Guy Rosolato notes
in his analysisof the Freud text: 'We must take anotherlook at Freud'spreviously
cited case,in order to emphasizethe very important part the body plays in it. Freud
views the projection as emanatingonly from the corporeal excitation and from
nothing else. His constructionpresupposesit.'8
146 Naomi Schor
The questionthen becomes:is there any evidenceto supportmy hypothesisthat

female psychoanalyticallybasedand orientedtheory is, by definition, a materialism
riveted to the body, its throbbing, its pulsations,its rhythms? My questionis here
a rhetorical one, becauseby its very phrasingit containsits own affirmative answer:
by linking up throbbing with the larger semanticfield of rhythm, I am alluding to
the critical vocabularyof the major French female theoreticianof the past decade,
Julia Kristeva. I am alluding in particular to her insistent valorization of what she
terms the semiotic - in contradistinctionto the symbolic - and which she defines
as follows:
It is chronologically anterior and synchronically transversal to the sign, syntax,

denotation, and signification. Made up of facilitations and their traces, it is a
provisional articulation,a non-expressiverhythm. Plato (Thaetetus)speaksof a chora,
anterior to the One, maternal, having borrowed the term from Democritus' and
Leucippes' 'rhythm'.... The semiotic is a distinctive, non-expressivearticulation;
neither amorphoussubstancenor meaningful numbering. We imagine it in the cries,
the vocalizing, the gesturesof infants; it functions, in fact, in adult discourseas rhythm,
prosody, plays on words, the non-senseof sense,laughter.9
Now although the semiotic is, in Kristeva's words, 'connoted'as maternal and
coextensivewith the pre-Oedipal,to take it for the specificity of women's writing
[ecriture feminine] would constitutea grossmisunderstandingof Kristeva'stheory.
As she demonstratesrepeatedly throughout both Revolution dans Ie langage
poetique and Polylogue, semiotic breaks in and primacy over the symbolic
characterizethe avant-gardetexts of such writers as Mallarme, Lautreamont,and
Artaud. This is not to say that the feminine does not enjoy a privileged relationship
with the semiotic,for it does,but only in nonartistic,nontextualforms: for Kristeva,
pregnancy and childbirth have been historically, in our culture, the female
equivalentof (avant-garde)art:
The speakerreachesthis limit, this requisiteof sociality, only by virtue of a particular,

discursivepracticecalled 'art'. A woman also attains it (and in our society, especially)
through thestrangeform of split symbolization(thresholdof languageand instinctual
drives, of the 'symbolic' and the 'semiotic') of which giving birth consists.lO
What Kristeva elaborates,then, is not a theory about the female imagination(or

imaginary); rather - and therein lies her unique contribution to feminist theory -
a specifically female theory, one which must be seenas a responseand an alternative
to the most pervasiveand insidious form of idealism in our time: structuralism.In
the face of a powerful ideology of scientific neutrality, of an eerily disembodied,
neuteredlinguistics, Kristeva proclaims the indelible imprint of the body on or in
language, and in so doing, associatesthe practice of a feminist psychoanalytic
criticism with a return to Freud potentially more radical than Lacan's. Whatever
Kristeva's own misgivings about paranoia - she generally equatesit with male
homosexuality and 'logical unity',11 though in her more recent writings she has
Female Paranoia 147
stressedthe part played by the repressionand recuperationof female paranoiain the

history of religion12 - her own writings offer an impressive and precious
confIrmation of the connectionbetweenfemale paranoiaand the body dramatized
by Freud'spatient.
The Vaginal vs. the Clitoral
Let us now return to Freud'stext. As I noted above, Freud'sstartling hypothesis-

the noise allegedly heard by the patient was nothing but a projection of the
throbbing of her clitoris - is rich in implications; we have examined, however
briefly, one of these implications - female theory is groundedin the body. Now,
what of the others? The secondis both more obvious and more problematicthan
the hrst: it is that female theory is clitoral. The distinction betweenbody and clitoris
is not, I would emphasize,merely a heuristic device enlisted to facilitate my
discussionof Freud'stext; it is fundamentalto my understandingof that text and
to the privilege I accord it in the elaboration of my own theory. As Rosolato
remarks: 'The faintly perceivedclitoral excitation remainsisolated,enigmaticin its
suspension,separate.'13
With the clitoris we enter the realm of speculation,for no evidence(leaving
behind the scopic economyso inimical to women) can be marshaledin support of
my provocative extrapolation from Freud's unconfIrmed interpretation of the
patient'sdelusion-a sort of paranoiain the third power - with its distinctly clinical
overtones.In the absenceof a Mastersand Johnsontype of study of text pleasure,
how can one hope to distinguish betweenthe 'vaginal' and the 'clitoral' schoolsof
feminist theory? And what is to be gained by adopting this distinction? Before
venturing into this truly 'dark continent', I would like to take two stepsbackward,
to situate my enquiry, and therebyto mitigate - if I can - its outrageousness. The
notion that there might be somethinglike an erotics of theory flows naturally from
Roland Barthes'snotion of 'the pleasureof the text': thus, to some extent, the
vaginal!clitoral paradigm may be said to be modeled on Barthes's pleasure/
jouissanceopposition. Now both Kristeva and Irigaray confIdently and repeatedly
assertthat female theory is intimately bound up with jouissance,that is, with the
most intense form of sexual pleasure.In one of the rare passageswhere Kristeva
commentsexplicitly on the specifIc vocation of female theoreticians,she writes:
It is perhapsnot indifferent that it is left up to a woman subjectto maintain here - and

elsewhere- this frustrating discourseof heterogeneity.Since everyoneknows that it is
impossible to know what a woman wants, since she wants a master, she comes to
representthat which is negativewithin the homogeneityof the community: 'the eternal
irony of the tribe'. Sheis able to ironize communalhomonymybecause:'in her vocation
as an individual and in her pleasure,her interest is centeredon the universal and
remainsalien to the particularity of desire'. Psychoanalysiswould say that this means
that she is bound up with jouissance(the 'universal' - the impossible) which she
148 Naomi Schor
distinguishes fromthe body ('particularity', the locus of 'desire'and 'pleasure'),all the

while knowing that there is no jouissanceother than that of the body ('particularity').
In other words, her knowledge is the knowledge of jouissance ('centered on the
universal'), beyond the pleasureprinciple (the pleasureof the body, be it perverse).14
The question then becomes:does jouissancedesignatefemale orgasm in general,

clitoral as well as vaginal, or rather strictly the vaginal, which has, at least since
Freud, been held to be the specifically female form of orgasm. In Des Chinoises,
Kristeva clearly locates the mother's jouissancein the vagina; as for Irigaray, in
Carolyn Greenstein Burke's words, her 'fable of the generation of meaning' is
'vaginal'.15 It would appearthen, on the basisof this all too brief survey, that there
is little or nothing in contemporaryFrenchfeminist psychoanalytictheory to support
my contentionthat female theory is clitoral; indeed,what little work has beendone
in this area (or zone) tends to valorize the vagina (or, as we have seenearlier, the
womb). Prominentas it is, the 'throbbingclitoris' in Freud'stext remainsenigmatic
and isolated.
Or doesit? Perhapswe have arrived at this impassebecausewe have adoptedthe
wrong approach.In order to proceed,we must retraceour stepsand rephraseour
question:which is not what is the locus of jouissance- for it seemsquite clear that
implicitly jouissanceis vaginal - but rather why recent French feminist psycho-
analytic theory has tendedto valorize the vagina and what are the consequences of
this valorization. To these questionsI would answer as follows: the valorization
of the vagina is for all practical purposesbound up with a theory of productionof
avant-gardefeminist texts, the examplesof the so-calledecriture feminine. It goes
handin handwith a preoccupationwith the ineffable, the unnamable,for as Eugenie
Lemoine-Luccioniwrites: 'It is to the extentthat sheexperiencesjouissance,that she
is silent. There are no words to say jouissance.'16The dangersof this valorization
of the vaginal mode of production are graphically illustrated by Lacan'sevocation
of Saint Theresaas representedby Bernini: 'you haveonly to go and look at Bernini's
statue in Rome to understandimmediately that she's coming, there is no doubt
about it. And what is her jouissance,her coming from? It is clear that the essential
testimony of the mystics is that they are experiencingit but know nothing about
it.>l7 Finally, the vaginal theoreticiansare always running the risk of seeing their
writings recuperatedby metaphysicalthinkers like Lacan.
Now, obviously, to valorize the clitoris is also a risky enterprise;the paranoiac
model is as fraught with pitfalls as the hystericalmodel which underliesthe vaginal
school of female theory. There is first and foremostthe Freudianassimilationof the
clitoral and the phallic (see epigraph supra) to be contended with: if French
feminists - in contradistinctionto Americanfeminists and sexologists- have tended
to valorize the vaginal form of jouissance,it is at least in part to lay claim to their
difference, turning Freud's normative view of female sexuality into a positivity.
There is further the argumentthat by emphasizingthe clitoris one remainslocked
into male dichotomies:why opposethe clitoral and the vaginal, insteadof stressing
their complementarity?
Female Paranoia 149
To answertheseimportant questionswe must begin by consideringthe place of

the clitoris in contemporarytheory, for, howeversurprisingthis may soundto some,
the clitoris lies at the heart or the center of an important polemic betweenJacques
Lacan and JacquesDerrida. It may be recalledthat in his righting of Lacan'swrong
readingof Poe'sThe PurloinedLetter, Derrida points out that one of the most telling
traces of Lacan's great and unacknowledgeddebt to Marie Bonaparte'spsycho-
biographicalanalysisof that particular text involves an unmistakableallusion to a
note in Bonaparte,regardingBaudelaire'smistranslationof the line describingthe
exact location of the purloined letter which, writes Poe, hangs'from a little brass
knob just beneaththe middle of the mantelpiece'.First Bonaparte,then Lacan:
Baudelaire translates: 'suspendu ... a un petit bouton de cuivre au-dessusde la

cherninee'. The imprecision of Baudelaire's translation, as far as this sentenceis
concerned,is obvious: in particular, 'beneath'is translated by 'au-dessus'('above'),
which is completely wrong.
Look! Betweenthe cheeksof the fireplace, there'sthe object alreadyin reach of a hand
the ravagerhas but to extend.... The questionof deciding whether he seizesit above
the mantel piece as Baudelairetranslates,or beneathit, as in the original text, may be
abandonedwithout harm to the inferencesof those whose professionis grilling raux
inferencesde la cuisine].18
Derrida'sresponseis that, on the contrary, the questionof the correct translation

is of the essence,because'on the mantelpiece, the letter could not have been
"between the cheeks of the fireplace", "between the legs of the fireplace,,,19 as
Lacan states.Is Lacan'spresumedrivalry with Bonapartea sufficient explanationof
his cavalierdismissalof a questionof decisiveimportancefor his thesis?I think not.
Finally, as Derrida almost inadvertentlysuggests,what is significant is not so much
what Lacan steals from Bonaparte,as what he misses altogether. And that is the
meaning she attributes to the little brass knob in a brief allusion which, notes
Derrida, 'the Seminardoesnot echo' and which reads: 'We have here, in fact, what
is almost an anatomicalchart, from which not even the clitoris (or brass knob) is
omitted.,20
What bearingdoesthis polemic haveon our inquiry? Simply this: it demonstrates
that the clitoris is coextensivewith the detail. The clitoral school of feminist criticism
might then well be identified by its practiceof a hermeneuticsfocusedon the detail,
which is to say on those details of the female anatomygenerally ignored by male
critics and which significantly influence our reading of the texts in which they
appear.21 A particularly apt (but by no meansunique) exampleof the kind of detail
I am referring to is to be found in the least commentedupon of the three tales that
make up Poe's Dupin trilogy, The Mystery of Marie Raget, a tale of rape and
murder which, not coincidentally I would argue, also containsPoe'smost explicit
theory of the detail, as indicatedby its last sentence:'It may be sufficient here to say
that it forms one of the infinite seriesof mistakeswhich arise in the path of Reason
150 Naomi Schor
through her propensity for seeking truth in detairY Which is, of course,exactly
what Dupin does, emphasizingin the processtwo aspectsof the detail:
1. its prominence: Thus Dupin remarks in a sentencewhich could easily be

superimposedon the conclusionquoted supra: 'I have thereforeobservedthat it
is by prominencesabove the plane of the ordinary, that reasonfeels her way, if
at all, in her searchfor the true' (p. 180);
2. its marginality: 'experiencehas shown, and a true philosophywill always show,
that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly
irrelevant'. In keepingwith this principle, Dupin informs the narrator, he will,
'discardthe interior points of the tragedy, and concentrateour attention on the
outskirts' (p. 191).
This last word should be taken quite literally for, as Dupin goes on to demon-
strate, the solution of the mystery of Marie Roget involves precisely drawing the
correct inferencesfrom the peculiar state of her outer skirts: The dresswas much
torn and otherwisedisordered.In the outer garment,a slip, about a foot wide, had
beentorn off. It was wound three times aroundthe waist, and securedby a sort of
hitch in the back' (p. 174). This detail is repeatedseveraltimes in the courseof the
narrative,but it is only when Dupin offers his reconstructionof the eventsthat this
detail is raised to textual (as well as referential) prominenceby a combination of
repetition and italicization:
My inferenceis this. The solitary murderer,having borne the corpsefor somedistance

... by meansof the bandagehitched around its middle, found the weight, in this mode
of procedure,too much for his strength.He resolvedto drag the burden.... With this
object in view, it becamenecessaryto attach somethinglike a rope to one of the
extremities.It could be best attachedabout the neck, where the head would prevent
its slipping off. And now the murdererbethoughthim, unquestionably,of the bandage
about the loins. He would have used this, but for its volution about the corpse, the
hitch which embarrassedit, and the reflection that it had not been 'torn off' from the
garment. It was easierto tear a new slip from the petticoat. He tore it, made it fast
about the neck, and so dragged his victim to the brink of the river. (p. 202)
For Dupin, the hitch (as well as the knot aroundthe neck) serveas incontrovertible
proof of the singularity of Marie's assassin:a gang would surely not have resorted
to such a clumsy contrivanceto transporta body. For the reader,the hitch appears
as a kind of marker, a signal, in a word: a detail jutting out abovethe plane surface
of the text, providing the would-be interpreteror literary detectivewith a 'handle'
on the text. Now this detail is quite conspicuouslybound up, as it were, with the
female anatomy,for as a curious slippagein the text indicates,the hitch surrounds
not so much the waist, as the 'loins' of the victim; indeed, the word 'rape' never
appearsin the text, rather we find such ambiguousexpressionsas 'brutal violence'
(p. 174) or 'appalling outrage'(p. 179). In this tale whose invariant might well be
said to be translation,23 the hitch serves,in the end, not so much as a meansof
moving the corpse from one place to another, as it does as a displacementof the
Female Paranoia 151
sexualcrime. The hitch designatesthe locus of violence, while at the sametime the
use of the word 'bandage'atteststo a wish to cover up and bind the wound. It is,
in degradedform, the veil that male authors are forever drawing over the female
sexual organs, thereby creating mysteries. The real mystery of Marie Roget lies
hidden beneaththe multiple circumvolutions of the text; the hitch is, to parody
Freud, the navel of the tale.
In conclusion, I would suggestthat if the rhetorical figure of vaginal theory is
metonymy - as Irigaray would have it - or metaphoras Kristeva would argue
- the figure of clitoral theory is synecdoche,the detail-figure. It is, I would suggest
further, no accidentthat Lacan,in his rewriting of RomanJakobson'sessayon 'Two
types of languageand two types of aphasicdisturbance',should not only entirely
do away with synecdoche(subordinatedto metonymy in Jakobson'sessay) but,
more important, offer, as a privileged exampleof metonymy, a syntagm- 'Thirty
24
sails' - which has since antiquity served to illustrate synecdoche. Clearly in
Lacan'sbinary structural linguistics, with its emphasison the perfect symmetry of
metaphor and metonymy, there is no room for this third trope, just as in his
rewriting of Bonaparte'sanalysisof Poe, there is no room for the knob-clitoris. Let
us now praise synecdoche!
Notes
An early version of this text was presentedat a discussionsessionorganizedby Carolyn

GreensteinBurke at the 1979 MLA; subsequently,a revised version appearedin the Special
Feminist Issue of Yale French Studies (1981), no. 62, entitled 'French texts/American
contexts', edited by the Dartmouth Feminist Collective, whose sound editorial
recommendationsare gratefully acknowledged.
1. SigmundFreud, The StandardEdition of the CompletePsychologicalWorks, ed. James
Strachey and trans. James Strachey et al., 24 vols (London: Hogarth, 1953-74);
henceforthS.E. 12: 79.
2. Freud, S.E. 23: 268.
3. Freud, S.E. 17: 261.
4. Phyllis Chesler, Womenand Madness [New York: Avon Books, 1973], pp. 42-3,50.
5. Ruth Mack Brunswick, 'The analysis of a case of paranoia (delusion of jealousy),
Uournal of Nervous and Mental Diseases(1929), 70], p. 170.
6. Freud, Collected Papers, [Joan Riviere, tr. London: Hogarth Press,1933] 2: 150. All
future referenceswill be included in the body of the text.
7. For an illuminating Lacanian reading of this text and this scenein particular, see Guy
Rosolato,'Paranoiaet ScenePrimitive', in Essaissur Ie symbolique [Paris: Gallimard,
1969], pp. 199-241.
8. Ibid., p. 233. All translationsmine except where otherwisenoted.
9. Julia Kristeva, Polylogue (Paris: Seuil, 1977), p. 14. I wish to thank Alice Jardinefor
sharing with me her expertisein translatingKristeva's texts.
10. Kristeva, Desire in Language:A semioticapproach to literature and art [Leon Roudiez,
ed.; Leon Roudiez, Tom Gora and Alice Jardine,trs., New York: Columbia University
Press,1980], p. 240.
11. Kristeva, Polylogue, p. 79.
12. SeeKristeva, 'Feminiteet ecriture. En reponseadeux questionssur Polylogue',especially
p. 500; and 'Herethiquede I'amour', in particular pp. 45-6.
152 Naomi Schor
13. Rosolato, p. 223.

14. Kristeva, Polylogue, p. 269; the quotationsare from Hegel's Phenomenologyof Spirit.
15. See, for example,in Kristeva, About Chinese Women [Anita Barrows, tr., New York:
Urizen Books, 1977], p. 30; Carolyn GreensteinBurke, 'Report from Paris: women's
writing and women'smovement' [Signs (Summer, 1978)], p. 852, no. 18.
16. EugenieLemoine-Luccioni, Partage des femmes [Paris, Seuil, 1976] , p. 101.
17. Feminine Sexuality:JacquesLacan and the ecolefreudienne OacquelineRose, tr., New
York: Norton, 1982], p. 147. On the precedingpageLacan makesit quite clear that he
is concernedexclusively with vaginal jouissance: 'Petty considerationsabout clitoral
orgasmor the jouissancedesignatedas bestone can, the other one precisely,which I am
trying to get you to along the path of logic, since, to date, there is no other' (pp. 145-6).
18. Bonaparteand Lacan as quoted by JacquesDerrida in 'The purveyor of truth' [Willis
Domingo et al. trs, Yale French Studies(1975)], p. 68.
19. Derrida, p. 69.
20. Ibid. Bonaparte'sattention to the detail of the knob-clitoris should be read in the light
of the amazingpagesshe devotesto the clitoris in her book Female Sexuality. Basing
herself on the three developmentalpaths Freud charts for women, Bonapartedivides
women into three categories:the acceptative(normal, vaginal women), the renunciatory
(Virginal), and the claimant (homosexual and/or clitoridal). In the section entitled
'Evolutionary Perspectives',she focuses on strategiesthe 'clitoridals' resort to in their
adaptationto the environment,in particular a bizarre surgical procedure,the so-called
Halban-Narjanioperation,which involves repositioningthe clitoris closer to the urethral
passage.According to Bonaparte'sbiographer,Celia Bertin, Narjani was the pseudonym
Bonaparteadoptedto write about female frigidity and to promotethe therapeuticvirtues
of Halban's operation. In despair over her own persistentfrigidity, in 1927, 'she let
Halban severher external clitoris from its position and move it closer to the openingof
the vagina. She always referred to the procedure by the code name "Narjani", her
pseudonym. The operation, performed in the presenceof Ruth Mack under local
anesthesia,took only twenty-two minutes.' Marie Bonaparte: A life [New York:
Harcourt BraceJovanovich,1982], p. 170. DespiteFreud'sdisapprovalof her resort to
surgery,Bonapartehad herselfoperatedon by Halbantwice more, fIrst in 1930 and then
again in 1931, to no avail.
21. Any attempt to link attention to all manner of details to a specifIcally feminist
hermeneuticsis bound to fail, for attention to details is characteristicof the post-
Freudiantextual approachesof Foucault, Barthes,and Derrida, to name only the most
spectacularself-styled contemporary detailists. For another example of the kind of
clitoral readingI am proposinghere, seemy complementarytext: 'Femalefetishism: the
caseof George Sand' (Poetics Today, forthcoming), where I focus on the detail of bizarre
woundsinflicted on the female body in severalof Sand'snovels. The related questionof
the link betweendetailism and femininity is taken up more fully in my genealogyof the
detail as aestheticcategory, 'Sublime details: from Reynolds to Barthes'.
22. Edgar Allan Poe, The CompleteTales and Poems [New York: RandomHouse, 1938],
p. 222. All subsequentreferenceswill be included in the text.
23. The entire tale takes the form of a transpositionof the facts of an actual crime which
took place in New York City into a Parisiansetting, and is made up for a large part of
purported translations of French newspaperarticles into English. Becausethis tale
involves a de-naturalization,followed by a re-naturalizationof American texts via a
fIctive Parisian setting, it is emblematicof the trans-Atlantic shuttle Franco-American
scholarsare perpetually engagedin.
24. Cf. Roman Jakobson'sessay in Fundamentalsof Language [The Hague: Mouton,
1956], and JacquesLacan, The agencyof the letter in the unconsciousor reasonsince
Freud', Ecrits [Paris: Seuil, 1966], in particular pp. 156-7.
2.6 Psychoanalysis
D
and Capitalism
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
The schizoanalyticargumentis simple: desireis a machine,a synthesisof machines,

a machinic arrangement- desiring-machines.The order of desire is the order of
production; all productionis at oncedesiring-productionand social production.We
therefore reproachpsychoanalysisfor having stifled this order of production, for
having shuntedit into representation.Far from showing the boldnessof psycho-
analysis, this idea of unconscious representationmarks from the outset its
bankruptcy or its abnegation: an unconsciousthat no longer produces, but is
contentto believe.The unconsciousbelievesin Oedipus,it believesin castration,in
the law. It is doubtlesstrue that the psychoanalystwould be the first to say that,
everything considered,belief is not an act of the unconscious;it is always the pre-
consciousthat believes. Shouldn't it even be said that it is the psychoanalystwho
believes - the psychoanalystin each of us? Would belief then be an effect on the
consciousmaterial that the unconsciousrepresentationexerts from a distance?But
inversely, who or what reducedthe unconsciousto this state of representation,if
not first of all a systemof beliefs put in the place of productions?In reality, social
productionbecomesalienatedin allegedly autonomousbeliefs at the sametime that
desiring-productionbecomesenticed into allegedly unconsciousrepresentations.
And as we have seen,it is the sameagency - the family - that performsthis double
operation, distorting and disfiguring social desiring-production,leading it into an
Impasse.
Thus the link betweenrepresentation-belief and the family is not accidental;it is
of the essenceof representationto be a familial representation.But productionis not
thereby suppressed,it continues to rumble, to throb beneath the representative
agency [instance representative] that suffocatesit, and that it in return can make
resonateto the breakingpoint. Thus in order to keep an effective grip on the zones
of production, representationmust inflate itself with all the power of myth and
From Deleuze,G. and Guattari, F., Anti-Oedipus:Capitalism and schizophrenia,trans. R. Hurley, M.

Seemand H. R. Lane, Athlone Press,London, 1984, pp. 296-316, 320-2, 393-4.
153
154 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
tragedy,it must give a mythic and tragic presentationof the family - and a familial
presentationof myth and tragedy. Yet aren'tmyth and tragedy,too, productions -
forms of production? Certainly not; they are production only when brought into
connectionwith real social production,real desiring-production.Otherwisethey are
ideological forms, which have taken the place of the units of production. Who
believesin all this - Oedipus,castration,etc.? The Greeks?Then the Greeks did
not producein the sameway they believed?The Hellenists?Do the Hellenistsbelieve
that the Greeks produced according to their beliefs? This is true at least of the
nineteenth-centuryHellenists, about whom Engels said: you'd think they really
believedin all that - in myth, in tragedy. Is it the unconsciousthat representsitself
through Oedipusand castration?Or is it the psychoanalyst- the psychoanalystin
us all, who representsthe unconsciousin this way? For never has Engels'sremark
regainedso much meaning:you'd think the psychoanalystsreally believedin all this
- in myth, in tragedy.(They go on believing, whereasthe Hellenistshavelong since
stopped.)
The Schreber case again applies: Schreber's father invented and fabricated
astonishinglittle machines,sadistico-paranoiac machines- for exampleheadstraps
with a metallic shank and leatherbands,for restrictive use on children, for making
them straighten up and behave.':. These machines play no role whatever in the
Freudian analysis. Perhapsit would have been more difficult to crush the entire
sociopolitical contentof Schreber'sdelirium if thesedesiring-machinesof the father
had beentaken into account,as well as their obvious participationin a pedagogical
social machinein general. For the real questionis this: of coursethe father acts on
the child's unconscious- but does he act as a head of a family in an expressive
familial transmission,or ratheras the agentof a machine,in a machinicinformation
or communication?Schreber'sdesiring-machinescommunicatewith those of his
father; but it is in this very way that they are from early childhood the libidinal
investmentof a social field. In this field the father has a role only as an agent of
production and antiproduction. Freud, on the contrary, choosesthe first path: it is
not the father who indicatesthe action of machines,but just the opposite;thereafter
there is no longer even any reasonfor consideringmachines,whether as desiring-
machinesor as social machines.In return, the father will be inflated with all the
'forces of myth and religion' and with phylogenesis,so as to ensurethat the little
familial representationhas the appearanceof being coextensivewith the field of
delirium. The productioncouple - the desiring-machinesand the social field - gives
way to a representativecouple of an entirely different nature: family-myth. Once
again, have you ever seen a child at play: how he already populatesthe technical
social machineswith his own desiring-machines,0 sexuality - while the father or
"w. G. Niederland discoveredand reproducedSchreber'sfather's machines: see especially 'Schreber,

father and son', PsychoanalyticQuarterly, vol. 28 (1959), pp. 151-69. Quite similar instrumentsof
pedagogicaltorture are to be found in the Contessede Segur: thus 'the good behaviorbelt', with an iron
plate for the back and an iron rod to hold the chin in place' (Comedieset proverbes,On ne prend pas
les mouches).
Psychoanalysisand Capitalism 155
mother remainsin the background,from whom the child borrows parts and gears
accordingto his need, and who are there as agentsof transmission,reception,and
interception: kindly agentsof production or suspiciousagentsof antiproduction.
Why was mythic and tragic representationaccordedsuch a senselessprivilege?
Why were expressiveforms and a whole theater installed there where there were
fields, workshops,factories,units of production?The psychoanalystparkshis circus
in the dumbfoundedunconscious,a real P. T. Barnum in the fields and in the
factory. That is what Miller,1 and already Lawrence, have to say against
psychoanalysis(the living are not believers, the seersdo not believe in myth and
tragedy)
[ ... ]
Oedipus(or Hamlet) led to the point of autocritique; the expressiveforms - myth

and tragedy- denouncedas consciousbeliefs or illusions, nothing more than ideas;
the necessityof a scouring of the unconscious,schizoanalysis as a curettageof the
unconscious;the matrical fissure in oppositionto the line of castration;the splendid
affirmation of the orphan-and producer-unconscious; the exaltationof the process
as a schizophrenicprocessof deterritorializationthat must producea new earth; and
even the functioning of the desiring-machinesagainst tragedy, against 'the fatal
dramaof the personality',against'the inevitableconfusionbetweenmaskand actor'.
[ ... ]
Michel Foucault has convincingly shown what break [coupure] introduced the
irruption of productioninto the world of representation.Productioncan be that of
labor or that of desire,it can be social or desiring,it calls forth forces that no longer
permit themselvesto be containedin representation,and it calls forth flows and
breaks that break through representation,traversing it through and through: 'an
2
immenseexpanseof shade'extendedbeneaththe level of representation. And this
collapse or sinking of the classical world of representationis assigneda date by
Foucault: the end of the eighteenthand the beginningof the nineteenthcentury. So
it seemsthat the situation is far more complex than we made it out to be, since
psychoanalysisparticipatesto the highest degreein this discovery of the units of
production, which subjugate all possible representationsrather than being
subordinatedto them. Just as Ricardo founds political or social economy by
discovering quantitativelabor as the principle of every representablevalue, Freud
founds desiring-economyby discoveringthe quantitativelibido as the principle of
every representationof the objectsand aims of desire.Freud discoversthe subjective
nature or abstractessenceof desire just as Ricardo discoversthe subjectivenature
or abstractessenceof labor, beyondall representations that would bind it to objects,
to aims, or evento particular sources.Freudis thus the first to disengagedesireitself
[Ie desir tout court) , as Ricardo disengageslabor itself [Ie travail tout court] , and
thereby the sphere of production that effectively eclipses representation.And
subjective abstract desire, like subjective abstract labor, is inseparablefrom a
movementof deterritorializationthat discoversthe interplay of machinesand their
agentsunderneathall the specific determinationsthat still linked desireor labor to

a given person,to a given object in the framework of representation.
Desiring-productionand machines,psychic apparatusesand machinesof desire,
desiring-machinesand the assemblingof an analytic machinesuitedto decodethem:
the domain of free syntheseswhere everything is possible; partial connections,
included disjunctions, nomadic conjunctions, polyvocal flows and chains, trans-
ductive.:. breaks;the relation of desiring-machinesas formations of the unconscious
with the molar formationsthat they constitutestatisticallyin organizedcrowds; and
the apparatusof social and psychic repressionresulting from these formations -
such is the compositionof the analytic field. And this subrepresentative field will
continue to survive and work, even through Oedipus, even through myth and
tragedy, which nevertheless mark the reconciliation of psychoanalysis with
representation. The fact remains that a conflict cuts across the whole of
psychoanalysis,the conflict betweenmythic and tragic familial representationand
social and desiring-production.For myth and tragedy are systems of symbolic
representations that still refer desireto determinateexterior conditionsas well as to
particular objective codes- the body of the Earth, the despoticbody - and that in
this way confound the discovery of the abstractor subjectiveessence.It has been
remarkedin this context that each time Freud brings to the fore the study of the
psychicapparatuses, the social and desiring-machines,the mechanismsof the drives,
and the institutional mechanisms,his interestin myth and tragedytendsto diminish,
while at the sametime he denouncesin lung, then in Rank, the re-establishmentof
an exterior representationof the essenceof desire as an objective desire, alienated
in myth or tragedy.t
How can this very complex ambivalenceof psychoanalysisbe explained?Several
different things must be distinguished. In the first place, symbolic representation
indeed grasps the essenceof desire, but by referring it to large 'objectities'
[objectitesl t as to the specificelementsthat determineits objects,aims, and sources.
It is in this way that myth ascribesdesireto the elementof the earth as a full body,
and to the territorial code that distributesprescriptionsand prohibitions. Likewise
tragedy ascribesdesire to the full body of the despot and to the corresponding
* For a definition of transductionwith respect to production and representation,see 'Interview/Felix

Guattari', Diacritics: a review of contemporarycriticism, Fall 1974, p. 39: 'Signs work as much as
matter. Matter expressesas much as signs.... Transductionis the idea that, in essence,somethingis
conducted,somethinghappensbetweenchainsof semioticexpression,and materialchains'. [Translators'
note.]
t Didier Anzieu distinguishesbetweentwo periodsin particular: 1906-1920,which 'constitutesthe great
period of mythological works in the history of psychoanalysis';then a period of relative discredit, as
Freudturns toward the problemsof the secondtopography [Translators'note: the id, ego, and superego],
and the relationships between desire and institutions and takes less and less of an interest in a
systematicexploration of myths ('Freud et la mythologie', Incidencesde la psychanalyse,no. 1 [1970],
pp. 126-9).
:j: objectites: This term correspondsto the German Objektitat. The following definition appearsin
Vocabulaire techniqueet critique de la philosophie(Paris: PressesUniversitairesde France,1968): 'the
form in which the thing-in-itself, the real, appearsas an object'. [Translators' note.]
imperial code. Consequently,the understandingof symbolic representationsmay

consist in a systematicphenomenologyof theseelementsand objectities (as in the
old Hellenists or even Jung); or else these representationsmay be understoodby
historical study that assignsthem to their real and objective social conditions (as
with recentHellenists).Viewed in the latter fashion,representationimplies a certain
lag, and expressesless a stable element than the conditioned passagefrom one
elementto another:mythic representationdoesnot expressthe elementof the earth,
but rather the conditions under which this element fades before the despotic
element; and tragic representationdoes not expressthe despotic elementproperly
speaking,but the conditions under which - in fifth-century Greece,for example-
this element diminishes in favor of the new order of the city-state.3 It is obvious
that neither one of these ways of treating myth or tragedy is suited to the
psychoanalyticapproach.The psychoanalyticmethodis quite different: rather than
referring symbolic representationto determinateobjectities and to objective social
conditions, psychoanalysisrefers them to the subjective and universal essenceof
desire as libido. Thus the operation of decoding in psychoanalysiscan no longer
signify what it signifies in the sciencesof man; the discovery of the secretof such
and such a code. Psychoanalysis must undo the codesso as to attain the quantitative
and qualitative flows of libido that traverse dreams, fantasies, and pathological
formations as well as myth, tragedy, and the social formations. Psychoanalytic
interpretationdoesnot consistin competingwith codes,adding a code to the codes
alreadyrecognized,but in decodingin an absoluteway, in eliciting somethingthat
is uncodableby virtue of its polymorphismand its polyvocity. (. It appears,then, that
the interest psychoanalysishas in myth (or in tragedy) is an essentially critical
interest, since the specificity of myth, understoodobjectively, must melt under the
rays of the subjectivelibido: it is indeed the world of representationthat crumbles,
or tends to crumble.
It follows that, in the second place, the link between psychoanalysisand
capitalismis no less profound than that betweenpolitical economyand capitalism.
This discoveryof the decodedand deterritorializedflows is the sameas that which
takesplace for political economyand in social production,in the form of subjective
abstractlabor, and for psychoanalysisand in desiring-production,in the form of
subjective abstract libido. As Marx says, in capitalism the essence becomes
subjective - the activity of production in general - and abstractlabor becomes
somethingreal from which all the precedingsocial formations can be reinterpreted
from the point of view of a generalized decoding or a generalizedprocess of
'·It cannotbe said, therefore,that psychoanalysisaddsa code -a psychologicalone - to the social codes
through which histories and mythologistsexplain myths. Freud pointed this out aproposdreams: it is
not a question of a deciphering process according to a code. In this regard, see JacquesDerrida's
commentsin L'ecriture et la difference(Paris: editions du Seuil, 1967), pp. 310 ff.: 'It is doubtlesstrue
that [dream writing] works with a massof elementscodi/ied in the courseof an individual or collective
history. But in its operations,its lexicon, and its syntax, a purely idiomatic residueremainsirreducible,
that must carry the whole weight of the interpretation,in the communicationamongunconsciouses.The
dreamerinvents his own grammar.'
158 Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari
deterritorialization: 'The simplest abstraction, then, which modern economics

placesat the head of its discussions,and which expressesan immeasurablyancient
relation valid in all forms of society, neverthelessachievespractical truth as an
abstractiononly as a categoryof the most modernsociety.'This is also the casefor
desire as abstractlibido and as subjective essence.Not that a simple parallelism
should be drawn betweencapitalist social production and desiring-production,or
betweenthe flows of money-capitaland the shit-flows of desire. The relationshipis
much closer: desiring-machinesare in social machinesand nowhereelse, so that the
conjunctionof the decodedflows in the capitalist machinetendsto liberate the free
figures of a universal subjective libido. In short, the discovery of an activity of
production in general and without distinction, as it appearsin capitalism, is the
identical discovery of both political economy and psychoanalysis,beyond the
determinatesystemsof representation.
Obviously this doesnot meanthat the capitalist being, or the being in capitalism,
desiresto work or that he works accordingto his desire. But the identity of desire
and labor is not a myth, it is rather the active utopia par excellencethat designates
the capitalistlimit to be overcomethrough desiring-production.But why, precisely,
is desiring-productionsituatedat the alwayscounteractedlimit of capitalism?Why,
at the same time as it discovers the subjective essenceof desire and labor -a
common essence,inasmuch as it is the activity of production in general - is
capitalism continually realienating this essence,and without interruption, in a
repressivemachine that divides the essencein two, and maintains it divided -
abstractlabor on the one hand, abstractdesireon the other: political economyand
psychoanalysis,political economy and libidinal economy? Here we are able to
appreciatethe full extent to which psychoanalysisbelongsto capitalism. For as we
have seen, capitalism indeed has as its limit the decoded flows of desiring-
production, but it never stopsrepelling them by binding them in an axiomatic that
takes the place of the codes. Capitalism is inseparablefrom the movement of
deterritorialization,but this movementis exorcisedthrough factitious and artificial
reterritorializations.Capitalismis constructedon the ruins of the territorial and the
despotic,the mythic and the tragic representations,but it re-establishesthem in its
own service and in anotherform, as imagesof capital.
Marx summarizesthe entire matter by saying that the subjectiveabstractessence
is discoveredby capitalismonly to be put in chains all over again, to be subjugated
and alienated - no longer, it is true, in an exterior and independentelement as
objectity, but in the element, itself subjective, of private property: 'What was
previously being external to oneself - man's externalizationin the thing - has
merely becomethe act of externalizing- the processof alienating.'It is, in fact, the
form of private property that conditions the conjunction of the decoded flows,
which is to say their axiomatizationin a system where the flows of the meansof
production, as the property of the capitalists,is directly related to the flow of so-
called free labor, as the 'property' of the workers (so that the State restrictions on
the substanceor the contentof private property do not at all affect this form). It is
also the form of private property that constitutes the center of the factitious
reterritorializationsof capitalism. And linally, it is this form that produces the

imageslilling the capitalist lield of immanence,'the' capitalist, 'the' worker, etc. In
other terms,capitalismindeedimplies the collapseof the greatobjectivedeterminate
representations,for the benelit of production as the universal interior essence,but
it does not thereby escapethe world of representation.It merely performs a vast
conversionof this world, by attributing to it the new form of an inlinite subjective
representation.~.
We seemto be straying from the main concernof psychoanalysis,yet never have
we been so close. For here again, as we have seenpreviously, it is in the interiority
of its movementthat capitalismrequiresand institutesnot only a social axiomatic,
but an applicationof this axiomatic to the privatized family. Representationwould
never be able to ensureits own conversionwithout this application that furrows
deepinto it, cleavesit, and forces it back upon itself. Thus subjectiveabstractLabor
as representedin private property has, as its correlate,subjectiveabstractDesire as
representedin the privatized family. Psychoanalysisundertakesthe analysisof this
secondterm, as political economyanalyzesthe first. Psychoanalysisis the technique
of application, for which political economy is the axiomatic. In a word, psycho-
analysis disengagesthe second pole in the very movement of capitalism, which
substitutesthe inlinite subjectiverepresentationfor the large determinateobjective
representations.It is in fact essentialthat the limit of the decodedflows of desiring-
production be doubly exorcised, doubly displaced, once by the position of
immanentlimits that capitalismdoes not ceaseto reproduceon an ever expanding
scale, and again by the marking out of an interior limit that reducesthis social
reproductionto restricted familial reproduction.
Consequently,the ambiguity of psychoanalysisin relation to myth or tragedyhas
the following explanation:psychoanalysisundoesthem as objectiverepresentations,
and discoversin them the ligures of a subjectiveuniversallibido; but it reanimates
them, and promotesthem as subjectiverepresentationsthat extendthe mythic and
tragic contentsto inlinity. Psychoanalysisdoestreat myth and tragedy,but it treats
them as the dreamsand the fantasiesof private man, Homo familia - and in fact
dreamand fantasyare to myth and tragedyas private propertyis to public property.
What acts in myth and tragedy at the level of objective elements is therefore
reappropriatedand raisedto a higher level by psychoanalysis,but as an unconscious
dimensionof subjectiverepresentation(myth as humanity'S dream). What acts as
an objective and public element- the Earth, the Despot - is now taken up again,
but as the expressionof a subjectiveand private reterritorialization: Oedipusis the
fallen despot- banished,deterritorialized- but a reterritorializationis engineered,
using the Oedipus complex conceived of as the daddy-mommy-meof today's
everyman.Psychoanalysisand the Oedipuscomplexgatherup all beliefs, all that has
ever been believed by humanity, but only in order to raise it to the condition of a
• Michel Foucault shows that 'the human sciences' found their principle in production and were
constituted on the collapse of representation,but that they immediately re-establisha new type of
representation,as unconsciousrepresentation(The Order of Things [see note 2], pp. 352-67),
denial that preservesbelief without believing in it (it's only a dream: the strictest
piety today asks for nothing more). Whence this double impression, that
psychoanalysisis opposedto mythology no less than to mythologists, but at the
sametime extendsmyth and tragedy to the dimensionsof the subjectiveuniversal:
if Oedipushimself 'has no complex', the Oedipuscomplex has no Oedipus, just as
narcissismhasno Narcissus.,:. Suchis the ambivalencethat traversespsychoanalysis,
and that extendsbeyond the specihcproblem of myth and tragedy: with one hand
psychoanalysisundoesthe system of objective representations(myth, tragedy) for
the benefit of the subjectiveessenceconceivedas desiring-production,while with the
other hand it reversesthis production in a system of subjective representations
(dream and fantasy, with myth and tragedy posited as their developmentsor
projections). Images, nothing but images. What is left in the end is an intimate
familial theater, the theater of private man, which is no longer either desiring-
productionor objectiverepresentation.The unconsciousas a stage.A whole theater
put in the place of production, a theaterthat disfigures this production even more
than could tragedy and myth when reducedto their meagerancient resources.
Myth, tragedy,dream,and fantasy- and myth and tragedyreinterpretedin terms
of dream and fantasy - are the representativeseriesthat psychoanalysissubstitutes
for the line of production: social and desiring-production.A theaterseries,instead
of a production series. But why in fact does representation,having become
subjective representation,assumethis theatrical form (There is a mysterious tie
between psychoanalysisand the theater')? We are familiar with the eminently
modern reply of certain recent authors: the theaterelicits the finite structureof the
infinite subjectiverepresentation.What is meantby 'elicit' is very complex, since the
structurecan never presentmore than its own absence,or representsomethingnot
representedin the representation:but it is claimed that the theater'sprivilege is that
of staging this metaphoricand metonymic causality that marks both the presence
and the absenceof the structures in its effects. While Andre Green expresses
reservationsabout the adequacyof the structure,he does so only in the name of a
theaternecessaryfor the actualizationof this structure,playing the role of revealer,
a place by which the structure becomes visible. t In her hne analysis of the
phenomenonof belief, Octave Mannoni likewise uses the theater model to show
how the denial of belief in fact implies a transformationof belief, under the effect
* Didier Anzieu, 'Freud et la mythologie', pp. 124, 128: 'Freud grants myth no specificity. This is one
of the points that have most seriouslyencumberedthe subsequentrelationsbetweenpsychoanalystsand
anthropologists. . .. Freud undertakes a veritable leveling. ... The article 'On Narcissism: An
Introduction', which constitutes an important step toward the revision of the theory of the drives,
containsno allusion to the myth of Narcissus'.
t Andre Green goes very far in the analysis of the representation-theater-structure-unconscious
relations: Un oeil en trap (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1969), Prologue(especiallyp. 43, concerning'the
representationof the nonrepresented in representation').However, the criticism that Green makesof the
structureis not conductedin the name of production, but in the name of representation,and invokes
the necessityfor extra-structuralfactors that must do nothing more than reveal the structure,and reveal
it as Oedipal.
of a structurethat the theaterembodiesor placeson stage.4 We should understand

that representation,when it ceasesto be objective, when it becomessubjective
infinite - that is to say, imaginary - effectively loses all consistency,unless it is
supportedby a structurethat determinesthe place and the functions of the subject
of representation,as well as the objects representedas images, and the formal
relations between them all. 'Symbolic' thus no longer designatesthe relation of
representationto an objectity as an element;it designatesthe ultimate elementsof
subjective representation, pure signifiers, pure nonrepresentedrepresentatives
whencethe subjects,the objects, and their relationshipsall derive. In this way the
structuredesignatesthe unconsciousof subjectiverepresentation.The seriesof this
representationnow presentsitself: (imaginary) infinite subjective representation-
theatrical representation-structuralrepresentation. And precisely because the
theateris thoughtto stagethe latent structure,as well as to embodyits elementsand
relations, it is in a position to reveal the universality of this structure,even in the
objective representationsthat it salvages and reinterprets in terms of hidden
representatives,their migrations and variable relations. All former beliefs are
gatheredup and revived in the nameof a structureof the unconscious:we are still
pious. Everywhere,the great gameof the symbolic signifier that is embodiedin the
signifieds of the Imaginary - Oedipusas a universal metaphor.
Why the theater?How bizarre, this theatrical and pasteboardunconscious:the
theatertaken as the model of production. Even in Louis Althusserwe are witness
to the following operation: the discovery of social production as 'machine' or
'machinery',irreducible to the world of objective representation[Vorstellung]; but
immediately the reduction of the machine to structure, the identification of
productionwith a structural and theatrical representation[Darstellung].5 Now the
same is true of both desiring-productionand social production: every time that
production,rather than being apprehendedin its originality, in its reality, becomes
reduced [rabattue] in this mannerto a representationalspace,it can no longer have
value exceptby its own absence,and it appearsas a lack within this space.In search
of the structure in psychoanalysis,Moustafa Safouan is able to present it as a
'contributionto a theory of lack'. It is in the structurethat the fusion of desirewith
the impossible is performed, with lack defined as castration. From the structure
there arises the most austeresong in honor of castration - yes, yes, we enter the
order of desirethroughthe gatesof castration- oncedesiring-productionhasspread
out in the space of a representationthat allows it to go on living only as an
absenceand a lack unto itself. For a structural unity is imposed on the desiring-
machinesthat joins them together in a molar aggregate;the partial objects are
referredto a totality that can appearonly as that which the partial objectslack, and
as that which is lacking unto itself while being lacking in them (the Great Signifier
'symbolizableby the inherencyof a -1 in the ensembleof signifiers'). Just how far
will one go in the developmentof a lack of lack traversingthe structure?Such is the
structuraloperation:it distributeslack in the molar aggregate.The limit of desiring-
production - the borderline separatingthe molar aggregatesand their molecular
elements the objective representationsand the machines of desire - is now
162 Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari
completely displaced.The limit now passesonly within the molar aggregateitself,

inasmuchas the latter is furrowed by the line of castration.The formal operations
of the structure are those of extrapolation, application, and biunivocalization,
which reducethe social aggregateof departureto a familial aggregateof destination,
with the familial relation becoming'metaphoricalfor all the others' and hindering
the molecular productive elementsfrom following their own line of escape.
When Andre Green looks for the reasonsthat establishthe affinity of psycho-
analysiswith the theatrical and structural representationit makesvisible, he offers
two that are especially striking: the theater raises the familial relation to the
condition of a universalmetaphoricstructuralrelation, whencethe imaginaryplace
and interplay of personsderives; and inversely, the theaterforces the play and the
working of machinesinto the wings, behind a limit that has become impassible
(exactly as in fantasy the machinesare there, but behind the wall). In short, the
displaced limit no longer passesbetween objective representationand desiring-
production, but between the two poles of subjective representation,as infinite
imaginary representation,and as finite structural representation.Thereafter it is
possible to opposethese two aspectsto each other, the imaginary variations that
tend toward the night of the indeterminate or the nondifferentiated, and the
symbolic invariant that traces the path of the differentiations: the same thing is
found all over, following a rule of inverserelation, or double bind. All of production
is conductedinto the double impasse of subjective representation.Oedipus can
always be consignedto the Imaginary, but no matter, it will be encounteredagain,
strongerand more whole, more lacking and triumphant by the very fact that it is
lacking, it will be encounteredagain in its entirety in symbolic castration.And it's
a sure thing that structure affords us no means for escapingfamilialism; on the
contrary, it adds another turn, it attributes a universal metaphoric value to the
family at the very moment it has lost its objective literal values. Psychoanalysis
makesits ambition clear: to relieve the waning family, to replacethe broken-down
familial bed with the psychoanalyst's couch,to makeit so that the 'analyticsituation'
is incestuousin its essence,so that it is its own proof or voucher, on a par with
Reality.6
In the final analysisthat is indeedwhat is at issue,as OctaveMannoni shows:how
can belief continue after repudiation,how can we continue to be pious? We have
repudiated and lost all our beliefs that proceeded by way of objective
representations.The earth is dead,the desertis growing: the old father is dead,the
territorial father, and the son too, the despotOedipus.We are alone with our bad
conscienceand our boredom, our life where nothing happens;nothing left but
imagesthat revolve within the infinite subjectiverepresentation.We will musterall
our strength so as to believe in these images, from the depths of a structure that
governsour relationshipswith them and our identificationsas so many effects of a
symbolic signifier. The 'good identification'. We are all Archie Bunker at the theater,
shouting out before Oedipus: there's my kind of guy, there's my kind of guy!
Everything, the myth of the earth, the tragedy of the despOl, is taken up again as
shadowsprojected on a stage. The great territorialities have fallen into ruin, but
the structureproceedswith all the subjectiveand private reterritorializations.What

a perverseoperation psychoanalysisis, where this neoidealism,this rehabilitated
cult of castration, this ideology of lack culminates: the anthropomorphic
representationof sex! In truth, they don't know what they are doing, nor what
mechanism of repression they are fostering, for their intentions are often
progressive.But no one today can enteran analyst'sconsultingroom without at least
being aware that everything has been played out in advance: Oedipus and
castration,the Imaginary and the Symbolic, the great lesson of the inadequacyof
being or of dispossession. Psychoanalysis as a gadget, Oedipus as a
reterritorialization, a retimbering of modern man on the 'rock' of castration.
The path markedout by Lacan led in a completely different direction. He is not
contentto turn, like the analytic squirrel, inside the wheel of the Imaginary and the
Symbolic; he refusesto be caughtup in the Oedipal Imaginary and the oedipalizing
structure,the imaginary identity of personsand the structural unity of machines,
everywhereknocking againstthe impassesof a molar representationthat the family
closesround itself. What is the use of going from the imaginary dual order to the
symbolic third (or fourth), if the latter is biunivocalizing whereas the first is
biunivocalized?As partial objects the desiring-machinesundergotwo totalizations,
one when the socius confers on them a structural unity under a symbolic signifier
acting as absenceand lack in an aggregateof departure,the other when the family
imposeson them a personal unity with imaginary signifieds that distribute, that
'vacuolize' lack in an aggregateof destination: a double abduction of the orphan
machines,inasmuchas the structureappliesits articulationto them, inasmuchas the
parentslay their fingers on them. To trace back from imagesto the structurewould
have little significanceand would not rescueus from representation,if the structure
did not have a reverse side that is like the real production of desire.
This reverseside is the 'real inorganization'of the molecular elements: partial
objects that enter into indirect synthesesor interactions,since they are not partial
[partiels] in the senseof extensiveparts, but rather partial ['partiaux'] * like the
intensitiesunderwhich a unit of matteralwaysfills spacein varying degrees(the eye,
the mouth, the anus as degrees of matter); pure positive multiplicities where
everything is possible, without exclusivenessor negation, synthesesoperating
without a plan, where the connectionsare transverse,the disjunctionsincluded, the
conjunctions polyvocal, indifferent to their underlying support, since this matter
that servesthem preciselyas a supportreceivesno specificity from any structuralor
personalunity, but appearsas the body without organsthat fills the spaceeachtime
an intensity fills it; signs of desire that composea signifying chain but that are not
,. partiel: partial, incomplete; partial (pI. partiaux): partial, biased,as biasedjudge.Wehave chosento
translateobjets partiels throughoutas 'partial objects' rather than as 'part-objects'(as in Melanie Klein),
in anticipation of this point in the book where Deleuze and Guattari shift from Klein's concept of the
partial objectsas 'part of, henceas an incompletepart of a lost unity or totality (molar), toward a concept
of the partial objects as biased, evaluating intensities that know no lack and are capable of selecting
organs (molecular). (Translators' note.)
164 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattar-i
themselvessignifying, and do not answerto the rules of a linguistic game of chess,

but instead to the lottery drawings that sometimescause a word to be chosen,
sometimesa design, sometimesa thing or a piece of a thing, dependingon one
another only by the order of the random drawings, and holding together only by
the absence of a link (nonlocalizable connections), having no other statutory
condition than that of being dispersed elements of desiring-machinesthat are
f
themselvesdispersed.· It is this entire reverse side of the structure that Lacan
discovers,with the '0' as machine,and the '0' as nonhumansex: schizophrenizing
the analytic fIeld, insteadof oedipalizing the psychotic fIeld.
Everythinghingeson the way in which the structureis elicited from the machines,
according to planes of consistencyor of structuration,and lines of selection that
correspond to the large statistical aggregatesor molar formations, and that
determine the links and reduce production to representationthat is where the
disjunctions becomeexclusive (and the connectionsglobal, and the conjunctions,
biunivocal), at the sametime that the supportgains a specifIcity under a structural
unity, and the signs themselvesbecomesignifying under the action of a despotic
symbol that totalizes them in the name of its own absenceor withdrawal. Yes, in
fact, there the production of desire can be represented only in terms of an
extrapolatedsign that joins togetherall the elementsof productionin a constellation
of which it is not itself a part. There the absenceof a tie necessarilyappearsas an
absence,and no longer as a positive force. There desire is necessarilyreferred to a
missing term, whose very essenceis to be lacking. The signs of desire, being
nonsignifying, become signifying in representationonly in terms of a signifIer of
absenceor lack. The structureis formed and appearsonly in terms of the symbolic
term defIned as a lack. The great Other as the nonhuman sex gives way, in
representation,to a signifIer of the great Other as an always missing term, the all-
too-humansex, the phallus of molar castration.t
"Lacan, Ecrits (see Note 7), pp. 657-9. Serge Leclaire has made a profound attempt to define within
this perspectivethe reverseside of the structure as the 'pure being of desire' ['La realite du desir'] in
Sexualite humaine (Paris: Aubier, 1970), pp. 242-9. In desire he sees a multiplicity of prepersonal
singularitiesor indifferent elementsthat are defined precisely by the absenceof a link. But this absence
of a link - and of a meaning - is positive, 'it constitutes the specific force of coherenceof this
constellation'.Of course,meaningand link can always be re·established,if only by inserting fragments
assumedto be forgotten: this is even the very function of Oedipus. But 'if the analysis again discovers
the link betweentwo elements,this is a sign that they are not the ultimate, irreducible terms of the
unconscious'.It will be noticed here that Leclaire usesthe exact criterion of real distinction in Spinoza
and Leibniz: the ultimate elements(the infinite attributes)are attributableto God, becausethey do not
dependon one anotherand do not tolerateany relation of oppositionor contradictionamongthemselves.
The absenceof all direct links guaranteestheir common participation in the divine substance.Likewise
for the partial objectsand the body without organs:the body without organsis substanceitself, and the
partial objects, the ultimate attributesor elementsof substance.
t Lacan, Ecrits (seeNote 7), p. 819: 'For want of this signifier, all the otherswould representnothing'. Serge
Leclaire shots how the structure is organizedaround a missing term, or rather a signifier of lack: "It is the
elective signifier of the absenceof a link, the phallus, that we find again in the unique privilege of its relation
to the essenceof lack - an emblem of difference par excellence- the irreducible difference, the difference
betweenthe sexes.... If man can talk, this is becauseat one point in the languagesystemthere is a guarantor
of the irreducibility of lack: the phallic signifier' ('La realite du desir" p. 251). How strangeall this is!
Here too Lacan'sapproachappearsin all its complexity; for it is certain that he

doesnot enclosethe unconsciousin an Oedipal structure.He showson the contrary
that Oedipusis imaginary, nothing but an image, a myth; that this or theseimages
are producedby an oedipalizing structure;that this structureacts only in so far as
it reproducesthe elementof castration,which itself is not imaginary but symbolic.
There we have the three major planes of structuration,which correspondto the
molar aggregates:Oedipus as the imaginary reterritorialization of private man,
produced under the structural conditions of capitalism, inasmuch as capitalism
reproducesand revives the archaismof the imperial symbol or the vanisheddespot.
All three are necessary- preciselyin order to lead Oedipusto the point of its self-
critique. The task undertaken by Lacan is to lead Oedipus to such a point.
(Likewise, ElisabethRoudinescohas clearly seenthat, in Lacan, the hypothesisof
an unconscious-as-Ianguage doesnot closetthe unconsciousin a linguistic structure,
but leadslinguistics to the point of its autocritique,by showing how the structural
organizationof signifi.ers still dependson a despotic Great Signifi.er acting as an
archaism.f
What is this point of self-criticism?It is the point where the structure,beyondthe
imagesthat fi.ll it and the Symbolic that conditions it within representation,reveals
its reverse side as a positive principle of nonconsistencythat dissolves it: where
desireis shifted into the order of production,relatedto its molecularelements,and
where it lacks nothing becauseit is defi.ned as the natural and sensuousobjective
being, at the sametime as the Real is defi.ned as the objective being of desire. For
the unconsciousof schizoanalysisis unawareof persons,aggregates,and laws, and
of images,structures,and symbols. It is an orphan,just as it is an anarchistand an
atheist. It is not an orphan in the sensethat the father's name would designatean
absence,but in the sensethat the unconsciousreproducesitself whereverthe names
of history designatepresentintensities('the seaof proper names').The unconscious
is not fi.gurative, sinceits figural is abstract,the fi.gure-schiz.It is not structural,nor
is it symbolic, for its reality is that of the Real in its very production, in its very
inorganization.It is not representative,but solely machinic, and productive.
Destroy,destroy.The task of schizoanalysis goesby way of destruction-a whole
scouringof the unconscious,a completecurettage.Destroy Oedipus,the illusion of
the ego, the puppetof the superego,guilt, the law, castration.It is not a matter of
pious destructions,such as thoseperformedby psychoanalysisunderthe benevolent
neutral eye of the analyst. For these are Hegel-style destructions, ways of
conserving.How is it that the celebratedneutrality, and what psychoanalysiscalls
- daresto call - the disappearance or the dissolution of the Oedipuscomplex, do
not make us burst into laughter?We are told that Oedipusis indispensable,that it
is the sourceof every possibledifferentiation, and that it savesus from the terrible
nondifferentiatedmother. But this terrible mother, the sphinx, is herself part of
Oedipus;her nondifferentiationis merely the reverseof the exclusivedifferentiations
createdby Oedipus,she is herselfcreatedby Oedipus:Oedipusnecessarilyoperates
in the form of this double impasse.We are told that Oedipusin its turn must be
overcome,and that this is achievedthrough castration,latency, desexualization,
and sublimation. But what is castrationif not still Oedipus,to the nth power, now
symbolic, and thereforeall the more virulent? And what is latency, this pure fable,
if not the silence imposed on desiring-machinesso that Oedipus can develop, be
fortified in us, so that it can accumulateits poisonoussperm and gain the time
necessaryfor propagatingitself, and for passingon to our future children?And what
is the elimination of castrationanxiety in its turn - desexualizationand sublimation
- if not divine acceptanceof, and infinite resignationto, bad conscience,which
consistsfor the womanof 'the appeasedwish for a penis ... destinedto be converted
into a wish for a baby and for a husband',and for the man in assuminghis passive
attitude and in '[subjecting] himself to a father substitute'8
We are all the more 'extricated'from Oedipusas we becomea living example,an
advertisement,a theoremin action, so as to attractour children to Oedipus:we have
evolved in Oedipus,we have beenstructuredin Oedipus,and under the neutral and
benevolenteye of the substitute,we havelearnedthe songof castration,the lack-of-
being-that-is-life; 'yes it is through castration/thatwe gain access/toDeeeeesire'.
What one calls the disappearance of Oedipusis Oedipusbecomean idea. Only the
idea can inject the venom. Oedipus has to becomean idea so that it sproutseach
time a new set of arms and legs, lips and mustache:'In tracing back the "memory
deaths" your ego becomesa sort of mineral theorem which constantly proves the
futility of living. 9 We have been triangulatedin Oedipus,and will triangulatein it
in turn. From the family to the couple, from the couple to the family. In actuality,
the benevolentneutrality of the analystis very limited: it ceasesthe instantone stops
respondingdaddy-mommy. It ceasesthe instant one introduces a little desiring-
machine- the tape-recorder- into the analyst'soffice; it ceasesas soon as a flow
is madeto circulate that doesnot let itself be stoppedby Oedipus,the mark of the
triangle (they tell you you have a libido that is too viscous, or too liquid,
contraindicationsfor analysis).
When Fromm denouncesthe existenceof a psychoanalyticbureaucracy,he still
doesn'tgo far enough, becausehe doesn'tsee what the stamp of this bureaucracy
is, and that an appealto the pre-Oedipalis not enoughto escapethis stamp:the pre-
Oedipal, like the post-Oedipal,is still a way of bringing all of desiring-production
- the anOedipal - back to Oedipus. When Reich denouncesthe way in which
psychoanalysisjoins forces with social repression,he still doesn't go far enough,
becausehe doesn't see that the tie linking psychoanalysiswith capitalism is not
merely ideological, that it is infinitely closer, infinitely tighter; and that
psychoanalysisdependsdirectly on an economicmechanism(whence its relations
with money) through which the decoded flows of desire, as taken up in the
axiomatic of capitalism, must necessarilybe reducedto a familial field where the
application of this axiomatic is carried out: Oedipusas the last word of capitalist
consumption- sucking away at daddy-mommy,being blocked and triangulatedon
the couch; 'So it's ...' Psychoanalysis,no less than the bureaucraticor military
apparatus,is a mechanismfor the absorptionof surplusvalue, nor is this true from
the outside, extrinsically; rather, its very form and its finality are marked by this
social function. It is not the pervert, nor even the autistic person, who escapes
psychoanalysis;the whole of psychoanalysisis an immenseperversion,a drug, a

radical break with reality, starting with the reality of desire; it is a narcissism,a
monstrous autism: the characteristicautism and the intrinsic perversion of the
machine of capital. At its most autistic, psychoanalysisis no longer measured
againstany reality, it no longer opensto any outside, but becomesitself the test of
reality and the guarantorof its own test: reality as the lack to which the inside and
the outside, departureand arrival, are reduced.Psychoanalysisindex sui, with no
other referencethan itself or 'the analytic situation'.
Psychoanalysisstates clearly that unconscious representationcan never be
apprehendedindependentlyof the deformations, disguises, or displacementsit
undergoes.Unconsciousrepresentationthereforecomprisesessentially,by virtue of
its own law, a representedthat is displacedin relation to an agencyin a constant
stateof displacement.But from this, two unwarrantedconclusionsare drawn: that
this agencycan be discoveredby way of the displacedrepresented;and this, precisely
because this agency itself belongs to representation, as a nonrepresented
representative,or as a lack 'that juts out into the overfull [trop-plein] of a
representation'.This resultsfrom the fact that displacementrefers to very different
movements: at times, the movement through which desiring-production is
continually overcomingthe limit, becoming deterritorialized,causing its flows to
escape,going beyondthe thresholdof representation;at times, on the contrary, the
movementthrough which the limit itself is displaced,and now passesto the interior
of the representationthat performsthe artificial reterritorializationsof desire.If the
displacingagencycan be concludedfrom the displaced,this is only true in the second
sense, where molar representationis organized around a representativethat
displacesthe represented.But this is certainly not true in the first sense,where the
molecularelementsare continually passingthrough the links in the chain. We have
seen in this perspectivehow the law of representationperverted the productive
forces of the unconscious,and inducedin its very structurea false imagethat caught
desire in its trap (the impossibility of concluding from the prohibition as to what
is actually prohibited). Yes, Oedipus is indeed the displaced represented;yes,
castration is indeed the representative,the displacing agency [Ie deplar;ant] , the
signifier - but none of that constitutesan unconsciousmaterial, nor does any of it
concernthe productionsof the unconscious.Oedipus,castration,the signifier, etc.,
exist at the crossroadsof two operationsof capture: one where repressivesocial
production becomes replaced by beliefs, the other where represseddesiring-
production finds itself replaced by representations.To be sure, it is not
psychoanalysisthat makesus believe: Oedipusand castrationare demanded,then
demandedagain, and thesedemandscome from elsewhereand from deeperdown.
But psychoanalysisdid find the following means,and fills the following function:
causingbeliefsto survive evenafter repudiation;causingthosewho no longer believe
in anything to continue believing; reconstituting a private territory for them, a
private Urstaat, a private capital (dreamsas capital, said Freud).
That is why, inversely,schizoanalysismust devoteitself with all its strengthto the
necessarydestructions.Destroying beliefs and representations,theatrical scenes.
And when engagedin this task no activity will be too malevolent.CausingOedipus

and castrationto explode, brutally interveningeach time the subject strikes up the
song of myth or intones tragic lines, carrying him back to the factory. As Charlus
says,'A lot we careaboutyour grandmother,you little shit!' Oedipusand castration
are no more than reactional formations, resistances,blockages, and armorings
whosedestructioncan't come fast enough.Reich intuits a fundamentalprinciple of
schizoanalysiswhen he says that the destructionof resistancesmust not wait upon
the discoveryof the material.10 But the reasonfor this is even more radical than he
thought: there is no unconsciousmaterial, so that schizoanalysishas nothing to
interpret. Thereare only resistances,and then machinesdesiring-machines.Oedipus
is a resistance;if we have beenable to speakof the intrinsically pervertednatureof
psychoanalysis,this is due to the fact that perversion in general is the artificial
reterritorializationof the flows of desire,whosemachineson the contraryare indices
of deterritorializedproduction. The psychoanalystreterritorializeson the couch, in
the representationof Oedipusand castration.Schizoanalysison the contrary must
disengagethe deterritorializedflows of desire,in the molecularelementsof desiring-
production. We should again call to mind the practical rule laid down by Leclaire,
following Lacan, the rule of the right to non-senseas well as to the absenceof a link:
you will not have reachedthe ultimate and irreducible terms of the unconsciousso
long as you find or restorea link betweentwo elements.(But how then can one see
in this extremedispersion- machinesdispersedin every machine - nothing more
than a pure 'fiction' that must give way to Reality defined as a lack, with Oedipus
and castrationback at a gallop, at the sametime that one reducesthe absenceof
a link to a 'signifier' of absencechargedwith representingthe absence,with linking
this absenceitself, and with moving us back and forth from one pole of displacement
to the other?One falls back into the molar hole while claiming to unmaskthe real.)
What complicates everything is that there is indeed a necessity for desiring-
productionto be inducedfrom representation,to be discoveredthrough its lines of
escape.But this is true in a way altogether different from what psychoanalysis
believesit to be. The decodedflows of desire form the free energy (libido) of the
desiring-machines.The desiring-machinestake form and train their sights along a
tangentof deterritorializationthat traversesthe representativespheres,and that runs
along the body without organs.Leaving, escaping,but while causingmore escapes.
The desiring-machinesthemselvesare the flows-schizzesor the breaks-flowsthat
break and flow at the sametime on the body without organs:not the gapingwound
representedin castration, but the myriad little connections, disjunctions, and
conjunctionsby which every machine producesa flow in relation to another that
breaksit, and breaksa flow that anotherproduces.But how would thesedecoded
and deterritorializedflows of desiring-productionkeep from being reducedto some
representativeterritoriality, how would they keep from forming for themselvesyet
anothersuch territory, even if on the body without organsas the indifferent support
for a last representation?Even those who are best at 'leaving', those who make
leaving into somethingas natural as being born or dying, thosewho set out in search
of nonhumansex - Lawrence, Miller - stake out a far-off territoriality that still
forms an anthropomorphicand phallic representation:the Orient, Mexico, or Peru.

Even the schizo'sstroll or voyage does not effect great deterritorializationswithout
borrowing from territorial circuits: the tottering walk of Molloy and his bicycle
preservesthe mother'sroom as the vestige of a goal; the vacillating spirals of The
Unnamablekeepthe familial tower as an uncertaincenterwhereit continuesto turn
while treading its own underfoot; the infinite seriesof juxtaposedand unlocalized
parks in Watt still containsa referenceto Mr Knott's house,the only one capable
of 'pushingthe soul out-of-doors',but also of summoningit back to its place. We
are all little dogs, we needcircuits, and we needto be taken for walks. Even those
best able to disconnect,to unplug themselves,enter into connectionsof desiring-
machinesthat re-form little earths. Even Gisela Pankow's great deterritorialized
subjects are led to discover the image of a family castle under the roots of the
uprooted tree that crossesthrough their body without organsY
Previously we distinguished two poles of delirium, one as the molecular
schizophrenicline of escape,and the other as the paranoiacmolar investment.But
the perverted pole is equally opposed to the schizophrenic pole, just as the
reconstitutionof territorialities is opposedto the movementof deterritorialization.
And if perversionin the narrowestsenseof the word performsa certainvery specific
type of reterritorialization within the artifice, perversion in the broad sense
comprisesall the types of reterritorializations,not merely artificial, but also exotic,
archaic, residual, private, etc.: thus Oedipus and psychoanalysisas perversion.
Even RaymondRoussel'sschizophrenicmachinesturn into perversemachinesin a
theaterrepresentingAfrica. In short, there is no deterritorializationof the flows of
schizophrenicdesirethat is not accompaniedby global or local reterritorializations,
reterritorializationsthat alwaysreconstituteshoresof representation.What is more,
the force and the obstinacyof a deterritorializationcan only be evaluatedthrough
the types of reterritorializationthat representit; the one is the reverseside of the
other. Our loves are complexesof deterritorializationand reterritorialization.What
we love is always a certain mulatto - male or female. The movement of
deterritorializationcan never be graspedin itself, one can only grasp its indices in
relation to the territorial representations.Take the exampleof dreams:yes, dreams
are Oedipal, and this comes as no surprise, since dreams are a perverse
reterritorializationin relation to the deterritorializationof sleepand nightmares.But
why return to dreams, why turn them into the royal road of desire and the
unconscious,when they are in fact the manifestationof a superego,a superpowerful
and superarchaizedego (the Urszeneof the Urstaat)? Yet at the heart of dreams
themselves - as with fantasy and delirium - machines function as indices of
deterritorialization.In dreamsthere are always machinesendowedwith the strange
property of passingfrom hand to hand, of escapingand causingcirculations, of
carrying and being carried away. The airplane of parentalcoitus, the father's car,
the grandmother'ssewing machine, the little brother's bicycle, all objects of flight
and theft, stealingand stealingaway - the machineis always infernal in the family
dream.The machineintroducesbreaksand flows that preventthe dreamfrom being
reconfinedin its sceneand systematizedwithin its representation.It makesthe most
of an irreducible factor of non-sense,which will develop elsewhere and from

without, in the conjunctionsof the real as such. Psychoanalysis,with its Oedipal
stubbornness,has only a dim understandingof this; for one reterritorializes on
personsand surroundings,but one deterritorializeson machines.Is it Schreber's
father who acts through machines,or on the contrary is it the machinesthemselves
that function through the father? Psychoanalysissettles on the imaginary and
structural representativesof reterritorialization, while schizoanalysisfollows the
mechanic indices of deterritorialization. The opposition still holds between the
neurotic on the couch - as an ultimate and sterile land, the last exhaustedcolony
and the schizo out for a walk in a deterritorializedcircuit.
[ ...J
The only thing that can save us from theseimpassesis an effective politicization
of psychiatry. And doubtless,with R.D. Laing and David Cooper antipsychiatry
went very far in this direction. But it seemsto us that they still conceive of this
politicization in terms of the structureand the event, rather than the processitself.
Furthermore,they localize social and mental alienation on a single line, and tend
to considerthem as identical by showinghow the familial agent extends the one into
the other.,:- Betweenthe two, however,the relationshipis rather that of an included
disjunction. This is becausethe decodingand the deterritorializationof flows define
the very processof capitalism - that is, its essence,its tendency,and its external
limit. But we know that the processis continually interrupted, or the tendency
counteracted, or the limit displaced, by subjective reterritorializations and
representationsthat operate as much at the level of capital as a subject (the
axiomatic), as at the level of the personsserving as capital's agents(application of
the axiomatic). But we seekin vain to assignsocial alienationand mental alienation
to one side or the other, as long as we establisha relation of exclusion betweenthe
two. The deterritorialization of flows in general effectively merges with mental
alienation, inasmuchas it includes the reterritorializationsthat permit it to subsist
only as the stateof a particular flow, a flow of madnessthat is defined thus because
it is chargedwith representingwhateverescapesthe axiomaticsand the applications
of reterritorialization in other flows. Inversely, one can find the form of social
alienation in action in all the reterritorializationsof capitalism, inasmuchas they
keep the flows from escapingthe system, and maintain labor in the axiomatic
framework of property, and desire in the applied framework of the family; but this
social alienationincludesin its turn mental alienation,which finds itself represented
or reterritorializedin neurosis,perversion,and psychosis(the mental illnesses).
. ,David Cooper, 'Alienation mentaIe et alienation sociale', Recherches,December 1968, pp.48-9:

'Social alienation comes for the most part to overlap the diverse forms of mental alienation.... Those
admitted into a psychiatrichospital are admitted not so much becausethey are sick, as becausethey are
protestingin a more or less adequateway againstthe social order. The social systemin which they are
caughtthereby comesto reinforce the damageswrought by the familial system in which they grew up.
This autonomythat they seek to affirm with regard to a microsociety acts as an indicator of a massive
alienation performed by society as a whole'.
A true politics of psychiatry, or antipsychiatry, would consist therefore in the

following praxis: (1) undoing all the reterritorializationsthat transform madness
into mental illness; (2) liberating the schizoidmovementof deterritorializationin all
the flows, in such a way that this characteristiccan no longer qualify a particular
residueas a flow of madness,but affects just as well. the flows of labor and desire,
of production, knowledge, and creation in their most profound tendency. Here,
madnesswould no longer exist as madness,not becauseit would have been
transformedinto 'mental illness', but on the contrary becauseit would receive the
supportof all the other flows, including scienceand art - onceit is said that madness
is called madnessand appearsas such only becauseit is deprived of this support,
and finds itself reducedto testifying all alone for deterritorializationas a universal
process.It is merely its unwarrantedprivilege, a privilege beyondits capacities,that
rendersit mad. In this perspectiveFoucaultannouncedan agewhen madnesswould
disappear,not becauseit would be lodged within the controlled spaceof mental
illness ('great tepid aquariums'), but on the contrary becausethe exterior limit
designatedby madnesswould be overcomeby meansof other flows escapingcontrol
on all sides, and carrying us along.*
It should thereforebe said that one can never go far enough in the direction of
deterritorialization: you haven't seen anything yet - an irreversible process.And
when we considerwhat there is of a profoundly artificial nature in the perverted
reterritorializations,but also in the psychoticreterritorializationsof the hospital, or
even the familial neurotic reterritorializations,we cry out, 'More perversion! More
artifice!' - to a point where the earth becomesso artificial that the movementof
deterritorializationcreatesof necessityand by itself a new earth. Psychoanalysisis
especiallysatisfying in this regard: its entire pervertedpractice of the cure consists
in transforming familial neurosis into artificial neurosis (of transference),and in
exalting the couch, a little island with its commander,the psychoanalyst,as an
autonomousterritoriality of the ultimate artifice. A little additional effort is enough
to overturn everything, and to lead us finally toward other far-off places. The
schizoanalyticflick of the finger, which restartsthe movement,links up again with
the tendency,and pushesthe simulacrato a point where they ceasebeing artificial
images to becomeindices of the new world. That is what the completion of the
processis: not a promisedand a pre-existingland, but a world createdin the process
of its tendency,its coming undone, its deterritorialization. The movementof the
theaterof cruelty; for it is the only theaterof production,there wherethe flows cross
the thresholdof deterritorializationand producethe new land - not at all a hope,
but a simple 'finding', a 'finished design',where the personwho escapescausesother
escapes,and marks out the land while deterritorializinghimself. An active point of
escapewherethe revolutionarymachine,the artistic machine,the scientific machine,
and the (schizo) analytic machine becomeparts and piecesof one another.
* Michel Foucault, 'La folie, l'absenced'oeuvre', La Table ronde, May 1964: 'Everything that we
experiencetoday in the mode of the limit, or of strangeness,
or of the unbearable,will have joined again
with the serenity of the positive'.
Notes
1. Henry Miller, Hamlet (Puerto Rico: Carrefour, 1939), vol. 1, pp. 124-9.
2. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: RandomHouse, 1970), pp. 208-11
(on the oppositionbetweendesireor desiring-productionand representation);pp. 253-6
(on the opposition betweensocial production and representation,in Adam Smith and
especially Ricardo).
3. On myth as the expressionof the organizationof a despoticpower that repressesthe
Earth, see Jean-PierreVernant, Les origines de la penseegrecque (Paris: Presses
Universitairesde France, 1962), pp. 109-16; and on tragedy as the expressionof an
organizationof the city-statethat repressesin its turn the fallen despot,Vernant, 'Oedipe
sans complexe', Raison presente,August 1967.
4. OctaveMannoni Clefs pour l'imaginaire ou l'autre scene(Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969),
Chs 1 and 7.
5. Louis Althusserand EtienneBalibar, ReadingCapital, trans. Ben Brewster(New York:
Pantheon,1970).
6. SergeLeclaire, DemasquerIe reel (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1971), pp. 28-3l.
7. Elisabeth Roudinesco,'L'action d'une metaphore',La Pensee,February 1972. See in
JacquesLacan, fcrits (Paris: Editions du Seuil), p. 821, the way in which Lacan raises
the idea of a 'signifier of the lack of this symbol' above the 'zero symbol', taken in its
linguistic sense.
8. Sigmund Freud, 'Analysis terminable and interminable', Standard Edition, vol. 23,
pp.251-2.
9. Miller, Hamlet, pp. 124-5.
10. Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm, trans. Vincent R. Carfagno(New York:
Simon & Schuster,1973), pp. 167-8. Seealso Wilhelm Reich, CharacterAnalysis(New
York: Simon & Schuster,1974).
11. Gisela Pankow, L'hommeet sa psychose(Paris: Aubier, 1969), pp. 68-72. And on the
role of the house:'La dynamiquede ]'espaceet Ie tempsvecu', Critique, February1972.
3 0 F e m in is m
Introduction
Probably more than in any other field of theory, feminists have forwarded their
projects methodologically through collaboration and argument. Reading 3.1 by
Heidi Hartmannis typical in this respect.Sheestablishesa position by working off,
with and againstother positionswithin socialist feminism and Marxism. Similarly,
the locating of texts by Kristeva (Reading 1. 3 ), Schor (Reading 2.5), Millett
(Reading 2.3), Mouffe (Reading 4.7), Irigaray (Reading 5.6), and Benhabib
(Reading 5.3) in other Sections at least illustrates the necessityfor feminists to
intervene in areas such as structuralism and post-structuralism,psychoanalytic
theory, Marxism and postmodernism.Nevertheless,the casefor a separatesection
on feminism is, if anything, strongerthan for any other body of texts, and may even
be analogousto claims which can be madeon behalfof Critical Theory vis-a-vis the
more context-specific,historically located activity of Cultural Studies.Even in this
century, there are plenty of examplesof periods when women were highly visible
in social and political life at local and even national level, but feminism was unable
to achieve much explanatory purchase,unable to become Theory (see Tallack,
1987). Although this Sectioncannotsurvey the current state of feminism, the role
of feminism as Theory is an underlying concern, as is the basis of feminism as
position in its intersectionswith other theoretical positions representedin this
Reader. In addition to the relations with Marxism examinedby Hartmann, the
precedingSectionsconfirm - if confirmation is needed- that feminism has been
significantly involved in the argumentsof post-structuralismand psychoanalytic
theory. It is also apparent from the Readings that a feminism of difference -
meaningboth the explorationand celebrationof varying degreesof separatismfrom
the larger society,or from projectswhoseassumptionsare implicitly definedby men,
as well as the claims madeby womenof colour - hasquestionedthe tenetsand ways
of thinking associatedwith earlierfeminists - Betty Friedan,Kate Millett, Shulamith
Firestoneand, to a lesserextent, Simone de Beauvoir.
The Readingfrom SexualPolitics (2.3) is a trenchantcritique of Freud (too easily
overlookedin the contextof language-based readingsof Freud), but doesnot do any
justice to Kate Millett's formulation of patriarchy:
the relationship betweenthe sexesis indeed a political one which involves the general
control of one collectivity, defmed by birth, over anothercollectivity, also defmed by
birth. Groups who rule by birthright are fast disappearing,yet there remains one
ancient and universal schemefor the dominationof one birth group by another- the
175
176 Feminism
schemethat prevails in the areaof sex. '" [It is] sturdierthan any form of segregation,
and more rigorous than class stratification, more uniform, cenainly more enduring.
(Millett, 1971, pp. 24,25)
While this is not an original theoretical insight, the distinction between sex and
genderwhich Millett goeson to articulategives the theoreticalimpetusto prise the
causeof women away from argumentsanchoredin biology. However, there have
beenobjectionsto Millett's apparentlytranshistoricaldefinition of patriarchy. It is
true, as Simonede Beauvoirobservesin The SecondSex,that womenhave not been
producedby history, as the traditional classeshave, and that patriarchypersists;yet
its configuration, and thereforeits meaning,have changed.Moreover, class in the
traditional sensedoesnot disappearas a conceptwithin either the male or the female
sphere.Most importantly for feminism, patriarchyis not so all-encompassingthat
women have been unable to criticise and opposeit. The historical dimension of
patriarchy- within which the gender-but not sex-definedwoman must function in
Millett's analysis - has been examined with particular care when Marxism and
feminism have beenin dialogueor in dispute,as Hartmann'saccountdemonstrates.
In another of the classicsof feminism, The Dialectic of Sex (1970) Shulamith
Firestone finds the materialist basis for patriarchy which Millett's theory
undoubtedly requires in a very particular interpretation of Friedrich Engels's
accountof the exploitation of female reproductivelabour by men:
Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeksthe ultimate
causeand the great moving power of all historical eventsin the dialectic of sex: the
division of societyinto two distinct biological classesfor procreativereproduction,and
the strugglesof theseclassesone with another;in the changesin the modesof marriage,
reproductionand childcare. (Firestone,1970, p. 20)
And later, in equally familiar language: 'the sexual-reproductiveorganization of

society always furnishesthe real basis,starting from which we alone can work out
the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructureof economic, juridical and
political institutions as well as the religious, philosophicaland other ideasof a given
period' (Firestone, 1970, p. 21), But this is to overlook the determining role of
economic conditions and to substitute biology, with the result that only by
technologically solving the realities of reproduction can any kind of dialectic of
liberation be envisaged.
A more thoroughgoinghistoricisationof patriarchythan Firestone'sneeds,in the
first instance, to move closer to Marx and Engels's broader definition of
materialism,understoodas a relationshipto economicdevelopmentleading to the
formation of, and struggle between,classes.In Juliet Mitchell's Woman'sEstate,
Marx and Engels are followed up to a point; that is to say, economicdeterminants
are acceptedfor the larger society and, in part, to explain women's position.
However, Mitchell maintains that whatever progressis made towards economic
equality, the family still functions ideologically - whereupon she introducesthe
Introduction 177
psychodramaof the family romance,discussedin the Introduction to Section2. To

some degree, this is the different kind of approach - less materialist than
psychoanalyticand ideological - which is required to explain why women occupy
the subordinate positions. But Heidi Hartmann's charge is that male-female
relations do have a material basis, though one which is slighted by Marxism's
emphasisupon the link betweensocial relationsand capital. Marxism gives too little
attentionto women'sexploitation as labourersin the home as well as in paid work,
a problemwhich has hardly disappearedwhen socialismor communismhasbecome
dominant. At the crossover points, when women enter the paid labour force,
Marxism's 'reservearmy' theory is invaluable, but once they are removedfrom the
labour market (as at the end of both World Wars) women slip out of focus, and the
questionsWhy is the domesticspherewomen's?and At what points are the interests
of capital at odds with the interestsof its male workers vis-a-vis 'their' women? are
not answered.According to Hartmann:
the categoriesof Marxist analysis... do not explain why particularpeoplefill particular

places.They give no cluesaboutwhy womenare subordinateto meninside and outside
the family and why it is not the other way around.Marxist categories,like capital itself,
are sex-blind. (Hartmann, 1981, pp. 10-11)
Much of the work broadly classified as socialist feminism has come out of an
Anglo-Americantradition. Michele Barrett, Sheila Rowbotham,Lydia Sargent,Iris
Young and Zillah Eisenstein,as well as Mitchell and Hartmann, come to mind.
However, in the absenceof a Readingby her, it is especiallyimportant to comment
on the contribution of Christine Delphy. Her work in a largely French intellectual
tradition allows for a more direct comparison between post-structuralistand
psychoanalyticfeminism and socialist feminism. In the essayscollected in 1984 as
Close to Home: A materialistanalysisof women'soppression,Delphy goesback to
Marx and Engels - not to identify occasionalinstancesof feminist awareness,but
to borrow and re-useconceptswhich, in the accountof capitalist relations,describe
relationsbetweenmen and women, primarily within the institution of marriageand
the family: the appropriationof the woman's(unpaid)labour and the accompanying
modes of domestic production; and the organisationof sexuality. Delphy's work
should therefore be distinguishedfrom argumentswhich situate the family wholly
in the context of capitalism. Her distinct preferencefor economic relationsbetween
men and womenas the causeof patriarchy,rather than the rule of the father (family
business rather than family romance), puts her at odds with psychoanalytic
feminists, while her rejection of biological explanationsas reductiveputs her at odds
with theorists of difference who have celebratedthe female world:
One of the axioms if not the fundamentalaxiom of my approachis that women and
men are social groups. I start from the incontestablefact that they are socially named,
socially differentiated, and socially pertinent and I seek to understandthese social
practices ... it is women and men that interest me, not females and males. (Delphy,
1984; p. 24)
178 Feminism
Delphy's work reveals a different dimension to French feminism in which

economicallygroundedpower relations, not the body, take priority.
Monique Wittig (see Reading 3.5) started the journal Questionsjeministes in
1977with ChristineDelphy (and Simonede Beauvoir),and they sharemany specific
views - for instancethat, in Wittig's words, 'there is no "feminine" writing'; as well
as a similar constructionistobjectionto naturalisingexplanations:namelythat when
differenceis discussed- particularly within the psychoanalyticcontext favoured by
Irigaray and Cixous - this is liable to reinforce hierarchies. Wittig sets out the
constructionistposition with no qualifications:
A materialist feminist approachshows that what we take for the causeor origin of
oppressionis in fact only the mark imposedby the oppressor... what we believe to be
a physical and direct perception is only a sophisticatedand mythic construction,an
'imaginary formation' which reinterpretsphysical features ... through the network of
relationships in which they are perceived. (They are seen black, therefore they are
black; they are seenas women,thereforethey are women. But before being seenthat
way, they had fIrst to be made that way.) (Wittig, 1992, pp. 11-12)
Difference is a social construct, produced by the heterosexualregime of 'the

straight mind'. Psychoanalytictheory is attackedas taking 'for granted that what
founds society, any society, is heterosexuality'(Wittig, 1992, p. 24). Hence the
importance,in Wittig's writings, of the lesbian who, for the straight mind, is not
a woman at all: 'lesbiansare not women' is the startling conclusionto 'The Straight
Mind', meaningthat they are not dependentupon men, this being the heterosexual
definition of women. The lesbian, therefore, is proof of the social constructionist
positions: 'a lesbian has to be somethingelse, a not-woman,a not-man, a product
of society, not a product of nature, for there is no naturein society' (Wittig, 1992,
p. 13). To see the full importance - and some of the difficulties - of Wittig's
position: her work may be comparedand contrastedwith AdrienneRich's definition
of lesbianismas part of a continuumof 'woman-identifiedexperience'.In this sense,
for Rich, 'all women are lesbians',a proposalwhich dependsfor its political efficacy
upon the expansionof 'the erotic choice' to be a lesbian into 'consciouswoman-
identification' (Rich, 1980a, p. 659). Oddly, Wittig has to be definitive about 'the
lesbian'in orderto revealthe essentialismof otherconcepts.In EssentiallySpeaking,
Diana Fuss's acute consideration of the contradictions in Wittig leads her to
concludethat:
As a materialist, Wittig states unequivocally that nothing exists prior to or outside

matter, yet, as an anti-essentialist,she also suggeststhat the body is not matter - at
least not in any pure or natural sense - but rather is a pure social construction.
Obviously what we need to say here, as Wittig does, is that matter is itself socially
constructed.But one can talk about the body as matter, it seemsto me, without
presumingthat matter has an essence.Most anti-essentialists,however, are hesitantto
discussthe body at all for fear of soundingessentializing.This caution leads Wittig,
in the end, to elide the material body almost completely, and she achievesthis lacuna
Introduction 179
by effecting a nearly imperceptible slippage from the formulation 'the body is not
matter'tothe position 'the body does not matter': it matters not. (Fuss, 1989, p. 50)
With the help of Adrienne Rich's distinction between'the body' and 'my body', Fuss
goes on to maintain that to talk about the body seemsmore essentialistbut is
actually an abstraction;whereasto talk about one'sown body is less totalising and
essentialist,more specific and local and variable - but more material. It makes -
as Fuss puts it - the body matter, and it gives a position from which to speak(see
Fuss, 1989, pp. 52-3).
Helene Cixous (see Reading3.2) is the target of many of Wittig's and Delphy's
criticisms. In part, this has to do with the intellectual context which informs
Cixous'swork and which only occasionally,and then in a rather unproductiveway,
abuts materialist, socialist feminism. For instance, Cixous's challenge to binary
thinking in 'Sorties' (1975; see Cixous and Clement, 1986) is an important part of
the internal revolution against structuralism. Cixous, like Derrida, argues that
oppositions,and especially the opposition betweenmale and female, are never in
equilibrium but always denotethe exertionof power, one term over the other. And,
along with Kristeva (at least from Revolution in Poetic Languageonwards) and
Irigaray, Cixous draws heavily on Lacan. However, it is still the larger project of
women'sliberation from patriarchy which guides Cixous's involvement with other
theoretical positions.
For all that 'difference'is a helpful notion for Cixous, her understandingand use
of language is finally different from Derrida's. While both acknowledge the
hierarchiesof binary pairings, Derrida unsettlesthem - albeit temporarily - by
reading againstthe dominant structuresof any system,whereasCixous wishes to
releasethe potential in the secondaryterm. Her aim is partially realisablethrough
what has come to be generalisedas ecriture jeminine. This is a conceptmore to be
enactedthan to be defined, lest a rational(ising) discoursetake over and reinstate
the priority of one term in an opposition ('Head' over 'Emotions','Intelligible' over
'Sensitive',for instance).Cixous'sown writing slips betweengenres,most commonly
poetic prose and philosophical categorising (which she handles easily when
required). Facedby objectionsthat she is essentialisinga category,she replies that
she has been misreadwithin a philosophicalmode of expression.It is a version of
the heresy of paraphrasewith which poetic knowledge has often been defended.
Even so, alongsideDerrida, Cixous does seemto give free rein to what she seesas
a female economyof writing which seeksto separateone term in any opposition
from the other, whereasDerrida insists that the implication of one with the other
is the real challengeto metaphysicalthinking. A woman 'physically materializes
what she's thinking; she signifies it with her body. In a certain way she inscribes
what she's saying, because she doesn't deny her drives the intractable and
impassionedpart they have in speaking'(Cixous, 1981, p. 251). Femininesexuality
and feminine writing are heterogeneous, varied. But it is when Cixous is compared
with Lacanthat the full significanceof speakingthe body becomesapparent,because
she favours the pre-Oedipal Imaginary and its symbiotic relationship with the
180 Feminism
mother over Lacan's orientation towards the Symbolic. To speak the body, for
Cixous, is to articulatea different way of being from that underthe Symbolic Order.
'Then,' she remarks, 'all the stories would have to be told differently, the future
would be incalculable, the historical forces would, will, change hands, bodies;
anotherthinking as yet not thinkable will transform the functioning of all society'
(Cixous, 1981, p. 93).
In 'French feminism in an internationalframe', publishedin 1981 and included
in In Other Worlds, Gayatri Spivak (see Reading3.3) wonders about the value of
feminist and avant-gardisttheory more generallywhen they are brought up against
other cultures. Accordingly, she offers a detailed critique of Kristeva's About
ChineseWomen,while Cixous'swork is picked out for particular criticism because
of the coincidencebetweenthe desire to liberate a feminine voice and avant-garde
literary practice. In a contrastingregister - oddly, one which is closer to Cixous's
- Trinh T. Minh-ha (Reading3.4) movesbetweentheory and speculationto pursue
Spivak's critique, regretting, in passing,the discrimination levelled againstwomen
of colour by white, First/SecondWorld feminists. Dual systemsanalysis, which
measuresthe relative explanatorypower of the conceptsof class and gender, is
shownto be largely blind to race,ethnicity and nation. Trinh draws upon the advice
of Audre Lorde (see Lorde, 1984) and BarbaraSmith (see Hull, Scott and Smith,
1982), amongothersworking on Afro-American feminism, to arguethat 'difference'
and 'authenticity' too easily become 'division' in academic discourse, and that
differenceneedsto be reconceptualisedby feminism in a cross-culturalperspective.
She also points out the drawbacks- notably for women who are at least doubly
disadvantaged- in opting for Kristeva's '''negative'' feminist practice which
continuously reminds us that "woman cannot be" or that we can no more speak
about "woman" than "man'" (Trinh, 1989, pp. 103-4). The necessityfor political
action and a 'politics of location' (Adrienne Rich's phrase)also sharpensSpivak's
perspectiveupon negativity and positivity. One of the consequences of her critical
survey of French feminism, with its post-structuralistorientation, is that she feels
obliged to define her relationshipto Derrideandeconstruction,acknowledgingthat
thereare limits to the negativity of deconstuctionand its ability to remain undecided
and in free play and, in response,delineating its 'positive' potential in a more
explicitly political and historical context than she finds in much theory.
Post-structuralism,techno-feminism,the theorisation of difference from within
feminism, and writing the body are all aspectsof a reactionto 1970sfeminism. The
final reaction, representedby Carol Gilligan's work (Reading3.6), is similar in a
very broad senseto ecriture feminine, inasmuchas it is woman-centred,but firmly
in an Anglo-American context - and this, perhaps,makes all the difference. To
accept as the standard of liberation the achievementof an androgynousstate
underminesthe basisupon which women had come togetherand, effectively, denies
women's experience. A further dimension of this change of tack, away from
constructivism,is that women'sexperienceand values can be seenas an indication
of what could ensue if the demandsof the women's movement were met and a
male-dominatedsocietywere reformedor overturned.For instance,Adrienne Rich's
Introduction 181
Of Woman Born, published in 1976, instigates a series of enqulfles into the

relationshipbetweenfeminism and motherhood,a topic which Firestone'sDialectic
of Sex had seemedto legislateagainstfrom within radical feminism. Rich's solution
is to distinguish betweenthe experienceof mothering and how motherhoodas an
institution serves to maintain male power over women. The destruction of the
institution of motherhood - and Rich recognises the need for alternative
socioeconomicinstitutions that would free women - would be followed by almost
unthought-ofbenefits for women, similar to those describedby Irigaray and, more
intangibly, by Cixous:
I am really asking whether women cannot begin, at last, to think through the body,
to connectwhat has beenso cruelly disorganized- our great mental capacities,hardly
used; our highly developed tactile sense; our genius for close observation; our
complicated,pain-enduring,multi-pleasuredphysicality. (Rich, 1976, p. 284)
Although Carol Gilligan is also intent upon defendingthe particularity of women,

her accountof women'sconceptionof morality takessociety, rather than a separate
woman-centredexistence,as the larger context. To this extent, at least, shemay be
comparedwith Dorothy Dinnersteinand Nancy Chodorowwho, in different ways,
proposethat the reform of society - and, within it, female-malerelations - is best
servedby dual parenting. Dinnerstein(in The Mermaid and the Minotaur [1976])
and Chodorow (in The Reproduction of Mothering [1978]) go in search of
explanationsfor why women and men are different, and find their answersin the
pre-oedipalstageand women'smonopoly of mothering,while male genderidentity
is thought to be formed out of separationand autonomy. Not unexpectedly,their
work has fed into and stimulatedthe kinds of essentialist/non-essentialist
discussions
which have marked much of the theory summarisedso far. Gilligan, however,
concentratesupon the downgradingand evenexclusionof women'smoral views and
ways of reasoning. Her own situation, as a student of psychologist Lawrence
Kohlberg being taught to follow Kohlberg's six stages of human development,
illustrates the way in which male views of morality-as-justice are taken as
synonymouswith the human response.Society is the poorer, Gilligan proposes.In
a Different Voice (1982) is basedon a casestudy of a group of twenty-ninewomen
explaining their decision to have or not have an abortion. That her sample was
sufficiently varied in age, ethnicity, class, and marital status suggests that,
notwithstandingher reluctanceto make such a claim, the version of the moral self
emerging from the case study is a distinctively gendered one. Her case-study
approachalso lends itself to the conclusion that circumstancesare crucial in how
women reach a moral decision,while men abstractfrom the situation and focus on
rights. This, though, has led to the retort that the ethics of care associatedwith
women is a consequenceof circumstances:women cope with and survive a
patriarchalsociety by the processof reasoningwhich Gilligan describes.
Gilligan, Chodorow and Dinnersteinprovide helpful comparisonsand contrasts
with the textualist and materialistfeminismswhich have beenso influential over the
182 Feminism
past fifteen years. However - looking aheadto the final Section of this Reader-
Gilligan's work seemsto be having a delayed impact upon communicativeethics.
For Seyla Benhabib (Reading 5.3), a contributor to this issue in her own right,
Gilligan's researchinto the reversibility of perspectivesin women'sreasoning(or, to
be morecircumspect,in the reasoningof the women whom Gilligan studied) offers
an antidoteto the communicativerationality which Jiirgen Habermashaspromoted
to deal with the down side of post-foundational theory. Gilligan deals with
particularitiesrather than the generalitiesof her mentor, LawrenceKohlberg, and
has a conceptof the other which is vital to any communicativeethics. It would be
in the spirit of Gilligan's work, but also of Diana Fuss'simportant attemptto clarify
the drawbacksof anti-essentialism(the drawbacksof essentialismare already well
known), that the localisedand ideologically inflected findings in In a Different Voice
be subject to a process of translation, redescription and negotiation. Even the
limited task of placing a theoretical text in a context (here, feminism), and then
reflecting upon the validity of that decision, bears upon that process and upon
feminism. With her own project in mind in Situating the Self(1992),Benhabibasks:
Is it possible to reconcile the insight of feminist theory that genderdifference is both

central and ubiquitous in our lives with the kind of interactiveuniversalismadvocated
in this book? Is not universalism of any sort, whether Kantian or Habermasian,
incompatiblewith the goals and insights of feminism? (Benhabib, 1992, p. 146)
3.1 D The Unhappy
Marriage of Marxism
and Feminism: towards
a more progressive
unzon
Heidi Hartmann
The 'marriage'of Marxism and feminism has beenlike the marriageof husbandand
wife depictedin English commonlaw: Marxism and feminism are one, and that one
is Marxism.1 Recent attempts to integrate Marxism and feminism are
unsatisfactoryto us as feminists becausethey subsumethe feminist struggleinto the
'larger' struggle against capital. To continue our simile further, either we need a
healthier marriageor we need a divorce.
The inequalitiesin this marriage,like most social phenomena,are no accident.
Many Marxists typically argue that feminism is at best less important than class
conflict and at worst divisive of the working class. This political stanceproducesan
analysisthat absorbsfeminism into the classstruggle. Moreover,the analytic power
Earlier drafts of this essayappearedin 1975 and 1977 co-authoredwith Amy B. Bridges. Unfortunately,
becauseof the pressof current commitments,Amy was unableto continuewith this project, joint from
its inception and throughoutmost of its long and controversialhistory. Over the yearsmany individuals
and groups offered us comments,debate, and support. Among them I would like to thank Marxist
Feminist Group I, the Women'sStudiesCollege at SUNY Buffalo, the Women'sStudiesProgramat the
University of Michigan, various groups of the Union for Radical Political Economics, and Temma
Kaplan, Anne Markusen,and JaneFlax for particularly careful, recentreadings.A version substantially
similar to the current one was published in Capital and Class in the summerof 1979. I would like to
thank the editors of Capital and Class, Lydia Sargent,and other membersof South End Press for their
interest in this essay.
From Sargent,L. (ed.), Womenand Revolution: A discussionof the unhappymarriage of Marxism and
feminism, South End Press,Boston, MA, 1981, pp. 2-4,9-11,14-24,27-41.
IB]
184 Heidi Hartmann
of Marxism with respect to capital has obscured its limitations with respect to
sexism.We will argueherethat while Marxist analysisprovidesessentialinsight into
the laws of historical development,and thoseof capital in particular, the categories
of Marxism are sex-blind. Only a specifically feminist analysisrevealsthe systemic
characterof relations betweenmen and women. Yet feminist analysis by itself is
inadequatebecauseit has been blind to history and insufficiently materialist. Both
Marxist analysis, particularly its historical and materialist method, and feminist
analysis, especially the identification of patriarchy as a social and historical
structure,must be drawn upon if we are to understandthe developmentof Western
capitalist societies and the predicamentof women within them. In this essay we
suggesta new direction for Marxist feminist analysis.
[ ...J
I. Marxism and the Woman Question
The woman questionhas never been the 'feminist question'. The feminist question
is directed at the causesof sexual inequality betweenwomen and men, of male
dominanceover women. Most Marxist analysesof women'sposition take as their
question the relationship of women to the economic system, rather than that of
women to men, apparentlyassumingthe latter will be explainedin their discussion
of the former. Marxist analysisof the woman questionhas taken three main forms.
All seewomen'soppressionin our connection(or lack of it) to production. Defining
women as part of the working class, these analysesconsistentlysubsumewomen's
relation to men under workers' relation to capital. First, early Marxists, including
Marx, Engels,Kautsky, and Lenin, saw capitalismdrawing all womeninto the wage
labor force, and saw this processdestroyingthe sexual division of labor. Second,
contemporaryMarxists have incorporatedwomen into an analystsof everydaylife
in capitalism.In this view, all aspectsof our lives are seento reproducethe capitalist
system and we are all workers in the system. And third, Marxist feminists have
focused on houseworkand its relation to capital, some arguing that housework
producessurplus value and that houseworkerswork directly for capitalists.
[ •.• J
While the approach of the early Marxists ignored housework and stressed
women's labor force participation, the two more recent approachesemphasize
houseworkto such an extent they ignore women'scurrent role in the labor market.
Nevertheless,all three attemptto include women in the categoryworking classand
to understandwomen'soppressionas anotheraspectof class oppression.In doing
so all give short shrift to the object of feminist analysis,the relationsbetweenwomen
and men. While our 'problems' have been elegantly analyzed, they have been
misunderstood.The focus of Marxist analysishas beenclassrelations;the object of
Marxist analysis has been understandingthe laws of motion of capitalist society.
While we believe Marxist methodologycan be used to formulate feminist strategy,
The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism 185
these Marxist feminist approachesdiscussedabove clearly do not do so, their

Marxism clearly dominatestheir feminism.
As we have already suggested,this is due in part to the analytical power of
Marxism itself. Marxism is a theory of the developmentof class society, of the
accumulationprocessin capitalist societies,of the reproductionof classdominance,
and of the developmentof contradictionsand class struggle. Capitalist societiesare
driven by the demandsof the accumulationprocess,most succinctly summarizedby
the fact that production is oriented to exchange,not use. In a capitalist system
productionis importantonly in so far as it contributesto the making of profits, and
the use value of productsis only an incidental consideration.Profits derive from the
capitalists'ability to exploit labor-power,to pay laborerslessthan the value of what
they produce.The accumulationof profits systematicallytransformssocial structure
as it transformsthe relationsof production. The reservearmy of labor, the poverty
of great numbers of people and the near-poverty of still more, these human
reproachesto capital are by-productsof the accumulationprocessitself. From the
capitalist'spoint of view, the reproductionof the working class may 'safely be left
to itself.2 At the sametime, capital createsan ideology, which grows up along side
it, of individualism, competitiveness,domination, and in our time, consumptionof
a particular kind. Whatever one's theory of the genesis of ideology one must
recognizethese as the dominant values of capitalist societies.
Marxism enables us to understand many aspects of capitalist societies: the
structureof production, the generationof a particular occupationalstructure,and
the natureof the dominantideology. Marx's theory of the developmentof capitalism
is a theory of the developmentof 'empty places'.Marx predicted,for example,the
growth of the proletariat and the demise of the petty bourgeoisie.More precisely
and in more detail, Braverman among others has explained the creation of the
'places'clerical worker and service worker in advancedcapitalist societies.3 Just as
capital createstheseplacesindifferent to the individuals who fill them, the categories
of Marxist analysis,class,reservearmy of labor, wage-laborer,do not explain why
particular people fill particular places. They give no clues about why women are
subordinateto men inside and outside the family and why it is not the other way
around. Marxist categories, like capital itself, are sex-blind. The categoriesof
Marxism cannot tell us who will fill the empty places. Marxist analysis of the
woman question has suffered from this basic problem.
[... J
II. Radical Feminism and Patriarchy
[...J
Towards a Definition of Patriarchy
We can usefully define patriarchy as a set of social relations betweenmen, which

have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create
186 Heidi Hartmann
interdependenceand solidarity among men that enablethem to dominatewomen.

Though patriarchy is hierarchical and men of different classes,races, or ethnic
groups have different placesin the patriarchy, they also are united in their shared
relationship of dominanceover their women; they are dependenton each other to
maintain that domination. Hierarchies'work' at least in part becausethey create
vested interestsin the statusquo. Those at the higher levels can 'buy off' those at
the lower levels by offering them power over those still lower. In the hierarchy of
patriarchy, all men, whatevertheir rank in the patriarchy, are bought off by being
able to control at least somewomen. There is some evidenceto suggestthat when
patriarchywas first institutionalizedin state societies,the ascendingrulers literally
made men the headsof their families (enforcing their control over their wives and
children) in exchangefor the men'sceding someof their tribal resourcesto the new
rulers.4 Men are dependenton one another(despitetheir hierarchicalordering) to
maintain their control over women.
The material baseupon which patriarchyrests lies most fundamentallyin men's
control over women'slabor-power.Men maintainthis control by excludingwomen
from access to some essential productive resources (in capitalist societies, for
example, jobs that pay living wages) and by restricting women's sexuality.s
Monogamousheterosexualmarriageis one relatively recent and efficient form that
seemsto allow men to control both these areas. Controlling women's accessto
resourcesand their sexuality, in turn, allows men to control women'slabor-power,
both for the purposeof serving men in many personaland sexualways and for the
purposeof rearing children. The serviceswomen rendermen, and which exonerate
men from having to perform many unpleasanttasks (like cleaning toilets), occur
outsideas well as inside the family setting. Examplesoutsidethe family include the
harassmentof women workers and studentsby male bossesand professorsas well
as the commonuse of secretariesto run personalerrands,make coffee, and provide
'sexy' surroundings.Rearingchildren, whetheror not the children'slabor-poweris
of immediate benefit to their fathers, is neverthelessa crucial task in perpetuating
patriarchy as a system. Just as class society must be reproduced by schools,
workplaces,consumptionnorms, etc., so must patriarchal social relations. In our
societychildren are generallyrearedby womenat home,womensocially definedand
recognizedas inferior to men, while men appearin the domesticpicture only rarely.
Children raisedin this way generallylearn their placesin the genderhierarchywell.
Central to this process,however, are the areasoutside the home where patriarchal
behaviorsare taught and the inferior position of women enforcedand reinforced:
churches,schools, sports, clubs, unions, armies, factories, offices, health centers,
the media, etc.
The material baseof patriarchy, then, does not rest solely on childrearing in the
family, but on all the social structuresthat enablemen to control women'slabor.
The aspects of social structures that perpetuate patriarchy are theoretically
identifiable, henceseparablefrom their other aspects.Gayle Rubin hasincreasedour
ability to identify the patriarchalelementof these social structuresenormouslyby
identifying 'sex/gendersystems':
a 'sex/gendersystem'is the set of arrangements

by which a societytransformsbiological
sexualityinto productsof humanactivity, and in which thesetransformedsexualneeds
are satisfied.6
We are born female and male, biological sexes,but we are createdwomanand man,
socially recognizedgenders.How we are so createdis that secondaspectof the mode
of production of which Engelsspoke,'the production of human beingsthemselves,
the propagationof the species'.
How people propagatethe speciesis socially determined.If, biologically, people
are sexuallypolymorphous,and societywere organizedin such a way that all forms
of sexualexpressionwere equally permissible,reproductionwould result only from
some sexual encounters,the heterosexualones. The strict division of labor by sex,
a social invention commonto all known societies,createstwo very separategenders
and a need for men and women to get togetherfor economicreasons.It thus helps
to direct their sexual needs toward heterosexualfulfillment, and helps to ensure
biological reproduction. In more imaginative societies, biological reproduction
might be ensuredby other techniques,but the division of labor by sex appearsto
be the universal solution to date. Although it is theoretically possiblethat a sexual
division of labor does not imply inequality between the sexes, in most known
societies,the socially acceptabledivision of labor by sex is one which accordslower
status to women's work. The sexual division of labor is also the underpinningof
sexual subculturesin which men and women experiencelife differently; it is the
material baseof male power which is exercised(in our society) not just in not doing
houseworkand in securingsuperior employment,but psychologicallyas well.
How people meet their sexual needs, how they reproduce,how they inculcate
social norms in new generations,how they learn gender, how it feels to be a man
or a woman - all occur in the realm Rubin labels the sex/gendersystem. Rubin
emphasizesthe influence of kinship (which tells you with whom you can satisfy
sexual needs)and the developmentof gender-specificpersonalitiesvia childrearing
and the 'Oedipal machine'. In addition, however, we can use the concept of the
sex/gendersystemto examineall other social institutions for the roles they play in
defining and reinforcing gender hierarchies. Rubin notes that theoretically a
sex/gendersystem could be female dominant, male dominant, or egalitarian, but
declines to label various known sex/gender systems or to periodize history
accordingly. We chooseto label our presentsex/gendersystempatriarchy, because
it appropriatelycapturesthe notion of hierarchyand male dominancewhich we see
as central to the presentsystem.
Economic production (what Marxists are used to referring to as the mode of
production) and the production of people in the sex/gendersphereboth determine
'the social organizationunder which the peopleof a particular historical epoch and
a particular country live', accordingto Engels. The whole of society, then, can be
188 Heidi Hartmann
understoodby looking at both thesetypes of production and reproduction,people

and things.7 There is no such thing as 'pure capitalism',nor does 'pure patriarchy'
exist, for they must of necessitycoexist. What exists is patriarchal capitalism, or
patriarchal feudalism, or egalitarian hunting/gatheringsocieties, or matriarchal
horticultural societies,or patriarchalhorticultural societies,and so on. There appears
to be no necessaryconnectionbetweenchangesin the one aspectof productionand
changes in the other. A society could undergo transition from capitalism to
socialism, for example,and remain patriarchal.8 Common sense,history, and our
experiencetell us, however, that these two aspectsof production are so closely
intertwined that change in one ordinarily creates movement, tension, or
contradiction in the other.
Racial hierarchiescan also be understoodin this context. Furtherelaborationmay
be possiblealong the lines of defining color/racesystems,arenasof social life that
take biological color and turn it into a social category,race. Racial hierarchies,like
gender hierarchies, are aspects of our social orga"nization, of how people are
producedand reproduced.They are not fundamentallyideological; they constitute
that secondaspectof our mode of production, the production and reproductionof
people.It might be most accurate,then, to refer to our societiesnot as, for example,
simply capitalist, but as patriarchalcapitalist white supremacist.In Part III below,
we illustrate one caseof capitalismadaptingto and making use of racial orders,and
several examplesof the interrelationsbetweencapitalism and patriarchy.
Capitalist development creates the places for a hierarchy of workers, but
traditional Marxist categoriescannottell us who will fill which places.Genderand
racial hierarchiesdetermine who fills the empty places. Patriarchy is not simply
hierarchical organization, but hierarchy in which particular people fill particular
places.It is in studyingpatriarchythat we learn why it is women who are dominated
and how. While we believe that most known societieshave beenpatriarchal,we do
not view patriarchy as a universal, unchangingphenomenon.Rather, patriarchy,
the set of interrelations among men that allow men to dominate women, has
changedin form and intensity over time. It is crucial that the hierarchyamongmen,
and their differential accessto patriarchalbenefits,be examined.Surely, class,race,
nationality, and even marital statusand sexual orientation, as well as the obvious
age, come into play here. And women of different class, race, national, marital
status,or sexualorientationgroupsare subjectedto different degreesof patriarchal
power. Women may themselvesexercise class, race, or national power, or even
patriarchal power (through their family connections) over men lower in the
patriarchalhierarchy than their own male kin.
To recapitulate,we define patriarchy as a set of social relations which has a
material base and in which there are hierarchical relations between men and
solidarity amongthem which enablethem in turn to dominatewomen. The material
base of patriarchy is men's control over women's labor-power. That control is
maintainedby excluding women from accessto necessaryeconomicallyproductive
resources,and by restricting women's sexuality. Men exercise their control in
receivingpersonalservicework from women,in not having to do houseworkor rear
children, in having accessto women's bodies for sex, and in feeling powerful and
being powerful. The crucial elementsof patriarchyas we currently experiencethem
are: heterosexualmarriage(and consequenthomophobia),female childrearingand
housework,women'seconomicdependenceon men (enforcedby arrangementsin
the labor market), the state, and numerousinstitutions basedon social relations
among men - clubs, sports, unions, professions, universities, churches,
corporations,and armies. All of these elementsneed to be examined if we are to
understandpatriarchal capitalism.
Both hierarchyand interdependence amongmen and the subordinationof women
are integral to the functioning of our society; that is, these relationships are
systemic.We leave asidethe questionof the creationof theserelationsand ask: can
we recognizepatriarchalrelations in capitalist societies?Within capitalist societies
we must discoverthosesamebondsbetweenmen which both bourgeoisand Marxist
social scientistsclaim no longer exist or are, at the most, unimportantleftovers. Can
we understand how these relations among men are perpetuatedin capitalist
societies? Can we identify ways in which patriarchy has shaped the course of
capitalist development?
III. The Partnership of Patriarchy and Capital
How are we to recognizepatriarchalsocial relationsin capitalistsocieties?It appears

as if eachwomanis oppressedby her own man alone; her oppressionseemsa private
affair. Relationshipsamongmen and amongfamilies seemequally fragmented.It is
hard to recognize relationships among men, and between men and women, as
systematicallypatriarchal. We argue, however, that patriarchy as a system of
relations between men and women exists in capitalism, and that in capitalist
societiesa healthy and strongpartnershipexists betweenpatriarchyand capital. Yet
if one begins with the conceptof patriarchy and an understandingof the capitalist
mode of production,one recognizesimmediatelythat the partnershipof patriarchy
and capital was not inevitable; men and capitalistsoften have conflicting interests,
particularly over the use of women'slabor-power. Here is one way in which this
conflict might manifest itself: the vast majority of men might want their women at
home to personally service them. A smaller number of men, who are capitalists,
might want most women (not their own) to work in the wage labor market. In
examining the tensionsof this conflict over women'slabor-power historically, we
will be able to identify the material base of patriarchal relations in capitalist
societies,as well as the basis for the partnershipbetweencapital and patriarchy.
Industrialization and the Development of Family Wages
Marxists madequite logical inferencesfrom a selectionof the social phenomenathey

witnessedin the nineteenthcentury. But Marxists ultimately underestimatedthe
190 Heidi Hartmann
strengthof the preexistingpatriarchalsocial forces with which fledgling capital had

to contend and the need for capital to adjust to these forces. The Industrial
Revolution was drawing all people into the labor force, including women and
children; in fact the first factories used child and female labor almost exclusively.9
That women and children could earn wagesseparatelyfrom men both undermined
authority relations [ ...J and kept wages low for everyone.
[ .•.J
While the problemof cheapcompetitioncould have beensolved by organizingthe

wage-earningwomen and youths, the problem of disruptedfamily life could not be.
Men reservedunion protection for men and argued for protective labor laws for
women and children.10 Protective labor laws, while they may have ameliorated
some of the worst abusesof female and child labor, also limited the participation
of adult women in many 'male' jobs.ll Men sought to keep high-wage jobs for
themselvesand to raise male wagesgenerally. They arguedfor wagessufficient for
their wagelabor aloneto supporttheir families. This 'family wage'systemgradually
came to be the norm for stable working-classfamilies at the end of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth.12 Several observershave declaredthe
non-wage-workingwife to be part of the standardof living of male workers.13
Insteadof fighting for equal wagesfor men and women, male workers sought the
family wage, wanting to retain their wives' services at home. In the absenceof
patriarchya unified working classmight haveconfrontedcapitalism,but patriarchal
social relationsdivided the working class, allowing one part (men) to be bought off
at the expenseof the other (women). Both the hierarchy between men and the
solidarity amongthem were crucial in this processof resolution. Family wagesmay
be understoodas a resolution of the conflict over women'slabor-powerwhich was
occurring betweenpatriarchal and capitalist interestsat that time.
Family wagesfor most adult men imply men'sacceptance,and collusion in, lower
wagesfor others - young people,women and socially defined inferior men as well
(Irish, blacks, etc., the lowest groups in the patriarchal hierarchy who are denied
many of the patriarchalbenefits).Lower wagesfor women and children and inferior
men are enforced by job segregationin the labor market, in turn maintained by
unions and managementas well as by auxiliary institutions like schools, training
programs,and even families. Job segregationby sex, by insuring that women have
the lower-paid jobs, both assureswomen's economic dependenceon men and
reinforcesnotions of appropriatespheresfor women and men. For most men, then,
the developmentof family wagessecuredthe material baseof male domination in
two ways. First, men have the better jobs in the labor market and earnhigher wages
than women. The lower pay women receive in the labor market both perpetuates
men'smaterial advantageover women and encourageswomen to choosewifery as
a career.Second,then, womendo housework,childcare,and perform other services
at home which benefit men directly.14 Women's home responsibilities in turn
reinforce their inferior labor market position.1S
The resolutionthat developedin the early twentieth centurycan be seento benefIt

capitalist interests as well as patriarchal interests. Capitalists, it is often argued,
recognizedthat in the extreme conditions which prevailed in the early nineteenth
century industrialization, working-class families could not adequatelyreproduce
themselves. They realized that housewives produced and maintained healthier
workers than wage-working wives and that educated children became better
workers than noneducatedones. The bargain, paying family wages to men and
keepingwomen home, suitedthe capitalistsat the time as well as the male workers.
Although the terms of the bargain have altered over time, it is still true that the
family and women'swork in the family servecapital by providing a labor force and
serve men as the spacein which they exercisetheir privilege. Women, working to
serve men and their families, also serve capital as consumers.16The family is also
the place where dominanceand submissionare learned,as Firestone,the Frankfurt
School, and many others have explainedY Obedient children become obedient
workers; girls and boys each learn their proper roles.
While the family wage showsthat capitalism adjuststo patriarchy,the changing
statusof children shows that patriarchy adjuststo capital. Children, like women,
cameto be excludedfrom wage labor. As children'sability to earn money declined,
their legal relationshipto their parentschanged.At the beginning of the industrial
era in the United States,fulfilling children's need for their fathers was thought to
be crucial, even primary, to their happy development;fathers had legal priority in
casesof contestedcustody. As children'sability to contributeto the economicwell-
being of the family declined, motherscame increasinglyto be viewed as crucial to
the happy developmentof their children, and gained legal priority in cases of
contestedcustody.18 Here patriarchy adaptedto the changing economic role of
children: when children were productive, men claimed them; as children became
unproductive,they were given to women.
The Partnershipin the Twentieth Century
The prediction of nineteenthcentury Marxists that patriarchy would wither away

in the face of capitalism'sneed to proletarianizeeveryonehas not come true. Not
only did Marxists underestimatethe strengthand flexibility of patriarchy,they also
overestimatedthe strength of capital. They envisioned the new social force of
capitalism, which had torn feudal relations apart, as virtually all powerful.
Contemporaryobserversare in a better position to see the difference betweenthe
tendenciesof 'pure' capitalism and those of 'actual' capitalism as it confronts
historical forces in everydaypractice.Discussionsof the partnershipbetweencapital
and racial ordersand of labor market segmentationprovide additional examplesof
how 'pure' capitalist forces meet up with historical reality. Greatflexibility has been
displayed by capitalism in this process.
[ ...J
192 Heidi Hartmann
If the first elementof our argumentabout the courseof capitalist developmentis

that capital is not all-powerful, the secondis that capital is tremendouslyflexible.
Capital accumulationencounterspreexistingsocial forms, and both destroysthem
and adapts to them. The adaptationof capital can be seen as a reflection of the
strength of thesepreexistingforms to perseverein new environments.Yet even as
they persevere,they are not unchanged.The ideology with which race and sex are
understoodtoday, for example,is strongly shapedby the particularways racial and
sexual divisions are reinforced in the accumulationprocess.
[...J
Ideology in the Twentieth Century
Patriarchy,by establishingand legitimating hierarchyamongmen (by allowing men

of all groups to control at least some women), reinforces capitalist control, and
capitalist values shapethe defmition of patriarchal good.
The psychological phenomena Shulamith Firestone identifies are particular
examplesof what happensin relationshipsof dependenceand domination. They
follow from the realitiesof men'ssocial power - which women are denied- but they
are shapedby the fact that they happenin the context of a capitalist society.19If
we examine the characteristics of men as radical feminists describe them -
competitive, rationalistic, dominating - they are much like our description of the
dominant values of capitalist society.
This 'coincidence'may be explainedin two ways. In the first instance,men, as
wage laborers, are absorbedin capitalist social relations at work, driven into the
competition theserelations prescribe,and absorbthe correspondingvalues.2o The
radical feminist description of men was not altogether out of line for capitalist
societies.Secondly,even when men and women do not actually behavein the way
sexual norms prescribe,men claim for themselvesthose characteristicswhich are
valuedin the dominantideology. So, for example,the authorsof CrestwoodHeights
found that while the men, who were professionals,spent their days manipulating
subordinates(often using techniquesthat appealto fundamentallyirrational motives
to elicit the preferredbehavior),men and womencharacterizedmen as 'rational and
pragmatic'. And while the women devoted great energies to studying scientific
methods of childrearing and child development,men and women in Crestwood
Heights characterizedwomen as 'irrational and emotional'.21
This helps to accountnot only for 'male' and 'female' characteristicsin capitalist
societies,but for the particularform sexistideology takesin capitalist societies.Just
as women's work servesthe dual purpose of perpetuatingmale domination and
capitalist production, so sexist ideology servesthe dual purposeof glorifying male
characteristics/ capitalist values, and denigratingfemale characteristics/socialneed.
If womenwere degradedor powerlessin other societies,the reasons(rationalizations)
men had for this were different. Only in a capitalist society does it make senseto
look down on women as emotionalor irrational. As epithets,they would not have

madesensein the Renaissance. Only in a capitalistsocietydoesit make senseto look
down on women as 'dependent'.'Dependent'as an epithet would not make sense
in feudal societies. Since the division of labor ensuresthat women as wives and
mothersin the family are largely concernedwith the production of use values, the
denigrationof theseactivities obscurescapital'sinability to meetsocially determined
need at the same time that it degradeswomen in the eyes of men, providing a
rationale for male dominance. An example of this may be seen in the peculiar
ambivalanceof televisioncommercials.On one hand,they addressthemselvesto the
real obstaclesto providing for socially determinedneeds: detergentsthat destroy
clothes and irritate skin, shoddily made goods of all sorts. On the other hand,
concernwith theseproblemsmust be denigrated;this is accomplishedby mocking
women, the workers who must deal with theseproblems.
A parallel argumentdemonstratingthe partnershipof patriarchy and capitalism
may be made about the sexual division of labor in the workforce. The sexual
division of labor places women in low-paying jobs, and in tasks thought to be
appropriateto women'srole. Women are teachers,welfare workers, and the great
majority of workers in the health fields. The nurturant roles that women play in
these jobs are of low status becausecapitalism emphasizespersonalindependence
and the ability of private enterpriseto meet social needs,emphasescontradictedby
the need for collectively provided social services.As long as the social importance
of nurturant tasks can be denigrated because women perform them, the
confrontationof capital'spriority on exchangevalue by a demandfor use valuescan
be avoided. In this way, it is not feminism, but sexism that divides and debilitates
the working class.
IV. Towards a More Progressive Union
Many problemsremain for us to explore. Patriarchyas we have usedit hereremains

more a descriptiveterm than an analyticone. If we think Marxism aloneinadequate,
and radical feminism itself insufficient, then we need to develop new categories.
What makesour task a difficult one is that the samefeatures,such as the division
of labor, often reinforce both patriarchy and capitalism, and in a thoroughly
patriarchal capitalist society, it is hard to isolate the mechanismsof patriarchy.
Nevertheless,this is what we must do. We have pointed to some starting places:
looking at who benefits from women'slabor-power, uncoveringthe material base
of patriarchy,investigatingthe mechanismsof hierarchyand solidarity amongmen.
The questionswe must ask are endless.
Can we speakof the laws of motion of a patriarchalsystem?How doespatriarchy
generatefeminist struggle?What kinds of sexual politics and struggle betweenthe
sexes can we see in societies other than advancedcapitalist ones? What are the
contradictionsof the patriarchal system and what is their relation to the contra-
dictions of capitalism?We know that patriarchalrelationsgave rise to the feminist
194 Heidi Hartmann
movement,and that capital generatesclass struggle - but how has the relation of
feminism to class strugglebeenplayed out in historical contexts?In this sectionwe
attempt to provide an answer to this last question.
Feminism and the Class Struggle
Historically and in the present,the relation of feminism and classstrugglehas been

either that of fully separatepaths ('bourgeois'feminism on one hand, class struggle
on the other), or, within the left, the dominanceof feminism by Marxism. With
respect to the latter, this has been a consequenceboth of the analytic power of
Marxism, and of the power of men within the left. Thesehave producedboth open
struggleson the left, and a contradictoryposition for Marxist feminists.
Most feminists who also see themselvesas radicals (anti-system,anti-capitalist,
anti-imperialist, socialist, communist, Marxist, whatever) agree that the radical
wing of the women'smovementhas lost momentumwhile the liberal sector seems
to have seized the time and forged ahead. Our movement is no longer in that
exciting, energetic period when no matter what we did, it worked - to raise
consciousness, to bring more women (more even than could be easily incorporated)
into the movement,to increasethe visibility of women'sissuesin the society, often
in ways fundamentally challengingto both the capitalist and patriarchal relations
in society. Now we senseparts of the movementare being cooptedand 'feminism'
is being used againstwomen - for example,in court caseswhen judgesargue that
women coming out of long-term marriagesin which they were housewivesdon't
need alimony becausewe all know women are liberated now. The failure to date
to securethe passageof the Equal Rights Amendmentin the United Statesindicates
the presenceof legitimate fears amongmany women that feminism will continueto
be usedagainstwomen, and it indicatesa real needfor us to reassessour movement,
to analyzewhy it hasbeencooptedin this way. It is logical for us to turn to Marxism
for help in that reassessmentbecauseit is a developedtheory of social change.
Marxist theory is well developedcomparedto feminist theory, and in our attempt
to use it, we have sometimesbeen sidetrackedfrom feminist objectives.
The left has always beenambivalentaboutthe women'smovement,often viewing
it as dangerousto the cause of socialist revolution. When left women espouse
feminism, it may be personally threateningto left men. And of course many left
organizationsbenefit from the labor of women. Therefore,many left analyses(both
in progressive and traditional forms) are self-serving, both theoretically and
politically. They seek to influence women to abandon attempts to develop an
independentunderstandingof women'ssituation and to adoptthe 'left's' analysesof
the situation. As for our responseto this pressure,it is natural that, as we ourselves
have turned to Marxist analysis, we would try to join the 'fraternity' using this
paradigm,and we may end up trying to justify our struggle to the fraternity rather
than trying to analyze the situation of women to improve our political practice.
Finally, many Marxists are satisfied with the traditional Marxist analysis of the
women question.They seeclassas the correctframework with which to understand

women'sposition. Women should be understoodas part of the working class; the
working class'sstruggleagainstcapitalismshould take precedenceover any conflict
betweenmen and women. Sex conflict must not be allowed to interfere with class
solidarity.
As the economicsituation in the United Stateshas worsenedin the last few years,
traditional Marxist analysis has reasserteditself. In the sixties the civil rights
movement,the studentfree speechmovement,the antiwar movement,the women's
movement,the environmentalmovement,and the increasedmilitancy of professional
and white-collar groups all raised new questionsfor Marxists. But now the return
of obvious economicproblemssuch as inflation and unemploymenthad eclipsedthe
importance of these demandsand the left has returned to the 'fundamentals'-
working-class(narrowly defIned) politics. The growing 'Marxist-Leninistpreparty'
sectsare committedantifeminists,in both doctrine and practice.And there are signs
that the presenceof feminist issuesin the academicleft is declining as well. Day care
is disappearingfrom left conferences.As Marxism or political economy become
intellectually acceptable,the 'old boys' network of liberal academiais replicatedin
a sidekick 'young boys' network of Marxists and radicals, none the less male in
membershipand outlook despite its youth and radicalism.
The pressureson radical women to abandonthis silly stuff and become'serious'
revolutionaries have increased. Our work seems a waste of time compared to
inflation and unemployment. It is symptomatic of male dominance that our
unemploymentwas never consideredin a crisis. In the last major economiccrisis,
the 1930s, the vast unemploymentwas partially dealt with by excluding women
from many kinds of jobs - one wage job per family, and that job was the man's.
Capitalism and patriarchy recovered - strengthenedfrom the crisis. Just as
economiccrisesservea restorativefunction for capitalismby correctingimbalances,
so they might serve patriarchy. The thirties put women back in their place.
The struggle againstcapital and patriarchycannot be successfulif the study and
practiceof the issuesof feminism is abandoned.A struggle aimed only at capitalist
relations of oppression will fail, since their underlying supports in patriarchal
relationsof oppressionwill be overlooked.And the analysisof patriarchyis essential
to a defInition of the kind of socialism useful to women. While men and women
sharea needto overthrow capitalismthey retain interestsparticular to their gender
group. It is not clear - from our sketch,from history, or from male socialists - that
the socialismbeing struggledfor is the samefor both men and women. For a humane
socialismwould require not only consensuson what the new societyshouldlook like
and what a healthy personshould look like, but more concretely,it would require
that men relinquish their privilege.
As women we must not allow ourselvesto be talked out of the urgency and
importanceof our tasks, as we have so many times in the past. We must fIght the
attemptedcoercion, both subtle and not so subtle, to abandonfeminist objectives.
This suggeststwo strategicconsiderations.First, a struggleto establishsocialism
must be a strugglein which groupswith different interestsform an alliance. Women
196 Heidi Hartmann
should not trust men to liberate them after the revolution, in part, becausethere is
no reasonto think they would know how; in part, becausethere is no necessityfor
them to do so. In fact their immediateself-interestlies in our continuedoppression.
Insteadwe must have our own organizationsand our own power base.Second,we
think the sexual division of labor within capitalism has given women a practice in
which we have learnedto understandwhat human interdependence and needsare.
While men have long struggled against capital, women know what to struggle
for.22 As a generalrule, men's position in patriarchy and capitalism preventsthem
from recognizingboth human needsfor nurturance,sharing, and growth, and the
potential for meetingthose needsin a nonhierarchical,nonpatriarchalsociety. But
even if we raise their consciousness,
men might assessthe potential gains againstthe
potentiallossesand choosethe statusquo. Men have more to lose than their chains.
As feminist socialists, we must organize a practice which addressesboth the
struggle againstpatriarchyand the struggle againstcapitalism. We must insist that
the society we want to createis a society in which recognition of interdependence
is liberation ratherthan shame,nurturanceis a universal,not an oppressivepractice,
and in which women do not continue to support the false as well as the concrete
freedoms of men.
Notes
1. Often paraphrasedas 'the husbandand wife are one and that one is the husband',English
law held that 'by marriage,the husbandand wife are one personin law: that is, the very
being or legal existenceof the women is suspendedduring the marriage, or at least is
incorporatedand consolidatedinto that of the Husband',I. Blackstone,Commentaries,
1965, pp. 442-5, cited in KennethM. Davidson,Ruth B. Ginsburgand HermaH. Kay,
Sex BasedDiscrimination (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1974), p. 117.
2. This is a paraphrase.Karl Marx wrote: 'The maintenanceand reproduction of the
working classis, and must ever be, a necessarycondition to the reproductionof capital.
But the capitalist may safely leave its fulfIllment to the labourer's instincts of self-
preservationand propagation'. [Capital (New York: International Publishers,1967),
vol. 1, p. 572.]
3. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1975).
4. See Viana Muller, 'The formation of the state and the oppressionof women: some
theoreticalconsiderationsand a casestudy in England and Wales', Reviewof Radical
Political Economics,vol. 9, no. 3 (Fall 1977), pp. 7-21.
5. The particular ways in which men control women's access to important economic
resourcesand restrict their sexualityvary enormously,both from societyto society,from
subgroupto subgroup,and acrosstime. The exampleswe use to illustrate patriarchyin
this section, however, are drawn primarily from the experienceof whites in Western
capitalist countries.The diversity is shown in Toward an Anthropologyof Women,ed.
Rayna Rapp Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), Woman, Culture and
Society,ed. Michelle Rosaldoand Louise Lamphere(Stanford,CA: Stanford University
Press,1974), and Females, Males, Families: A biosocial approach, by Liba Leibowitz
(North Scituate,MA: Duxbury Press,1978). The control of women'ssexualityis tightly
linked to the placeof children. An understandingof the demand(by men and capitalists)
for children is crucial to understandingchangesin women's subordination.
Where children are neededfor their presentor future labor-power,women'ssexuality
will tend to be directed toward reproductionand childrearing. When children are seen
as superfluous,women'ssexuality for other than reproductivepurposesis encouraged,
but men will attempt to direct it toward satisfying male needs. The Cosmo girl is a
good exampleof a woman 'liberated' from childrearing only to find herself turning all
her energies toward attracting and satisfying men. Capitalists can also use female
sexuality to their own ends, as the successof Cosmo in advertisingconsumerproducts
shows.
6. Gayle Rubin, 'The traffic in women', in Anthropologyof Women,ed. Reiter, p. 159.
7. Himmelweit and Mohun point out that both aspectsof production (people and things)
are logically necessaryto describea mode of production becauseby defmition a mode
of production must be capable of reproducingitself. Either aspect alone is not self-
sufficient. To put it simply, the productionof things requirespeople,and the production
of peoplerequiresthings. Marx, though recognizingcapitalism'sneedfor people,did not
concernhimself with how they were producedor what the connectionsbetweenthe two
aspectsof productionwere. SeeSusanHimmelweit and Simon Mohun, 'Domesticlabour
and capital', CambridgeJournal of Economics,vol. 1, no. 1 (March 1977), pp. 15-3l.
8. For an excellent discussionof one such transition to socialism, see Batya Weinbaum,
'Women in transition to socialism: perspectiveson the Chinesecase', Reviewof Radical
Political Economics,vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 1976), pp. 34-58.
9. It is importantto rememberthat in the preindustrialperiod, women contributeda large
share to their families' subsistence- either by participating in a family craft or by
agriculturalactivities. The initiation of wagework for womenboth allowed and required
this contribution to take place independentlyfrom the men in the family. The new
departure,then, was not that women earnedincome, but that they did so beyondtheir
husbands' or fathers' control. Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women in the
Seventeenth Century(New York: Kelly, 1969) describeswomen'spreindustrialeconomic
roles and the changesthat occurredas capitalismprogressed.It seemsto be the casethat
Marx, Engels, and Kautsky were not fully aware of women's economic role before
capitalism.
10. Just as the factory laws were enactedfor the benefit of all capitalistsagainstthe protest
of some, so too, protective legislation for women and children may have been enacted
by the statewith a view toward the reproductionof the working class.Only a completely
instrumentalist view of the state would deny that the factory laws and protective
legislationlegitimatethe stateby providing concessionsand are responsesto the demands
of the working class itself.
11. For a more completediscussionof protective labor legislation and women, see Ann C.
Hill, 'Protectivelabor legislation for women: its origin and effect', mimeographed(New
Haven, CT: Yale Law School, 1970) parts of which have beenpublishedin BarbaraA.
Babcock,Ann E. Freedman,EleanorH. Norton and SusanC. Ross, SexDiscrimination
and the Law: Causes and remedies (Boston, MA: Little Brown & Co., 1975), an
excellent law text. See also Hartmann,'Capitalism,patriarchy, and job segregationby
sex', Signs: Journal of Womenin Culture and Society,vol. 1, no. 3, pt 2 (Spring 1976),
pp. 164-6.
12. A reading of Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women, and Ivy Pinchbeck, Women
Workers, suggeststhat the expropriationof productionfrom the home was followed by
a social adjustment process creating the social norm of the family wage. Heidi
Hartmann,in Capitalism and Women'sWork in the Home, 1900-1930(Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation,Yale University, 1974; forthcoming Temple University Press)argues,
basedon qualitative data, that this processoccurredin the U.S. in the early twentieth
198 Heidi Hartmann
century. One should be able to test this hypothesisquantitatively by examining family

budget studiesfor different years and noting the trend of the proportion of the family
incomefor different incomegroups,provided by the husband. However,thesedata were
not available in comparableform for our period. The family wage resolution has
probably been underminedin the post World War II period. Carolyn Shaw Bell, in
'Working women's contribution to family income', Eastern EconomicJournal, vol. 1,
no. 3 (July 1974), pp. 185-201,presentscurrentdata and arguesthat it is now incorrect
to assumethat the man is the primary earner of the family. Yet whateverthe actual
situation today or earlier in the century, we would argue that the social norm was and
is that men should earn enough to support their families. To say it has been the norm
is not to say it has been universally achieved.In fact, it is preciselythe failure to achieve
the norm that is noteworthy. Hence the observationthat in the absenceof suf1i.ciently
high wages,'normative'family patternsdisappear,as for exampleamongimmigrantsin
the nineteenthcentury and Third World Americans today. Oscar Handlin, Boston's
Immigrants (New York: Atheneum, 1968) discussesmid-nineteenth-centuryBoston,
where Irish women were employedin textiles; women constitutedmore than half of all
wage laborers and often supportedunemployedhusbands.The debate about family
structure among Black Americans today still rages; see Carol B. Stack, All Our Kin:
strategiesfor survival in a Black community(New York: Harper & Row, 1974), esp.
Chap. 1. We would also argue(seebelow) that for most families the norm is upheld by
the relative placesmen and women hold in the labor market.
13. Hartmann,Women'sWork, arguesthat the non-workingwife was generallyregardedas
part of the male standardof living in the early twentieth century (seep. 136, no. 6) and
Ira Gerstein, 'Domestic work and capitalism', Radical America, vol. 7, no. 4-5
(July-October1973) pp. 101-28,suggeststhat the norm of the working wife entersinto
the determinationof the value of male labor-power (see p. 121).
14. The importanceof the fact that women perform labor services for men in the home
cannot be overemphasized.As Pat Mainardi said in 'The politics of housework','[tlhe
measureof your oppressionis his resistance'(in Sisterhoodis Powerful, ed. Robin
Morgan [New York: Vintage Books, 1970], p. 451). Her article, perhapsas important
for us as Firestoneon love, is an analysisof power relations betweenwomen and men
as exemplified by housework.
15. Libby Zimmerman has explored the relation of membership in the primary and
secondarylabor markets to family patternsin New England. See her Women in the
Economy: A case study of Lynn, Massachusetts,1760-1974 (Unpublished Ph.D
dissertation,Heller School,Brandeis,1977). Batya Weinbaumis currently exploring the
relationshipbetweenfamily roles and placesin the labor market. Seeher 'Redefiningthe
questionof revolution', Reviewof RadicalPolitical Economics,vol. 9, no. 3 (Fall 1977),
pp. 54, 78, and The Curious Courtship of Women'sLiberation and Socialism (Boston,
MA: South End Press, 1978). Additional studies of the interaction of capitalism and
patriarchycan be found in Zillah Eisenstein,ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the casefor
Socialist Feminism (New York: Monthly Review Press,1978).
16. See Batya Weinbaum and Amy Bridges, 'The other side of the paycheck: monopoly
capital and the structureof consumption',Monthly Review,vol. 28, no. 3 (July-August
1976), pp. 88-103, for a discussionof women'sconsumptionwork.
17. For the view of the Frankfurt School, seeMax Horkheimer,'Authority and the family',
in Critical Theory(New York: Herder & Herder,1972) and Frankfurt Institute of Social
Research,'The family', in Aspectsof Sociology(Boston, MA: Beacon, 1972).
18. Carol Brown, 'Patriarchal capitalism and the female-headedfamily', Social Scientist
(India), no. 40-41 (November-December1975), pp. 28-39.
19. Richard Sennett's and Jonathan Cobb's The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York:
Random House, 1973) examines similar kinds of psychological phenomenawithin
hierarchical relationshipsbetweenmen at work.
20. This should provide someclues to classdifferencesin sexism,which we cannotexplore

here.
21. See John R. Seeley et al., Crestwood Heights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1956), pp. 382-94. While men'splace may be characterizedas 'in production'this does
not mean that women'splace is simply 'not in production' - her tasks, too, are shaped
by capital. Her nonwagework is the resolution,on a day-to-daybasis,of productionfor
exchangewith socially determinedneed,the provision of usevaluesin a capitalistsociety
(this is the context of consumption).SeeWeinbaumand Bridges, 'The other side of the
paycheck', for a more complete discussion of this argument. The fact that women
provide 'merely' use values in a society dominatedby exchangevalues can be used to
denigratewomen.
22. Lise Vogel, 'The earthly family', RadicalAmerica,vol. 7, no. 4-5 (July-October1973),
pp.9-50.
3.2 0 Sorties: Out and
Out: attacks/ways
out/forays
Helene Cixous
[...J
A Woman'sComing to Writing:
Who
Invisible, foreign, secret, hidden, mysterious,black, forbidden
Am I ...
Is this me, this no-bodythat is dressedup, wrappedin veils, carefully kept distant,
pushedto the side of History and change,nullified, kept out of the way, on the edge
of the stage,on the kitchen side, the bedside?
For you?
Is that me, a phantomdoll, the causeof sufferingsand wars, the pretext, 'because
of her beautiful eyes',for what men do, says Freud, for their divine illusions, their
conquests,their havoc?Not for the sakeof 'me', of course.But for my 'eyes',so that
I will look at you, so that he will be looked at, so that he will see himself seenas
he wants to be. Or as he fears he is not. Me, nobody, therefore,or else the mother
that the Eternal Male always returns to when seeking admiration.
Men say that it is for her that the Greekslauncheda thousandships, destroyed,
killed, wageda fabulous war for ten-times-tenyears - amongmen! For the sakeof
her, yonder, the idol, carried off, hidden, lost. Becauseit is for-her and without-her
that they live it up at the celebrationof death that they call their life.
Murder of the Other:
I come, biographically, from a rebellion, from a violent and anguisheddirect
refusal to acceptwhat is happeningon the stageon whoseedge I find I am placed,
as a result of the combinedaccidentsof History. I had this strange'luck': a couple
From Cixous, H. and Clement, c., The Newly Born Woman, trans. B. Wing, ManchesterUniversity
Press,Manchester,1986, pp. 69-73, 78-86, 131.
200
Sorties 201
of rolls of the dice, a meetingbetweentwo trajectoriesof the diaspora,land, at the

end of theseroutesof expulsionand dispersionthat mark the functioning of Western
History through the displacementsof Jews,I fall. -I am born - right in the middle
of a scenethat is the perfect example,the naked model, the raw idea of this very
process:I learned to read, to write, to scream,and to vomit in Algeria. Today I
know from experiencethat one cannot imagine what an Algerian French girl was;
you have to have beenit, to have gone through it. To have seen'Frenchmen'at the
'height'of imperialist blindness,behavingin a country that was inhabitedby humans
as if it were peopledby nonbeings,born-slaves.I learnedeverythingfrom this ftrst
spectacle: I saw how the white (French), superior, plutocratic, civilized world
founded its power on the repressionof populations who had suddenly become
'invisible', like proletarians,immigrant workers, minorities who are not the right
'color'. Women.2 Invisible as humans. But, of course, perceivedas tools - dirty,
stupid, lazy, underhanded,etc. Thanksto someannihilatingdialecticalmagic. I saw
that the great, noble, 'advanced'countriesestablishedthemselvesby expelling what
was 'strange';excludingit but not dismissingit; enslavingit. A commonplacegesture
of History: there have to be two races - the mastersand the slaves.
We know the implied irony in the master/slavedialectic: the body of what is
strangemust not disappear,but its force must be conqueredand returnedto the
master.Both the appropriateand the inappropriatemust exist: the clean, hencethe
dirty; the rich, hence the poor; etc.
So I am three or four years old and the first thing I see in the street is that the
world is divided in half, organized hierarchically, and that it maintains this
distribution through violence. I seethat thereare thosewho beg, who die of hunger,
misery, and despair,and that there are offenderswho die of wealth and pride, who
stuff themselves,who crush and humiliate. Who kill. And who walk around in a
stolencountry as if they had had the eyesof their soulsput out. Without seeingthat
the others are alive.
Already I know all aboutthe 'reality' that supportsHistory's progress:everything
throughout the centuries depends on the distinction between the Selfsame, the
ownself (- what is mine, hencewhat is good) and that which limits it: so now what
menacesmy-own-good(good never being anythingother than what is good-for-me)
is the 'other'. What is the 'Other'? If it is truly the 'other', there is nothing to say;
it cannot be theorized. The 'other' escapesme. It is elsewhere,outside: absolutely
other. It doesn'tsettle down. But in History, of course,what is called 'other' is an
alterity that does settle down, that falls into the dialectical circle. It is the other in
a hierarchically organized relationship in which the same is what rules, names,
deftnes, and assigns 'its' other. With the dreadful simplicity that orders the
movementHegel erectedas a system,societytrots along beforemy eyesreproducing
to perfection the mechanismof the death struggle: the reduction of a 'person'to a
'nobody' to the position of 'other' - the inexorableplot of racism. There has to be
some 'other' - no master without a slave, no economico-politicalpower without
exploitation, no dominant class without cattle under the yoke, no 'Frenchmen'
without wogs, no Nazis without Jews,no propertywithout exclusion- an exclusion
202 Helene Cixous
that has its limits and is part of the dialectic. If there were no other, one would
invent it. Besides,that is what mastersdo: they have their slavesmadeto order. Line
for line. They assemblethe machine and keep the alternator supplied so that it
reproducesall the oppositionsthat make economy and thought run.
The paradox of othernessis that, of course, at no moment in History is it
tolerated or possible as such. The other is there only to be reappropriated,
recaptured,and destroyedas other. Even the exclusionis not an exclusion. Algeria
was not France, but it was 'French'.
Me too. The routine 'our ancestors,the Gauls' was pulled on me. But I was born
in Algeria, and my ancestors lived in Spain, Morocco, Austria, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia,Germany; my brothers by birth are Arab. So where are we in
history? I side with those who are injured, trespassedupon, colonized. I am (not)
Arab. Who am I? I am 'doing' Frenchhistory. I am a Jewishwoman. In which ghetto
was I pennedup during your wars and your revolutions?I want to fight. What is
my name?I want to changelife. Who is this 'I'? Where is my place? I am looking.
I searcheverywhere.I read,I ask. I begin to speak.Which languageis mine? French?
German?Arabic? Who spokefor me throughoutthe generations?It's my luck. What
an accident! Being born in Algeria, not in France,not in Germany; a little earlier
and, like some membersof my family, I would not be writing today. I would
anonymiserateeternally from Auschwitz. Luck: if I had been born a hundredyears
earlier, I told myself, I would have beenpart of the Commune.How? - you? Where
are my battles?my fellow soldiers?What am I saying ... the comrades,women, my
companions-in-arms?
I am looking everywhere.A daughterof chance. One year earlier. A miracle. I
know it; I hateit: I might neverhave beenanythingbut dead.Yesterday,what could
I have been? Can I imagine my elsewhere?
-I live all of my childhood in this knowledge: severaltimes I have miraculously
survived. In the previous generation,I would not have existed. And I live in this
rebellion: it is impossible for me to live, to breathe,to eat in a world where my
people don't breathe,don't eat, are crushedand humiliated. My people: all those
that I am, whosesameI am. History's condemned,the exiled, colonized,and burned.
Yes, Algeria is unliveable. Not to mention France.

Germany! Europe the accomplice! ...
- There has to be somewhereelse, I tell myself. And everyoneknows that to go

somewhereelse there are routes,signs, 'maps'- for an exploration,a trip. - That's
what books are. Everyoneknows that a place exists which is not economicallyor
politically indebted to all the vileness and compromise. That is not obliged to
reproducethe system.That is writing. If there is a somewhereelse that can escape
the infernal repetition,it lies in that direction, whereit writes itself, whereit dreams,
where it invents new worlds.
And that is where I go. I take books; I leave the real, colonial space;I go away.
Often I go read in a tree. Far from the ground and the shit. I don't go and read just
Sorties 203
to read, to forget - No! Not to shut myself up in some imaginary paradise.1 am

searching:somewherethere must be people who are like me in their rebellion and
in their hope. Because1 don't despair: if 1 myself shout in disgust, if 1 can't be alive
without being angry, there must be others like me. 1 don't know who, but when 1
am big, I'll fmd them and I'll join them, 1 don't yet know where. While waiting,
I want to have only my true ancestorsfor company(and even at that 1 forgive the
Gauls a great deal, thanks to their defeat, they, too, were alienated, deceived,
enslaved,it's true) - my true allies, my true 'race'.Not this comical, repulsivespecies
that exercisespower in the place where 1 was born.
And naturally 1 focusedon all the texts in which there is struggle. Warlike texts;
rebellious texts. For a long time 1 read, 1 lived, in a territory made of spacestaken
from all the countriesto which 1 had accessthrough fiction, an antiland (I can never
say the word 'patrie', 'fatherland', even if it is provided with an 'anti-') where
distinctionsof races,classes,and origins would not be put to use without someone's
rebelling. Where there are people who are ready for anything - to live, to die for
the sakeof ideasthat are right and just. And whereit was not impossibleor pathetic
to be generous.1 knew, 1 have always known, what 1 hated. 1 located the enemy
and all his destructivefigures: authority, repression, censorship, the unquenchable
thirst for wealth and power. The ceaselesswork of death - the constantof evil. But
that couldn't last. Deathhad to be destroyed.1 saw that reality, history, was a series
of struggles,without which we would have long ago been dead. And in my mental
voyage,1 gave great importanceto battlefields,conflicts, the confrontationbetween
the forces of death and the forces of life, between wrong ideas and right ideas.
Actually, I have always wantedwar; 1 did not believe that changeswould be made
except through revolutionarymovements.1 saw the enormity of power every day.
Nazism, colonialism, centuries of violent inequality, the massacreof peoples,
religious wars. Only one answer- struggle. And without theorizing any of that, of
course -1 forged through the texts where there was struggle.
1 questionedmight - its use, its value; through a world of fiction and myths, 1
followed closely thosewho had it and who usedit. 1 askedeverywhere:where does
your strengthcome from? What have you done with your power? What causehave
you served?I watched the 'masters'especially closely - the kings, chiefs, judges,
leaders,all thosewho 1 thought could have changedsociety; and then the 'heroes':
that is to say, the persons endowed with an individual strength but without
authority, those who were isolated, eccentric, the intruders: great, undaunted,
sturdy beings, who were at odds with the Law.
[ •..J
The Empire of the Selfsame (Empirically from

Bad to Worse)
For, unfortunately,Hegel isn't inventing things. What 1 mean is that the dialectic,
its syllogistic system,the subject'sgoing out into the other in order to come back
204 Helene Cixous
to itself, this entire process,particularly describedin the Phenomenologyof the

Mind, is, in fact, what is commonly at work in our everydaybanality. Nothing is
more frightening or more ordinary than Society'sfunctioning the way it is laid out
with the perfect smoothnessof Hegelian machinery, exhibited in the movement
through which one passes,in three stages,from the family to the State.
A historical processdynamizedby the dramaof the Selfsame[Pro preJ. Impossible
to conceiveof a desirethat doesnot entail conflict and destruction.We are still living
under the Empire of the Selfsame.The same mastersdominate history from the
beginning,inscribing on it the marks of their appropriatingeconomy: history, as a
story of phallocentrism,hasn'tmoved exceptto repeatitself. 'With a difference',as
Joyce says. Always the same, with other clothes.
Nor hasFreud(who is, moreover,the heir of Hegel and Nietzsche)madeanything
up. All the great theoristsof destinyor of humanhistory have reproducedthe most
commonplacelogic of desire, the one that keeps the movementtoward the other
stagedin a patriarchal production, under Man's law.
History, history of phallocentrism, history of propriation: a single history.
History of an identity: that of man's becoming recognized by the other (son or
woman), reminding him that, as Hegel says, death is his master.
It is true that recognition, following the phallocentric lead, passesthrough a
conflict the brunt of which is borne by woman; and that desire, in a world thus
determined,is a desire for appropriation. This is how that logic goes:
(1) Where does desire come from? From a mixture of difference and inequality.
No movementtoward, if the two terms of the couple are in a state of equality. It
is always a difference of forces which results in movement. (Reasoningthat is,
therefore, basedon 'physical' laws.)
(2) A little surreptitiousslippage:the sexualdifferencewith an equality of force,
therefore, does not produce the movementof desire. It is inequality that triggers
desire, as a desire - for appropriation.Without inequality, without struggle, there
is inertia - death.
It is on this level of analysis (more or less conscious,dependingon the supposed-

masters)that what I consider to be the great masculineimpostureoperates:
One could, in fact, imagine that difference or inequality - if one understandsby
that noncoincidence,asymmetry- lead to desirewithout negativity, without one of
the partner'ssuccumbing:we would recognizeeach other in a type of exchangein
which each one would keep the other alive and different. But in the (Hegelian)
schemaof recognition,thereis no placefor the other, for an equalother, for a whole
and living woman. She must recognizeand recuntnizethe male partner, and in the
time it takes to do this, she must disappear,leaving him to gain Imaginary profit,
to win Imaginary victory. The good woman, therefore,is the one who 'resists'long
enough for him to feel both his power over her and his desire (I mean one who
'exists'), and not too much, to give him the pleasureof enjoying, without too many
obstacles,the return to himself which he, grown greater- reassuredin his own eyes,
is making.
Sorties 205
All women havemore or lessexperiencedthis cuntditionality of masculinedesire.

And all its secuntdaryeffects. The fragility of a desirethat must (pretendto) kill its
object. Fantasizingrape or making the transition to the act of rape. And plenty of
women, sensingwhat is at stake there, cuntsentto play the part of object....
Why did this comedy,whose fmal act is the master'sflirtation with death,make
Bataille laugh so hard, as he amusedhimself by pushing Hegel to the edge of the
abyssthat a civilized man keepshimself from falling into? This abyssthat functions
as a metaphorboth of death and of the feminine sex.
All history is inseparablefrom economyin the limited senseof the word, that of
a certain kind of savings. Man's return - the relationshiplinking him profitably to
man-being,conservingit. This economy, as a law of appropriation,is a phallo-
centric production. The opposition appropriate/inappropriate,proper/improper,
clean/unclean,mine/not mine (the valorization of the selfsame), organizes the
opposition identity/difference.Everything takes place as if, in a split second,man
and being had propriated each other. And as if his relationshipto woman was still
at playasthe possibility - though threatening,of the not-proper, not-clean, not-
mine: desireis inscribedas the desireto reappropriatefor himself that which seems
able to escape him. The (unconscious?)stratagem and violence of masculine
economy consists in 'making sexual difference hierarchical by valorizing one of
the terms of the relationship,by reaffirming what Freud calls phallic primacy. And
the 'difference' is always perceivedand carried out as an opposition. Masculinity/
femininity are opposedin such a way that it is male privilege that is affirmed in a
movementof conflict played out in advance.
And one becomesaware that the Empire of the Selfsameis erectedfrom a fear
that, in fact, is typically masculine:the fear of expropriation,of separation,of losing
the attribute. In other words, the threat of castrationhas an impact. Thus, there is
a relationship between the problematic of the not-selfsame,not-mine (hence of
desireand the urgencyof reappropriation)and the constitutionof a subjectivity that
experiencesitself only when it makesits law, its strength,and its masteryfelt, and
it can all be understoodon the basis of masculinity becausethis subjectivity is
structuredaround a loss. Which is not the case with femininity.
What does one give?
All the difference determining history's movement as property's movement is
articulatedbetweentwo economiesthat are defined in relation to the problematic
of the gift.
The (political) economy of the masculine and the feminine is organized by
different demands and constraints, which, as they become socialized and
metaphorized,producesigns, relations of power, relationshipsof production and
reproduction,a whole huge systemof cultural inscription that is legible as masculine
or feminine.
I make a point of using the qualifiers of sexual difference here to avoid the
confusion man/masculine,woman/feminine:for there are some men who do not
represstheir femininity, some women who, more or less strongly, inscribe their
masculinity. Difference is not distributed, of course, on the basis of socially
determined'sexes'. On the other hand, when I speak of political economy and
206 Helene Cixous
libidinal economy,connectingthem, I am not bringing into play the false question

of origins -a story madeto order for male privilege. We have to be careful not to
lapsesmugly or blindly into an essentialistideological interpretation,as both Freud
and Jones, for example, risked doing in their different ways. In the quarrel that
brought them into conflict on the subject of feminine sexuality, both of them,
starting from oppositepoints of view, came to support the formidable thesis of a
'natural', anatomicaldeterminationof sexual difference-opposition.On that basis,
both of them implicitly back phallocentrism'sposition of strength.
We can recall the main lines of the opposingpositions: Jones(in Early Feminine
Sexuality)in an ambiguousmove attacksthe Freudianthesesthat make woman out
to be a flawed man.
For Freud:
(1) The 'fate' of the feminine situation is an effect of an anatomical'defect'.
(2) Thereis only one libido and it is male in essence;sexualdifferenceis inscribed
at the beginningof the phallic phasethat both boys and girls go through. Until that
point, the girl will have been a sort of little boy: the genital organizationof the
infantile libido is articulated through the equivalence activity/masculinity. The
vagina has not yet been 'discovered'.
(3) Since the first object of love, for both sexes,is the mother, it is only in the
boy that the love of the oppositesex is 'natural'.
For Jones: femininity is an autonomous'essence'.
From the beginning (starting at the age of six months) the girl has a 'feminine'
desirefor her father; analysisof the little girl's most primitive fantasieswould show,
in fact, that in place of the breast,which is perceivedas disappointing,the penis or
(by an analogicalshift) an object shapedlike it is desired.One is alreadyin the chain
of substitutions,which meansthat the child, in the seriesof partial objects,would
come to take the place of the penis ... for, to counter Freud, Jones obediently
reenlists in Freudian territory. And overdoesit! He concludesfrom the equation
breast-penis-childthat the little girl feels a primary desire toward her father. (And
the desire to have the father's child would be primary also.) He concludesthat, of
course,the girl has a primary love for the oppositesex as well. Therefore,she too
has a right to her own Oedipuscomplex as a primary formation and to the threat
of mutilation by the mother. In the end -a woman, that is what she is and with
no anatomicaldefect: her clitoris is not a minipenis. Clitoral masturbationis not,
as Freud claims, a masculinepractice. And seeingthe early fantasies,it would seem
that the vagina is discoveredextremely early.
In fact, by affirming that there is a specific femininity (all the while preserving
orthodox theses elsewhere),Jones is still reenforcing phallocentrism under the
pretextof taking femininity's side (and God'stoo, who, he remindsus, createdthem
male and female!). And bisexualitydisappearsin the unbridgedabyssseparatingthe
opponentshere.
As for Freud, if one subscribesto what he saysin his article on the Disappearance
of the Oedipus Complex (1933) in which he identifies himself with Napoleon:
'anatomy is destiny', one participates in condemningwoman to death. And in
wrapping up all of History.
Sorties 207
It is undeniablethat there are psychicconsequences of the difference betweenthe

sexes. But they certainly cannot be reduced to the ones that Freudian analysis
designates.Starting from the relationshipof the two sexesto the Oedipuscomplex,
the boy and the girl are steeredtoward a division of social roles such that women
'inevitably' havea lesserproductivity becausethey 'sublimate'lessthan men and that
symbolic activity, hence the production of culture, is the work of men.3
Elsewhere,Freud startsfrom what he calls the anatomicaldifferencebetweenthe
sexes.And we know how that is representedin his eyes: by the differencebetween
having/not having the phallus. By referenceto those preciousparts. Starting from
what will take shapeas the transcendentalsignifier with Lacan.
But sexual difference is not determined simply by the fantasized relation to
anatomy,which dependsto a great extent on catching sight of something,thus on
the strangeimportancethat is accordedto exteriority and to that which is specular
in sexuality'sdevelopment.A voyeur's theory, of course.
No, the difference,in my opinion, becomesmost clearly perceivedon the level of
jouissance,inasmuchas a woman'sinstinctual economycannot be identified by a
man or referred to the masculineeconomy.
For me, the question askedof woman - 'What does she want?' - is a question
that woman asksherself, in fact, becauseshe is askedit. It is preciselybecausethere
is so little room for her desire in society that, becauseof not knowing what to do
with it, she endsup not knowing where to put it or if she even has it. This question
concealsthe most immediateand most urgent question: 'How do I pleasure?'What
is it - feminine jouissance- where doesit happen,how doesit inscribe itself - on
the level of her body or of her unconscious?And then, how does it write itself?
One can ramble on for a long time about hypothetical pre-history and a
matriarchal epoch. Or, like Bachofen,4one can attempt to prefigure a gynarchic
society, drawing from it poetic and mythical effects, which have a powerfully
subversiveimpact regarding the history of family and male power.
All the ways of differently thinking the history of power, property, masculine
domination, the formation of the State, and the ideological equipmenthave some
effect. But the changethat is in processconcernsmore than just the question of
'origin'. There is phallocentrism.History has never producedor recordedanything
else - which does not mean that this form is destinal or natural. Phallocentrismis
the enemy.Of everyone.Men's loss in phallocentrismis different from but as serious
as women's. And it is time to change.To invent the other history.
There is 'destiny'no more than there is 'nature'or 'essence'as such. Rather,there
are living structures that are caught and sometimes rigidly set within
historicocultural limits so mixed up with the sceneof History that for a long time
it has been impossible (and it is still very difficult) to think or even imagine an
'elsewhere'.We are presentlyliving in a transitionalperiod - one in which it seems
possible that the classic structure might be split.
It is impossibleto predict what will becomeof sexualdifference- in anothertime
(in two or three hundredyears?).But we must make no mistake: men and women
are caught up in a web of age-old cultural determinations that are almost
unanalyzablein their complexity. One can no more speakof 'woman'than of 'man'
208 Helene Cixous
without being trappedwithin an ideologicaltheaterwherethe proliferation of repre-

sentations,images,reflections, myths, identifications, transform, deform, constantly
5
changeeveryone'sImaginary and invalidate in advanceany conceptualization.
Nothing allows us to rule out the possibility of radical transformation of
behaviors, mentalities, roles, political economy - whose effects on libidinal
economyare unthinkable - today. Let us simultaneouslyimagine a generalchange
in all the structuresof training, education,supervision- hencein the structuresof
reproductionof ideologicalresults. And let us imagine a real liberation of sexuality,
that is to say, a transformationof each one's relationship to his or her body (and
to the other body), an approximation to the vast, material, organic, sensuous
universe that we are. This cannot be accomplished,of course, without political
transformations that are equally radical. (Imagine!) Then 'femininity' and
'masculinity' would inscribe quite differently their effects of difference, their
economy,their relationshipto expenditure,to lack, to the gift. What today appears
to be 'feminine' or 'masculine'would no longer amountto the samething. No longer
would the commonlogic of differencebe organizedwith the oppositionthat remains
dominant. Difference would be a bunch of new differences.
But we are still floundering - with few exceptions- in Ancient History.
The Masculine Future
There are someexceptions.There have always beenthoseuncertain,poetic persons

who have not let themselvesbe reduced to dummies programmed by pitiless
repressionof the homosexualelement. Men or women: beings who are complex,
mobile, open. Accepting the other sex as a componentmakes them much richer,
more various, stronger,and - to the extent that they are mobile - very fragile. It
is only in this condition that we invent. Thinkers, artists, those who create new
values, 'philosophers'in the mad Nietzscheanmanner, inventors and wreckers of
conceptsand forms, thosewho changelife cannothelp but be stirred by anomalies
- complementary or contradictory. That doesn't mean that you have to be
homosexualto create.But it doesmeanthat there is no inventionpossible,whether
it be philosophical or poetic, without there being in the inventing subject an
abundance of the other, of variety: separate-people,thought-Jpeople,whole
populationsissuingfrom the unconscious,and in eachsuddenlyanimateddesert,the
springingup of selvesone didn't know - our women,our monsters,our jackals,our
Arabs, our aliases,our frights. That there is no invention of any other I, no poetry,
no fiction without a certain homosexuality(the IJplay of bisexuality) acting as a
crystallization of my ultrasubjectivities.6 I is this exuberant,gay, personalmatter,
masculine,feminine or other where I enchants,I agonizesme. And in the concert
of personalizationscalled I, at the same time that a certain homosexuality is
repressed,symbolically, substitutively,it comesthrough by various signs, conduct-
character,behavior-acts.And it is even more clearly seenin writing.
Sorties 209
Thus, what is inscribedunderJeanGenet'sname,in the movementof a text that

divides itself, pulls itself to pieces,dismembersitself, regroups,remembersitself, is
a proliferating, maternalfemininity. A phantasmicmeld of men, males,gentlemen,
monarchs,princes,orphans,flowers, mothers,breastsgravitatesabout a wonderful
'sun of energy'- love - that bombardsand disintegratestheseephemeralamorous
anomaliesso that they can be recomposedin other bodies for new passions.
She is bisexual:
What I proposehereleadsdirectly to a reconsiderationof bixexuality. To reassert
the value of bisexuality;7 henceto snatchit from the fate classically reservedfor it
in which it is conceptualizedas 'neuter' because,as such, it would aim at warding
off castration.Therefore,I shall distinguishbetweentwo bisexualities,two opposite
ways of imagining the possibility and practice of bisexuality.
(1) Bisexuality as a fantasy of a complete being, which replaces the fear of
castrationand veils sexual difference in so far as this is perceivedas the mark of a
mythical separation- the trace, therefore,of a dangerousand painful ability to be
cut. Ovid's Hermaphrodite,less bisexualthan asexual,not madeup of two genders
but of two halves. Hence, a fantasy of unity. Two within one, and not even two
wholes.
(2) To this bisexuality that melts together and effaces, wishing to avert
castration,I opposethe other bisexuality, the one with which every subject, who
is not shut up inside the spuriousPhallocentricPerforming Theater,sets up his or
her erotic universe. Bisexuality - that is to say the location within oneself of the
presenceof both sexes, evident and insistent in different ways according to the
individual, the nonexclusion of difference or of a sex, and starting with this
'permission'one gives oneself,the multiplication of the effects of desire'sinscription
on every part of the body and the other body.
For historical reasons,at the presenttime it is woman who benefits from and
opensup within this bisexuality besideitself, which does not annihilate differences
but cheersthem on, pursuesthem, adds more: in a certain way woman is bisexual
- man having beentrained to aim for glorious phallic monosexuality.By insisting
on the primacy of the phallus and implementing it, phallocratic ideology has
producedmore than one victim. As a woman, I could be obsessedby the scepter's
great shadow, and they told me: adore it, that thing you don't wield.
But at the same time, man has been given the grotesqueand unenviablefate of
being reducedto a single idol with clay balls. And terrified of homosexuality,as
Freud and his followers remark. Why does man fear being a woman? Why this
refusal [Ablehnung] of femininity? The questionthat stumpsFreud. The 'barerock'
of castration.For Freud,the repressedis not the other sex defeatedby the dominant
sex, as his friend Fliess (to whom Freud owes the theory of bisexuality) believed;
what is repressedis leaning toward one's own sex.
Psychoanalysisis formed on the basis of woman and has repressed(not all that
successfully)the femininity of masculinesexuality, and now the accountit gives is
hard to disprove.
210 Helene Cixous
We women, the derangers,know it only too well. But nothing compels us to

deposit our lives in theselack-banks;to think that the subject is constitutedas the
last stagein a dramaof bruising rehearsals;to endlesslybailout the father'sreligion.
Becausewe don't desireit. We don't go round and round the supremehole. We have
no woman'sreasonto pay allegianceto the negative. What is feminine (the poets
suspectedit) affirms: ... and yes I said yes I will Yes, says Molly (in her rapture),
carrying Ulysseswith her in the direction of a new writing; I said yes, I will Yes.
To say that woman is somehowbisexual is an apparently paradoxicalway of
displacing and reviving the question of difference. And therefore of writing as
'feminine' or 'masculine'.
I will say: today, writing is woman's. That is not a provocation, it meansthat
woman admits there is an other. In her becoming-woman,she has not erasedthe
bisexuality latent in the girl as in the boy. Femininity and bisexuality go together,
in a combinationthat varies accordingto the individual, spreadingthe intensity of
its force differently and (dependingon the momentsof their history) privileging one
componentor another.It is much harderfor man to let the other comethrough him.
Writing is the passageway,the entrance,the exit, the dwelling place of the other in
me - the other that I am and am not, that I don't know how to be, but that I feel
passing,that makesme live - that tears me apart, disturbs me, changesme, who?
-a feminine one, a masculine one, some? - several, some unknown, which is
indeedwhat gives me the desireto know and from which all life soars.This peopling
gives neither rest nor security, always disturbsthe relationshipto 'reality', produces
an uncertaintythat gets in the way of the subject'ssocialization.It is distressing,it
wears you out; and for men this permeability, this nonexclusion, is a threat,
somethingintolerable.
Notes
1. My father, Sephardic- Spain - Morocco - Algeria - my mother, Ashkenazy- Austria

- Hungary - Czechoslavakia(her father) and Spain (her mother) passing by chance
through a Paris that was short-lived.
2. Women: at that time I wasn't thinking about them. At first, occupyingthe stagein a way
that I could plainly see, the battle to death was the battle pitting colonial power against
its victims. Beyond that I perceivedthat it was the imperialist result of capitalist structure
and that it intensifiedthe classstruggleby deepeningit and making it more monstrousand
inhuman: the exploited were not even 'workers' but, with racism'sassistance,something
worse - subhuman;and the universecould pretendto obey 'natural' laws. War was on
the horizon, partially concealedfrom me. I wasn't in France. I didn't see betrayal and
collaboration with my own eyes. We were living under Vichy: I perceived its effects
without knowing their causes.I had to guesswhy my father couldn't do his work, why
I couldn't go to school, et cetera. And I had to guesswhy, as a little white girl informed
me, 'all Jews areliars'.
3. Freud's thesis is the following: when the Oedipus complex disappears,the superego
becomesits heir. The moment a boy starts to feel the threat of castration,he begins to
overcomethe Oedipuscomplex, with the help of a very harsh superego.For the boy, the
Sorties 211
Oedipuscomplex is a primary formation - his first love object is the mother, as it is for
the girl. But the girl's history is inevitably constitutedunderthe pressureof a superegothat
is less harsh: becauseshe is castrated,her superegowill not be as strong. She never
completely overcomesthe Oedipus complex. The feminine Oedipus complex is not a
primary formation. The pre-Oedipalattachmentto the mother entails a difficulty for the
girl from which, Freud says,she never recovers.It is having to changeobjects(to love the
father) along the way -a painful conversion,which is accompaniedby a supplementary
renunciation:the passagefrom pre-Oedipalsexuality to 'normal' sexuality supposesthe
abandonmentof the clitoris for the vagina. In the terms of this 'destiny', women have a
reducedsymbolic activity: they have nothing to lose, to win, or to defend.
4. J.-J. Bachofen(1815-76),a Swisshistorianof 'gynocracy','historian'of a nonhistory.His
aim is to show that the variouspeoples(Greek, Roman,Hebrew) have passedthrough an
age of 'gynocracy',the reign of the Mother, before arriving at patriarchy. This age can
only be deduced,for it remainswithout history. This situation,which was humiliating for
men, has been repressed,according to Bachofen'stheory, and covered by historical
oblivion. And he attempts(particularlyin Das Mutterrecht [Mother Rightl1861)to make
an archeologyof the matriarchalsystem,which is very beautiful, beginningwith a reading
of the nrst historical texts on the level of the symptom, of what is unsaid in them.
Gynocracy, he says, is organizedmaterialism.
5. There are encoded paradigms projecting the robot couple man/woman, as seen by
contemporary societies that are symptomatic of a consensusof repetition. See the
UNESCO issue of 1975, which is devoted to the International Woman's Year.
6. Prenomsde Personne[Nobody's First Names], Cixous, Editions du Seuil: 'Les Comtesde
Hoffmann' [Tales of Hoffmann']' pp. 112 ff.
7. See Nouvelle Revuede Psychoanalyse,no. 7, Bisexualiteet difference des sexes(Spring
1973).
3.3 D Feminism and
Deconstruction, Again:
negotiations
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
[ ... ]
It is not just that deconstructioncannot found a politics, while other ways of

thinking can. It is that deconstructioncan make founded political programsmore
useful by making their in-built problems more visible. To act is therefore not to
ignore deconstruction,but actively to transgressit without giving it up. (A slightly
tougherformulation which clarity-fetishistscan ignore: deconstructiondoesnot aim
at praxis or theoretical practice but lives in the persistentcrisis or uneaseof the
moment of techiie or crafting.) Feminism has a special situation here because,
among the many names that Derrida gives to the problem/solution of founded
programs,one is 'woman'. I explain in this chapter [of Outside in the Teaching
Machine] why feminism should keep to the critical intimacy of deconstructionbut
give up its attachmentto that specifIc name for the problem/solution of founded
programs(also named'writing'). I put it so awkwardly becauseso-called'political'
academicswill still insist that writing is only script and make the blindingly brilliant
critique that Derrida ignores mothers speakingto infants, or ignores orature.I
This is a more charitable position on the usefulness of deconstruction for
feminism than I have supported in the past. It is a negotiation and an
acknowledgmentof complicity. This is a result of a growing sensethat, at homeand
abroad,postcolonialsand migrants are still coming to terms with unacknowledged
complicity with the culture of imperialism,in a whole rangeof experiencesincluding
the failure of secularismand the Eurocentrismof economicmigration. There may
be somethinglike a relationshipwith how feminists and indeed women in general
deal with patriarchy and feminist theory.2
The chapteris written in the musing style of speakingto my 'school-mates',the
occasionbeing TeresaBrennan'sinvitation to speakto feminists generallysympathetic
to poststructuralismand psychoanalysisin a seminarseriesat Cambridgein 1987.
Spivak, G. c., Outside in the Teaching Machine, Routledge,New York, 1993, pp. 121-40, 305-9.
212
Feminism and Deconstruction,Again 213
I first conceivedof the line of thought pursuedin the following pagesimmediately

after six monthsof teachingin Delhi and Calcutta.Teachingfor the first time in the
country of my citizenship,and occasionallyin my own language,was an unsettling
and ambivalentexperience.The measureof my uneasewill be sensedwhen I point
out that I found a resonancein ThomasNagel's reflections on the Vietnam years:
the United Stateswas engagedin a criminal war, criminally conducted.This produced

a heightened sense of the absurdity of my theoretical pursuits. Citizenship is a
surprisingly strong bond, even for those of us whose patriotic feelings are weak. We
read the newspaperevery day with rage and horror, and it was different from reading
about the crimesof anothercountry. Thosefeelings led to the growth in the late 1960s
of seriousprofessionalwork by philosopherson public issues.3
Rajiv Gandhi and his centralizedpower-structurewere attemptingto redefineIndia

as the habitation of the tiny percentageof the taxpaying upper crust. That is my
classalliance,which I felt much more stronglythan my class-positionas an academic
in a trivial discipline in the United States.Thosewere also the months of the crisis
of the Bofors arms scandal, not much publicized in the international press but
certainly disturbing to a critic who regularly theorized the 'epistemicviolence' of
imperialism. It did not help that that particular crisis was later managedby the
Indian interventionin the Sri Lankan Civil War. (Again, the interveningyearshave
left their mark on this narrative. Does one ever catch up with the history of the
present?I have come to sensethat my uneasehad somethingto do not only with
the culture of 'old' imperialisms, but with the relationship between the new
economicmigrant to the United Statesand the country of her origin, thus the 'new'
imperialism; citizenship as a pious mark of perceived difference rather than
sameness,on both sides. This sensebleedsinto forthcoming work. In that balance,
two fresh entries,addingto the bond of [a] citizenshipthere, [bJ migrancy here: [aJ
Religious fundamentalismand the relationship betweensecularismand the culture
of 'old' imperialism [ ... ] [b] the Gulf War and the New World Order, the breakup
of the remnantsof India's old protectedeconomyand the much greaterrole played
by the IMF and the World Bank in the new 'liberalized'polity, perceivedby the New
York Times as the end of 'the political era in which India emerged from
colonialism'.)4
The position of academicfeminism in the elite universitiesin the two Indian cities
where I worked was not strikingly different from the United States, where I
habitually teach. And I am not given to unquestioningbenevolencetowards that
dubious category - Third World Woman'. Yet, there was producedin me, not
infrequently during my time in India, 'a heightenedsenseof the absurdity of my
theoreticalpursuits'. When I spoke in Cambridgein responseto TeresaBrennan's
invitation, immediately after leaving India, I found myself consideringthe relation-
ship betweenfeminism and deconstructionin terms of that senseof absurdity.
Before I could embarkon such a chasteningproject, it seemednecessaryto situate
a sympatheticmisrepresentationof the connectionbetweenthe two movements.In
214 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
that spirit I offered a reading of a few pages from a book then recently out,
JacquelineRose'sSexualityin the Field of Vision.5
At the end of Rose'sintroduction to her book, there is a dismissalof Derrida as
a certain kind of subjectivist essentialist. Unlike Elaine Showalter's or, more
recently, MargaretHoman'sdismissalsof deconstruction,Rose'stext is basedon a
reading of Derrida.6 When I deal with this dismissal,you see me defending a sort-
of-Derrida againstRose defending a sort-of-Lacan.This is yet anotherinstanceof
'the [necessary]absurdityof [our] theoreticalpursuits'. Thosefew monthsin India,
spent as a diasporic Indian and a working academic, gave me a senseof how
peculiarly uneasypeople were about the cultural legacy of imperialism. This was
certainly true in my own classbut was also pervasive,howeverinarticulately, across
the classes.The uneasestraddledthe genders,and in its context, varieties of elite
nativism or isolationist nationalism seemedpeculiarly out of touch with national
and international'realities'.The practicaleffectsof this legacywill escapetheoretical
negotiations into the veining of traces even as those negotiations become more
possible, more authoritative.7 As a reminder of this unease,and in responseto
Brennan'sspecific invitation, I felt I must reckon with the legacy of patriarchy
which, like the culture of imperialism, is a dubiousgift that we can only transform
if we acknowledgeit. In the strictestsense,feminism is 'subsumed'in patriarchy.My
entire discussionof Rose must be read as framed by this necessaryabsurdity.
I agreewith Rose that 'to understandsubjectivity, sexual difference and fantasy,
in a way that neither entrenchesthe terms nor denies them' remains a crucial task
for today.8 On these terms, in fact, there is not much difference betweenhow she
understandsLacan and how I understanddeconstruction. For Rose, 'only the
concept of a subjectivity at odds with itself gives back to women the right to an
impasseat the point of sexualidentity, with no nostalgiawhatsoeverfor its possible
or future integration into a norm'.9 This desire for an impasseis not unlike the
desirefor the abyssor infinite regressionfor which deconstructionmust perpetually
account. I do, of course, declare myself bound by that desire. The difference
betweenRose and myself here is that what she feels is a right to be claimed, I am
obliged to recognizeas a bind to be watched.10 I think the differencebetweenus in
this context comesfrom Rose'sunderstandingof deconstructionas only a narrative
of the fully dispersedand decenteredsubject. I am not myself suggestinga strict
oppositionbetweenstructureand narrative,or morphologyand narrative. But I do
want to insist that when it is understoodonly as a narrative,deconstructionis only
the picture of an impossibility that cannot help any political position. Or perhaps
it can, only too easily. (I am thinking here of other arguments, relying on a
trivialized descriptionof deconstructionas a narrative,argumentswhich suggest,for
example, that since women are naturally decentered,deconstructionis good for
feminism and vice versa.)
In her introduction to Sexuality in the Field of Vision, Rose is by no means a
trivializer, but seemsstill to understanddeconstructiononly as a narrative.One way
of showing this is to bring a different understandingof deconstructionto bear on
JacquelineRose'sgeneral presentationof psychoanalysisas a project.
It seemsto me that, for Rose, the psychoanalyticproject is a kind of epistemo-

logical project, through which women and men understandtheir ontology in terms
of (or at least not excluding) sexual difference:
Feminism must depend on psychoanalysisbecause the issue of how individuals

recognizethemselvesas male or female, the demandthat they do so, seemsto stand
in such fundamentalrelation to the forms of inequality and subordinationwhich it is
feminism's objective to change.11
This sentenceis, I think, about male and female subjectsconstruingthemselvesas

knowable objects, especiallyif I am right in thinking that the word 'recognize'is
doing duty here for the more critical 'cognize'. Now the antisexist project of
feminism basesitself upon the conviction that distinctions arising in social practice
out of the declarationof a fundamentalontic difference are, more often than not,
incorrect, because,like most declarationsof difference,theseinvolve a dissimulated
ranking. The range of such social practicesruns from sociobiology to corporate
(civil) and familial (domestic) practice. Rose's new epistemologicalitinerary will
allow us to correctthis. It will usethe epistemologyof sexualdifferenceas an answer
to the ontological question:what am I (woman)? and then to an accountingof that
epistemology:how do I recognizemyself (woman)?
It is, however,the next step, containedin the last part of the sentencefrom Rose
quoted above, which gives me trouble. That step covers the quick shift from
epistemology/ontologyto the ethicopolitical project. The subjectrecognizingherself
(woman) seemsin Rose'sreadingto do so in order to act in the interestsof psycho-
social justice: in a 'fundamentalrelation to the forms of inequality and subordination
which it is feminism's objective to change'.Rose'sposition is of coursesufficiently
subtle. She is aware that 'femininity [the formula for this ontic secret that we
discover through the epistemologicalitinerary of the divided subject - woman] in
psychoanalysis,is neither simply achievednor is it ever complete'.It none the less
involves that unacknowledgedshift I havedescribedbetweenepistemology/ontology
on the one hand and ethicopolitics on the other. If, as Rose suggests,it is crucial
to admit the division in the subject, it seemsto me no less crucial to admit the
irreducible difference betweenthe subject (woman) of that epistemology,and the
subject (feminist) of this ethicopolitics.12 In the previous chapter, I have touched
upon the fact that Marxism foundered on this difference. In my new and
forthcoming work, I am concentratingupon this difference straddling the division
betweenthe women's movementand feminist theory.
If one looks at the deconstructivemorphology(rather than simply reading it as
the narrative of the decentered subject), then one is obliged to notice that
deconstruction has always been about the limits of epistemology. It sees the
ontological impetus as a program implicated in the writing of the name of Man.13
Let me emphasizethis by reopeningSpurs,whereDerrida commentson Heidegger
and his reading of Nietzsche.14 Simplifying Derrida's argument a little, we could
read it as follows: there is a questionwhich is precomprehended even by the careful
subtletyof the Heideggerianarticulationof the antico-ontologicaldifference.Simpli-

fying that Heideggeriansubtlety, we might summarizeit as follows: Heidegger
suggeststhat Dasein is ontically programmedto ask the ontological question, and
not to be able to answerit. This is undoubtedlya correctivefor any accountwhich
assumes that when we look for an epistemological itinerary to cleanse the
ontological accountof ourselves, thismight contribute or, indeed, lead to correct
psychosexualethicopolitical action. (One may argue that 'correct' epistemologies
can be the basisof 'correct'public policy - but that seemsnot to be Rose'sargument.
Indeed, the relationship betweenresearchand public policy is another link in the
chain of knowingJdoing [pouvoirJ savoir] that is under discussion.)
Even this Heideggeriancorrective is critiqued by Derrida becauseit does not
attend to the naming of woman.
For not having posed the sexual question, or at least for having subsumedit in the
generalquestionof truth, Heidegger'sreadingof Nietzschehasbeenidling offshoreever
since it missedthe woman in the affabulation of truth.IS
Spurs gives an accountof how one can read Nietzsche'smasterconcept-metaphors.

The most interesting one for Derrida is 'woman'. Like all concept-metaphors,
'woman' is here used in such a way that one cannot locate an adequateliteral
referentfor the word. There is somethingspecialaboutit, however,for the question
of sexual difference in Nietzscheis not 'a regional questionin a larger order which
would subordinateit first to the domain of a generalontology, subsequentlyto that
of a fundamentalontology, and finally to the questionof the truth of being itself'. 16
Derrida rescuesthis reading of the concept-metaphor 'woman' in Nietzsche,and
also suggeststhat Nietzsche'sown analysis of sexual difference is caught within a
historical or narrative understanding/misunderstanding of 'propriation', making a
being proper to itself.
(This notion, of the originary and thereforestructurally inaccessibleautoposition
of the subject, is a fairly common one in generally non-foundationalist'Marxist'
philosopherssuch as Louis Althusser or Theodor Adorno. Althusser's ill-fated
remark about the 'apparentlyparadoxicalproposition which I shall expressin the
following terms: ideology has no history' belongsto this family of notions; as does
Adorno's carefully articulated statement, 'the subject is appearancein its self-
positing and at the same time something historically altogether real'.17 Derrida
placesthe questionof sexual difference, at least, as he seesit in Nietzsche,in this
space.(For Althusser, by contrast,sexual differenceis one of the ideologies [rather
than Ideology], which are within history: 'it is in this implacableand more or less
pathological ... structure of the familial ideological configuration that the former
subject-to-bewill have to ... [become] the sexual subject [boy or girl] which it
already is in advance'.18For Adorno the question of sexual difference cannot be
entertainedon this level.)
In Derrida'sreading,Nietzscheis able to sketchsexualdifferenceas preontological
propriationperhapsbecausehe is boundby and gives his assentto significationsand
values that define sexual difference in terms of the eternal war betweenthe sexes,
and the mortal hatred of the sexes in love, eroticism, etc. Thus propriation in
Nietzsche may at first glance seem to have nothing but a series of restricted
meanings; appropriation, expropriation, taking possession, gift and barter,
mastering, servitude.19 You have, then, on the one side, Heidegger with his
extraordinarily subtle accountof the ontological difference, not posing the sexual
question,at leastin this context. You have,on the other, Nietzsche,using or having
to use the concept-metaphor 'woman'to point at preomologicaldifference,using it,
none the less, inside male-dominatedhistorical narrativesof propriation.
JacquelineRose, when she writes about propriation in a couple of sentencesin
her introduction, is obliged to keep within the Nietzscheanhistorical assumptions
about propriation, without the emancipatingmoment of emergenceof woman as
'catachresis',as a metaphorwithout a literal referent standingin for a conceptthat
is the condition of conceptuality;Nietzscheprivileges the metaphoras condition of
possibility of 'truth'. 'Woman'is a necessaryand irreducible misnomerfor this prior
or primal figurative. Any programwhich assumescontinuity betweenthe subjectof
epistemology/ontologyand that of ethicopolitics, must actively forget that the call
t%f the wholly-other, that which is the undifferentiated(radically precontinuous)
ethical, is the condition of possibility of the political, and that the propriation of a
subjectfor ontology/epistemologyhas already also becomepossibleby way of this
condition. [ ... J
The distinction betweenthe narrow senseand the generalsenseof catachresisis
never clear-cut in deconstruction,although the difference is always acknowledged.
According to Derrida, if one looks at propriation in the generalsensein Nietzsche,
one sees a question that is 'more powerful than the question, 'what is?', more
powerful than 'the veil of truth or the meaningof being',20 becausebefore one can
even say that there is being, there must be a decision that being can be proper to
itself to the extent of being part of that proposition. (In German,before the gift of
being in Es gibt Sein, one has to think the propriety to itself of the Es.) Outsideof
all philosophicalgame playing, the irreducible predicamentpointed at here is that
the ontological question cannot be asked in terms of a cleansedepistemology,for
propriation organizesthe totality of 'language'sprocessand symbolic exchangein
general', caught in the catachresis,snarled in the false analogy, not in 'pure'
metaphor.21
I believethat in 'Displacementand the Discourseof Woman',I missedthe fact that
in Derrida'sreadingof Nietzschein Spurs,thereis an insistencethat 'woman'in that
text was a concept-metaphorthat was also a name marking the preontologicalas
propriation in sexual difference,zz
When one of us defendsDerrida againstthe other of us defendingLacan we are
moving away from the suggestion in deconstruction (indeed European post-
Hegelian theory in general)that a thinker does not make a point on the full steam
of his sovereignsubjectivity. Nietzsche,even as he dependsupon propriation in the
patriarchal,restricted,or narrow sense,reachesthe generalsenseof propriation by
putting the name of woman on it through the conduct of his text. And Derrida,
218 Gayatrl Chakravorty Spivak
graspinghis reach as reader, does it not to trump Nietzschebut to make his text
more useful for us. I hope the rest of this chapterwill make clear how crucial it is
not to ignore the powerful currentsof Europeanantihumanistthoughtthat influence
us, yet not to excusethem of their masculismwhile using them. This is what I am
calling 'negotiation'.
Thus we can read Nietzsche'stext in a way that suggeststhat the nameof woman
makesthe questionof propriation indeterminate.Let us look at the sentence:'there
is no truth of woman, but becauseof that abyssalself-apartnessof truth, this non-
truth is "truth",.23 If one takes the crucial term 'woman' out of the sentence,it
would be possible to suggestthat this is what Nietzschethinks is new about his
philosophy of truth, that the nature of truth is such that it is always abyssally (in
a structureof repeatedindefinite mirroring) apartfrom what one appropriatesas the
truth in terms of which one can act. This non-truth is 'truth'. The quotation marks
indicate a catachresticalsetting apart [ ...J 'Truth' here is not only not the literal,
it is rather that for which there is no adequateliteral referent.
Because,in Nietzsche'sunderstandingof propriationin the narrow sense,woman
is seen as the custodianof irreducibly inadequateliteral referents;she is also seen
as a model. In other words, when Nietzschesuggeststhere is no truth of woman in
his historical understanding,a certain kind of woman is a model for the 'no truth'.
Woman is thus 'one name for that non-truth of truth,:24 one name for that
nontruth of truth.
My previous position on this essayof Derrida's was polemical. I suggestedthat
it was not right to see the figure of woman as a sign for indeterminancy.Reading
my analysisof appropriationin this polemic, JacquelineRose gives me the benefit
of the doubt by claiming solidarity on this particular position.25 And, within its
own context, I acceptthis gesture.But today, negotiating,I want to give the assent
for the momentto Derrida'sargument.Affirmative deconstructionsays'yes' to a text
twice, seescomplicity when it could rather easily be oppositional.As we have seen
in the previous chapter, Derrida has described his first phase as 'guarding the
question', 'keeping the question alive'. The question is no particular question, of
course, but its slippage into the form of a particular question is a 'necessary
transgression'.In that spirit, and in this case,let us protectthe questionthat we urge
Roseto ask: is therenot a differencebetweenknowing-being- epistem%ntological
- and right doing - the ethicopolitical?26He describedthe secondphaseas calling
to the wholly other. (If sexual difference is indeed pre-comprehended by the onto-
logical questionthen, miming Derrida'sNietzsche,we might think 'philosopher',by
way of the samehistorical narrative that gave Nietzsche'woman', as one misname
for the forgetfulness of the nontruth of 'truth'; The quick defensivenessto save
philosophyfrom this charge,discussedin the previouschapter,will then match our
anger at these 'philosophers'use of the name of 'woman', and show that the
difference between the philosopher and woman conceals a violence (truth/non-
truth::theory/practice)that will not be undone by repeating the theory-practice
quarrelin the women'squarter.Luce Irigaray's'ethicsof sexualdifference' [ ...J gives
us a way out in the thinking of ethics. I have tried to think a politics that will not
repeatthat violence,more carefully than I have beenable to in this book, in 'Gender

in ContemporaryColonization', as yet unpublished.
At this stage,still discussingfeminism and deconstruction,let us considerhow this
shift from the first phaseto the secondtranslatesinto a strategyof reading,a strategy
of giving assent.Let us look at Derrida's relatively recent study of Nietzsche, The
Ear of the Other, a piece on the politics of reading.27He suggeststhere that the
readershould not excusethe texts of Nietzschefor their use by the Nazis. There is
no reasonto saythat thatwas a meremisreading.On the contrary,the readershould
note that there is somethingin Nietzsche'stext which leadsexactly to that kind of
appropriation.This is one paradoxicalway of saying 'yes' to the text, but it entails
understandingfrom within, as it were, so that the momentsthat lend themselvesto
the so-calledmisappropriationare understoodin the text's own terms.It is then that
one can begin to develop a politics of reading, which will open up a text towards
an as yet unknown horizon so that it can be of use without excuse.Let us now call
this: negotiatingwith structuresof violence. It is in that spirit of negotiation that
I proposeto give assentto Derrida'stext about woman as a name for the nontruth
of truth, upon the broaderterrain of negotiationwith other establishedstructures,
daily practiced but often disavowed, like the Law, institutional education, and,
ultimately, capitalism. Negotiation, not collaboration; producing a new politics
through critical intimacy.
Affirmative deconstructionof this kind was already signaledin Grammatology.
Let us repeatthat passage:
The movementsof deconstructiondo not destroystructuresfrom the outside.They are

not possible and effective, nor can they take active aim, except by inhabiting those
structures.Inhabiting them in a certain way, becauseone always inhabits, and all the
more when one does not suspectit. Operatingnecessarilyfrom the inside, borrowing
all the strategic and economic resources of subversion from the old structure,
borrowing them structurally, that is to say without being able to isolate their elements
and atoms,the enterpriseof deconstructionalways in a certain way falls prey to its own
work (OG, 24; emphasismine).
It is this particular attitude that presagesthe crucial differencebetweenthe first and

the secondphases.The secondattitude towards that which is critiqued, the giving
of assentwithout excuse,so much that one inhabitsits discourse-a short word for
this might be 'love'.28
Deconstructionis not an exposure of error, nor a tabulation of error; logo-
centrism is not a pathology, nor is the metaphysicalclosure a prison to overthrow
by violent means.Looking for irreducibles,realizing the theoreticalabsurdityof my
position, it is with that 'love' that I am readingtexts alreadyread, and questioning
the usefulnessof reading deconstructionmerely as the narrative of the decentered
subject,of the fully dispersedsubject.This is whereI began,with the suggestionthat
Rose'scaseagainst deconstructionwas basedon such a reading.
Let us look in more detail at why it is unsatisfactoryto reducedeconstructionto

a narrative.
One focus of deconstructionas a morphologyis the graphematicstructure.In this
brief compass,I will presentthe morphology also as a narrative (perhapsthis is
inescapable)- the narrative of a narrative if you like - and contrast it to the
narrativeof a decenteredsubjectwhich deconstructionoffers not only to Jacqueline
Rose, but to readerssuch as Jurgen Habermasand Fredric Jameson.
One focus, then, of deconstructionis the graphematicstructure. The adjective
'graphematic'comesfrom Derrida'sanalysisthat writing is historically the structure
that is supposednecessarilyto operatein the presumedabsenceof its origin, the
sender.
Any act must assumeunified terms to get started. The implicit mechanicsby
which theseassumptionsare establishedor taken for grantedspell out, if examined,
a structureof repetition,which yet overtly posits self-evidence.Thesemechanicsare
generally found to be suppressedor finessed, so that beginnings do not seem
problematic. Nearly all of Derrida's writing has been a discussionof such gestures
- sometimeseven self-consciousgesturesof dismissal as difficulties or counter-
examples- performedin different ways in different discourses.Let us decideto call
this gesturethe suppressionof a graphematicstructure.The graphematicstructure
that seemsto orchestratethe inaugurationof all acts (including acts of thought) is
a structure like writing (although it is passedoff as the self-identity of definitions
present to themselves),something that looks more like the mark of an absent
presence, writing commonly conceived. As in the case of writing commonly
conceived,we cannot be necessarilysure of the identity of the originator, so in the
caseof the graphematicstructure,we cannotendorsethe 'fact' that it is an absent
presenceof which the trace-structureat the origin is the mark. (I remind the reader
of the origin of Marx's socialist teleology in a 'convenient error' [ ....J) This
unendorsable naming of the discovery of the repetition at the origin as
'graphematic',by way of 'writing' as a catachresis,is the double bind that founds
all deconstruction.In other words, hidden agendasmight passthemselvesoff as the
goes-without-saying-ness of truth, to fools and knavesalike; but to show them up
as writing and meanit is to buy into that very agenda,unlesswe put scare-quotes
around the word, and say: can't do better for the time being, must keep moving.
To call by the name of man all human reality is move number one: humanism;to
substitutethe nameof womanin that modeis move numbertwo; to put scare-quotes
around 'woman' is move number three, not a synthesis but a provisional half-
solution that always createsproblemsbecauseit is or is not mistakenfor the second
move; thereforealways looking forward, while making do, toward a fourth move,
that never happensbut always might.
By thesealleyways, human beings think themselvesunified also by finessing the
assumptionof a repressedgraphematicstructure.There is no way to get hold of a
subjectbefore this two-step. This is the narrativeof the famous decenteredsubject.
In early work such as 'Structure, Sign, and Play' and the first chapter of OJ
Grammatology,Derrida does invoke 'our epoch',meaning,specifically, an 'epoch'
that privileges languageand thinks (impossibly) to have got rid of centrisms.29 To

turn this critique - of a claim to have decenteredmethod, by pointing out that the
subject can only ever be posited by the fmessing of a graphematicstructureat the
origin - into merely the story of the individual becoming decenteredwith late
capitalism(Jameson),the passingof the pre-Socratics(Heidegger),the inception of
modernity (Habermas via Weber), or with Derrida's new tricky bolstering of
Eurocentricpatriarchy (Rose), is a plausible but unexaminedmove.
The useful part of deconstructionis in the suggestionthat the subject is always
centered.Deconstructionpersistentlynoticesthat this centeringis an effect-structure
with indeterminableboundariesthat can only be decipheredas determining. No
politics can occupy itself with only this enabling epistemologicaldouble bind. But
when a political analysisor programforgets this it runs the risk of declaringruptures
where there is also a repetition -a risk that can result in varieties of funda-
mentalism,of which the ontolepistemolethicopoliticalconfusion is a characteristic
symptom. International communismhas died of the risk.
Differance is one of the names for the necessityto obliterate the graphematic
structure,and the necessityto misnameit 'graphematic',since there is no other way
one can call it. This double bind - the double sessionof 'defering' - is at the origin
of practice.3o
Rose suggests,and she is not alone, that there is in Derrida a desire to suppress
sexual difference in the interest of differance, and a privileging of differance as the
name. (It seemsto go unnoticed that, in his later work, the word is hardly ever
used.)
Differance is, and it cannot be repeatedoften enough, only one name for the
irreducible double bind that allows the very possibility of difference(s). Sexual
identity is sexual differance,not sexualdifference;it producessexualdifference.We
are obliged to assumea pre-originarywholly other spacewithout differencesin the
interestof suppressingthat 'graphematic'structureat the inaugurationof our texts;
and differance is only one name for that necessity.There is no harm in admitting
that it's not just the productionof sexualdifferencethat's being framed here but the
possibility of thinking difference itself.
I invite you to consider again that, in the discourseof this critic of phallogo-
centrism,'woman'is anothernamefor this irreducibledouble bind. This is a difficult
considerationwhen we want to claim deconstructionfor or againstfeminism, but
I now see no way around it. Here differance as the ungraspableground of
propriation is (but the copula is a supplement)sexual difference.31 The name (of)
woman occupiesthis site in Derrida. Differance and 'woman' are two nameson a
chain of nominal displacementswhere, unmotivated names, neither can claim
priority. 'Man' is the duped name of the undivided origin. We are rather far away
from the 'subject' of feminist ethicopolitics. In fact, we are still looking at the
(im)possibility of broaching the epistemolontological.32
If differance (or 'woman', as well as the other names)opensup the question of
symbolic possibility in general,it is not, as Rose writes, by suppressionof thoughts
of cultural form. The thought of cultural forms, which implies the differentiation
of one culture from another,or of sexual difference, and indeed all other kinds of
difference; the difference between being and nonbeing, if you like the ontico-
ontologicaldifferencein this particularunderstanding,our desireto havean impasse
which can only be betweentwo things, our desire even for the undecidable;all of
theseare limited by the possibility that at the beginningis a suppressionwhich we
cannotget a handleon. Differance is in a (con)text, never pure. That's all it is, it's
no big deal, but it's not a story-line which dismissesthesedifferencesas culturally
unacceptable.We are still circling around the possibility of story-lines, even the
story-lines that put one 'culture' over against another. (I have learnedthis all the
better in terms of the politics of the postcolonialclamor for cultural difference and
the current demandsof liberal multiculturalism.) If all this seems too ethereal
rememberwe wouldn't have to do this if 'deconstruction'had not been diagnosed
in the first place as a story-line suppressingsexual and cultural difference in the
interestof differance. As you will, 1 hope, seein the end, I prefer a more pragmatic
line of reasoning(by way of a persistentactive and only immediately forgetful
transgressionof theory) myself when 1 am thinking/doing as a feminist.33
'Woman', then, is a name that is the nontruth of 'truth' in Derrida reading
Nietzsche. [...J This particular speciesof nominalism, an obsessionwith names
that are necessarilymisnames,names that are necessarilycatachreses,'writing',
'differance', 'power' ('woman' in this case), names that have no adequateliteral
referent,characterizespoststructuralismin general,in spite of local differences(and
via 'Value', and the 'Social', makes one suspecta kinship between the Marxian
project and the implicit politics of poststructuralism- thinking of Marx's critical
intimacy with Hegel'sVerhaltnis-obsessed dialecticalstructuralism- so inaccessible
to the polemical eye, yet perhapsamongthe most important reasonsfor its failure
in the handsof positivist sentimentalists).It is important to rememberthat eachof
these names is determinedby their historical burden in the most empirical way.
(Derrida calls this 'paleonymy'.)1 hope it is by now clear that Nietzscheusesa name
such as 'woman' becausehe has inherited it, and thus he usesall the contemporary
allegorical,sociological,historical, anddismissivestereotypesaboutwoman. On the
other hand, sinceNietzschealso wants to welcomethis nameas a namefor his own
practice - 'my truths' - what one sees in his text is the site of a conflict or a
negotiation.Nietzsche,or Derrida, or for that matter Lacan, is here fully complicit
with masculism(quite as Nietzscheis with the possibility of the grafting of Nazism
onto his left), yet it is also possibleto see, and Derrida is asking us to see this in
Nietzschebecauseif we do this we can makethe text useful, that within this itinerary
there is that peculiar affirmation. This is the model Nietzschewants - woman in
that senseis twice model (modeling the nontruth of 'truth', and being as unlike the
dogmaticphilosopherof truth as possibleby way of someof the dubioushistorical
stereotypes).It might be useful for us to accusethe text responsibly,and then lift
this lever and ab-usethe text, rather than not use it at all and follow the mistake
of the truth of (wo)man. Derrida himself is also bound (as is Lacan, and as are we
in our tastefor a pragmaticfeminism that claims to be theoreticaleven as it forgets
the difference betweenthe subjectsof onto/epistemologyand ethico-politics) by a

certain set of historical presuppositions.After all, one neverhearsa claim not to use
anything from the other side except as it is made possible through institutional
affiliation, the International Book Trade, fiscal support of a nation-state,
consumeristsupport of transnational('postmodern')capitalism, and so on. It is
never heard from women involved in primary health care, literacy, or alternative
(not 'sustainable'- that new cant word) development. (The crisis of so-called
national liberation is a different caseand must have its shareof gesture politics.)In
the persistentstruggle againstgendering('internalizedconstraintseenas choice')34
it is better to ab-usethe enemy'senemiesthan to be a purist while sitting in the
enemy'slap -a lap so colossal and shape-changingthat you can forget you are
sitting in it.
Derrida gives proof of being bound by the paleonymyof 'woman' when, at the
end of The Ear of the Other, speakingstill about his politics of reading,he sounds
a theme that has beensoundedby him before: the patronymic(the father's name),
becausethrough it the man can continue to survive after death, is a kiss of death.
By contrast, the namelessfeminine is the name of living. And it is this peculiar
livingnessof the feminine that is in some ways contaminatedor betrayedby what
Derrida perhapsunderstandsas 'feminism'. 'No woman or trace of woman. And I
do not makethis remarkin orderto benefit from that supplementof seductionwhich
today enters into all courtships or courtrooms. This vulgar procedureis what I
proposeto call "gynegogy"'.35
It must be acknowledgedthat this perspective,constitutedby the historico-legal
tradition of the patronymicin patriarchy,exists in Derrida'stext just as much as a
perspectiveconstitutedby his historical legacyexistsin Nietzsche'scatachresticaluse
of 'woman' as name. Thus, becauseof the necessityof the historical determination
of the name'woman'for the double bind at the origin of the productionof 'truth(s)',
there is no sense in talking about the relationship between deconstructionand
36
feminism as if women were naturally decentered. It takes its place, in its
productivity, with the claim that women are naturally anything.
Yet the nameof woman as the nontruth of 'truth' can have a significant message
for us if we, refusingfully to honor the historically boundcatachresis,give the name
of womanto that disenfranchisedwomanwho is historically different from ourselves,
the subjectsof feminist theory, and yet acknowledgethat she has the right to the
constructionof a subject-effectof sovereigntyin the narrow sense.Thenwe, as those
by now relatively enfranchisedagents,will shareand understandthe philosophers'
anxiety about the nasty historical determinationswhich allow this name to exist.
Since thesephilosophersare not essentialists,they have a real anxiety aboutthe loss
of the name 'woman' becauseit survives on theseprecariouslysketched,basically
essentialist historical generalizations.This is what is reflected in the kind of
masculinistnoiseswe noticed above at the conclusionof The Ear of the Other.37
Thereis a passagein Lacan's'Love Letter', an essaytranslatedby JacquelineRose
in Feminine Sexuality, where he talks about the understandingof the place of
woman beyond the question of sex, in soul-makingand in naming God, which I

think can be put togetherwith Nietzsche'slonging for affirming the nameof woman
as the nontruth of 'truth', and Derrida's anxiety about compromising the living
feminine in the interest of a gynegogywhich would sell itself to the death-storyof
the patronymic.38 This, to my mind, marks a moment of the need for taking the
name of woman in the interest of a philosophicalpractice. It is, in fact, no more
and indeed no less than the need for a name. It is easierto grasp this if we look at
the way in which Derrida writes about differance. In 'Differance', the essayby that
name, he repeatstediously that difjerance is neither a conceptnor a metaphor,nor
indeed a word, and yet, in the end, the entire essay is argued in terms of the
conceptualityand metaphoricityof the term. This particular tactic, of marking the
anxiety by keeping the name intact against all disavowalsunreadablewithout the
nameof that graphematicstructurewhich can only be misnamed,makeswork open
to traditional masculism,in the caseof the name of 'woman', as it makes it open
to traditional modes of languageuse in the case of differance.
What can we do about this? I have alreadymentionedthat I welcomethe idea of
the embattledlove of the text that is given to us by deconstruction.Yet I cannoterr
too long on that path. Deconstructionis not androgyny, phallocentrismis not a
pathology. After we have repeatedtheselessons,we must still insist on the project
of antisexism,becausesexismis also a pathology.39In that perspective,women can
no longer only be namesfor 'writing' or the nontruth of differance.We cannotclaim
both the desireto identify with the oppressionof woman in terms of an ontological
deception,and the desire for the right to an impasse,to a deconstructivefeminism
which would take woman as a namefor the graphematicstructureand the nontruth
of truth. We have to give up the one or the other. I would proposethat we should
not share this anxiety for the name, we should not identify the guarding of the
questionwith this particular name. This would allow us to use the ontological and
epistemologicalcritiques found in deconstruction(and indeed psychoanalysis)and
appreciatepoststructuralist'nominalism'. We must rememberthat this particular
name, the name of 'woman', misfires for feminism. Yet, a feminism that takes the
traditionalist line against deconstructionfalls into a historical determinismwhere
'history' becomesa gender-fetish.
What I have describedin the paragraphaboveis an ethical aporia, backedup by
intellectual preparationand its relationshipto a political decision. 'Pessimismof the
intellect and optimism of the will', if you like formulas, or, 'ethics as the experience
of the impossible'.Derrida has written about this with the philosopher'sanxiety in
'The Force of Law'. By contrast,guardingthis particular name for the graphematic
structureis perhapsthe most essentialistmove of all - this turning of deconstruction
into a narrative whetherin praise or dispraise.If we lose the 'name' of specifically
woman for writing there is no causefor lament.
It is in the interestof diagnosingthe ontological ruse, on the basisof which there
is oppressionof woman,that we haveto bring our understandingof the relationship
betweenthe name'woman'and deconstructioninto crisis. If we do not take the time
to understandthis in our zeal to be 'political', then I fear we act out the kind of play
that Nietzschefigured out in The Genealogyof Mortals: in the interestof giving an

alibi to his desireto punish, which is written into his way of being, in other words
in the interestof a survival game,man producesan alibi which is called justice. And
in the interestof that alibi, man has to define and articulate,over and over again,
the name of man. It seems to me that if we forget that we cannot have a
deconstructivefeminism which decides to transform the usefulnessof the name
'woman', itself based on a certain kind of historical anxiety for the graphematic
structure,into a narrative, and thus take up arms againstwhat we sometimescall
essentialism, then we might be acting out this particular scenario, adequately
contradictingand thus legitimizing it - by devisingnewernamesof woman - in the
interestof giving the desireto punishthe alibi of justice. And if you ask me whether
the disenfranchisedcan think this critique, 1 would say yes. It is the disenfranchised
who teachesus most often by saying: I do not recognizemyself in the object of your
benevolence.I do not recognizemy sharein your naming. Although the vocabulary
is not that of high theory, she tells us if we care to hear (without identifying our
onto/epistemologicalsubjectivity with her anxiety for the subjectshipof ethics and
the agencyof the political) that sheis not the literal referentfor our frenzied naming
of woman in the scramblefor legitimacy in the houseof theory. She remindsus that
the name of 'woman', however political, is, like any other name, a catachresis.
(I am not being etherealhere. I know the kind of woman I am thinking about.
And 1 also know that this person is not imaginable by most friends reading these
words. I cannotenter into the immenseand complicatedlogic of why this is so. Let
this remain a lost parenthesis,being fleshed out through a laborious program of a
learningnot yet accessibleto the productionof knowledge-a promissorynote that
you are under no obligation to endorsein the competitionfor 'the most oppressed
feminist'.)
The claim to deconstructivefeminism (and deconstructiveantisexism - the
political claim of deconstructivefeminists) cannot be sustainedin the name of
'woman'within the Derridian problematic.Like classconsciousness, which justifies
its own production so that this historical class-formationcan be undone,'woman'
as the name of writing must be erased in so far as it is a necessarilyhistorical
catachresis.
The name of woman cannot be the 'reality' of writing or of the necessary
graphematicstructureunlessyou turn the theory into nonsense.Let us say, speaking
from within, that we have to deconstructour desire for the impasse,neutralizethe
name of 'woman' for deconstructionand be deconstructivefeminists in that sense.
If we want to make political claims that are more useful all aroundthan the general
bourgeois academicfeminist toothsomeeuphoria, this seemsnow to be the only
way.
This point is not quite identical with the other note I have beensoundingon and
off: the object that is known to us through the epistemicproject, the cleansedobject
that knows the itinerary of its recognition of itself as male or female, cannot be
identical with the constituencyof antisexism,the subject of ethicopolitics. I will
bring the two together by way of a considerationof Foucault'sdouble-play with
'power' and power, and compareit to ours with 'woman' and woman: the name
and, as it were, the thing, the phenomenalessence.It should be a lessonto us that
if we do not watch out for the historical determinationsfor the name of woman as
catachresisin deconstruction,and merely seekto delegitimizethe nameof man, we
legitimize what is diagnosedby Nietzscheand acted out by Foucault.
'Objective'precedesthe famouschapteron 'Method' in History of SexualityI. By
the end of this section,everythinghappensas if the lessonslearnedfrom Nietzsche,
preciselythe alibi for the ontologicalcompulsionto articulateas epistemology(name
of man as subject of justice as alibi for the ontological need to punish), could be
undoneby an act of will. Thus Foucault is able to say, 'We must at the sametime
conceive of sex without the law, and power without the king' (HS, 91). This
sentenceleads into the section entitled 'Method'. Arrived here, the name'power' is
systematicallysold short for the 'thing' power, and we are able to get a method
becausewe know the objective, not reducedto an act of willed thought. (The best
way to deconstructthis is through Foucault'sown notion of the 'referential'in the
Archaeologyof Knowledge [ ....J
This bit of short-circuitingis comparableto the way that we would naturalizethe
name 'woman' if we transformedit into the central characterin that narrative of
woman'srecognitionwithin gendering,howeverdeferred.Foucault'snaturalizingof
the name'power' allows the coding of the phenomenalityof power as somethinglike
an arithmeticalsystemof equivalences:'And it is doubltlessthe strategiccodifIcation
of thesepoints of resistancethat makes a revolution possiblesomewhatsimilar to
the way in which the state relies on the institutional integration of power relation-
ships.'4o We see here a case of Foucault's desire to get beyond the ontological/
epistemologicalbind, comparableto our equationof the subjectof ontoepistemology
and ethicopolitics.
I have warned against an abuse of theory, becausewe cannot stop when the
analytic philosophercan stop, with 'the heritageof Socrates'behind him.41 I quote
the following words, continuingmy very fIrst quotationin this essaynot in mockery,
but recognizing how self-critical they are. 'Moral judgment' Nagel writes, 'and
moral theory certainly apply to public questions,but they are notably ineffective.'
What I have been arguing so far about the relationship between feminism and
deconstructivefeminism, feminism and the confusion between the object of the
epistemicproject and the constituencyof antisexismmight translateto what is being
said here.
Moral judgment and moral theory certainly apply to public questions,but they are
notably ineffective. When powerful interestsare involved it is very difficult to change
anything by arguments, however cogent, which appeal to decency, humanity,
compassion,and fairness. These considerationsalso have to competewith the more
primitive moral sentimentsof honor and retribution and respect for strength. The
conditions under which moral argumentcan have an influ('nce are rather special, and
not very well understoodby me. They need to be investigatedthrough the history and
psychology of morals, important but underdevelopedsubjects much neglected by
philosopherssince Nietzsche.It certainly is not enoughthat the injustice of a practice

of the wrongnessof policy should be made glaringlx evident. Peoplehave to be ready
to listen, and that is not determinedby argument. 2
In the end Nagel says,in a kind of melancholyself-distancingfrom Marx's Eleventh

Thesis on Feuerbach:'I do not know whether it is important to changethe world
or to understandit, but philosophy is best judged by its contribution to under-
standing,not to the courseof events.'I... J Marx tried to redo the role of philosophy
in the divided but related activities of interpreting and changing the world. Yet
Marxism founderedin the relationship betweenclass-consciousness and agencyof
'revolution', not to mention the running of a bounded'post-revolutionarystate'. If,
in fact, we do not acknowledgethat the object of the epistemic search and the
constituencyof antisexistwork are not identical,that genderingis within 'the history
and psychologyof morals', and we simply finessethe fact that the feminist challenge
must combine method and act, we might be able to echo the nobility of Thomas
Nagel'ssentiments.I myself think we cannotstop here, becausein the culturesnow
dominatingthe world, women have not had an acknowledgedcode of 'honor and
retribution and respectfor strength'exceptas victims/supporters.I will, then, repeat
my modest solution.
Incanting to ourselves all the perils of transforming a 'name' to a referent -
making a catechism,in other words, of catachresis- let us none the less name(as)
'woman' that disenfranchisedwoman whom we strictly, historically, geopolitically
cannot imagine, as literal referent. 'Subaltern'is the name of the social spacethat
is different from the classedsocial circuit, the track of hegemony.By proposingthe
irreducible other in that spaceas holding the name 'woman', I am attempting to
deflect attention from the 'poor little rich girl speaking personalpain as victim of
the greatestoppression'-actthat multiculturalist capitalism - with its emphasison
individuation and competition - would thrust upon us. Let us divide the name of
woman so that we seeourselvesas naming, not merely named.Let us acknowledge
that we must changea morphologyto a story-line, acknowledgethat we participated
in obliterating the traces of her production, stage the sceneof the effacing of the
graphematic- her biography - in the crudest possible way. The anxiety of this
naming will be that, if we must think a relationship betweenthe subject of onto/
epistemology(ourselves,roughly, in this room at Cambridge,or Elaine Showalter
at Princeton)and the object of onto/axiology (that disenfranchisedwoman,not even
graduatedinto that subject, whose historicity or subjectshipwe cannot imagine
beyondthe regulation'women'sunion' or 'personalpain' humaninterestanecdote),
the hope behind the political desirewill be that the possibility for the namewill be
finally erased. Today, here, what 1 call the 'gendered subaltern', especially in
decolonizedspace,has becomethe name 'woman' for me. 'Douloti' ... traffic-in-
wealth - financialization - may be one such name. In searchof irreducibles,after
the chasteningexperienceof coming closeto the personwho providesthat imagined
name, I want to be able not to lament when the material possibility for the name
will have disappeared.
I... J
Notes
1. With referenceto this complaint, see Derrida's spirited defenseof the Nambikwara
against the chargethat peopleswithout a recognizablyphono- or ideo-graphicwriting
were 'without writing,' (Of Crammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(Baltimore: The JohnsHopkins University Press,1976), pp. 101-40. Hereaftercited as
OC)
2. For two different approachesto this question, see Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy:
Loss and Recoveryof Self Under Colonialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1983)
and Dipesh Chakrabarty,'Postcoloniality and the ArtifIce of History: Who Speaksfor
"Indian" Pasts?,'Representations,37 (Winter 1992): pp. 1-26.
3. Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979),
p. xii.
4. EdwardA. Gargan,'India Flirts with Hope, DespiteDisasters,'New York Times(March
1, 1992).
5. JacquelineRose, Sexualityin the Field of Vision (London: Verso, 1986).
6. MargaretHoman, 'Feminist Criticism and Theory: The Ghost of Creusa',Yale Journal
of Criticism 1: 1 (Fall 1987), pp. 153-182. Showalter quoted by Elizabeth Skolbert,
'Literary Feminism Comesof Age', New York Times SundayMagazine (December6,
1987): p. 112.
7. See Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative
Discourse?(London: Zed, 1986).
8. Rose, Sexuality, p. 23.
9. Rose, Sexuality,p. 15.
10. The differencebetweenthe desirefor an impasseand negotiatingwith an enablingdouble
bind seemsimportant if we wish to acknowledgethat we are 'free agents'producedby
and written in history. Ignoring of the double bind in nonfoundationalistphilosophyis
now affecting EuroamericanMarxism as well: 'a justifIcation of Marxian theory on the
groundsof its social context and consequences amountsto warranting a theory by the
meansof the self-sametheory ... we are not botheredby the nature of [the alternative
antiessentialistlinfinite regressthat is independentof these"independentterms" and can
serve as an ultimate ground of truth for these meanings.'(Stephen A. Resnick and
Richard D. Wolff, Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1987], p. 28.)
11. Rose, Sexuality,p. 5.
12. It would be to belaborthe obvious to point out that there is rather a straight and self-
consciousline here betweenKant and Freud. See,for example,Freud,StandardEdition,
vol. 22, pp. 61, 163. The relationship between the knowing and acting subject is a
rupture rather than a continuousprogression.It is surely one of the gifts of structuralist
and poststructuralist psychoanalysisto make us productively uneasy about that
relationship. (I use 'productive' where I should perhapssay 'potentially productive.' I
mean that the uneasecan be less intransigentthan a mere privileging of either theory or
practice, or the assumptionof achievablecontinuity betweenthem.)
13. Again, this is rathera prominentcornerstoneof the critique of humanism.The lines here
fall unevenly betweenNietzsche,Heidegger,Foucault, and Derrida. Foucault, having
decided to name the problem itself the empirico-transcendental-discursive mark of the
modern, went off in other interestingdirections. Derrida has kept patiently producing
its implications. He statedthe problem simply in 1963 (in a sentencethat I often quote)
with specialreferenceto the anthropologizingof philosophy,a project, in which the later
Roseas a feminist (Derrida is speakingof Sartreas a humanist)is perhapsalso engaged:
'Everything occurs as if the sign(man) has no origin, no historical, cultural, linguistic
limit' (Margins of Philosophy, p. 116).
14. JacquesDerrida, Spurs, trans. BarbaraHar!ow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1978).
15. Derrida, Spurs,p. 109. The essay'Geschlecht:differencesexuelle,differenceontologique,'
in Psyche:Inventionsde l'autre (Paris: Galilee, 1987) should be consideredif one wants
to engageDerrida specifically on the issue of the place of sexual duality in Heidegger's
thought. It has little to do with the argumenthere.
16. Derrida, Spurs, p. 109.
17. Louis Althusser, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an
investigation),'in Lenin and Philosophyand Other Essays,trans. Ben Brewster (New
York: Monthly Review Press,1971), p. 159. TheodorAdorno, 'Subjectand Object', in
The EssentialFrankfurt SchoolReader,trans. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt(New
York: Urizen, 1978), p. 508.
18. Althusser, 'Ideology,' p. 176.
22. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 'Displacementand the Discourse of Woman', in Mark
Krupnick, ed., Displacement:Dern·daand After (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press,
1983). I do mention the fact of the 'name', but do not seemto grasp its import.
25. Rose, Sexuality, p. 21 n. 38.
26. This phasein Derrida beginsas early as his deconstructivereadingof the philosophyof
EmmanualLevinasin 'Violenceand Metaphysics',publishedin 1964(andin Writing and
Difference, trans. Alan Bass [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978]). Levinas
arguesthere that Husser! and Heidegger, both within the Greek tradition, ultimately
write philosophiesof oppression.Neutralizing the other, fundamental ontology and
phenomenologyperform the same structural operation as philosophiesof knowledge,
appropriatingthe other as object. By contrast, Levinas suggests,the gaze toward the
other must always be open, an open question,the possibility of the ethical. 'Before the
ontological level, the ethical level' (p. 98). Derrida reads Levinas critically, suggesting
that he too is complicit with philosophy in the Greek. But about the opennessof the
question,the prior claim of responsibilityto the traceof the other (which will be for him
the possibility of 'the non-ethical opening of ethics': Of Grammatology,p. 140), he is
in agreement.
27. JacquesDerrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography,Transference,Translation, trans.
Peggy Kamuf (New York: Schocken,1985).
28. The paleonymicburdenof the word 'love' for a feminist is to be distinguishedrigorously
from the gentlemanlyor belle-Iettristic attitude of 'love for the text'.
29. 'Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences',in Writing and
Difference.
30. Part of the idea behind spelling 'differance' with an 'a' was that it would be a
neographism,be visible, not audible. To keep the word in English and to pronounceit
in the Frenchway has foiled that project. Since anotherpart of the idea was to include
both 'differ' and 'defer' and indicate that this was the spacing/timestructure of the
inevitable break between,among other things, theory and method (epistem%ntology
and axiology, too, of course),I propose'difering' in English. I will do nothing to give
this translationcurrency.
31. 'The Supplementof Copula: Philosophy Before Linguistics' in Margins of Philosophy.
The 'supplement' - both adding to a preexisting whole and filling a preexisting
hole - is something like the 'difering' that every 'is' pretends or professesit isn't
doing.
32. [T]he 'tim)' in sucha formulation marksthe enablingdouble bind at the inauguration
of practice that, literalizing a catachresis,allows the possibility of practice as craft. I
believe there is no particular virtue in making it sound less abstractin its formulation,
and thus taking away precision.If the readerwants the 'concrete',shewill have to check
it out in doing, not graspingeasily.
33. I add this parenthesisbecause,when I gave a version of this paper at the University of
Virginia, so clear a thinker as Richard Rorty thought that my messagewas that feminism
must 'ignore' deconstructionaltogetherin order to act. To spell it out this way sounds
bizarre. In the doing it is somethinglike a reflex, the 'faith' (habit?) that Gramscirefers
to in 'The Formation of Intellectuals' (Antonio Gramsci, Selectionsfrom the Prison
Notebooks,trans. Quintin Hoareand Geoffrey Nowell-Smith [New York: International
Publishers,1971], p. 339). I think, although it does not matter to me very much, that
Derrida himself is aware of this at all times, and that it is becauseof this that in the
introduction to his 1987 collection Psyche,he calls the unifying themesof his writings
of the last decadea tMorie distraite - the best English translationof which would be,
in my judgment,'an inattentive theory' (Psyche,p. 9) .... Such 'inattention' - pointing
toward the constancyof a habit - has interestingconnectionswith the Freudiannotion
of hypercathexis.
34. Sheila Allen and Carol Wolkowitz, Homeworking: Myths and Realities (London:
Macmillan, 1987), p. 73.
35. Derrida, The Ear of the Other, pp. 16-17, 38.
36. It is interesting to see that Derrida falls back on the most 'orthodox' model of
deconstructive method-reversal and displacement- when he makesa somewhatsimilar
point and does not, of course, refer to his own position within patriarchal
presuppositions:Derrida, 'Women in the Beehive,'in Paul Smith and Alice Jardine,eds.,
Men in Feminism (New York: Methuen, 1987), pp. 194-5. It is thesepresuppositions
of the name'woman',rather than the morphologyof 'differance',that will not allow for
the acknowledgmentof class and race specifically in women - racial heterogeneityin
anotherguise - that I go on to discussin my text.
37. Foucault fabulatesthis anxiety poignantly in the adult male Greek's anxiety about the
loss of the boyhood of the boy as erotic object in The Use of Pleasure: The History of
Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1986), vol. 2.
38. JacquesLacan, 'God and the Jouissanceof Woman, A Love Letter', in Feminine
Sexuality, trans. JacquelineRose (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 155£.
39. An interestedinsistenceof this sort, not absolutely justified by theory, is, of course,
pervasivelycrucial to deconstructivemethod. The two articulationsthat I still find most
useful are OC, 62, and 'The Double Session,'in Dissemination,trans. BarbaraJohnson
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1981), p. 235.
40. Foucault, Archaeology,p. 96.
41. For this particular bonding, see Richard Rorty, 'Solidarity or Objectivity?', in Cornel
West and John Rajchman, eds., Post-Analytical Philosophy (New York: Columbia
University Press,1985).
42. Nagel, Mortal Questions,p. xiii.
3.4 D Difference: 'A
special Third World
women lssue'
Trinh T. Minh-ha
[...J
Words empty out with age. Die and rise again, accordingly invested with new
meanings, and always equipped with a secondhandmemory. In trying to tell
something,a woman is told, shreddingherself into opaquewords while her voice
dissolveson the walls of silence. Writing: a commitmentof language.The web of
her gestures,like all modes of writing, denotes a historical solidarity (on the
understandingthat her story remainsseparablefrom history). She has beenwarned
of the risk she incurs by letting words run off the rails, time and again temptedby
the desire to gear herselfto the acceptednorms. But where has obedienceled her?
At best, to the satisfaction of a 'made-woman',capable of achieving as high a
mastery of discourse as that of the male establishmentin power. Immediately
gratified, she will, as years go by, sink into oblivion, a fate she inescapablyshares
with her foresisters.How many, already,havebeencondemnedto prematuredeaths
for having borrowedthe master'stools and therebyplayed into his hands?Solitude
is a commonprerequisite,eventhoughthis may only meansolitudein the immediate
surroundings.Elsewhere,in every corner of the world, there exist women who,
despite the threat of rejection, resolutely work toward the unlearning of insti-
tutionalizedlanguage,while staying alert to every deflection of their body compass
needles. Survival, as Audre Lorde comments,'is not an academic skill. ... It is
learninghow to take our differencesand makethem strengths.For the master'stools
will neverdismantlethe master'shouse.They may allow us temporarilyto beathim
at his own game, but they will never enableus to bring about genuine change.'l
The more one dependson the master'shousefor support, the less one hearswhat
Trinh, T. M.-H., Woman, Native, Other: Writing, postcolonialityand feminism,University of Indiana

Press,Bloomington, 1989, pp. 79-83,85-6,90,95-101,102-4,157-9.
231
232 Trinh T. Minh-ha
he doesn'twant to hear. Difference is not differenceto someears,but awkwardness

or incompleteness.Aphasia. Unable or unwilling? Many have come to toleratethis
dissimilarity and have decidedto suspendtheir judgments(only) wheneverthe other
is concerned.Such an attitude is a step forward; at least the dangerof speakingfor
the other has emergedinto consciousness.But it is a very small step indeed, since
it servesas an excusefor their complacentignoranceand their reluctanceto involve
themselvesin the issue.You who understandthe dehumanizationof forced removal-
relocation-reeducation-redefinition, the humiliation of having to falsify your own
reality, your voice - you know. And often cannotsayit. You try and keep on trying
to unsay it, for if you don't, they will not fail to fill in the blanks on your behalf,
and you will be said.
The Policy of 'Separate Development'
With a kind of pervertedlogic, they work toward your erasurewhile urging you to
keep your way of life and ethnic valueswithin the borders of your homelands.This
is called the policy of 'separatedevelopment'in apartheidlanguage.Tactics have
changedsince the colonial times and indigenouscultures are no longer (overtly)
destroyed(preservethe form but removethe content,or vice versa). You may keep
your traditional law and tribal customsamongyourselves,as long as you and your
own kind are careful not to step beyond the assignedlimits. Nothing has been left
to chance when one considers the efforts made by the White South African
authoritiesto distort and use the tools of Westernliberalism for the defenseof their
racialistic-ally indefensiblecause.Since no integration is possiblewhen terror has
becomethe order of the day, I (not you) will give you freedom. I will grant you
autonomy- not completeautonomy,however,for 'it is a liberal fallacy to suppose
that thoseto whom freedom is given will use it only as foreseenby thosewho gave
it'. 2 (Confidentially, I live in a state of intense fear, knowing that Western
educationhas taught you aggressionin equality. Now I sleepwith a gun under my
pillow and lock the gate at the top of my stairway; a single secondof carelessness
may cost me my life - for life and dominationare synonymsto me - and I tremble
at the slightestmovementof my servants.Better intern you 'for your own good' than
be internedor 'driven to the sea'by you.) Self-determinationbeginswith the division
of the land (on condition that I cut the cake), and I will make sure eachof you gets
the part s/he deserves.The delimitation of territoriesis my answerto what I perceive
as some liberals' dream for 'the inauguration,namely, of a systemin which South
Africa's many peoples would resolve themselvesunreluctantly into one'.3 The
governeddo not (should not) composea single people; this is why I am eager to
show that South Africa is not one but ten separatenations (of which the White
nation is the only one to be skin-defined;the other nine being determinedlargely
on the basis of language- the Zulu nation, the Swazi nation, and so on). This
philosophy -I will not call it 'policy' - of 'differentiation' will allow me to have
Difference 23]
better control over my nation while looking after yours, helping you thereby to
gradually stand on your own. It will enable you to return to 'where you belong'
wheneveryou are not satisfied with my law and customsor wheneveryou are no
longer useful to me. Too bad if you consider what has been given to you as the
leftovers of my meals. Call it 'reservesof cheaplabor' or 'bantustans'if you wish;
'separatedevelopment'meansthat eachone of us minds her/hisown business(I will
interfere when my rights are concernedsince I representthe State) and that your
economicalpoverty is of your own making. As for 'the Asiatic cancer,which has
already eaten so deeply into the vitals of South Africa, [it] ought to be resolutely
eradicated,.4Non-white foreignershave no part whatsoeverin my plans and I 'will
undertaketo drive the coolies [Indians] out of the country within four years'.5 My
'passionateconcern for the future of a European-typewhite society, and ... that
society's right to self-preservation'is not a question of color feeling, but of
nationalism, the 'Afrikaner nationalism [which] is a form of collective selfishness;
but to say this is simply to say that it is an authenticcaseof nationalism'.6
Words manipulatedat will. As you can see,'difference'is essentially'division' in the

understandingof many. It is no more than a tool of self-defenseand conquest.You
and I might as well not walk into this semantictrap which sets us up againsteach
other as expectedby a certainideology of separatism.Have you read the grievances
some of our sistersexpresson being among the few women chosenfor a 'Special
Third World Women'sIssue'or on being the only Third World woman at readings,
workshops, and meetings? It is as if everywherewe go, we become Someone's
private zoo. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak spoke of their remarking 'the maids
upstairs in the guest quarters were women of color' in a symposium;7 Gloria
Anzaldua, of their using her as a token woman and her friend Nellie Wong as a
'purveyor of resourcelists,;8 Mitsuye Yamada,of having to start from scratcheach
time, as if she were 'speakingto a brand new audienceof people who had never
known an Asian Pacific womanwho is other than the passive,sweet,etc., stereotype
of the "Oriental" woman';9 Audre Lorde, of the lack of interracial cooperation
betweenacademicfeminists whose sole explanationfor the issueremains: 'We did
not know who to ask,;10 and Alice Walker, of the necessityof learning to discern
the true feminist - for whom racism is inherently an impossibility' - from the white
female opportunist - for whom racism, inasmuchas it assureswhite privilege, is
an acceptedway of life'. 11 The decision you and I are called upon to make is
fraught with far-reachingconsequences. On the one hand, it is difficult for us to sit
at table with them (the master and/or his substitutes)without feeling that our
presence, like that of the 'native' (who happens to be invited) among the
anthropologists, serves to mask the refined sexist and/or racist tone of their
discourse,reinforcing thereby its pretensionsto universality. Given the permanent
statusof 'foreign workers', we - like the South African blacks who are allowed to
toil on white territories as 'migrants', but are gotten rid of and resettled to the
homelandarea as soon as they becomeunprofitablelabor units - continuein most
casesto be treatedas 'temporarysojourners',even though we may spendour whole

lifetime by their side pleading a common cause.
[. . .J
'Why do we haveto be concernedwith the questionof Third World women?After
all, it is only one issue among manyothers.'Delete 'Third World' and the sentence
immediatelyunveils its value-loadedcliches. Generally speaking,a similar result is
obtainedthrough the substitutionof words like racist for sexist, or vice versa, and
the establishedimage of the Third World Woman in the context of (pseudo-)
feminism readily mergeswith that of the Native in the context of (neo-colonialist)
anthropology.The problemsare interconnected.Here, a plural, angry reply may be
expected:what else do you wish? It seemsas if no matterwhat We do We are being
resented.Now, 'in responseto complaintsof exclusionarypractices,special care is
always taken to notify minority organizationsand women of color of conferences,
planning meetings, job openings, and workshops'.12 Once again, re-read the
statementwith the master'svoice and with 'woman' in place of 'minority'. Much
remainsto be said about the attitude adoptedin this 'special care' program and its
(unavowedor unavowable)intent. Viewing the questionthrough the eyesof a white
sister, Ellen Pencethus writes:
Gradually, I beganto realize the tremendousgap betweenmy rhetoric about solidarity

with Third World women and my gut feelings.... Our idea of including women of color
was to sendout notices.We nevercameto the businesstable as equals.Womenof color
joined us on our terms.... I startedseeingthe similarities with how men have excluded
the participationof women in their work through RobertsRules of Order, encouraging
us to set up subcommitteesto discussour problems but never seeing sexism as their
problem. It becameclear that in many ways I act the sameway toward women of color,
supportingthem in dealing with their issues.... I'm now beginning to realize that in
many casesmen do not understandbecausethey have never committed themselvesto
understandingand by understanding,choosingto sharetheir power. The lessonswe've
learned so well as women must be the basis for our understandingof ourselvesas
oppressiveto the Third World women we work with. 13
No matter which side i belong to, once i step down into the mud pit to flght my
adversary,i can only climb out from it stained.This is the story of the duper who
turns her/himselfinto a dupe while thinking s/he has madea dupeof the other. The
close dependencythat characterizesthe master-servantrelationship and binds the
two to each other for life is an old, patent fact one can no longer deny. Thus, in
so far as I/i understandhow 'sexismdehumanizesmen', I/i shall also see how 'my
racism must dehumanizeme' (Pence).The inability to relate the two issues,and to
feel them in my bones,has allowed me to indulge in the illusion that I will remain
safe from all my neighbors'problemsand can go on leading an undisturbed,secure
life of my own. Hegemonyand racism are, therefore,a pressingfeminist issue; 'as
usual, the impetus comes from the grass-roots, activist women's movement'.
Feminism, as Barbara Smith deflnes it, 'is the political theory and practice that
Difference 235
strugglesto free all women.... Anything less than this vision of total freedomis not
feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement,.14
Infinite Layers: I Am Not

[ ...JCan Be You and
Me
A critical difference from myself meansthat I am not i, am within and without i.

IIi can be I or i, you and me both involved. We (with capital W) sometimes
include(s), other times exclude(s)me. You and I are close, we intertwine; you may
stand on the other side of the hill once in a while, but you may also be me, while
remainingwhat you are and what i am not. The differencesmade betweenentities
comprehended as absolutepresences- hencethe notionsof pure origin and true self
- are an outgrowth of a dualistic systemof thought peculiar to the Occident (the
'onto-theology'which characterizesWestern metaphysics).They should be distin-
guishedfrom the differencesgraspedboth betweenand within entities, eachof these
being understoodas multiple presence. 15 Not One, not two either. 'I' is, therefore,
not a unified subject, a fixed identity, or that solid mass covered with layers of
superficialitiesone has gradually to peel off before one can see its true face. '1' is,
itself, infinite layers. Its complexity can hardly be conveyed through such
typographic conventions as I, i, or IIi. Thus, IIi am compelled by the will to
saylunsay,to resortto the entiregamutof personalpronounsto stay nearthis fleeing
and static essenceof Not-I. WhetherI acceptit or not, the naturesof 1, i, you, sl he,
We, we, they, and wolman constantly overlap. They all display a necessary
ambivalence,for the line dividing I and Not-I, us and them, or him and her is not
(cannot)always(be) as clear as we would like it to be. Despiteour desperate,eternal
attemptto separate,contain, and mend,categoriesalwaysleak. Of all the layersthat
form the open (never finite) totality of 'I', which is to be filtered out as superfluous,
fake, corrupt, and which is to be called pure, true, real, genuine,original, authentic?
Which, indeed,since all interchange,revolving in an endlessprocess?(According to
the contextin which they operate,the superfluouscan becomethe real; the authentic
can prove fake; and so on.) Authenticity,as a needto rely on an 'undisputedorigin',
is prey to an obsessivefear: that of losing a connection. Everything must hold
together. In my craving for a logic of being, I cannot help but loathe the threatsof
interruptions,disseminations,and suspensions.To begin, to develop to a climax,
then, to end. To fill, to join, to unify. The order and the links createan illusion of
continuity, which I highly prize for fear of nonsenseand emptiness.Thus, a clear
origin will give me a connectionback through time, and I shall, by all means,search
for that genuinelayer of myself to which I can always cling. To abolish it in such
a perspectiveis to remove the basis, the prop, the overture, or the finale - giving
thereby free rein to indeterminancy:the result, forefeared, is either an anarchic
successionof climaxesor a de(inex)pressive,uninterruptedmonotony- and to enter
236 Trinh T. Minh·ha
into the limitless processof interactionsand changesthat nothing will stop, not even
death. In other words, things may be said to be what they are, not exclusively in
relation to what was and what will be (they should not solely be seen as clusters
chainedtogetherby the temporal sequenceof causeand effect), but also in relation
to each other's immediatepresencesand to themselvesas non/presences.The real,
nothing else than a code of representation,doesnot (cannot)coincidewith the lived
or the performed.This is what Vine Deloria,Jr accountsfor when he exclaims:'Not
even Indians can relate themselvesto this type of creaturewho, to anthropologists,
is the "real" Indian.'16 A realistic identification with such a code has, therefore,no
reality whatsoever:it is like 'stoppingthe ear while trying to steal the bell' (Chinese
saying).
[. ..J
The Female Identity Enclosure
Difference as uniquenessor specialidentity is both limiting and deceiving.If identity

refersto the whole patternof sameness within a humanlife, the style of a continuing
me that permeatesall the changesundergone,then difference remains within the
boundaryof that which distinguishesone identity from another.This meansthat at
heart, X must be X, Y must be Y, and X cannotbe Y. Thosewho run aroundyelling
that X is not X and X can be Y usually land in a hospital, a 'rehabilitation'center,
'1 concentrationcamp, or a res-er-va-tion.All deviationsfrom the dominantstream
of thought, that is to say, the belief in a permanentessenceof wolman and in an
invariant but fragile identity, whose 'loss' is consideredto be a 'specifically human
danger', can easily fit into the categoriesof the 'mentally ill' or the 'mentally
underdeveloped'.It is probably difficult for a 'normal', probing mind to recognize
that to seekis to lose, for seekingpresupposesa separationbetweenthe seekerand
the sought,the continuingme and the changesit undergoes.What if the popularized
story of the identity crisis proves to be only a story and nothing else?Can identity,
indeed, be viewed other than as a by-product of a 'manhandling'of life, one that,
in fact, refers no more to a consistent'pattern of sameness'than to an incon-
sequentialprocessof otherness?How am I to lose, maintain, or gain an (fe/male)
identity when it is impossibleto me to take up a position outsidethis identity from
which I presumablyreachin and feel for it? Perhapsa way to portray it is to borrow
theseversesfrom the Cheng-tao-ke:
You cannot take hold of it,

But you cannot lose it.
In not being able to get it, you get it.
When you are silent, it speaks;
When you speak,it is silent.l7
Difference 237
Difference in such an in situable context is that which underminesthe very idea 0/

identity, deferring to infinity the layers whose totality forms '1'. It subverts the
foundations of any affirmation or vindication of value and cannot, thereby, ever
bearin itself an absolutevalue. The difference(within) betweendifferenceitself and
identity hasso often beenignored, and the useof the two terms so readily confused,
that claiming a female/ethnic identity/difference is commonly tantamount to
reviving a kind of naive 'male-tinted' romanticism. If feminism is set forth as a
demystifying force, then it will have to question thoroughly the belief in its own
identity. To suppose,like Judith Kegan Gardiner, that 'the concept of female
identity provides a key to understandingthe special qualities of contemporary
writing by women ... , the diverse ways in which writing by women differs from
writing by men', and to 'proposethe preliminary metaphor "female identity is a
process"for the most fundamentalof these differences'does not, obviously, allow
us to radically depart from the master'slogic. Such a formulation endeavorsto
'reach a theory of female-identity ... that varies from the male modef, and to
demonstratethat:
primary identity for women is more flexible and relational than for men. Femalegender
identity is more stablethan malegenderidentity. Femaleinfantile identificationsare less
predictablethan male ones ... the female counterpartof the male identity crisis may
occur more diffusely, at a different stage,or not at all. (emphasisadded)
It seemsquite content with reforms that, at best, contribute to the improvement

and/or enlargementof the identity enclosure,but do not, in any way, attempt to
remove its fence. The constantneed to refer to the 'male model' for comparisons
unavoidablymaintainsthe subjectunder tutelage.For the point is not to carveone's
spacein 'identity theories that ignore women' and describe some of the faces of
female identity, saying, like Gardiner: 'I picture female identity as typically less
fixed, less unitary, and more flexible than male individuality, both in its primary
core and in the entire maturational complex developed from this core',18 but
patiently to dismantle the very notion of core (be it static or not) and identity.
Woman can never be defined. Bat, dog, chick, mutton, tart. Queen,madam,lady
of pleasure.MISTRESS. Belle-de-nuit, woman of the streets,fruitwoman, fallen
woman. Cow, vixen, bitch. Call girl, joy girl, working girl. Lady and whore are
both bred to please.The old Woman image-repertoiresaysShe is a Womb, a mere
baby's pouch, or 'nothing but sexuality'. She is a passivesubstance,a parasite,an
enigma whose mystery proves to be a snareand a delusion. She wallows in night,
disorder, and immanenceand is at the same time the 'disturbing factor (between
men)' and the key to the beyond. The further the repertoireunfolds its images,the
more entangledit gets in its attemptsat capturingHer. 'Truth, Beauty,Poetry - she
is All: once more all under the form of the Other. All except herself,19Simonede
Beauvoir wrote. Yet, even with or becauseof Her capacityto embodyAll, Woman
is the lesserman, and among male athletes,to be called a woman is still resented
as the worst of insults. 'WOo' appendedto 'man' in sexist contexts is not unlike
Third World', 'Third', 'minority', or 'color' affixed to woman in pseudo-feminist
contexts. Yearning for universality, the generic 'woman', like its counterpart,the
generic 'man', tends to efface difference within itself. Not every female is 'a real
woman', one knows this through hearsay.... Just as 'man' providesan exampleof
how the part playedby womenhas beenignored,undervalued,distorted,or omitted
through the use of terminology presumedto be generic, 'woman' more often than
not reflects the subtle power of linguistic exclusion, for its set of referentsrarely
includesthoserelevantto Third World 'femalepersons'.'All the WomenAre White,
All the Blacks are Men, But Someof Us Are Brave' is the title given to an anthology
edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith. It is, indeed,
somehowdeviousto think that WOMAN also encompasses the Chinesewith bound
feet, the genitally mutilated Africans, and the one thousandIndians who committed
suttee for one royal male. Sister Cinderella'sfoot is also enviably tiny but never
crooked! And Europeanwitches were also burnt to purify the body of Christ, but
they do not pretend to 'self-immolation'. 'Third World', therefore, belongs to a
category apart, a 'special' one that is meant to be both complimentary and
complementary,for First and Secondwent out of fashion, leaving a seriousLack
behind to be filled.
Third World?
To survive, Third World' must necessarilyhavenegativeand positive connotations:

negativewhen viewed in a vertical ranking system- 'underdeveloped'comparedto
over-industrialized,'underprivileged'within the alreadySecondsex - and positive
when understood sociopolitically as a subversive, 'non-aligned' force. Whether
Third World' soundsnegativeor positive also dependson who usesit. Coming from
you Westerners,the word can hardly mean the same as when it comes from Us
membersof the Third World. Quite predictably,you/we who condemnit most are
both we who buy in and they who deny any participationin the bourgeoismentality
of the West. For it was in the context of such mentality that 'Third World' stood
out as a new semanticfinding to designatewhat was known as 'the savages'before
the Independences.Today, hegemonyis much more subtle, much more pernicious
than the form of blatant racism once exercisedby the colonial West. I/i always find
myself asking, in this one-dimensionalsociety, where 1/ i should draw the line
betweentracking down the oppressivemechanismsof the system and aiding their
spread. Third World' commonly refers to those statesin Africa, Asia and Latin
America which called themselves'non-aligned',that is to say, affiliated with neither
the Western(capitalist) nor the Eastern(communist)power bloc. Thus, if 'Third
World' is often rejected for its judged-to-be-derogativeconnotations,it is not so
much because of the hierarchical, first-second-third order implied, as some
invariably repeat, but becauseof the growing threat 'Third World' consistently
Difference 239
presentsto the Westernbloc the last few decades.The emergenceof repressedvoices

into the worldwide political arenahas alreadypromptedher (Julia Kristeva) to ask:
'How will the West greetthe awakeningof the "third world" as the Chinesecall it?
Can we [Westerners]participate,actively and lucidly, in this awakeningwhen the
center of the planet is in the processof moving toward the East?,.20Exploited,
looked down upon, and lumped together in a convenientterm that denies their
individualities, a group of 'poor' (nations), having once sided with neither of the
dominating forces, has slowly learnedto turn this denial to the best account.'The
Third World to Third World peoples'thus becomesan empoweringtool, and one
which politically includesall non-whitesin their solidariststruggleagainstall forms
of Western dominance. And since 'Third World' now refers to more than the
geographicallyand economicallydeterminednationsof the 'South' (versus'North'),
since the term comprisessuch 'developed'countriesas Japanand thosewhich have
opted for socialist reconstructionof their system(China, Cuba, Ethiopia, Angola,
Mozambique)as well as thosewhich have favored a capitalistmodeof development
(Nigeria, India, Brazil), there no longer exists such a thing as a unified unaligned
Third World bloc. Moreover, Third World has moved West (or North, depending
on where the dividing line falls) and has expandedso as to include even the remote
parts of the First World. What is at stake is not only the hegemonyof Western
cultures, but also their identities as unified cultures. Third World dwells on
diversity; so does First World. This is our strength and our misery. The West is
painfully madeto realizethe existenceof a Third World in the First World, and vice
versa. The Master is bound to recognizethat His Culture is not as homogeneous,
as monolithic as He believedit to be. He discovers,with much reluctance,He is just
an other among others.
Thus, wheneverit is a questionof 'Third World women' or, more disquietingly, of

'Third World Womenin the US', the reactionprovokedamongmany whites almost
never fails to be that of annoyance,irritation, or vexation. 'Why Third World in
the US?' they say angrily; 'You mean thosewho still have relatives in South East
Asia?' 'Third World! I don't understandhow one can use such a term, it doesn't
mean anything.' Or even better, 'Why use such a term to defeat yourself?'
Alternatives like 'Western' and 'non-western'or 'Euro-American'and 'non-Euro-
American' may sound a bit less charged,but they are certainly neither neutral nor
satisfactory,for they still take the dominant group as point of reference,and they
reflect well the West'sideology of dominance(it is as if we were to usethe term 'non-
Afro-Asian', for example,to designateall white peoples).More recently, we have
been hearing of the Fourth World which, we are told, 'is a world populatedby
indigenous people who still continue to bear a spiritual relationship to their
traditional lands'.The colonialist creed'Divide and Conquer'is hereagain, alive and
well. Often ill at easewith the outspokeneducatednativeswho representthe Third
World in debatesand paternalisticallyscornful of those who remain reserved,the
dominantthus decidesto weakenthis term of solidarity, both by invalidating it as
empoweringtool and by inciting divisivenesswithin the Third World -a Third

World within the Third World. AggressiveThird World (educated'savages')with
its awarenessand resistanceto domination must thereforebe classified apart from
gentle Fourth World (uneducated 'savages'). Every unaligned voice should
necessarily/consequently be either a personalor a minority voice. The (impersonal)
majority, as logic dictates, has to be the (aligned) dominant.
It is, apparently,inconvenient,if not downright mind stretching [notes Alice Walker],

for white women scholars to think of black women as women, perhaps because
'woman' (like 'man' among white males) is a name they are claiming for themselves,
and themselvesalone. Racismdecreesthat if they arenow women (yearsago they were
ladies, but fashions change) then black women must, perforce, be something else.
(While they were 'ladies' black women could be 'women' and so on.)21
Another revealingexampleof this separatistmajority mentality is the story Walker

relatesof an exhibit of women paintersat the Brooklyn Museum: when asked'Are
there no black women paintersrepresentedhere?'(none of them is, apparently),a
white woman feminist simply replies 'It's a women'sexhibit!,22 Different historical
contexts,different semanticcontents. '"
'Woman' and the Subtle Power of Linguistic

Exclusion
What is woman? Long ago, during one of the forceful speechesshe delivered in
defenseof her people, SojournerTruth was askedby a threatenedwhite doctor in
the audienceto prove to all those presentthat she was truly a woman:
'There are those among us', he beganin a tone characteristicof institutional training,
'who questionwhetheror not you are a woman. Some feel that maybe you are a man
in a woman'sdisguise. To satisfy our curiosity, why don't you show your breaststo
the women [sic] in this audience?,23
It seemed,indeed,profoundly puzzling for this man-child doctor's mind to see the

Woman (or Breasts)in someonewho had 'never been helped into carriages,lifted
over ditches,nor given the bestplaceseverywhere',who had 'plowed, and planted,
and gathered into barns', and who, beyond measure, triumphantly affirmed
elsewhere:'Look at me! Look at my arm! ... and no man could headme - and ar'nt
I a woman!,24 Definitions of 'woman', 'womanhood', 'femininity', 'femaleness',
and, more recently, of 'female identity', have brought about the arroganceof such
a shamanatomicalcuriosity - whoseneedsmust be 'satisfied'- and the legitimation
of a shamelesslydehumanizingform of Indiscretion. Difference reducedto sexual
identity is thus posited to justify and conceal exploitation. The Body, the most
visible difference betweenmen and women, the only one to offer a secureground
for those who seek the permanent,the feminine 'nature' and 'essence',remains
Difference 241
therebythe safestbasis for racist and sexist ideologies.The two merging themesof
Othernessand the Identity-Body are precisely what Simone de Beauvoir discussed
at length in The SecondSex, and continueduntil the time of her death to argue in
the French journal she edited, QuestionsFeministes.The lead article written by the
Editorial Collective under the title of 'Variations on Common Themes'explainsthe
purposeof the journal - to destroy the notion of differences betweenthe sexes,
'which gives a shapeand a base to the concept of "woman"':
Now, after centuries of men constantly repeating that we were different, here are
womenscreaming,as if they were afraid of not being heardand as if it were an exciting
discovery: 'We are different!' Are you going fishing? No, I am going fishing.
The very theme of difference, whateverthe differencesare representedto be, is useful
to the oppressinggroup ... any allegedly natural feature attributed to an oppressed
group is used to imprison this group within the boundariesof a Nature which, since
the group is oppressed,ideological confusion labels 'nature of oppressedperson'... to
demandthe right to Differencewithout analyzingits social characteris to give back the
enemy an effective weapon.2S
Difference as the Editorial Collective of Questions Feministes understandsand

condemnsit is bound to remain an integral part of naturalistideology. It is the very
kind of colonized-anthropo-Iogized differencethe masterhasalwayshappily granted
his subordinates.The searchand the claim for an essentialfemale/ethnicidentity-
differencetoday can never be anything more than a move within the male-is-norm-
divide-and-conquertrap. The malady lingers on. As long as words of difference
serveto legitimate a discourseinsteadof delaying its authority to infmity, they are,
to borrow an image from Audre Lorde, 'noteworthy only as decorations'. In 'An
open letter to Mary Daly', Lorde reproachesDaly (whose vision of non-European
women in Gyn! Ecology mainly results from her insistence on universalizing
women'soppression)with utilizing Lorde's words 'only to testify againstmyself as
a woman of color'. She further expandsthis comment by specifying:
I feel you do celebratedifferencesbetweenwhite women as a creative force towards

change, rather than a reason for misunderstandingand separation.But you fail to
recognizethat, as women, those differencesexposeall women to various forms and
degreesof partriarchaloppression,someof which we share,someof which we do not.
... The oppressionof womenknows no ethnic nor racial boundaries,true, but that does
not mean it is identical within those boundaries.
In other words,
to imply ... that all women suffer the sameoppressionsimply becausewe are women,
is to lose sight of the many varied tools of patriarchy.26
Here you probably smile, for none of us is safe from such a critique, including I
who quote Lorde in my attempts at disentangling Difference. The process of
differentiation, however,continues,and speakingnearbyor togetherwith certainly

differs from speakingfor and about. The latter aims at the finite and dwells in the
realm of fixed oppositions(subject/objectdifference; man/womansexual difference),
tending thereby to valorize the privileged father-daughterrelationship.
[ ... ]
Su b;ect-i n-the- M aki ng
'In "woman''', says Julia Kristeva, 'I see something that cannot be represented,
something that is not said, something above and beyond nomenclaturesand
ideologies'YSince therecan be no social-politicalr-evolution without a r-evolution
of subjects,in order to shatterthe social codes,womenmust assume,in every (non-
dualist) senseof the word, 'a negativefunction: reject everything ... definite, struc-
tured, loaded with meaning, in the existing state of society'. Such a responsibility
does not exclusively devolve upon women, but it is women who are in a better
position to accept it, 'becausein social, sexual and symbolic experiencesbeing a
woman has always provided a meansto anotherend, to becomingsomethingelse:
a subject-in-the-making,a subject on trial'. 28 In a book written after her visit to
China, Kristeva remarkshow little Chinesewomen differ from Chinesemen - these
women 'whoseancestorsknew better than anyonethe secretsof erotic art, now so
sober and so absorbedin their gray-blue suits, relaxed and austere... standring]
before their lathes or in the arms of their children ... the "pill" in their pockets.. .':
One can say that they 'censurethe sexual difference' ... what if this reproach,insofar
as it is one, were to have no meaningexceptin our framework of paternaldominance,
where any trace of a 'central mother fIgure' is completely lost? What if their tradition,
on condition one could strip it of its hierarchical-bureaucratic-patriarchal weight,
allowed no more separationbetweentwo metaphysicalentities (Men and Women); no
more symbolic difference, that is, outside the biological difference, except a subtle
differentiation on both sides of the biological barrier, structuredby the recognition of
a social law to be assumedin order ceaselesslyto be contested?...
If ... one consideredthe family, women, and the sexual difference in the way they
determinea social ethic, one could say ... that the basic questionthere is the building
of a society whose active power is representedby no one ... not even women.29
(emphasisadded)
The point raisedby this apparentindifferenceto a physical distinction betweenmen

and women is not simple repressionof a sexual difference, but a different distri-
bution 0/ sexual difference,therefore a challengeto the notion of (sexual) identity
as commonlydefinedin the West and the entire gamutof conceptsthat ensues:femi-
nini ty -femaleness-femi ni tude-woman-womanhoodlmasculinity-m aleness-
virility-man-manhood,and so on. In other words, sexualdifferencehas no absolute
value and is interior to the praxis of every subject. What is known as the 'Phallic
Difference 24]
principle' in one part of the world (despitethe dominancethis part exerts over the
rest) does not necessarilyapply to the other parts. A thorough underminingof all
power-basedvalues would require the dismantling of the sovereign, authority-
claiming subject,without which it is bound to be co-optedby power. 'On a deeper
level', observesKristeva, 'a womancannot"be"; it is somethingwhich doesnot even
belongin the order of being. It follows that a feminist practicecan only be negative
['our negativity is not Nietzscheananger'], at odds with what alreadyexists so that
we may say "that's not it" and "that's still not it'''. 30
Ethnicity or Womanhood: Whose Duality?
Voices of theories.Unlike Kristeva, while understandingthe necessityof a 'negative'

feminist practicewhich continuouslyremindsus that 'woman cannotbe' or that we
can no more speakabout 'woman' than about 'man', I would not 'try to go against
metaphysicaltheories that censure what [she] just labeled "a woman'" and to
'dissolve identity'.31 Although these statementsbelong to a context of active
questioningof the searchfor a woman'sidentity (and, by extension,of a straight
celebrationof ethnic identity), they tend to invite accusationsof privileging 'woman'
as attitude over 'woman' as sex. One does not go without the other, and'woman',
with its undefinablespecificity (the difference, as mentionedabove, both between
and within entities), cannotexclusively be apprehendedin relation to an apparently
unsexedor supposedlybeyond-the-sex'negativefunction'. The perceptionof sex as
a secondaryattribute -a property or an adjective that one can add or subtract-
to woman is a perceptionthat still dwells in the prevailing logic of acquisition and
separation.Difference understoodnot as an irreducible quality but as a drifting
apart within 'woman' articulates upon the infinity of 'woman' as entities of
inseparable'I's' and 'Not-I's'. In any case,'woman'here is not interchangeablewith
'man'; and to declareprovocatively,as Kristeva does,that one should dissolve'even
sexualidentities'is, in a way, to disregardthe importanceof the shift that the notion
of identity has undergonein woman's discourses.That shift does not lead to 'a
theory of female identity ... that varies from the male model' (Gardiner), as
mentioned earlier, but rather to identity as points of re-departureof the critical
processesby which I have come to understandhow the personal- the ethnic me,
the female me - is political. Difference does not annul identity. It is beyond and
alongside identity. Thus, there is simply no point outside Kristeva's 'sexual
identities' from which to take up a position ('When you are silent, it speaks;/When
you speak,it is silent'). The sameholds true for the choice many women of color
feel obliged to make betweenethnicity and womanhood:how can they? You never
have/areone without the other. The idea of two illusorily separatedidentities, one
ethnic, the other woman (or, more precisely, female), again, partakesin the Euro-
American systemof dualistic reasoningand its age-old divide-and-conquertactics.
Triple jeopardymeanshere that whenevera woman of color takes up the feminist
fight, she immediatelyqualifies for three possible'betrayals':she can be accusedof
betraying either man (the 'man-hater'),or her community ('people of color should
stay together to fight racism'), or woman herself ('you should fight first on the
women's side'). The pitting of anti-racist and anti-sexist struggles against one
anotherallows somevocal fighters to dismissblatantly the existenceof either racism
or sexism within their lines of action, as if oppressiononly comes in separate,
monolithic forms. Thus, to understandhow pervasivelydominanceoperatesvia the
conceptof hegemonyor of absenttotality in plurality is to understandthat the work
of decolonizationwill have to continue within the women's movements.
[ ...J
Notes
1. Audre Lorde, 'The master'stools will neverdismantlethe master'shouse',in This Bridge

Called My Back: Writings by radical womenof color, ed. C. Morraga and G. Anzaldua
(Watertown, MA.: PersephonePress,1981), p. 99.
2. CharlesA. W. Manning. 'In defenseof apartheid',in Africa Yesterdayand Today, ed.
C. D. Moore and A. Dunbar (New York: Bantam, 1968), p. 287.
3. Ibid., p. 289.
4. Jan Christiaan Smuts, quoted in Louis Fischer, Gandhi: His life and messagefor the
world (New York: New American Library, 1954), p. 25.
5. General Louis Botha, quoted in ibid.
6. Manning, 'In defenseof apartheid',p. 287.
7. Gayatri ChakravortySpivak, 'The politics of interpretations',Critical Inquiry 9, no. 1
(1982), p. 278.
8. Gloria Anzaldua, 'Speaking in tongues: a letter to 3rd World women writers', This
Bridge, pp. 167-8.
9. Mitsuye Yamada, 'Asian Pacific American women and feminism', This Bridge, p. 71.
10. Lorde, 'The master'stools', p. 100.
11. Alice Walker, 'One child of one's own: a meaningful digressionwithin the work(s)', in
The Writer on Her Work, ed. J. Sternburg(New York: W. W. Norton, 1980), p. 137.
12. Ellen Pence,'Racism-a white issue', in But Someof Us Are Brave, ed. G. T. Hull, P.
B. Scott and B. Smith (Old Westbury, NY.: Feminist Press,1982), p. 46.
13. Ibid., pp. 46-7.
14. BarbaraSmith, 'Racism and women's studies',But Someof Us Are Brave, p. 49.
15. I have discussedat length the notions of non-dualisticthinking and of multiple presence
in Trinh T. Minh-ha, Un Art sans oeuvre. L'Anonymatdans les arts contemporains
(Troy, M1.: International Books Pubs, 1981).
16. Vine Deloria, Jr, Custer Died for Your Sins (New York: Avon Books, 1969), p. 86.
17. Quotedin Alan W. Watts, Nature, Man, and Woman(1958, rpt. New York: Vintage
Books, 1970), p. 121.
18. 'On female identity and writings by women', Critical Inquiry 8 (SpecialIssueon Writing
and SexualDifference, ed. E. Abel), no. 2 (1981), pp. 348-9,354,353.
19. Simone de Beauvoir, The SecondSex (1952, rpt. New York: Bantam, 1970), p. 223.
20. Julia Kristeva, 'Woman can never be defined', trans. Marily A. August, in New French
Feminisims,ed. E. Marks and 1. De Courtivon (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press,1980), p. 139.
21. 'One child of one's own', pp. 133-4.
22. Ibid., p. 136.
Difference 245
23. Quoted in Sturdy Black Bridges. Visions of Black women in literature, ed. R. P. Bell,
B. J. Parkerand B. Guy-Sheftall (GardenCity, NY.: Anchor/Doubleday,1979), p. xxv.
24. SojournerTruth, 'Speechof woman'ssuffrage', The Ethnic American Woman,p. 335.
25. In New French Feminisms,pp. 214,219.
26. In This Bridge, pp. 95, 97.
27. 'Woman can never be defmed', p. 137.
28. Kristeva in an interview with Xaviere Gauthier,'Oscillation betweenpower and denial',
New French Feminisms,pp. 166-7.
29. Julia Kristeva, 'On the women of China', trans. E. Conroy Kennedy, Signs 1, no. 1
(1975), pp. 79,81.
30. 'Woman can never be defined', p. 137.
31. Ibid., p. 138.
3.5 D The Straight Mind
1
Monique Wittig
In recent years in Paris, language as a phenomenonhas dominated modern

theoreticalsystemsand the social sciencesand has enteredthe political discussions
of the lesbian and women'sliberation movements.This is becauseit relatesto an
important political field where what is at play is power, or more than that, a
network of powers,sincethereis a multiplicity of languagesthat constantlyact upon
the social reality. The importanceof languageas such as a political stake has only
recently been perceived.2 But the gigantic developmentof linguistics, the multi-
plication of schoolsof linguistics, the adventof the sciencesof communication,and
the technicality of the metalanguagesthat these sciences utilize, represent the
symptomsof the importanceof what is politically at stake.The scienceof language
has invaded other sciences,such as anthropology through Levi-Strauss,psycho-
analysisthrough Lacan, and all the disciplineswhich have developedfrom the basis
of structuralism.
The early semiologyof Roland Barthesnearly escapedfrom linguistic domination
to become a political analysis of the different systems of signs, to establish a
relationship betweenthis or that system of signs - for example,the myths of the
petty-bourgeoisclass- and the classstrugglewithin capitalismthat this systemtends
to conceal.We were almost saved,for political semiology is a weapon(a method)
that we needto analyzewhat is called ideology. But the miracle did not last. Rather
than introducing into semiology conceptswhich are foreign to it - in this case
Marxist concepts- Barthes quickly stated that semiology was only a branch of
linguistics and that languagewas its only object.
Thus, the entire world is only a great register where the most diverse languages
come to have themselvesrecorded,such as the languageof the Unconscious,3the
languageof fashion, the languageof the exchangeof women where human beings
are literally the signs which are used to communicate.Theselanguages,or rather
thesediscourses,tit into one another,interpenetrateone another,supportone another,
reinforceone another,auto-engender,and engenderone another.Linguistics engenders
From Wittig, M., The Straight Mind and Other Essays,HarvesterWheatsheaf,Hemel Hempstead,1992,
pp. 21-32, 102-3.
246
The Straight Mind 247
semiology and structural linguistics, structural linguistics engendersstructuralism,

which engendersthe Structural Unconscious. The ensembleof these discourses
producesa confusing static for the oppressed,which makesthem lose sight of the
materialcauseof their oppressionand plungesthem into a kind of ahistoricvacuum.
For they producea scientific readingof the social reality in which human beings
are given as invariants,untouchedby history and unworked by classconflicts, with
identical psychesbecausegeneticallyprogrammed.This psyche,equally untouched
by history and unworked by class conflicts, provides the specialists, from the
beginningof the twentiethcentury, with a whole arsenalof invariants: the symbolic
languagewhich very advantageouslyfunctions with very few elements,since, like
digits (0-9), the symbols 'unconsciously'produced by the psyche are not very
numerous.Therefore,thesesymbolsare very easyto impose,through therapy and
theorization,upon the collective and individual unconscious.We are taughtthat the
Unconscious, with perfectly good taste, structures itself upon metaphors, for
example,the Name-of-the-father,the Oedipuscomplex, castration,the murder-or-
death-of-the-father,the exchangeof women, etc. If the Unconscious,however, is
easy to control, it is not just by anybody. Similar to mystical revelations, the
apparition of symbols in the psyche demands multiple interpretations. Only
specialists can accomplish the deciphering of the Unconscious. Only they, the
psychoanalysts,are allowed (authorized?) to organize and interpret psychic
manifestationswhich will show the symbol in its full meaning. And while the
symbolic languageis extremely poor and essentially lacunary, the languagesor
metalanguages which interpret it are developing,eachone of them, with a richness,
a display, that only theological exegesesof the Bible have equalled.
Who gave the psychoanalyststheir knowledge?For example,for Lacan, what he
calls the 'psychoanalyticdiscourse',or the 'analytical experience',both 'teach' him
what he alreadyknows. And each one teacheshim what the other one taught him.
But can we deny that Lacan scientifically discovered, through the 'analytical
experience'(somehowan experiment),the structuresof the Unconscious?Will we
be irresponsibleenoughto disregardthe discoursesof the psychoanalyzedpeople
lying on their couches?In my opinion, there is no doubt that Lacan found in the
Unconsciousthe structureshe said he found there, since he had previouslyput them
there. Peoplewho did not fall into the power of the psychoanalyticinstitution may
experiencean immeasurablefeeling of sadnessat the degree of oppression(of
manipulation)that the psychoanalyzeddiscoursesshow. In the analytic experience
there is an oppressedperson,the psychoanalyzed,whose need for communication
is exploited and who (in the sameway as the witches could, under torture, only
repeatthe languagethat the inquisitorswantedto hear) hasno other choice,(if s/he
doesnot want to destroythe implicit contractwhich allows her/him to communicate
and which s/he needs),than to attemptto say what s/he is supposedto say. They
say that this can last for a lifetime - cruel contractwhich constrainsa humanbeing
to display her/his misery to an oppressorwho is directly responsiblefor it, who
exploits her/him economically, politically, ideologically and whose interpretation
reducesthis misery to a few figures of speech.
248 Monique Wittig
But can the needto communicatethat this contractimplies only be satisftedin the
psychoanalyticsituation, in being cured or 'experimented'with? If we believe recent
testimonies4 by lesbians, feminists, and gay men, this is not the case. All their
testimoniesemphasizethe political signiftcanceof the impossibility that lesbians,
feminists, and gay men face in the attemptto communicatein heterosexualsociety,
otherthan with a psychoanalyst.When the generalstateof things is understood(one
is not sick or to be cured, one has an enemy)the result is that the oppressedperson
breaksthe psychoanalyticcontract. This is what appearsin the testimonies,along
with the teachingthat the psychoanalyticcontractwas not a contractof consentbut
a forced one.
The discourseswhich particularly oppress all of us, lesbians, women, and
homosexualmen, are those which take for grantedthat what founds society, any
5
society, is heterosexuality. Thesediscoursesspeakabout us and claim to say the
truth in an apolitical fteld, as if anything of that which signiftes could escapethe
political in this moment of history, and as if, in what concerns us, politically
insigniftcant signs could exist. Thesediscoursesof heterosexualityoppressus in the
sensethat they preventus from speakingunlesswe speakin their terms. Everything
which puts them into questionis at once disregardedas elementary.Our refusal of
the totalizing interpretationof psychoanalysismakesthe theoreticianssay that we
neglect the symbolic dimension. These discoursesdeny us every possibility of
creating our own categories.But their most ferocious action is the unrelenting
tyranny that they exert upon our physical and mental selves.
When we use the overgeneralizingterm 'ideology' to designateall the discourses
of the dominatinggroup, we relegatethesediscoursesto the domain of Irreal Ideas;
we forget the material (physical) violence that they directly do to the oppressed
people, a violence producedby the abstractand 'scientiftc' discoursesas well as by
the discoursesof the massmedia. I would like to insist on the material oppression
of individuals by discourses,and I would like to underline its immediate effects
through the exampleof pornography.
Pornographicimages,ftlms, magazinephotos,publicity posterson the walls of the
cities, constitutea discourse,and this discoursecoversour world with its signs, and
this discoursehas a meaning: it signiftes that women are dominated.Semioticians
can interpret the systemof this discourse,describeits disposition. What they read
in that discourseare signswhosefunction is not to signify and which haveno raison
d'etre except to be elementsof a certain system or disposition. But for us this
discourseis not divorced from the real as it is for semioticians.Not only does it
maintain very close relations with the social reality which is our oppression
(economicallyand politically), but also it is in itself real since it is one of the aspects
of oppression,since it exerts a precisepower over us. The pornographicdiscourse
is one of the strategiesof violence which are exercisedupon us: it humiliates, it
degrades,it is a crime againstour 'humanity'. As a harassingtactic it has another
function, that of a warning. It ordersus to stay in line, and it keepsthosewho would
tend to forget who they are in step; it calls upon fear. These same experts in
semiotics, referred to earlier, reproach us for confusing, when we demonstrate
against pornography,the discourseswith the reality. They do not see that this
discourseis reality for us, one of the facets of the reality of our oppression.They
believe that we are mistaken in our level of analysis.
I have chosen pornography as an example becauseits discourse is the most
symptomaticandthe most demonstrativeof the violencewhich is doneto us through
discourses,as well as in the society at large. There is nothing abstractabout the
powerthat sciencesand theorieshaveto act materially and actually upon our bodies
and our minds,evenif the discoursethat producesit is abstract.It is one of the forms
of domination, its very expression.I would say, rather, one of its exercises.All of
the oppressedknow this power and havehad to deal with it. It is the onewhich says:
you do not have the right to speechbecauseyour discourseis not scientific and not
theoretical,you are on the wrong level of analysis,you are confusingdiscourseand
reality, your discourseis naive, you misunderstandthis or that science.
If the discourseof modern theoretical systemsand social scienceexert a power
upon us, it is becauseit works with conceptswhich closely touch us. In spite of the
historic advent of the lesbian, feminist, and gay liberation movements,whose
proceedingshave already upset the philosophical and political categoriesof the
discoursesof the social sciences,their categories(thus brutally put into question)are
neverthelessutilized without examinationby contemporaryscience.They function
like primitive conceptsin a conglomerateof all kinds of disciplines, theories, and
currentideasthat I will call the straightmind. (SeeThe SavageMind by ClaudeLevi-
Strauss.)They concern 'woman', 'man', 'sex', 'difference', and all of the series of
conceptswhich bear this mark, including such conceptsas 'history', 'culture', and
the 'real'. And although it has been acceptedin recent years that there is no such
thing as nature,that everythingis culture, there remainswithin that culture a core
of naturewhich resistsexamination,a relationshipexcludedfrom the social in the
analysis-a relationshipwhosecharacteristicis ineluctability in culture, as well as
in nature, and which is the heterosexualrelationship. I will call it the obligatory
social relationshipbetween'man' and 'woman'. (Here I refer to Ti-Grace Atkinson
and her analysisof sexual intercourseas an institution.6 ) With its ineluctability as
knowledge,as an obviousprinciple, as a given prior to any science,the straightmind
developsa totalizing interpretationof history, social reality, culture, language,and
all the subjectivephenomenaat the sametime. I can only underline the oppressive
character that the straight mind is clothed in in its tendency to immediately
universalizeits production of conceptsinto generallaws which claim to hold true
for all societies, all epochs, all individuals. Thus one speaksof the exchangeof
women, the difference between the sexes, the symbolic order, the Unconscious,
Desire, Jouissance,Culture, History, giving an absolutemeaningto theseconcepts
when they are only categoriesfounded upon heterosexuality,or thought which
producesthe difference betweenthe sexesas a political and philosophicaldogma.
The consequenceof this tendencytoward universality is that the straight mind
cannotconceiveof a culture, a society where heterosexualitywould not order not
only all human relationshipsbut also its very production of conceptsand all the
processeswhich escapeconsciousness,as well. Additionally, these unconscious
250 Monique Wittig
processesare historically more and more imperative in what they teach us about
ourselvesthrough the instrumentalityof specialists.The rhetoric which expresses
them (and whoseseductionI do not underestimate)envelopsitself in myths, resorts
to enigma,proceedsby accumulatingmetaphors,and its function is to poeticizethe
obligatory characterof the 'you-will-be-straight-or-you-will-not-be'.
In this thought, to reject the obligation of coitus and the institutions that this
obligation has producedas necessaryfor the constitutionof a society, is simply an
impossibility, sinceto do this would meanto reject the possibility of the constitution
of the other and to reject the 'symbolic order', to make the constitutionof meaning
impossible, without which no one can maintain an internal coherence. Thus
lesbianism,homosexuality,and the societiesthat we form cannot be thought of or
spokenof, eventhough they have always existed.Thus, the straightmind continues
to affirm that incest, and not homosexuality,representsits major interdiction. Thus,
when thought by the straight mind, homosexualityis nothing but heterosexuality.
Yes, straight society is basedon the necessityof the different/other at every level.
It cannotwork economically,symbolically, linguistically, or politically without this
concept. This necessityof the different/other is an ontological one for the whole
conglomerateof sciencesand disciplines that I call the straight mind. But what is
the different/other if not the dominated?For heterosexualsociety is the society
which not only oppresseslesbiansand gay men, it oppressesmany different/others,
it oppressesall women and many categoriesof men, all thosewho are in the position
of the dominated.To constitutea difference and to control it is an 'act of power,
sinceit is essentiallya normativeact. Everybodytries to show the other as different.
But not everybodysucceedsin doing so. One hasto be socially dominantto succeed
in it.'7
For example,the conceptof differencebetweenthe sexesontologically constitutes
women into different/others.Men are not different, whites are not different, nor are
the masters.But the blacks, as well as the slaves,are. This ontologicalcharacteristic
of the differencebetweenthe sexesaffectsall the conceptswhich are part of the same
conglomerate.But for us thereis no suchthing as being-womanor being-man.'Man'
and 'woman'are political conceptsof opposition,and the copulawhich dialectically
unites them is, at the same time, the one which abolishesthem.8 It is the class
struggle between women and men which will abolish men and women.9 The
conceptof difference has nothing ontological about it. It is only the way that the
mastersinterpret a historical situation of domination. The function of difference is
to mask at every level the conflicts of interest, including ideological ones.
In other words, for us, this meansthere cannot any longer be women and men,
and that as classesand categoriesof thought or languagethey have to disappear,
politically, economically,ideologically. If we, as lesbiansand gay men, continueto
speak of ourselvesand to conceive of ourselves as women and as men, we are
instrumental in maintaining heterosexuality. I am sure that an economic and
political transformationwill not dedramatizethesecategoriesof language.Can we
redeemslave? Can we redeemnigger, negress?How is woman different? Will we
continueto write white, master, man? The transformationof economicrelationships
will not suffice. We mustproducea political transformationof the key concepts,that

is, of the concepts which are strategic for us. For there is another order of
materiality, that of language,and languageis worked upon from within by these
strategicconcepts.It is at the sametime tightly connectedto the political6eld,where
everything that concernslanguage, science and thought refers to the person as
subjectivity and to her/his relationshipto society. And we cannotleave this within
the power of the straight mind or the thought of domination.
If amongall the productionsof the straightmind I especiallychallengethe models
of the Structural Unconscious,it is because:at the moment in history when the
domination of social groups can no longer appear as a logical necessityto the
dominated,becausethey revolt, becausethey questionthe differences,Levi-Strauss,
Lacan, and their epigones call upon necessitieswhich escape the control of
consciousnessand therefore the responsibility of individuals.
They call upon unconsciousprocesses,for example,which require the exchange
of womenas a necessarycondition for every society.Accordingto them, that is what
the unconscioustells us with authority, and the symbolicorder, without which there
is no meaning,no language,no society,dependson it. But what doeswomen being
exchangedmeanif not that they are dominated?No wonder then that there is only
one Unconscious,and that it is heterosexual.It is an Unconsciouswhich looks too
consciously after the interests of the masterslO in whom it lives for them to be
dispossessed of their conceptsso easily. Besides,domination is denied; there is no
slavery of women, there is difference. To which I will answerwith this statement
made by a Romanianpeasantat a public meetingin 1848: 'Why do the gentlemen
say it was not slavery,for we know it to havebeenslavery,this sorrow that we have
sorrowed.'Yes, we know it, and this scienceof oppressioncannot be taken away
from us.
It is from this sciencethat we must track down the 'what-goes-without-saying'
heterosexual,and (I paraphrasethe early Roland Barthes)we must not bear 'seeing
Nature and History confusedat every turn'.u We must make it brutally apparent
that psychoanalysisafter Freud and particularly Lacan have rigidly turned their
conceptsinto myths - Difference, Desire, the Name-of-the-father,etc. They have
even 'over-mythi6ed'the myths, an operationthat was necessaryfor them in order
to systematicallyheterosexualizethat personaldimensionwhich suddenlyemerged
through the dominated individuals into the historical 6eld, particularly through
women, who startedtheir strugglealmost two centuriesago. And it has beendone
systematically,in a concertof interdisciplinarity,nevermore harmoniousthan since
the heterosexualmyths started to circulate with easefrom one formal system to
another, like sure values that can be invested in anthropology as well as in
psychoanalysisand in all the social sciences.
This ensembleof heterosexualmyths is a systemof signs which uses6guresof
speech, and thus it can be politically studied from within the science of our
oppression;'for-we-know-it-to-have-been-slavery' is the dynamic which introduces
the diachronism of history into the 6xed discourse of eternal essences.This
undertakingshould somehowbe a political semiology, although with 'this sorrow
252 Monique Wittig
that we have sorrowed' we work also at the level of language/manifesto,of

languagelaction, that which transforms,that which makes history.
In the meantime,in the systemsthat seemedso eternal and universal that laws
could be extractedfrom them, laws that could be stuffed into computers,and in any
case for the moment stuffed into the unconsciousmachinery, in these systems,
thanksto our action and our language,shifts are happening.Such a model, as for
example,the exchangeof women, reengulfshistory in so violent and brutal a way
that the whole system,which was believedto be formal, topples over into another
dimensionof knowledge. This dimensionof history belongsto us, since somehow
we have beendesignated,and since, as Levi-Strausssaid, we talk, let us say that we
break off the heterosexualcontract.
So, this is what lesbianssay everywherein this country and in someothers,if not
with theories at least through their social practice, whose repercussionsupon
straight culture and society are still unenvisionable.An anthropologistmight say
that we haveto wait for fifty years. Yes, if one wantsto universalizethe functioning
of thesesocietiesand maketheir invariantsappear.Meanwhilethe straightconcepts
are undermined. What is woman? Panic, general alarm for an active defense.
Frankly, it is a problem that the lesbians do not have becauseof a change of
perspective,and it would be incorrect to say that lesbiansassociate,make love, live
with women, for 'woman'hasmeaningonly in heterosexualsystemsof thought and
heterosexualeconomicsystems.Lesbiansare not women.
Notes
1. This text was first read in New York at the Modern LanguageAssociationConvention
in 1978 and dedicatedto Amencanlesbians.
2. However, the classicalGreeksknew that there was no political power without mastery
of the art of rhetoric, especially in a democracy.
3. Throughoutthis paper,when Lacan'suse of the term 'the Unconscious'is referred to it
is capitalized,following his style.
4. For example,seeKarla Jay and Allen Young, (eds),Out of the Closets(New York: Links
Books, 1972).
5. Heterosexuality:a word which first appearsin the French languagein 1911.
6. Ti-Grace Atkinson, AmazonOdyssey(New York: Links Books, 1974), pp. 13-23.
7. Claude Faugeronand Philippe Robert, La Justice et son public et les representations
socialesdu systemepenal (Paris: Masson,1978).
8. See,for her definition of 'social sex', Nicole-ClaudeMathieu, 'Notespour une definition
sociologiquedes categoriesde sexe', EpistemologieSociologique11 (1971). Translated
as Ignored by Some,Deniedby Others: The social sex categoryin sociology(pamphlet),
Explorations in Feminism 2 (London: Women's Research and Resources Centre
Publications,1977), pp. 16-37.
9. In the same way that in every other class struggle the categoriesof opposition are
'reconciled'by the struggle whose goal is to make them disappear.
10. Are the millions of dollars a year made by the psychoanalystssymbolic?
11. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972), p. 11.
3.6 D From In a
Different Voice:
Psychological theory
and women's
development
Carol Gilligan
Conceptsof Self and Morality

[...J
Norma Haan's(1975) researchon college studentsand ConstanceHolstein's(1976)

three-yearstudy of adolescentsand their parentsindicate that the moral judgments
of women differ from those of men in the greater extent to which women's
judgmentsare tied to feelings of empathyand compassionand are concernedwith
the resolutionof real as opposedto hypotheticaldilemmas.However, as long as the
categoriesby which development is assessedare derived from researchon men,
divergencefrom the masculinestandardcan be seenonly as a failure of development.
As a result, the thinking of women is often classified with that of children. The
absenceof alternative criteria that might better encompassthe developmentof
women, however,points not only to the limitations of theoriesframed by men and
validated by researchsamplesdisproportionatelymale and adolescent,but also to
the diffidence prevalent among women, their reluctanceto speakpublicly in their
own voice, given the constraintsimposedon them by their lack of power and the
politics of relations betweenthe sexes.
From Gilligan, c., In a Different Voice: Psychological theory and women's development,Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982, pp. 69-74,79,82-3,98, 100-01, 102-3, 105,172-4,
177-80.
2Sl
254 Carol Gilligan
In order to go beyond the question'How much like men do women think, how
capable are they of engaging in the abstract and hypothetical construction of
reality?' it is necessaryto identify and define developmentalcriteria that encompass
the categoriesof women's thought. Haan points out the necessityto derive such
criteria from the resolution of the 'more frequently occurring, real-life moral
dilemmas of interpersonal,empathic, fellow-feeling concerns'(p. 34) which have
long beenthe centerof women'smoral concern.But to derive developmentalcriteria
from the languageof women'smoral discourse,it is necessaryfirst to see whether
women'sconstructionof the moral domain relies on a languagedifferent from that
of men and one that deservesequal credencein the definition of development.This
in turn requiresfmding placeswhere womenhavethe power to chooseand thus are
willing to speakin their own voice.
When birth control and abortion provide women with effective means for
controlling their fertility, the dilemma of choice entersa central arenaof women's
lives. Then the relationshipsthat have traditionally defined women'sidentities and
framed their moral judgmentsno longer flow inevitably from their reproductive
capacity but becomematters of decision over which they have control. Released
from the passivity and reticence of a sexuality that binds them in dependence,
women can questionwith Freud what it is that they want and can asserttheir own
answersto that question.However, while society may affirm publicly the woman's
right to choose for herself, the exercise of such choice brings her privately into
conflict with the conventionsof femininity, particularly the moral equation of
goodnesswith self-sacrifice.Although independentassertionin judgmentand action
is consideredto be the hallmark of adulthood,it is rather in their care and concern
for others that women have both judged themselvesand been judged.
The conflict betweenself and other thus constitutesthe centralmoral problem for
women, posing a dilemma whose resolution requires a reconciliation between
femininity and adulthood. In the absenceof such a reconciliation, the moral
problemcannotbe resolved.The 'good woman'masksassertionin evasion,denying
responsibilityby claiming only to meet the needsof others, while the 'bad woman'
forgoesor renouncesthe commitmentsthat bind her in self-deceptionand betrayal.
It is precisely this dilemma - the conflict between compassionand autonomy,
betweenvirtue and power - which the feminine voice struggles to resolve in its
effort to reclaim the self and to solve the moral problem in such a way that no one
is hurt.
When a woman considers whether to continue or abort a pregnancy, she
contemplatesa decision that affects both self and others and engagesdirectly the
critical moral issueof hurting. Since the choice is ultimately hers, and thereforeone
for which sheis responsible,it raisespreciselythosequestionsof judgmentthat have
been most problematic for women. Now she is asked whether she wishes to
interrupt that streamof life which for centurieshas immersedher in the passivity
of dependencewhile at the sametime imposing on her the responsibility for care.
Thus the abortion decision brings to the core of feminine apprehension,to what
JoanDidion (1972) calls 'the irreconcilabledifferenceof it - that senseof living one's
From In a Different Voice 255
deepestlife underwater,that dark involvement with blood and birth and death'
(p. 14), the adult questionsof responsibility and choice.
How women deal with such choices was the subject of the abortion study,
designed to clarify the ways in which women construct and resolve abortion
decisions. Twenty-nine women, ranging in age from fifteen to thirty-three and
diverse in ethnic background and social class, were referred for the study by
abortion and pregnancycounselingservices.The women participatedin the study
for a variety of reasons- someto gain further clarification with respectto a decision
about which they were in conflict, somein responseto a counselor'sconcernabout
repeatedabortions, and others to contribute to ongoing research.Although the
pregnanciesoccurredunder a variety of circumstancesin the lives of thesewomen,
certain commonalitieswere discerned. The adolescentsoften failed to use birth
control becausethey denied or discredited their capacity to bear children. Some
women became pregnant due to the omission of contraceptive measures in
circumstanceswhere intercourse had not been anticipated. Some pregnancies
coincided with efforts on the part of the women to end a relationshipand may be
seenas a manifestationof ambivalenceor as a way of putting the relationshipto the
ultimate test of commitment.For thesewomen,the pregnancyappearedto be a way
of testing truth, making the baby an ally in the search for male support and
protection or, that failing, a companion victim of male rejection. Finally, some
women becamepregnantas a result either of a failure of birth control or of a joint
decision that was later reconsidered.Of the twenty-nine women, four decided to
have the baby, two miscarried,twenty-onechoseabortion, and two who were in
doubt aboutthe decisionat the time of the interview could not be contactedfor the
follow-up research.
The women were interviewed twice, first at the time they were making the
decision,in the first trimesterof a confirmed pregnancy,and then at the end of the
following year. The referral procedurerequiredthat therebe an interval betweenthe
woman'scontactinga counseloror clinic and the time the abortionwas performed.
Given this factor and the fact that some counselorssaw participation in the study
as an effective meansof crisis-intervention,thereis reasonto believethat the women
interviewed were in greater than usual conflict over the decision. Since the study
focused on the relation betweenjudgment and action rather than on the issue of
abortion per se, no effort was madeto selecta samplethat would be representative
of women considering,seeking,or having abortions. Thus the findings pertain to
the different ways in which women think about dilemmasin their lives rather than
to the ways in which women in generalthink about the abortion choice.
In the initial part of the interview, the women were askedto discussthe decision
they faced, how they were dealing with it, the alternativesthey were considering,
their reasonsboth for and againsteach option, the people involved, the conflicts
entailed, and the ways in which making this decision affected their views of
themselvesand their relationshipswith others. In the secondpart of the interview,
the women were askedto resolvethree hypotheticalmoral dilemmas,including the
Heinz dilemma from Kohlberg's research.
256 Carol Gilligan
In extending Piaget's description of children's moral judgment to the moral

judgmentof adolescentsand adults, Kohlberg (1976) distinguishesthree perspectives
on moral conflict and choice. Tying moral developmentin adolescenceto the growth
of reflective thought at that time, Kohlberg terms these three views of morality
preconventional,conventional, and postconventional,to reflect the expansionin
moral understandingfrom an individual to a societal to a universal point of view.
In this scheme,conventionalmorality, or the equationof the right or good with the
maintenanceof existing social norms and values, is always the point of departure.
Whereaspreconventionalmoral judgmentdenotesan inability to constructa shared
or societal viewpoint, postconventionaljudgment transcendsthat vision. Precon-
ventional judgment is egocentric and derives moral constructs from individual
needs;conventionaljudgmentis basedon the sharednorms and valuesthat sustain
relationships,groups, communities,and societies;and postconventionaljudgment
adoptsa reflective perspectiveon societalvaluesand constructsmoral principlesthat
are universal in application.
This shift in perspectivetoward increasinglydifferentiated, comprehensive,and
reflective forms of thought appears in women's responsesto both actual and
hypothetical dilemmas. But just as the conventions that shape women's moral
judgment differ from those that apply to men, so also women's definition of the
moral domain diverges from that derived from studies of men. Women's
construction of the moral problem as a problem of care and responsibility in
relationshipsrather than as one of rights and rules ties the developmentof their
moral thinking to changesin their understandingof responsibilityand relationships,
just as the conceptionof morality as justice ties developmentto the logic of equality
and reciprocity. Thus the logic underlying an ethic of care is a psychologicallogic
of relationships,which contrastswith the formal logic of fairnessthat informs the
justice approach.
Women'sconstructionsof the abortion dilemma in particular reveal the existence
of a distinct moral languagewhoseevolution tracesa sequenceof development.This
is the languageof selfishnessand responsibility,which definesthe moral problem as
one of obligation to exercisecare and avoid hurt. The inflicting of hurt is considered
selfish and immoral in its reflection of unconcern,while the expressionof careis seen
as the fulfillment of moral responsibility. The reiterative use by the women of the
words selfish and responsiblein talking about moral conflict and choice, given the
underlying moral orientationthat this languagereflects, setsthe women apart from
the men whom Kohlberg studied and points toward a different understandingof
moral development.
The three moral perspectivesrevealed by the abortion decision study denote a
sequencein the developmentof the ethic of care. Thesedifferent views of care and
the transitions betweenthem emergedfrom an analysis of the ways in which the
women used moral language- words such as should, ought, better, right, good,
and bad, by the changesand shifts that appearedin their thinking, and by the way
in which they reflectedon and judgedtheir thought. In this sequence,an initial focus
on caring for the self in order to ensuresurvival is followed by a transitionalphase
in which this judgment is criticized as selfIsh. The criticism signals a new under-
standing of the connection between self and others which is articulated by the
conceptof responsibility. The elaborationof this conceptof responsibility and its
fusion with a maternal morality that seeksto ensurecare for the dependentand
unequalcharacterizesthe secondperspective.At this point, the good is equatedwith
caring for others.However,when only othersare legitimized as the recipientsof the
woman's care, the exclusion of herself gives rise to problems in relationships,
creating a disequilibrium that initiates the second transition. The equation of
conformity with care, in its conventionaldefInition, and the illogic of the inequality
betweenother and self, lead to a reconsiderationof relationshipsin an effort to sort
out the confusion between self-sacrifIce and care inherent in the conventionsof
feminine goodness.The third perspectivefocuseson the dynamicsof relationships
and dissipatesthe tension between selfIshnessand responsibility through a new
understandingof the interconnectionbetweenother and self. Care becomesthe self-
chosen principle of a judgment that remains psychological in its concern with
relationshipsand responsebut becomesuniversalin its condemnationof exploitation
and hurt. Thus a progressivelymore adequateunderstandingof the psychologyof
humanrelationships- an increasingdifferentiationof self and other and a growing
comprehensionof the dynamicsof social interaction - informs the developmentof
an ethic of care. This ethic, which reflects a cumulative knowledge of human
relationships, evolves around a central insight, that self and other are inter-
dependent.The different ways of thinking about this connectionor the different
modesof its apprehensionmark the three perspectivesand their transitionalphases.
In this sequence, the fact of interconnection informs the central, recurring
recognition that just as the incidenceof violence is in the end destructiveto all, so
the activity of care enhancesboth others and self.
[ ...J
The transition from the fIrst to the secondperspective,the shift from selfIshness
to responsibility, is a move toward social participation. Whereasfrom the fIrst
perspective,morality is a matter of sanctions imposedby a society of which one is
more subject than citizen, from the secondperspective,moral judgment relies on
sharednorms and expectations.The woman at this point validates her claim to
social membershipthrough the adoption of societal values. Consensualjudgment
about goodnessbecomesthe overriding concernas survival is now seento depend
on acceptanceby others.
Here the conventionalfeminine voice emergeswith great clarity, defIning the self
and proclaiming its worth on the basisof the ability to care for and protect others.
The woman now constructsa world perfusedwith the assumptionsabout feminine
goodnessthat are reflectedin the stereotypesof the Brovermanet al. studies(1972),
where all the attributes considereddesirablefor women presumean other - the
recipient of the 'tact, gentlenessand easy expressionof feeling' which allow the
woman to respondsensitively while evoking in return the care that meetsher 'very
strongneedfor security' (p. 63). The strengthof this position lies in its capacityfor
258 Carol Gilligan
canng; the limitation of this position lies in the restriction it Imposes on direct
expression.
[ ... ]
This notion of responsibility,backwardsin its assumptionsaboutcontrol, disguises
assertionas response.By reversing responsibility, it generatesa series of indirect
actions, which in the end leave everyonefeeling manipulatedand betrayed. The
logic of this position is confusedin that the morality of mutual care is embedded
in the psychology of dependence.Assertion becomespotentially immoral in its
power to hurt. This confusionis capturedin Kohlberg'sdefinition of the third stage
of moral developmentwhich joins the need for approval with the wish to care for
and help others. When thus caught betweenthe passivity of dependenceand the
activity of care, the woman becomessuspendedin a paralysis of initiative with
respectto both action and thought. Thus Denise [one of the women interviewed]
speaksof herself as 'just going along with the tide'.
The transitionalphasethat follows this judgmentis markedby a shift in concern
from goodness to truth. The transition begins with reconsideration of the
relationship betweenself and other, as the woman starts to scrutinizethe logic of
self-sacrifice in the service of a morality of care. In the abortion interviews this
transition is announcedby the reappearanceof the word selfish. Retrieving the
judgmentalinitiative, the woman begins to ask whetherit is selfish or responsible,
moral or immoral, to include her own needswithin the compassof her care and
concern. This question leads her to reexamine the concept of responsibility,
juxtaposingthe concernwith what other peoplethink with a new inner judgment.
In separatingthe voice of the self from the voices of others, the woman asks if
it is possibleto be responsibleto herself as well as to others and thus to reconcile
the disparity betweenhurt and care. The exerciseof such responsibilityrequires a
new kind of judgment, whose first demandis for honesty. To be responsiblefor
oneself, it is first necessaryto acknowledgewhat one is doing. The criterion for
judgmentthus shifts from goodnessto truth when the morality of action is assessed
not on the basisof its appearancein the eyesof others, but in terms of the realities
of its intention and consequence.
[ ... ]
To admit the truth of the women's perspectiveto the conception of moral

developmentis to recognizefor both sexesthe importancethroughout life of the
connectionbetweenself and other,the universality of the needfor compassionand
care. The conceptof the separateself and of moral principles uncompromisedby
the constraintsof reality is an adolescentideal, the elaboratelywrought philosophy
of a StephenDaedaluswhose flight we know to be in jeopardy. Erikson (1964), in
contrastingthe ideological morality of the adolescentwith the adult ethic of taking
care, attemptsto grapple with this problem of integration. But when he charts a
developmentalpath where the sole precursorto the intimacy of adult love and the
generativityof adult work and relationshipsis the trust establishedin infancy, and
where all intervening experience is marked as steps toward autonomy and

independence,then separationitself becomesthe model and the measureof growth.
ThoughErikson observesthat, for women,identity hasas much to do with intimacy
as with separation,this observationis not integratedinto his developmentalchart.
The morality of responsibility that women describestands,like their conceptof
self, apart from the path marked to maturity. The progressto moral maturity is
depictedas leading through the adolescentquestioningof conventionalmorality to
the discovery of individual rights.
[ ... ]
The moral imperative that emergesrepeatedlyin interviews with women is an
injunction to care,a responsibilityto discernand alleviatethe 'real and recognizable
trouble' of this world. For men, the moral imperativeappearsratheras an injunction
to respectthe rights of othersand thus to protect from interferencethe rights to life
and self-fulfillment. Women's insistenceon care is at first self-critical rather than
self-protective,while men initially conceiveobligation to othersnegativelyin terms
of noninterference.Developmentfor both sexeswould thereforeseemto entail an
integration of rights and responsibilities through the discovery of the comple-
mentarity of these disparate views. For women, the integration of rights and
responsibilitiestakes place through an understandingof the psychologicallogic of
relationships.This understandingtempers the self-destructivepotential of a self-
critical morality by assertingthe need of all personsfor care. For men, recognition
throughexperienceof the needfor more active responsibilityin taking care corrects
the potential indifferenceof a morality of noninterferenceand turns attentionfrom
the logic to the consequencesof choice (Gilligan and Murphy, 1979; Gilligan,
1981). In the developmentof a postconventionalethical understanding,women
cometo seethe violenceinherentin inequality,while men cometo seethe limitations
of a conceptionof justice blinded to the differencesin human life.
Hypothetical dilemmas, in the abstraction of their presentation,divest moral
actors from the history and psychology of their individual lives and separatethe
moral problemfrom the social contingenciesof its possibleoccurrence.In doing so,
thesedilemmasare useful for the distillation and refinementof objective principles
of justice and for measuringthe formal logic of equality and reciprocity. However,
the reconstruction of the dilemma in its contextual particularity allows the
understandingof cause and consequencewhich engages the compassion and
tolerance repeatedlynoted to distinguish the moral judgments of women. Only
when substanceis given to the skeletal lives of hypotheticalpeopleis it possibleto
considerthe social injustice that their moral problemsmay reflect and to imagine
the individual suffering their occurrencemay signify or their resolution engender.
The proclivity of women to reconstructhypothetical dilemmasin terms of the
real, to requestor to supply missinginformation aboutthe natureof the peopleand
the placeswherethey live, shifts their judgmentaway from the hierarchicalordering
of principles and the formal proceduresof decision-making.This insistenceon the
particular signifies an orientationto the dilemma and to moral problemsin general
260 Carol Gilligan
that differs from any current developmental stage descriptions. Consequently,

though several of the women in the abortion study clearly articulate a
postconventionalmetaethicalposition, noneof them is consideredprincipled in their
normative moral judgments of Kohlberg's hypothetical dilemmas. Instead, the
women's judgmentspoint toward an identification of the violence inherent in the
dilemma itself, which is seen to compromise the justice of any of its possible
resolutions.This constructionof the dilemma leadsthe women to recastthe moral
judgment from a considerationof the good to a choice betweenevils.
[ •.. J
The reluctanceto judge remainsa reluctanceto hurt, but one that stemsnot from
a senseof personalvulnerability but rather from a recognition of the limitation of
judgment itself. The deference of the conventional feminine perspective thus
continuesat the postconventionallevel,not as moral relativism but rather as part
of a reconstructedmoral understanding.Moral judgment is renounced in an
awarenessof the psychologicaland social determinationof human behavior,at the
sametime that moral concernis reaffirmed in recognition of the reality of human
pain and suffering.
[ •..J
The abortion study suggeststhat women impose a distinctive construction on
moral problems,seeingmoral dilemmasin termsof conflicting responsibilities.This
constructionwas tracedthrough a sequenceof three perspectives,each perspective
representinga more complex understandingof the relationship between self and
other and eachtransition involving a critical reinterpretationof the conflict between
selfishnessand responsibility. The sequenceof women's moral judgment proceeds
from an initial concernwith survival to a focus on goodnessand finally to a reflective
understandingof care as the most adequateguide to the resolution of conflicts in
humanrelationships.The abortion study demonstratesthe centrality of the concepts
of responsibility and care in women'sconstructionsof the moral domain, the close
tie in women's thinking between conceptionsof the self and of morality, and
ultimately the needfor an expandeddevelopmentaltheory that includes,ratherthan
rules out from consideration,the differencesin the feminine voice. Such an inclusion
seemsessential,not only for explaining the developmentof women but also for
understandingin both sexesthe characteristicsand precursorsof an adult moral
conception.
[ ...J
Visions of Maturity
[ ...J
There seemsat presentto be only partial agreementbetweenmen and womenabout
the adulthood they commonly share. In the absenceof mutual understanding,

relationships between the sexes continue in varying degrees of constraint,
manifestingthe 'paradoxof egocentrism'which Piagetdescribes,a mystical respect
for rules combinedwith everyoneplaying more or less as he pleasesand paying no
attention to his neighbor (p. 61). For a life-cycle understandingto addressthe
developmentin adulthoodof relationshipscharacterizedby cooperation,generosity,
and care, that understandingmust include the lives of women as well as of men.
Among the most pressingitems on the agendafor researchon adult development
is the needto delineatein women'sown terms the experienceof their adult life. My
own work in that direction indicatesthat the inclusion of women'sexperiencebrings
to developmentalunderstandinga new perspectiveon relationshipsthat changes
the basicconstructsof interpretation.The conceptof identity expandsto include the
experienceof interconnection. The moral domain is similarly enlarged by the
inclusion of responsibility and care in relationships. And the underlying
epistemology correspondingly shifts from the Greek ideal of knowledge as a
correspondence betweenmind and form to the biblical conceptionof knowing as a
processof human relationship.
Given the evidenceof different perspectivesin the representationof adulthoodby
women and men, there is a need for researchthat elucidatesthe effects of these
differencesin marriage,family, and work relationships.My researchsuggeststhat
men and womenmay speakdifferent languagesthat they assumeare the same,using
similar words to encode disparate experiencesof self and social relationships.
Becausethese languagesshare an overlapping moral vocabulary, they contain a
propensityfor systematicmistranslation,creatingmisunderstandings which impede
communicationand limit the potentialfor cooperationand care in relationships.At
the sametime, however,theselanguagesarticulatewith one anotherin critical ways.
Just as the languageof responsibilitiesprovides a weblike imagery of relationships
to replacea hierarchicalordering that dissolveswith the coming of equality, so the
languageof rights underlinesthe importanceof including in the network of care not
only the other but also the self.
As we have listened for centuries to the voices of men and the theories of
developmentthat their experienceinforms, so we havecomemore recentlyto notice
not only the silenceof women but the difficulty in hearingwhat they say when they
speak.Yet in the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of care, the tie
betweenrelationshipand responsibility, and the origins of aggressionin the failure
of connection.The failure to see the different reality of women'slives and to hear
the differencesin their voices stemsin part from the assumptionthat there is a single
mode of social experienceand interpretation. By positing instead two different
modes,we arrive at a more complex rendition of humanexperiencewhich seesthe
truth of separationand attachmentin the lives of women and men and recognizes
how these truths are carried by different modes of languageand thought.
To understandhow the tension betweenresponsibilitiesand rights sustainsthe
dialectic of human developmentis to see the integrity of two disparatemodes of
experiencethat are in the end connected.While an ethic of justice proceedsfrom
262 Carol Gilligan
the premiseof equality - that everyoneshouldbe treatedthe same- an ethic of care

rests on the premise of nonviolence - that no one should be hurt. In the
representationof maturity, both perspectivesconvergein the realizationthat just as
inequality adverselyaffects both partiesin an unequalrelationship,so too violence
is destructivefor everyoneinvolved. This dialogue betweenfairness and care not
only provides a better understandingof relations betweenthe sexesbut also gives
rise to a more comprehensiveportrayal of adult work and family relationships.
As Freud and Piagetcall our attentionto the differencesin children'sfeelings and
thought, enabling us to respond to children with greater care and respect, so a
recognitionof the differencesin women'sexperienceand understandingexpandsour
vision of maturity and points to the contextual nature of developmentaltruths.
Through this expansionin perspective,we can begin to envision how a marriage
betweenadult developmentas it is currently portrayedand women'sdevelopment
as it beginsto be seencould leadto a changedunderstandingof humandevelopment
and a more generativeview of human life.
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4 Ma rxi sm
Introduction
Louis Althusseracknowledgesthe determiningpower of economicconditions'in the

last instance', adding - it is not clear how seriously - that this instance 'never
comes'.If thereis a way to approachthe selectionof Readingsin this Section,it may
be the extent to which each theorist endorsessuch quali&cations of a Marxist
tradition which flourished in Easternand WesternEurope before World War I but
has been severelydiscreditedwheneverthe opportunity has arisen to make it the
ruling tradition. In the loosestsense,all the Readingsbelow - bar ErnestoLaclau
and Chantal Mouffe's (Reading 4.7) - fall within the category of 'Western
Marxism', and they at least measuretheir point of departurefrom Marx. Attempts
to de&ne Western Marxism have a history, beginning in the disputeswith Georg
Lukacs and Karl Korsch by the Cominternin 1923 but becomingmore judicious in
Maurice Merleau-Ponty'sAdventuresof the Dialectic (1955) and Perry Anderson's
Considerationson Western Marxism (1979). Anderson'sis the broadestsweep -
sincehe comesat the conceptgenerationally,geographicallyand intellectually - and
includes Louis Althusser and anti-HegelianMarxists.
Western Marxism, in Anderson'sde&nition, can be construedtheoretically as
setting itself against the scienti&c model of orthodox Eastern Marxism and the
theoreticalwork of Engels at the end of his life and Kautsky and Plekhano':from
the late 188Os, all of whom expoundeda more con&denthistorical materialismthan
can be found in a consistentway in Marx himself. Their 'text' is Marx's Capital,
as it is, less immediately, in Luxemburg's,Bukharin's and Lenin's accountsof the
advancesof monopoly and &nance capitalismthrough to the early yearsof the First
World War. WesternMarxism lacks this insistenteconomism,and is also missing
the promulgation of Marxist political theory to be found in Lenin especially,but
also in Trotsky. The work of the Frankfurt School in particular- but other strands
in Western Marxism, too - came out of the disappointmentsand defeatswhich
beganin the 1920sin WesternEuropewith the revival of capitalismand reformism,
and accompaniedthe increasingisolation of the Soviet Revolutionand its aftermath;
and they were fuelled by the trajectory of the Soviet state from the 1930s and its
cultural manifestationin the PopularFront againstfascism. After 1945, capitalism
went into overdrive in the USA and, eventually, in Europe and, in its various
manifestations,mademore and more con&dent claims that it was best &tted also to
deliver democraticends.Andersonsumsup the consequences for WesternMarxism:
'Henceforward,it was to speak its own encipheredlanguage,at an increasingly
remote distance from the class whose fortunes it formally sought to serve or
267
268 Marxism
articulate' (Anderson, 1979, p.32). Intellectually, stimulation came from the

rediscovery in the 1920s of Marx's early writings which emphasizedalienation,
reification and cultural critique, sometimes at the expense of economic
developments.It was the founding in 1923 of the Institute for Social Research-
invariably known since the 1960s as the Frankfurt School - which gave Western
Marxism the academicspaceto becomeremote - or, to put it more positively, to
developtheoretically,initially in Germanyand between1934 and 1949 in the USA.
'Cultural Criticism and Society' (Reading4.2) is the lead essayin Adorno's 1955
book Prisms, written after his return to Frankfurt in 1949 after exile in England
(1934-8) and the USA (1938-49). These essayscome out of a period in which
reflection upon the Holocaust came together with a continuing analysis of mass
culture, most forcefully in 'The culture industry' (1944) and other essayswritten
with his Frankfurt School colleague Max Horkheimer, and published as The
Dialectic of Enlightenment. Their attack on domination through reification is
relentless,and the fIercenessof the attack on Hollywood intimatesthat this critique
is still dealing with the manipulationof consciousnessby the fascist regimesof the
1930s. The Frankfurt School idea that an 'administeredworld' and 'repressive
tolerance'were the chief outcomesof the promise of the Enlightenmentis evident
in Prisms,which takesup Max Weber'sthemein the closing pagesof The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930): that rationality, with its Reformation
origins, had constructeda rationalisedworld, an 'iron cage'.In Adorno'swords near
the end of 'Cultural Criticism and Society':
the sinister, integrated society of today no longer tolerates even those relatively
independent,distinct moments to which the theory of the causal dependenceof
superstructureon base once referred. In the open-air prison which the world is
becoming, it is no longer so important to know what dependson what, such is the
extent to which everything is one. ... Absolute reification, which presupposed
intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind
entirely. (Adorno, 1967, p. 34)
Adorno's pessimismabout the relationshipbetweentheory and practicepredateshis

experienceof fascism, and may be discernedin his inaugural lecture of 1931, 'The
actuality of philosophy'; but by the 1950s it is openly expressedand may even be
generalized as an element in Western Marxism. From the late 1920s political
connectionswere sparseamong Western Marxists. Indeed, Gramsci's'revolution
againstCapitaf togetherwith a loss of the confidencethat runs through Marx's text
that thought and practice can be united in scientifIc socialism and historical
inevitability, becamemotifs in a wholesaleturn towardsphilosophicalcritique and
the project of the unmaskingof ideological structures.In Adorno, Horkheimerand
Marcuse the power of the administeredworld left the working class without its
classicalrevolutionary role, so that Critical Theory remainedtheir only way to be
radical. Invariably,the sphereleft open to what Adorno calls an immanentcritique
is culture. Incidentally, the borrowing of 'Critical Theory' to describe the loose
Introduction 269
agglomerationof self-reflective, interdisciplinary theorizing presentedin a Reader

such as this implies a common problem in relating theory to action which runs
through the whole held from the Frankfurt School in the 1930s to a post-
structuralist hegemonyin the 1970s and 1980s.
Even 'in theory' a 'way out' is difficult to envisage,and certainly in Adorno there
is nothing of Marcuse'sradicalizationof Freudin the serviceof utopian speculation,
though a Frankfurt School conferenceon Freud the year after Eros and Civilization
(1955) was published provided an opportunity. It was left to avant-garde
modernismto put up some resistanceto massculture and its hegemonicpower, as
Martin Jay explains: 'The wholenessof art, including music, was ... a prehguration
of the normative totality of the future society' (Jay, 1984b, pp. 54-5). Adorno
insists (in a discussionof Baudelaire'smodernism)that this is no mere aestheticism:
'Essence'itself in this poetry is no abstractthing in itself; it is a social phenomenon.

The objectively dominant idea in Baudelaire'swork is that the new, the products of
historical progress,are what has to be conjured up in his verse. To use Benjamin's
expression,we fmd not an archaic,but a 'dialectical'imagein his work. (Adorno, 1980,
p. 158)
Like Walter Benjamin (see Reading4.1), Adorno rejects symbolism as the basisof
art and a Hegelian expressivetotality as the basis for philosophy: 'philosophy ...
must learn to do without the symbolic function, in which for a long time, at least
in idealism, the particular appearedto represent the general' (Adorno, 1977,
p. 127). At the other end of the aestheticspectrum,realism was rejected(the crux
of Adorno's case against Lukacs) becauseit was too easily co-opted and the
solidarity with readers which it encouragedwas a false, 'populist' unity which
threatenedcritical, revolutionaryindependence.Adorno and Benjamin- along with
Lukacs, Bertolt Brecht and, in a different way, Louis Althusser(seeReading4.3) -
have madea remarkablecontributionto Marxist aestheticand cultural theory. The
extent and quality of thesecontributions,however, are a measureof their distance
from the economicand political concernsof nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century
Marxism.
Prisms also contains Adorno's hrst essay on Walter Benjamin. Apart from a
passingregret in this essayat 'Benjamin'stendencyto cedehis intellectual power to
objects diametrically opposedto it, the most extreme example of which was his
study on 'The Work of Art in the Era of its Mechanical Reproduction'(Adorno,
1967, p. 233), Adorno doesnot confront his worry that Benjamin'sinterestin new
media (photography and him, especially) brings him too close to one of the
mechanismsof domination in the modern world. Benjamin'sview in 'The work of
art', 'The author as producer'and 'Paris - capital of the nineteenthcentury' is that
althoughtechnologydestroysthe aura of an original work of art and a remembered
momentof unity, it revealsthe logic of capitalist repetition and, as a technologyof
reproduction,holds out the possibility of a genuinelypopularculture. In connection
with Benjamin'senigmatic'Theseson the philosophyof history' (completedin 1940,
270 Marxism
just before he died), his opennessto technologypoints towardsan allegoricaltheory

of history; in FredricJameson'swords: 'an exercise... in the locating of somefitting
emblem in which to anchorthe peculiar and nervousmodern state of mind which
was Benjamin's subject matter' (Jameson,1974, p. 76). 'The allegorically signi-
ficant', Benjamin remarksin The Origin of German Tragic Drama, 'is preventedby
guilt from finding fulfillment in its meaningin itself (Benjamin, 1977, p. 224). This
rejectionof the expressivetotality of the symbol,which collapsessubjectinto object,
object into subject, is the crucial, if highly mediated, step towards historical
explanation.Allegory becomesBenjamin'sdialectics; it is, in Adorno's phrase,'the
thinking of materialism'(Adorno, 1977).
In an anti-Marxist reading of Benjamin's'Theseson the philosophy of history',
GershomScholempoints out that historical materialism,in the immediateaftermath
of the shock of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the massingstorm clouds of fascism,
neededtheology to win through. However, it does not take a lot of rereading,
especially in the context of Adorno's, Marcuse's and Benjamin's comments on
allegory, to take this as the utopian,ratherthan theological,dimensionin Marxism
reassertingitself in dark times. It is not theological becausethe universal, like the
symbolic, is decisively rejected(there is no 'eternal image'); but there is the hope,
located in the most enigmatic of Benjamin'stheses(number IX), that 'the storm
blowing from Paradise'will hurl 'the angel of history' into the future (Benjamin,
1973, p. 259).
If Perry Anderson'scontextualaccountgives a degreeof coherenceto most of the
figures in this Section, then Louis Althusser's work, beginning in 1953 with
expository accountsof Marx, is the clearestindication that Western Marxism is
nothing like a homogeneousbody of theory. Where for Herbert Marcuse,among
others,the rediscoveryof Marx's early works gave philosophical,even humanistic,
critique an authorisedrole and potential, for Althusser these texts had to be read
but then put in their place -a place of significantly less importance than that
occupied by Marx's mature work. In terms which bear comparisonwith Michel
Foucault, and ThomasKuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions(1962), but
seem to have been derived from his former teacherGaston Bachelard,Althusser
argues for an epistemologicalbreak in Marx's thought. For Marx (1965) and
ReadingCapital (1968) are the relevanttexts. In returningto Marx, Althusserdoes
not, as the foregoing discussionof Western Marxism might suggest,return to a
reflection model, the superstructurecorrespondingto the basein a directly deter-
minate relationship. Rather, in For Marx, he fashions an argumentwithin theory:
a sciencealways works on existing concepts.... It doesnot work on a purely objective

'given', that of pure and absolute'facts'. On the contrary,its particularlabour consists
of elaborating its own scientific facts through a critique of the ideological 'facts'
elaboratedby an earlier ideological theoreticalpractice. To elaborateits own specific
'facts' is simultaneouslyto elaborateits own 'theory', since a scientific fact - and not
the self-styled pure phenomenon- can only be identified in the field of a theoretical
practice. (Althusser, 1970, p. 184)
Introduction 271
The seemingly enclosedfeel to this remarkableformulation recalls the debate

coveredin Section1, on Structuralismand Post-Structuralism,especiallythe former.
Just as Barthes,in Mythologies (see Reading 1.1), draoprs on a Marxist critique of
ideology, so Althusser'swork can be usefully readin con~mction
with structuralism.
The structuralist tenets of the priority of the system to its constituentparts, the
questioningof reference(used,in part, to insist that totality could not be read off
from the economic base in pre-1917 fashion), and the attack on the subject all
inform Althusser'srejection of Lukacs's expressivetotality and, more broadly, the
Hegelian tradition in Marxism. Where that tradition understandsthe parts of the
historical process as revealed in the totality, Althusser talks of the 'relative
autonomy'of different spheres.For Althusser,a scientinctheory alone, and not the
humanistic,consciousness-centred Marxism of E.P. Thompson(who gives a nrm
reply to Althusserin The Povertyof Theory [1978]), could supply a total view free
from subjectivism.Structuralism'santi-subjectivismis utilised by Althusserto argue
that ideology is not the product of individual false consciousnessor a conspiracy,
but has a materiality to it. Ideology is inseparablefrom representations,and 'in the
majority of casesthese representationshave nothing to do with "consciousness":
they are usually imagesand occasionallyconcepts,but it is above all as structures
that they impose on the vast majority of men, not via their "consciousness'"
(Althusser, 1970, p. 233). The links with Saussureanlinguistics may be discerned
in this not altogetherpersuasiveassertion(materiality seemsto meansystematicity);
but so, too, can links with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, and these assist
Althusser in arguing that it is the centredself which is the pre-eminentsubject of
ideology:
there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects.... The category of the
subject ... is the constitutive category of all ideology, whatever its determination
(regional or class) and whatever its historical date - since ideology has no history.
(Althusser, 1971, pp. 170-71)
It is the repetitive character of the construction of a subject, the subject as

'interpellated',which Althussertakes from Lacan. Ideology in what Althussercalls
a 'general' sense(as opposedto 'particular ideologies' in specinc institutions and
practices)seemspermanent,evenundercommunism,in the way that the unconscious
is permanent.Sciencealone can see through ideology, as Althusserexplainsin the
passagefrom For Marx quoted above, which suggestsa comparisonwith Lenin's
understandingof the way in which sciencecould transform the working classinto
a knowledgeableclass.
It is hard to tell whetherit is Althusser'stheoreticalposition, as partially laid out
in Reading4.3, or the continuing story of defeatswhich so mouldedthe Frankfurt
School, which accounts for his highly abstract and seemingly transhistorical
(virtually Idealist) concept of ideology; and, therefore, for a concept of science
which would matchthis view of ideology and replaceMarx's epistemology,in which
knowledgecomesthroughaction in the midst of changingconditionsand manifested
272 Marxism
contradictions.Althusser'sposition can be a recipefor detachment,evenquiescence,

and he was noticeably silent over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakiain 1968.
In The Political Unconscious(1983), a book which far outweighshis somewhat
overexposedstudiesof postmodernism,Fredric Jameson(see Reading4.5) engages
with Althusser,a figure from whom he had largely kept his distancein earlierworks.
Jameson'sattemptto incorporateelementsof Althusser'swork as a vital elementin
any 'negativeMarxist hermeneutic'is pursuedwhile, on anotherfront, he advances
a continued critique of post-structuralism- its 'ideology of the text' - and a re-
evaluation of the work of Lukacs. On post-structuralismwhich Jamesontakes
seriously and has, therefore,to arguewith and around - there is a sharp reminder
not to take various textual manifestationsof heterogeneityas all that politically
radical. 'Paradoxically',Jamesonpoints out in an important note to Reading4.5,
'the extrinsic, "contextual" or situational references repudiated by [post-
structuralism]turn out to be preciselywhat is heterogeneousto it' (Jameson,1983,
p. 283). This is a themeJamesonhas expandedupon ever since his 1972 book The
Prison-Houseof Language.
In Marxism and Form (1974), JamesonassemblesLukacs, Adorno, Benjamin,
Marcuse,and Sartreinto a tradition of thinkers (a subsetof WesternMarxism itself)
who have engagedwith formal and, especially, narrative issues. More than any
other theorist, it is Lukacs who prompts Jameson towards narrative as the
epistemologicalform capableof forming a historical consciousness.Lukacs - who
in many ways announcesthe onset of Western Marxism with History and Class
Consciousness(1923) - holds out against various forms of reification, including
symbolismas an aspectof modernism.Instead,he promotesthe nineteenth-century
realistic novel. Thus, the lessonJamesonlearns from Lukacs is, crudely, to keep
things moving:
realism itself comes to be distinguished by its movement, its storytelling and

dramatizationof its content;comes,following the title of one of Lukacs' nnestessays,
to be characterizedby narration rather than description..., for him, symbolism ... is
always a secondbest, always a kind of admissionof defeaton the part of the novelist;
for by having recourseto it the writer implies that someoriginal, objectivemeaningin
objects is henceforthinaccessibleto him. (Jameson,1974, pp. 196, 197)
Jamesonalso finds in Lukacs theexpressionof a utopian potential, frowned upon

within scientific Marxism and presentonly intermittently in Western Marxism in
times of despair, 'when it becomesclear to us that there is a sensein which the
developmentfrom [the utopian socialist] Fourier to Marx remains,both theoretically
and practically, a task for the future' (quoted in Jameson,1988c, p. 76). In an
explicit reversal of Adorno and Horkheimer's domination thesis in 'The culture
industry', Jamesonrecognisesthe necessityfor a positive hermeneutics.This must
accompanya Marxist critique of ideology and must confront, ratherthan back away
from, the 'degraded'productsof mass culture in an effort to releasetheir utopian
dimension,that which still points to an unrealisedand better future associatedwith
Introduction 273
the needs and interests of the class most subdued by the product's ideological
functioning. Jameson'soptimism in seeking ways to release a subdued utopian
impulse is an important theoretical move, even if it cannotfully answerFrankfurt
School pessimismabout the power of culture industriessuch as Hollywood. What
is apparent from reading Jameson alongside Adorno's 'Cultural Criticism and
Society', however, is how at homeJamesonis with the sphereof cultural criticism.
The turn to culture (and the superstructure)which marks WesternMarxism seems
less of a denial of a Marxist project than it can in older Marxists. Jamesonis quite
open about the new circumstancesin the Prefaceto The Political Unconscious:
as the traditional dialectic teachesus, the historicizing operationcan follow two distinct
paths,which only ultimately meet in the sameplace: the path of the object and the path
of the subject,the historical origins of the things themselvesand that more intangible
historicity of the conceptsand categoriesby which we attempt to understandthose
things.... For betteror for worse, it is this secondpath we havechosento follow here.
(Jameson,1983, p. 9)
Jamesonposits Marxism as the horizon againstwhich the shortcomingsof other

theoreticalmodelsmust be measuredand accorded'local' or 'sectoralvalidity' within
'the intellectual marketplacetoday' (Jameson,1983, p. 10). In this acknowledge-
ment, as in Jameson'swillingness to read the past through his own momentof late
monopoly capitalism, it is easy to appreciatewhy he feels it important to come to
terms with postmodernism.His analysisof postmodernculture is familiar, but - for
the purposesof this Reader- it is still worth quoting the claim that postmodernism,
as a period concept,gives explanatoryleverageupon the post-structuralisttheory
which has been a persistentantagonistfor Jamesonand post-1960sMarxism:
This is perhapsthe momentto say somethingabout contemporarytheory, which has,

amongother things, beencommittedto the mission of criticizing and discrediting this
very hermeneuticmodel of the inside and the outsideand of stigmatizingsuch models
as ideological and metaphysical.But what is today called contemporarytheory - or
better still, theoreticaldiscourse- is also, I would want to argue, itself very precisely
a postmodernistphenomenon.It would therefore be inconsistentto defend the truth
of its theoreticalinsights in a situation in which the very conceptof 'truth' itself is part
of the metaphysicalbaggagewhich poststructuralismseeksto abandon.What we can
at leastsuggestis that the poststructuralistcritique of the hermeneutic,of ... the depth
model, is useful for us as a very signifIcant symptomof the very postmodernistculture
which is our subject here. (Jameson,1991, p. 12)
From time to time, Jamesonhas relied upon RaymondWilliams (seeReading4.4),

though without much awarenessof the social and historical context which formed
Williams and gives substanceto his stressupon lived experienceand the 'structure
of feeling' in any culture. The importanceof culture as a concept in Williams -
beginningwith Culture and Society,1780-1950(1958) and leadingto his influence
upon British Cultural Studies- is enoughto justify his inclusion under the category
274 Marxism
WesternMarxism. But Terry Eagletoncatchesanotheraspectof Williams's highly

individualistic membershipof this potpourri of a tradition when he remarksthat 'if
a Marxist criticism comesabout in English society,one might risk the paradoxthat
one of its sourceswill be the fact that Williams had in his own time to reject it'
(Eagleton, 1978, p. 23). Eagleton goes on, however, to criticise Williams's
'Romanticpopulism',which idealisesthe ordinary, day-to-daydimensionof culture,
without a full understandingof the structural characterof late capitalism and of
culture as itself an ideological term. Williams's assumption,which he shareswith
E.P. Thompson,is that the culture of a rooted community is indeed its culture
(Eagleton,1978, pp. 27-35). In his Marxism a.nd Literature (1977; Reading4.4),
Williams respondsto but does not necessarilyanswerEagleton'scriticism that his
concept of culture is too unified, and lacks awarenessof the invasive power of
cultural and social institutions beyond the local and immediate. Williams
distinguisheshegemonyfrom the more formal conceptof ideology,remarkingon the
'saturationof the whole processof living' by which 'domination'and 'subordination'
(Williams's words) are enacted.But Williams interpretsthe move from more direct
forms of control to 'saturation'in a positive way:
If the pressuresand limits of a given form of dominationare to this extent experienced

and in practice internalized, the whole questionof class rule, and of oppositionto it,
is transformed.Gramsci'semphasison the creationof an alternativehegemony,by the
practical connection of many different forms of struggle, including those not easily
recognizableas and indeednot primarily 'political' and 'economic',thus leadsto a much
more profound and more active senseof revolutionary activity in a highly developed
society than the persistently abstract models derived from very different historical
situations. (Williams, 1977, pp. 110-11)
While he acceptsthat a certain idealism is built into his notion of culture, Williams
warns againstseeinghegemonyas seamlessand as total. If hegemonyis a process
ratherthan an imposedstructureand if, in order to work, it must be translatedinto
local discourses,then it cannot be total:
The reality of any hegemony,in the extendedpolitical and cultural sense,is that, while
by definition it is always dominant, it is never either total or exclusive. At any time,
forms of alternative or directly oppositional politics and culture exist as significant
elementsin the society. (Williams, 1977, p. 113)
Jamesonfinds in Williams's notions of 'dominant,residual and emergent'culture

the senseof movement necessaryto resist the temptation to assumethat post-
modernismand, with it, theoriesof textuality mark the limits of any critique, and
that analysiscan take place only inside the text or in a thoroughly textual culture.
If postmodernismis recategorisedin Williams's term asonly a 'dominant',then alter-
native cultural resourcesexist: thosewhich havenot beenwiped out by an 'affectless'
culture of simulacra, and those which are generatedby contradictionswithin the
dominant culture. Jamesonhas proposed 'cognitive mapping' in an attempt to
Introduction 275
reconnect,from within, the local with the generalor totality, but the vaguenessof
this notion and the apparentdilution of Marxist praxis into the critical reading of
a culture calls for further elaboration(Jameson,1988a).
Counter-hegemonicthinking has considerablepotential, but if it is adopted it
throws up one particular problem for Marxism: if a local focus is adopted to
demonstratethat hegemonyis not total, it is not at all clear that the micro-politics
that can be recoveredcan ever come together in a coherent manner capable of
opposing, in more general ways, the ruling class. It is odd that Quentin Skinner
entitles his perceptive overview of contemporarytheory The Return of Grand
Theory (1985), becausethe drift of developmentswithin and acrosseach of the
Sectionsin this Reader- with the implicationsbecomingmost patentin this Section
- is towardsmicro-analysisand difference.Of late, it hasbeenMichel Foucaultwho
hasoften seemedthe most likely alternativefor Marxists troubledby the subsuming
of race, gender and region within an overarchingnarrative of class conflict. But
when Foucaulthimself arrives, theoretically, at the diversity and multi-sitednessof
micro-political activity, this only serves to highlight the macro-dimensiononce
more, becauseeven a cursory surveyof post-1945history revealsthat when the big
decisionsare made,they are still made by a class-basedalliance of 'the power elite'
at the highest levels of the military-industrial-governmentalcomplex. At which
recognition Foucault has to resort, somewhathopefully, to 'specific intellectuals'
(Foucault,1980, pp. 126-33)to provide the junctureswhich link the particular to
the general.
The text aroundwhich much Marxist uneasehas concentratedis ErnestoLaclau
and Chantal Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a radical
democratic politics (1985; see Reading 4.7). Together with the British journal
Marxism Today and its 'New Times' project of 1988-9, Laclau and Mouffe have
brought Gramsci and the conceptof hegemonyto the centre of revisionist left-of-
centrethinking in an attemptto explain the strengthof capitalism'shold over minds
and hearts as well as bodies, but also to carve out an area for resistance.Tony
Bennett is just one of those who refer to 'the Gramscian moment in cultural
studies',critically from his perspective(Bennett, 1992, p. 29). In a later text from
the one included here, New Reflectionson the Revolutionsof Our Time (1990),
Laclau states his position: 'I haven't rejected Marxism. Somethingdifferent has
occurred.It is Marxism that has broken up and I believe I am holding on to its best
fragments' (Laclau, 1990). Although a top-down, structural (rather than
structuralist)explanationof class power has plenty of mileage in it, emancipation
through working-class solidarity is difficult to defend through examples and,
theoretically, is liable to relegatein importanceor get theoretically mixed up with
other forms of resistanceandliberation (throughthe identity politics of race,gender,
ecology, etc.). In the absenceof the priority of class, according to Laclau and
Mouffe, what is neededis an explanationof how a dominant culture is contested
through often contingent relations between groups. Protest and the articulation
of grievances are not funnelled through class but become part of 'chains of
equivalence' .
276 Marxism
Although Laclau and Mouffe's analysis is entirely relevant to the cultural

dimensionwhich figures so strongly in WesternMarxism - particularly in its later
and, some would argue, virtually non-Marxist phase- its importancelies in the
explicit focus upon the political sphere,ratherthan that of culture. Thus, in Thomas
Docherty's Postmodernism:A reader (1993), Laclau's 'Politics and the limits of
modernity' (1988) is included as an instance of 'post-Marxism or postmodern
Marxism' (Docherty, 1993,p. 319); and, as far as the latter categorygoes,thereare
a number of familiar aspects: first, heterogeneity,difference and - in its least
stringentformulation - pluralism as descriptionsof a politics that takesfull account
of the variety of new social movements;second,a scepticismaboutthe emancipatory,
dialectical metanarrative;third (a closely related point), a scepticism about the
Enlightenment search for a totality and for Truth which finds expression in
difference politics but also in a revival of American Pragmatism which has a
particular relevancein the sphereof local or regional political action; and, fourth,
an acceptancethat 'democracy'is the contestedconcept(after 1989 this is so in the
ex-communiststatesas well) and is, simultaneously,a call to liberatory action and
the meansof containing and diffusing democraticclaims. Theseargumentsseek to
recover a radical politics after the defeatsof socialism and communismacrossthe
world, evendrawing strengthfrom the subsequentdetaileddiscreditingof less-than-
glorious modelsof what socialism and communismcan be. However, this unhappy
history may require a still more dramatic rethink; at least, this is Richard Rorty's
view in his attempt to put 'Western leftist intellectuals' on the spot in these
deliberatelyirritating observations(from 'The intellectualsat the end of socialism'
[1992]):
Visitors from postrevolutionaryEasternand Central Europe are going to stare at us

incredulouslyif we continueto use the word socialism when we describeour political
goals. For thesepeople take it as self-evidentthat nobody could, any longer, wish to
nationalizethe meansof production or abolish private property. To them, socialism
meansthe absenceof a market economy.They are not preparedto fudge, as we have
for so long, the difference betweensocialism and social democracy.... We ['Western
leftist intellectuals']are not only going to haveto stop using the term capitalist economy
as though we knew what a functioning non-capitalisteconomy looked like, we are
going to haveto stop using the term bourgeoisculture as thoughwe knew what a viable
non-bourgeoisculture in an industrializedsocietywould look like. (Rorty, 1992, pp. 1,
2)
By way of contrastto much of the above - but from a position within Western
Marxism, and specifically within the Italian Marxism which includes Gramsci -
SebastianoTimpanaro (see Reading 4.6) steadfastlyadopts a long and, in some
respects,fundamentalpoint of view. In On Materialism (1970), Timpanaroreturns
to what initially brought Marx and Engels into an agreementwith Darwin: the
materialism of nature within a historical perspective.While there is a superficial
similarity with Althusser,in so far as both arguefor the scientific statusof Marxism,
Timpanarogoes back to Engels'smaterialist scienceof socialism and the study of
Introduction 277
the capitalism of his own time. This is a project continued, in Late Capitalism
(1975), by Ernst Mandel who, in his long-wavetheory of economicchange,shares
somethingof Timpanaro'sappreciationof the time-scaleof historical change.Thus,
Timpanaro warns against the historicism which takes from Gramsci only what
Gramsci'sconstrainedcircumstancesin prison permitted him: a limited, localised
understandingof praxis: 'the appealto praxis often represents,within the Marxist
camp, a way of not talking about or of talking very little about materialism'
(Timpanaro, 1980, p.56). And, in a polemic against 'structuralism and its
successors',Timpanaroinveighs againstAlthusser'sconceptionof Marx: 'But can
one possibly see [Marx] as the precursor of a theory like structuralism, which
emerged from the anti-materialist (and, more or less indirectly, anti-Marxist)
reaction of the late nineteenth century and representsa renewal of the schism
between history and science?' (Timpanaro, 1980, p. 196). Raymond Williams
invokes Timpanarowhen he defendshis own stresson 'experience'and comments
upon the linguistic turn in which 'the epistemological wholly absorbs the
ontological':
To formalist friends, of whom I have many, who affect to doubt the very possibility
of an 'external' referent, it is necessaryto recall an absolutely founding presumption
of materialism:namelythat the natural world exists whetheranyonesignifies it or not.
The fact is that we have beenpassingthrough a phaseof rabid idealism on the left in
the sixties and seventies.It is a positive relief to read Timpanaro'sreminder that
physicalorganismsexist in an undeniablymaterial world whetheror not they haveeven
been signified. (Williams, 1981, p. 167)
Perry Anderson,who providesthe parametersfor any accountof WesternMarxism,

is anothercontemporaryMarxist who seemsto find in Timpanaro an overlooked
dimensionof the material. He seesin this 'privative' understandingof humannature
the basis for the ethics which is largely missing in Marxism and which createsa
commonality of analysis between the two poles of nature and history, between
Marxism and (Anderson'stwo examples)feminism and ecological movements,the
latter spurred on by the prospectsof global - or at least, very far-reaching -
catastrophes.
4.1 D Theses on the
Philosophy of History
Walter Benjamin
I
The story is told of an automatonconstructedin such a way that it could playa
winning game of chess,answeringeach move of an opponentwith a countermove.
A puppetin Turkish attire and with a hookah in its mouth sat before a chessboard
placedon a large table. A systemof mirrors createdthe illusion that this table was
transparentfrom all sides. Actually, a little hunchbackwho was an expert chess
player sat inside and guidedthe puppet'shand by meansof strings. One can imagine
a philosophicalcounterpartto this device. The puppetcalled 'historical materialism'
is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services
of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.
II
'One of the most remarkablecharacteristicsof human nature', writes Lotze, 'is,

alongsideso much selfishnessin specific instances,the freedomfrom envy which the
presentdisplaystoward the future.' Reflection showsus that our imageof happiness
is thoroughly colored by the time to which the course of our own existencehas
assignedus. The kind of happinessthat could arouseenvy in us exists only in the
air we have breathed,among people we could have talked to, women who could
have given themselvesto us. In other words, our image of happinessis indissolubly
bound up with the image of redemption.The sameappliesto our view of the past,
which is the concernof history. The past carrieswith it a temporalindex by which
it is referred to redemption.There is a secretagreementbetweenpast generations
and the presentone. Our coming was expectedon earth. Like every generationthat
From Benjamin, W., Illuminations, trans. H. Zohn, ed. H. Arendt, Fontana, London, 1973,
pp.255-66.
278
Theseson the Philosophyof History 279
precededus, we have been endowedwith a weak Messianic power, a power to

which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historical
materialistsare aware of that.
III
A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing betweenmajor and minor

ones acts in accordancewith the following truth: nothing that has ever happened
shouldbe regardedas lost for history. To be sure,only a redeemedmankindreceives
the fullness of its past - which is to say, only for a redeemedmankind has its past
becomecitable in all its moments.Each moment it has lived becomesa citation a
l'ordre du jour - and that day is JudgmentDay.
IV
Seek for food and clothing first, then

the Kingdom of God shall be added unto you.
(HEGEL, 1807)
The classstruggle, which is always presentto a historian influenced by Marx, is a

fight for the crude and materialthings without which no refined and spiritual things
could exist. Nevertheless,it is not in the form of the spoils which fall to the victor
that the latter maketheir presencefelt in the classstruggle.They manifestthemselves
in this struggle as courage,humor, cunning, and fortitude. They have retroactive
force and will constantly call in question every victory, past and present,of the
rulers. As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a secretheliotropism the past
strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history. A historical
materialist must be aware of this most inconspicuousof all transformations.
The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seizedonly as an image which
flashesup at the instantwhen it can be recognizedand is neverseenagain.'The truth
will not run away from us': in the historical outlook of historicism thesewords of
Gottfried Keller mark the exact point where historical materialism cuts through
historicism. For every image of the past that is not recognizedby the presentas one
of its own concernsthreatensto disappearirretrievably. (The good tidings which the
historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very
moment he openshis mouth.)
280 Walter Benjamin
VI
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognizeit 'the way it really
was' (Ranke). It meansto seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of
danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which
unexpectedlyappearsto man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The
danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers.The samethreat
hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes.In every era the
attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is
about to overpowerit. The Messiah comesnot only as the redeemer,he comesas
the subduerof Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark
of hope in the past who is firmly convincedthat eventhe deadwill not be safe from
the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceasedto be victorious.
VII
Considerthe darknessand the great cold

In this vale which resoundswith misery.
(BRECHT, The ThreepennyOpera)
To historianswho wish to relive an era, Fustel de Coulangesrecommendsthat they

blot out everythingthey know about the later courseof history. There is no better
way of characterizingthe methodwith which historical materialismhas broken. It
is a processof empathywhose origin is the indolenceof the heart, acedia, which
despairsof graspingand holding the genuinehistorical image as it flares up briefly.
Among medievaltheologiansit was regardedas the root causeof sadness.Flaubert,
who was familiar with it, wrote: 'Feu de gensdevinerontcombienit a fallu etre triste
pour ressusciterCarthage.'('Few will be able to guesshow sadone had to be in order
to resuscitateCarthage.')The nature of this sadnessstandsout more clearly if one
asks with whom the adherentsof historicism actually empathize. The answer is
inevitable: with the victor. And all rulers are the heirs of those who conquered
before them. Hence, empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers.
Historical materialists know what that means. Whoever has emergedvictorious
participatesto this day in the triumphal processionin which the presentrulers step
over thosewho are lying prostrate.According to traditional practice,the spoils are
carried along in the procession.They are called cultural treasures,and a historical
materialistviews them with cautiousdetachment.For without exceptionthe cultural
treasureshe surveyshave an origin which he cannot contemplatewithout horror.
They owe their existencenot only to the efforts of the great minds and talentswho
have createdthem, but also to the anonymoustoil of their contemporaries.There
is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of
barbarism.And just as such a documentis not free of barbarism,barbarismtaints
also the mannerin which it was transmittedfrom one owner to anotherA historical
Theseson the Philosophy of History 281
materialist thereforedissociateshimself from it as far as possible. He regardsit as

his task to brush history againstthe grain.
VIII
The tradition of the oppressedteachesus that the 'stateof emergency'in which we

live is not the exceptionbut the rule. We must attain to a conceptionof history that
is in keepingwith this insight. Thenwe shall clearly realizethat it is our task to bring
about a real state of emergency,and this will improve our position in the struggle
against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of
progressits opponentstreat it as a historical norm. The current amazementthat the
things we are experiencing are 'still' possible in the twentieth century is not
philosophical.This amazementis not the beginningof knowledge- unlessit is the
knowledgethat the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.
IX
Mein Flugel ist zum Schwungbereit,

ich kehrte gem zuruck,
denn blieb ich auch lebendigeZeit,
ich hatte wenig Gluck.
(My wing is ready for flight,
r would like to turn back.
If r stayedtimelesstime,
r would have little luck.)
(GERHARD SCHOLEM, 'Gruss vom Angelus')
A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is

about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are
staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.This is how one picturesthe angel
of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceivea chain of events,
he seesone single catastrophewhich keepspiling wreckageupon wreckageand hurls
it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make
whole what has been smashed.But a storm is blowing from Paradise;it has got
caughtin his wings with such violencethat the angelcan no longer closethem. This
storm irresistibly propelshim into the future to which his back is turned, while the
pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
The themes which monastic discipline assigned to friars for meditation were
282 Walter Benjamin
designedto turn them away from the world and its affairs. The thoughtswhich we
are developinghere originate from similar considerations.At a moment when the
politicians in whom the opponentsof Fascismhad placedtheir hopesare prostrate
and confirm their defeat by betraying their own cause, these observationsare
intendedto disentanglethe political worldlings from the snaresin which the traitors
have entrapped them. Our consideration proceeds from the insight that the
politicians' stubborn faith in progress,their confidencein their 'mass basis', and,
finally, their servile integration in an uncontrollable apparatushave been three
aspectsof the samething. It seeksto conveyan idea of the high price our accustomed
thinking will haveto pay for a conceptionof history that avoidsany complicity with
the thinking to which thesepoliticians continue to adhere.
XI
The conformism which has been part and parcel of Social Democracyfrom the
beginningattachesnot only to its political tactics but to its economicviews as well.
It is one reasonfor its later breakdown.Nothing hascorruptedthe Germanworking
class so much as the notion that it was moving with the current. It regarded
technologicaldevelopmentsas the fall of the streamwith which it thought it was
moving. From thereit was but a step to the illusion that the factory work which was
supposedto tend toward technologicalprogressconstituteda political achievement.
The old Protestantethics of work was resurrectedamong German workers in
secularized form. The Gotha Program1 already bears traces of this confusion,
defining labor as 'the source of all wealth and all culture'. Smelling a rat, Marx
counteredthat 'the man who possesses no otherpropertythan his labor-power'must
of necessity become 'the slave of other men who have made themselvesthe
owners... .' However, the confusion spread, and soon thereafterJosef Dietzgen
proclaimed:'The savior of moderntimes is called work. The ... improvement... of
labor constitutesthe wealth which is now able to accomplishwhat no redeemerhas
ever been able to do.' This vulgar-Marxist conception of the nature of labor
bypassesthe questionof how its productsmight benefit the workers while still not
being at their disposal.It recognizesonly the progressin the masteryof nature,not
the retrogressionof society; it already displays the technocratic features later
encounteredin Fascism. Among these is a conception of nature which differs
ominouslyfrom the one in the Socialistutopiasbeforethe 1848 revolution. The new
conception of labor amounts to the exploitation of nature, which with naive
complacencyis contrastedwith the exploitation of the proletariat. Comparedwith
this positivistic conception,Fourier'sfantasies,which have so often beenridiculed,
prove to be surprisingly sound. According to Fourier, as a result of efficient
cooperativelabor, four moons would illuminate the earthly night, the ice would
recedefrom the poles, sea water would no longer taste salty, and beastsof prey
would do man's bidding. All this illustrates a kind of labor which, far from
exploiting nature,is capableof delivering her of the creationswhich lie dormantin
Theseson the Philosophy of History 283
her womb as potentials. Nature, which, as Dietzgen puts it, 'exists gratis', IS a
complementto the corruptedconceptionof labor.
XII
We need history, but not the way a spoiled loafer

in the gardenof knowledge needsit.
(NIETZSCHE, Of the Use and Abuseof History)
Not man or men but the struggling, oppressedclass itself is the depository of
historical knowledge. In Marx it appearsas the last enslavedclass, as the avenger
that completesthe task of liberation in the nameof generationsof the downtrodden.
This conviction, which had a brief resurgencein the Spartacistgroup,2 has always
been objectionable to Social Democrats. Within three decadesthey managed
virtually to erasethe name of B1anqui, though it had been the rallying sound that
had reverberatedthrough the precedingcentury. Social Democracythought 6.t to
assignto the working classthe role of the redeemerof future generations,in this way
cutting the sinews of its greateststrength. This training made the working class
forget both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifIce, for both are nourishedby the image
of enslavedancestorsrather than that of liberated grandchildren.
XIII
Every day our causebecomesclearer and people get smarter.

(WILHELM DIETZGEN, Die Religion der Sozialdemokratie)
Social Democratic theory, and even more its practice, have been formed by a
conceptionof progresswhich did not adhereto reality but made dogmaticclaims.
Progressas pictured in the minds of Social Democratswas, fIrst of all, the progress
of mankind itself (and not just advancesin men'sability and knowledge).Secondly,
it was somethingboundless,in keepingwith the infInite perfectibility of mankind.
Thirdly, progresswas regardedas irresistible,somethingthat automaticallypursued
a straight or spiral course. Each of these predicatesis controversial and open to
criticism. However,when the chips are down, criticism mustpenetratebeyondthese
predicatesand focus on somethingthat they have in common. The conceptof the
historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from the concept of its
progressionthrough a homogeneous,empty time. A critique of the conceptof such
a progressionmust be the basis of any criticism of the conceptof progressitself.
284 Walter Benjamin
XIV
Origin is the goal.

(KARL KRAUS, Worte in Versen, vol. I)
History is the subjectof a structurewhosesite is not homogeneous,empty time, but

time filled by the presenceof the now Uetztzeitl.3 Thus, to Robespierreancient
Rome was a past chargedwith the time of the now which he blasted out of the
continuumof history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome reincarnate.It
evoked ancient Rome the way fashion evokescostumesof the past. Fashionhas a
flair for the topical, no matterwhere it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tiger's
leap into the past. This jump, however,takesplacein an arenawherethe ruling class
gives the commands.The sameleap in the open air of history is the dialectical one,
which is how Marx understoodthe revolution.
XV
The awarenessthat they are about to make the continuum of history explode is
characteristicof the revolutionaryclassesat the moment of their action. The great
revolution introduced a new calendar. The initial day of a calendar serves as a
historical time-lapsecamera.And, basically, it is the sameday that keepsrecurring
in the guise of holidays, which are days of remembrance.Thus the calendarsdo not
measuretime as clocks do; they are monumentsof a historical consciousnessof
which not the slightesttrace has beenapparentin Europein the pasthundredyears.
In the July revolution an incident occurred which showed this consciousnessstill
alive. On the first evening of fighting it turned out that the clocks in towers were
being fired on simultaneouslyand independentlyfrom several places in Paris. An
eye-witness,who may have owed his insight to the rhyme, wrote as follows:
Qui Ie croirait! on dit, qu'irrites contre l'heure

De nouveauxJosuesau pied de chaquetour,
Tiraient sur les cadranspour arreter Ie jour.
(Who would have believed it! we are told that new Joshuas
at the foot of every tower, as though irritated with
time itself, fired at the dials in order to stop the day.)
XVI
A historical materialist cannot do without the notion of a presentwhich is not a

transition, but in which time standsstill and has come to a stop. For this notion
defines the present in which he himself is writing history. Historicism gives the
'eternal'image of the past; historical materialismsuppliesa unique experiencewith
Theseson the Philosophyof History 285
the past. The historical materialist leaves it to others to be drained by the whore
called 'Once upon a time' in historicism's bordello. He remains in control of his
powers, man enough to blast open the continuum of history.
XVII
Historicism rightly culminates in universal history. Materialistic historiography

differs from it as to methodmore clearly than from any other kind. Universalhistory
has no theoreticalarmature.Its methodis additive; it mustersa massof data to fill
the homogeneous,empty time. Materialistic historiography,on the other hand, is
basedon a constructiveprinciple. Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts,
but their arrestas well. Where thinking suddenlystopsin a configurationpregnant
with tensions,it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a
monad. A historical materialist approachesa historical subject only where he
encountersit as a monad. In this structure he recognizesthe sign of a Messianic
cessationof happening,or, put differently, a revolutionary chancein the fight for
the oppressedpast. He takes cognizanceof it in order to blast a specific era out of
the homogeneouscourse of history - blasting a specific life out of the era or a
specificwork out of the lifework. As a result of this methodthe lifework is preserved
in this work and at the sametime canceled;4in the lifework, the era; and in the era,
the entire course of history. The nourishing fruit of the historically understood
contains time as a precious but tastelessseed.
XVIII
'In relation to the history of organic life on earth,' writes a modern biologist, 'the
paltry fifty millennia of homo sapiensconstitutesomethinglike two secondsat the
close of a twenty-four-hour day. On this scale, the history of civilized mankind
would fill one-fifth of the last secondof the last hour.' The present,which, as a
model of Messianictime, comprisesthe entire history of mankind in an enormous
abridgment,coincidesexactly with the staturewhich the history of mankind has in
the universe.
Historicism contentsitself with establishinga causal connection betweenvarious

momentsin history. But no fact that is a causeis for that very reasonhistorical. It
becamehistorical posthumously,as it were, through eventsthat may be separated
from it by thousandsof years. A historian who takes this as his point of departure
stopstelling the sequenceof eventslike the beadsof a rosary. Instead,he graspsthe
constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one. Thus he
286 Walter Benjamin
establishesa conceptionof the presentas the 'time of the now' which is shot through
with chips of Messianic time.
The soothsayerswho found out from time what it had in store certainly did not
experiencetime as either homogeneousor empty. Anyone who keepsthis in mind
will perhapsget an idea of how past times were experiencedin remembrance-
namely, in just the same way. We know that the Jews were prohibited from
investigatingthe future. The Torah and the prayersinstruct them in remembrance,
however.This strippedthe future of its magic, to which all thosesuccumbwho turn
to the soothsayersfor enlightenment.This does not imply, however, that for the
Jewsthe future turnedinto homogeneous, empty time. For every secondof time was
the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.
Editor's notes
1. The Gotha Congressof 1875 united the two German Socialist parties, one led by
FerdinandLassalle, the other by Karl Marx and Wilhelm Liebknecht. The program,
drafted by Liebknecht and Lassalle,was severelyattackedby Marx in London. Seehis
'Critique of the Gotha Program'.
2. Leftist group, founded by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg at the beginning of
World War I in opposition to the pro-war policies of the GermanSocialist Party, later
absorbedby the CommunistParty.
3. Benjamin says 'Jetztzeit'and indicatesby the quotation marks that he does not simply
meanan equivalentto Gegenwart,that is, present.He is clearly thinking of the mystical
nunc stans.
4. The Hegelianterm aufhebenin its threefold meaning:to preserve,to elevate,to cancel.
4.2 D Cultural Criticism
and Society
Theodor W. Adorno
[.•• J
The complicity of cultural criticism with culture lies not in the merementality of the
critic. Far more, it is dictatedby his relation to that with which he deals. By making
culture his object, he objectifIes it once more. Its very meaning, however, is the
suspensionof objectifIcation. Once culture itself has been debasedto 'cultural
goods', with its hideous philosophical rationalization, 'cultural values', it has
already defamed its raison d'etre. The distillation of such 'values' - the echo of
commerciallanguageis by no meansaccidental- placesculture at the will of the
market. Even the enthusiasmfor foreign cultures includes the excitementover the
rarity in which money may be invested. If cultural criticism, even at its best with
Valery, sides with conservativism,it is becauseof its unconsciousadherenceto a
notion of culture which, during the era of late capitalism,aims at a form of property
which is stable and independentof stock-marketfluctuations. This idea of culture
assertsits distancefrom the systemin order, as it were, to offer universal security
in the middle of a universaldynamic. The model of the cultural critic is no less the
appraising collector than the art critic. In general, cultural criticism recalls the
gestureof bargaining, of the expert questioningthe authenticity of a painting or
classifying it amongthe Master'slesserworks. One devaluatesin order to get more.
The cultural critic evaluatesand henceis inevitably involved in a spherestainedwith
'cultural values', even when he rants against the mortgaging of culture. His
contemplative stance towards culture necessarilyentails scrutinizing, surveying,
balancing,selecting: this piece suits him, that he rejects. Yet his very sovereignty,
the claim to a more profound knowledgeof the object, the separationof the idea
from its object through the independenceof the critical judgment, threatensto
succumbto the thinglike form of the object when cultural criticism appealsto a
From Adorno, T. W. Prisms, trans. S. and S. Weber, Neville Spearman,London, 1967, pp. 22-34.
287
288 Theodor W. Adorno
collection of ideas on display, as it were, and fetishizesisolated categoriessuch as

mind, life and the individual.
But the greatestfetish of cultural criticism is the notion of culture as such. For no
authenticwork of art and no true philosophy,accordingto their very meaning,has
ever exhausteditself in itself alone, in its being-in-itself. They have always stood in
relation to the actual life-process of society from which they distinguished
themselves.Their very rejection of the guilt of a life which blindly and callously
reproducesitself, their insistenceon independenceand autonomy, on separation
from the prevailing realm of purposes,implies, at least as an unconsciouselement,
the promise of a condition in which freedom were realized. This remains an
equivocalpromiseof culture as long as its existencedependson a bewitchedreality
and, ultimately, on control over the work of others. That Europeanculture in all
its breadth - that which reachedthe consumerand which today is prescribedfor
whole populations by managers and psychotechnicians- degeneratedto mere
ideology resulted from a changein its function with regard to material praxis: its
renunciationof interference.Far from being culture's 'sin', the changewas forced
upon culture by history. For it is only in the processof withdrawing into itself, only
indirectly that is, that bourgeoisculture conceivesof a purity from the corrupting
traces of a totalitarian disorder which embracesall areasof existence.Only in so
far as it withdraws from a praxis which has degeneratedinto its opposite,from the
ever-changingproduction of what is always the same, from the service of the
customerwho himself servesthe manipulator- only in so far as it withdraws from
Man, can culture be faithful to man. But such concentrationon substancewhich is
absolutelyone'sown, the greatestexampleof which is to be found in the poetry and
theoretical writings of Paul Valery, contributes at the same time to the
impoverishmentof that substance.Once the mind is no longer directed at reality,
its meaning is changeddespite the strictest preservationof meaning. Through its
resignationbeforethe facts of life and, evenmore, through its isolation as one 'field'
among others, the mind aids the existing order and takes its place within it. The
emasculationof culture hasangeredphilosopherssincethe time of Rousseauand the
'ink-splatteringage' of Schiller's Robbers,to Nietzscheand, finally, to the preachers
of commitment for its own sake. This is the result of culture's becoming self-
consciously cultural, which in turn places culture in vigorous and consistent
opposition to the growing barbarismof economichegemony.What appearsto be
the declineof culture is its coming to pure self-consciousness. Only when neutralized
and reifled does Culture allow itself to be idolized. Fetishism gravitatestowards
mythology. In general, cultural critics becomeintoxicated with idols drawn from
antiquity to the dubious, long-evaporatedwarmth of the liberalist era, which
recalledthe origins of culture in its decline. Cultural criticism rejectsthe progressive
integration of all aspects of consciousnesswithin the apparatus of material
production. But becauseit fails to see through the apparatus,it turns towards the
past,lured by the promiseof immediacy. This is necessitatedby its own momentum
and not merely by the influence of an order which seesitself obliged to drown out
its progressin dehumanizationwith cries againstdehumanizationand progress.The
Cultural Criticism and Society 289
isolation of the mind from material production heightensits esteembut also makes
it a scapegoatin the generalconsciousness for that which is perpetratedin practice.
Enlightenment as such - not as an instrument of actual domination - is held
responsible.Hence,the irrationalismof cultural criticism. Onceit has wrenchedthe
mind out of its dialectic with the materialconditionsof life, it seizesit unequivocally
and straightforwardlyas the principle of fatality, thus undercuttingthe mind's own
resistance.The cultural critic is barred from the insight that the reification of life
resultsnot from too much enlightenmentbut from too little, and that the mutilation
of man which is the result of the presentparticularisticrationality is the stigma of
the total irrationality. The abolition of this irrationality, which would coincidewith
the abolition of the divorce betweenmental and physicalwork, appearsas chaosto
the blindnessof cultural criticism: whoever glorifies order and form as such must
seein the petrified divorce an archetypeof the Eternal. That the fatal fragmentation
of society might someday end is, for the cultural critic, a fatal destiny. He would
rather that everythingend than for mankind to put an end to reification. This fear
harmonizeswith the interestsof those interestedin the perpetuationof material
denial. Whenevercultural criticism complainsof 'materialism',it furthers the belief
that the sin lies in man'sdesirefor consumergoods, and not in the organizationof
the whole which withholds thesegoods from man: for the cultural critic, the sin is
satiety, not hunger. Were mankind to possessthe wealth of goods, it would shake
off the chains of that civilized barbarism which cultural critics ascribe to the
advancedstateof the human spirit rather than to the retardedstateof society. The
'eternal values' of which cultural criticism is so fond reflect the perennial
catastrophe.The cultural critic thrives on the mythical obduracyof culture.
Becausethe existenceof cultural criticism, no matter what its content, depends
on the economicsystem,it is involved in the fate of the system.The more completely
the life-process,including leisure, is dominatedby modern social orders - thosein
the East, aboveall - the more all spiritual phenomenabear the mark of the order.
Either they may contribute directly to the perpetuationof the systemas entertain-
ment or edification, and are enjoyed as exponentsof the systemprecisely because
of their socially preformed character.Familiar, stampedand Approved by Good
5
Housekeeping as it were, they insinuatethemselvesinto a regressiveconsciousness,
present themselves as 'natural', and permit identification with powers whose
preponderanceleaves no alternative but that of false love. Or, by being different,
they become rarities and once again marketable. Throughout the liberalist era,
culture fell within the sphereof circulation. Hence, the gradual withering away of
this sphere strikes culture to the quick. With the elimination of trade and its
irrational loopholes by the calculated distributive apparatus of industry, the
commercialization of culture culminates in absurdity. Completely subdued,
administered,thoroughly 'cultivated'in a sense,it dies out. Spengler'sdenunciation
- that mind and money go together- provescorrect. But becauseof his sympathy
with direct rule, he advocateda structureof existencedivested of all economicas
well as spiritual mediations. He maliciously threw the mind together with an
economictype which was in fact obsolete.What Spenglerfailed to understandwas
that no matter to what extent the mind is a product of that type, it implies at the
sametime the objective possibility of overcomingit. Just as culture sprangup in the
marketplace,in the traffic of trade,in communicationand negotiation,as something
distinct from the immediatestruggle for individual self-preservation,just as it was
closely tied to trade in the era of maturecapitalism, just as its representativeswere
counted among the class of 'third persons'who supportedthemselvesin life as
middlemen,so culture, considered'socially necessary'accordingto classicalrules,
in the senseof reproducingitself economically,is in the end reducedto that as which
it began,to mere communication.Its alienation from human affairs terminatesin
its absolutedocility before a humanity which has beenenchantedand transformed
into clientele by the suppliers. In the name of the consumer, the manipulators
suppresseverything in culture which enablesit to go beyond the total immanence
in the existing society and allow only that to remain which serves society's
unequivocalpurpose.Hence,'consumerculture'can boastof being not a luxury but
rather the simple extension of production. Political slogans, designed for mass
manipulation, unanimously stigmatize, as 'luxury', 'snobbism'. and 'highbrow',
everything cultural which displeasesthe commissars.Only when the established
order has becomethe measureof all things doesits mere reproductionin the realm
of consciousnessbecometruth. Cultural criticism points to this and rails against
'super6.ciality'and 'loss of substance'.But by limiting its attentionthe entanglement
of culture in commerce,such criticism itself becomessuper6.cial. It follows the
patternof reactionarysocial critics who pit 'productive'against'predatory'capital.
In fact, all culture sharesthe guilt of society. It ekesout its existenceonly by virtue
of injustice alreadyperpetratedin the sphereof productionmuch as doescommerce
(cf. Dialektik der Aufklarung). Consequently,cultural criticism shifts the guilt: such
criticism is ideology as long as it remains mere criticism of ideology. Totalitarian
regimesof both kinds, seekingto protect the status quo from even the last traces
of insubordination which they ascribe to culture even at its most servile, can
conclusively convict culture and its introspection of servility. They suppressthe
mind, in itself alreadygrown intolerable, and so feel themselvesto be puri6.ersand
revolutionaries.The ideological function of cultural criticism bridles its very truth
which lies in its opposition to ideology. The struggle against deceit works to the
advantageof naked terror. 'When I hear the word "culture", I reach for my gun,'
said the spokesmanof Hitler's Imperial Chamberof Culture.
Cultural criticism is, however,only able to reproachculture so penetratinglyfor
prostitutingitself, for violating in its declinethe pure autonomyof the mind, because
culture originatesin the radical separationof mental and physical work. It is from
this separation- the original sin 5 as it were - that culture draws its strength.When
culture simply denies the separationand feigns harmoniousunion, it falls back
behind its own notion. Only the mind which, in the delusion of being absolute,
removes itself entirely from the merely existent, truly de6.nesthe existent in its
negativity. As long as even the least part of the mind remains engagedin the
reproductionof life, it is its sworn bondsman.The anti-philistinism of Athens was
both the most arrogantcontemptof the man who need not soil his handsfor the
man from whose work he lives, and the preservationof an image of existence
beyond the constraint which underlies all work. In projecting its own uneasy
conscienceon to its victims as their 'baseness',such an attitude also accusesthat
which they endure:the subjugationof men to the prevailingform in which their lives
are reproduced.All 'pure culture' has always been a source of discomfort to the
spokesmenof power. Plato and Aristotle knew why they would not permit the
notion to arise. Instead, in questions concerning the evaluation of art, they
advocateda pragmatismwhich contrastscuriously with the pathosof the two great
metaphysicians.Modern bourgeois cultural criticism has, of course, been too
prudent to follow them openly in this respect. But such criticism secretly bnds a
source of comfort in the divorce between 'high' and 'popular' culture, art and
entertainment,knowledgeand noncommittalWeltanschauung.Its anti-philistinism
exceedsthat of the Athenian upper class to the extent that the proletariat is more
dangerousthan the slaves. The modern notion of a pure, autonomousculture
indicatesthat the antagonismhas becomeirreconcilable. This is the result both of
an uncompromisingopposition to being-for-somethingelse, and of an ideology
which in its hybris enthronesitself as being-in-itself.
Cultural criticism sharesthe blindnessof its object. It is incapableof allowing the
recognitionof its frailty to arise, a frailty set in the division of mental and physical
work. No society which contradictsits very notion - that of mankind - can have
full consciousnessof itself. A display of subjective ideology is not required to
obstruct this consciousness,although in times of historical upheaval it tends to
contributeto the objective blindness.Rather,the fact that every form of repression,
dependingon the level of technology,hasbeennecessaryfor the survival of society,
and that society as it is, despiteall absurdity,does indeed reproduceits life under
the existing conditions,objectively producesthe semblanceof society'slegitimation.
As the epitomeof the self-consciousness of an antagonisticsociety, culture can no
more divest itself of this semblancethan can cultural criticism, which measures
culture againstculture's own ideal. The semblancehas becometotal in a phasein
which irrationality and objective falsity hide behind rationality and objective
necessity. Nevertheless,by virtue of their real force, the antagonismsreassert
themselvesin the realm of consciousness. Justbecauseculture affirms the validity of
the principle of harmony within an antagonisticsociety, albeit in order to glorify
that society,it cannotavoid confrontingsocietywith its own notion of harmonyand
thereby stumbling on discord. The ideology which affirms life is forced into
opposition to life by the immanentdrive of the ideal. The mind which seesthat
reality doesnot resembleit in every respectbut is insteadsubjectto an unconscious
and fatal dynamic,is impelled evenagainstits will beyondapologetics.The fact that
theory becomesreal force when it moves men is founded in the objectivity of the
mind itself which, through the fulblment of its ideological function, must lose faith
in ideology. Promptedby the incompatibility of ideology and existence,the mind,
in displaying its blindness, also displays its effort to free itself of ideology.
Disenchanted,the mind perceivesnaked existencein its nakednessand delivers it
up to criticism. The mind either damnsthe material base, in accordancewith the
ever-questionablecriterion of its 'pure principle', or it becomesaware of its own

questionableposition, by virtue of its incompatibility with the base. As a result of
the social dynamic, culture becomescultural criticism, which preservesthe notion
of culture while demolishing its presentmanifestationsas mere commoditiesand
meansof brutalization.Such critical consciousness remainssubservientto culture in
so far as its concernwith culture distractsfrom the true horrors. From this arises
the ambivalent attitude of social theory towards cultural criticism. The procedure
of cultural criticism is itself the object of permanentcriticism, both in its general
presuppositions- its immanence in the existing society - and in its concrete
judgments. For the subservienceof cultural criticism is revealed in its specifIc
content, and only in this may it be grasped conclusively. At the same time, a
dialectical theory which does not wish to succumbto 'Economism',the sentiment
which holds that the transformationof the work is exhaustedin the increaseof
production, must absorbcultural criticism, the truth of which consistsin bringing
untruth to consciousnessof itself. A dialectical theory which is uninterestedin
culture as a mere epiphenomenonaids pseudo-culture to run rampant and
collaboratesin the reproductionof the evil. Cultural traditionalism and the terror
of the new Russiandespotsare in basic agreement.Both affirm culture as a whole,
sight-unseen,while at the sametime prescribingall forms of consciousnesswhich
are not made-to-order.They are thus no less ideological than is criticism when it
calls a disembodiedculture before its tribunal, or holds the alleged negativity of
culture responsiblefor real catastrophes.To acceptculture as a whole is to deprive
it of the ferment which is its very truth - negation. The joyous appropriationof
culture harmonizeswith a climate of military music and paintings of battle-scenes.
What distinguishesdialectical from cultural criticism is that it heightenscultural
criticism until the notion of culture is itself negated,fulfIlled and surmountedin one.
Immanentcriticism of culture, it may be argued,overlookswhat is decisive: the
role of ideology in social conflicts. To suppose,if only methodologically,anything
like an independentlogic of culture is to collaboratein the hypostasisof culture, the
ideological proton pseudos.The substanceof culture, accordingto this argument,
residesnot in culture alone but in its relation to somethingexternal,to the material
life-process.Culture, as Marx observedof juridical and political systems,cannotbe
fully 'understoodeither in terms of itself ... or in terms of the so-called universal
developmentof the mind'. To ignore this, the argument concludes, is to make
ideology the basic matter and thus to establishit fIrmly. And in fact, having taken
a dialectical turn, cultural criticism must not hypothesizethe criteria of culture.
Criticism retainsits mobility in regardto culture by recognizingthe latter'sposition
within the whole. Without such freedom, without consciousnesstranscendingthe
immanence of culture, immanent criticism itself would be inconceivable: the
spontaneousmovementof the object can be followed only by someonewho is not
entirely engulfed by it. But the traditional demandof the ideology-critiqueis itself
subject to a historical dynamic. The critique was conceivedagainst idealism, the
philosophicalform which reflects the fetishization of culture. Today, however, the
definition of consciousness in termsof being has becomea meansof dispensingwith
all consciousnesswhich does not conform to existence.The objectivity of truth,

without which the dialectic is inconceivable,is tacitly replacedby vulgar positivism
and pragmatism - ultimately, that is, by bourgeois subjectivism. During the
bourgeoisera, the prevailing theory was the ideology and the opposingpraxis was
in direct contradiction. Today, theory hardly exists any longer and the ideology
drones, as it were, from the gearsof an irresistible praxis. No notion daresto be
conceived any more which does not cheerfully include, in all camps, explicit
instructionsas to who its beneficiariesare - exactly what the polemicsonce sought
to expose.But the unideologicalthought is that which does not permit itself to be
reducedto 'operationalterms'and insteadstrivessolely to help the things themselves
to that articulationfrom which they are otherwisecut off by the prevailinglanguage.
Since the moment arrived when every advancedeconomic and political council
agreedthat what was importantwas to changethe world and that to interpretit was
allotria, it has become difficult simply to invoke the Thesesagainst Feuerbach.
Dialectics also includesthe relation betweenaction and contemplation.In an epoch
in which bourgeoissocial sciencehas, in Scheler'swords, 'plundered'the Marxian
notion of ideology and diluted it to universal relativism, the danger involved in
overlooking the function of ideologies has become less than that of judging
intellectual phenomenain a subsumptive,uninformed and administrativemanner
and assimilatingthem into the prevailing constellationsof power which the intellect
ought to expose.As with many other elementsof dialectical materialism,the notion
of ideology has changedfrom an instrumentof knowledge into its straitjacket. In
the name of the dependenceof superstructureon base, all use of ideology is
controlled insteadof criticized. No one is concernedwith the objective substanceof
an ideology as long as it is expedient.
Yet the very function of ideologiesbecomesincreasinglyabstract.The suspicion
held by earlier cultural critics is confirmed: in a world which denies the mass of
humanbeingsthe authenticexperienceof intellectual phenomenaby making genuine
educationa privilege and by shacklingconsciousness, the specificideologicalcontent
of thesephenomenais less important than the fact that there should be anything at
all to fill the vacuumof the expropriatedconsciousness and to distractfrom the open
secret. Within the context of its social effect, the particular ideological doctrine
which a film impartsto its audienceis presumablyfar lessimportantthan the interest
of the homeward-boundmovie-goerin the namesand marital affairs of the stars.
Vulgar notions such as 'amusement'and 'diversion' are more appropriate than
pretentiousexplanationswhich designateone writer as a representativeof the lower-
middle class,anotherof the upper-middle.Culture has becomeideological not only
as the quintessenceof subjectivelydevisedmanifestationsof the objective mind, but
even more as the sphereof private life. The illusory importanceand autonomyof
private life concealsthe fact that private life drags on only as an appendageof the
social process.Life transformsitself into the ideology of reification -a deathmask.
Hence,the taskof criticism must be not so much to searchfor the particularinterest-
groupsto which cultural phenomenaare to be assigned,but rather to decipherthe
general social tendencieswhich are expressedin these phenomenaand through
which the most powerful interests realize themselves. Cultural crItICISm must
becomesocial physiognomy.The more the whole divests itself of all spontaneous
elements,is socially mediatedand filtered, is 'consciousness', the more it becomes
'culture'. In addition to being the means of subsistence,the material processof
productionfinally unveils itself as that which it always was, from its origins in the
exchange-relationship as the false consciousness which the two contractingparties
haveof eachother: ideology. Inversely,however,consciousness becomesat the same
time increasingly a mere transitional moment in the functioning of the whole.
Today, ideology meanssociety as appearance.Although mediatedby the totality
behind which standsthe rule of partiality, ideology is not simply reducible to a
partial interest. It is, as it were, equally near the centre in all its pieces.
The alternatives- either calling culture as a whole into question from outside
underthe generalnotion of ideology, or confrontingit with the normswhich it itself
has crystallized - cannot be acceptedby critical theory. To insist on the choice
betweenimmanenceand transcendence is to revert to the traditional logic criticized
in Hegel's polemic againstKant. As Hegel argued,every method which setslimits
and restrictsitself to the limits of its object therebygoesbeyondthem. The position
transcending culture is in a certain sense presupposedby dialectics as the
consciousness which doessuccumbin advanceto the fetishizationof the intellectual
sphere. Dialectics means intransigencetowards all reification. The transcendent
method, which aims at totality, seemsmore radical than the immanent method,
which presupposesthe questionablewhole. The transcendentcritic assumesan as
it were Archimedeanposition aboveculture and the blindnessof society,from which
consciousness can bring the totality, no matter how massive,into flux. The attack
on the whole drawsstrengthfrom the fact that the semblanceof unity and wholeness
in the world grows with the advanceof reification; that is, with division. But the
summary dismissal of ideology which in the Soviet spherehas already become a
pretext for cynical terror, taking the form of a ban on 'objectivism', pays that
wholenesstoo high an honour. Such an attitude buys up culture en bloc from
society, regardlessof the use to which it is put. If ideology is defined as socially
necessaryappearance,then the ideology today is societyitself in so far as its integral
powerand inevitability, its overwhelmingexistence-in-itself,surrogatesthe meaning
which that existencehasexterminated.The choice of a standpointoutsidethe sway
of existing societyis as fictitious as only the constructionof abstractutopiascan be.
Hence,the transcendentcriticism of culture, much like bourgeoiscultural criticism,
seesitself obliged to fall back upon the idea of 'naturalness',which itself forms a
centralelementof bourgeoisideology. The transcendentattackon culture regularly
speaksthe languageof false escape,that of the 'natureboy'. It despisesthe mind and
its works, contendingthat they are, after all, only man-madeand serveonly to cover
up 'natural' life. Because of this alleged worthlessness,the phenomenaallow
themselvesto be manipulatedand degradedfor purposesof domination.
This explainsthe inadequacyof most socialist contributionsto cultural criticism:
they lack the experienceof that with which they deal. In wishing to wipe away the
whole as if with a sponge,they develop an affinity to barbarism.Their sympathies
are inevitably with the more primitive, more undifferentiated,no matterhow much
it may contradictthe level of intellectual productiveforces. The blanketrejectionof
culture becomes a pretext for promoting what is crudest, 'healthiest', even
repressive;above all, the perennial conflict betweenindividual and society, both
drawn in like manner,which is obstinatelyresolvedin favour of society according
to the criteria of the administratorswho have appropriatedit. From there it is only
a step to the official reinstatementof culture. Against this strugglesthe immanent
procedureas the more essentiallydialectical. It takes seriously the principle that it
is not ideology in itself which is untrue but, rather, its pretensionto correspondto
reality. Immanent criticism of intellectual and artistic phenomenaseeksto grasp,
through the analysis of their form and meaning,the contradiction betweentheir
objective idea and that pretension.It nameswhat the consistencyor inconsistency
of the work itself expressesof the structureof the existent. Such criticism doesnot
stop at a generalrecognitionof the servitudeof the objective mind, but seeksrather
to transformthis knowledgeinto a heightenedperceptionof the thing itself. Insight
into the negativity of culture is binding only when it revealsthe truth or untruth of
a perception, the consequenceor lameness of a thought, the coherence or
incoherenceof a structure, the substantialityor emptinessof a hgure of speech.
Where it hnds inadequaciesit does not ascribe them hastily to the individual and
his psychology,which are merely the fa<;:adeof the failure, but insteadseeksto derive
them from the irreconcilability of the object's moments.It pursuesthe logic of its
aporias, the insolubility of the task itself. In such antinomiescriticism perceives
those of society. A successfulwork, according to immanentcriticism, is not one
which resolves objective contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which
expressesthe idea of harmonynegativelyby embodyingthe contradictions,pure and
uncompromised,in its innermoststructure.Confrontedwith this kind of work, the
verdict 'mere ideology' loses its meaning. At the same time, however, immanent
criticism holds in evidencethe fact that the mind has always beenunder a spell. On
its own it is unable to resolvethe contradictionsunder which it labours. Even the
most radical reflection of the mind on its own failure is limited by the fact that it
remains only reflection, without altering the existenceto which its failure bears
witness. Hence immanent criticism cannot take comfort in its own idea. It can
neitherbe vain enoughto believethat it can liberate the mind directly by immersing
itself in it, nor naive enoughto believethat unflinching immersionin the object will
inevitably lead to truth by virtue of the logic of things if only the subjective
knowledgeof the false whole is kept from intruding from the outside, as it were,
in the determination of the object. The less the dialectical method can today
presupposethe Hegelianidentity of subjectand object, the more it is obliged to be
mindful of the duality of the moments.It must relate the knowledgeof society as
a totality and of the mind's involvement in it to the claim inherent in the specihc
content of the object that it be apprehendedas such. Dialectics cannot, therefore,
permit any insistenceon logical neatnessto encroachon its right to go from one
genusto another,to shed light on an object in itself hermetic by casting a glance
at society,to presentsocietywith the bill which the object doesnot redeem.Finally,
the very opposition between knowledge which penetratesfrom without and that
which bores from within becomessuspectto the dialectical method, which seesin
it a symptomof preciselythat reification which the dialecticis obliged to accuse.The
abstract categorizing and, as it were, administrative thinking of the former
correspondsin the latter to the fetishism of an object blind to its genesis,which has
becomethe prerogativeof the expert. But if stubbornly immanentcontemplation
threatensto revert to idealism, to the illusion of the self-sufficient mind in command
of both itself and of reality, transcendentcontemplationthreatensto forget the effort
of conceptualizationrequiredand contentitself insteadwith the prescribedlabel, the
petrified invective, most often 'petty-bourgeois',the ukasedispatchedfrom above.
Topological thinking, which knows the placeof every phenomenonand the essence
of none, is secretlyrelatedto the paranoicsystemof delusionswhich is cut off from
experienceof the object. With the aid of mechanicallyfunctioning categories,the
world is divided into black and white and thus madeready for the very domination
againstwhich conceptswere onceconceived.No theory, not eventhat which is true,
is safe from perversioninto delusion once it has renounceda spontaneousrelation
to the object. Dialectics must guard againstthis no less than againstenthralmentin
the cultural object. It can subscribeneither to the cult of the mind nor to hatred of
it. The dialectical critic of culture must both participate in culture and not
participate. Only then does he do justice to his object and to himself.
The traditional transcendentcritique of ideology is obsolete. In principle, the
method succumbsto the very reification which is its critical theme. By transferring
the notion of causalitydirectly from the realm of physical natureto society, it falls
back behind its own object. Nevertheless,the transcendentmethodcan still appeal
to the fact that it employs reified notions only in so far as society itself is reified.
Through the crudity and severity of the notion of causality, it claims to hold up a
mirror to society'sown crudity and severity, to its debasementof the mind. But the
sinister, integrated society of today no longer tolerates even those relatively
independent,distinct moments to which the theory of the causal dependenceof
superstructureon base once referred. In the open-air prison which the world is
becoming,it is no longer so important to know what dependson what, such is the
extent to which everythingis one. All phenomenarigidify, becomeinsignias of the
absoluterule of that which is. There are no more ideologiesin the authenticsense
of false consciousness, only advertisements for the world throughits duplicationand
the provocative lie which does not seek belief but commandssilence. Hence, the
questionof the causaldependenceof culture, a questionwhich seemsto embodythe
voice of that on which culture is thoughtonly to depend,takeson a backwoodsring.
Of course,even the immanentmethodis eventuallyovertakenby this. It is dragged
into the abyssby its object. The materialistictransparencyof culture has not made
it more honest,only more vulgar. By relinquishingits own particularity, culture has
also relinquishedthe salt of truth, which once consistedin its opposition to other
particularities. To call it to account before a responsibility which it denies is only
to confirm cultural pomposity. Neutralizedand ready-made,traditional culture has
becomeworthlesstoday. Through an irrevocableprocessits heritage,hypocritically
reclaimed by the Russians,has becomeexpendableto the highest degree, super-

fluous, trash. And the huckstersof massculture can point to it with a grin, for they
treat it as such. The more total society becomes,the greaterthe reifIcation of the
mind and the more paradoxicalits effort to escapereifIcation on its own. Even the
most extreme consciousnessof doom threatensto degenerateinto idle chatter.
Cultural criticism fInds itself faced with the fInal stageof the dialectic of culture and
barbarism.To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodeseven the
knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute
reifIcation, which presupposedintellectual progressas one of its elements,is now
preparingto absorbthe mind entirely. Critical intelligencecannot be equal to this
challengeas long as it confInes itself to self-satisfIedcontemplation.
4.3 D Ideology and
Ideological State
Apparatuses(Notes
towards an
Investigation)1
Louis Althusser
[ ...J
Infrastructure and Superstructure
On a number of occasionsZ I have insisted on the revolutionary characterof the

Marxist conceptionof the 'social whole' in so far as it is distinct from the Hegelian
'totality'. I said (and this thesis only repeats famous propositions of historical
materialism) that Marx conceivedthe structure of every society as constitutedby
'levels' or 'instances'articulated by a specific determination:the infrastructure, or
economicbase(the 'unity' of the productiveforces and the relationsof production)
and the superstructure,which itself containstwo 'levels' or 'instances':the politico-
legal (law and the State) and ideology (the different ideologies, religious, ethical,
legal, political, etc.).
Besidesits theoretico-didacticinterest(it revealsthe differencebetweenMarx and
Hegel), this representationhasthe following crucial theoreticaladvantage:it makes
it possibleto inscribe in the theoretical apparatusof its essentialconceptswhat I
have called their respectiveindices of effectivity. What does this mean?
It is easy to see that this representationof the structure of every society as an
edi&ce containinga base(infrastructure)on which are erectedthe two '£loors' of the
superstructure,is a metaphor,to be quite precise,a spatialmetaphor:the metaphor
From Althusser,L., Lenin and Philosophyand Other Essays,trans. B. Brewster,Monthly Review Press,
New York, 1971, pp. 134-6, 141-50,159-62,164-7,170-75,183-6.
298
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses 299
of a topography[topiquel. 3 Like every metaphor,this metaphorsuggestssomething,

makessomethingvisible. What? Preciselythis: that the upper floors could not 'stay
up' (in the air) alone, if they did not rest precisely on their base.
Thus the object of the metaphor of the edifice is to representabove all the
'determinationin the last instance'by the economicbase. The effect of this spatial
metaphoris to endow the basewith an index of effectivity known by the famous
terms: the determinationin the last instanceof what happensin the upper 'floors'
(of the superstructure)by what happensin the economicbase.
Given this index of effectivity 'in the last instance', the 'floors' of the superstructure
are clearly endowedwith different indices of effectivity. What kind of indices?
It is possibleto say that the floors of the superstructureare not determinantin the
last instance,but that they are determinedby the effectivity of the base;that if they
are determinantin their own (as yet undefined)ways, this is true only in so far as
they are determinedby the base.
Their index of effectivity (or determination),as determinedby the determination
in the last instanceof the base,is thought by the Marxist tradition in two ways: (1)
thereis a 'relative autonomy'of the superstructurewith respectto the base;(2) there
is a 'reciprocal action' of the superstructureon the base.
We can therefore say that the great theoretical advantage of the Marxist
topography,i.e. of the spatial metaphorof the edifice (baseand superstructure),is
simultaneouslythat it reveals that questions of determination (or of index of
effectivity) are crucial; that it reveals that it is the basewhich in the last instance
determinesthe whole edifice; and that, as a consequence,it obliges us to pose the
theoretical problem of the types of 'derivatory' effectivity peculiar to the
superstructure,i.e. it obliges us to think what the Marxist tradition calls conjointly
the relative autonomy of the superstructureand the reciprocal action of the
superstructureon the base.
The greatestdisadvantageof this representationof the structureof every society
by the spatial metaphorof an edifice, is obviously the fact that it is metaphorical:
i.e. it remains descriptive.
It now seemsto me that it is possibleand desirableto representthings differently.
NB, I do not mean by this that I want to reject the classicalmetaphor,for that
metaphoritself requiresthat we go beyondit. And I am not going beyondit in order
to reject it as outworn. I simply want to attemptto think what it gives us in the form
of a description.
I believe that it is possibleand necessaryto think what characterizesthe essential
of the existenceand natureof the superstructureon the basis of reproduction. Once
one takesthe point of view of reproduction,many of the questionswhoseexistence
was indicatedby the spatial metaphorof the edifice, but to which it could not give
a conceptualanswer, are immediately illuminated.
My basic thesisis that it is not possibleto posethesequestions(and thereforeto
answerthem) exceptfrom the point of view of reproduction.
[ ... ]
300 Louis Althusser
The State
[•..J
To summarizethe 'Marxist theory of the State' [ ...J, it can be said that the Marxist
classicshave always claimed that (1) the Stateis the repressiveState apparatus,(2)
Statepower and Stateapparatusmust be distinguished,(3) the objective of the class
struggleconcernsStatepower, and in consequence the use of the Stateapparatusby
the classes(or alliance of classesor of fractions of classes)holding State power as
a function of their class objectives, and (4) the proletariat must seize State power
in order to destroy the existing bourgeois State apparatusand, in a first phase,
replace it with a quite different, proletarian,State apparatus,then in later phases
set in motion a radical process,that of the destructionof the State(the end of State
power, the end of every State apparatus).
In this perspective,therefore,what I would proposeto add to the 'Marxist theory'
of the State is already there in so many words. But it seemsto me that even with
this supplement,this theory is still in part descriptive,althoughit doesnow contain
complex and differential elements whose functioning and action cannot be
understoodwithout recourseto further supplementarytheoretical development.
The State Ideological Apparatuses
Thus, what has to be addedto the 'Marxist theory' of the State is somethingelse.
Here we must advancecautiouslyin a terrain which, in fact, the Marxist classics
enteredlong before us, but without having systematizedin theoretical form the
decisive advancesimplied by their experiencesand procedures.Their experiences
and procedureswere indeedrestrictedin the main to the terrain of political practice.
In fact, i.e. in their political practice, the Marxist classicstreated the State as a
more complex reality than the definition of it given in the 'Marxist theory of the
State',evenwhen it has beensupplementedas I have just suggested.They recognized
this complexity in their practice, but they did not expressit in a corresponding
theory.4
I shouldlike to attempta very schematicoutline of this correspondingtheory. To
that end, I proposethe following thesis.
In order to advancethe theory of the Stateit is indispensableto take into account
not only the distinction betweenState power and Stateapparatus,but also another
reality which is clearly on the side of the (repressive)Stateapparatus,but must not
be confused with it. I shall call this reality by its concept: the Ideological State
Apparatuses.
What are the Ideological State Apparatuses(ISAs)?
They mustnot be confusedwith the (Repressive)StateApparatus.Rememberthat
in Marxist theory, the State Apparatus (SA) contains: the Government, the
Administration,the Army, the Police, the Courts,the Prisons,etc., which constitute
what I shall in future call the RepressiveState Apparatus.Repressivesuggeststhat

the State Apparatusin question 'functions by violence' - at least ultimately (since
repression,e.g. administrativerepression,may take non-physicalforms).
I shall call Ideological State Apparatusesa certain number of realities which
presentthemselvesto the immediateobserverin the form of distinct and specialized
institutions. I propose an empirical list of these which will obviously have to be
examined in detail, tested, corrected and reorganized.With all the reservations
implied by this requirement,we can for the momentregardthe following institutions
as Ideological State Apparatuses(the order in which I have listed them has no
particular significance):
• the religious ISA (the systemof the different Churches);

• the educationalISA (the system of the different public and private 'Schools');
• the family ISA; 5
• the legal ISA; 6
• the political ISA (the political system, including the different Parties);
• the trade-unionISA;
• the communicationsISA (press, radio and television, etc.);
• the cultural ISA (Literature, the Arts, sports, etc.).
I have said that the ISAs must not be confused with the (Repressive)State
Apparatus.What constitutesthe difference?
As a first moment,it is clear that while there is one (Repressive)StateApparatus,
there is a plurality of Ideological StateApparatuses.Even presupposingthat it exists,
the unity that constitutesthis plurality of ISAs as a body is not immediatelyvisible.
As a secondmoment, it is clear that whereasthe - unified - (Repressive)State
Apparatus belongs entirely to the public domain, much the larger part of the
Ideological State Apparatuses(in their apparent dispersion) are part, on the
contrary, of the private domain. Churches,Parties,Trade Unions, families, some
schools, most newspapers,cultural ventures,etc., etc., are private.
We can ignore the first observationfor the moment. But someoneis bound to
question the second, asking me by what right I regard as Ideological State
Apparatuses,institutions which for the most part do not possesspublic status,but
are quite simply private institutions. As a conscious Marxist, Gramsci already
forestalledthis objectionin one sentence.The distinction betweenthe public and the
private is a distinction internal to bourgeoislaw, and valid in the (subordinate)
domainsin which bourgeoislaw exercisesits 'authority'. The domain of the State
escapesit becausethe latter is 'abovethe law': the State, which is the State of the
ruling class,is neither public nor private; on the contrary, it is the preconditionfor
any distinction betweenpublic and private. The same thing can be said from the
starting point of our State Ideological Apparatuses.It is unimportantwhether the
institutions in which they are realizedare 'public' or 'private'. What mattersis how
they function. Private institutions can perfectly well 'function' as Ideological State
Apparatuses.A reasonablythorough analysis of anyoneof the ISAs proves it.
302 Louis Althusser
But now for what is essential.What distinguishesthe ISAs from the (Repressive)
State Apparatusis the following basic difference: the RepressiveState Apparatus
functions 'by violence', whereas the Ideological State Apparatusesfunction 'by
ideology'.
I can clarify matters by correcting this distinction. I shall say rather that every
StateApparatus,whetherRepressiveor Ideological,'functions'both by violenceand
by ideology, but with one very important distinction which makesit imperativenot
to confusethe Ideological StateApparatuseswith the (Repressive)StateApparatus.
This is the fact that the (Repressive)State Apparatus functions massively and
predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while functioning
secondarilyby ideology. (There is no such thing as a purely repressiveapparatus.)
For example,the Army and the Police also function by ideology both to ensuretheir
own cohesionand reproduction,and in the 'values' they propoundexternally.
In the same way, but inversely, it is essential to say that for their part the
Ideological State Apparatusesfunction massively and predominantlyby ideology,
but they also function secondarily by repression, even if ultimately, but only
ultimately, this is very attenuatedand concealed,even symbolic. (There is no such
thing as a purely ideological apparatus.)Thus Schools and Churchesuse suitable
methods of punishment,expulsion, selection, etc., to 'discipline' not only their
shepherds,but also their flocks. The sameis true of the Family.... The sameis true
of the cultural IS Apparatus(censorship,among other things), etc.
Is it necessaryto add that this determination of the double 'functioning'
(predominantly,secondarily)by repressionand by ideology, accordingto whether
it is a matter of the (Repressive) State Apparatus or the Ideological State
Apparatuses,makesit clear that very subtle explicit or tacit combinationsmay be
woven from the interplay of the (Repressive)State Apparatusand the Ideological
StateApparatuses?Everydaylife providesus with innumerableexamplesof this, but
they must be studied in detail if we are to go further than this mere observation.
Nevertheless,this remark leadsus towards an understandingof what constitutes
the unity of the apparently disparate body of the ISAs. If the ISAs 'function'
massively and predominantlyby ideology, what unifies their diversity is precisely
this functioning, in so far as the ideology by which they function is always in fact
unified, despite its diversity and its contradictions,beneath the ruling ideology,
which is the ideology of 'the ruling class'. Given the fact that the 'ruling class' in
principle holds State power (openly or more often by meansof alliances between
classesor class fractions), and therefore has at its disposal the (Repressive)State
Apparatus, we can accept the fact that this same ruling class is active in the
Ideological StateApparatusesin so far as it is ultimately the ruling ideology which
is realized in the Ideological State Apparatuses,precisely in its contradictions.Of
course,it is a quite different thing to act by laws and decreesin the (Repressive)State
Apparatus and to 'act' through the intermediary of the ruling ideology in the
Ideological StateApparatuses.We must go into the details of this difference - but
it cannot mask the reality of a profound identity. To my knowledge,no class can
hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercising its
hegemonyover and in the State Ideological Apparatuses.I only needone example

and proof of this: Lenin's anguished concern to revolutionize the educational
IdeologicalStateApparatus(amongothers),simply to makeit possiblefor the Soviet
proletariat,who had seizedStatepower, to securethe future of the dictatorshipof
the proletariat and the transition to socialism.7
This last commentputs us in a position to understandthat the Ideological State
Apparatusesmay be not only the stake,but also the site of classstruggle,and often
of bitter forms of class struggle. The class (or class alliance) in power cannot lay
down the law in the ISAs as easily as it can in the (Repressive)StateApparatus,not
only becausethe former ruling classesare able to retain strong positions there for
a long time, but also becausethe resistanceof the exploited classesis able to fmd
means and occasionsto express itself there, either by the utilization of their
contradictions,or by conqueringcombat positions in them in struggle.8
Let me run through my comments.
If the thesis I have proposedis well-founded, it leads me back to the classical
Marxist theory of the State,while making it more precisein one point. I arguethat
it is necessaryto distinguish betweenStatepower (and its possessionby ... ) on the
one hand, and the StateApparatuson the other. But I add that the StateApparatus
containstwo bodies: the body of institutions which representthe RepressiveState
Apparatuson the one hand, and the body of institutions which representthe body
of Ideological State Apparatuseson the other.
But if this is the case,the following question is bound to be asked,even in the
very summarystate of my suggestions:what exactly is the extent of the role of the
IdeologicalStateApparatuses?What is their importancebasedon ? In other words:
to what does the 'function' of these Ideological State Apparatuses,which do not
function by repressionbut by ideology, correspond?
On the Reproduction of the Relations of

Production
I can now answerthe central questionwhich I have left in suspensefor many long
pages: how is the reproduction of the relations of production secured?
In the topographicallanguage(Infrastructure,Superstructure),I can say: for the
most part,9 it is securedby the legal-political and ideological superstructure.
But as I havearguedthat it is essentialto go beyondthis still descriptivelanguage,
I shall say: for the most part, it is securedby the exerciseof Statepower in the State
Apparatuses,on the one hand the (Repressive)State Apparatus,on the other the
Ideological State Apparatuses.
What I have just said must also be taken into account,and it can be assembled
in the form of the following three features:
1. All the StateApparatusesfunction both by repressionand by ideology, with

the difference that the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and
]04 Louis Althusser
predominantlyby repression,whereasthe Ideological State Apparatusesfunction

massively and predominantlyby ideology.
2. Whereas the (Repressive)State Apparatus constitutes an organized whole
whose different parts are centralized beneath a commanding unity, that of the
politics of classstruggleapplied by the political representativesof the ruling classes
in possessionof State power, the Ideological State Apparatusesare multiple,
distinct, 'relatively autonomous'and capable of providing an objective fteld to
contradictionswhich express,in forms which may be limited or extreme,the effects
of the clashesbetweenthe capitalist classstruggleand the proletarianclassstruggle,
as well as their subordinateforms.
3. Whereasthe unity of the (Repressive)StateApparatusis securedby its unifted
and centralized organization under the leadership of the representativesof the
classesin power executingthe politics of the class struggle of the classesin power,
the unity of the different Ideological State Apparatusesis secured, usually In
contradictoryforms, by the ruling ideology, the ideology of the ruling class.
Taking thesefeaturesinto account,it is possibleto representthe reproductionof

the relationsof production10 in the following way, accordingto a kind of 'division
of labour'.
The role of the RepressiveStateApparatus,in so far as it is a repressiveapparatus,
consists essentially in securing by force (physical or otherwise) the political
conditionsof the reproductionof relationsof productionwhich are in the last resort
relations of exploitation. Not only does the State apparatuscontribute generously
to its own reproduction(the capitalist State contains political dynasties,military
dynasties,etc.), but also, and above all, the State apparatussecuresby repression
(from the most brutal physical force, via mere administrative commands and
interdictions,to open and tacit censorship)the political conditionsfor the action of
the Ideological State Apparatuses.
In fact, it is the latter which largely securethe reproductionspeciftcally of the
relations of production, behind a 'shield' provided by the Repressive State
Apparatus.It is here that the role of the ruling ideology is heavily concentrated,the
ideology of the ruling class,which holds Statepower. It is the intermediationof the
ruling ideology that ensuresa (sometimesteeth-gritting) 'harmony' between the
RepressiveStateApparatusand the Ideological StateApparatuses,and betweenthe
different Ideological State Apparatuses.
[ ...J
On Ideology
[ ••. J
Ideology has no History
One word ftrst of all to expoundthe reasonin principle which seemsto me to found,
or at least to justify, the project of a theory of ideology in general, and not a theory
of particular ideologies, which, whatever their form (religious, ethical, legal,

political), always expressclass positions.
It is quite obvious that it is necessaryto proceedtowards a theory of ideologies
in the two respectsI have just suggested.It will then be clear that a theory of
ideologies dependsin the last resort on the history of social formations, and thus
of the modesof productioncombinedin social formations,and of the classstruggles
which develop in them. In this senseit is clear that there can be no question of a
theory of ideologies in general, since ideologies (defi.ned in the double respect
suggestedabove: regional and class)have a history, whosedeterminationin the last
instanceis clearly situated outside ideologies alone, although it involves them.
On the contrary, if I am able to put forward the project of a theory of ideology
in general, and if this theory really is one of the elementson which theories of
ideologiesdepend,that entails an apparentlyparadoxicalpropositionwhich I shall
expressin the following terms: ideology has no history.
As we know, this formulation appearsin so many words, in a passagefrom The
German Ideology. Marx utters it with respectto metaphysics,which, he says, has
no more history than ethics (meaning also the other forms of ideology)
In The GermanIdeology, this formulation appearsin a plainly positivist context.
Ideology is conceivedas a pure illusion, a pure dream, i.e. as nothingness.All its
reality is externalto it. Ideology is thus thought as an imaginaryconstructionwhose
statusis exactly like the theoreticalstatusof the dreamamongwriters before Freud.
For these writers, the dream was the purely imaginary, i.e. null, result of 'day's
residues', presented in an arbitrary arrangement and order, sometimes even
'inverted', in other words, in 'disorder'. For them, the dream was the imaginary, it
was empty, null and arbitrarily 'stuck together' [bricole], once the eyeshad closed,
from the residuesof the only full and positive reality, the reality of the day. This
is exactly the status of philosophy and ideology (since in this book philosophy is
ideology par excellence)in The German Ideology.
Ideology, then, is for Marx an imaginary assemblage[bricolage], a pure dream,
empty and vain, constitutedby the 'day's residues'from the only full and positive
reality, that of the concrete history of concrete material individuals materially
producing their existence.It is on this basis that ideology has no history in The
German Ideology, since its history is outside it, where the only existing history
is, the history of concrete individuals, etc. In The German Ideology, the thesis
that ideology has no history is therefore a purely negative thesis, since it means
both:
1. ideology is nothing in so far as it is a pure dream (manufacturedby who knows

what power: if not by the alienation of the division of labour, but that, too, is
a negativedetermination);
2. ideology has no history, which emphatically does not mean that there is no
history in it (on the contrary, for it is merely the pale, empty and inverted
reflection of real history) but that it has no history of its own.
Now, while the thesis I wish to defend formally speaking adopts the terms of
306 Louis Althusser
The German Ideology ('ideology has no history'), it is radically different from the
positivist and historicist thesis of The German Ideology.
For on the one hand, I think it is possibleto hold that ideologieshave a history
of their own (althoughit is determinedin the last instanceby the classstruggle);and
on the other, I think it is possibleto hold that ideology in general has no history,
not in a negativesense(its history is external to it), but in an absolutely positive
sense.
This senseis a positive one if it is true that the peculiarity of ideology is that it
is endowedwith a structureand a functioning such as to make it a non-historical
reality, i.e. an omni-historical reality, in the sensein which that structure and
functioning are immutable, presentin the sameform throughoutwhat we can call
history, in the sensein which the CommunistManifestodefineshistory as the history
of class struggles,i.e. the history of class societies.
To give a theoretical reference-pointhere, I might say that, to return to our
example of the dream, in its Freudian conception this time, our proposition:
ideology has no history, can and must (and in a way which has absolutelynothing
arbitrary about it, but, quite the reverse,is theoretically necessary,for there is an
organiclink betweenthe two propositions)be relateddirectly to Freud'sproposition
that the unconsciousis eternal, i.e. that it has no history.
If eternal means, not transcendentto all (temporal) history, but omnipresent,
transhistoricaland thereforeimmutable in form throughoutthe extent of history,
I shall adopt Freud's expressionword for word, and write ideology is eternal,
exactly like the unconscious.And I add that I find this comparisontheoretically
justified by the fact that the eternity of the unconsciousis not unrelated to the
eternity of ideology in general.
That is why I believe I am justified, hypotheticallyat least, in proposinga theory
of ideology in general,in the sensethat Freudpresenteda theory of the unconscious
in general.
To simplify the phrase,it is convenient,taking into accountwhat has been said
about ideologies, to use the plain term ideology to designateideology in general,
which I have just said has no history, or, what comesto the samething, is eternal,
i.e. omnipresentin its immutable form throughouthistory (= the history of social
formationscontainingsocial classes).For the momentI shall restrict myself to 'class
societies'and their history.
Ideology is a 'Representation' of the Imaginary Relationship of

Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence
In order to approachmy centralthesison the structureand functioning of ideology,

I shall first presenttwo theses,one negative,the other positive. The first concerns
the object which is 'represented'in the imaginary form of ideology, the second
concernsthe materiality of ideology.
THESIS I: Ideology representsthe imaginary relationship of individuals to their

real conditions of existence.
[ ••. J
To speakin a Marxist language,if it is true that the representationof the real
conditions of existence of the individuals occupying the posts of agents of
production,exploitation, repression,ideologizationand scientific practice,does in
the last analysisarise from the relations of production, and from relationsderiving
from the relations of production,we can say the following: all ideology represents
in its necessarilyimaginary distortion not the existing relations of production(and
the otherrelationsthat derive from them), but aboveall the (imaginary)relationship
of individuals to the relationsof productionand the relationsthat derive from them.
What is representedin ideologyis thereforenot the systemof the real relationswhich
govern the existenceof individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals
to the real relations in which they live.
If this is the case,the questionof the 'cause'of the imaginarydistortion of the real
relationsin ideology disappearsand must be replacedby a different question: why
is the representationgiven to individuals of their (individual) relation to the social
relations which govern their conditions of existence and their collective and
individual life necessarilyan imaginary relation? And what is the nature of this
imaginariness?Posedin this way, the questionexplodesthe solution by a 'clique',11
by a group of individuals (Priests or Despots) who are the authors of the great
ideological mystification, just as it explodesthe solution by the alienatedcharacter
of the real world. We shall seewhy later in my exposition. For the momentI shall
go no further.
THESIS II: Ideology has a material existence.
I have alreadytouchedon this thesisby sayingthat the 'ideas'or 'representations',
etc., which seemto make up ideology do not have an ideal [ideale or ideelie ] or
spiritual existence,but a material existence.I even suggestedthat the ideal [ideale,
jdeelle] and spiritual existenceof 'ideas'arisesexclusivelyin an ideology of the 'idea'
and of ideology, and, let me add, in an ideology of what seemsto have 'founded'
this conceptionsince the emergenceof the sciences,i.e. what the practiciansof the
sciencesrepresentto themselvesin their spontaneousideology as 'ideas', true or
false. Of course,presentedin affirmative form, this thesisis unproven.I simply ask
that the readerbe favourably disposedtowardsit, say, in the nameof materialism.
A long seriesof argumentswould be necessaryto prove it.
This hypothetical thesis of the not spiritual but material existenceof 'ideas' or
other 'representations' is indeednecessaryif we are to advancein our analysisof the
nature of ideology. Or rather, it is merely useful to us in order the better to reveal
what every at all seriousanalysisof any ideology will immediatelyand empirically
show to every observer,however critical.
While discussingthe Ideological StateApparatusesand their practices,I said that
eachof them was the realizationof an ideology (the unity of thesedifferent regional
ideologies- religious, ethical, legal, political, aesthetic,etc. - being assuredby their
l08 Louis Althusser
subjection to the ruling ideology). I now return to this thesis: an ideology always
exists in an apparatus,and its practice, or practices.This existenceis material.
Of course,the material existenceof the ideology in an apparatusand its practices
does not have the same modality as the material existenceof a paving-stoneor a
rifle. But, at the risk of being taken for a Neo-Aristotelian (NB, Marx had a very
high regard for Aristotle), I shall say that 'matter is discussedin many senses',or
rather that it exists in different modalities,all rooted in the last instancein 'physical'
matter.
Having said this, let me move straighton and seewhat happensto the 'individuals'
who live in ideology, i.e. in a determinate(religious, ethical, etc.) representationof
the world whose imaginary distortion dependson their imaginary relation to their
conditions of existence, in other words, in the last instance, to the relations of
productionandto classrelations(ideology =an imaginaryrelation to real relations).
I shall say that this imaginary relation is itself endowedwith a material existence.
[ ...J
I shall immediately set down two conjoint theses:
1. there is no practice except by and in an ideology;

2. there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects.
I can now come to my central thesis.
Ideology Interpellates Individuals as Subjects
This thesis is simply a matter of making my last proposition explicit: there is no

ideologyexceptby the subjectand for subjects.Meaning,thereis no ideology except
for concretesubjects,and this destinationfor ideology is only madepossibleby the
subject: meaning, by the category of the subject and its functioning.
By this I meanthat, even if it only appearsunder this name (the subject)with the
rise of bourgeoisideology, above all with the rise of legal ideology,12 the category
of the subject(which may function under other names:e.g. as the soul in Plato, as
God, etc.) is the constitutive category of all ideology, whatever its determination
(regional or class) and whateverits historical date - since ideology has no history.
I say: the categoryof the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at the same
time and immediately I add that the category of the subjectis only constitutiveof
all ideology in so far as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of
'constituting' concrete individuals as subjects. In the interaction of this double
constitution exists the functioning of all ideology, ideology being nothing but its
functioning in the material forms of existenceof that functioning.
In order to graspwhat follows, it is essentialto realize that both he who is writing
these lines and the reader who reads them are themselvessubjects,and therefore
ideological subjects(a tautologicalproposition), i.e. that the author and the reader
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses ]09
of theselines both live 'spontaneously'or 'naturally'in ideology in the sensein which

I have said that 'man is an ideological animal by nature'.
[ ...J
I only wish to point out that you and I are always-alreadysubjects,and as such
constantlypracticethe rituals of ideologicalrecognition,which guaranteefor us that
we are indeed concrete, individual, distinguishableand (naturally) irreplaceable
subjects.The writing I am currently executingand the reading you are currently13
performing are also in this respectrituals of ideological recognition, including the
'obviousness'with which the 'truth' or 'error' of my reflectionsmay imposeitself on
you.
But to recognizethat we are subjectsand that we function in the practical rituals
of the most elementaryeverydaylife (the handshake,the fact of calling you by your
name,the fact of knowing, even if I do not know what it is, that you 'have'a name
of your own, which meansthat you are recognizedas a unique subject,etc.) - this
recognition only gives us the 'consciousness'of our incessant(eternal) practice of
ideologicalrecognition- its consciousness, i.e. its recognition - but in no sensedoes
it give us the (scientific) knowledgeof the mechanismof this recognition. Now it
is this knowledgethat we have to reach,if you will, while speakingin ideology, and
from within ideology we have to outline a discourse which tries to break with
ideology, in order to dare to be the beginning of a scientific (i.e. subjectless)
discourseon ideology.
Thus in order to representwhy the category of the 'subject' is constitutive of
ideology, which only exists by constituting concrete subjects as subjects, I shall
employ a special mode of exposition: 'concrete' enough to be recognized, but
abstractenough to be thinkable and thought, giving rise to a knowledge.
As a first formulation I shall say: all ideology hails or interpellates concrete
individuals as concretesubjects,by the functioning of the categoryof the subject.
This is a proposition which entails that we distinguish for the moment between
concreteindividuals on the one hand and concretesubjectson the other, although
at this level concretesubjectsonly exist in so far as they are supportedby a concrete
individual.
I shall then suggestthat ideology 'acts'or 'functions'in such a way that it 'recruits'
subjectsamongthe individuals (it recruits them all), or 'transforms'the individuals
into subjects(it transformsthem all) by that very preciseoperation which I have
called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the
most commonplaceeverydaypolice (or other) hailing: 'Hey, you there! 14
Assumingthat the theoreticalsceneI have imaginedtakes place in the street, the
hailed individual will turn round. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree
physicalconversion,he becomesa subject.Why? Becausehe hasrecognizedthat the
hail was 'really' addressedto him, and that 'it was really him who was hailed' (and
not someone else). Experience shows that the practical telecommunicationof
hailings is such that they hardly ever miss their man: verbal call or whistle, the one
hailed always recognizesthat it is really him who is being hailed. And yet it is a
310 Louis Althusser
strangephenomenon,and one which cannot be explainedsolely by 'guilt feelings',

despitethe large numberswho 'have somethingon their consciences'.
Naturally for the convenienceandclarity of my little theoreticaltheatreI havehad
to presentthings in the form of a sequence,with a before and an after, and thus in
the form of a temporalsuccession.There are individuals walking along. Somewhere
(usually behindthem) the hail rings out: 'Hey, you there!' One individual (nine times
out of ten it is the right one) turns round, believing/suspecting/knowing that it is
for him, i.e. recognizing that 'it really is he' who is meant by the hailing. But in
reality thesethings happenwithout any succession.The existenceof ideology and
the hailing or interpellationof individuals as subjectsare one and the samething.
I might add: what thus seemsto take place outsideideology (to be precise,in the
street),in reality takesplace in ideology. What really takesplace in ideology seems
therefore to take place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe
themselvesby definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the
practical denegationof the ideological characterof ideology by ideology: ideology
never says,'I am ideological'. It is necessaryto be outsideideology, i. e. in scientific
knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptionalcase) or (the
general case): I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusationof being in
ideology only appliesto others, never to oneself(unlessone is really a Spinozistor
a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the samething). Which amounts
to saying that ideology has no outside (for itself), but at the sametime that it is
nothing but outside (for scienceand reality).
[•..J
P.S. If these few schematicthesesallow me to illuminate certain aspectsof the
functioning of the Superstructureand its mode of interventionin the Infrastructure,
they are obviously abstract and necessarily leave several important problems
unanswered,which should be mentioned:
1. The problem of the total processof the realizationof the reproductionof the
relations of production.
As an elementof this process,the IS As contribute to this reproduction.But the
point of view of their contribution alone is still an abstractone.
It is only within the processesof productionand circulation that this reproduction
is realized.It is realizedby the mechanismsof thoseprocesses,in which the training
of the workers is 'completed',their postsare assignedthem, etc. It is in the internal
mechanismsof theseprocessesthat the effect of the different ideologiesis felt (above
all the effect of legal-ethical ideology).
But this point of view is still an abstractone. For in a class society the relations
of production are relations of exploitation, and therefore relations between
antagonisticclasses.The reproductionof the relations of production,the ultimate
aim of the ruling class,cannotthereforebe a merely technicaloperationtraining and
distributing individuals for the different posts in the 'technical division' of labour.
In fact there is no 'technicaldivision' of labour exceptin the ideology of the ruling
class: every 'technical'division, every 'technical'organizationof labour is the form

and maskof a social ( = class)division and organizationof labour. The reproduction
of the relationsof productioncan thereforeonly be a classundertaking.It is realized
through a classstrugglewhich counterposesthe ruling classand the exploited class.
The total process of the realization of the reproduction of the relations of
productionis thereforestill abstract,in so far as it hasnot adoptedthe point of view
of this classstruggle.To adoptthe point of view of reproductionis therefore,in the
last instance,to adopt the point of view of the class struggle.
2. The problemof the classnatureof the ideologiesexisting in a social formation.

The 'mechanism'of ideology in general is one thing. We have seenthat it can be
reducedto a few principles expressedin a few words (as 'poor' as those which,
accordingto Marx, define productionin generalor in Freud,define the unconscious
in general). If there is any truth in it, this mechanismmust be abstractwith respect
to every real ideological formation.
I have suggestedthat the ideologieswere realized in institutions, in their rituals
and their practices,in the ISAs. We have seenthat on this basis they contribute to
that form of classstruggle,vital for the ruling class,the reproductionof the relations
of production. But the point of view itself, however real, is still an abstractone.
In fact, the State and its Apparatusesonly have meaningfrom the point of view
of the classstruggle,as an apparatusof classstruggleensuringclassoppressionand
guaranteeingthe conditions of exploitation and its reproduction. But there is no
classstrugglewithout antagonisticclasses.Whoeversaysclassstruggleof the ruling
class says resistance,revolt and class struggle of the ruled class.
That is why the ISAs are not the realizationof ideology in general, nor even the
conflict-free realizationof the ideology of the ruling class.The ideology of the ruling
class doesnot becomethe ruling ideology by the graceof God, nor even by virtue
of the seizureof Statepower alone. It is by the installation of the ISAs in which this
ideology is realized and realizesitself that it becomesthe ruling ideology. But this
installationis not achievedall by itself; on the contrary,it is the stakein a very bitter
and continuous class struggle: first against the former ruling classesand their
positions in the old and new ISAs, then againstthe exploited class.
But this point of view of the class struggle in the ISAs is still an abstractone. In
fact, the classstrugglein the ISAs is indeedan aspectof the classstruggle,sometimes
an importantand symptomaticone: e.g. the anti-religiousstrugglein the eighteenth
century, or the 'crisis' of the educationalISA in every capitalist country today. But
the classstrugglesin the ISAs is only one aspectof a classstrugglewhich goesbeyond
the ISAs. The ideology that a class in power makesthe ruling ideology in its ISAs
is indeed 'realized' in those ISAs, but it goes beyond them, for it comes from
elsewhere.Similarly, the ideologythat a ruled classmanagesto defendin and against
such ISAs goes beyond them, for it comesfrom elsewhere.
It is only from the point of view of the classes,i.e. of the class struggle,that it
is possibleto explain the ideologiesexisting in a social formation. Not only is it from
this startingpoint that it is possibleto explain the realizationof the ruling ideology
312 Louis Althusser
in the ISAs and of the forms of class struggle for which the ISAs are the seat and
the stake. But it is also and above all from this starting point that it is possibleto
understandthe provenanceof the ideologies which are realized in the ISAs and
confront one anotherthere. For if it is true that the ISAs representthe form in which
the ideology of the ruling classmust necessarilybe realized, and the form in which
the ideology of the ruled class must necessarily be measuredand confronted,
ideologiesare not 'born' in the ISAs but from the social classesat grips in the class
struggle: from their conditionsof existence,their practices,their experienceof the
struggle, etc.
April 1970
Notes
1. This text is madeup of two extractsfrom an ongoingstudy. The subtitle 'Notestowards

an Investigation' is the author'sown. The ideas expoundedshould not be regardedas
more than the introduction to a discussion.
2. In For Marx and ReadingCapital, 1965 (English editions 1969 and 1970 respectively).
3. Topographyfrom the Greek topos: place. A topographyrepresentsin a definite space
the respectivesites occupiedby severalrealities: thus the economicis at the bottom (the
base), the superstructureabove it.
4. To my knowledge, Gramsci is the only one who went any distancein the road I am
taking. He had the 'remarkable' idea that the State could not be reduced to the
(Repressive)StateApparatus,but included, as he put it, a certain numberof institutions
from 'civil society': the Church, the Schools, the trade unions, etc. Unfortunately,
Gramsci did not systematizehis institutions, which remainedin the state of acute but
fragmentary notes (d. Gramsci, Selectionsfrom the Prison Notebooks,International
Publishers, 1971, pp.12, 259, 260-63; see also the letters to Tatiana Schucht,
7 September1931, in Lettre del Carcere, Einaudi, 1968, p.479. English-language
translation in preparation.
5. The family obviously has other 'functions' than that of an ISA. It intervenesin the
reproduction of labour-power. In different modes of production it is the unit of
production and/or the unit of consumption.
6. The 'Law' belongsboth to the (Repressive)StateApparatusand to the systemof the ISAs.
7. In a pathetic text written in 1937, Krupskaya relates the history of Lenin's desperate
efforts and what she regardsas his failure.
8. What I havesaid in thesefew brief words aboutthe classstrugglein the ISAs is obviously
far from exhaustingthe question of the class struggle.
To approachthis question,two principles must be borne in mind:
The first principle was formulated by Marx in the Prefaceto A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy:
In considering such transformations [a social revolution] a distinction should

always be made betweenthe material transformationof the economicconditions
of production,which can be determinedwith the precisionof natural science,and
the legal, political, religious, aestheticor philosophic- in short, ideological forms
in which men becomeconsciousof this contlict and fight it out.
The class struggle is thus expressedand exercisedin ideological forms, thus also in the
ideological forms of the ISAs. But the classstruggle extendsfar beyondtheseforms, and
it is becauseit extendsbeyond them that the struggle of the exploited classesmay also
be exercisedin the forms of the ISAs, and thus turn the weaponof ideology againstthe
classesin power.
This by virtue of the secondprinciple: the class struggle extends beyond the ISAs
becauseit is rooted elsewherethan in ideology, in the Infrastructure,in the relationsof
production,which are relationsof exploitationand constitutethe basefor classrelations.
9. For the most part. For the relationsof productionare first reproducedby the materiality
of the processesof production and circulation. But it should not be forgotten that
ideological relations are immediately presentin these sameprocesses.
10. For that part of reproduction to which the Repressive State Apparatus and the
Ideological State Apparatuscontribute.
11. I use this very modernterm deliberately.For even in Communistcircles, unfortunately,
it is a commonplaceto 'explain' some political deviation (left or right opportunism)by
the action of a 'clique'.
12. Which borrowedthe legal categoryof 'subjectin law' to makean ideologicalnotion: man
is by nature a subject.
13. NB: this double 'currently' is one more proof of the fact that ideology is 'eternal', since
thesetwo 'currentlys'are separatedby an indefinite interval; I am writing theselines on
6 April 1969, you may read them at any subsequenttime.
14. Hailing as an everydaypractice subjectto a preciseritual takes a quite 'special'form in
the policeman'spractice of 'hailing' which concernsthe hailing of 'suspects'.
Dominant~
4.4
Dominant~and Emergent
Raymond Williams
The complexity of a culture is to be found not only in its variableprocessesand their

socialdefinitions - traditions,institutions,and formations- but also in the dynamic
interrelations, at every point in the process, of historically varied and variable
elements.In what I have called 'epochal'analysis, a cultural processis seizedas a
cultural system, with determinatedominant features: feudal culture or bourgeois
culture or a transition from one to the other. This emphasison dominant and
definitive lineamentsand featuresis important and often, in practice,effective. But
it then often happensthat its methodologyis preservedfor the very different function
of historical analysis, in which a sense of movement within what is ordinarily
abstractedas a system is crucially necessary,especiallyif it is to connectwith the
future as well as with the past. In authentichistorical analysisit is necessaryat every
point to recognizethe complex interrelationsbetweenmovementsand tendencies
both within and beyond a specific and effective dominance. It is necessaryto
examine how these relate to the whole cultural processrather than only to the
selectedand abstracteddominant system. Thus 'bourgeoisculture' is a significant
generalizing description and hypothesis, expressedwithin epochal analysis by
fundamentalcomparisonswith 'feudal culture' or 'socialist culture'. However, as a
descriptionof cultural process,over four or five centuriesand in scoresof different
societies,it requiresimmediatehistorical and internally comparativedifferentiation.
Moreover, even if this is acknowledgedor practically carried out, the 'epochal'
definition can exert its pressureas a statictype againstwhich all real cultural process
is measured,either to show 'stages'or 'variations'of the type (which is still historical
analysis),or, at its worst, to selectsupportingand exclude'marginal' or 'incidental'
or 'secondary'evidence.
Such errors are avoidable,if, while retaining the epochalhypothesis,we can find
terms which recognizenot only 'stages'and 'variations' but the internal dynamic
From Williams, R., Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press,Oxford, 1977, pp. 121-7.
314
Dominant, Residual, and Emergent 315
relations of any actual process.We have certainly still to speakof the 'dominant'
and the 'effective', and in thesesensesof the hegemonic.But we fmd that we have
also to speak,and indeed with further differentiation of each, of the 'residual' and
the 'emergent',which in any real process. and at any moment in the process,are
significant both in themselvesand in what they reveal of the characteristicsof the
'dominant'.
By 'residual' I mean somethingdifferent from the 'archaic', though in practice
theseare often very difficult to distinguish. Any culture includes available elements
of its past, but their place in the contemporarycultural process is profoundly
variable. I would call the 'archaic'that which is wholly recognizedas an elementof
the past, to be observed,to be examined,or even on occasionto be consciously
'revived', in a deliberately specializingway. What I mean by the 'residual' is very
different. The residual,by definition, has been effectively formed in the past, but it
is still active in the cultural process,not only and often not at all as an elementof
the past, but as an effective element of the present. Thus certain experiences,
meanings,and values which cannot be expressedor substantiallyverified in terms
of the dominant culture, are neverthelesslived and practisedon the basis of the
residue- cultural as well as social - of someprevioussocial and cultural institution
or formation. It is crucial to distinguishthis aspectof the residual,which may have
an alternativeor evenoppositionalrelation to the dominantculture, fromthat active
manifestationof the residual (this being its distinction from the archaic) which
has been wholly or largely incorporated into the dominant culture. In three
characteristiccasesin contemporaryEnglish culture this distinction can becomea
precise term of analysis. Thus organized religion is predominantly residual, but
within this there is a significant difference betweensomepractically alternativeand
oppositionalmeaningsand values (absolutebrotherhood,serviceto otherswithout
reward) and a larger body of incorporatedmeaningsand values (official morality,
or the social order of which the other-worldly is a separatedneutralizingor ratifying
component).Again, the idea of rural community is predominantlyresidual, but is
in some limited respectsalternativeor oppositional to urban industrial capitalism,
though for the most part it is incorporated,as idealizationor fantasy,or as an exotic
- residential or escape- leisure function of the dominant order itself. Again, in
monarchy, there is virtually nothing that is actively residual (alternative or
oppositional), but, with a heavy and deliberate additional use of the archaic, a
residual function has been wholly incorporatedas a specific political and cultural
function - marking the limits as well as the methods - of a form of capitalist
democracy.
A residualcultural elementis usually at somedistancefrom the effective dominant
culture, but somepart of it, someversion of it - and especiallyif the residueis from
somemajor area of the past - will in most caseshave had to be incorporatedif the
effective dominant culture is to make sensein these areas. Moreover, at certain
points the dominantculture cannotallow too much residualexperienceand practice
outsideitself, at least without risk. It is in the incorporationof the actively residual
- by reinterpretation,dilution, projection, discriminating inclusion and exclusion
316 Raymond Williams
- that the work of the selectivetradition is especiallyevident. This is very notable

in the caseof versions of 'the literary tradition', passingthrough selectiveversions
of the characterof literature to connectingand incorporateddefinitions of what
literature now is and should be. This is one among severalcrucial areas,since it is
in somealternativeor even oppositionalversionsof what literatureis (has been)and
what literary experience (and in one common derivation, other significant
experience)is and must be, that, against the pressuresof incorporation, actively
residual meaningsand values are sustained.
By 'emergent'I mean, first, that new meaningsand values, new practices,new
relationships and kinds of relationship are continually being created. But it is
exceptionallydifficult to distinguishbetweenthosewhich are really elementsof some
new phaseof the dominant culture (and in this sense'species-specific')and those
which are substantiallyalternativeor oppositionalto it: emergentin the strict sense,
ratherthan merely novel. Sincewe are alwaysconsideringrelationswithin a cultural
process,definitions of the emergent,as of the residual,can be madeonly in relation
to a full senseof the dominant.Yet the social location of the residualis alwayseasier
to understand,since a large part of it (though not all) relates to earlier social
formations and phasesof the cultural process,in which certain real meaningsand
valueswere generated.In the subsequentdefault of a particularphaseof a dominant
culture there is then a reaching back to those meanings and values which were
createdin actual societiesand actual situationsin the past, and which still seemto
have significancebecausethey representareasof humanexperience,aspiration,and
achievementwhich the dominantculture neglects,undervalues,opposes,represses,
or even cannot recognize.
The caseof the emergentis radically different. It is true that in the structureof
any actual society, and especiallyin its classstructure,there is always a social basis
for elements of the cultural process that are alternative or oppositional to the
dominant elements.One kind of basis has been valuably describedin the central
body of Marxist theory: the formation of a new class,the coming to consciousness
of a new class, and within this, in actual process,the (often uneven)emergenceof
elementsof a new cultural formation. Thus the emergenceof the working class as
a classwas immediatelyevident (for example,in nineteenth-centuryEngland)in the
cultural process.But therewas extremeunevennessof contributionin different parts
of the process.The making of new social values and institutions far outpacedthe
making of strictly cultural institutions, while specific cultural contributions,though
significant, were less vigorous and autonomousthan either generalor institutional
innovation. A new classis always a sourceof emergentcultural practice, but while
it is still, as a class,relatively subordinate,this is always likely to be unevenand is
certain to be incomplete.For new practiceis not, of course,an isolatedprocess.To
the degreethat it emerges,and especiallyto the degreethat it is oppositionalrather
than alternative, the processof attemptedincorporation signifIcantly begins. This
can be seen,in the sameperiod in England,in the emergenceand then the effective
incorporation of a radical popular press. It can be seen in the emergenceand
incorporationof working-classwriting, wherethe fundamentalproblemof emergence
Dominant, Residual, and Emergent 317
is clearly revealed, since the basis of incorporation, in such cases,is the effective
predominanceof received literary forms - an incorporation, so to say, which
alreadyconditionsand limits the emergence.But the developmentis always uneven.
Straight incorporationis most directly attemptedagainstthe visibly alternativeand
oppositionalclass elements:trade unions, working-classpolitical parties,working-
class life styles (as incorporated into 'popular' journalism, advertising, and
commercialentertainment).The processof emergence,in such conditions, is then
a constantly repeated,an always renewable, move beyond a phase of practical
incorporation: usually made much more difficult by the fact that much incor-
poration looks like recognition, acknowledgement,and thus a form of acceptance.
In this complexprocessthereis indeedregularconfusionbetweenthe locally residual
(as a form of resistanceto incorporation) and the generally emergent.
Cultural emergencein relation to the emergenceand growing strengthof a class
is then always of major importance,and always complex. But we have also to see
that it is not the only kind of emergence.This recognition is very difficult,
theoretically,though the practical evidenceis abundant.What has really to be said,
as a way of defining important elementsof both the residual and the emergent,and
as a way of understandingthe character of the dominant, is that no mode of
production and therefore no dominant social order and therefore no dominant
culture ever in reality includes or exhaustsall human practice, human energy, and
humanintention. This is not merely a negativeproposition,allowing us to account
for significant things which happenoutside or againstthe dominant mode. On the
contrary it is a fact about the modes of domination, that they select from and
consequentlyexcludethe full rangeof humanpractice.What they excludemay often
be seenas the personalor the private, or as the natural or even the metaphysical.
Indeedit is usually in one or other of thesetermsthat the excludedareais expressed,
since what the dominant has effectively seizedis indeed the ruling definition of the
social.
It is this seizurethat has especiallyto be resisted.For there is always, though in
varying degrees,practical consciousness,in specific relationships, specific skills,
specific perceptions,that is unquestionablysocial and that a specifically dominant
social order neglects,excludes,represses,or simply fails to recognize.A distinctive
and comparativefeatureof any dominantsocial order is how far it reachesinto the
whole rangeof practicesand experiencesin an attemptat incorporation.There can
be areasof experienceit is willing to ignore or dispensewith: to assign as private
or to specializeas aestheticor to generalizeas natural. Moreover, as a social order
changes,in terms of its own developingneeds,theserelations are variable. Thus in
advancedcapitalism, becauseof changesin the social characterof labour, in the
social characterof communications,and in the social characterof decision-making,
the dominantculture reachesmuch further than ever before in capitalist societyinto
hitherto 'reserved'or 'resigned'areasof experienceand practice and meaning. The
areaof effectivepenetrationof the dominantorder into the whole social and cultural
processis thus now significantly greater.This in turn makesthe problemof emergence
especiallyacute,and narrowsthe gap betweenalternativeand oppositionalelements.
318 Raymond Williams
The alternative,especiallyin areasthat impinge on significant areasof the dominant,

is often seenas oppositionaland, by pressure,often convertedinto it. Yet even here
there can be spheresof practice and meaningwhich, almost by definition from its
own limited character,or in its profound deformation, the dominant culture is
unable in any real terms to recognize. Elements of emergencemay indeed be
incorporated,but just as often the incorporatedforms are merely facsimiles of the
genuinelyemergentcultural practice. Any significant emergence,beyond or against
a dominantmode,is very difficult undertheseconditions;in itself and in its repeated
confusion with the facsimiles and novelties of the incorporatedphase.Yet, in our
own period as in others, the fact of emergentcultural practice is still undeniable,
and togetherwith the fact of actively residual practice is a necessarycomplication
of the would-be dominant culture.
This complex processcan still in part be describedin class terms. But there is
always other social being and consciousnesswhich is neglected and excluded:
alternativeperceptionsof others, in immediaterelationships;new perceptionsand
practicesof the material world. In practice these are different in quality from the
developing and articulated interestsof a rising class. The relations betweenthese
two sourcesof the emergent- the class and the excludedsocial (human) area - are
by no meansnecessarilycontradictory.At times they can be very close and on the
relations betweenthem much in political practice depends.But culturaliy and as a
matter of theory the areascan be seen as distinct.
What matters,finally, in understandingemergentculture, as distinct from both
the dominantand the residual,is that it is neveronly a matterof immediatepractice;
indeedit dependscrucialiy on finding new forms or adaptationsof form. Again and
again what we have to observeis in effect a pre-emergence,active and pressingbut
not yet fully articulated, rather than the evident emergencewhich could be more
confidently named.It is to understandmore closely this condition of pre-emergence,
as well as the more evident forms of the emergent,the residual, and the dominant,
that we need to explore the conceptof structuresof feeling.
4.5 D The Dialectic of
Utopia and Ideology
Fredric Jameson
As in all previous history, whoever emergesas victor still

participatesin that triumph in which today'srulers march over
the prostrate bodies of their victims. As is customary, the
spoils are borne aloft in that triumphal parade. These are
generallycalled the cultural heritage.The latter finds a rather
distanced observer in the historical materialist. For such
cultural riches, as he surveys them, everywhere betray an
origin which he cannot but contemplatewith horror. They
owe their existence,not merely to the toil of the greatcreators
who have produced them, but equally to the anonymous
forced labor of the latters' contemporaries.There has never
beena documentof culture whichwas not at one and the same
time a documentof barbarism.
(W AL TER BENJAMIN, 'Theseson the Philosophy of History',
VII)
The conception of the political unconscious... has tended to distance itself, at

certain strategic moments, from those implacably polemic and demystifying
procedurestraditionally associatedwith the Marxist practiceof ideological analysis.
It is now time to confront the latter directly and to spell out such modifications in
more detail. The most influential lesson of Marx - the one which ranges him
alongside Freud and Nietzsche as one of the great negative diagnosticiansof
contemporaryculture and social life - has, of course,rightly been taken to be the
lessonof false consciousness, of classbias and ideological programming,the lesson
of the structurallimits of the values and attitudesof particular social classes,or in
other words of the constitutiverelationshipbetweenthe praxis of such groups and
what they conceptualizeas value or desire and project in the form of culture.
From Jameson,F., The Political Unconscious:Narrative as a socially symbolicact, Methuen,London,

1983, pp. 281-92, 296-7, 298-9.
319
320 Fredric Jameson
In a splendidly arguedconfrontationwith Marxism, the anthropologistMarshall

Sahlins has attemptedto demonstratethat it is by its very philosophical structure
locked into an approach to culture which must thus remain functional or
instrumental in the broadest sense.1 Given the Marxian orientation toward the
reading or demystiftcationof superstructuresin terms of their base,or relations of
production, even the most sophisticatedMarxian analysesof cultural texts must,
accordingto Sahlins,necessarilyalwayspresupposea certainstructuralfunctionality
about culture: the latter will always 'ultimately' (if not far more immediately) be
graspedas the instrument,witting or unwitting, of class domination,legitimation,
and social mystiftcation. Sahlins is untroubled by the paradox that Marx himself
reservedhis most brilliant polemic onslaughtsfor the classical form taken by an
instrumental theory of culture in his own time, namely utilitarianism; nor does
Sahlins seemaware that his own targets- economism,technologicaldeterminism,
the primacy of the forces of production - are also those that have been subjected
to powerful critiques by a range of contemporaryMarxisms which regard them as
deviationsfrom the authenticMarxist spirit. It may, however, readily be admitted
that what he calls the instrumentalizationof culture is a temptation or tendency
within all Marxisms, without, for all that, being a necessaryand fatal consequence.
Before offering a perspectivein which this particularproblembecomesa false one,
we must clarify the troubled position of the individual subject within it. We
suggested... that most forms of contemporarycriticism tend, as toward their
ideal, toward a model of immanence: on the theoretical level that concerns us
here, this is to say that the phenomenologicalideal - that of some ideal unity
of consciousnessor thinking and experienceor the 'objective' fact - continues
to dominate modern thought even where phenomenologyas such is explicitly
repudiated.2 Even the Freudian model of the unconscious, which has been
exemplary in our own proposal of a properly political unconscious here, is
everywheresubvertedby the neo-Freudiannostalgia for some ultimate moment of
cure, in which the dynamicsof the unconsciousproper rise to the light of day and
of consciousness and are somehow'integrated'in an active lucidity about ourselves
and the determinationsof our desiresand our behavior. But the cure in that sense
is a myth, as is the equivalentmirage within a Marxian ideological analysis:namely,
the vision of a moment in which the individual subject would be somehow fully
consciousof his or her determinationby classand would be able to squarethe circle
of ideological conditioning by sheerlucidity and the taking of thought. But in the
Marxian system, only a collective unity - whether that of a particular class, the
proletariat,or of its 'organ of consciousness',the revolutionaryparty - can achieve
this transparency;the individual subject is always positioned within the social
totality (and this is the sense of Althusser's insistence on the permanenceof
ideology).
What this impossibility of immanencemeans in practice is that the dialectical
reversal must always involve a painful 'decentering'of the consciousnessof the
individual subject,whom it confrontswith a determination(whetherof the Freudian
or the political unconscious)that must necessarilybe felt as extrinsic or external to
The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology 321
consciousexperience.It would be a mistaketo think that anyoneever really learns

to live with this ideological 'Copernicanrevolution', any more than the most lucid
subjects of psychoanalysisever really achieve the habit of lucidity and self-
knowledge;the approachto the Real is at best fitful, the retreatfrom it into this or
that form of intellectual comfort perpetual.But if this is so, it follows that we must
bracket that whole dimension of the critique of the Marxist doctrine of
determinationby social being which springsfrom exasperationwith this unpleasant
reflexivity. In particular, it should be stressedthat the processof totalization ...
offers no way out of this the 'labor and suffering of the negative', but must
necessarilybe accompaniedby it, if the processis to be authenticallyrealized.
Once this unavoidableexperiential accompanimentof the dialectic is granted,
however, the theoreticalproblem of interpretive alternativesto an instrumentalor
functional theory of culture may more adequatelybe raised. That such alternatives
are at least abstractlyconceivablemay be demonstratedby Paul Ricoeur'sseminal
reflections on the dual nature of the hermeneuticprocess:
At one pole, hermeneuticsis understoodas the manifestation and restoration of a

meaning addressedto me in the manner of a message,a proclamation, or as is
sometimes said, a kerygma; according to the other pole, it is understood as a
demystification, as a reduction of illusion .... The situation in which languagefinds
itself today comprisesthis double possibility, this double solicitation and urgency: on
the one hand, to purify discourse of its excrescences,liquidate the idols, go from
drunkennessto sobriety,realizeour stateof poverty onceand for all; on the other hand,
to use the most 'nihilistic', destructive,iconoclasticmovementso as to let speakwhat
once,what eachtime, was said, when meaningappearedanew, when meaningwas at
its fullest. Hermeneuticsseems to me to be animated by this double motivation:
willingnessto suspect,willingnessto listen: vow of rigor, vow of obedience.In our time
we have not finished doing away with idols and we have barely begun to listen to
symbols.3
It is unnecessaryto underscorethe obvious, namely the origins of Ricoeur'sthought

and figures in the tradition of religious exegesisand Christianhistoricism. The limits
of Ricoeur's formulation are, however, not specifically theological ones, but are
attributableto the persistenceof categoriesof the individual subject:specifically, his
conception of 'positive' meaning as a kerygma or interpellation (retained in
Althusser'stheory of ideology4) is modeled on the act of communicationbetween
individual subjects,and cannot therefore be appropriatedas such for any view of
meaning as a collective process.
As far as the religious framework of Ricoeur's account is concerned,I have
throughout the presentwork implied what I have suggestedexplicitly elsewhere,
that any comparisonof Marxism with religion is a two-way street, in which the
former is not necessarily discredited by its associationwith the latter. On the
contrary, such a comparisonmay also function to rewrite certain religious concepts
- most notably Christian historicism and the 'concept'of providence,but also the
pretheological systems of primitive magic - as anticipatory foreshadowingsof
322 Fredric Jameson
historical materialism within precapitalist social formations in which scientific

thinking is unavailableas such. Marx's own notion of the so-calledAsiatic mode of
production (or 'Oriental despotism')is the very locus for such reinterpretationof
religious categories,as we will see below.
Meanwhile, the historically original form of the negativedialectic in Marxism -
whether ideology is in it graspedas mere 'false consciousness',or, more compre-
hensively, as structural limitation - should not be allowed to overshadowthe
presencein the Marxian tradition of a whole series of equivalentsto Ricoeur's
doctrine of meaningor positive hermeneutic.Ernst Bloch's ideal of hope or of the
Utopian impulse; Mikhail Bakhtin'snotion of the dialogical as a rupture of the one-
dimensional text of bourgeois narrative, as a carnivalesque dispersal of the
hegemonicorder of a dominantculture; the Frankfurt School'sconceptionof strong
memory as the trace of gratification, of the revolutionary power of that promesse
de bonheurmost immediatelyinscribed in the aesthetictext: all theseformulations
hint at a variety of options for articulating a properly Marxian version of meaning
beyond the purely ideological.
Yet we have also suggested... that even within an ostensiblyreligious framework
such varied options can be measuredagainstthe standardof the medieval system
of four levels, which helpedus to distinguishthe resonanceof the 'moral' level - that
of the individual soul, or of the libidinal Utopia of the individual body - from that
ultimate, and logically prior level traditionally termed the 'anagogical',in which
even such individual visions of Utopian transftgurationare rewritten in terms of the
collective, of the destiny of the humanrace. Such a distinction allows us to spell out
the priority, within the Marxist tradition, of a 'positive hermeneutic'basedon social
class from those still limited by anarchistcategoriesof the individual subject and
individual experience.The conceptof classis thus the spacein which, if anywhere,
a Marxian version of the hermeneuticsof meaning, of some noninstrumental
conceptionof culture, may be tested, particularly in so far as it is from this same
conceptof social classthat the strongestform of a Marxian 'negativehermeneutic'
- of the class characterand functionality of ideology as such - also derives.
Such a demonstrationmight be stagedundera reversalof Walter Benjamin'sgreat
dictum that 'there is no documentof civilization which is not at one and the same
time a documentof barbarism',and would seek to argue the proposition that the
effectively ideological is also, at the same time, necessarily Utopian. What is
logically paradoxicalabout such a proposition can be understood,if not 'resolved',
by consideringthe conceptuallimits imposedon our thinking and our languageby
categoriesthat we have had frequent enoughoccasionto unmaskin the preceding
pages,namely those of the ethical code of good and evil, in which even our own
terminology of 'positive' and 'negative'remainsunavoidably imprisoned. We have
suggestedthat the vocation of the dialectic lies in the transcendenceof this
opposition toward some collective logic 'beyond good and evil', while noting that
the languageof the classicsof dialectical thought has historically failed to overcome
this opposition,which it can only neutralizeby reflexive play acrossthesecategories.
Nor is this particularly surprising, if we take dialectical thought to be the
The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology III
anticipation of the logic of a collectivity which has not yet come into being. In this
sense,to project an imperativeto thoughtin which the ideologicalwould be grasped
as somehowat one with the Utopian, and the Utopian at one with the ideological,
is to formulate a question to which a collective dialectic is the only conceivable
answer.
Yet at a lower and more practical level of cultural analysis this proposition is
perhapssomewhatless paradoxicalin its consequences, and may initially be argued
in terms of a manipulatorytheory of culture. Such theories,which are strongestin
areaslike the study of the media and mass culture in contemporarysociety, must
otherwiserest on a peculiarly unconvincingnotion of the psychologyof the viewer,
as someinert and passivematerial on which the manipulatoryoperationworks. Yet
it doesnot take much reflection to seethat a processof compensatoryexchangemust
be involved here, in which the henceforth manipulatedviewer is offered specifIc
gratifIcations in return for his or her consentto passivity. In other words, if the
ideological function of mass culture is understoodas a processwhereby otherwise
dangerousand protopolitical impulsesare 'managed'and defused,rechanneledand
offered spuriousobjects,then somepreliminary stepmust also be theorizedin which
thesesameimpulses- the raw materialupon which the processworks - are initially
awakenedwithin the very text that seeksto still them. If the function of the mass
cultural text is meanwhileseenrather as the production of false consciousness and
the symbolic reaffirmation of this or that legitimizing strategy, even this process
cannot be graspedas one of sheer violence (the theory of hegemonyis explicitly
distinguishedfrom control by brute force) nor as one inscribing the appropriate
attitudes upon a blank slate, but must necessarilyinvolve a complex strategy of
rhetorical persuasionin which substantial incentives are offered for ideological
adherence.We will say that such incentives,as well as the impulsesto be managed
by the masscultural text, are necessarilyUtopian in nature. Ernst Bloch's luminous
recoveryof the Utopian impulsesat work in that most degradedof all masscultural
texts, advertising slogans - visions of external life, of the transfIgured body, of
preternaturalsexual gratification - may serve as the model for an analysis of the
dependenceof the crudestforms of manipulationon the oldest Utopian longings of
humankind.5 As for the influential Adorno-Horkheimerdenunciationof the 'culture
industry', this same Utopian hermeneutic- implicit in their systemas well - is in
their Dialectic of Enlightenmentobscuredby an embattled commitment to high
culture; yet it has not sufficiently been noticed that it has been displaced to the
succeedingchapterof that work,6 where a similar, yet even more difficult analysis
is undertaken,in which one of the ugliest of all human passions,anti-Semitism,is
shown to be profoundly Utopian in character,as a form of cultural envy which is
at the sametime a repressedrecognition of the Utopian impulse.
Still, such analyses,methodologicallysuggestivethough they are, do not go far
enough along the lines proposedabove. In particular, they depend on an initial
separationbetweenmeansand ends- betweenUtopian gratification and ideological
manipulation- which might well serveas evidencefor the oppositeof what was to
have been demonstrated,and might be invoked to deny the profound identity
324 Fredric Jameson
betweenthesetwo dimensionsof the cultural text. It is possible,indeed, that such

a separationspringsobjectively from the peculiarstructureof the masscultural texts
themselves;and that culture proper, by which we may understandthe 'organic'
culture of older societiesfully as much as the 'high' culture of the presentday,7 may
be expectedto embody such identity in a rather different form.
We must therefore return to the 'strong' form of the problem, and to the class
terms in which we began by posing it. Its traditional Marxist formulation would
then run as follows: how is it possible for a cultural text which fulfills a
demonstrablyideological function, as a hegemonicwork whose formal categories
as well as its contentsecurethe legitimation of this or that form of classdomination
- how is it possiblefor such a text to embody a properly Utopian impulse, or to
resonatea universal value inconsistentwith the narrower limits of class privilege
which inform its more immediateideological vocation? The dilemma is intensified
when we deny ourselves,as we just have, the solution of a coexistenceof different
functions, as when, for instance,it is suggestedthat the greatnessof a given writer
may be separatedfrom his deplorableopinions, and is achievedin spite of them or
even againstthem. Such a separationis possibleonly for a world-view - liberalism
- in which the political and the ideological are mere secondaryor 'public' adjuncts
to the contentof a real 'private' life, which alone is authenticand genuine.It is not
possiblefor any world-view - whetherconservativeor radical and revolutionary -
that takes politics seriously.
There can, I think, be only one consequent'solution' to the problem thus posed:
it is the proposition that all class consciousness- or in other words, all ideology
in the strongestsense,including the most exclusiveforms of ruling-classconscious-
nessjust as much as that of oppositionalor oppressedclasses- is in its very nature
Utopian. This proposition rests on a specific analysis of the dynamics of class
consciousnesswhich can only briefly be summarizedhere,8 and whose informing
idea graspsthe emergenceof classconsciousness as such (what in Hegelianlanguage
is sometimescalled the emergenceof a class-for-itself, as opposedto the merely
potential class-in-itself of the positioning of a social group within the economic
structure) as a result of the struggle betweengroups or classes.According to this
analysis, the prior moment of class consciousnessis that of the oppressedclasses
(whose structural identity - whether a peasantry, slaves, serfs, or a genuine
proletariat- evidently derivesfrom the mode of production).On such a view, those
who must work and produce surplus-valuefor others will necessarilygrasp their
own solidarity - initially, in the unarticulatedform of rage, helplessness,victimiz-
ation, oppressionby a common enemy - before the dominant or ruling class has
any particular incentive for doing so. Indeed, it is the glimpse of such sullen
resistance,and the senseof the nascentpolitical dangersof suchpotentialunifIcation
of the laboring population, which generatesthe mirror-image of class solidarity
among the ruling groups (or the possessorsof the means of production). This
suggests,to use anotherHegelian formula, that the truth of ruling-classconscious-
ness (that is, of hegemonicideology and cultural production) is to be found in
working-classconsciousness.It suggests,even more strongly, that the index of all
classconsciousness is to be found not in the latter's 'contents'or ideological motifs,

but first and foremost in the dawning senseof solidarity with other membersof a
particular group or class, whetherthe latter happento be your fellow landowners,
thosewho enjoy structuralprivilegeslinked to your own, or, on the contrary, fellow
workers and producers,slaves,serfs, or peasants.Only an ethical politics, linked
to thoseethical categorieswe haveoften had occasionto criticize and to deconstruct
in the precedingpages [of The Political Unconscious],will feel the need to 'prove'
that one of these forms of class consciousnessis good or positive and the other
reprehensible or wicked: on the grounds, for example, that working-class
consciousness is potentially more universal than ruling-classconsciousness, or that
the latter is essentiallylinked to violence and repression.It is unnecessaryto argue
these quite correct propositions;ideological commitmentis not first and foremost
a matter of moral choice but of the taking of sidesin a struggle betweenembattled
groups. In a fragmentedsocial life - that is, essentiallyin all class societies- the
political thrust of the struggle of all groups against each other can never be
immediately universal but must always necessarilybe focused on the class enemy.
Even in preclass society (what is called tribal or segmentarysociety, or in the
Marxian tradition, primitive communism), collective consciousnessis similarly
organizedaroundthe perceptionof what threatensthe survival of the group: indeed,
the most powerful contemporaryvision of 'primitive communism',Colin Turnbull's
description of pygmy society,9 suggeststhat the culture of prepolitical society
organizesitself aroundthe externalthreatof the nonhumanor ofnature,in the form
of the rainforest, conceivedas the overarching spirit of the world.
The preceding analysis entitles us to conclude that all class consciousnessof
whatevertype is Utopian in so far as it expressesthe unity of a collectivity; yet it
must be addedthat this proposition is an allogorical one. The achievedcollectivity
or organic group of whatever kind - oppressorsfully as much as oppressed- is
Utopian not in itself, but only in so far as all such collectivities are themselvesfigures
for the ultimate concretecollective life of an achievedUtopian or classlesssociety.
Now we are in a better position to understandhow even hegemonicor ruling-class
culture and ideology are Utopian, not in spite of their instrumental function to
secureand perpetuateclass privilege and power, but rather precisely becausethat
function is also in and of itself the affirmation of collective solidarity.
Such a view dictatesan enlargedperspectivefor any Marxist analysisof culture,
which can no longer be content with its demystifying vocation to unmask and to
demonstratethe ways in which a cultural artifact fulfills a specific ideological
mission, in legitimating a given power structure,in perpetuatingand reproducing
the latter, and in generatingspecific forms of false consciousness (or ideology in the
narrower sense).It must not ceaseto practice this essentiallynegativehermeneutic
function (which Marxism is virtually the only current critical method to assume
today) but must also seek, through and beyond this demonstration of the
instrumental function of a given cultural object, to project its simultaneously
Utopian power as the symbolic affirmation of a specific historical and class form of
collective unity. 10 This is a unified perspectiveand not the juxtaposition of two
326 Fredric Jameson
options or analytic alternatives: neither is satisfactory In itself. The Marxian

'negative hermeneutic', indeed, practiced in isolation, fully justifIes Sahlins's
complaintsabout the 'mechanical'or purely instrumentalnatureof certain Marxian
cultural analyses;while the Utopian or 'positive hermeneutic',practicedin similar
isolation as it is in Frye's doctrine of the collective origins of art, relaxes into the
religious or the theological,the edifying and the moralistic, if it is not informed by
a senseof the class dynamics of social life and cultural production.
[ •..J
Such is then the general theoretical framework in which I would wish to argue
the methodologicalpropositionoutlined here: that a Marxist negativehermeneutic,
a Marxist practice of ideological analysis proper, must in the practical work of
reading and interpretation be exercised simultaneouslywith a Marxist positive
hermeneutic, or a decipherment of the Utopian impulses of these same still
ideological cultural texts. If the Mannheimianovertonesof this dual perspective-
ideology and Utopia - remain active enough to offer communicationalnoise and
conceptualinterference,then alternativeformulations may be proposed,in which
an instrumentalanalysisis coordinatedwith a collective-associationalor communal
reading of culture, or in which a functional method for describingcultural texts is
articulatedwith an anticipatory one.
I would not want to conclude, however, without observingthat the issuesand
dilemmas such a proposal seeksto addressgreatly transcendthe limited field of
literary or even cultural criticism. One hesitatesto defendthe privileged position of
cultural criticism in a self-serving way. Still, it is a historical fact that the
'structuralist' or textual revolution - as, mainly through Althusserianism,it has
transformed a whole range of other disciplines, from political science to
anthropology,and from economicsto legal and juridical studies- takesas its model
a kind of deciphermentof which literary and textual criticism is in many ways the
strong form. This 'revolution', essentially antiempiricist, drives the wedge of the
concept of a 'text' into the traditional disciplines by extrapolatingthe notion of
'discourse'or 'writing' onto objectspreviously thought to be 'realities' or objects in
the real world, such as the variouslevels or instancesof a social formation: political
power, social class, institutions, and events themselves.When properly used, the
conceptof the 'text' doesnot, as in garden-varietysemiotic practicetoday, 'reduce'
theserealities to small and manageablewritten documentsof one kind or another,
but rather liberates us from the empirical object - whether institution, event, or
individual work - by displacing our attention to its constitution as an object and
its relationship to the other objects thus constituted.
[ ..•J
Finally, I will take Tom Nairn's pathbreakingbook on the national question,The

Break-up of Britain, as an example of an analogoustheoretical solution to that
proposed here in an area which remains one of the fundamental ones of
contemporaryworld politics but about which Nairn rightly observesthat it stands

as 'Marxism's great historical failure', blocked precisely by a practice of the
traditional Marxian negativehermeneuticfor which the national questionis a mere
ideological epiphenomenonof the economic.
The task of a theory of nationalism... must be to embraceboth horns of the dilemma.

It must be to seethe phenomenonas a whole, in a way that rises abovethese'positive'
and 'negative'sides.... [Such] distinctionsdo not imply the existenceof two brandsof
nationalism,one healthy and one morbid. The point is that, as the most elementary
comparative analysis will show, all nationalism is both healthy and morbid. Both
progressand regressare inscribed in its genetic code from the start.II
Nor is this insistenceon the simultaneouslyideological and Utopian characterof the

national phenomenona merely theoreticalissue. On the contrary, it is increasingly
clear in today'sworld (if it had ever been in doubt) that a Left which cannotgrasp
the immenseUtopian appeal of nationalism (any more than it can grasp that of
religion or of fascism) can scarcelyhope to 'reappropriate'such collective energies
and must effectively doom itself to political impotence.
But at this point, we must restore Benjamin's identification of culture and
barbarism to its proper sequence,as the affirmation not merely of the Utopian
dimensionof ideological texts, but also and above all of the ideological dimension
of all high culture. So it is that a Marxist hermeneutic- the deciphermentby
historical materialismof the cultural monumentsand tracesof the past - must come
to terms with the certaintythat all the works of classhistory, as they have survived
and beentransmittedto peoplethe various museums,canonsand 'traditions'of our
own time, are all in one way or anotherprofoundly ideological,haveall had a vested
interestin and a functional relationshipto social formations basedon violence and
exploitation; and that, finally, the restorationof the meaningof the greatestcultural
monumentscannot be separatedfrom a passionateand partisan assessmentof
everythingthat is oppressivein them and that knows complicity with privilege and
class domination, stainedwith the guilt not merely of culture in particular but of
History itself as one long nightmare.
Yet Benjamin'ssloganis a hard saying, and not only for liberal and apoliticizing
critics of art and literature, for whom it spells the return of class realities and the
painful recollectionof the dark undersideof even the most seeminglyinnocent and
'life-enhancing'masterpiecesof the canon. For a certainradicalismalso, Benjamin's
formulation comesas a rebuke and a warning againstthe facile reappropriationof
the classicsas humanisticexpressionsof this or that historically 'progressive'force.
It comes, finally, as an appropriate corrective to the doctrine of the political
unconsciouswhich has beendevelopedin thesepages,reassertingthe undiminished
power of ideological distortion that persists even within the restored Utopian
meaningof cultural artifacts, and reminding us that within the symbolic power of
art and culture the will to dominationperseveresintact. It is only at this price - that
of the simultaneousrecognition of the ideological and Utopian functions of the
328 Fredric Jameson
artistic text that a Marxist cultural study can hope to play its part in political
praxis, which remains, of course, what Marxism is all about.
Notes
1. Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1976).
2. As far as literary criticism is concerned,it is often easier to denouncethis mirage of
immanenceon the level of theory than to resist its hold on the level of practical exegesis.
An instructive and influential example of this contradiction may be found in the
contemporary reaction against an 'old-fashioned' Lukacsean 'content analysis' (as
documentedin the important Cluny colloquium held by La Nouvelle Critique in April
1970, and published as Litterature et ideologies): the codifIcation of a whole new
alternatemethod - which exploresthe inscription of ideology in an ensembleof purely
formal categories,such as representation,narrativeclosure,the organizationaroundthe
centeredsubject,or the illusion of presenceis generally associatedwith the Tel que!
and Screengroups, and also, in a different way, with the work of JacquesDerrida (see
in particular 'Hors Livre', in La Dissemination [Paris: Seuil, 1972], pp. 9-67. The
unmaskingof such categoriesand their ideological consequences is then achievedin the
name of newer aesthetic, psychoanalytic, and moral values variously termed
heterogeneity,dissemination,discontinuity, schizophrenia,and ecriture, that is, in the
nameof explicitly anti-immanent(but also antitranscendent)concepts.Yet the impulse
behind the critical practicetherebytheorizedis often preciselyan immanentone, which
bracketsthe historical situationsin which texts are effective and insists that ideological
positionscan be identified by the identifIcation of inner-textualor purely formal features.
Such an approachis thereby able to confIne its work to individual printed texts, and
projectsthe ahistorical view that the formal featuresin questionalways and everywhere
bear the same ideological charge. Paradoxically, then, the extrinsic, 'contextual' or
situational references repudiated by this system turn out to be precisely what is
heterogeneousto it.
3. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy,trans. D. Savage(New Haven, CT: Yale, 1970),
p.27.
4. SeeLouis Althusser,'IdeologicalStateApparatuses',in Lenin and Philosophy,trans. Ben
Brewster (New York: Monthly Review, 1971), pp. 170-77. (See Reading 4.3 above.)
5. Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Ho/fnung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1959), pp. 395-409.
6. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. J.
Cumming, (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), pp. 168-208.
7. In 'ReifIcation and Utopia in massculture' (Social Text, no. 1 [1979], pp. 130-48), I
suggest,however,that it may well be more adequateto study contemporary'high culture'
(that is to say, modernism)as part of a larger cultural unity in which massculture stands
as its inseparabledialectical counterpole.
8. See Marxism and Form, pp. 376-90; and the related reflections in 'Class and allegory
in contemporarymassculture: Dog Day Afternoon as a political fIlm', College English,
vol. 38, No.7 (March 1977), reprinted in Screen Education, no. 30 (Spring, 1979).
These formulations draw on Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial
Society (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959), pp.280-89; on E. P.
Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966),
Preface (but see also his 'Eighteenth century English society: class struggle without
class?',Social History, 3 [May, 1978]; and The Poverty of Theory [London: Merlin,
1979J,pp. 298 ff.); and finally on Jean-PaulSartre,Critique of Dialectical Reason,trans.
A. Sheridan-Smith(London: New Left Books, 1976), esp. pp. 363-404,on the 'fused
group'.
9. Colin Turnbull, The Forest People (New York: Simon & Schuster,1962).
10. That this is no mere theoretical or literary-critical issue may be demonstratedby the
renewal of interest in the nature and dynamicsof fascism, and the urgencyof grasping
this phenomenonin some more adequateway than as the mere epiphenomenal'false
consciousness'of a certain moment of monopoly capitalism. Such attempts,many of
them grounded on Reich and seeking to measurethe mass 'libidinal investment' in
fascism, constitutethe attempt,in our current terminology, to completean 'ideological'
analysis of fascism by one which identifIes its 'Utopian' power and sources.See, for
example, Jean-Pierre Faye, Langages totalitaires (Paris: Hermann, 1972); Maria
Antonietta Macciochi (ed.), Elementspur une analysedu jascisme,2 vols (Paris: 10/18,
1976); as well as Ernst Bloch's Erbscha/t dieser Zeit (1935; Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1973).
11. Tom Nairn, The Break-upoj Britain (London: New Left Books, 1977),pp. 332,347-8.
4.6 D Considerationson
Materialism
SebastianoTimpanaro
Perhapsthe sole characteristiccommon to virtually all contemporaryvarieties of

Western Marxism is their concernto defend themselvesagainst the accusationof
materialism. Gramscianor Togliattian Marxists, Hegelian-ExistentialistMarxists,
Neo-PositivizingMarxists, Freudianor StructuralistMarxists, despitethe profound
dissensionswhich otherwise divide them, are at one in rejecting all suspicion of
collusion with 'vulgar' or 'mechanical'materialism; and they do so with such zeal
as to cast out, togetherwith mechanismor vulgarity, materialismtout court. Much
of the polemical debate between various Marxist groups turns precisely on the
selection of the most effective safeguardagainst the danger of falling into vulgar
materialism: whether this safeguardis to be the dialectic or historicism, an appeal
to Marxist humanism or an associationof Marxism with an empirio-critical or
pragmatistor Platonist epistemology.
[ .•.J
This ostensible self-purification of Marxism is typically concretized and
symbolizedby a devaluationof Engels,who for many holds prime responsibilityfor
the declineof Marxism from its true philosophicalheightsto the depthsof a 'popular
philosophy'. Becauseof its dramatically contradictorycharacter(which deservesa
more profoundstudy), Engels'swork is particularly liable to attack from both main
contemporaryMarxist currents, Hegelian and empirio-pragmatist.On the one
hand, Engelswas much more sensiblethan Marx of the necessityto come to terms
with the natural sciences,to link 'historical' materialism(in the human sciences)to
physical and biological materialism- all the more so, at a time when Darwin had
finally openedthe way to an historical understandingof natureitself. On the other
hand, in his effort to reject any reduction of Marxism to a banal evolutionism or
eclecticpositivism, Engelsundertookto apply the Hegeliandialectic to the sciences
From Timpanaro,S., On Materialism, trans. L. Garner,Verso, London, 1975, pp. 29, 32-6, 40-45,
47-8, 51-4.
330
Considerationson Materialism 331
with a certain punctilio, and to translatephenomenaof physics or biology into the

language of the 'negation of the negation' and the 'conversion of quantity into
quality'. It is for this reasonthat he can be accusedin turn of archaic Hegelianism
and contaminationby positivism, abandonmentof the great Germanphilosophical
tradition and neglectof the pragmatisthints in the Theseson Feuerbach,scientism
and a retrogressiveand superficial scientific culture.
It might be arguedthat polemics againstthe deformationsof vulgar materialism
are justified by the needto struggleagainstStalinistdogmatismand to restoreits free
creative force to Marxism. It is true that in Stalin's opuscule On Dialectical and
Historical Materialism, which becamethe most widely diffused elementarytext on
Marxism, not merely in the USSR but throughoutthe world communistmovement,
it is easy to find extremely schematicand crude assertions,especially as regards
relations between structure and superstructure. But a crude conception and
exposition of Marxism does not necessarilymean an accentuationof its materialist
aspect. In fact, Stalin's brochure, as well as his other writings, lack any specific
interest in the natural sciencesor the relationship betweenman and nature; there
is a completeabsenceof any emphasison the 'passiveside' of consciousness, on the
way in which man is conditioned by his own physical structure and the natural
environment.Indeed,certainof Stalin'spositions,such as his patronageof Lysenko,
or his very theory of socialism and even communismin one country, can well be
defined as idealist and voluntarist. It is no mistake that critics have spoken
of 'Stalinist subjectivism'. The so-calleddogmatismof Stalin and his followers did
not in reality consistof a coherentmaterialistposition, but ratherof a 'politicization'
(in the pejorativesense)of Marxist theory - in other words an immediatereduction
not only of scienceto ideology, but of ideology itself to an instrumentof propaganda
and petty justification of adventitiouspolitical positions, wherebythe most abrupt
changesof policy were in each caselegitimated with pseudo-theoreticalarguments
and presentedas congruentwith the most orthodox Marxism. 1
[. . .J
But what are we to understandby materialism?Moreover, how is materialismto
escapefrom the accusationof itself being a metaphysictoo, and one of the most
naive ones at that?
By materialism we understandabove all acknowledgementof the priority of
natureover 'mind', or if you like, of the physical level over the biological level, and
of the biological level over the socioeconomicand cultural level; both in the sense
of chronologicalpriority (the very long time which supervenedbefore life appeared
on earth, and betweenthe origin of life and the origin of man), and in the senseof
the conditioning which nature still exerciseson man and will continue to exercise
at least for the foreseeablefuture. Cognitively, therefore,the materialist maintains
that experiencecannot be reduced either to a production of reality by a subject
(howeversuchproductionis conceived)or to a reciprocalimplication of subjectand
object. We cannot, in other words, deny or evade the element of passivity in
experience:the external situation which we do not createbut which imposesitself
332 SebastianoTimpanaro
on us. Nor can we in any way reabsorbthis external datum by making it a mere
negativemoment in the activity of the subject, or by making both the subject and
the object mere moments,distinguishableonly in abstraction,of a single effective
reality constitutedby experience.
This emphasison the passiveelementin experiencecertainly doesnot claim to be
a theory of knowledge - somethingwhich in any casecan be constructedonly by
experimentalresearchon the physiology of the brain and the senseorgans,and not
by merely conceptualor philosophicalexercises.But it is the preliminary condition
for any theory of knowledge which is not content with verbalistic and illusory
solutions.
This implies a polemical position towards a major part of modern philosophy,
which has entangledand exhausteditself in the setting up of 'epistemologicaltraps'
to catch and tame the external datum, in order to make it somethingwhich exists
solely as a function of the activity of the subject. It is important to realize that
epistemologyhas undergonesuch an enormous(and sophistical) developmentin
modernthoughtbecauseit hasnot only correspondedto the needto understandhow
knowledge arises, but has been charged with the task of founding the absolute
liberty of man, by eliminating everything which commonly seemsto restrict that
freedom.Whetherthis task has beenexecutedin the direction of a romanticidealism
of the absoluteego, or in that of a critical empiricism, whether the subject-object
relation is conceivedas relation of creation,or scissionwithin an original unity, or
reciprocal action or 'transaction',or any other variant, certainly implies a whole
series of important differences in cultural formation and social ambience, and
explainsthe fierce polemicsof both past and presentamongthe proponentsof these
various idealisms. It does not, however, alter their common characteras illusions.
It should be addedthat the attackson epistemologismby pragmatistsand actualists
of the left also serve,indeedin exasperatedform, the samepurposeof 'annihilating
external reality' and founding human freedom which generatedepistemologism
itself. They thus form a type of polemicwhich from our point of view can be situated
within the general orientation that we hold must be rejected.
It will be said that if the idealism of the absoluteego is the expressionof a culture
stronglyimbuedwith romanticand anti-scientificirrationalism,empirio-criticist and
pragmatist positions arose precisely from reflections on science, and that it is
thereforeillegitimate to counterposea materialismbasedon the sciencesof a century
ago, or even on naive common sense,to these conceptionsas 'more scientific'.
But it is on this very point that mistakesare particularly easy to make. It is true
that scientific knowledgeis the only exact and rigorous form of knowledge. But if
philosophy displaces all its attention from the results and objects of scientific
researchto the researchas such, and if, omitting to considerman'scondition in the
world as it is establishedby the results of scientific research,it confines itself to a
methodologyof the activity of the scientist, then it relapsesinto idealism, because
it then suggeststhat there is only one reality - not nature,but man the investigator
of natureand constructorof his own science.The resultsof scientific researchteach
us that man occupiesa marginal position in the universe;that for a very long time
life did not exist on earth, and that its origin dependedon very special conditions;
that human thought is conditioned by determinateanatomical and physiological
structures,and is clouded or impeded by determinatepathological alterationsof
these;and so on. But let us considertheseresults as mere contentsof our thoughts
as it cogitates or of our activity as it experiments and modifies nature, let us
emphasizethat they do not exist outsideour thought and our activity, and the trick
is done: external reality has been conjured away, and not by an antiquated
humanism hostile to science, but instead with all the blessingsof science and of
modernity!
[...1
The very uncertainty which has always existed within the camp of Marxism as
to the way in which materialism should be understood,and the easewith which
versions of Marxism have prevailed that have attenuatedor directly denied its
materialist character,are undoubtedlydue to the influences of bourgeoisculture.
[...1 But I also believe that they have found a propitious terrain becauseof a lack
of clarity that goesright back to the origin of Marxist theory and was perhapsnever
completely overcomeeven in Marx's mature thought.
Marxism was born as an affirmation of the decisiveprimacy of the socioeconomic
level over juridical, political and cultural phenomena,and as an affirmation of the
historicity of the economy. It might be said that in the expression 'historical
materialism', the noun was a polemic against Hegel and a whole philosophical
tradition which affirmed the primacy of the spirit over any economic structure,
whereas the adjective was a polemic against Feuerbach and English classical
economics,in short against any statically naturalist conceptionof human society.
If a critique of anthropocentrismand an emphasison the conditioning of man by
nature are consideredessential to materialism, it must be said that Marxism,
especially in its first phase (up to and including The German Ideology), is not
materialismproper. Physicaland biological natureis certainly not deniedby Marx,
but it constitutesmore a prehistoric antecedentto human history than a reality
which still limits and conditions man. From the time when man startedto labour
and to produce,it appearsthat he entersinto relationshipwith nature (according
to a famous passagein The German Ideology) only through work. This was to
relapse into a pragmatic conceptionof the relationship betweenman and nature
which illegitimately annuls the 'passiveside' of this relationshipitself; to passover
in silence the fact that man entersinto relation with nature also through heredity
and, even more, through the innumerable other influences of the natural
environmenton his body and hence on his intellectual, moral and psychological
personality. To deny all this by affixing the label of positivism or of vulgar
materialismto it is not possible,whether for the fundamentalreasonthat facts do
not allow themselvesto be vanquished by labels or because,even historically,
materialismhas not been a privilege or a blemish only of the positivist age (among
positivists,indeed,it hasbeena minority position), but characterizeda whole strand
of the eighteenth-centuryEnlightenment (not to speak of earlier philosophical
positions, or later ones such as those of Leopardi or Feuerbach)which cannot be

liquidated with a couple of polemic strokes.
Marx in his maturity - who admiredDarwin and wantedto dedicatethe second
volume of Capital to him, who declared in the preface to Capital itself that he
'viewed the evolution of the economicformation of society as a processof natural
history', - was certainly much more materialist than the Marx of the Theseson
Feuerbach. But the gigantic labour to which he had dedicatedhimself in the field
of political economydid not permit him to developa new conceptionof the relation
betweenman and nature which would fully replace that outlined in his youthful
writings.
Even more than by Marx - though evidently not in dissentfrom him - the need
for the constructionof a materialismwhich was not purely socioeconomicbut also
'natural'was felt by Engels,and this was a greatmerit of his. The impulseto deepen
their materialism in this way came not only from the general philosophical and
scientific climate of the secondhalf of the nineteenthcentury, but more specifically
from the radical changewhich Darwinism introducedin the natural sciences,by its
definitive demonstration(against the concept of nature acceptedby Hegel and
materialistsof Hegelianderivation such as Moleschott)of the historicity of nature.
The task was now no longer to counterposethe historicity of human society to the
ahistoricity of nature, but to establishboth the linkage and the distinction between
the two historicities. Engelscontributedto this task most especiallyin his splendid
book on The Origin of the Family, as well as in his generalexpositionsof Marxism.
However, as we have alreadymentioned,he remainedtorn betweena tendencyto
developphysical-biologicalmaterialismand a tendencyto counterposethe last great
'classical'philosophy of Hegelianismto the 'eclectic soup' of positivist professors.
[ .•• J
When Marxists affirm the 'decisive primacy' of economic and social structures,
and therefore designatethis level and not the biological level underlying it as the
'base'of humansocietyand culture, they are right in relation to the greattransform-
ations and differentiationsof society,which arise fundamentallyas consequences of
changesin economicstructuresand not of the geographicalenvironmentor physical
constitutionof man. The division of humanityinto social classesexplainsits history
infinitely betterthan its division into racesor peoples;and although,as a given fact,
racial hatredsand nationalconflicts haveexistedandcontinueto exist, and although
the ambiguousand compositeconceptsof nation and of homelandalways have a
racist component,there is neverthelessno doubt that theseconflicts, at least from
the end of prehistory onwards, are fundamentallydisguisedor diverted economic
and social conflicts (increasinglyso), not 'genuinely' biological or ethnic contrasts.
Hence the immense methodological superiority of Marx's historiography by
comparison,not merely with a vulgar racist historiography,but evenwith an ethnic
historiographysuch as that of Thierry. 2
By comparisonwith the evolutionarypaceof economicand social structures(and
of the superstructuresdeterminedby them), nature, including man as a biological
entity, also changes,as evolutionism has taught us, but at an immensely slower
tempo. 'Natureis ever green,or rather goes/bysuch long paths/thatshe seemsstill',
says Leopardi.3 If therefore we are studying even a very long period of human
history to examinethe transformationsof society, we may legitimately passover the
physical and biological level, inasmuchas relative to that period it is a constant.
Similarly, we may agreeit is permissiblefor a Marxist, when writing the history of
political or cultural eventswithin the restrictedcontext of a fundamentallyunitary
and stable socioeconomicsituation, to take the latter as a constantand study the
history of the superstructurealone. Engels,and later Gramsci,warnedthat it would
be naive to think that each single superstructuralfact was the repercussionof a
changein the infrastructure.Luporini has recalled that Marx himself, in the 1859
prefaceto A Critique of Political Economy,explicitly affirms the dependenceof the
superstructureon the structureonly 'in its macroscopicand catastrophicaspects,so
to speak,that is, in relation to social revolutions'.4
But if, basing ourselveson this relatively immobile character(over a certain
period) of the economicand social structure,we were to conclude that it has no
conditioningpower over the superstructure,or evenno real existence,we shouldbe
committing a typical 'historicist' fallacy. Now, it is a precisely similar sophismto
deny the conditioning which nature exerciseson humanity in general,just because
this conditioning does not conspicuouslydifferentiate individual epochsof human
history. Marxists put themselvesin a scientifically and polemically weak position if,
after rejectingthe idealist argumentswhich claim to show that the only reality is that
of the Spirit and that cultural facts are in no way dependenton economicstructures,
they then borrow the same argumentsto deny the dependenceof man on nature.
[ ... ]
The historicist polemic against'man in general',which is completely correct as

long as it deniesthat certain historical and social forms such as private property or
class divisions are inherent in humanity in general,errs when it overlooks the fact
that man as a biological being, endowedwith a certain (not unlimited) adaptability
to his external environment,and with certain impulses towards activity and the
pursuit of happiness,subjectto old age and death, is not an abstractconstruction,
nor one of our prehistoricancestors,a speciesof pithecanthropusnow superseded
by historical and social man, but still exists in eachof us and in all probability will
still exist in the future. It is certainly true that the developmentof society changes
men'swaysof feeling pain, pleasureand otherelementarypsycho-physicalreactions,
and that there is hardly anything that is 'purely natural' left in contemporaryman,
that has not beenenrichedand remouldedby the social and cultural environment.
But the general aspectsof the 'human condition' still remain, and the specific
characteristicsintroduced into it by the various forms of associatedlife have not
beensuch as to overthrowthem completely.To maintainthat, since the 'biological'
is always presentedto us as mediatedby the 'social', the 'biological' is nothing and
the 'social' is everything,would once again be idealist sophistry.If we makeit ours,
how are we to defendourselvesfrom thosewho will in turn maintainthat, since all
reality (including economicand social reality) is knowable only through language

(or through the thinking mind), language(or the thinking mind) is the sole reality,
and all the rest is abstraction?
[ .•.J
It is certainly necessaryto warn that the dependenceof the superstructureon the
structure must not be conceivedin a simplistic way. It is still more necessary,as
Luporini has recently observed5 not to content oneselfwith generic refutations of
simplism and mechanism('reciprocal action betweenstructureand superstructure',
'dependenceof the superstructureon the structure, but only in the last instance'),
but fmally to proceedto deepenactual study of the processesby which the super-
structure acquires autonomy (always within certain limits) of the structure, and
exercisesa reactionon it, which will yet remain secondaryby comparisonwith the
action exercisedon it by the structure. However, it seemsto me that the concept
of superstructure,evenunderstoodnon-mechanically,cannotinclude the totality of
cultural activities.
Interestin mathematicsor physicsor philology only arises,it is true, in a definite
social environment; the adoption of particular techniques of research is only
conceivable in a particular society; furthermore ideology itself (this is aimed
specifically at the many modern historianswho considerthemselvesimmune from
all 'practical political' interests) is a perilous but irreplaceable instrument of
research,at least as long as a perfectly classlesssociety has not been achieved.But
the objectivetruths which the scienceshave alreadyattainedin pre-socialistsocieties
(sometimesthe work of politically and socially conservativescientists) are not
reducible to slave-owningor feudal or bourgeois ideology. Otherwise we should
really fall into a debasedhistoricism, into a relativist conceptionof knowledgeand,
at the end of the day, into a denial of externalreality or of its knowability.6 Thus,
just as scientific knowledge is not sic et simpliciter superstructure(although, we
repeat, it is necessarilyconnected with elements of the superstructure),so the
instrumental,ideologically neutral and thereforeextra-classdimensionsthat exist in
all human institutions - in language more than in legal, political and cultural
institutions in the strict sense7 - are not reduciblewithout residueto superstructures.
[ ...J
The constant dimensions (hardly modified hitherto, and perhaps scarcely
modifiable in the future) of the human condition are not, be it clearly understood,
metaphysicalor metahistorical.'Man in general'as we understandit - who is none
other than natural man - is not 'eternalman'; so much so that he has an origin and
will have an end (or a transformationby Darwinian evolution). But though they are
not actually eternal, theseaspectsare neverthelesslong-lasting: that is to say, they
have, relative to the existenceof the human species,much greater stability than
historical or social institutions.8 To attemptto reducethem to the latter is merely
to provide an easypolemical target for thosewho will exploit the inevitable failure
of such a reduction to reaffirm once again the existenceof 'eternal man' - just as
any attempt to derive religion exclusively from economic and social conditions,
overlooking the fact that religion is also an illusory compensationfor the fear of
death and in general for the oppressionwhich nature exerciseson man, plays into
the handsof those who exalt the independentand privileged value of the 'religious
experience,.9 The problem of 'historical and cultural inheritance' and of the
'permanenceand transmissionof values' through successiveand variant forms of
society (the importanceof which is rightly emphasizedby Luporini in the article we
have alreadyhad occasionto cite) will doubtlessfmd a large measureof its solution
in a more articulated conception of the relations between structure and super-
structure and in a closer study of the function of intellectuals as bearersof the
continuity of culture. But we should not forget either that this cultural continuity
- through which, as Marx observed,we feel so near to the poetry of Homer - has
also beenrenderedpossibleby the fact that man as a biological being has remained
essentiallyunchangedfrom the beginningsof civilization to the present;and those
sentimentsand representationswhich are closest to the biological facts of human
existencehave changedlittle.
At this point it will, I think, be sufficiently clear in what respectone can, from
a materialistpoint of view, agreeor disagreewith recentorientationswhich may be
summarizedby such formulas as 'Marxism plus psychoanalysis'or 'Marxism plus
structuralism plus psychoanalysis'.These trends must be concededthe merit of
rejecting the reduction of Marxism to 'historicism' (with all the idealist and
intuitionist errors connotedby this term), to of emphasizingthe need for scientific
study of historical and literary disciplines,and finally of seekingto connectthe study
of historical man with the study of natural man (hencetheir interestin psychology,
in anthropology,and in languageas a more or less intermediateformation between
natural organismsand social institutions).
However, psychoanalysisand structuralism,if they contain an appealto science
against the claims of a purely humanistic culture, are at the same time deeply
permeatedwith anti-materialistideology. The attacksto which psychoanalysishas
been and is subjected'from the Right' should not lead us to forget the fact that this
scientific current arose in polemical opposition to materialist psychology, and
sought to render psychic phenomenaindependentof anatomicaland physiological
data. That linguists with a Croceanor VosslerianbackgroundJ1 attack structuralism
in the name of an identification of languagewith art, does not alter the fact that
structuralismmakes the 'system'it studies into somethingclosed and intrinsically
coherent, and reveals no interest in its genesis'from below', or in the relations
between human activities and their material determinations - whether socio-
economic or biophysical. Its truly Cuvierian concept of 'system' is inherently
ahistorical, not merely anti-historicist. Polarization of the distinction between
synchronyand diachrony,and contemptor indifferencetowardsdiachronicstudies,
are essential characteristicsof structuralism, which cannot be overcome by any
eclectic blending of it.
Surveying these two tendencies,it is more necessarythan ever to separatetheir
scientific achievementsfrom all that is ideological and unverifiable in them (I refer
in particular to psychoanalysis),or even tantamountto charlatanry(I refer, as a

limiting case, to the colossal presumptionsand ridiculous coquetriesof a Uvi-
Strauss).What is neededis an ideologicalconfrontationbetweenMarxism and these
tendencies,an antagonisticand not merely receptive stance: antagonisticnot only
in the senseof a critique of their lack of interest in economicand social facts and
in the link betweentheory and practice, but also in the senseof a critique of their
anti-materialism. Failing this, any rapprochementwith structuralism or psycho-
analysiswill merely end in yet another'modernization'of Marxism, through which
it will be culturally enriched but will always remain subaltern.
It is also wrong, in my view, to assumethat a Marxist interest in linguistics or
psychology today must obligatorily be directed towards the latest schools within
thesedisciplines. If we are convinced(and as a matterof principle we should all be)
that the developmentof bourgeoisculture does not follow a trajectory of absolute
progress,but of progress-and-involution (progressin methodologicalrefinementand
in certain areas of knowledge, involution in ideology and therewith partial
falsification or misinterpretationof properly scientific results), then it may be that
Pavlov will have more to tell us than Freud, at least in certain respects,and Ascoli 12
more than Roman Jakobson. It may also be that the vanguard role within the
sciencesat presentassignedby bourgeoisculture to linguistics and psychologywill
prove debatable,and a more important position be attributed to the historical
sciencesof nature. But of courseall theseoptions dependon a choice for or against
materialism.
Notes
1. This aspectof Stalinism was fi.rst analyzed by Trotsky: see especially The Revolution
Betrayed (New York 1965), pp.32-5. Note also Lukac's comments in Nuovi
Argomenti, no. 57-8, July-October1962, pp. 120-24.
2. Augustin Thierry (1795-1856):Frenchhistorian who concentratedon national conflicts
in Europeanhistory. (NLB)
3. La Ginestra, lines 292-4. (NLB)
4. Engels, letters to Bloch and Schmidt, in Marx-Engels, Selected Correspondence,
(Moscow 1965), pp. 417-25; Gramsci, Prison Notebooks,(London 1971), pp. 407 ff.
See also C. Luporini, 'Realta e Storicita: Economiae Dialettica nel Marxismo', Critica
Marxista, IV, 1966, p. 105, and now in Dialettica e materialismo,p. 207.
5. Realta e Storicita', pp. 104-6.
6. It must be rememberedthat the concept of superstructurehistorically arose from a
critique of religion and law, that is to say, of constructionswhich were both eminently
devoid of objectivevalidity, and especiallyprofusein universalisticpretensions,vaunting
a divine or 'natural'origin. The conceptof superstructureplayed an extremelyimportant
role in demystifying theseclaims. But transferredwithout modifi.cation to the domain of
scientifi.c knowledge,it risks making the latter as relative and subjectivea phenomenon
as religion or law; that is, it can have an anti-materialistand anthropocentriceffect. The
very theory of knowledge as a mirror-reflection, which appearsto be a ne plus ultra of
objectivism,can acquirea relativist characterif it is only historical and social reality, and
not also natural reality, that is taken as the object of the reflection: Kepler's laws or
Pascal'sprinciple then becomemere expressionsof the socioculturalambiencein which

their authors were reared, and not also formulations of objective relations between
phenomena- relations which antedatetheir discoverers.There is a way of writing the
history of scienceas the history of culture, and of equatingsciencewith the history of
science,which may representa major advanceover historical or literary idealism, but
itself remainstoo humanistic.
7. See Stalin's only writing of any theoretical interest, Marxism and Linguistics, and my
comment on it in Belfagor, XVIII, 1963, pp. 9-14.
8. Of course,there are also very considerabledifferencesin the duration of historical and
social superstructures. Marx and Engelsnoted in The CommunistManifestothat certain
forms of consciousness were commonto all successivecivil societieshitherto, sincethey
were all societiesdivided into classes.Probably basinghimself on this passagefrom the
Manifesto, the Triestine writer and scholar Guido Voghera sought to develop from a
Marxist point of view the idea that certain moral principles correspondto the inherent
needs of any society (including communist society), and are therefore certainly
superstructures,but superstructures'of sociality in general'. Although the dangersof a
regressionto an ahistorical conception of ethics are evident, I think that this notion
neverthelessdeservesclose consideration.
9. It may be noted that the role of the relationshipbetweenman and nature in the genesis
and perduranceof religion was precisely perceived by Lenin in a letter to Gorky of
December1913: 'God is (in history and in real life) first of all the complex of ideas
generatedby the brutish subjection of man both by external nature and by the class
yoke.' Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow 1966), vol. 35, p. 128.
10. SeeLouis Althusser, ReadingCapital (London 1979), and Luporini. 'Realtae Storicita'.
However, it should be said that the professionof historicism by Italian Marxists did not
merely have the inferior humanistor intuitionist connotationthat is rightly repudiated
today; it also had the senseof a polemic againstthe metaphysicalor 'actualistic'aspects
of Italian neo-idealism.Especially in the field of literary history, historicism meant a
rejection of the aestheticsof pure intention, and of monographicessays;in other words,
what was summarily defined as a 'return to De Sanctis'.It should also be noted that well
beforeAlthusseror Luporini, therewere Italian Marxists who denouncedthe ambiguities
inherent in the notion of 'historicism': see especially A. La Pennain La Riforma della
Scuola, VI, no. 2, February 1959.
11. Karl Vossler (1872-1949): German linguist and follower of Croce, who equated
languageand poetry. (NLB)
12. GraziadioAscoli (1829-1907);the greatestItalian linguistic scholarof the last century,
a specialist in neo-Latin and Celtic languages.(NLB)
4.7 0 From Hegemony
and Socialist Strategy
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
Introduction
Left-wing thought today standsat a crossroads.The 'evident truths' of the past -
the classicalforms of analysis and political calculation, the nature of the forces in
conflict, the very meaningof the Left's strugglesand objectives- have beenseriously
challengedby an avalancheof historical mutationswhich have riven the ground on
which thosetruths were constituted.Someof thesemutationsdoubtlesscorrespond
to failures and disappointments:from Budapestto Prague and the Polish coup
d'etat, from Kabul to the sequelsof Communistvictory in Vietnam and Cambodia,
a questionmark has fallen more and more heavily over a whole way of conceiving
both socialism and the roads that should lead to it. This has rechargedcritical
thinking, at once corrosive and necessary,on the theoreticaland political baseson
which the intellectual horizon of the Left was traditionally constituted.But there is
more to it than this. A whole series of positive new phenomenaunderlie those
mutations which have made so urgent the task of theoretical reconsideration:the
rise of the new feminism, the protest movementsof ethnic, national and sexual
minorities, the anti-institutionalecology struggleswaged by marginalizedlayers of
the population,the anti-nuclearmovement,the atypical forms of social struggle in
countries on the capitalist periphery - all these imply an extension of social
conflictuality to a wide rangeof areas,which createsthe potential,but no more than
the potential, for an advance towards more free, democratic and egalitarian
societies.
This proliferation of strugglespresentsitself, first of all, as a 'surplus'of the social
vis-a-vis the rational and organized structuresof society - that is, of the social
'order'. Numerousvoices, deriving especially from the liberal-conservativecamp,
have insistently argued that Western societiesface a crisis of governability and a
From Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C., Hegemonyand Socialist Strategy: Towards a radical democratic
politics, Verso, London, 1985, pp. 1-4,149,152-4,159-61,163-9,176-8,193-4.
340
From Hegemonyand Socialist Strategy 341
threatof dissolutionat the handsof the egalitariandanger.However,the new forms

of social conflict have also thrown into crisis theoretical and political frameworks
closer to the ones that we shall seekto engagein dialogue in the major part of this
book. Thesecorrespondto the classicaldiscoursesof the Left, and the characteristic
modes in which it has conceived the agents of social change, the structuring of
political spaces, and the privileged points for the unleashing of historical
transformations.What is now in crisis is a whole conceptionof socialismwhich rests
upon the ontological centrality of the working class, upon the role of Revolution,
with a capital 'r', as the founding momentin the transition from one type of society
to another,and upon the illusory prospectof a perfectly unitary and homogeneous
collective will that will render pointless the moment of politics. The plural and
multifarious characterof contemporarysocial struggleshas finally dissolvedthe last
foundation for that political imaginary. Peopled with 'universal' subjects and
conceptually built around History in the singular, it has postulated'society' as an
intelligible structurethat could be intellectually masteredon the basisof certainclass
positionsand reconstituted,as a rational, transparentorder, through a founding act
of a political character.Today, the Left is witnessingthe final act of the dissolution
of that Jacobin imaginary.
[ •..J
The guiding thread of our analysishas been the transformationsin the concept
of hegemony,consideredas a discursive surface and fundamental nodal point of
Marxist political theorization. Our principal conclusionis that behind the concept
of 'hegemony' lies hidden something more than a type of political relation
complementaryto the basic categoriesof Marxist theory. In fact, it introducesa
logic of the social which is incompatible with those categories.Faced with the
rationalismof classicalMarxism, which presentedhistory and society as intelligible
totalities constituted around conceptuallyexplicable laws, the logic of hegemony
presenteditself from the outset as a complementaryand contingent operation,
required for conjunctural imbalances within an evolutionary paradigm whose
essentialor 'morphological'validity was not for a momentplacedin question.(One
of the central tasks of this book will be to determine this specific logic of
contingency.)As the areasof the concept'sapplicationgrew broader,from Lenin to
Gramsci, the field of contingent articulations also expanded,and the category of
'historical necessity' - which had been the cornerstoneof classical Marxism -
withdrew to the horizon of theory.... The expansionand determinationof the social
logic implicit in the concept of 'hegemony'- in a direction that goes far beyond
Gramsci - will provide us with an anchorage from which contemporarysocial
strugglesare thinkable in their specificity, as well as permitting us to outline a new
politics for the Left basedupon the project of a radical democracy.
One questionremainsto be answered:why shouldwe broachthis task through a
critique and a deconstructionof the various discursivesurfacesof classicalMarxism?
Let us first say that there is not one discourseand one systemof categoriesthrough
which the 'real' might speak without mediations. In operating deconstructively
342 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
within Marxist categories,we do not claim to be writing 'universal history', to be

inscribing our discourseas a moment of a single, linear processof knowledge.Just
as the era of normative epistemologieshas come to an end, so too has the era of
universal discourses.Political conclusionssimilar to those set forth in this book
could have been approximatedfrom very different discursive formations - for
example,from certain forms of Christianity, or from libertarian discoursesalien to
the socialisttradition - none of which could aspireto be the truth of society (or 'the
in surpassablephilosophy of our time', as Sartre put it). For this very reason,
however, Marxism is one of the traditions through which it becomespossible to
formulate this new conception of politics. For us, the validity of this point of
departureis simply basedon the fact that it constitutesour own past.
Is it not the casethat, in scaling down the pretensionsand the area of validity of
Marxist theory, we are breaking with somethingdeeply inherent in that theory:
namely,its monist aspirationto capturewith its categoriesthe essenceor underlying
meaningof History? The answercan only be in the affirmative. Only if we renounce
any epistemologicalprerogativebasedupon the ontologically privileged position of
a 'universalclass'will it be possibleseriouslyto discussthe presentdegreeof validity
of the Marxist categories.At this point we shouldstatequite plainly that we are now
situatedin a post-Marxistterrain. It is no longer possibleto maintainthe conception
of subjectivity and classeselaboratedby Marxism, nor its vision of the historical
courseof capitalist development,nor, of course,the conceptionof communismas
a transparent society from which antagonisms have disappeared.But if our
intellectual project in this book is post-Marxist,it is evidently also post-Marxist. It
has been through the development of certain intuitions and discursive forms
constitutedwithin Marxism, and the inhibition or elimination of certainothers,that
we have constructeda conceptof hegemonywhich, in our view, may be a useful
instrumentin the struggle for a radical, libertarian and plural democracy.
[ •.. J
Hegemonyand Radical Democracy

[. . .J
In this chapter we shall defend the thesis that It IS [theJ moment of continuity
betweenthe Jacobin and the Marxist political imaginary which has to be put in
questionby the project for a radical democracy.The rejection of privileged points
of rupture and the confluenceof strugglesinto a unified political space,and the
acceptance,on the contrary, of the plurality and indeterminacyof the social, seem
to us the two fundamental bases from which a new political imaginary can be
constructed,radically libertarian and infInitely more ambitiousin its objectivesthan
that of the classic Left. This demands, in the fIrst place, a description of the
historical terrain in which it emerged,which is the field of what we shall call the
'democraticrevolution'.
The Democratic Revolution
The theoretical problematic which we have presented excludes not only the
concentrationof social conflict on a priori privileged agents,but also referenceto
any generalprinciple or substratumof an anthropologicalnaturewhich, at the same
time that it unified the different subject positions, would assign a characterof
inevitability to resistanceagainst the diverse forms of subordination. There is
thereforenothing inevitable or natural in the different strugglesagainstpower, and
it is necessaryto explain in each case the reasonsfor their emergenceand the
different modulationsthey may adopt. The struggle against subordinationcannot
be the result of the situation of subordinationitself. Although we can affirm, with
Foucault,that whereverthere is power there is resistance,it must also be recognized
that the forms of resistancemay be extremelyvaried. Only in certain casesdo these
forms of resistancetake on a political character and become struggles directed
towards putting an end to relations of subordinationas such. If throughout the
centuries there have been multiple forms of resistanceby women against male
domination, it is only under certain conditions and specific forms that a feminist
movementwhich demandsequality (equality before the law in the first place, and
subsequentlyin other areas)has been able to emerge.Clearly, when we speakhere
of the 'political' characterof thesestruggles,we do not do so in the restrictedsense
of demandswhich are situatedat the level of parties and of the State. What we are
referring to is a type of action whose objective is the transformationof a social
relation which constructs a subject in a relationship of subordination. Certain
contemporaryfeminist practices,for example, tend to transform the relationship
betweenmasculinity and femininity without passingin any way through parties or
the State. Of course,we are not seekingto deny that certain practicesrequire the
interventionof the political in its restrictedsense.What we wish to point out is that
politics as a practiceof creation,reproductionand transformationof social relations
cannotbe locatedat a determinatelevel of the social, as the problem of the political
is the problem of the institution of the social, that is, of the definition and
articulation of social relations in a field crisscrossedwith antagonisms.
Our central problem is to identify the discursiveconditions for the emergenceof
a collective action, directedtowards struggling againstinequalitiesand challenging
relations of subordination. We might also say that our task is to identify the
conditions in which a relation of subordinationbecomesa relation of oppression,
and thereby constitutesitself into the site of an antagonism.We enter here onto a
terrain constituted by numerous terminological shifts which have ended by
establishinga synonymity between'subordination','oppression',and 'domination'.
The basewhich makesthis synonymitypossibleis, as is evident,the anthropological
assumptionof a 'humannature'and of a unified subject:if we can determinea priori
the essence of a subject, every relation of subordination which denies it

automatically becomesa relation of oppression.But if we reject this essentialist
perspective,we need to differentiate 'subordination'from 'oppression'and explain
the precise conditions in which subordination becomes oppressive. We shall
understandby a relation of subordinationthat in which an agentis subjectedto the
decisionsof another - an employeewith respectto an employer, for example,or
in certain forms of family organizationthe woman with respectto the man, and so
on. We shall call relations of oppression, in contrast, those relations of sub-
ordinationwhich havetransformedthemselvesinto sitesof antagonisms.Finally, we
shall call relations of domination the set of those relations of subordinationwhich
are consideredas illegitimate from the perspective,or in the judgement,of a social
agentexternalto them, and which, as a consequence, mayor may not coincidewith
the relations of oppressionactually existing in a determinatesocial formation. The
problem is, therefore,to explain how relationsof oppressionare constitutedout of
relationsof subordination.It is clear why relationsof subordination,consideredin
themselves,cannotbe antagonisticrelations:a relation of subordinationestablishes,
simply, a set of differential positions betweensocial agents,and we already know
that a systemof differenceswhich constructseach social identity as positivity not
only cannot be antagonistic,but would bring about the ideal conditions for the
elimination of all antagonisms- we would be faced with a sutured social space,
from which every equivalencewould be excluded. It is only to the extent that the
positive differential characterof the subordinatedsubjectposition is subvertedthat
the antagonismcan emerge.'Serf', 'slave', and so on, do not designatein themselves
antagonisticpositions;it is only in the termsof a different discursiveformation, such
as 'the rights inherentto every human being', that the differential positivity of these
categoriescan be subvertedand the subordinationconstructedas oppression.This
meansthat there is no relation of oppressionwithout the presenceof a discursive
'exterior' from which the discourseof subordinationcan be interrupted.1 The logic
of equivalencein this sensedisplacesthe effects of somediscoursestowardsothers.
If, as was the case with women until the seventeenthcentury, the ensembleof
discourseswhich constructedthem as subjectsfixed them purely and simply in a
subordinated position, feminism as a movement of struggle against women's
subordinationcould not emerge.Our thesisis that it is only from the momentwhen
the democratic discourse becomesavailable to articulate the different forms of
resistanceto subordination that the conditions will exist to make possible the
struggle againstdifferent types of inequality. In the caseof women we may cite as
an example the role played in England by Mary Wollstonecraft, whose book
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, publishedin 1792, determinedthe birth of
feminism through the use made in it of the democraticdiscourse,which was thus
displacedfrom the field of political equality betweencitizens to the field of equality
betweenthe sexes.
[ ...J
Democratic Revolution and New Antagonisms
The equivalential displacementbetween distinct subject positions - which is a

condition for the emergenceof an antagonismmay thus presentitself in two
fundamentalvariants. Firstly, it may be a question of relations of subordination
alreadyin existencewhich, thanks to a displacementof the democraticimaginary,
are rearticulatedas relationsof oppression.To take the caseof feminism onceagain:
it is becausewomen as women are denied a right which the democraticideology
recognizesin principle for all citizensthat there appearsa fissure in the construction
of the subordinatedfeminine subjectfrom which an antagonismmay arise. It is also
the casewith the ethnic minorities who demandtheir civil rights. But the antagonism
can also arise in other circumstances- for example,when acquiredrights are being
called into question,or when social relationswhich had not beenconstructedunder
the form of subordination begin to be so under the impact of certain social
transformations.In this caseit is becauseit is negatedby practicesand discourses
bearing new forms of inequality that a subject position can becomethe site of an
antagonism.But in every case what allows the forms of resistanceto assumethe
character of collective struggles is the existence of an external discourse which
impedesthe stabilization of subordinationas difference.
The unsatisfactoryterm 'new social movements'groupstogethera seriesof highly
diverse struggles:urban, ecological, anti-authoritarian,anti-institutional, feminist,
anti-racist,ethnic, regional or that of sexualminorities. The commondenominator
of all of them would be their differentiation from workers' struggles,consideredas
'class' struggles. It is pointless to insist upon the problematicnature of this latter
notion: it amalgamatesa seriesof very different strugglesat the level of the relations
of production, which are set apart from the 'new antagonisms'for reasonsthat
display all too clearly the persistenceof a discoursefounded upon the privileged
statusof 'classes'.What interestsus about thesenew social movements,then, is not
the idea of arbitrarily grouping them into a categoryopposedto that of class, but
the novel role they play in articulatingthat rapid diffusion of social conflictuality to
more and more numerous relations which is characteristic today of advanced
industrial societies.This is what we shall seek to analysethrough the theoretical
problematic presentedabove, which leads us to conceive these movementsas an
extensionof the democraticrevolution to a whole new seriesof social relations. As
for their novelty, that is conferredupon them by the fact that they call into question
new forms of subordination.We should distinguish two aspectsof this relation of
continuity/discontinuity.The aspectof continuity basicallyinvolves the fact that the
conversion of liberal-democraticideology into the 'common sense' of Western
societies laid the foundation for that progressive challenge to the hierarchical
principle which Tocqueville called the 'equalization of conditions'. It is the
permanenceof this egalitarianimaginary which permits us to establisha continuity
betweenthe strugglesof the nineteenthcentury againstthe inequalitiesbequeathed
by the ancien regime and the social movementsof the present.But from a second
point of view we can speak of discontinuity, as a good proportion of the new

political subjectshave been constitutedthrough their antagonisticrelationship to
recent forms of subordination, derived from the implanting and expansion of
capitalist relations of production and the growing intervention of the state. It is to
thesenew relationsof subordinationand to the antagonismsconstitutedwithin them
that we shall now addressourselves.
It was in the context of the reorganizationwhich took place after the Second
World War that a seriesof changesoccurred at the level of social relations and a
new hegemonicformation was consolidated.The latter articulatedmodifications at
the level of the labour process,the form of stateand the dominantmodesof cultural
diffusion which were to bring abouta profoundtransformationin the existing forms
of social intercourse.If we examinethe problem from an economicpoint of view,
the decisive change is what Michel Aglietta has termed the transition from an
extensiveto an intensive regime of accumulation.The latter is characterizedby the
spreadof capitalist relations of productionto the whole set of social relations, and
the subordinationof the latter to the logic of production for profit. According to
Aglietta the fundamentalmomentof this transition is the introduction of Fordism,
which he describesas 'the principle of an articulation betweenprocessof production
and mode of consumption'.2 More specifically, it is the articulation between a
labour processorganizedaround the semi-automaticproduction line, and a mode
of consumption characterized by the individual acquisition of commodities
producedon a large scale for private consumption.This penetrationof capitalist
relations of production, initiated at the beginning of the century and steppedup
from the 1940son, was to transformsocietyinto a vast marketin which new 'needs'
were ceaselesslycreated,and in which more and more of the productsof human
labour were turnedinto commodities.This 'commodification'of social life destroyed
previous social relations, replacing them with commodity relations through which
the logic of capitalist accumulationpenetratedinto increasinglynumerousspheres.
Today it is not only as a seller of labour-powerthat the individual is subordinated
to capital, but also through his or her incorporationinto a multitude of other social
relations: culture, free time, illness, education, sex, and even death. There is
practically no domain of individual or collective life which escapescapitalist
relations.
But this 'consumersociety' has not led to the end of ideology, as Daniel Bell
announced,nor to the creation of a one-dimensionalman, as Marcusefeared. On
the contrary, numerousnew struggles haveexpressedresistanceagainst the new
forms of subordination,and this from within the very heartof the new society. Thus
it is that the waste of natural resources,the pollution and destruction of the
environment, the consequencesof productivism have given birth to the ecology
movement.Other struggles,which Manuel Castellsterms 'urban',3 expressdiverse
forms of resistance to the capitalist occupation of social space. The general
urbanizationwhich has accompaniedeconomicgrowth, the transferof the popular
classesto the urban periphery or their relegationto the decayinginner cities, and
the general lack of collective goods and services have caused a series of new
problems which affect the organization of the whole of social life outside work.
Hencethe multiplicity of social relationsfrom which antagonismsand strugglesmay
originate: habitat, consumption,various servicescan all constituteterrains for the
struggle against inequalities and the claiming of new rights.
[. . .J
One cannotunderstandthe presentexpansionof the fleld of social conflictuality
and the consequentemergenceof new political subjectswithout situatingboth in the
context of the commodiflcationand bureaucratizationof social relationson the one
hand and the reformulation of the liberal-democraticideology - resuiting from the
expansionof strugglesfor equality - on the other. For this reasonwe haveproposed
that this proliferation of antagonismsand calling into question of relations of
subordinationshould be consideredas a moment of deepeningof the democratic
revolution. This has also been stimulated by the third important aspect in the
mutation of social relations which has characterizedthe hegemonicformation of
the post-warperiod: namely, the new cultural forms linked to the expansionof the
meansof mass communication.Thesewere to make possible a new mass culture
which would profoundly shake traditional identities. Once again, the effects here
are ambiguous, as along with the undeniable effects of massiflcation and
uniformization, this media-basedculture also contains powerful elementsfor the
subversionof inequalities: the dominant discoursesin consumersociety presentit
as social progressand the advanceof democracy,to the extentthat it allows the vast
majority of the populationaccessto an ever-increasingrangeof goods. Now, while
Baudrillard is right to say that we are 'ever further away from an equality vis-C.-vis
the object',4 the reigning appearanceof equality and the cultural democratization
which is the inevitableconsequence of the action of the media permit the questioning
of privileges based upon older forms of status. Interpellated as equals in their
capacity as consumers,ever more numerousgroups are impelled to reject the real
inequalities which continue to exist. This 'democratic consumer culture' has
undoubtedly stimulated the emergenceof new struggles which have played an
important part in the rejection of old forms of subordination,as was the casein the
United States with the struggle of the black movement for civil rights. The
phenomenonof the young is particularly interesting,and it is no causefor wonder
that they should constitutea new axis for the emergenceof antagonisms.In order
to createnew necessities,they are increasinglyconstructedas a speciflc categoryof
consumer,which stimulatesthem to seeka flnancial autonomythat society is in no
condition to give them. On the contrary, the economiccrisis and unemployment
maketheir situationdifficult indeed.If we add to this the disintegrationof the family
cell and its growing reduction to pure functions of consumption,along with the
absenceof social forms of integrationof these'new subjects'who have receivedthe
impact of the generalquestioningof existing hierarchies,we easily understandthe
different forms which the rebellion of the young has adoptedin industrial societies.
The fact that these'new antagonisms'are the expressionof forms of resistanceto
the commodiflcation,bureaucratizationand increasinghomogenizationof social life
itself explainswhy they should frequently manifestthemselvesthrough a proliferation

of particularisms,and crystallize into a demandfor autonomy itself. It is also for
this reason that there is an identinable tendency towards the valorization of
'differences' and the creation of new identities which tend to privilege 'cultural'
criteria (clothes,music, language,regional traditions, and so on). In so far as of the
two great themesof the democraticimaginary - equality and liberty - it was that
of equality which was traditionally predominant,the demandsfor autonomybestow
an increasingly central role upon liberty. For this reasonmany of these forms of
resistanceare mademanifestnot in the form of collective struggles,but through an
increasinglyaffirmed individualism. (The Left, of course,is ill preparedto take into
accountthesestruggles,which even today it tendsto dismiss as 'liberal'. Hence the
dangerthat they may be articulated by a discourseof the Right, of the defenceof
privileges.) But in any case,and whateverthe political orientation through which
the antagonismcrystallizes(this will dependupon the chains of equivalencewhich
constructit), the form of the antagonismas such is identical in all cases.That is to
say, it alwaysconsistsin the constructionof a social identity - of an overdetermined
subjectposition - on the basisof the equivalencebetweena set of elementsor values
which expel or externalizethoseothersto which they are opposed.Once again, we
nnd ourselvesconfronting the division of social space.
[ ...J
The central idea which we have defendedthus far is that the new struggles- and
the radicalizationof older strugglessuch as those of women or ethnic minorities -
should be understoodfrom the double perspectiveof the transformationof social
relationscharacteristicof the new hegemonicformation of the post-warperiod, and
of the effects of the displacementinto new areas of social life of the egalitarian
imaginary constitutedaroundthe liberal-democraticdiscourse.It is this which has
provided the framework necessaryfor the questioningof the different relations of
subordinationand the demandingof new rights. That the democraticimaginary has
played a fundamental role in the eruption of new demandssince the 1960s is
perfectly well understoodby the American neo-conservatives,who denouncethe
'excessof democracy'and the wave of 'egalitarianism'which in their view caused
an overload in the political systemsof the West. SamuelHuntington, in his report
to the Trilateral Commissionin 1975, arguedthat the strugglesin the United States
in the 1960s for greater equality and participation had provoked a 'democratic
surge' which had made society 'ungovernable'.He concludedthat 'the strength of
the democratic ideal poses a problem for the governability of democracy'.5 The
increasinglynumerousdemandsfor real equality have led society, accordingto the
neo-conservatives,to the edge of the 'egalitarianprecipice'. This is where they see
the origins of the doubletransformationwhich, in their opinion, the idea of equality
has undergone:it haspassedfrom equality of opportunityto equality of results,and
from equality betweenindividuals to equality betweengroups. Daniel Bell considers
that this 'new egalitarianism'puts in jeopardy the true ideal of equality, whose
objective cannot be equality of results, but a 'just meritocracy'.6 The presentcrisis
is, then, seenas the result of a 'crisis of values',the consequence of the development
of an 'adversaryculture' and of the 'cultural contradictionsof capitalism'.
Thus far we have presentedthe emergenceof new antagonismsand political
subjectsas linked to the expansionand generalizationof the democraticrevolution.
In reality, it can also be seenas a prolongationof various other areasof political
effectswhich we havecomeacrossfrequently throughoutour analysis.In particular,
the proliferation of these antagonismsmakesus see in a new light the problem of
the fragmentation of the 'unitary' subjects of the social struggles with which
Marxism found itself confrontedin the wake of its first crisis, at the end of the last
century. All the discussionon strategiesfor recompositionof working-classunity,
seenin perspective,is nothing other than the first act of a recognition - reluctant,
it is true - of the plurality of the social, and the unsuturedcharacterof all political
identity. If we read sous rature the texts of Rosa Luxemburg, Labriola, and of
Kautsky himself, we shall see that this unassimilablemoment of plurality is in one
way or another present in their discourse, undermining the coherenceof their
categories.It is clear that this multiformity was not necessarilya negativemoment
of fragmentationor the reflection of an artificial division resulting from the logic of
capitalism,as the theoristsof the SecondInternationalthought, but the very terrain
which made possiblea deepeningof the democraticrevolution. As we shall see,this
deepeningis revealedeven in the ambiguitiesand difficulties which every practiceof
articulation and recompositionhas to face. Renunciationof the categoryof subject
as a unitary, transparentand suturedentity opensthe way to the recognitionof the
specificity of the antagonismsconstitutedon the basisof different subjectpositions,
and, hence,the possibility of the deepeningof a pluralist and democraticconception.
The critique of the categoryof unified subject,and the recognitionof the discursive
dispersion within which every subject position is constituted, therefore involve
somethingmore than the enunciationof a generaltheoreticalposition: they are the
sine qua non for thinking the multiplicity out of which antagonismsemerge in
societiesin which the democraticrevolution has crosseda certain threshold. This
gives us a theoreticalterrain on the basis of which the notion of radical and plural
democracy- which will be central to our argumentfrom this point on - finds the
first conditions under which it can be apprehended.Only if it is acceptedthat the
subjectpositions cannotbe led back to a positive and unitary founding principle -
only then can pluralism be consideredradical. Pluralism is radical only to the extent
that eachterm of this plurality of identitiesfinds within itself the principle of its own
validity, without this having to be sought in a transcendentor underlying positive
ground for the hierarchy of meaningof them all and the sourceand guaranteeof
their legitimacy. And this radical pluralism is democratic to the extent that the
autoconstitutivity of each one of its terms is the result of displacementsof the
egalitarianimaginary. Hence, the project for a radical and plural democracy,in a
primary sense,is nothing other than the struggle for a maximum autonomization
of sphereson the basis of the generalizationof the equivalential-egalitarianlogic.
This approachpermits us to redimensionand do justice to workers' struggles
themselves,whose characteris distorted when they are contrasteden bloc to the
strugglesof the 'new political subjects'.Once the conceptionof the working class
as a 'universalclass'is rejected,it becomespossibleto recognizethe plurality of the
antagonismswhich take place in the field of what is arbitrarily groupedunder the
label of 'workers' struggles',and the inestimableimportanceof the great majority
of them for the deepeningof the democraticprocess.Workers' struggleshave been
numerous,and have assumedan extraordinaryvariety of forms as a function of
transformationsin the role of the state, the trade-union practices of different
categoriesof workers, the antagonismswithin and outside the factories, and the
existing hegemonicequilibria. An excellentexampleis afforded us by the so-called
'new workers' struggles',which took place in Franceand in Italy at the end of the
1960s. They show well how the forms of struggleswithin the factory dependupon
a discursive context much vaster than that of simple relations of production. The
evident influence of the strugglesand slogansof the studentmovement;the central
role played by young workers, whose culture was radically different from that of
their older colleagues;the importanceof immigrants in Franceand southernersin
Italy - all this reveals to us that the other social relations in which workers are
enrolled will determinethe mannerin which they react inside the factory, and that
as a result the plurality of theserelations cannot be magically erasedto constitute
a single working class. Nor, then, can workers' demandsbe reducedto a unique
antagonismwhose nature is ontologically different from that of other social and
political subjects.
Thus far we have spoken of a multiplicity of antagonismswhose effects,
converging and overdetermined,are registeredwithin the framework of what we
have called the 'democraticrevolution'. At this point it is necessary,nevertheless,to
make it clear that the democraticrevolution is simply the terrain upon which there
operatesa logic of displacementsupportedby an egalitarianimaginary, but that it
does not predeterminethe direction in which this imaginary will operate. If this
direction were predeterminedwe should simply have constructeda new teleology -
we would be on a terrain similar to that of Bernstein'sEntwicklung.But in that case
there would be no room at all for a hegemonicpractice. The reasonwhy it is not
thus, and why no teleologycan accountfor social articulations,is that the discursive
compassof the democraticrevolution opensthe way for political logics as diverse
as right-wing populism and totalitarianism on the one hand, and a radical
democracy on the other. Therefore, if we wish to construct the hegemonic
articulationswhich allow us to set ourselvesin the direction of the latter, we must
understandin all their radical heterogeneitythe range of possibilities which are
openedin the terrain of democracyitself.
It cannotbe doubtedthat the proliferation of new antagonismsand of 'new rights'
is leadingto a crisis of the hegemonicformation of the post-warperiod. But the form
in which this crisis will be overcomeis far from being predetermined,as the manner
in which rights will be defined and the forms which struggleagainstsubordination
will adopt are not unequivocally established. We are faced here with a true
polysemia.Feminismor ecology,for example,exist in multiple forms, which depend
upon the mannerin which the antagonismis discursivelyconstituted.Thus we have
a radical feminism which attacksmen as such; a feminism of differencewhich seeks

to revalorize'femininity'; and a Marxist feminism for which the fundamentalenemy
is capitalism,consideredas linked indissolubly to patriarchy. There are thereforea
plurality of discursive forms of constructing an antagonism on the basis of the
different modesof women'ssubordination.Ecology, in the sameway, may be anti-
capitalist, anti-industrialist, authoritarian, libertarian, socialist, reactionary, and
so on. The forms of articulation of an antagonism,therefore, far from being
predetermined,are the result of a hegemonic struggle. This affirmation has
important consequences,as it implies that these new strugglesdo not necessarily
have a progressivecharacter,and that it is thereforean error to think, as many do,
that they spontaneouslytake their place in the context of left-wing politics. Many
have devoted themselves since the 1960s to the search for a new privileged
revolutionarysubjectwhich might come to replacethe working class,with the latter
seen as having failed in its historical mission of emancipation. The ecological
movements,the studentmovements,feminism and the marginal masseshave been
the most popularcandidatesfor the carrying out of this new role. But it is clear that
such an approachdoesnot escapethe traditional problematic,but simply displaces
it. There is no uniqueprivileged position from which a uniform continuity of effects
will follow, concludingwith the transformationof society as a whole. All struggles,
whetherthoseof workersor otherpolitical subjectsleft to themselves,havea partial
character,and can be articulatedto very different discourses.It is this articulation
which gives them their character,not the place from which they come. There is
thereforeno subject - nor, further, any 'necessity'- which is absolutelyradical and
irrecuperable by the dominant order, and which constitutes an absolutely
guaranteedpoint of departurefor a total transformation.(Equally, there is nothing
which permanentlyassuresthe stability of an establishedorder.)
[. . .J
Radical Democracy: Alternative for a New Left
[.•.J
It is clear, therefore,that a left alternativecan only consist of the constructionof
a different systemof equivalents,which establishessocial division on a new basis.
In the face of the projectfor the reconstructionof a hierarchicsociety,the alternative
of the Left should consist of locating itself fully in the fteld of the democratic
revolution and expandingthe chains of equivalentsbetweenthe different struggles
againstoppression.The task of the Left therefore cannot be to renounceliberal-
democraticideology, but on the contrary, to deepenand expandit in the direction
of a radical and plural democracy.We shall explain the dimensionsof this task in
the following pages,but the very fact that it is possiblearisesout of the fact that
the meaningof liberal discourseon individual rights is not deftnitively ftxed; and just
as this unftxity permits their articulation with elementsof conservativediscourse,it
also permits different forms of articulation and redefinition which accentuatethe

democraticmoment. That is to say, as with any other social element,the elements
making up the liberal discoursenever appearas crystallized, and may be the field
of hegemonicstruggle. It is not in the abandonmentof the democraticterrain but,
on the contrary, in the extensionof the field of democraticstrugglesto the whole
of civil society and the state,that the possibility residesfor a hegemonicstrategyof
the Left. It is neverthelessimportant to understandthe radical extentof the changes
which are necessaryin the political imaginary of the Left, if it wishesto succeedin
founding a political practice fully located in the field of the democraticrevolution
and consciousof the depth and variety of the hegemonicarticulations which the
presentconjuncturerequires. The fundamentalobstaclein this task is the one to
which we have beendrawing attention from the beginningof this book: essentialist
apriorism, the conviction that the social is suturedat some point, from which it is
possibleto fix the meaningof any event independentlyof any articulatory practice.
This hasled to a failure to understandthe constantdisplacementof the nodal points
structuringa social formation, and to an organizationof discoursein termsof a logic
of' a priori privileged points' which seriouslylimits the Left's capacityfor action and
political analysis.This logic of privileged points has operatedin a variety of direc-
tions. From the point of view of the determiningof the fundamentalantagonisms,
the basic obstacle,as we have seen,has been classism: that is to say, the idea that
the working classrepresentsthe privileged agentin which the fundamentalimpulse
of social change resides - without perceiving that the very orientation of the
working class dependsupon a political balanceof forces and the radicalizationof
a plurality of democraticstruggleswhich are decidedin good part outsidethe class
itself. From the point of view of the social levels at which the possibility of
implementingchangesis concentrated,the fundamentalobstacleshave beenstatism
- the idea that the expansionof the role of the stateis the panaceafor all problems;
and economism(particularly in its technocraticversion) - the idea that from a
successfuleconomicstrategythere necessarilyfollows a continuity of political effects
which can be clearly specified.
But if we look for the ultimate core of this essentialistfixity, we shall find it in
the fundamentalnodal point which has galvanizedthe political imagination of the
Left: the classicconceptof 'revolution', cast in the Jacobinmould. Of course,there
would be nothing in the conceptof 'revolution' to which objection could be made
if we understoodby it the overdeterminationof a set of struggles in a point of
political rupture, from which there follow a variety of effects spread across the
whole of the fabric of society. If this were all that was involved, there is no doubt
that in many casesthe violent overthrow of a repressiveregime is the condition of
every democraticadvance.But the classicconceptof revolution implied much more
than this: it implied the foundational character of the revolutionary act, the
institution of a point of concentration of power from which society could be
'rationally' reorganized. This is the perspectivewhich is incompatible with the
plurality and the opening which a radical democracy requires. Once again
radicalizingcertainof Gramsci'sconcepts,we fmd the theoreticalinstrumentswhich
allow us to redimension the revolutionary act itself. The concept of a 'war of

position' implies precisely the processcharacterof every radical transformation-
the revolutionary act is, simply, an internal moment of this process. The
multiplication of political spacesand the preventingof the concentrationof power
in one point are, then, preconditionsof every truly democratictransformationof
society. The classic conception of socialism supposedthat the disappearanceof
private ownershipof the meansof productionwould set up a chain of effectswhich,
over a whole historical epoch, would lead to the extinction of all forms of
subordination.Today we know that this is not so. There are not, for example,
necessarylinks betweenanti-sexismand anti-capitalism,and a unity betweenthe
two can only be the result of a hegemonicarticulation. It follows that it is only
possibleto constructthis articulation on the basisof separatestruggles,which only
exercise their equivalential and overdeterminingeffects in certain spheresof the
social. This requires the autonomization of the spheres of struggle and the
multiplication of political spaces,which is incompatiblewith the concentrationof
power and knowledge that classic Jacobinism and its different socialist variants
imply. Of course,every project for radical democracyimplies a socialist dimension,
as it is necessaryto put an end to capitalist relations of production, which are at
the root of numerous relations of subordination; but socialism is one of the
componentsof a project for radical democracy,not vice versa. For this very reason,
when one speaksof the socializationof the meansof production as one elementin
the strategy for a radical and plural democracy,one must insist that this cannot
meanonly workers' self-management, as what is at stakeis true participationby all
subjectsin decisionsabout what is to be produced,how it is to be produced,and
the forms in which the product is to be distributed.
[...J
Notes
1. On the conceptof 'interruption', see D. Siverman and B. Torode, The Material Word
(London 1980), ch. 1.
2. M. Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation (London 1979), p. 117.
3. Cf. M. Castells, La question urbaine (Paris 1972).
4. Baudrillard, Le systemedes objets (Paris 1968), p. 183.
5. S. Huntington, 'The democratic distemper', in N. Glazer and I. Kristol (eds), The
American Commonwealth(New York 1976), p. 37.
6. D. Bell, 'On meritocracy and equality', The Public Interest, Fall 1972.
5 D Post-Foundational
Ethics and Politics
Introduction
The previous Section titles refer to canonic categoriesin Critical Theory, even if
someof their contentshave beenchosento conveythe permeabilityand imprecision
of those categories.To collect seven pieces under the heading Post-Foundational
Ethics and Politics requires a different kind of Section introduction: less an
introduction to the individual theoristswithin the framework of an establishedfield
and more an extendedrationalewhich maps a seriesof enquiriesand alerts readers
to the significanceof some figures (notably Hannah Arendt) whose relevanceand
importanceto Critical Theory registeredtoo late in the compiling of this book to
have been included.
The ftrst thing to say is that this sectionis not a comprehensivesummaryof where
Theory is currently 'at' - certainly not in a chronological sensebecausealthough
ethical preoccupationsseem to have come late to some theorists, Emmanuel
Uvinas'sftrst book (on Husserl)was publishedin 1930 (seeReading5.5). Perhaps,
though, it is the rediscoveryof Levinas, dating from JacquesDerrida's 1964 essay
'Violence and metaphysics',which prompts his inclusion. Even so, it has to be
admitted that post-foundationalethics and politics would not be many readers'
version of where most interest and energy in pursuing objectives are currently
concentrated. Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory (see Williams and
Chrisman, 1993) exert a stronger claim, probably even a stronger claim than
postmodernism(seeDocherty, 1993). Of course,postmodernismmight be one way
of talking about a post-foundationalcrisis in Theory, except that the Readings
which follow are a step back from - or on from - postmodernism,becausethere
is little interest in deftning it or investigating its cultural manifestations in
architecture,art and literature. Moreover, there is no intent, here, to explain the
theoreticalpositions as mere signs of the postmodernera.
The secondthing to say - or, rather, to repeatfrom the main Introduction - is
that there is no suggestionthat theorists included in earlier Sectionscould not be
included here: 'Choreographies',Christie McDonald's 1982 interview with Jacques
Derrida; or his and J. Hillis Miller's responsesto the accusationsof anti-Semitism
and collaborationwith the Nazis levelled at Paul de Man would be many readers'
choices. Miller's recent work has been explicitly about what he calls 'the ethics of
':. This Introduction and Section owe a lot to my colleague Richard King, though I feel sure that his
selection of Readings would have been a more determined and principled questioning of a post-
structuralist and Marxist canon.
357
358 Post-FoundationalEthics and Politics
reading', and Derrida has, arguably, always been vitally interestedin ethical and
political questions,rather than in the nihilistic or playful. Richard Bernstein'sview,
though, is that theseconcernshave becomemore markedas the implications of key
theoretical breakthroughshave been acknowledged:
Initially it appears that ethical-political questions about praxis are excluded and
marginalized. In the early writings of Heidegger,Derrida, Foucault and Rorty these
questionsdo not even seemto be considered.Yet as we follow the pathwaysof their
thinking and writings somethingcurious beginsto happen- for eachof thesethinkers
beginsto gravitatemore and more to confronting the ethical-political consequencesof
their own thinking. (Bernstein, 1991, p. 11)
That is to say, the ethical-politicaldimensionis not a formal alternativeto the texts

and categoriesabove but a developmentin the work of Derrida, Foucault, and
others. Gayatri Spivak is just one of many other theoristsincluded in this Reader
(see Reading3.3) to be explicit about the increasinglyurgent intersectionbetween
ethicsandpolitics in their work - for instance,in a 1993 interview with SaraDanius
and StefanJonsson:
more than critiquing Westernethics [in The PostcolonialCritic I I am more interested

now in imagining theotherethical subject... moving from the critical phaseinto a more
affirmative phase,into areasfrom where agenciesof critique can come. (Spivak, 1993,
p.27)
Thereis anotherdefining featureof post-foundationalethical and political thought,

and this is the overdueinvolvementin its problematics by thinkers who are working
in different fields - primarily political and moral thought - or do not easily fit the
categoriesemployed in the Sections above: Richard Rorty (Reading 5.1), Seyla
Benhabib(Reading5.3), Martha Nussbaum(Reading5.7), and Jiirgen Habermas
(Reading5.2; Habermas'sconnectionswith the original Frankfurt School are often
quite tenuous).But fully to registerthe importanceof this changingpersonnel,other
theorists, besidesthose representedin their own words, need to be mentioned:
Charles Taylor, John Rawls (who at least featuresprominently in Rorty's essay),
HannahArendt, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Walzer,JeanBethkeElshtain,Cornel
West, Stanley Cavell, and Bernstein. The traffic has not been one-way, and moral
and political theory have been revitalised by a growing awarenessof developments
in Critical Theory. Judging by recent surveys of this renaissance,thinkers are
grapplingwith a problemfamiliar to thoseon the Critical Theory side: namely,how
to respondto the widely recognisedlimitations of any foundationaltheory of truth,
whether founded in transcendentalconceptionsof truth or in an acceptanceof the
self's unchallengedplaceat the centreof any analysis.From the Critical Theory side,
the concentrationupon cultural, aestheticand philosophical questions- even in
Marxism, where Western Marxism is defined by just these preoccupationsat the
expenseof economicsand politics - indicatesthe value in more of an exchangewith
Introduction 359
neo-Kantianliberals such as Rawls; neo-Hegeliancommunitarianssuch as Taylor;

and neo-Aristotelians,such as Nussbaumand Arendt, who competeas much with
more orthodox liberals as with Marxists and post-structuralistsin their assertionof
the importanceof the political and public sphere. Bernstein'sexplanationof the
subtitle to The New Constellation: The ethical-political horizons of modernity/
postmodernity- a book which seeksto repair the intellectualapartheidbetweenthe
Anglo-American and Europeantraditions - underlinesthe expandedfocus of this
exchangebetweentraditions:
the hyphenatedexpression'ethical-political' ... invoke[s] and recall [s] the classical

(Greek) understandingof the symbiotic relation betweenethics and politics. Ethics is
concernedwith ethos, with those habits, customsand modes of responsethat shape
and deftne our praxis. Politics is concernedwith our public lives in the polis - with
the communalbondsthat at once unite and separateus as citizens. (Bernstein, 1991,
p.9)
Politics and ethics are posited, therefore, as antidotes to the narrowing of this
enquiry in modern thought, equally in positivistic moral and political philosophy
and, less obviously, in Critical Theory.
Bernstein poses,as an organisingtheme for The New Constellation, questions
provoked by Rorty as well as Derrida: critique or deconstructionor the exerciseof
pragmatic,non-essentialising reason,but in the serviceof what?What is being stood
for, and what is being critiqued? Critique and deconstructionare critical of the
Enlightenment,but doesnot this underminethe basisfor critique and deconstruction?
How shouldone live? By quoting Derrida, Bernsteinacceptsthat thesequestionsare
not foreign to the continentaltradition, even if the vocabularyis different from that
used by Anglo-American thinkers: 'I cannot conceive of a radical critique which
would not be ultimately motivated by some sort of affirmation, acknowledgedor
not' (quotedin Bernstein,1991,p. 7). Nevertheless,what is at issuein reassessments
of critique and deconstructionare the implications of a logic of deferral, the
necessityfor an immanentreading(a readingratherthan an interpretation),and the
generalcaution at using conceptssuch as freedomin a world defined in terms of an
imagery of imprisonmentfrom Weber through the Frankfurt School to Foucault.
CharlesTaylor, who is a contributor to this debatein his own right in Sourcesof
the Self(1989), puts the caseagainstFoucaultin a 1984 article originally published
in Political Theory, a journal with more and more to say to Critical Theorists.
Taylor respectsFoucault's'unmasking'of different regimesof power, but questions
Foucault'sapparentunwillingnessto theorise his own position:
The idea of liberating truth [in Foucault] is a profoundillusion. Thereis no truth which
can be espoused,defended,rescuedagainstsystemsof power. On the contrary, each
such systemdeftnesits own variant of truth. And there is no escapefrom power into
freedomfor suchsystemsof powerare co-extensivewith humansociety. (Taylor, 1986,
p.70)
For Taylor:
The Foucaultiannotion of power not only requiresfor its sensethe correlativenotions

of truth and liberation, but even the standardlink betweenthem, which makestruth
the condition of liberation. To speak of power, and to want to deny a place to
liberation and truth as well as the link betweenthem, is to speakincoherently.(Taylor,
1986, p. 93)
Even in the specific, local site where, Foucault insists, resistance must be
concentrated(becausea generalsourceof power either cannotbe locatedor cannot
practically be attackedhead-on),it is still not clear in Foucaultwhy one should act
this way rather than that way. The desirableend is, for Foucault, constructedby
the imposing authority.
As so often, a diagnosisof a generalmalaiseseemslessconvincingwhen a number
of examplesare investigated.It would be interestingto hearwhetherCharlesTaylor
could maintain his thesiswith referenceto Foucault'slast writings. Similarly, while
Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard's The PostmodernCondition (1979) is short on persuasive
responsesto the crisis oflegitimation which is his main theme, The Differend (1983)
undoubtedlyaddressesthe relatedissuesof post-foundationalethics and politics. In
a variety of ways, all the Readingsbelow signal a reconsiderationof how to respond
to a world in which there is no broadly assumedexternal,context-freestandardof
truth, and conflict seemsendemic.In some cases,the reconsiderationdirectly faces
up to the perceiveddangersof relativism, which structuralisminauguratedin its
postmodernphasebut which is an aspectof all anti-foundationalthinking. In other
cases,relativism is seenmore positively, and is thereforeto be explored. Rorty has
been prominent in proposing that we learn the lessonsof (mostly French) post-
structuralism: that philosophy in its traditional metaphysicalrole is not going to
decideanythingonce and for all; and the more important and pressingthe issue,the
lesslikely that therewill be agreementon foundationalprinciples. Rorty differs from
Derrida, for example, in concluding that this failure of philosophy in its
epistemological and ontological modes is actually a good thing: look at what
happenswhen fundamentalsare adheredto, is the lessonhe would derive from the
crises of twentieth-centuryhistory, notably those of the 1930s and 1940s. It may
be, though, that Rorty's low-key, non-polemical defence of Western liberalism
derives more from the failures of left and right ideologiesthan from the strengths
of what is left after the Cold War. But to return to Rorty's post-foundationalism:
in his view Derrida unnecessarilyworries away at the metaphysicaltradition rather
than considering other forms of legitimation and engaging in the process of
redescription of cultural and political vocabularies. Incidentally, Christopher
Norris's vigorous rejection of Rorty's postmodernDerrida standsas an indication
that 'Anglo-American'is hardly a reliable categoryin surveyingcurrent debates(see
Norris, 1985, ch. 6).
In accordancewith his espousalof a post-Philosophical(with a capital letter)
culture in favour of cultural criticism and 'conversation',Rorty is intellectually in
Introduction 361
touch with most of the figures centrally involved in respondingto doubts about (if
not the end of) foundationalthinking. His preferencefor essayisticinterventionsin
the broadersphereof 'the humanities'that will greasethe wheels of debateacross
intellectual traditions and disciplineswhich have not had much to say to eachother
is consistentwith what he thinks intellectualsshould be doing. His tone has upset
the cultural Left and Right, as it onceupsetPhilosophers,and for a while the debates
that are now going on acrossdisciplines and fields of enquiry will almost certainly
continue to generate some kneejerk reactions - for example, that Rortyean
liberalism is inescapablythe prop for American cultural imperialism; or, on the
other hand, that French esoterics are a radical alternative to practical political
action. But one can hopethat the exampleof someof the participantsin the debates
will be salutary, and there will be more genuineinterchangeof ideas.
On the first count - that liberalism is merely symptomatic of Western, and
particularly American, power - Reading5.2 is some indication of the complexity
of liberalism. But more important is the fact that only a minority of those now
enteringthe debatesout of an Anglo-Americanintellectualbackgroundwould count
themselvesas liberals, and all have different versions of the separationbetween
private and public sphereswhich Rorty makescentral to his version of liberalism:
'the idea that politics can be separatedfrom beliefs about matters of ultimate
importancethat sharedbeliefs among citizens on such mattersare not essential
to a democraticsociety' (Rorty, 1991, vol. 2, p. 175). Rorty's account of Rawls
suggeststhat the latter's notion of proceduralliberalism ought to be taken far more
seriously outside of Anglo-American political theory becauseit faces up to the
necessity,in a multicultural society, that different discoursesengagewith eachother
in the absenceof any way in which objective (meta-physical)judgementscan be
reachedabout their truth or falsity. There is also more common ground - or, at a
minimum, the basisfor productivedialogue- than one would think betweenRawls
and his communitarian opponents (Taylor and MacIntyre, for instance) and
Lyotard - in The Differend, at least.
To the second kneejerk reaction - that French (and especially French post-
structuralist)theory lends itself to a disappointingpolitical and ethical acquiescence
masqueradingas radicalism - the most significant recentrejoinder is to be found in
The Differend. While it is close to Derrida, Lyotard's work has given greater
prominenceto narrativeand to a 'philosophyof sentences'ratherthan simply to the
deconstructionof the structureof the sign with which Derrida announcedhimself
in two of his 1967 books, Speechand Phenomenaand Of Grammatology. The
activity and senseof agency, which is sometimesdifficult to make out after the
linguistic turn in philosophy,is realisedin narrativewhich, Lyotard argues,is never
totalised but has to be begun over and over, thereby manifesting a storytelling
impulsein humans.Lyotard recognisesthat political action is provoked,ratherthan
curtailed, by the breakdownof the binary opposition betweenthe metanarratives
of Marxism and capitalism; and that the loss of transcendentalfoundationsis an
argumentfor, rather than against,a democratic,consensualform of legitimacy. In
The Differend, he brings politics and ethics down to sentences:each sentence
proposesanothersentence,but this linkage, this What next?, is both contingentand

necessary,in so far as sentencesget corralled into genres. Ethical and political
questionsarisein the attemptto transformcontingencyinto necessity,sentencesinto
genresor 'regimesof sentences'which are in an agonisticrelationshipto eachother.
Importantly, Lyotard doesnot substitute'dissensus'for 'consensus'because'it would
only be the caseif the concatenationof phraseshad nothing to do with any finality
tied to a genre, and took place without genres if their heterogeneity completely
disjoined them and left their linkage unforeseeableand inexplicable.... Now, this
is not possible'(Lyotard, 1988 p. 129). To locate a 'differend' is an injunction to
enterthe public realm. Thus, it is Lyotard'spost-foundationalismwhich is the motor
for politics: 'One side's legitimacy does not imply the other's lack of legitimacy'
(Lyotard, 1988, p. xi). If this sounds like an acceptanceof relativism, Lyotard
makesit clear that the public sphere,that of litigation, does not consist of a mere
balancingor reconciling of existing argumentations:
The differend is the unstablestate and instant of languagewherein somethingwhich

must be able to be put into phrasescannotyet be.... A lot of searchingmust be done
to fmd new rules for forming and linking phrasesthat are able to expressthe differend.
... What is at stakein a literature, a philosophy,in a politics perhaps,is to bearwitness
to differends by finding idioms for them. (Lyotard, 1988, p. 13)
Lyotard hesitatesover politics becauseit requiresa degreeof normalisation,and

his own experienceof politics-turned-into-a-genre, completewith a grand narrative
of communism ('teleology begins with genres of discourse,not with sentences'),
perhapsmakeshim suspiciousof any hint of totalisation. Here, Jiirgen Habermas
and HannahArendt offer conceptsof the political which can usefully be compared
and contrastedwith Lyotard's.
In Arendt'scase,compared,in so far as both she and Lyotard react againstforms
of totalitarianism;but contrasted,up to a point, in so far as Arendt finds what she
is willing to call 'freedom' precisely in the public (and presumably normalised)
sphere of politics. Arendt's analysis in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
persuadeda generationof mostly American intellectualswho had comeup from the
chasteningexperiencesof the 1930sand 1940sto doubt politics as a 'vocation'(Max
Weber'sdescription),or at least politics understoodas Messianicpolitics of Left or
Right. She anticipates concern about metanarrativesin her indictment of the
totalitarianismof fascism and communismfor its adherenceto 'laws of movement',
whetherof Natureor History. Yet, in striking contrastto thoseAmericanintellectuals
whom she influenced, Arendt's theoretical explanation of totalitarianism is not
completely dominated by the experiencesof the 1930s and the war years, even
though thesebrought her ideastogether.In tracing the genealogyof totalitarianism
and its relationship with modernity, she goes back to the nineteenthcentury in
Europeand the vacatingof the public arenaas a place of common interestsby the
middle classes.There was still talk of the public, of course,but, in Arendt'swords,
'the whole thing is a delusion. Public life takeson the deceptiveaspectof a total of
Introduction 363
private interestsas though theseinterestscould createa new quality through sheer

addition' (Arendt, 1986, p. 145). This is what she largely meanswhen she talks of
the 'rise of the social' at the expenseof a political public realm defmed by the
common good and inhabited by citizens. And this phenomenonoccurred well in
advanceof totalitarianism. It then becamepossibleto exclude and victimise those
who had been propelled into the discredited public sphere by other historical
changes,notably the break-upof nation-states.These peoplesbecame'homeless',
'stateless'and 'rightless'. The redefinition - in effect, loss - of public spacedid not
producetotalitarianismbut createdthe conditionsin which it could flourish. Terror
and ideologicalmanipulationcolonisedthe public spaces,the spacesbetweenpeople
which ought to precipitate communication.
Arendt ought to have been entirely disenchantedwith the public political sphere
after her analysis of what totalitarianism does to it; instead, she foregroundsit,
concentratingin particular upon the importanceof the spacesbetweenpeople, the
places where communicationcan go on. Rather in the manner of the American
PragmatistWilliam James,who, faced by philosophical argumentswhich denied
freedom, decided one day simply to believe in freedom, Arendt, in a 1960 essay,
'What is freedom?', sets herself the task of thinking about freedom and its
connectionwith politics in spite of the insightsinto totalitarianismwhich sheherself
had provided ten years earlier. She acknowledgesthe difficulty, and her accountis
an indirect gloss on the intellectual problem of thinking affirmatively in the wake
of some of the intellectual trends representedin previous Sections:
Yet it is precisely this coincidenceof politics and freedom which we cannot take for
grantedin the light of our presentpolitical experience.The rise of totalitarianism,its
claim to having subordinatedall spheresof life to the demandsof politics and its
consistentnonrecognitionof civil rights, above all the rights of privacy and the right
to freedom from politics, makes us doubt not only the coincidenceof politics and
freedom but their very compatibility. We are inclined to believe that freedom begins
where politics endsbecausewe have seenthat freedomhas disappearedwhen so-called
political considerationsoverruled everythingelse. Was not the liberal credo, 'The less
politics the more freedom' right after all? (Arendt, 1961, p. 149)
Arendt goes after this liberal definition of freedom as 'freedom from politics', and
does so just in advance of the 1960s revival of a view of politics as public
participation, and with a theoretical acumen which has allowed her defence to
survive a rerun of the end of ideology crisis post-1968, to which Lyotard and
Foucault allude.
Arendt seeksto rescuepolitics as inseparablefrom freedom, and she resorts, in
the absenceof better models, to the classicaltradition of republicanor civic virtue
in which citizens must appear,debateand act in public. For Arendt, with the loss
of the public political spacewhich the Greek polis symbolised,peoplebehavesolely
as economicproducersand consumers.This, incidentally, is the gist of her difference
with Marx. The polis, it is necessaryto stress, symbolisespublic participation,
becauseArendt does not seriouslyenvisagethe return of elite rule, dependentupon

the labour of the excluded.The public sphereis not an exclusive space,since entry
doesnot dependupon status,as it did in the Greek polis; nevertheless,it is still not
an easy spacein which to appearbecauseit is, by definition, agonistic. But what
must be emphasisedis that in an increasingly privatised society, Arendt's work
argues that the modern philosophical tradition (Rousseau and Kant are her
antagonists) has unwittingly conspired with socioeconomic developments to
transposethe idea of freedom'from its original field, the field of politics and human
affairs in general, to an inward domain, the will, where it would be open to self-
inspection' (Arendt, 1961, p. 145). She goes on to defend freedom as acting in
concert with others in public:
the very oppositeof 'inner freedom',the inward spaceinto which men may escapefrom
externalcoercionand feel free. This inner feeling remainswithout outer manifestations
and hence is by deflnition politically irrelevant. ... it was originally the result of an
estrangementfrom the world in which worldly experienceswere transformed into
experienceswithin one's own self. (Arendt, 1961, p. 146)
For Arendt, the political is the recognitionthat we live in a society with otherswho
are both similar to and different from us. This is where her pluralism differs from
the assumed pluralism of some of her consensus-theorycontemporaries,who
refusedto acknowledgeits ideologicalcharacter.But it also suggeststhat Arendt has
somethingto offer to the understandingof contemporaryidentity and difference
politics, becausepolitics, for her, requires the common condition of citizenship,
especially when cross-culturaldecisions are involved.
Richard Bernsteinwas introducedabove as an American philosopherinterested
in linking the American and Europeantraditions (where Britain figures in all of this
intellectual excitementis a depressingthought), and he gives a good summary of
why the work of Arendt, who was exiled in the United States,is so worthwhile:
It is action which is exhibited in the public space of political debate, action that
presupposesthe human condition of plurality and natality that is the highest form of
the vita activa. ... We have becomeblind and forgetful of what is distinctive about
action, and are on the verge of becominga 'laboring society'. But Arendt's analysisof
action is intended as an act of retrieval, to reveal a possibility that can never be
obliterated. (Bernstein, 1991, p. 127; see also Bernstein, 1985; King, 1984)
The referenceto natality is motivatedby Arendt's claim, in Origins of Totalitarianism,

that 'with each new birth' in the camps'a new beginning is born into the world, a
new world has potentially comeinto being' (Arendt, 1986, p. 465). Arguably, there
is somethingin common betweenthe critique of metaphysicsin, say, Derrida, and
Arendt's insistencethat freedom is an intersubjectiveconceptwhich needsa space,
needscivil society, and should not be confined to 'an inward domain ... where it
would be open to self-inspection'.However, it is only in a very cautious - even
Introduction ]65
precious- sense,subjectto constantdeferral,that Derrida has helpedus to function

in 'the realm of politics ... whose raison d'etre ... is freedom, and [whose] ... fIeld
of experienceis action' (Arendt, 1961, p. 146). And as Taylor observesin his
admiring but critical accountof Michel Foucault: 'it is certainly not the case that
all [political] patternsissuefrom consciousaction, but all patternshaveto be made
intelligible in relation to conscious action' (Taylor, 1986, p.88). Taylor is
particularly critical of the Nietzschean deconstruction of the self, in case it
underminesthe self-determinationand self-realisationthrough experiencewhich the
philosophyof the subjectinitially voiced, and which is most neededby the exploited
and marginalised (see King, 1992). There is a related worry that theoretical
discoursesmay become so disengagedfrom each other that common purposes
cannot be articulated, nor projects carried through; and that interventionsin the
public, political spherewill always be skirmishesaround the edgesbecauseof the
assumption(and it can be an intellectually comforting assumption)that this sphere
is under hegemoniccontrol. The very assumptionthat there is hegemoniccontrol
can de-legitimatecritical discourses.
Reading5.2, by Jiirgen Habermas,is a direct responseto commentson his work
by a numberof critics, Rorty and Bernsteinamongthem, all of which are collected
in Bernstein'sHabermasand Modernity (Bernstein,1986a). Lyotard, Adorno and
Horkheimer are also strong presencesin the book, becauseHabermas'sdefenceof
what he elsewherecalls 'modernity: an incompleteproject' (Habermas,1985) is a
partial responseto the postmodernend of metanarratives,including that of the
Enlightenmentproject which had suffered at the hands of his former Frankfurt
School colleagues.Habermas'sessayis also part of a defenceof the public sphere
which he has been conducting since The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere,nrst publishedin Germanin 1962 (Habermas,1989a). Ratherlike Arendt,
Habermaseffects a recovery from the nadir of modernity that was (knowledgeof)
the Holocaustto arguedeterminedlyfor a revision of the tradition of emancipatory
reason,located in the public world. Where Adorno and Horkheimer'sreading of
Weberled them to a conceptof totality in someways more entrenchedthan Weber's
'iron cage' of instrumental rationality (from which the only conceivableexit for
Adorno was through negative dialectics), Habermas arrives at a theory of
communicativereasonwhich, he maintains,producesunderstandingof the other,
and of society and its potential for emancipation,even though philosophy cannot
give accessto objective meaning. Habermasdefends his claim to have steered
betweenrelativism and absolutismin Reading5.2, so commentscan be reservedfor
the related question of what Habermasmeans by the public sphere, since this
conceptis one way of formulating the different responsesto post-foundationalism
from an ethical and political point of view.
In one of the essaysin Situating the Self (1992) Seyla Benhabib (Reading 5.3)
compares Habermas's discursive model of the public sphere with Arendt's
republican model and the liberal one in John Rawls, among others. Benhabib
commendsHabermasfor challengingthe assumptionthat the public dimensionand,
with it, participation is an inevitable casualty of modernity and, further, for
broadeningArendt's (understandablebut limiting) view that politics is the only and

pre-eminentsphereof participation.There is also a dynamic quality to Habermas's
public spherewhich contrastswith the taint of supposedneutrality attachedto the
liberal definition. In Benhabib'saccount, 'the public sphere comesinto existence
wheneverand whereverall affected by generalsocial and political norms of action
engagein a practical discourse,evaluatingtheir validity' (Benhabib,1992, p. 105).
In contrastto the liberal limitation of the public sphereof discussionand legislation
to thosesubjectsnecessaryfor what Rorty calls 'political cohesion',Benhabib(ibid.,
p. 106) developsthe view that 'in communicativeethics and in democraticpolitics
we assumecritical and reflective distancepreciselytoward thoserules and practices
which we also cannot avoid but uphold'. Earlier, she defines those rules and
practices as the 'constitutive and regulative institutional norms of debate in
democraticsocietieswhich cannotbe transformedand abrogatedby simple majority
decisions' (ibid., p. 107). Where Lyotard might come back is in the matter of
whether such a model can account for the recognition 'that what remains to be
phrasedexceedswhat [humans]can presentlyphrase,and that they must be allowed
to institute idioms which do not yet exist' (Lyotard, 1988,p. 13). This is not central
to Benhabib'sanalysis,however, and elsewherein her book she invokes a feminist
critique of Lyotard's version of postmodernismas damagingto the 'regulativeideal
of enhancingthe agency, autonomy and selfhood of women' (p. 214); however,
using Carol Gilligan's work (see Reading 3.6), she also advances a feminist
modification to the gender-blindness of discursive,liberal and republicanmodelsof
the public sphereand their relation to the supposedlyprivate sphere.
It is not surprising to find that the discussionof ethics and politics, within the
context of arguments about post-foundationalism,has spread into the field of
colonial discourse,subalternstudiesand feminism via the conceptsof differenceand
otherness.There is no easyway to generalisethis new concern,since alongsidethe
revised and more circumspectethics of sameness(Nussbaum;Habermasand, in
Rorty's reporting of him, John Rawls to an extent), the Readingsbelow include an
ethics and a politics of radical alterity (EmmanuelUvinas, Lyotard, to the degree
indicated in the commentsabove, and Luce Irigaray [Reading 5.6]). Uvinas, for
instance,offers an ethics which starts from an acceptancenot of commonality but
of irreducible otherness.In rejecting the Hegelian subsumptionof othernessin an
'absolutefreedom', Levinas proposesan absoluteotherness'with an alterity that is
not formal, is not the simple reverseof identity, and is not formed out of resistance
to the same,but is prior to every initiative, to all imperialism of the same.It is other
with an alterity constitutiveof the very contentof the other' (Uvinas, 1969, p. 38).
Since this radical othernessdisturbs one'sown self, a responseis requiredwhich is
also a responsibilityfor the other. It is this senseof obligation - sometimesregarded
as a form of violence - which Lyotard translatesinto the form of sendersand
addresseesof sentences.For Levinas, however, this is the ethical encounter,
indicating that he regardsthe ethical as absolutelyprior to all other relations: it is
'the face to face'. Levinasdoesnot look for the collapsingof the other into the same
but asks what we do about the other. There is reciprocity in this relationship.The
Introduction 367
selfs autonomy is questioned but not dispersed. The self, meeting the other,
becomesitself, and philosophybeginsfrom this encounter:'The fact that the other,
my neighbor, is also a third party with respectto another,who is also a neighbor,
is the birth of thought, consciousness,justice and philosophy' (Levinas, 1981,
p.128).
Luce Irigaray's significancefor psychoanalyticand feminist thought has already
been introducedin earlier Sections,but since the late 1980sshe has drawn out the
ethical challengelatent in her own intentions in both of those intellectual spheres.
Thus, her 'Questionsto EmmanuelLevinas'expandsupon the suggestionthat when
Levinas caresfor the other preciselyas other, he risks denying the feminine other.
The feminine other is in dangerof being reducedto the stimulus for Levinas'sown
'birth' in the generalsensesidentified in the statementabove. For Irigaray, Levinas's
laudable effort to respect'the mystery of the other' makes it likely that when he
theoriseswoman he will have no way back from the patriarchalequationbetween
mystery and nature,'the darknessof a pseudo-animality'.'The feminine other', she
remarks, 'is left without her own specific face. On this point his philosophy falls
radically short of ethics' (Irigaray, 1991). However, as the earlier discussionof the
essaysin This Sex Which Is Not One indicates,to deconstructsexual difference,
even - or perhaps especially - when woman becomesthe crucial excesswhich
dismantlesany system(the idea of 'reading as a woman'), is to fail to confront the
power of essentialismboth to confine women and as the focus for self-definition.
Essentialismor nature,here, functions as a strategicrisk. Men, too, fail to achieve
self-definition by exporting 'nature'to the feminine domain through symbolisation.
But Irigaray'schief concernin Reading5.6 and in a relatedessay,'The necessityfor
sexuaterights', is with the urgent needto recognisesexualdifferencein law through
rights, a conceptwhich has been reinvigoratedby the attention it is now receiving
from contrastingspheresof political thought (John Rawls comesto mind again, as
does the rediscovery of Hannah Arendt through the work of Benhabib and
Habermas)and from feminist theory.
It is Derrida, however,who promptsthe most surprisingcriticism of Levinas, and
it has a particular use in post-colonialtheory. 'If the other was not recognizedas
ego,' Derridaobserves,'its entire alterity would collapse.'He adds that 'the other
is absolutelyother only if he is an ego, that is, in a certain way, if he is the same
as I' (Derrida, 1978,pp. 125,127).Martha Nussbaum'sincautiouscharacterisation
of Derrida at the end of Reading5.7 is lessto be recommendedthan her determined
(and controversial)attemptto reconstructa non-essentialistsamenesswhich we can
discernfrom time to time in Derrida. She has important things to say, notably that
to recognisethe other as humanis to recognisea degreeof commonality.She rejects
the prevailing orthodoxy that to respondwith sympathy, recognition and under-
standingis necessarilyto enter an imperialist engagement.It is worth stressingthat
she situatesher cautioningagainstthe possibleblindnessesof differenceas a concept
in the international context of developmenteconomics.How to connectis not a
questionthat can be evadedin such a context; which is not to say that Nussbaum
comesup with a wholly satisfying explanationof what 'an essentialismof a kind'
might be (for a different approach,see Fuss, 1989); but she wants to urge critical
considerationof what levels of justice a society without any essentialismmight
achieve by way of recognisingand reforming wrongs. Richard Bernstein is more
circumspectthan Nussbaum,but he also is worried at the easyrecourseto difference
and incommensurabilityin contemporarytheory. He acceptsthat
we can never escapethe real practical possibility that we will fail to do justice to the
alterity of 'the Other'.... But the responseto this practical failure should be an ethical
one - to assumethe responsibility to acknowledge,appreciateand not to violate the
alterity of 'the Other'. Without such acknowledgementand recognition no ethics is
possible. (Bernstein, 1991, p. 74)
The implied contrast is betweenan ethical responseand a theoretical one which

would turn any failure to communicateand any limit caseinto an absolutetheory
- this time, of difference.
5.1 D The Priority
of Democracy to
Philosophy
Richard Rorty
ThomasJeffersonset the tone for American liberal politics when he said 'it doesme
no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty Gods or no God,.l His
examplehelpedmake respectablethe idea that politics can be separatedfrom beliefs
about mattersof ultimate importancethat sharedbeliefs amongcitizens on such
matters are not essentialto a democraticsociety. Like many other figures of the
Enlightenment,Jeffersonassumedthat a moral faculty commonto the typical theist
and the typical atheist suffices for civic virtue.
Many Enlightenmentintellectuals werewilling to go further and say that since
religious beliefs turn out to be inessentialfor political cohesion,they should simply
be discardedas mumbo jumbo - perhapsto be replaced(as in twentieth-century
totalitarian Marxist states)with some sort of explicitly secularpolitical faith that
will form the moral consciousnessof the citizen. Jeffersonagain set the tone when
he refusedto go that far. He thought it enough to privatize religion, to view it as
irrelevant to social order but relevant to, and possibly essential for, individual
perfection. Citizens of a Jeffersoniandemocracycan be as religious or irreligious as
they pleaseas long as they are not 'fanatical'. That is, they must abandonor modify
opinions on matters of ultimate importance,the opinions that may hitherto have
given senseand point to their lives, if theseopinionsentail public actionsthat cannot
be justified to most of their fellow citizens.
This Jeffersoniancompromiseconcerningthe relation of spiritual perfection to
public policy has two sides. Its absolutistside saysthat every human being, without
the benefit of special revelation, has all the beliefs necessaryfor civic virtue. These
beliefs spring from a universal human faculty, conscience- possessionof which
constitutesthe specifically human essenceof each human being. This is the faculty
From Rorty, R., Objectivity, Relativism,and Truth: Philosophicalpapers,vol. 1, CambridgeUniversity

Press,Cambridge,1991, pp. 175-81, 183-96.
369
370 Richard Rorty
that gives the individual humandignity and rights. But thereis also a pragmaticside.
This side says that when the individual finds in her consciencebeliefs that are
relevant to public policy but incapableof defenseon the basis of beliefs common
to her fellow citizens, she must sacrifice her conscienceon the altar of public
expediency.
The tensionbetweenthesetwo sidescan be eliminatedby a philosophicaltheory
that identifies justifiability to humanity at large with truth. The Enlightenmentidea
of 'reason'embodiessuch a theory: the theory that there is a relation betweenthe
ahistoricalessenceof the humansoul and moral truth, a relation which ensuresthat
free and open discussionwill produce 'one right answer' to moral as well as to
scientific questions.2 Such a theory guaranteesthat a moral belief that cannot be
justified to the mass of mankind is 'irrational', and thus is not really a product of
our moral faculty at all. Rather, it is a 'prejudice', a belief that comesfrom some
other part of the soul than 'reason'.It does not sharein the sanctity of conscience,
for it is the product of a sort of pseudoconscience - somethingwhose loss is no
sacrifice, but a purgation.
In our century, this rationalist justification of the Enlightenmentcompromisehas
been discredited. Contemporary intellectuals have given up the Enlightenment
assumption that religion, myth, and tradition can be opposed to something
ahistorical, somethingcommon to all human beings qua human. Anthropologists
and historiansof sciencehave blurred the distinction betweeninnate rationality and
the productsof acculturation.Philosopherssuch as Heideggerand Gadamerhave
given us ways of seeing human beings as historical all the way through. Other
philosophers,such as Quine and Davidson, have blurred the distinction between
permanenttruths of reasonand temporarytruths of fact. Psychoanalysishas blurred
the distinction betweenconscienceand the emotionsof love, hate,and fear, and thus
the distinction betweenmorality and prudence.The result is to erasethe picture of
the self common to Greek metaphysics,Christian theology and Enlightenment
rationalism: the picture of an ahistoricalnatural center,the locus of humandignity,
surroundedby an adventitiousand inessentialperiphery.
The effect of erasing this picture is to break the link between truth and
justifiability. This, in turn, breaks down the bridge betweenthe two sides of the
Enlightenmentcompromise.The effect is to polarizeliberal social theory. If we stay
on the absolutistside, we shall talk about inalienable'humanrights' and about 'one
right answer'to moral and political dilemmaswithout trying to back up such talk
with a theory of human nature. We shall abandonmetaphysicalaccountsof what
a right is while neverthelessinsisting that everywhere,in all times and cultures,
membersof our specieshave had the samerights. But if we swing to the pragmatist
side, and consider talk of 'rights' an attempt to enjoy the benefits of metaphysics
without assumingthe appropriateresponsibilities,we shall still need somethingto
distinguish the sort of individual consciencewe respectfrom the sort we condemn
as 'fanatical'. This can only be somethingrelatively local and ethnocentric- the
tradition of a particular community, the consensusof a particular culture.
According to this view, what countsas rational or as fanatical is relative to the group
The Priority of Democracyto Philosophy 371
to which we think it necessaryto justify ourselves- to the body of sharedbelief that

determinesthe referenceof the word 'we'. The Kantian identification with a central
transculturaland ahistorical self is thus replacedby a quasi-Hegelianidentification
with our own community, thought of as a historical product. For pragmatistsocial
theory, the question of whether justifiability to the community with which we
identify entails truth is simply irrelevant.
Ronald Dworkin and others who take the notion of ahistorical human 'rights'
seriouslyserveas examplesof the first, absolutist,pole. John Dewey and, as I shall
shortly be arguing, John Rawls serve as examplesof the secondpole. But there is
a third type of social theory - often dubbed'communitarianism'- which is lesseasy
to place. Roughly speaking,the writers taggedwith this label are thosewho reject
both the individualistic rationalismof the Enlightenmentand the idea of 'rights', but
unlike the pragmatists,see this rejection as throwing doubt on the institutions and
culture of the surviving democratic states. Such theorists include Robert Bellah,
Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, early Roberto Unger, and
many others. Thesewriters sharesomemeasureof agreementwith a view found in
an extremeform both in Heideggerand in Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of
Enlightenment.This is the view that liberal institutionsand culture either shouldnot
or cannot survive the collapse of the philosophical justification that the
Enlightenmentprovided for them.
There are three strandsin communitarianismthat needto be disentangled.First,
thereis the empirical predictionthat no societythat setsasidethe idea of ahistorical
moral truth in the insouciant way that Dewey recommended can survive.
Horkheimer and Adorno, for example, suspect that you cannot have a moral
community in a disenchantedworld becausetoleration leadsto pragmatism,and it
is not clear how we can prevent 'blindly pragmatizedthought' from losing 'its
transcendingquality and its relation to truth'. 3 They think that pragmatismwas the
inevitable outcome of Enlightenmentrationalism and that pragmatism is not a
strongenoughphilosophyto make moral communitypossible.4 Second,thereis the
moral judgmentthat the sort of humanbeing who is producedby liberal institutions
and culture is undesirable.MacIntyre for example, thinks that our culture -a
culture he saysis dominatedby 'the Rich Aesthete,the Manager,and the Therapist'
- is a reductio ad absurdumboth of the philosophicalviews that helped createit
and of those now invoked in its defense. Third, there is the claim that political
institutions'presuppose'a doctrine about the natureof humanbeingsand that such
a doctrine must, unlike Enlightenment rationalism, make clear the essentially
historical characterof the self. So we find writers like Taylor and Sandelsayingthat
we need a theory of the self that incorporatesHegel's and Heidegger'ssenseof the
self's historicity.
The first claim is a straightforwardempirical, sociological-historicalone aboutthe
sort of glue that is required to hold a community together. The second is a
straightforward moral judgment that the advantagesof contemporary liberal
democracy are outweighed by the disadvantages,by the ignoble and sordid
characterof the culture and the individual humanbeingsthat it produces.The third
372 Richard Rorty
claim, however, is the most puzzling and complex. I shall concentrateon this
third, most puzzling, claim, althoughtoward the end I shall return briefly to the first
two.
To evaluatethis third claim, we need to ask two questions.The first is whether
there is any sensein which liberal democracy'needs'philosophical justification at
all. Those who share Dewey's pragmatism will say that although it may need
philosophicalarticulation, it doesnot needphilosophicalbackup. On this view, the
philosopherof liberal democracymay wish to develop a theory of the human self
that comportswith the institutions he or she admires.But such a philosopheris not
therebyjustifying theseinstitutions by referenceto more fundamentalpremises,but
the reverse: He or she is putting politics first and tailoring a philosophy to suit.
Communitarians,by contrast,often speakas though political institutions were no
better than their philosophical foundations.
The secondquestionis one that we can ask even if we put the oppositionbetween
justification and articulation to one side. It is the questionof whether a conception
of the self that, as Taylor says,makes'the communityconstitutiveof the individual,5
does in fact comport better with liberal democracythan does the Enlightenment
conceptionof the self. Taylor summarizesthe latter as 'an ideal of disengagement'
that definesa 'typically modernnotion' of humandignity: 'the ability to act on one's
own, without outside interference or subordination to outside authority'. On
T aylor's view, as on Heidegger's,these Enlightenmentnotions are closely linked
with characteristicallymodern ideas of 'efficacy, power, unperturbability'.6 They
are also closely linked with the contemporaryform of the doctrine of the sacredness
of the individual conscience- Dworkin's claim that appealsto rights 'trump' all
other appeals.Taylor, like Heidegger,would like to substitutea less individualistic
conceptionof what it is to be properly human - one that makesless of autonomy
and more of interdependence.
I can preview what is to comeby sayingthat I shall answer'no' to the first question
aboutthe communitarians'third claim and 'yes' to the second.I shall be arguingthat
Rawls, following up on Dewey, shows us how liberal democracycan get along
without philosophicalpresuppositions.He has thus shown us how we can disregard
the third communitarianclaim. But I shall also argue that communitarianslike
Taylor are right in saying that a conceptionof the self that makesthe community
constitutiveof the self doescomportwell with liberal democracy.That is, if we want
to flesh out our self-imageas citizens of such a democracy witha philosophicalview
of the self, Taylor gives us pretty muchthe right view. But this sort of philosophical
fleshing-outdoesnot havethe importancethat writers like Horkheimerand Adorno,
or Heidegger,have attributed to it.
Without further preface,I turn now to Rawls. I shall begin by pointing out that both
in A Theory of Justice and subsequently,he has linked his own position to the
Jeffersonianideal of religious toleration. In an article called 'Justice as fairness:
political not metaphysical', he says that he is 'going to apply the principle of

toleration to philosophy itself', and goes on to say:
The essentialpoint is this: as a practical political matter no generalmoral conception

can provide the basisfor a public conceptionof justice in a moderndemocraticsociety.
The social and historical conditionsof such a society have their origins in the Wars of
Religion following the Reformationand the developmentof the principle of toleration,
and in the growth of constitutional governmentand the institutions of large market
economies. These conditions profoundly affect the requirements of a workable
conceptionof political justice: such a conceptionmust allow for a diversity of doctrines
and the plurality of conflicting, and indeed incommensurableconceptionsof the good
affirmed by the membersof existing democraticsocieties.7
We can think of Rawls as saying that just as the principle of religious toleration
and the social thought of the Enlightenmentproposedto bracket many standard
theological topics when deliberatingabout public policy and constructingpolitical
institutions, so we need to bracket many standardtopics of philosophicalinquiry.
For purposesof social theory, we can put asidesuch topics as an ahistorical human
nature, the nature of selfhood, the motive of moral behavior, and the meaningof
human life. We treat these as irrelevant to politics as Jeffersonthought questions
about the Trinity and about transubstantiation.
In so far as he adoptsthis stance,Rawls disarmsmany of the criticisms that, in
the wake of Horkheimer and Adorno, have been directed at American liberalism.
Rawls can agreethat Jeffersonand his circle shareda lot of dubious philosophical
views, views that we might now wish to reject. He can even agreewith Horkheimer
and Adorno, as Dewey would have, that these views containedthe seedsof their
own destruction. But he thinks that the remedy may be not to formulate better
philosophical views on the same topics, but (for purposes of political theory)
benignly to neglect these topics. As he says:
since justice as fairnessis intendedas a political conceptionof justice for a democratic

society, it tries to draw solely upon basic intuitive ideas that are embeddedin the
political institutions of a democratic society and the public traditions of their
interpretation.Justiceas fairnessis a political conceptionin part becauseit startsfrom
within a certainpolitical tradition. We hopethat this political conceptionof justice may
be at least supported by what we may call 'overlapping consensus',that is, by a
consensusthat includesall the opposingphilosophicaland religious doctrineslikely to
persist and gain adherentsin a more or less just constitutional democraticsociety.8
Rawls thinks that 'philosophy as the search for truth about an independent
metaphysicaland moral order cannot ... provide a workable and sharedbasis for
a political conceptionof justice in a democraticsociety'.9 So he suggeststhat we
confine ourselvesto collecting 'such settled convictions as the belief in religious
toleration and the rejection of slavery', and then 'try to organizethe basic intuitive
374 Richard Rorty
ideas and principles implicit in these convictions into a coherent conception of

justice'.10
This attitude is thoroughly historicist and antiuniversalist.11 Rawls can whole-
heartedly agree with Hegel and Dewey against Kant and can say that the
Enlightenment attempt to free oneself from tradition and history, to appeal to
'Nature'or 'Reason'was self-deceptive.12 He can seesuch an appealas a misguided
attemptto make philosophydo what theology failed to do. Rawls'seffort to, in his
words, 'stay on the surface, philosophically speaking' can be seen as taking
Jefferson'savoidanceof theology one step further.
[ ...J
Rawls wants views about man's nature and purposeto be detachedfrom politics.
As he says,he wants his conceptionof justice to 'avoid ... claims about the essential
nature and identity of persons'.13 So presumably,he wants questionsabout the
point of humanexistence,or the meaningof human life, to be reservedfor private
life. A liberal democracywill not only exempt opinions on such mattersfrom legal
coercion,but also aim at disengagingdiscussionsof such questionsfrom discussions
of social policy. Yet it will use force againstthe individual conscience,just in so far
as conscienceleads individuals to act so as to threaten democratic institutions.
Unlike Jefferson's,Rawls'sargumentagainstfanaticism is not that it threatenstruth
about the characteristicsof an antecedentmetaphysical and moral order by
threateningfree discussion,but simply that it threatensfreedom, and thus threatens
justice. Truth about the existenceor nature of that order drops out.
The definition of 'philosophy'I have justsuggestedis not as artificial and ad hoc
as it may appear.Intellectual historianscommonly treat 'the nature of the human
subject' as the topic that gradually replaced'God' as Europeanculture secularized
itself. This has been the central topic of metaphysicsand epistemologyfrom the
seventeenthcentury to the present, and, for better or worse, metaphysicsand
epistemologyhavebeentakento be the 'core'of philosophy.14 In so far as one thinks
that political conclusionsrequire extrapolitical grounding- that is, in so far as one
thinks Rawls's method of reflective equilibrium 15 is not good enough - one will
want an accountof the 'authority' of those general principles.
If one feels a need for such legitimation, one will want either a religious or a
philosophical preface to politics. 16 One will be likely to share Horkheimer and
Adorno's fear that pragmatismis not strong enoughto hold a free society together.
But Rawls echoesDewey in suggestingthat in so far as justice becomesthe first
virtue of a society,the needfor suchlegitimation may graduallyceaseto be felt. Such
a society will becomeaccustomedto the thought that social policy needsno more
authority than successfulaccommodationamongindividuals, individuals who find
themselvesheir to the samehistorical traditions and faced with the sameproblems.
It will be a society that encouragesthe 'end of ideology', that takes reflective
equilibrium as the only method neededin discussingsocial policy. When such a
society deliberates,when it collects the principles and intuitions to be brought into
equilibrium, it will tend to discardthosedrawn from philosophicalaccountsof the
self or of rationality. For such a society will view such accounts not as the
foundationsof political institutions, but as, at worst, philosophicalmumbo jumbo,

or, at best, relevant to private searchesfor perfection, but not to social policy. 17
In order to spell out the contrastbetweenRawls's attempt to 'stay on the surface,

philosophicallyspeaking'and the traditional attemptto dig down to 'philosophical
foundationsof democracy',I shall turn briefly to Sandel'sLiberalism and the Limits
ofJustice. This clear and forceful book providesvery elegantand cogentarguments
againstthe attempt to use a certain conceptionof the self, a certain metaphysical
view of what human beings are like, to legitimize liberal politics. Sandelattributes
this attempt to Rawls. Many people, including myself, initially took Rawls's A
Theory of Justice to be such an attempt. We read it as a continuation of the
Enlightenmentattempt to ground our moral intuitions on a conceptionof human
nature (and, more specifically, as a neo-Kantianattempt to ground them on the
notion of 'rationality').
[ ...J
But reading A Theory ofJusticeas political rather than metaphysical,one can see
that when Rawls saysthat 'the self is prior to the endswhich are affirmed by it', 18
he need not mean that there is an entity called 'the self that is somethingdistinct
from the web of beliefs and desiresthat that self 'has'. When he saysthat 'we should
not attempt to give form to our life by first looking to the good independently
defined',19 he is not basing this 'should' on a claim about the nature of the self.
'Should' is not to be glossed by 'becauseof the intrinsic nature of morality'20 or
'becausea capacityfor choice is the essenceof personhood',but by somethinglike
'becausewe - we modern inheritors of the traditions of religious tolerance and
constitutional government- put liberty aheadof perfection'.
This willingness to invoke what we do raises, as I have said, the spectersof
ethnocentrismand of relativism. BecauseSandel is convinced that Rawls shares
Kant's fear of these specters, he is convinced that Rawls is looking for an
"'Archimedean point" from which to assessthe basic structure of society' -a
'standpointneithercompromisedby its implication in the world nor dissociatedand
so disqualified by detachment'.21 It is just this idea that a standpoint can be
'compromisedby its implication in the world' that Rawls rejects in his recent
writings. Philosophicallyinclined communitarianslike Sandelare unableto envisage
a middle ground betweenrelativism and a 'theory of the moral subject' -a theory
that is not about, for example,religious toleranceand large market economies,but
about humanbeingsas such, viewed ahistorically. Rawls is trying to stakeout just
such a middle ground.22 When he speaksof an 'Archimedian point', he does not
meana point outsidehistory, but simply the kind of settledsocial habits that allow
much latitude for further choices.
[ ... ]
[We] heirs of the Enlightenment think of enemies of liberal democracy like
Nietzscheor Loyola as, to use Rawls's word, 'mad'. We do so becausethere is no
376 Richard Rorty
way to see them as fellow citizens of our constitutionaldemocracy,people whose

life plans might, given ingenuity and goodwill, be fitted in with those of other
citizens. They are not crazy becausethey have mistaken the ahistorical nature of
human beings. They are crazy becausethe limits of sanity are set by what we can
take seriously. This, in turn, is determined by our upbringing, our historical
situation.23
If this short way of dealing with Nietzsche and Loyola seems shockingly
ethnocentric,it is becausethe philosophicaltradition has accustomedus to the idea
that anybody who is willing to listen to reason- to hear out all the arguments-
can be broughtaroundto the truth. This view, which Kierkegaardcalled 'Socratism'
and contrastedwith the claim that our point of departuremay be simply a historical
event, is intertwined with the idea that the human self has a center(a divine spark,
or a truth-tracking faculty called 'reason')and that argumentationwill, given time
and patience,penetrateto this center. For Rawls's purposes,we do not need this
picture. We are free to see the self as centerless,as a historical contingencyall the
way through. Rawls neither needsnor wants to defend the priority of the right to
the good as Kant defendedit, by invoking a theory of the self that makesit more
than an 'empirical self', more than a 'radically situated subject'. He presumably
thinks of Kant as, although largely right about the nature of justice, largely wrong
about the nature and function of philosophy.
More specifically, he can reject Sandel'sKantian claim that there is a 'distance
betweensubject and situation which is necessaryto any measureof detachment,is
essentialto the ineliminably possessiveaspect of any coherentconception of the
self'.24 Sandeldefinesthis aspectby saying, 'I can never fully be constitutedby my
attributes '" there must always be some attributes1 have rather than am'. On the
interpretation of Rawls I am offering, we do not need a categorical distinction
between the self and its situation. We can dismiss the distinction between an
attribute of the self and a constituentof the self, betweenthe self's accidentsand its
essence,as 'merely' metaphysical.25 If we are inclined to philosophize,we shall want
the vocabularyoffered by Dewey, Heidegger,Davidson,and Derrida, with its built-
in cautionsagainstmetaphysics,rather than that offered by Descartes,Hume, and
Kant. 26 For if we use the former vocabulary,we shall be able to seemoral progress
as a history of making rather than finding, of poetic achievementby 'radically
situated'individuals and communities,ratherthan as the gradualunveiling, through
the use of 'reason',of 'principles' or 'rights' or 'values'.
Sandel'sclaim that 'the conceptof a subjectgiven prior to and independentof its
objects offers a foundation for the moral law that ... powerfully completesthe
deontological vision' is true enough. But to suggestsuch a powerful completion to
Rawls is to offer him a poisonedgift. It is like offering Jeffersonan argumentfor
religious tolerance basedon exegesisof the Christian Scriptures'.27 Rejecting the
assumptionthat the moral law needsa 'foundation'is just what distinguishesRawls
from Jefferson.It is just this that permitshim to be a Deweyannaturalistwho needs
neither the distinction between will and intellect nor the distinction betweenthe
self's constituentsand its attributes. He does not want a 'complete deontological
vision', one that would explain why we should give justice priority over our
conceptionof the good. He is filling out the consequences of the claim that it is prior,
not its presuppositions.28 Rawls is not interestedin conditionsfor the identity of the
self, but only in conditions for citizenship in a liberal society.
Supposeone grants that Rawls is not attempting a transcendentaldeduction of

American liberalism or supplying philosophical foundations for democratic
institutions, but simply trying to systematizethe principles and intuitions typical of
Americanliberals. Still, it may seemthat the importantquestionsraisedby the critics
of liberalism have been begged. Consider the claim that we liberals can simply
dismiss Nietzscheand Loyola as crazy. One imaginesthesetwo rejoining that they
are quite aware that their views unfit them for citizenship in a constitutional
democracyand that the typical inhabitantof such a democracywould regardthem
as crazy. But they take these facts as further counts against constitutional
democracy.They think that the kind of personcreatedby such a democracyis not
what a human being should be.
In finding a dialectical stanceto adopt toward Nietzscheor Loyola, we liberal
democratsare faced with a dilemma. To refuseto argue about what humanbeings
should be like seemsto show a contempt for the spirit of accommodationand
tolerance,which is essentialto democracy.But it is not clear how to argue for the
claim that human beings ought to be liberals rather than fanatics without being
driven back on a theory of humannature,on philosophy.I think that we must grasp
the first horn. We haveto insist that not every argumentneedsto be met in the terms
in which it is presented.Accommodation and tolerance must stop short of a
willingness to work within any vocabularythat one'sinterlocutor wishesto use, to
take seriously any topic that he puts forward for discussion.To take this view is of
a piece with dropping the idea that a single moral vocabulary and a single set of
moral beliefs are appropriatefor every humancommunityeverywhere,and to grant
that historical developments may lead us to simply drop questions and the
vocabulary in which those questionsare posed.
Just as Jeffersonrefusedto let the Christian Scripturesset the terms in which to
discuss alternative political institutions, so we either must refuse to answer the
question'What sort of human being are you hoping to produce?'or, at least, must
not let our answer to this question dictate our answer to the question 'Is justice
primary?,29It is no more evidentthat democraticinstitutions are to be measuredby
the sort of person they create than that they are to be measuredagainst divine
commands.It is not evident that they are to be measuredby anything more specific
than the moral intuitions of the particular historical community that has created
thoseinstitutions. The idea that moral and political controversiesshould always be
'broughtback to first principles'is reasonableif it meansmerely that we shouldseek
commonground in the hope of attaining agreement.But it is misleadingif it is taken
as the claim that thereis a natural order of premisesfrom which moral and political
conclusionsare to be inferred - not to mention the claim that some particular
378 Richard Rorty
interlocutor (for example, Nietzscheor Loyola) has already discernedthat order.

The liberal responseto the communitarians'secondclaim must be, therefore,that
even if the typical charactertypes of liberal democraciesare bland, calculating,
petty, and unheroic,the prevalenceof such peoplemay be a reasonableprice to pay
for political freedom.
The spirit of accommodationand tolerancecertainly suggeststhat we should seek
common ground with Nietzscheand Loyola, but there is no predicting where, or
whether, such common ground will be found. The philosophical tradition has
assumedthat there are certain topics (for example,'What is God's will?', 'What is
man?','What rights are intrinsic to the species?')on which everyonehas, or should
have, views, and that thesetopics are prior in the order of justification to those at
issuein political deliberation.This assumptiongoesalong with the assumptionthat
human beings have a natural center that philosophical inquiry can locate and
illuminate. By contrast, the view that human beings are centerlessnetworks of
beliefs and desires and that their vocabulariesand opinions are determined by
historical circumstanceallows for the possibility that there may not be enough
overlap between two such networks to make possible agreementabout political
topics, or even profitable discussion of such topics.30 We do not conclude that
Nietzsche and Loyola are crazy becausethey hold unusual views on certain
'fundamental'topics; rather, we conclude this only after extensiveattemptsat an
exchangeof political views have made us realize that we are not going to get
anywhere.31
One can sum up this way of grasping the first horn of the dilemma I sketched
earlier by saying that Rawls puts democraticpolitics first, and philosophy second.
He retainsthe Socraticcommitmentto free exchangeof views without the Platonic
commitmentto the possibility of universal agreement-a possibility underwritten
by epistemologicaldoctrineslike Plato's Theory of Recollection32 or Kant's theory
of the relation betweenpure and empirical concepts.He disengagesthe questionof
whether we ought to be tolerant and Socratic from the question of whether this
strategy will lead to truth. He is content that it should lead to whatever
intersubjectivereflective equilibrium may be obtainable,given the contingentmake-
up of the subjectsin question. Truth, viewed in the Platonic way, as the grasp of
what Rawls calls 'an order antecedentto and given to us', is simply not relevantto
democraticpolitics. So philosophy,as the explanationof the relation betweensuch
an order and humannature,is not relevanteither. When the two come into conflict,
democracytakes precedenceover philosophy.
This conclusionmay seemliable to an obvious objection. It may seemthat I have

been rejecting a concern with philosophical theories about the nature of men and
womenon the basisof just such a theory. But notice that although I have frequently
said that Rawls can be contentwith a notion of the human self as a centerlessweb
of historically conditioned beliefs and desires, I have not suggestedthat he needs
such a theory. Such a theory doesnot offer liberal social theory a basis. If one wants
a model of the human self, then this picture of a centerlessweb will fill the need.
But for purposesof liberal social theory, one can do without such a model. One can
get along with commonsenseand social science,areasof discoursein which the term
'the self rarely occurs.
If, however, one has a taste for philosophy - if one's vocation, one's private
pursuit of perfection, entails constructing models of such entities as 'the self,
'knowledge','language','nature','God', or 'history', and then tinkering with them
until they meshwith one anotherone will want a picture of the self. Sincemy own
vocation is of this sort, and the moral identity around which I wish to build such
models is that of a citizen of a liberal democraticstate, I commendthe picture of
the self as a centerlessand contingentweb to those with similar tastesand similar
identities. But I would not commend it to those with a similar vocation but
dissimilar moral identities - identities built, for example,around the love of God,
Nietzscheanself-overcoming,the accuraterepresentationof reality as it is in itself,
the quest for 'one right answer'to moral questions,or the natural superiority of a
given charactertype. Suchpersonsneeda more complexand interesting,lesssimple-
minded model of the self - one that meshesin complex ways with complex models
of suchthings as 'nature'or 'history'. Nevertheless,suchpersonsmay, for pragmatic
rather than moral reasons,be loyal citizens of a liberal democraticsociety. They
may despise most of their fellow citizens, but be prepared to grant that the
prevalenceof such despicablecharactertypesis a lesserevil than the loss of political
freedom. They may be ruefully grateful that their private sensesof moral identity
and the models of the human self that they develop to articulate this sense - the
ways in which they deal with their aloneness- are not the concernof such a state.
Rawls and Dewey have shown how the liberal state can ignore the difference
betweenthe moral identities of Glauconand of Thrasymachus,just as it ignoresthe
differencebetweenthe religious identities of a Catholic archbishopand a Mormon
prophet.
There is, however,a flavor of paradoxin this attitude toward theoriesof the self.
One might be inclined to say that I have evadedone sort of self-referentialparadox
only by falling into anothersort. For I am presupposingthat one is at liberty to rig
up a model of the self to suit oneself,to tailor it to one'spolitics, one's religion, or
one'sprivate senseof the meaningof one'slife. This, in turn, presupposes that there
is no 'objective truth' about what the human self is really like. That, in turn, seems
a claim that could be justified only on the basis of a metaphysico-epistemological
view of the traditional sort. For surely, if anything is the province of such a view,
it is the question of what there is and is not a 'fact of the matter' about. So my
argumentmust ultimately come back to philosophical first principles.
Here I can only say that if there were a discoverablefact of the matterabout what
there is a fact of the matter about, then it would doubtlessbe metaphysicsand
epistemologythat would discover that meta-fact. But I think that the very idea of
a 'fact of the matter' is one we would be better off without. Philosopherslike
Davidson and Derrida have, I think, given us good reason to think that the
physis-nomos,in se-adnos, and objective-subjectivedistinctionswere stepson a
380 Richard Rorty
ladder that we can now safely throwaway. The question of whether the reasons
such philosophers have given for this claim are themselves metaphysico-
epistemologicalreasons,and if not, what sort of reasonsthey are, strikes me as
pointlessand sterile. Once again, I fall back on the holist's strategyof insisting that
reflective equilibrium is all we need try for - that there is no natural order of
justification of beliefs, no predestinedoutline for argumentto trace. Getting rid of
the idea of such an outline seemsto me one of the many benefits of a conception
of the self as a centerlessweb. Another benefit is that questionsaboutwhom we need
justify ourselvesto - questionsabout who countsas a fanatic and who deservesan
answer - can be treated as just further matters to be sorted out in the course of
attaining reflective equilibrium.
I can, however,makeone point to offset the air of light-minded aestheticismI am
adopting toward traditional philosophical questions.This is that there is a moral
purpose behind this Iight-mindedness. The encouragementof light-mindedness
about traditional philosophical topics serves the same purposes as does the
encouragementof light-mindednessabout traditional theological topics. Like the
rise of large market economies,the increasein literacy, the proliferation of artistic
genres,and the insouciant pluralism of contemporaryculture, such philosophical
superficiality and light-mindednesshelps along the disenchantmentof the world. It
helps make the world's inhabitantsmore pragmatic, more tolerant, more liberal,
more receptive to the appeal of instrumentalrationality.
If one's moral identity consists in being a citizen of a liberal polity, then to
encouragelight-mindednessmay serve one's moral purposes.Moral commitment,
after all, doesnot requiretaking seriouslyall the mattersthat are, for moral reasons,
taken seriously by one's fellow citizens. It may require just the opposite. It may
requiretrying to josh them out of the habit of taking thosetopics so seriously.There
may be seriousreasonsfor so joshing them. More generally,we should not assume
that the aestheticis always the enemyof the moral. I should arguethat in the recent
history of liberal societies, the willingness to view matters aesthetically - to be
contentto indulge in what Schiller called 'play' and to discardwhat Nietzschecalled
'the spirit of seriousness'- has been an important vehicle of moral progress.
I havenow saideverythingI haveto say aboutthe third of the communitarianclaims

that I distinguishedat the outset: the claim that the social theory of the liberal state
restson false philosophicalpresuppositions.I hope I havegiven reasonsfor thinking
that in so far as the communitarianis a critic of liberalism, he shoulddrop this claim
and should insteaddevelop either of the first two claims: the empirical claim that
democratic institutions cannot be combined with the senseof common purpose
predemocraticsocietiesenjoyed, or the moral judgment that the products of the
liberal stateare too high a price to pay for the elimination of the evils that preceded
it. If communitariancritics of liberalism stuck to thesetwo claims, they would avoid
the sort of terminal wistfulnesswith which their bookstypically end. Heidegger,for
example,tells us that 'we are too late for the gods, and too early for Being'. Unger
endsKnowledgeand Politics with an appealto a Deus absconditus.MacIntyre ends

After Virtue by saying that we 'are waiting not for a Godot, but for another -
doubtless very different - St. Benedict'.33 Sandel ends his book by saying that
liberalism 'forgets the possibility that when politics goeswell, we can know a good
in commonthat we cannotknow alone',but he doesnot suggesta candidatefor this
common good.
Instead of thus suggestingthat philosophical reflection, or a return to religion,
might enableus to re-enchantthe world, I think that communitariansshould stick
to the questionof whetherdisenchantment has, on balance,doneus more harm than
good, or createdmore dangersthan it hasevaded.For Dewey, communaland public
disenchantmentis the price we pay for individual and private spiritual liberation,
the kind of liberation that EmersonthoughtcharacteristicallyAmerican. Dewey was
as well awareas Weberthat thereis a price to be paid, but he thoughtit well worth
paying. He assumedthat no good achieved by earlier societieswould be worth
recapturingif the price were a diminution in our ability to leave people alone, to
let them tryout their private visions of perfection in peace. He admired the
American habit of giving democracypriority over philosophyby asking, about any
vision of the meaning of life, 'Would not acting out this vision interfere with the
ability of othersto work out their own salvation?'Giving priority to that question
is no more 'natural' than giving priority to, say, MacIntyre's question'What sorts
of human beings emergein the culture of liberalism?' or Sandel'squestion 'Can a
community of those who put justice first ever be more than a community of
strangers?'The question of which of these questionsis prior to which others is,
necessarily, begged by everybody. Nobody is being any more arbitrary than
anybodyelse. But that is to say that nobody is being arbitrary at all. Everybody is
just insisting that the beliefs and desiresthey hold most dear should come first in
the order of discussion.That is not arbitrariness,but sincerity.
The dangerof re-enchantingthe world, from a Deweyanpoint of view, is that it
might interfere with the developmentof what Rawls calls 'a social union of social
unions',34 some of which may be (and in Emerson'sview, should be) very small
indeed.For it is hard to be both enchantedwith one versionof the world and tolerant
of all the others. I have not tried to argue the questionof whether Dewey was right
in this judgment of relative danger and promise. I have merely argued that such a
judgmentneither presupposesnor supportsa theory of the self. Nor have I tried to
deal with Horkheimerand Adorno's prediction that the 'dissolventrationality' of the
Enlightenmentwill eventually causethe liberal democraciesto come unstuck.
The only thing I have to say about this predictionis that the collapseof the liberal
democracieswould not, in itself, provide much evidencefor the claim that human
societies cannot survive without widely shared opinions on matters of ultimate
importance- sharedconceptionsof our place in the universe and our mission on
earth. Perhapsthey cannotsurvive under such conditions, but the eventualcollapse
of the democracieswould not, in itself, show that this was the case- any more than
it would show that humansocietiesrequire kings or an establishedreligion, or that
political community cannot exist outside of small city-states.
382 Richard Rorty
Both Jeffersonand Dewey describedAmerica as an 'experiment'.If the experiment

fails, our descendantsmay learn somethingimportant. But they will not learn a
philosophicaltruth, any more than they will learn a religious one. They will simply
get somehints about what to watch out for when setting up their next experiment.
Even if nothing else survives from the age of the democraticrevolutions, perhaps
our descendants will rememberthat social institutions can be viewed as experiments
in cooperationrather than as attemptsto embodya universaland ahistoricalorder.
It is hard to believe that this memory would not be worth having.
Notes
1. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII, in The Writings of
ThomasJefferson,ed. A. A. Lipscomb and A. E. Bergh (Washington,DC, 1905), 2:
217.
2. Jeffersonincluded a statementof this familiar Scriptural claim (roughly in the form in
which it had been restatedby Milton in Areopagitica) in the preambleto the Virginia
Statutefor Religious Freedom:'truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, ... she is
the proper and sufficient antagonistto error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict,
unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons,free argument and
debate,errors ceasingto be dangerouswhen it is permitted freely to contradict them'
(ibid., 2: 302).
3. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment(New York:
SeaburyPress,1972), p. xiii.
4. 'For the Enlightenment,whatever does not conform to the rule of computation and
utility is suspect.So long as it can develop undisturbedby any outwardrepression,there
is no holding it. In the process,it treatsits own ideasof human rights exactly as it does
the older universals .. , Enlightenmentis totalitarian' (ibid., p. 6). This line of thought
recurs repeatedly in communitarian accounts of the present state of the liberal
democracies;see, for example,Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen,William Sullivan, Ann
Swidler and Steven Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and commitmentin
American life (Berkeley: University of California Press,1985): 'There is a widespread
feeling that the promise of the modern era is slipping away from us. A movementof
enlightenmentand liberation that was to havefreed us from superstitionand tyranny has
led in the twentieth century to a world in which ideological fanaticism and political
oppressionhave reachedextremesunknown in previous history' (p. 277).
5. Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences,vol. 2 of Philosophical Papers
(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press,1985), p. 8.
6. Ibid., p. 5.
7. John Rawls, 'Justice as fairness: political not metaphysical', Philosophy and Public
Affairs, 14 (1985): 225. Religious toleration is a constantlyrecurring theme in Rawls's
writing. Early in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press,
1971), when giving examplesof the sort of common opinions that a theory of justice
must take into accountand systematize,he cites our conviction that religious intolerance
is unjust (p. 19). His exampleof the fact that 'a well-orderedsociety tends to eliminate
or at least to control men'sinclinations to injustice' is that 'warring and intolerant sects
are much less likely to exist' (p. 247). Another relevant passage(which I shall discuss
below) is his diagnosis of Ignatius Loyola's attempt to make the love of God the
'dominant good'. 'Although to subordinateall our aims to one end does not strictly
speakingviolate the principlesof rational choice ... it still strikesus as irrational, or more
likely as mad' (pp. 553-4).
8. Rawls, 'Justiceas fairness',pp. 225-6. The suggestionthat thereare many philosophical
views that will not survive in such conditions is analogous to the Enlightenment
suggestionthat the adoptionof democraticinstitutionswill cause'superstitious'forms of
religious belief gradually to die off.
9. Ibid., p. 230.
10. Ibid.
11. For Rawls's historicism see, for example, Theory of Justice, p. 547. There, Rawls says
that the people in the original position are assumedto know 'the general facts about
society', including the fact that 'institutions are not fIxed but changeover time, altered
by natural circumstancesand the activities and conflicts of social groups'. He uses this
point to rule out, as original choosersof principlesof justice, those'in a feudal or a caste
system',and thosewho are unawareof eventssuch as the FrenchRevolution. This is one
of many passagesthat make clear (at least read in the light of Rawls'slater work) that
a great deal of knowledgethat camelate to the mind of Europe is presentto the minds
of thosebehindthe veil of ignorance.Or, to put it anotherway, suchpassages makeclear
that thoseoriginal choosersbehind the view exemplify a certain moderntype of human
being, not an ahistorical human nature. See also p. 548, where Rawls says 'Of course
in working out what the requisite principles [of justice] are, we must rely upon current
knowledgeas recognizedby commonsenseand the existingscientifIc consensus.We have
to concedethat as establishedbeliefs change,it is possiblethat the principles of justice
which it seemsrational to choosemay likewise change.'
12. SeeBellah et al., Habits 0/ the Heart, p. 141, for a recent restatementof this 'counter-
Enlightenment' line of thought. For the authors' view of the problems created by
persistencein Enlightenmentrhetoric and by the prevalenceof the conceptionof human
dignity that Taylor identifIes as 'distinctively modern', see p. 21: 'For most of us, it is
easierto think about to get what we want than to know exactly what we should want.
Thus Brian, Joe, Margaret and Wayne [some of the Americans interviewed by the
authors] are each in his or her own way confusedabout how to defIne for themselves
such things as the nature of success,the meaningof freedom, and the requirementsof
justice. Those difficulties are in an important way created by the limitations in the
common tradition of moral discoursethey - and we - share.'Comparep. 290: 'the
languageof individualism, the primary American languageof self-understanding,limits
the way in which people think.'
To my mind, the authorsof Habits of the Heart underminetheir own conclusionsin
the passageswhere they point to actual moral progressbeing made in recent American
history, notably in their discussionof the civil rights movement. There, they say that
Martin Luther King, Jr, madethe strugglefor freedom'a practiceof commitmentwithin
a vision of America as a community of memory', and that the responseKing elicited
'camefrom the reawakenedrecognition by many Americansthat their own senseof self
was rooted in companionshipwith otherswho, though not necessarilylike themselves,
neverthelessshared with them a common history and whose appealsto justice and
solidarity made powerful claims on our loyalty' (p. 252). Thesedescriptionsof King's
achievementseemexactly right, but they can be read as evidencethat the rhetoric of the
Enlightenmentoffers at least as many opportunitiesas it doesobstaclesfor the renewal
of a senseof community. The civil rights movementcombined,without much strain, the
languageof Christianfellowship and the 'languageof individualism', aboutwhich Bellah
and his colleaguesare dubious.
13. Rawls, 'Justiceas fairness', p. 223.
14. In fact, it has beenfor the worse. A view that madepolitics more central to philosophy
and subjectivity less would both permit more effective defensesof democracythan those
384 Richard Rorty
that purport to supply it with 'foundations'and permitliberals to meet Marxists on their

own, political, ground. Dewey's explicit attempt to make the central philosophical
question 'What serves democracy?' rather than 'What permits us to argue for
democracy?'has been, unfortunately, neglected.I try to make this point in 'Philosophy
as science,as metaphor,and as politics' (in Essayson Heideggerand Others).
15. That is, give-and-take between intuitions about the desirability of particular
consequences of particular actions and intuitions about general principles, with neither
having the determiningvoice.
16. One will also, as I did on first reading Rawls, take him to be attemptingto supply such
legitimation by an appealto the rationality of the choosersin the original position. Rawls
warned his readersthat the original position (the position of those who, behind a veil
of ignorancethat hides them from their life chancesand their conceptionsof the good,
select from among alternativeprinciples of justice) servedsimply 'to make vivid ... the
restrictionsthat it seemsreasonableto imposeon argumentsfor principles of justice and
thereforeon those principles themselves'(Theory of Justice, p. 18).
But this warning went unheededby myself and others,in part becauseof an ambiguity
between'reasonable'as defined by ahistoricalcriteria and as meaningsomethinglike 'in
accord with the moral sentimentscharacteristicof the heirs of the Enlightenment'.
Rawls's later work has, as I have said, helped us come down on the historicist Side of
this ambiguity; see, for example,'Kantian constructivism':'the original position is not
an axiomatic (or deductive)basisfrom which principles are derived but a procedurefor
singling out principles most fitting to the conceptionof the personmost likely to be held,
at least implicitly, in a democraticsociety' (p. 572). It is tempting to suggestthat one
could eliminate all referenceto the original position from A Theory of Justice without
loss, but this is as daring a suggestionas that one might rewrite (as many have wished
to do) Kant's Critique of Pure Reasonwithout referenceto the thing-in-itself. T. M.
Scanlonhas suggestedthat we can, at least, safely eliminatereference,in the description
of the choosersin the original position, to an appealto self-interest.'Contractualismand
utilitarianism', in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen
[Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press,1982]). Since justifiability is, more evidently
than self-interest, relative to historical circumstance,Scanlon'sproposal seems to be
more faithful to Rawls's overall philosophicalprogram than Rawls's own formulation.
17. In particular, there will be no principles or intuitions concerningthe universal features
of humanpsychologyrelevantto motivation. Sandelthinks that sinceassumptionsabout
motivation are part of the description of the original position, 'what issuesat one end
in a theory of justice must issueat the other in a theory of the person,or more precisely,
a theory of the moral subject'(Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice,p. 47). I would argue
that if we follow Scanlon'slead (Note 16) in dropping referenceto self-interestin our
descriptionof the original choosersand replacing this with referenceto their desire to
justify their choices to their fellows, then the only 'theory of the person' we get is a
sociological description of the inhabitantsof contemporaryliberal democracies.
18. Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 560.
19. Ibid.
20. It is important to note that Rawls explicitly distanceshimself from the idea that he is
analyzingthe very idea of morality, and from conceptualanalysisas the methodof social
theory (ibid., p. 130). Some of his critics have suggestedthat Rawls is practicing
'reductive logical analysis' of the sort characteristicof 'analytic philosophy'; see, for
example,William M. Sullivan, ReconstructingPublic Philosophy(Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1982), pp. 94 ff. Sullivan says that 'this ideal of reductive logical
analysislends legitimacy to the notion that moral philosophy is summedup in the task
of discovering, through the analysis of moral rules, both primitive elements and
governingprinciples that must apply to any rational moral system,rational here meaning
"logically coherent'" (p. 96). He goes on to grant that 'Nozick and Rawls are more
sensitiveto the importanceof history and social experiencein human life than were the
classicliberal thinkers'(p. 97). But this concessionis too slight and is misleading.Rawls's
willingness to adopt 'reflective equilibrium' rather than 'conceptual analysis' as a
methodologicalwatchword sets him apart from the epistemologicallyoriented moral
philosophy that was dominant prior to the appearanceof A Theory of Justice. Rawls
representsa reaction against the Kantian idea of 'morality' as having an ahistorical
essence,the same sort of reaction found in Hegel and in Dewey.
21. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, p. 17.
22. ' ... liberty of conscienceand freedomof thought should not be founded on philosophical
or ethical skepticism,nor on indifferenceto religious and moral interests.The principles
of justice defIne an appropriatepath betweendogmatismand intoleranceon the one side,
and a reductionismwhich regardsreligion and morality as merepreferenceson the other'
(Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 243). I take it that Rawls is identifying 'philosophicalor
ethical skepticism' with the idea that everything is just a matter of 'preference',even
religion, philosophy,and morals. So we shoulddistinguishhis suggestionthat we 'extend
the principle of toleration to philosophy itself' from the suggestionthat we dismiss
philosophy as epiphenomenal.That is the sort of suggestionthat is backed up by
reductionistaccountsof philosophicaldoctrinesas 'preferences'or 'wish fulfIllments' or
'expressionsof emotion' (see Rawls's criticism of Freudian reductionism in ibid.,
pp. 539 ff.). Neither psychologynor logic nor any other theoreticaldiscipline can supply
non-question-beggingreasons why philosophy should be set aside, any more than
philosophy can supply such reasons why theology should be set aside. But this is
compatiblewith saying that the generalcourseof historical experiencemay lead us to
neglect theological topics and bring us to the point at which, like Jefferson,we fInd a
theological vocabulary'meaninglesss'(or, more precisely, useless).I am suggestingthat
the courseof historical experiencesince Jefferson'stime has led us to a point at which
we fInd much of the vocabularyof modern philosophy no longer useful.
23. 'Aristotle remarksthat it is a peculiarity of men that they possessa senseof the just and
the unjust and that their sharing a common understandingof justice makes a polis.
Analogouslyone might say, in view of our discussion,that a common understandingof
justice as fairnessmakesa constitutionaldemocracy'(Rawls, Theory of Justice,p. 243).
In the interpretationof Rawls I am offering, it is unrealistic to expectAristotle to have
developeda conceptionof justice as fairness,sincehe simply lackedthe kind of historical
experiencethat we have accumulatedsince his day. More generally, it is pointlessto
assume(with, for example, Leo Strauss)that the Greeks had already canvassedthe
alternativesavailablefor social life and institutions. When we discussjustice, we cannot
agree to bracket our knowledgeof recent history.
24. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, p. 20.
25. We can dismissother distinctions that Sandeldraws in the sameway. Examplesare the
distinction betweena voluntarist and a cognitive accountof the original position (ibid.,
p. 121), that between 'the identity of the subject', as the 'product' rather than the
'premise'of its agency(ibid., p. 152), and that betweenthe question'Who am I?'and its
rival as 'the paradigmaticmoral question','What shall I choose?'(ibid., p. 153). These
distinctionsare all to be analyzedaway as productsof the 'Kantian dualism' that Rawls
praisesHegel and Dewey for having overcome.
26. For some similarities betweenDewey and Heideggerwith respectto anti-Cartesianism,
see my 'Overcoming the tradition', in Richard Rorty, Consequencesof Pragmatism
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1982).
27. David Levin has pointed out to me that Jefferson was not above borrowing such
arguments.I take this to show that Jefferson,like Kant, found himself in an untenable
halfway position betweentheology and Deweyan social experimentalism.
386 Richard Rorty
28. Sandel takes 'the primacy of the subject' to be not only a way of hlling out the
deontologicalpicture, but also a necessarycondition of its correctness:'If the claim for
the primacy of justice is to succeed,if the right is to be prior to the good in the
interlocking moral and foundational sensewe have distinguished,then some version of
the claim for the primacy of the subjectmust succeedas well' (Liberalism and the Limits
of Justice, p. 7). Sandel quotes Rawls as saying that 'the essentialunity of the self is
alreadyprovided by the conceptionof the right', and takes this passageas evidencethat
Rawls holds a doctrine of the 'priority of the self (ibid., p. 21). But considerthe context
of this sentence.Rawls says:'The principlesof justice and their realizationin social forms
dehnethe boundswithin which our deliberationstake place. The essentialunity of the
self is already provided by the conceptionof right. Moreover, in a well-orderedsociety
this unity is the samefor all; everyone'sconceptionof the good as given by his rational
plan is a sub-planof the larger comprehensiveplan that regulatesthe community as a
social union of social unions'(Theory of Justice,p. 563). The 'essentialunity of the self,
which is in question here, is simply the system of moral sentiments, habits, and
internalizedtraditions that is typical of the politically aware citizen of a constitutional
democracy.This self is, once again, a historical product. It has nothing to do with the
nonempirical self, which Kant had to postulate in the interests of Enlightenment
universalism.
29. This is the kernel of truth in Dworkin's claim that Rawls rejects 'goal-based'social
theory, but this point should not lead us to think that he is thereby driven back on a
'rights-based'theory.
30. But one should not press this point so far as to raise the specter of 'untranslatable
languages'.As Donald Davidsonhas remarked,we would not recognizeother organisms
as actual or potential languageusers - or, therefore, as persons- unless there were
enoughoverlapin belief and desireto make translationpossible.The point is merely that
efficient and frequent communicationis only a necessary,not a sufficient, condition of
agreement.
31. Further, such a conclusionis restricted to politics. It does not cast doubt on the ability
of thesemen to follow the rules of logic, or their ability to do many other things skillfully
and well. It is thus not equivalentto the traditional philosophicalchargeof 'irrationality'.
That chargepresupposes that inability to 'see'certain truths is evidenceof the lack of an
organ that is essentialfor human functioning generally.
32. In Kierkegaard'sPhilosophicalFragments,we fmd the Platonic Theory of Recollection
treatedas the archetypaljustifi.cation of 'Socratism'and thus as the symbol of all forms
(especiallyHegel's) of what Bernard Williams has recently called 'the rationalist theory
of rationality' - the idea that one is rational only if one can appealto universallyaccepted
criteria, criteria whosetruth and applicability all human beingscan fi.nd 'in their heart'.
This is the philosophicalcore of the Scriptural idea that 'truth is great, and will prevail',
when the idea is dissociatedfrom the idea of 'a New Being' (in the way that Kierkegaard
refused to dissociateit).
33. SeeJeffrey Stout's discussionof the manifold ambiguities of this conclusion in 'Virtue
amongthe ruins: an essayon MacIntyre', Newe Zeitschrift fur SystematischeTheologie
und Religionsphilosophie,26 (1984): 256-73, especially 269.
34. This is Rawls's description of 'a well-ordered society (correspondingto justice as
fairness), (Theory of Justice, p. 527). Sandel fi.nds these passagesmetaphorical, and
complainsthat 'intersubjectiveand individualistic images appearin uneasy,sometimes
unfelicitous combination, as if to betray the incompatible commitments contending
within' (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, pp. 150 ff.). He concludesthat 'the moral
vocabulary of community in the strong sensecannot in all cases be captured by a
conceptionthat [as Rawls has said his is) 'in its theoreticalbasesis individualistic'. I am
claiming that these commitmentswill look incompatibleonly if one attemptsto defi.ne
their philosophical presuppositions(which Rawls himself may occasionallyhave done

too much of), and that this is a good reasonfor not making such attempts.Compare
the Enlightenmentview that attemptsto sharpenup the theological presuppositionsof
social commitmentshad done more harm than good, and that if theology cannotsimply
be discarded,it should at least be left as fuzzy (or, one might say, 'liberal') as possible.
Oakeshotthas a point when he insists on the value of theoreticalmuddle for the health
of the state.
Elsewhere Rawls has claimed that 'there is no reason why a well-ordered society
should encourage primarilyindividualistic values if this means ways of life that lead
individuals to pursuetheir own way and to have no concernfor the interest of others'
('Fairnessto goodness',Philosophical Review,84 [1975): 550). Sandel'sdiscussionof
this passagesays that it 'suggests a deeper sense in which Rawls' conception is
individualistic', but his argumentthat this suggestionis correct is, once again, the claim
that 'the Rawlsian self is not only a subject of possession,but an antecedently
individuated subject' (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, pp. 61 ff.). This is just the
claim I have beenarguing againstby arguing that there is no such thing as 'the Rawlsian
self, and that Rawls does not want or need a 'theory of the person'.Sandelsays(p. 62)
that Rawls 'takesfor grantedthat every individual consistsof one and only one system
of desires',but it is hard to fi.nd evidencefor this claim in the texts. At worst, Rawls
simplifi.es his presentationby imagining eachof his citizens as having only one such set,
but this simplifying assumptiondoes not seem central to his view.
5.2 0 Questionsand
Counterquestions-,.
,f
Jurgen Habermas
[ ...J
Scarcelyanyonewould disagreethat [ ...J distancesand oppositionshaveincreased

and intensified in the modern age, which has itself becomea philosophical theme
of the first rank since the eighteenthcentury. Individuals, groups, and nationshave
drifted far apartin their backgroundsof biographicaland social-culturalexperience.
This pluralization of diverging universesof discoursebelongsto specifically modern
experience;the shatteringof naive consensusis the impetusfor what Hegel calls 'the
experienceof reflection'. We cannotnow simply wish this experienceaway; we can
only negateit. In the framework of our culture, investedas it is with reflection, the
thrust of this experiencehad to be worked through not only politically but also
philosophically.Today we can surveythe spectrumof answersgiven by philosophers:
roughly speaking,it extendsall the way from historicism to transcendentalism.
On the one side, Dilthey, Weber, Jaspers,and Kolakowski take an affirmative
position on the growing pluralism of 'gods and demons' [Glaubensmachte],
existential modes of being, myths, value attitudes, and metaphysicalor religious
world-views. A philosophy that treats forms of truth in the plural is supposedto
leave to the sciences the job of providing an adequate reserve of consensual
knowledge.On the other side, philosopherssuch as Husserl,the early Wittgenstein,
Popper,and Apel, all attemptto maintain, at a higher level of abstraction,the unity
of reason,evenif only in a proceduralsense.They distill the commoncharacteristics
of rational activity that mustbe implicitly presupposedin the pluralism of 'gods and
demons'and in the argumentativecollisions betweenuniversesof discourse.In this
way, there arise what Rorty calls 'metanarratives',that is, the theoriesof rationality
". Habermasis respondingto articles collected in Habermasand Modernity.
From Bernstein, R. J. (ed.), Habermas and Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 192-8,
203-11,228-30.
388
Questionsand Counterquestions 389
that are supposedto account for why and in what sensewe can still connectour
convictions and our descriptive, normative, and evaluative statements,with a
transcendingvalidity claim that goes beyond merely local contexts.
These are philosophical answers to the unavoidable experienceof modernity;
when they are sharpenedinto the opposition betweenrelativism and absolutism,
an unmediatedconfrontation emergesbetween pure historicism and pure trans-
cendentalism.At that point the failures of both positionsbecomeclear: the one side
carries the burden of self-referential,pragmaticcontradictionsand paradoxesthat
violate our needfor consistency;the other side is burdenedwith a foundationalism
that conflicts with our consciousness of the fallibility of humanknowledge.No one
who gives this situation much thought would want to be left in this bind.
In the context of our discussionhere, this reading of the presentsituation is not
really in dispute, although Rorty, Bernstein, and I react to it in different ways.
Forcefully freeing himself from the straitjacket of analytic philosophy, Richard
Rorty has undertakenthe most ambitiousproject: he wants to destroythe tradition
of the philosophy of consciousness,from its Cartesianbeginnings,with the aim of
showing the pointlessnessof the entire discussionof the foundationsand limits of
knowledge. He concludes that philosophers need only recognize the hybrid
characterof their controversiesand give the field over to the practitionersof science,
politics, and daily life to be rid of the problem. Like the later Wittgenstein,Rorty
seesphilosophyitself as the sicknesswhosesymptomsit previously and unsuccessfully
tried to cure. But Rorty is still enough of a philosopherto give a reason for his
recommendationthat we avoid the Holzweg of philosophical justification: one
shouldn'tscratchwhere it doesn'titch. It is just this assumptionthat 'it doesn'titch'
that I find problematic.
Forms of life are totalities which always emergein the plural. Their coexistence
may cause friction, but this difference does not automatically result in their
incompatibility. Somethingsimilar is the casefor the pluralism of values and belief
systems.The closer the proximity in which competing'gods and demons'have to
live with each other in political communities,the more tolerancethey demand;but
they are not incompatible.Convictionscan contradictone anotheronly when those
who are concernedwith problemsdefine them in a similar way, believethem to need
resolution, and want to decide issueson the basis of good reasons.
To be sure,it is also a characteristicof modernitythat we havegrown accustomed
to living with dissentin the realm of questionsthat admit of 'truth'; we simply put
controversial validity claims to one side 'for the time being'. None the less, we
perceive this pluralism of contradictory convictions as an incentive for learning
processes;we live in the expectationof future resolutions.As long as we take part
and do not merely look over our own shouldersas historians and ethnographers,
we maintainpreciselythe distinctionsthat Rorty wantsto retract: betweenvalid and
socially accepted views, between good arguments and those which are merely
successfulfor a certain audienceat a certain time.
In believing that he can consistentlyreplacethe implicitly normative conception
of 'valid arguments'with the descriptiveconceptof 'argumentsheld to be true for
390 Jurgen Habermas
us at this time', Rorty commits an objectivistic fallacy. We could not even

understandthe meaning of what we describe from a third-personperspectiveas
argumentativeconduct if we had not already learnedthe performative attitude of
a participant in argumentation;that is, what it meansfrom the perspectiveof the
first person to raise a validity claim that points beyond the provincial agreements
of the specific local context. Only this capacitygives our opinions the characterof
convictions.(This is no less true for the practice of everydaycommunicationthan
for argumentativedisputes about the hypothetical validity of statements.)Any
mutual understandingproducedin communicationand reproducedin the life-world
is basedon a potential reserveof reasonsthat may be challenged,reasonsthat force
us to take a rationally motivatedposition of yes or no. This calls for a differenttype
of attitude from that which we bring to the claims of merely influential ideas. From
the perspectiveof the participant, a moment of unconditionedness is built into the
conditionsof action orientedtoward reachingunderstanding.From the perspective
of the first person,the questionof which beliefs are justified is a questionof which
beliefs are basedon good reasons;it is not a function of life-habits that enjoy social
currency in some places and not in others.
And becausein the modern age the gaps betweencompetingconvictions reach
deep into the domain of questionsthat 'admit of truth', there exists, contrary to
Rorty, a philosophicalinterest'to see social practicesof justification as more than
just such practices'.1 The stubbornnesswith which philosophyclings to the role of
the 'guardianof reason'can hardly be dismissedas an idiosyncrasyof self-absorbed
intellectuals, especially in a period in which basic irrationalist undercurrentsare
transmutedonce again into a dubiousform of politics. In my opinion, it is precisely
the neoconservatives who articulate,intensify, and spreadthis mood of the times via
the mass media - with such an effect that 'it itches'.
II
In his latest book Richard Bernstein gives us another answer: instead of bidding
farewell to philosophyfrom an artificially alienatedviewpoint of an ethnologist,he
turns it toward the practical. While Rorty absolutizes the perspective of the
observer,Bernsteinremainswithin the perspectiveof the participantand entersinto
a debate which today leads beyond the mistaken alternativesof historicism and
trancendentalism,a debategoing on betweenGadamer,Arendt, Rorty, and myself,
among others.2Bernstein does not end his splendid reconstructionof the diverse
paths of this discussion-a discussionthat has not yet come to a close - with a
proposalfor a theoreticalsolution, but with a practical recommendation:we ought
to act under the presuppositionof the unifying power of communicativereason.In
order to make this argumentativemove intelligible, let me cite a thesis of Herbert
Schniidelbach with which Bernstein would probably agree: 'that the difference
betweenwhat we always claim for our rationality and what we are actually able to
explicate as rational can in principle never be eliminated'.3 If I understandthe
conclusionof his book correctly, it is for this reasonthat Bernsteinfrom the start
locatesthe momentof unconditionedness built into the universalisticvalidity claims
of our communicativepracticesin the horizon of practical reason;he finds in the
communicativeinfrastructure of the life-world a practical postulate,one that is
dictated by reasonitself. He refusesto regard the proceduralunity of rationality
within the historical and cultural multiplicity of standardsof rationality as a
question that is accessibleto theoretical treatment.
I suspectthat behind Bernstein'sargumentativestrategythere lies an absolutizing
of the perspectiveof the participantwhich is complementaryto Rorty's absolutizing
of that of the observer.I don't seewhy one could not, at leastin a preliminary way,
explore a third path, which I have embarkedupon with my 'theory of communi-
cative action'. In this approach, philosophy surrendersits claim to be the sole
representativein matters of rationality and enters into a nonexclusivedivision of
labor with the reconstructivesciences.It has the aim of clarifying the presuppositions
of the rationality of processesof reachingunderstanding,which may be presumed
to be universal becausethey are unavoidable. Then philosophy shareswith the
sciencesa falliblistic consciousness,in that its strong universalistic suppositions
4
require confirmation in an interplay with empirical theoriesof competence. This
revisionary self-understandingof the role of philosophy marks a break with the
aspirationsof first philosophy [Ursprungsphilosophie] in any form, even that of
the theory of knowledge;but it doesnot meanthat philosophyabandonsits role as
the guardianof rationality. With its self-imposedmodestyof method,a philosophy
starting from formal pragmaticspreservesthe possibility of speakingof rationality
in the singular. Unlike the sciences,it hasto accountreflectively for its own context
of emergenceand thus its own placein history.5 Thus, 'metanarratives',in the sense
of foundational 'ultimate groundings'or totalizing philosophiesof history, could
never even arise.
The most important achievementof such an approach is the possibility of
clarifying a conceptof communicativerationality that escapesthe snaresof Western
logocentrism. Instead of following Nietzsche's path of a totalizing and self-
referentialcritique of reason,whetherit be via Heideggerto Derrida, or via Bataille
to Foucault,6and throwing the baby out with the bathwater,it is more promising
to seekthis endthroughthe analysisof the alreadyoperativepotentialfor rationality
containedin the everydaypracticesof communication.Here the validity dimensions
of propositionaltruth, normativerightness,and subjectivetruthfulnessor authenticity
are intermeshedwith each other. From this network of a bodily and interactively
shaped,historically situatedreason,our philosophicaltradition selectedout only the
single thread of propositionaltruth and theoretical reasonand stylized it into the
monopoly of humanity. The commonground that unites both von Humboldt and
pragmatism with the later Wittgenstein and Austin is the opposition to the
ontological privileging of the world of beings, the epistemologicalprivileging of
contact with objects or existing states of affairs, and the semantic privileging of
assertoricsentencesand propositional truth. Logocentrism means neglecting the
complexity of reasoneffectively operatingin the life-world, and restricting reason
392 Jurgen Habermas
to its cognitive-instrumentaldimension (a dimension,we might add, that has been

noticeablyprivileged and selectivelyutilized in processesof capitalist modernization).
Rorty takes Western logocentrism as an indication of the exhaustion of our
philosophicaldiscourseand a reasonto bid adieu to philosophy as such. This way
of readingthe tradition cannot be maintainedif philosophy can be transformedso
as to enableit to cope with the entire spectrumof aspectsof rationality - and with
the historical fate of a reasonthat has been arrestedagain and again, ideologically
misused and distorted, but that also stubbornly raises its voice in every
inconspicuousact of successfulcommunication.Such a transformationis possible
only if philosophy does not remain fixated on the natural sciences.Had Rorty not
shared this fixation, he might have entertained a more flexible and accepting
relationship to the philosophicaltradition. Fortunately,not all philosophizingcan
be subsumedunder the paradigmof the philosophy of consciousness.
Rorty believesthat the needin the modernage for self-reassurance is a capricious
problem createdby intellectuals- indeed,even a typically Germanproblem. In his
view, it arisesfrom the esotericWeltschmerzof small intellectual circles, from their
preoccupationwith a world that was lost along with the religious beliefs of their
fathers.But doesit not remainan openquestionwhetheror not the social integrative
powersof the religious tradition shakenby enlightenmentcan find an equivalentin
the unifying, consensus-creating power of reason?This was indeed the motivation
behind German Idealism; this type of idealism has found equally influential
proponentsin the tradition of Peirce, Royce, Mead, and Dewey, in which Rorty
prefers to place himself. What is perhapsspecifically German is the philosophical
conceptof alienation,both in the Hegelian-Marxistversion and the early Romantic
version taken up by Nietzsche. This same theme resonatesnot only in post-
structuralist France; since the sixties, and I need not remind Rorty of this, the
discussionof modernity in conflict with itself had been nowhereso lively as in the
USA - admittedly, more so among social scientistsand psychologiststhan among
analytic philosophers.Carl Schorskeeven thought he could seeintellectual affinities
between the contemporary American scene and Weimar Germany. While the
expression'postmodern'was not invented by American neoconservatives,they at
least popularizedit.
Do not theseand similar signsindicatethat intellectualsarticulateshifts in mood,
which they in no way invent, but which have instead palpable social and often
economiccauses?As a good pragmatist,I hold the view that a philosopher'scapacity
to create problems through intentionally inciting doubt is quite limited. I share
Peirce'sdoubt about any type of Cartesiandoubt. Problemsemergein situations
over which we are not in control; they are somethingwhich objectively happensto
us. The sloganthat leftist intellectualsare the causeof the misery they analyzehas
alreadybeenbandiedabout for too long amongrightist intellectualsin Germanyto
be credible. It is no more credible in the attractivepackagingof a theory of the new
class.
Tome, the notion of intellectual 'value elites' is absolutelyworthless.Like Rorty,
I havefor a long time identified myself with that radical democraticmentality which
is presentin the best American traditions and articulatedin American pragmatism.

This mentality takesseriouslywhat appearsto so-calledradical thinkers asso much
reformist naivety. Dewey's 'attempt to make concrete concerns with the daily
problems of one's community' expressesboth a practice and an attitude. It is a
maxim of action about which it is in fact superfluousto philosophize.
[...J
IV
Thomas McCarthy raises two sorts of objections: first, against my systematic

interpretationof Weber'sdiagnosisof the times; and second,againstmy analysisof
interpretativeunderstanding.Since I believe that the relationship betweenthe two
problemsestablishedby McCarthy is artificial, I will first deal separatelywith the
problem of the objectivity of understanding.
In the field of meaningtheory I hold the view that we understanda literally meant
speechact when we know the conditionsunder which it could be acceptedas valid
by a hearer. This pragmaticallyextendedversion of truth conditional semanticsis
supportedby the fact that we connectthe executionof speechactsto variousvalidity
claims: claims to the truth of propositions(or of the existentialpresuppositionsof
the propositionalcontents),claims to the rightnessof an utterance(with respectto
existing normative contexts), and claims to the truthfulness of an expressed
intention. With theseclaims we take on, as it were, a warrant for their redemption,
should it be necessary- above all, in that we offer, at least implicitly, reasonsfor
the validity of our speechacts. A hearerknows the contentof what is said when he
knows what reasons(or what sort of reasons)the speakerwould give for the validity
of his speechact (under appropriatecircumstances).The interpreter(eventhe social
scientific interpreterwho dealswith linguistically formed data) doesnot understand
symbolically prestructuredobjects(in the normal case,communicative utterances),
if he or she does not also understandthe reasonspotentially relatedto their validity
claims.
Now the interestingpoint is that reasonsare of a specialnature. They can always
be expandedinto argumentswhich we then understandonly when we recapitulate
[nachvollziehenJ them in the light of some standards of rationality. This
'recapitulation'requires a reconstructiveactivity in which we bring into play our
own standards of rationality, at least intuitively. From the perspective of a
participant, however, one's own rationality standardsmust always claim general
validity; this claim to generalvalidity can be restrictedonly subsequently,from the
perspectiveof a third person. In short, the interpretativereconstructionof reasons
makesit necessarythat for us to place 'their' standardsin relation to 'ours', so that
in the caseof a contradictionwe either revise our preconceptionsor relativize 'their'
standardsof rationality against 'ours'.
These reflections do indeed lead to the rather 'strong' thesis that we cannot
understandreasonswithout at least implicitly evaluating them. McCarthy argues
394 Jurgen Habermas
that this conclusionis false, since, even if it is the casethat it is necessaryto take
up a rationally motivatedyes or no position on reasonsin order to understandthem,
the interpretercan not only agreeor disagreewith them but, can also practicea kind
of abstention;he or she has the option of 'leaving to one side' the questionof the
validity of 'their' rationality standards(and hence of the reasons themselves).
However, I think that such an abstentionis also a rationally motivatedposition, as
much as a 'yes' or a 'no', and in no way relieves us of the necessityof taking a
position. Abstention in this context does not really signify a true declaration of
neutrality, but only signals that we are putting off problemsfor the time being and
wish to suspendour interpretativeefforts. For example,so long as we are unable
to see a perspicuous internal relation between the categorial frameworks of
Aristotelian and Newtonian physics, we do not know precisely in what sense
Aristotle, in contrast to Newton, wanted to 'explain' natural processes.Simply
noting the competition betweenvarious paradigmscomesclose to confessingthat
we do not yet understandthe physicsand metaphysicsof Aristotle as well as we do
the basic assumptionsabout nature in classical mechanics.
The rational characterof understanding,which Gadameralways emphasized,
becomesespecially clear in limit cases, as, for example, in the interpretation of
mythical narratives. Undercutting or leaving to one side (or merely shaking one's
head while accepting) the totalistic categoriesof a world-view within which the
narrativeinterweavingand (as it appearsto us) the categoricalconfusionof surface
phenomenalay claim to explanatorypower, merely indicatethat we are putting off,
prematurely breaking off, the interpretative process. This is tantamount to
confessingthat we do not yet understandthe point of mythical modesof thought.
We understandthem only when we can say why the participantshad good reasons
for their confIdencein this type of explanation.But in order to achievethis degree
of understanding,we have to establishan internal relation between'their' sort of
explanation and the kind we accept as correct. We must be able to reconstruct
the successfuland unsuccessfullearning processeswhich separate'us' from 'them';
both modes of explanation have to be located within the same universe of
discourse.As long as this is not achieved,the feeling remains that one does not
understandsomething.It is this perplexity which fInds its appropriateexpressionin
suspension.
But it does not follow from this that the sciences which have to establish
hermeneuticaccessto their object domain have to renounce the objectivity of
knowledge. I have criticized this hermeneutisticposition in various ways.7 In
principle, I do not see any difficulty in achieving some theoretical knowledgeeven
in those domains of reality with which we have contact primarily through norm-
conforming or expressiveattitudes. My reservationsconcernonly thosetheoretical
positions which ignore the hermeneuticdimension of accessto the object domain
entirely.8 If the sentenceMcCarthy criticizes is to be readas reportingmy own view,
'that nothing can be learned in the objectivating attitude about inner nature qua
subjectivitY',9 then it may be understoodonly in the senseof a rejection of purely
objectivistic approachesto psychology.
McCarthy is further interested in the question whether or not the rationality

complexeswhich have beendifferentiatedin modernEurope and achieveda certain
autonomy do not, as it were, also communicatewith one another and have their
roots in one and the same reason. In my view, this theme can be treated
independentlyof the problem of interpretativeunderstanding.For this purpose,the
schema reproducedby McCarthy is not really a fruitful point of departure. Its
purpose was only to represent the content of Max Weber's famous
'Zwischenbetrachtung'.10Unfortunately, in responseto earlier objections I made
the mistake of referring to this schemain a systematicway. 11 And McCarthy does
the samehere. My previouscarelessness thus makesit necessaryin what follows to
distinguishmore carefully betweenmy interpretationof Weber and my own views.
v
I want first to isolatethoseelementsof Weber'stheory of culture that I appropriated
into my own view (1). In so doing, we then encounterMcCarthy'sconcernfor the
costs of a processof disenchantmentthat now leavesopen the possibility of only a
procedural unity of reason cutting across different forms of argumentation(2).
McCarthy finally treats the questionof the synthesisof the differentiatedmoments
of reasonunder three quite distinct aspects.He lists three problemsthat cannot be
subsumedunder the sameanalytical perspective(that is, the perspectiveof varying
basic attitudestoward the objective, the social, and the subjective worlds) (3).
1. To begin with, let me turn to what I have appropriatedfrom Weber'stheory

of culture. In Weber'sview, the assertionof a differentiation of 'value spheres',each
with its own inner logic - which was inspired by the Neo-KantiansEmil Lask and
Heinrich Rickert - can be plausibly defendedin regardto modern Europe on two
levels: first, on the level of ideas that can be transmitted in traditions (scientific
theories,moral and legal beliefs, as well as artistic productions);but also, second,
on the level of cultural action systems, in which corresponding'discourses'and
activities are given professionally and institutionally organized form. The
differentiation of value spherescorrespondsto a decenteredunderstandingof the
world which is an important internal condition for the professionalizedtreatment
of cultural traditions separatedinto questionsof truth, justice, and taste. This
modern understandingof the world makes possible a hypothetical approach to
phenomenaand experiences,which are isolated from the complexity of life-world
contextsand analyzedunder experimentallyvaried conditions. This is equally true
for the statesof an objectified nature, for norms and modesof acting, and for the
reflective experiencesof an 'unbound' subjectivity (set free from the practical
constraintsof everydaylife). The well-known distinction of cognitive developmental
psychologybetweenstructurallydefinedlevels of learning, on the one hand, and the
learning of contents,on the other, certainly may not be applied in the sameway to
science,morality, and art. In this respectmy formulations were not careful enough.
]96 Ji.irgen Habermas
Comparedto the growth of theoretical knowledge, describedby McCarthy as

accumulationof contentsacrossparadigm shifts, the trends in the developmentof
art [...J do not so much signify an accumulationof contents as the progressive
constitution of a particular domain of autonomousart and aestheticexperience
purified of cognitive and moral admixtures;they also signify expandingexplorations
that illuminate more and more of this realm of experience.Yet this concentric
expansionis not accompaniedby the familiar effects of a devaluationof formerly
held insights typical for cumulative learning processes.Moral and legal theories
occupy a middle position. Here, too, we can observethe constitution of a domain
of autonomousmorality and moral universalismthat distills a class of rationally
solvableproblemsfrom the complexity of the contextsof ethical life underthe single
aspect of justice. Learning processesin this sphere are similar to a theoretical
progressachievedwithin the limits of a single paradigm.Thus, in the modern age
the explication and justification of moral intuitions make a certain 'progress':
this progress is not exhaustedin ever new reinterpretationsof the same moral
principle.
However, the thesis that capitalist modernizationcan be graspedas a selective
actualization of the rationality potential contained in modern structures of
consciousnessrequires the counterfactualsuppositionof a non-selectivemodel of
societal rationalization.12 In this connection I have suggestedthat for the value
spheresof science, morality, and art in modern Europe 'we should be able to
demonstrateplausible correspondences with typical forms of argumentation,each
of which is specializedin accordwith a universalvalidity claim'. 13 Thus, the burden
of proof is put on the theory of argumentation;leaving aside explicative discourse
and therapeuticcritique, it has to distinguish and clarify the systematiccontent of
three different forms of argumentation:namely, empirical-theoreticaldiscourse,
moral discourse, and aestheticcritique. 14 It was due to the context of Weber's
diagnosisof the times that I did not introduce the three rationality complexesvia
argumentationtheory but by way of a schemathat was supposedto representthe
characteristicsof a decenteredunderstandingof the world. Indeed, the modern
understanding of the world structurally opens up the possibility of taking
objectivating, norm-conforming or expressive attitudes towards three different
worlds (objective, social or subjective - in short, to states of affairs, norms, or
subjective experiences);it also allows us to vary these attitudes in relation to
elementsof one and the same world.
[ . . .J
2. Basedon reflectionsin the theory of meaning,I take as my starting point that
facts, norms, and subjective experienceshave their originary locus in 'their'
correspondingworlds (objective, social, or subjective),and, in the first instance,are
accessible,or identifiable, only from the perspective of an actor who takes a
correspondingattitude (be it objectivating, norm-conforming,or expressive).It is
with this linear ordering that the first of the three questionsMcCarthy treats at the
end of his article arises.
How is it that we can talk in an objectivating attitude about somethingin the

subjectiveor social world, that is, about those elementsthat we first experienceas
something subjective or which we first encounter as something normative? In
theoretical discourse (scientific discourse, for example) we can only incorporate
theseelementsif we thematizesubjectiveexperiencesand norms as statesof affairs
after having transformedthem into componentsof the objective world. In everyday
communication we certainly succeed, without much trouble, in transforming
expressiveutterances(or first-person sentences)into equivalent statementsin the
third person, or in accurately reporting the content of normative utterancesor
imperativesfrom the third-personpoint of view. On the level of scientific discourse,
however, there is a tendency to delimit the object domains of, for example,
psychology or sociology, by neglecting their hermeneuticdimensions,in such a
way that the componentsof the subjective or social world are naturalistically
assimilatedto physicalentitiesor to observablebehavior.In eachcasethey are made
into components of the objective world, inherently accessible only in the
objectivatingattitude; that is, they are forced into the basic conceptualframework
of physicalismor behaviorism.As opposedto this naturalisticreduction,the point
here is only to defend non-objectivistic approachesin psychology and the social
SCIences.
Mutatis mutandis, the same questionsarise for moral-practicaldiscourse,and,
indirectly, for aestheticcriticism. Theseforms of argumentationare also inherently
relatedto componentsof one specific world, the social or the subjective.Here too,
elementsof the othertwo worlds must be broughtinto play in such a way as to avoid
the dangers of, respectively, moralism and aestheticism,just as previously the
dangerof objectivismhad to be avoided.We can thus observethat science,morality,
and art have not only been differentiatedfrom each other; they also communicate
with each other. But within the boundariesof each expert culture, the different
momentsof reasoncome into contactwith one anotherin such a way as to avoid
violating the inner logic of the dominant form of argumentationspecializedeither
in truth, normativecorrectness,or aestheticharmony.This is one concernof the last
chapterof The Theory of CommunicativeAction. 15
At this point the motivation behind McCarthy'S criticism becomesclear: an
interest in the question of how the moments of reason retain their unity within
differentiation, and of how this unity can be adequatelyexpressedin philosophical
analysis. Unfortunately, my schematicpresentationof Weber's diagnosis of the
times leadsMcCarthy to con£Iatethreequite distinct questionsundera single aspect.
As just shown, the formal-pragmaticrelations playa role in the analysis of those
interactionsbetweenthe cognitive, moral, and expressivemomentsof reason.But
the other two questions really have nothing to do with this problem: first, the
question of how the knowledge produced in expert cultures can be mediated
with everyday practices (which I touched upon above in relation to the constel-
lation 'art' and 'life'); and second, the question of whether we can provide an
equivalent for the meaning of traditional world-views - for their function of
'Sinngebung'.
398 Jurgen Habermas
3. With the emergenceof autonomousart and science,problemsof mediation

arise - such as the relation of art and life, or of theory and practice. Since Hegel
a correspondingproblemhasemergedin termsof the relation of morality and ethical
life (Sittlichkeit). This problemhaslessto do with an expressiveattitude toward the
social world than with the fact that the insights of a postconventionalmorality
would remainwithout any impact on real life unlessmorality is anchoredin concrete
forms of ethical life. The deontologicalethicsdevelopedin the Kantian tradition do
indeed offer a solution to the problem of justification; they show how to choose
betweencontroversialnorms of action with good reasons(in light of what might be
willed by all). But they do not offer any solution for two resultantproblems: first,
that of the application of justified normswhich are generaland abstractedfrom any
content;and second,that of the efficacyof pure moral insightsthat havebeengained
under the condition of abstracting from available motivations. Autonomous
morality owes its gain in rationality to the transformationof questionsof the good
life into problemsof justice. As a consequenceof this deontologicalabstraction,it
can only provide answers to questions lacking specific contexts. This necessary
disregardfor the complexity of concreteforms of life, in which moral momentsare
always interlaced with evaluative, cognitive, and expressivemoments, calls for
specific compensationsthat make good the deficits with regard to the application
and realization of moral insights. I am not able to go further into this question
here.16
The discussionsof morality and ethical life, theory and practice, art and life, all
centeraroundthe idea of a non-reified everydaycommunicativepractice,a form of
life with structuresof an undistortedintersubjectivity.Such a possibility must today
be wrung from the professional,specialized,self-sufficient culture of experts and
from the systems-imperatives of state and economywhich destructivelyinvade the
ecological basisof life and the communicativeinfrastructureof our life-world. This
same intuition is expressedin Marx's utopian perspectiveon the realization of
philosophy: to the extent that the reason expressedin Hegel's philosophy can be
embodied in the forms of life of an emancipatedsociety, philosophy somehow
becomespointless. For Marx, philosophy realized is philosophy aufgehoben.The
theory of communicativeaction gives this idea anotherreading: the unity of reason
cannot be reestablishedon the level of cultural traditions in terms of a substantive
world-view, but only on this side of the expert cultures, in a non-reified,
communicativepracticeof everydaylife. Indeed,in a certainway the unity of reason
is a tergo always-alreadyrealizedin communicativeaction - namely, in such a way
that we have an intuitive knowledge of it. A philosophy that wants to bring this
intuition to a conceptual level must retrieve the scattered traces of reason in
communicativepracticesthemselves,no matter how muted they may be. However,
it cannot simply repeat the attempt, long since discredited, to project some
theoretical picture of the world as a whole.
I think I have learnedfrom the tradition of Hegelian-Marxism,from the history
of critical social theory from Marx to Benjamin, Bloch, Marcuse,and Adorno that
any attemptto embedthe perspectiveof reconciliationin a philosophyof history of
nature, however indirectly it is done, must pay the price of dedifferentiatingforms

of knowledgebehind whosecategorialdistinctionswe can no longer retreatin good
conscience.All this is not really an argument,but more an expressionof skepticism
in the face of so many failed attemptsto have one's cake and eat it too: to retain
both Kant's insights and, at the sametime, to return to the 'home' [Behausung]from
which these same insights have driven us. But, perhaps,McCarthy or others will
some day succeed in formulating the continuities between human history and
naturalhistory so carefully that they are weak enoughto be plausibleand yet strong
enough to permit us to recognizeman's place in the cosmos(Scheler), at least in
broad outlines.
Notes
1. Richard Rorty, Philosophyand the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ, 1979), p. 390.
2. R. J. Bernstein,BeyondObjectivismand Relativism (Philadelphia,1983).
3. H. Schnadelbach,in Kommunikationund Reflexion,ed. W. Kuhlmann and D. Bohler
(Frankfurt, 1983), p. 361.
4. J. Habermas,'Die Philosophie als Platzhalterund Interpret', in Moralbewusstseinund
kommunikativesHandeln (Frankfurt, 1983), pp. 9 ff.
5. Habermas,Theorie des kommunikativenHandelns,vol. 2 (Frankfurt, 1981),pp. 586 ff.
6. I have never used the term 'neoconservative',in this connection.I did once, in passing,
comparethe critique of reasonin Foucaultand Derrida to the ' Young Conservatives'of
the Weimar Republic. Usually Hans Freyer, Arnold Gehlen, Martin Heidegger,Ernst
Junger,and Carl Schmidtare numberedamongthis group. They all take from Nietzsche
the radical gestureof a breakwith modernity and a revolutionaryrenewalof pre-modern
energies,most often reaching back to archaic times. Like any comparison,it has its
weaknesses,but in the German context it does illuminate intellectual affinities that,
notwithstandingthe politically contrarypositions,stem from the authority of Nietzsche.
(See my 'Modernity versuspost-modernity',New German Critique, 22 (1981), 3-22.)
7. Habermas,The Theory of CommunicativeAction, vol. 1, pp. 120 ff., 130 ff. Also,
'Interpretativesocial scienceand Hermeneuticism',in Social Scienceas Moral Inquiry,
ed. N. Hann, R. Bellah, P. Rabinowand W. Sullivan (Berkeley, CA, 1983),pp. 251-70.
8. Habermas,Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurt, 1982).
9. Habermas,The Theory of CommunicativeAction, vol. I, p. 237.
10. Ibid., p. 238.
11. Habermas,Vorstudien und Erganzungenzur Theorie des kommunikativenHandelns
(Frankfurt, 1982).
12. On this 'rather risky model', see The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I,
pp. 239 ff.
13. Ibid.
14. See my 'Excursus'on argumentationtheory, ibid., pp. 18-42.
15. 'In each of these spheres, the process of differentiation is accompanied by a
countermovementwhich always re-incorporatesthe other two, at lirst excludedvalidity
aspectsunder the primacy of the dominantone. In this way, non-objectivistapproaches
to the human sciencesalso bring into play the perspectivesof moral and aesthetic
critique, while not endangeringthe primacy of the question of truth; only in this
way is an encompassingtheory of society possible. The discussion of an ethics of
responsibility and the more pronouncedconsiderationof utilitarian motives bring the
400 Jiirgen Habermas
perspectivesof the calculation of consequencesand the interpretation of needs into

play in universalisticethics, perspectiveswhich lie within the cognitive and expressive
validity domains; in this way, materialistic ideas can also be given their due, without
endangeringthe autonomy of the moral perspective.Finally, post-avant-gardeart is
characterizedby the simultaneouspresenceof realistic and engagedintentions, along
with the authenticcontinuationof classicalmodernity, which distilled out the internal
meaningof the aestheticsphere.With realistic and engagedart, onceagain the cognitive
and moral-practicalmomentsenter into art, at the level of the wealth of form set free
by the avant-garde.' Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, vol. II,
pp.585-6.
16. SeeHabermas,'Uber Moralitat und Sittlichkeit: was macht eine Lebensformrational?',
in Rationalitat, ed. H. Schnadelbach(Frankfurt, 1984), pp. 218 ff.
5.3 D Communicative
Ethics and the Claims of
Gender, Community and
Postmodernism
Seyla Benhabib
As the twentieth centurydraws to a close, there is a little questionthat we are living

through more than the chronological end of an epoch. To invoke a distinction
familiar to the Greeks, it is not only kranas which is holding sway over our lives;
but our kairos as well, our lived time, time as imbued with symbolic meaning, is
caught in the throes of forces of which we only have a dim understandingat the
present.The many 'postisms',like posthumanism,post-structuralism,postmodemism,
post-Fordism,post-Keynesianism,and post-histoire,circulating in our intellectual
and cultural lives, are at one level only expressionsof a deeply sharedsensethat
certain aspectsof our social, symbolic and political universehave been profoundly
and most likely irretrievably transformed.
During periods of profound transformationssuch as these,as contemporariesof
an epoch, we are more often than not in the position of staring through the glass
darkly. We do not have the privilege of hindsight; we are not like the 'owl of
Minerva' which spreadsits wings only at dusk. As engagedintellectualswe cannot
write from the vantagepoint of 'the grey which paints itself on green', and we do
not even want to. Contrary to this Hegelian prognosisof 'standing at the end of
history', which has been recently revived by Francis Fukuyama- this late student
of Hegel as read through the eyesof AlexandreKojeve1 - the presentharborsmany
ironies, contradictions and perplexities. Ernst Bloch's phrase of 'non-
contemporaneous contemporaneities',or ungleichzeitigeGleichzeitigkeiten,is more
appropriateto capturethe fractured spirit of our times.2
From Benhabib,S., Situating the Self Gender, communityand postmodernismin contemporaryethics,

Poliry Press,Cambridge,1992, pp. 1-19.
401
402 Seyla Benhabib
Among the many ironies nourishedby this fracturedspirit is certainly the fact that
while the cultural and political ideals of modernity, and amongthem what Richard
Rorty has called 'the metanarrativesof liberal democracies', 3 have becomesuspectto
the humanisticand artistic avant-gardeof Westernlate-capitalistsocieties,political
developmentsin EasternEuropeand the Soviet Union have given theseideals a new
purchaseon life. While the peoplesof EasternEurope and the Soviet Union have
taken to the streetsand defied state police as well as the potential threat of foreign
troops in the name of parliamentarydemocracy,the rule of law and a market
economy,the academicdiscourseof the last decades,particularly under the label of
'postmodernism',has producedan intellectual climate profoundly skeptical toward
the moral and political idealsof modernity,the Enlightenmentand liberal democracy.
This current mood of skepticismamongintellectual, academicand artistic circles
toward continuing the 'project of modernity' is based upon an understandable
disillusionment with a form of life that still perpetrateswar, armament,environ-
mental destructionand economicexploitation at the cost of satisfying basic human
needs with human dignity, a form of life that still relegatesmany women, non-
Christian and non-white peoplesto second-classmoral and political status,a form
of life that saps the basesof solidaristic coexistencein the name of profit and
competition. Whetherthe form of life of advancedcapitalist massdemocraciescan
reform itself from within is a pressingone. It is my conviction, however, that the
project of modernity can only be reformed from within the intellectual, moral and
political resources made possible and available to us by the development of
modernity on a global scale since the sixteenth century. Among the legacies of
modernitywhich today needreconstructingbut not wholesaledismantlingare moral
and political universalism, committed to the now seemingly 'old-fashioned'and
suspectideals of universal respectfor each personin virtue of their humanity; the
moral autonomy of the individual; economic and social justice and equality;
democraticparticipation; the most extensivecivil and political liberties compatible
with principles of justice; and the formation of solidaristic human associations.
This book [Situating the Self] attempts a reconstruction of this legacy by
addressingthe following question: what is living and what is dead in universalist
moral and political theories of the present, after their criticism in the hands of
communitarians,feminists and postmodernists?More specifically, this book is an
attempt to defend the tradition of universalism in the face of this triple-pronged
critique by engaging with the claims of feminism, communitarianism and
postmodernism,and by learning from them.
Communitariancritics of liberalism like Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel,
CharlesTaylor and Michael Walzer have questionedthe epistemologicalassump-
tions as well as the normative vision of liberal political theories. Feminist thinkers
like Carol Gilligan, CarolePateman,SusanMoller Okin, Virginia Held, Iris Young,
Nancy Fraser, and Drucilla Cornell have continued the communitariancritique
of liberal visions of the 'unencumberedself'. They have also pointed out that
neither liberals nor communitarianshave overcometheir genderblindnesssuch as
to include women and their activities in their theories of justice and community.
CommunicativeEthics 403
Postmodernists,a somewhatvague label by which we have come to designatethe

works of Michel Foucault, JacquesDerrida and Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard among
others, while sharing the communitarian and feminist skepticism toward the
metanarrativesof liberal Enlightenment and modernity, have radicalized this
critique to the point of questioningthe idea of an autonomoussubjectof ethics and
politics and the normative foundations of democraticpolitics altogether. Each of
theselines of thought has contributedto a forceful rethinking of the Enlightenment
tradition in ethics and politics extendingfrom Immanuel Kant to John Rawls and
Jiirgen Habermas.
I wish to isolate threegeneralthemesaroundwhich the rethinking of Enlightenment
universalisminitiated by feminism, communitarianismand postmodernismought to
be continued. Communitarians, feminists and postmodernistshave (1) voiced
skepticism toward the claims of a 'legislating' reasonto be able to articulate the
necessaryconditions of a 'moral point of view', an 'original position', or an 'ideal
speechsituation'; (2) they have questionedthe abstractand disembedded,distorting
and nostalgic ideal of the autonomousmale ego which the universalist tradition
privileges; (3) they have unmaskedthe inability of such universalist, legislative
reasonto deal with the indeterminacyand multiplicity of contextsand life-situations
with which practical reason is always confronted. I shall argue in this book that
there is a powerful kernel of truth in these criticisms, and that contemporary
universalist theories must take seriously the claims of community, gender and
postmodernism.Nevertheless,neither the pretensesof a legislative reason,nor the
&ction of a disembeddedautonomousmale ego, nor for that matterindifferenceand
insensitivity to contextual reasoning, are the sine qua non of the universalist
tradition in practical philosophy. A post-Enlightenmentdefenseof universalism,
without metaphysicalprops and historical conceits,is still viable. Such universalism
would be interactivenot legislative,cognizantof genderdifferencenot genderblind,
contextuallysensitiveand not situation indifferent. The goal of the essayscollected
in this volume is to argue for such a post-Enlightenmentproject of interactive
universalism.
By bringing competingintellectual discoursesof the presentinto dialogue, and by
measuringtheir claims against each other, I intend to soften the boundarieswhich
have often beendrawn arounduniversalisttheoriesand feminist positions,communi-
tarian aspirationsand postmodernistskepticism.Theseoppositionsand juxtapositions
are too simple to graspthe complex crisscrossingof theoreticaland political commit-
ments in the present.Not only is a feminist universalism,for example, a discursive
possibility rather than a sheercontradiction in terms; no matter how contradictory
their political messagesmay be, in their critique of progress and modernity
communitarianismand postmodernismare allies rather than opponents.By focusing
on the fragile and shifting nature of such conceptualalliances and confrontations,I
hope to illuminate the contradictory potentials of the present moment in our
intellectuallives. It is my hope to createcracksand &ssuresin the edi&ce of discursive
traditions large enoughso that a new ray of reasonwhich still reflects the dignity of
justice along with the promise of happinessmay shine through them.
404 Seyla Benhabib
A centralpremiseof this book is that the crucial insights of the universalisttradition

in practical philosophy can be reformulatedtoday without committing oneself to
the metaphysical illusions of the Enlightenment. These are the illusions of a
self-transparentand self-grounding reason, the illusion of a disembeddedand
disembodiedsubject,and the illusion of having found an Archimedeanstandpoint,
situated beyond historical and cultural contingency. They have long ceased to
convince. But since how long one lingers on in their company and basks in their
comforting warmth more often than not dependsupon the intensity of the original
farewell, let me state here my own adieu to these ideals. Enlightenmentthinkers
from Hobbes and Descartesto Rousseau,Locke and Kant believed that reasonis
a naturaldispositionof the humanmind, which when governedby propereducation
can discover certain truths. It was furthermore assumed that the clarity and
distinctnessof thesetruths or the vivacity of their impact upon our senseswould be
sufficient to ensureintersubjectiveagreementamong like-thinking rational minds.
Even Kant, whose Copernicanrevolution uncoveredthe active contribution of the
knower to the processof knowing, neverthelessconflated the discovery of those
conditions under which the objectivity of experience was possible with those
conditionsunderwhich the truth or falsehoodof propositionsconcerningexperience
could be ascertained.By contrast, I proceed from the premise that we must
distinguish betweenthe conditions for ascertainingthe validity of statementsand
thosecharacteristicspertainingto the cognitive apparatusof the humansubjectand
which lead it to organizeperceptualand experientialreality in a certain fashion.4
Such a universal-pragmatic reformulation of transcendental philosophy, as
undertakenby Karl-Otto Apel and Jiirgen Habermas,5is postmetaphysicalin the
sense that truth is no longer regarded as the psychological attribute of human
consciousness, or to be the property of a reality distinct from the mind, or even to
consistin the processby which 'givens' in consciousness are correlatedwith 'givens'
in experience. In the discursive justification and validation of truth claims no
moment is privileged as a given, evidential structure which cannot be further
questioned.It is the discourseof the communityof inquirers(CharlesSandersPeirce)
which first assignsan evidential or other type of value to aspectsof our conscious-
nessor experience,and brings them into playasfactors which support our claims
to the veracity of our beliefs. In the continuing and potentially unendingdiscourse
of the community of inquiry there are no 'givens', there are only those aspectsof
consciousness and reality which at any point in time may enterinto our deliberations
as evidenceand which we find cogentin backingour statements.The first step,then,
in the formulation of a post-metaphysicaluniversalist position is to shift from a
substantialisticto a discursive, communicativeconceptof rationality.
The secondstep comeswith the recognitionthat the subjectsof reasonare finite,
embodiedand fragile creatures,and not disembodiedcogitos or abstractunities of
transcendentalapperception to which may belong one or more bodies. The
empiricist tradition, which in contradistinctionfrom Descartesand Kant, let us say,
would describethe self as an 'I know not what', or as a 'bundleof impressions',does
not so much ignore the body as it tries to formulate the unity of the self along the
model of the continuity of a substancein time. As opposedto the dismissalof the

body in the one case, and the reduction of self-identity to the continuity of a
substancein the other, I assumethat the subject of reasonis a human infant whose
body can only be kept alive, whose needscan only be satisfied,and whose self can
only developwithin the humancommunity into which it is born. The humaninfant
becomesa 'self', a being capableof speechand action, only by learning to interact
in a humancommunity. The self becomes anindividual in that it becomesa 'social'
being capable of language,interaction and cognition. The identity of the self is
constitutedby a narrativeunity which integrateswhat 'I' can do, have done and will
accomplishwith what you expectof 'me', interpret my acts and intentionsto mean,
wish for me in the future, etc. The Enlightenmentconceptionof the disembedded
cogito no less than the empiricist illusion of a substance-likeself cannotdo justice
to those contingent processesof socialization through which an infant becomesa
person, acquireslanguageand reason,developsa senseof justice and autonomy,
and becomescapableof projectinga narrativeinto the world of which sheis not only
the author but the actor as well. The 'narrative structureof actions and personal
identity' is the secondpremisewhich allows one to move beyond the metaphysical
assumptionsof Enlightenmentuniversalism.
If reason is the contingent achievementof linguistically socialized, finite and
embodied creatures,then the legislative claims of practical reason must also be
understoodin interactionist terms. We may mark a shift here from legislative to
interactive rationality. 6 This shift radically altersthe conceptualizationof 'the moral
point of view'. The moral point of view is not an Archimedeancenter from which
the moral philosopherpretendsto be able to move the world. The moral point of
view articulatesrather a certain stagein the developmentof linguistically socialized
humanbeingswhen they start to reasonabout generalrules governingtheir mutual
existencefrom the standpointof a hypotheticalquestioning:under what conditions
can we say that thesegeneralrules of action are valid not simply becauseit is what
you and I have been brought up to believe or becausemy parents,the synagogue,
my neighbors, my tribe say so, but becausethey are fair, just, impartial, in the
mutual interestof all? The moral point of view correspondsto the stageof reasoning
reachedby individuals for whom a disjunction emergesbetweenthe social validity
of norms and of normative institutional arrangementson the one hand, and their
hypothetical validity from the standpoint of some standard of justice, fairness,
impartiality. 'Tell me Euthyphro', is the Socratic question, 'is something pious
becausethe gods love it, or do the gods love it becauseit is pious?'In the first case,
the morally valid is dictated by the gods of my city, in the second,even the gods
of my city recognizethe presenceof standardsof piety and justice which would be
valid for all. The moral point of view correspondsto the developmentalstage of
individuals and collectivities who have moved beyond identifying the 'ought' with
the 'socially valid', and thus beyond a 'conventional' understandingof ethical
life, to a stanceof questioningand hypothetical reasoning.Most high cultures in
human history which differentiate betweenthe natural and the social worlds are
capableof producing such questioning,and such a disjunction between'the moral
406 Seyla Benhabib
ought' (das moralische Sol/en) and 'social validity or acceptability' (soziale

Geltung).7
The elementsof a postmetaphysical,interactive universalism are: the universal
pragmatic reformulation of the basis of the validity of truth claims in terms of a
discoursetheory of justification; the vision of an embodiedand embeddedhuman
self whose identity is constitutednarratively, and the reformulation of the moral
point of view as the contingent achievementof an interactive form of rationality
rather than as the timelessstandpointof a legislative reason.Taken together,these
premisesform a broad conceptionof reason,self and society. What is their status
in the project of a postmetaphysicaland interactive universalism?
Perhapsthis questioncan be best approachedby contrastingJohn Rawls's claims
for a 'political conceptionof justice' with the broad vision of reason,self and society
outlined above. In the wake of objections raised by communitarianslike Michael
Sandelin particular to the conceptof the self and the vision of the good presupposed
or at least implied by his theory of justice, John Rawls distinguished between
'metaphysical'and 'political' conceptionsof justice. While the former view would
entail fundamentalphilosophical premisesabout the nature of the self, one's vision
of society and even one's conceptof human rationality, the political conceptionof
justice proceededfrom assumptionsabout self, society and reason which were
'formulated not in terms of any comprehensivedoctrine but in terms of certain
fundamental intuitive ideas viewed as latent in the public political culture of a
democraticsociety'.8 Rawls believesin the legislative task of reasonand he limits the
scopeof philosophicalinquiry in accordancewith conceptionsof what is appropriate
for the public culture of liberal democracies. He formulates his philosophical
presuppositionsin such a fashion as would elicit an 'overlappingconsensus'and thus
be acceptableto the implicit self-understandingof the public actors of a democratic
polity. The essayscollected in this volume do not restrict the scope of normative
inquiry to the actually existing limitations on the public discoursesof actually existing
democracies.In the final analysis,conceptionsof self, reasonand society and visions
of ethics and politics are inseparable.One should regard such conceptionsof self,
reason and society not as elements of a 'comprehensive'Weltanschauungwhich
cannotbe further challenged,but as presuppositionswhich are themselvesalways also
subjectto challengeand inquiry. As I will arguebelow, such assumptionsabout self,
reason and society are the 'substantive' presuppositions without which no
'proceduralism', including Rawls's own program of an 'overlappingconsensus',can
be cogently formulated. There is a kind of normative philosophical analysis of
fundamental presuppositionswhich serves to place ethical inquiry in the larger
contextof epistemicand cultural debatesin a society. Such analysisof presuppositions
should be viewed not as the attempt to put forth a comprehensivemoral doctrine
acceptableto all, but as the dialectical uncoveringof premisesand argumentswhich
are implicit not only in contemporarycultural and intellectual debatesbut in the
institutions and social practicesof our lives as well. In Hegelian languagethis would
be the study of ethics as a doctrine of 'objective spirit'. In my languagethis is a study
of ethics in the context of a critical theory of society and culture.9
While continuing the broad philosophicalshift from legislative to interactivereason

initiated by the work of Jiirgen Habermasin particular, in this book I depart from
his version of a discourseor communicativeethic in crucial ways. I attempt to
highlight, emphasizeand evenradicalizethoseaspectsof a discourseethic which are
universalistwithout being rationalistic, which seek understandingamong humans
while consideringthe consensusof all to be a counterfactualillusion, and which are
sensitiveto differencesof identity, needsand modesof reasoningwithout obliterating
thesebehindsomeconceptionof uniform rational moral autonomy.There are three
decisive foci around which I proposeto save discourseethics from the excessesof
its own rationalistic Enlightenmentlegacy. Theseare the conceptualizationof the
moral point of view in light of the reversibility of perspectivesand the cultivation
in HannahArendt's terms of 'representativethinking', to 'engender'the subject of
moral reasoning,not in order to relativize moral claims to fit genderdifferencesbut
to make them gender sensitive and cognizant of gender difference; to develop a
rudimentaryphenomenologyof moral judgmentin order to show how a principled,
universalistmorality and context-sensitivemoral judgmentcan fit together.My goal
is to situate reason and the moral self more decisively in contexts of gender and
community, while insisting upon the discursive power of individuals to challenge
such situatednessin the nameof universalisticprinciples, future identities and as yet
undiscoveredcommunities.
Chapter1, entitled 'In the Shadowof Aristotle and Hegel: CommunicativeEthics
and Current Controversiesin PracticalPhilosophy',presentsthe generaloutlines of
my attempt to defend communicativeethics while heeding the criticism of neo-
Aristotelians like Hans-GeorgGadamerand Alasdair MacIntyre on the one hand
and of neo-Hegelianslike CharlesTaylor on the other. I begin by seekingan answer
to the standardHegelianobjection to formalist ethical universalismthat procedures
of universalizability are at best inconsistent and at worst empty. Applying this
objection to the caseof discourseethics, I maintain that neither inconsistencynor
emptinessare unavoidabledefectsof a conversationallyconceivedmodel of moral
reasoning.What I proposeis a proceduralreformulation of the universalizability
principle along the model of a moral conversationin which the capacityto reverse
perspectives,that is, the willingness to reasonfrom the others' point of view, and
the sensitivity to heartheir voice is paramount.Following Kant, HannahArendt has
given this core intuition of universalistic ethical and political theories a brilliant
formulation:
The power of judgment rests on a potential agreementwith others, and the thinking
processwhich is active in judging somethingis not, like the thought processof pure
reasoning,a dialogue betweenme and myself, but finds itself always and primarily,
even if I am quite alone in making up my mind, in an anticipatedcommunicationwith
others with whom I know I must finally come to some agreement.And this enlarged
way of thinking, which as judgmentknows how to transcendits individual limitations,
cannotfunction in strict isolation or solitude; it needsthe presenceof others'in whose
place' it must think, whose perspectiveit must take into consideration,and without
whom it never has the opportunity to operateat all. 10
408 Seyla Benhabib
The nerve of my reformulation of the universalist tradition in ethics is this

constructionof the 'moral point of view' along the model of a moral conversation,
exercising the art of 'enlarged thinking'. The goal of such conversation is not
consensusor unanimity (Einstimmigkeitor Konsens)but the 'anticipatedcommuni-
cation with others with whom I know I must finally come to some agreement'
( Verstandigung).This distinction between'consensus'and 'reachingan agreement'
has not always been heeded in objections to communicative ethics. At times
Habermas himself has overstated the case by insisting that the purpose of
universalizabilityproceduresin ethicsmust be the uncoveringor discoveringof some
'general interest' to which all could consent.11 I proposeto view the concept of
'general interest' in ethics and politics more as a regulative ideal and less as the
subjectmatterof a substantiveconsensus.In ethics,the universalizabilityprocedure,
if it is understoodas a reversingof perspectivesand the willingness to reasonfrom
the other's(others')point of view, does not guaranteeconsent;it demonstratesthe
will and the readinessto seek understandingwith the other and to reach some
reasonableagreementin an open-endedmoral conversation.Likewise, in politics,
it is less significant that 'we' discover'the' generalinterest,but more significant that
collective decisionsbe reachedthrough procedureswhich are radically open and fair
to all. Above all these decisions should not exclude the voice of those whose
'interests'may not be formulable in the acceptedlanguageof public discourse,but
whose very presencein public life may force the boundariesbetweenprivate needs
and public claims, individual misfortunesand collectively representablegrievances.
One consequenceof reformulating universalizability in terms of the model of
reversibility of perspectivesand the cultivation of 'enlarged thinking' is that the
identity of the moral self must be reconceptualizedas well. More precisely,
this reformulation allows us to challenge those presuppositionsof 'legalistic
universalism'from Kant to Rawls which haveprivileged a certainvision of the moral
self. In order to think of universalizabilityas reversingof perspectivesand a seeking
to understandthe standpoint of the other(s), they must be viewed not only as
generalized but also as concrete others. According to the standpoint of the
'generalizedother', each individual is a moral personendowedwith the samemoral
rights as ourselves;this moral personis also a reasoningand acting being, capable
of a senseof justice, of formulating a vision of the good, and of engagingin activity
to pursuethe latter. The standpointof the concreteother, by contrast,enjoins us
to view every moral person as a unique individual, with a certain life history,
disposition and endowment,as well as needsand limitations. One consequenceof
limiting proceduresof universalizability to the standpointof the generalizedother
has been that the other as distinct from the self has disappearedin universalizing
moral discourse. [ ...J [TJ here can be no coherentreversibility of perspectivesand
positionsunlessthe identity of the other as distinct from the self, not merely in the
senseof bodily othernessbut as a concreteother, is retained.
I envision the relationship of the generalizedto the concreteother as along the
model of a continuum. In the first place there is the universalisticcommitmentto
the considerationof every human individual as a being worthy of universal moral
respect.This norm which I sharewith the liberal tradition is institutionalizedin a

democraticpolity through the recognitionof civil, legal and political rights - all of
which reflect the morality of the law or, if you wish, the principles of justice in a
well-orderedpolity. The standpointof the concreteother, by contrast,is implicit in
thoseethical relationshipsin which we are alwaysalreadyimmersedin the lifeworld.
To be a family member, a parent, a spouse,a sister or a brother meansto know
how to reasonfrom the standpointof the concreteother. One cannot act within
theseethical relationshipsin the way in which standingin this kind of a relationship
to someoneelse demandsof us without being able to think from the standpointof
our child, our spouse,our sister or brother, mother or father. To stand in such an
ethical relationshipmeansthat we as concreteindividuals know what is expectedof
us in virtue of the kind of social bonds which tie us to the other.
If the standpointof the generalizedand the concreteother(s) are thought of as
existing along a continuum, extending from universal respect for all as moral
personsat one end to the care,solidarity and solicitation demandedof us and shown
to us by thoseto whom we stand in the closestrelationshipat the other,12 then the
privileging in traditional universalistictheoriesof the legal domain and the exclusive
focus upon relationshipsof justice must be altered. I argue against Kohlberg and
Habermasthat relations of justice do not exhaustthe moral domain, even if they
occupya privileged position within it [ ...J. Again to introducea Hegelianlocution,
ethical life encompassesmuch more than the relationship of right-bearing
generalizedothersto eachother. Even if the Kantian tradition distinguishesbetween
legality and morality, a tendencyin Kantian ethics which has persistedtill our own
days is to model ethical bonds along juridical (rechtsfroemmig)ones. Viewed from
the standpointof the interactive universalismwhich I seekto develop in this book,
the problem appearsdifferently: my questionis how ethical life must be thought of
- life in the family no less than life in the modern constitutionalstate - from the
standpointof a postconventionaland universalistmorality. SometimesHegel argued
as if 'the moral point of view' and Sittlichkeit were incompatible, but the really
challengingtask suggestedby his Philosophyof Right is to envisagea universalistic
moral point of view as situatedwithin an ethical community. Call this the vision of
a postconventionalSittlichkeit.
It is this searchfor a 'postconventionalSittlichkeit' which distinguishesmy vision
from that of communitarianthinkers like Michael Sandeland Alasdair MacIntyre in
particular. In the chapter on 'Autonomy, Modernity and Community: Communi-
tarianismand Critical Society Theory in Dialogue', I arguethat there are two strands
of communitarianthinking on the question of reconstituting a community under
conditions of modernity. The fIrst I describeas the 'integrationist'and the secondas
the 'participationist'.While the fIrst group of thinkers seekto reconstitutecommunity
via recouping and reclaiming an integrative vision of fundamental values and
principles,the participationistsenvisagesucha communityas emergingfrom common
action, engagementand debatein the civic and public realmsof democraticsocieties.
I reject the integrationistvision of community as being incompatiblewith the values
of autonomy,pluralism, reflexivity and tolerancein modern societies.
410 Seyla Benhabib
In the constitutionof such a postconventionalSittlichkeit via participatorypolitics

in a democraticpolity, the faculty of 'enlargedthinking' plays a crucial role. This
was one of HannahArendt's cardinal insights, and ultimately why she considered
judgment a political rather than a moral faculty. In 'thinking with Arendt against
Arendt' in severalof the chaptersbelow, I will attempt to make her conceptionof
enlargedthinking useful both for morality and for politics. In the democraticpolity,
the gap betweenthe demandsof justice, as thesearticulateprinciples of moral right,
and the demandsof virtue, as this defines the quality of our relations to others in
the lifeworld, can be bridged by cultivating qualities of civic friendship and
solidarity. These qualities of civic friendship and solidarity mediate between the
standpointsof the 'generalized'and the 'concreteothers', by teachingus to reason,
to understandand to appreciatethe standpointof 'collective concreteothers'. Such
understanding,however, is a product of political activity. It cannot be performed
either by the political theorist or by the moral agentin vacuo. For, as Arendt well
knew, the multiplicity of perspectiveswhich constitute the political can only be
revealedto thosewho are willing to engagein the foray of public contestation.The
perspectivalquality of the public world can only manifest itself to those who 'join
togetherin action in concert'.Public spaceis formed through such action in concert.
In a postconventionalSittlichkeit, the public sphere is the crucial domain of
interaction which mediatesbetweenthe macropolitical institutions of a democratic
polity and the private sphere.
The public sphereis a common theme in severalchaptersof this book. I set up
a contrastbetweenthe liberal, the Arendtian and the Habermasianmodels of the
public sphere.As representativeof the liberal position, Bruce Ackerman'smodel of
a public conversationunder the constraintsof neutrality is chosen.My argumentis
that the constraintof neutrality illicitly limits the agendaof public conversationand
excludes particularly those groups like women and blacks who have not been
traditional partners in the liberal dialogue. I maintain that democratic politics
redefinesand reconstitutesthe line betweenthe right and the good, justice and the
good life. Although this agonaland contestatorydimensionof politics is at the heart
of HannahArendt'swork, what makesher conceptof public spaceso deficient from
the standpointof complex, modern societiesis a constraint similar to that intro-
ducedby Ackermanwith his conceptof 'liberal neutrality'. Arendt also seeksto limit
the scopeand the agendaof the public spherevia essentialistassumptionsabout the
'natural place' of human activities and the 'political' or 'non-political' nature of
certain topoi of debate. By contrast,I plead for a radically proceduralistmodel of
the public sphere,neither the scopenor the agendaof which can be limited a priori,
and whoselines can be redrawnby the participantsin the conversation.Habermas's
concept of a public sphere embodying the principles of a discourseethics is my
model here.
One of the chief contributions of feminist thought to political theory in the
Westerntradition is to have questionedthe line dividing the public and the private.
Feminists have argued that the 'privacy' of the private sphere,which has always
includedthe relationsof the male headof householdto his spouseand children, has
been an opaque glass rendering women and their traditional spheresof activity
invisible and inaudible. Women, and the activities to which they have been
historically confmed, like childrearing, housekeeping, satisfying the emotional and
sexualneedsof the male, tending to the sick and the elderly, have beenplaceduntil
very recently beyond the pale of justice. The norms of freedom, equality and
reciprocity have stoppedat the householddoor. Two centuriesafter the American
and the French revolutions, the entry of women into the public sphereis far from
complete,the genderdivision of labor in the family is still not the object of moral
and political reflection, and women and their concerns are still invisible in
contemporarytheoriesof justice and community. It is not my purposeto lament the
invisibility of genderin contemporarythought, but rather to ask the question:what
consequencesdoes this invisibility have for the theories under consideration?A
theory of universalistmorality or of the public spherecannotsimply 'ignore' women
and be subsequently'corrected'by their reinsertioninto the picture from which they
were missing. Women'sabsencepoints to some categoricaldistortionswithin these
theories;that is to say, becausethey excludewomenthesetheoriesare systematically
skewed. The exclusion of women and their point of view is not just a political
omission and a moral blind spot but constitutesan epistemologicaldeftcit as well.
I call attentionto the epistemologicaldeftcits of contemporaryuniversalismin the
following areas.First, I arguethat the neglect by universalisttheoriesof the moral
emotionsand of everydaymoral interactionswith concreteothershaseverythingto
do with the genderdivision of labor in Westernsocietiessubsequentto modernity.
Justice becomesthe core of collective moral life when the extendedhouseholdsof
antiquity and the Middle Ages lose their productive functions with the rise of the
capitalist exchangeeconomy,and becomemere reproductiveunits whose function
is to satisfy the daily bodily and psychosexualneedsof their members.Second,every
conceptof public spacepresupposesa correspondingdelimitation of the private. In
the chapterentitled 'Models of Public Space:HannahArendt, the Liberal Tradition
and Jiirgen Habermas',I show that these theories of the public sphereare gender
blind to the extent that they either draw a rigid and dogmatic boundary between
the public and the private (Arendt), or, as is the casewith Habermas,becausethey
developbinary oppositionswhich excludethe thematizationof issuesmost important
for women from public discussion.The oppositionsbetween,'justice' and 'the good
life', 'generalizableinterests'versus 'private need interpretations',between'public
norms' and 'private values', have the consequenceof leaving the line betweenthe
public and the private pretty much where it has always been, namely betweenthe
public spheresof the polity and the economy on the one hand and the familial-
domesticrealm on the other. Engagingin a dialectical battle with Habermas,I try
to reconstruct his model of the public sphere in a way which would both
accommodatefeminist criticisms and also help feminists in our own thinking about
alternative public spheres.
Finally, there is a relationship between the neglect of the problem of moral
judgment in universalist moral theories and the neglect of women and their
activities. Becausewomen'ssphereof activity has traditionally been and still today
412 Seyla Benhabib
is so concentratedin the private sphere in which children are raised, human

relationshipsmaintained and traditions handed down and continued, the female
experiencehas been more attuned to the 'narrative structure of action' and the
'standpoint of the concrete other'. Since they have had to deal with concrete
individuals, with their needs,endowments,wants and abilities, dreamsas well as
failures, womenin their capacitiesas primary caregivershave had to exerciseinsight
into the claims of the particular. In a sensethe art of the particular has been their
domain, as hasthe 'web of stories',which in HannahArendt'swords constitutesthe
who and the what of our sharedworld. It is in the context of discussingHannah
Arendt'stheory of judgmentthat I provide the outlinesof a phenomenologyof moral
judgment, which would none the less be compatible with a universalist and
principled morality.
The claim that the genderblindnessof universalisttheoriesis not merely a matter
of moral indifferenceor political inclination but that it points to a deeperepistemic
failure has been one of the cornerstonesof the postmodernistcritique of the grand
narrativesof the logocentric Western tradition. If there is one commitmentwhich
unites postmodernistsfrom Foucault to Derrida to Lyotard it is this critique of
Westernrationality as seenfrom the perspectiveof the margins,from the standpoint
of what and whom it excludes,suppresses, delegitimizes,rendersmad, imbecilic or
childish. In his impressivegenealogiesof reasonFoucault uncoversthe discursive
practiceswhich havedrawn the line betweenmadnessand civilization, mental health
and sickness,criminality and normality, sexual devianceand sexual conformism.!3
Foucault shows that the other of reason comes to haunt this very reason. The
persistenceof the other within the text of Western metaphysics,the continuing
attemptsof this metaphysicsto erasethe presenceof the other in the endlessgame
of binary oppositions,has been a guiding vision of JacquesDerrida'sthought from
his early essayon 'the ends of man' to his most recent commentson the 'force of
law'. 14 Of course,it would be a mistaketo think that the other in JacquesDerrida's
thought is merely a nomer for an excluded gender, race, people or geopolitical
region of the world. For Derrida, as for Hegel, no identity can be constituted
without difference;the other is never merely an other but always also an in- and for-
itself. But for Hegel there is a moment of identity which overcomesdifference by
'appropriating'it, by pretendingthat the 'other' is somethingmerely posited(etwas
gesetzt)which the one self-identicalsubjectpresupposes (vorausgesetzt),for Derrida
difference is irreducible and never evaporatesinto the imperialist game of positing
one's presuppositionswhich Hegel's subjects always play. Difference which is
ineliminable is differance, the continuing act and processof differing. Although
thereis no identity, none the lessthere is more than merely a contingentrelationship
betweenthe logocentrismof the West and the imperialist gesturewith which the
West 'appropriates'its other(s), pretending,much like the Hegelian concept,that
they were its own presuppositionson the way to self-fulfillment. The Orient is there
to enable the Occident, Africa is there to enable Western civilization to fulfill its
mission,the woman is there to help man actualizehimself in her womb, etc.... The
logic of binary oppositionsis also a logic of subordinationand domination.
Lyotard's Lyotard's work the epistemic exclusion of the other also has
In Jean-Fran~ois
moral and political implications, although it can by no meansbe reducedto these.
In The Postmodern Condition Lyotard contrastedthe 'grand narratives' of the
Enlightenmentto the 'petits recits' of women, children, fools and primitives. The
exclusionof small narrativity, arguedLyotard, was an aspectof the grandiosevision
of the modernizingWesterntradition. The PostmodernCondition left ambiguous,
however, whether by 'narrativity' Lyotard meant a kind of ordinary language
philosophy a fa Wittgenstein,a hermeneutictradition of judgment afa Gadamer,
or a kind of poetic imaginationlike the one Richard Rorty defends.Perhapsall three
were envisioned. In subsequentworks like Le Differend, Just Gaming and
Heideggerand the Jews15 there is a linking of the limits of rationalismto the ethics
and politics of the other.
As the chapteron 'Feminismand the Questionof Postmodernism'clarifies, in their
critique of the illusions of logocentrismand in their championingof the standpoint
of the 'other(s}', postmodernistthinkers have been crucial allies for contemporary
feminism. By focusing on the problem of the subject, the question of grand
narratives,and the standardsof rationality and critique, I constructa dialoguehere
betweenweak and strong postmodernistclaims and feminist positions/oppositions.
Postmodernismis an ally with whom feminism cannotclaim identity but only partial
and strategic solidarity. Postmodernism,in its infinitely skeptical and subversive
attitude toward normative claims, institutional justice and political struggles, is
certainly refreshing. Yet, it is also debilitating. The so-called critique of 'identity
politics', which is now dominatingfeminist thought,is not only an acknowledgment
of the necessityof 'rainbow politics', as Iris Young has claimed.16 The critique of
'identity politics' attemptsto replacethe vision of an autonomousand engendered
subject with that of a fractured, opaqueself; the 'deed without the doer' becomes
the paradigmof subversiveactivity for selveswho joyfully deny their own coherence
and relish their opacity and multiplicity. This problematic vision of the self is a
radicalizationof the Nietzscheancritique of modernity in the nameof an aesthetics
of the everyday.It is Zarathustrawho can be lamb and lion, sageand rebel at once.
For women the aesthetictranscendenceof the everydayis of coursea temptation.
But preciselybecausewomen'sstorieshaveso often beenwritten for them by others,
preciselybecausetheir own senseof self has beenso fragile, and their ability to assert
control over the conditions of their existenceso rare, this vision of the self appears
to me to be making a virtue out of necessity.No lessimportantis that social criticism
of the kind requiredfor women'sstrugglesis not even possiblewithout positing the
legal, moral and political norms of autonomy, choice and self-determination.
Aesthetic modernismhas always parasitically dependedupon the achievementsof
modernity in the spheresof law and morality - in so far as the right of the moral
person to pursue her senseof the good, be it ever so fractured, incoherent and
opaque, has first to be anchoredin law and morality before it can become an
everydayoption for playful selves.In this respect,as in many others,postmodernism
presupposesa superliberalism,more pluralistic, more tolerant, more open to the
right of difference and othernessthan the rather staid and soberversionspresented
414 Seyla Benhabib
by John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and ThomasNagel. As far as I am concernedthis

is not troublesome.What is baffling, though, is the lightheartednesswith which
postmodernistssimply assumeor even posit those hyper-universalistand super-
liberal valuesof diversity, heterogeneity,eccentricityand otherness.In doing so they
rely on the very normsof the autonomyof subjectsand the rationality of democratic
procedureswhich otherwise they seem to so blithely dismiss. What concept of
reason, which vision of autonomy allows us to retain these values and the
institutions within which these values flourish and become ways of life? To this
questionpostmodernistshave no answer;perhapsbecause,more often than not, as
sons of the French Revolution, they have enjoyed the privileges of the modern to
the point of growing blase vis-a-vis them.
This book ends as it beganin a tug with Hegel. 'On Hegel, Women and Irony'
brings togethermany strandsof argumentation.By examining Hegel'srelationship
to the movement of the early romantics in the Jena circle, and in particular by
looking at the life of one of theseearly 'modernist'women, Caroline Michaelis von
Schlegel Schelling, I show that the women's question in Hegel's philosophy is not
only a conceptualresult necessitatedby a seriesof binary oppositionswhich define
the logic of genderrelations in his philosophy. Nor is the confinementof women
to a traditionalist vision of Sittlichkeit in the Philosophy of Right merely a
consequenceof the historical limitations of Hegel'stimes. Hegel could have argued
otherwise,just as some of his contemporariesand most notably the early Friedrich
von Schlegeldid. Yet he chose not to; he was not necessitatedto do so. He chose
not to follow the consequencesof modernity in ethical life all the way into the
sphereof personal,intimate, sexualrelationsbetweenmen and women. He refused
to accept the ideals of heterosexualequality and egalitarian reciprocity which his
romanticfriends, for a short while at least, advocated.Yet as the personof Caroline
von Schlegel Schelling shows, women cannot but have an ambivalentrelationship
to modernity,which on the one hand promisesthem so much and which yet on the
other constantly subverts its own promessedu bonheur. In joining the French
revolutionary armies and the shortlived republic of Mainz, Caroline appearsto me
to have appreciatedthe dialectic of bourgeoisrepublicanismwhich initially allowed
women as participantsinto the public sphere,only at a secondstageto send them
scurryinghome. The recoveryof a senseof irony in the face of the modernistproject
and bemusementat its dialectical twists and turns is truer not only to the dilemmas
of contemporaryfeminism but in the face of an epoch approachingits end as well.
Notes
1. F. Fukuyamahas arguedthat transformationsin the Soviet Union and EasternEurope

show that we have in effect reached'the end of history'. F. Fukuyama,'The end of
history?', The National Interest (Summer1989), pp. 3-18. Of course,this is not meant
in the trivial chronological sensethat time will now stand still, but rather in the sense
that the economicand political kairos of the future (how long is the future?) will not add
anything new to the principles of Western capitalism and liberal democracy.Just as

Hegel saw the post-Frenchrevolutionary modern state, basedon the principles of the
right of personsand property,to representthe conceptualend of the history of freedom,
Fukuyama also believes that the second half of the twentieth century has vindicated
capitalism and liberal democracyover their enemies,namely fascism and communism.
See ibid., pp. 9 ff.
2. See Ernst Bloch, Erbschaft dieser Zeit, nrst published 1935 (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt,
1973), pp. 110 ff.
3. SeeRichard Rorty, 'Habermasand Lyotard on postmodernity',Praxis International, 4.1
(April 1984), pp. 34 ff. Also see 'The contingency of a liberal community', in
Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989),
pp. 44 ff.
4. Wilfried Sellars'sdiscussionof this point, which is, after all, a restatementof Hegel's
critique of 'SenseCertainty'in the nrst chapterof The Phenomenology of Spirit, hasbeen
very influential on my thinking. SeeWilfried Sellars,'Empiricism and the philosophyof
mind', in Science, Perceptionand Reality (Humanities, New York, 1963), pp. 127 ff.;
and Michael Williams, GroundlessBelief: An essayon the possibility of epistemology
(Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1977), esp. pp. 25 ff. for a more recent
statement.
5. SeeKarl-Otto Apel, 'From Kant to Peirce: the semiotictransformationof transcendental
logic', in Towards a Transformationof Philosophy,trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby
(Routledge& Kegan Paul, London, 1980), pp. 77-93; see also J. Habermas,'What is
universal pragmatics?',in Communicationand the Evolution of Society,trans. Thomas
McCarthy (Beacon, Boston, MA, 1979), pp. 1-69, and 'Wahrheitstheorien',in
Wirklichkeit und Reflexion,ed. H. Fahrenbach(Neske, Pfullingen, 1973), and most
recently JUrgen Habermas,Postmetaphysisches Denken (Suhrkamp,Frankfurt, 1989).
6. In chapter 5 [of Situating the Self], The Generalizedand the Concrete Other: The
Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Moral Theory', I use the terms 'substitutionalist'
and 'interactive'universalismsto mark this contrast.
7. The kind of developmentaluniversalismdefendedby Kohlberg and Habermashas at
times beensubjectto the misleadingreadingthat Socratesand Jesus,Buddhaor Francis
of Assisi, as membersof cultures and societieswhich were prior in world history to
Western Enlightenmentand modernity, should be consideredfor that reasonto be on
a 'lower level of moral development'than Voltaire or Nietzsche,Kant or Karl Marx!
Obviously, an absurdview which reeksof the self-satisnedevolutionismof the eighteenth
and nineteenthcenturies.I have arguedelsewherethat this is a gross misunderstanding
of Habermas'swork; in particular,seeS. Benhabib,Critique, Norm and Utopia: A study
of the foundations of critical theory (Columbia University Press, New York, 1986)
pp. 253 ff. Although the relationship of cognitive universalist moral positions to
modernity is a complex one, which I shall addressin various chapters below, the
developmental interpretation of the moral point of view in no way sanctions the
construalof world history and human cultures as if they were stagesin the growth of
a superegowrit large. I reject attemptsto apply a cognitive developmentalschemewith
a teleological endpoint to world history and cultures. One can utilize a much weaker
schemeof distinctions between preconventional,conventional, and postconventional
modalitiesof cultural traditions, without also having to maintain that theseare 'natural'
sequencesof evolution which will invariably take place in a normal course of
'development'.For in the caseof individual developmentit is the interaction of a nnite
bodily individual with the social and the physical world which initiates learning in this
individual, activatesmemory and reflection and brings about progressionsto 'higher',
more integratedstagesof situationcomprehensionand problem solving. The 'subject'of
world history, by contrast,is an abstractionat best and a nction at worst. One cannot
416 Seyla Benhabib
attribute to this bction a dynamic source of interaction and learning such as propels
individuals. Although I bnd the categoriesof 'pre, post and conventional moralities'
descriptively useful in thinking about patterns of normative reasoningin cultures, I
attribute no teleological necessityto the progressionfrom one stageto another.
8. John Rawls, 'The priority of right and ideasof the good', Philosophyand Public Affairs,
17.4 (Fall 1988), pp. 251-76, here p. 252.
9. I have dealt with the logic and presuppositionsof critical social theory in my book
Critique, Norm and Utopia. The currentvolume continuesthe explorationof the project
of communicativeethics, outlined in Chapter 8 of that book.
10. Hannah Arendt, 'The crisis in culture', in BetweenPast and Future: Six exercisesin
political thought (Meridian, New York, 1961), pp. 220-2I.
11. See in particular Habermas'scontinuing reliance on the concept of 'general interest',
formulated brst in the context of his theory of legitimation crisis, and subsequentlyin
the context of his moral theory. J. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas
McCarthy (Beacon, Boston, MA, 1975), pp. 111 ff, and 'Discourseethics: notes on a
program of philosophical justibcation', in Moral Consciousnessand Communicative
Action, trans. Christian Lehnhardtand Shierry Weber Nicholsen (MIT Press,Boston,
MA, 1990), pp. 43 ff; and my critique in chapter 1 [of Situating the Selfl.
12. This, of course,doesnot meanthat only family or kinship groupscan debnesuch a space
for us. In modern societiesmost individuals re-createfamily and kinlike structuresfor
themselveson the basis of ties other than blood lineage; the relationship of friendship,
which is a special bonding of two individuals, beyond and sometimes against the
demandsof kinship, nationality, ethnicity and politics, is one of the most cherished
dimensionsof ordinary lives under conditions of modernity.
13. For an early but extremely illuminating statement of the purpose of 'genealogical
inquiry', see Michel Foucault, 'Nietzsche,genealogy,history', in Language, Counter-
Memory, Practice: Selectedessaysand interviews, ed. and introd. Donald F. Bouchard
(Cornell University Press,New York, 1977), pp. 139-65.
14. JacquesDerrida, The endsof man', reprinted in After Philosophy,ed. Kenneth Baynes,
JamesBohman and ThomasMcCarthy (MIT Press,Boston, MA, 1987), pp. 125-61,
and 'The force of law: The "mythical foundation of authority"', in special issue on
Deconstructionand the Possibility of Justice,BenjaminN. CardozoLaw Review,11.5-6
(July-August 1990), pp. 919-1047.
15. SeeJean-Fran<;oisLyotard, The Differend: Phrasesin dispute,trans. G. van den Abbeele
(University of Minnesota Press,Minneapolis, 1988); Jean-Fran<;oisLyotard and Jean-
Loup Thebaud, Just Gaming, trans. Wald Godzich (University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis, 1979); and Lyotard, Heideggerand the Jews, trans. AndreasMichel and
Mark Roberts (University of Minnesota Press,Minneapolis, 1990).
16. See Iris Young, The ideal of community and the politics of difference', reprinted in
Feminism and Postmodernism,ed. Linda Nicholson (Routledge, New York, 1990),
pp.300-01.
5.4 D From The Differend:
Phrases In dispute
Jean-Fran~oisLyotard
Preface: Reading Dossier

Title
As distinguished from a litigation, a differend [di/ferendl would be a case of

conflict, between(at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack
of a rule of judgment applicableto both arguments.One side'slegitimacy does not
imply the other's lack of legitimacy. However, applying a single rule of judgment
to both in order to settle their differend as though it were merely a litigation would
wrong (at least) one of them (and both of them if neither side admits this rule).
Damagesresult from an injury which is inflicted upon the rules of a genre of
discoursebut which is reparableaccordingto thoserules. A wrong resultsfrom the
fact that the rules of the genre of discourseby which one judges are not those of
the judgedgenreor genresof discourse.The ownershipof a literary or artistic work
can incur damages(as when the moral rights of the authorare assailed);but the very
principle that one ought to treat a work as an object of ownership may constitute
a wrong (as when it is not recognizedthat the 'author' is its hostage).The title of
this book suggests(through the genericvalue of the definite article) that a universal
rule of judgment betweenheterogeneousgenresis lacking in general.
Object
The only one that is indubitable,the phrase,becauseit is immediatelypresupposed.

(To doubt that one phrasesis still to phrase,one'ssilencemakesa phrase.)Or better
From Lyotard, J.-F., The Dl(f,:rend: Phrases in dispute, trans. C. Van Den Abbeele, Manchester
University Press,Manchester,1983, pp. xi-xvi, 3-14.
417
418 Jean-Fran<:ois Lyotard
yet, phrases: becausethe singular calls forth the plural (as the plural does the
singular) and becausethe singular and the plural are together already the plural.
Thesis
A phrase,even the most ordinary one, is constitutedaccordingto a set of rules (its

regimen). There are a numberof phraseregimens:reasoning,knowing, describing,
recounting, questioning, showing, ordering, etc. Phrases from heterogeneous
regimenscannotbe translatedfrom one into the other. They can be linked one onto
the other in accordancewith an end fixed by a genre of discourse.For example,
dialogue links an ostension(showing) or a definition (describing)onto a question;
at stakein it is the two partiescoming to an agreementaboutthe senseof a referent.
Genresof discoursesupply rules for linking together heterogeneousphrases,rules
that are proper for attaining certain goals: to know, to teach, to be just, to seduce,
to justify, to evaluate,to rouse emotion, to over-see.... There is no 'language'in
general,except as the object of an Idea.
Question
A phrase'happens'.How can it be linked onto? By its rule, a genre of discourse

suppliesa set of possiblephrases,each arising from somephraseregimen. Another
genreof discoursesuppliesanotherset of other possiblephrases.Thereis a differend
betweenthesetwo sets(or betweenthe genresthat call them forth) becausethey are
heterogeneous. And linkage must happen'now'; anotherphrasecannotnot happen.
It's a necessity;time, that is. There is no non-phrase.Silence is a phrase.There is
no last phrase.In the absenceof a phraseregimen or of a genre of discoursethat
enjoys a universal authority to decide, does not the linkage (whichever one it is)
necessarilywrong the regimensor genreswhosepossiblephrasesremain unactualized?
Problem
Given (1) the impossibility of avoiding conflicts (the impossibility of indifference)

and (2) the absenceof a universal genre of discourseto regulate them (or, if you
prefer, the inevitable partiality of the judge): to find, if not what can legitimate
judgment (the 'good' linkage), then at least how to save the honor of thinking.
Stakes
To convince the reader (including the first one, the A.) that thought, cognition,
ethics,politics, history or being, dependingon the case,are in play when one phrase
From The Differend 419
is linked onto another. To refute the prejudice anchoredin the readerby centuries
of humanismand of 'humansciences'that thereis 'man,'that thereis 'language',that
the former makesuse of the latter for his own ends, and that if he does not succeed
in attaining these ends, it is for want of good control over language'by means'of
a 'better' language.To defendand illustrate philosophyin its differend with its two
adversaries:on its outside,the genreof economicdiscourse(exchange,capital); on
its inside, the genre of academicdiscourse(mastery). By showing that the linking
of one phraseonto anotheris problematicand that this problem is the problem of
politics, to set up a philosophicalpolitics apartfrom the politics of 'intellectuals'and
of politicians. To bear witness to the differend.
Context
The 'linguistic turn' of Westernphilosophy(Heidegger'slater works, the penetration

of Anglo-American philosophies into European thought, the development of
languagetechnologies);and correlatively, the decline of universalistdiscourses(the
metaphysicaldoctrines of modern times: narratives of progress,of socialism, of
abundance,of knowledge).The wearinesswith regardto 'theory', and the miserable
slackeningthat goesalong with it (new this, new that, post-this,post-that,etc.). The
time has come to philosophize.
Pretext
The two thoughtswhich beckon to the A.: the Kant of the third Critique and the
historical-politicaltexts (the 'fourth Critique'); the Wittgensteinof the Philosophical
Investigationsand the posthumouswritings. In the contextimaginedby the A., they
are epiloguesto modernity and prologues to an honorable postmodernity. They
draw up the affidavit ascertainingthe declineof universalistdoctrines(Leibnizian or
Russellianmetaphysics).They questionthe terms in which thesedoctrinesthought
they could settle differends (reality, subject, community, finality). They question
them more rigorously than does Husserl's 'rigorous science', which proceedsby
eidetic variation and transcendentalevidence,the ultimate expedientof Cartesian
modernity. At the oppositepole, Kant saysthat there is no such thing as intellectual
intuition, and Wittgenstein that the signification of a term is its use. The free
examination of phrasesleads to the (critical) dissociation of their regimens (the
separation of the faculties and their conflict in Kant; the disentanglementof
languagegamesin Wittgenstein).They lay the ground for the thought of dispersion
(diaspora,writes Kant) which, accordingto the A., shapesour context. Their legacy
ought to be relievedtoday of its cumbersomedebt to anthropomorphism(the notion
of 'use' in both, an anthropomorphismthat is transcendentalin Kant, empirical in
Wittgenstein).
Mode
The book's mode is philosophic, reflective. Thc A.'s only rule here is to examine
casesof differend and to fmd the rules for the heterogeneous genresof discoursethat
bring about thesecases.Unlike a theoretician,he does not presupposethe rules of
his own discourse,but only that this discoursetoo must obey rules. The mode of
the book is philosophical,and not theoretical(or anything else) to the extent that
its stakesare in discoveringits rules rather than in supposingtheir knowledgeas a
principle. In this very way, it deniesitself the possibility of settling, on the basisof
its own rules, the differends it examines (contrary to the speculativegenre, for
instance,or the analytic). The mode is that of a metalanguagein the linguist's sense
(phrasesare its object) but not in the logician's sense(it does not constitute the
grammarof an object-language).
Genre
In the senseof poetics,the genre is that of Observations,Remarks,Thoughts,and

Notes which are relative to an object; in other words, a discontinuousform of the
Essay.A notebookof sketches?The reflections are arrangedin a seriesof numbers
and groupedinto sections.The seriesis interruptedon occasionby Notices, which
are reading notes for philosophical texts, but the whole is to be read in sequence.
Style
The A.'s naive ideal is to attain a zero degreestyle and for the readerto have the
thoughtin hand,as it were. Theresometimesensuesa tone of wisdom, a sententious
one, which shouldbe disregarded.The book'stempo is not that of 'our time'. A little
out of date? The A. explains himself at the end about the time of 'our time'.
Reader
A philosophicalone, that is, anybodyon the condition that he or she agreesnot to

be done with 'language'and not to 'gain time'. Nevertheless,the presentreading
dossierwill allow the reader,if the fancy grabshim or her, to 'talk aboutthe book',
without having read it. (For the Notices, a little more professionala reader.)
Author
Announcedthe presentreflectionsin the 'Priere de desinserer'of Rudimentspaiens

(1977) [Pagan Rudiments] and in the Introduction to The PostmodernCondition
(1979). Were he not afraid of being tedious, he would confessthat he had begun
this work right after the publication of Economie libidinale (1974). Or for that
matter. ... Thesereflectionscould not in the end have seenthe light of day without
an agreementreached between the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes in Saint-
Denis) and the CNRS, and without the obliging help of Maurice Caveing and
Simone Debout-Oleszkiewicz,researchersat the CNRS. The A., if not the reader,
thanks them for this.
Address
So, in the next centurythere will be no more books. It takestoo long to read, when
successcomesfrom gaining time. What will be called a book will be a printed object
whose 'message'(its information content) and name and title will first have been
broadcastby the media, a film, a newspaperinterview, a television program, and
a cassetterecording. It will be an object from whose salesthe publisher (who will
also have producedthe film, the interview, the program,etc.) will obtain a certain
profit margin, becausepeoplewill think that they must 'have' it (and thereforebuy
it) so as not to be taken for idiots or to break (my goodness)the social bond! The
book will be distributed at a premium, yielding a financial profit for the publisher
and a symbolic one for the reader.This particularbook, along with others,belongs
to the last of last year'sline [fin de serie]. Despiteevery effort to make his thought
communicable,the A. knows that he has failed, that this is too voluminous, too
long, and too difficult. The promoters have hidden away. Or more exactly, his
timidity kept him from 'contacting' them. Contentedenough that one publisher
(condemnedalso by this very act) has agreedto publish this pile of phrases.
Philosophershave never had instituted addressees,which is nothing new. The
reflection'sdestinationis also an object of reflection. The last of last year'sline has
been around a long time. So has solitude. Still there is somethingnew: the relation
to time (I am tempted to write the 'use of time') that reigns today in the 'public
space'.Reflection is not thrust asidetoday becauseit is dangerousor upsetting,but
simply becauseit is a wasteof time. It is 'good for nothing', it is not good for gaining
time. For successis gaining time. A book, for example,is a successif its first printing
is rapidly sold out. This finality is the finality of the economicgenre. Philosophyhas
beenable to publish its reflectionsunderthe guiseof many genres(artistic, political,
theological,scientific, anthropological),at the price, of course,of misunderstandings
and gravewrongs, but still ... - whereaseconomiccalculationseemsfatal to it. The
differend doesnot bear upon the contentof the reflection. It concerns(and tampers
with) its ultimate presuppositions.Reflection requires that you watch out for
occurrences,that you don't already know what's happening. It leaves open the
question:Is it happening?[Arrive-t-il?] It tries to keep up with the now [maintenir
Ie maintenant] (to use a belabored word).In the economicgenre, the rule is that
what happenscan happenonly if it has already beenpaid back, and thereforehas
alreadyhappened.Exchangepresupposes that the cessionis canceledin advanceby
a countercession,the circulation of the book being canceledby its sales. And the
soonerthis is done, the better the book is.
In writing this book, the A. had the feeling that his sole addresseewas the Is it
happening? It is to it that the phraseswhich happencall forth. And, of course,he
will never know whether or not the phraseshappento arrive at their destination,
and by hypothesis,he must not know it. He knows only that this ignoranceis the
ultimate resistancethat the event can oppose to the accountableor countable
[comptable] use of time.
The Differend
1. You are informed that human beings endowedwith languagewere placed in
a situation such that none of them is now able to tell about it. Most of them
disappearedthen, and the survivorsrarely speakaboutit. When they do speakabout
it, their testimony bears only upon a minute part of this situation. How can you
know that the situation itself existed? That it is not the fruit of your informant's
imagination?Either the situation did not exist as such. Or else it did exist, in which
case your informant's testimony is false, either becausehe or she should have
disappeared,or else becausehe or she should remain silent, or else because,if he
or she does speak,he or she can bear witness only to the particular experiencehe
had, it remaining to be establishedwhether this experiencewas a componentof
the situation in question.
2. 'I have analyzedthousandsof documents.I have tirelessly pursuedspecialists
and historianswith my questions.I havetried in vain to fmd a single former deportee
capableof proving to me that he had really seen,with his own eyes,a gas chamber'.
(Faurisson[ ...]). To have 'really seenwith his own eyes'a gas chamberwould be
the condition which gives one the authority to say that it exists and to persuadethe
unbeliever. Yet it is still necessaryto prove that the gas chamberwas used to kill
at the time it was seen.The only acceptableproof that it was usedto kill is that one
died from it. But if one is dead, one cannot testify that it is on accountof the gas
chamber. - The plaintiff complainsthat he has been fooled about the existenceof
gas chambers,fooled that is, about the so-calledFinal Solution. His argumentis:
in order for a place to be identifIed as a gas chamber,the only eyewitnessI will
acceptwould be a victim of this gaschamber:now, accordingto my opponent,there
is no victim that is not dead; otherwise,this gas chamberwould not be what he or
she claims it to be. There is, therefore, no gas chamber.
3. Can you give me, says an editor defending his or her profession,the title of
a work of major importancewhich would have been rejected by every editor and
which would therefore remain unknown? Most likely, you do not know any
masterpieceof this kind because.if it does exist, it remainsunknown. And if you

think you know one, since it has not been made public, you cannot say that it is
of major importance,exceptin your eyes. You do not know of any, therefore,and
the editor is right. - This argumenttakes the sameform as those in the preceding
numbers. Reality is not what is 'given' to this or that 'subject', it is a state of the
referent (that about which one speaks) which results from the effectuation of
establishmentproceduresdefinedby a unanimouslyagreed-uponprotocol, and from
the possibility offered to anyoneto recommencethis effectuationas often as he or
she wants. The publishing industry would be one of these protocols, historical
inquiry another.
4. Either the Ibanskian'~
witnessis not a communist,or elsehe is. If he is, he has
no needto to testify that Ibanskiansociety is communist,since he admits that the
communistauthoritiesare the only ones competentto effectuatethe establishment
proceduresfor the reality of the communistcharacterof that society. He defers to
them then just as the laypersondefers to the biologist or to the astronomerfor the
affirmation of the existenceof a virus or a nebula.If he ceasesto give his agreement
to these authorities, he ceasesto be a communist.We come back then to the first
case: he is not a communist. This meansthat he ignores or wishes to ignore the
establishmentproceduresfor the reality of the communist characterof Ibanskian
society. There is, in this case,no more credit to be accordedhis testimonythan to
that of a human being who says he has communicatedwith Martians. 'There is
thereforenothing surprisingin the fact that the [IbanskianJStateregardsopposition
activity in generalas a criminal activity on the samelevel as robbery, gangsterism,
speculationand so on ... It is a non-political society(Zinoviev [...J). More exactly,
it is a learnedState [...J it knows no reality other than the establishedone, and
it holds the monopoly on proceduresfor the establishmentof reality.
5. The difference, though, betweencommunism,on the one hand, and a virus
or a nebula,on the other hand, is that there are meansto observethe latter - they
are objects of cognition - while the former is the object of an idea of historical-
political reason,and this object is not observable(Kant Notice 4, §1). There are no
procedures, defined by a protocol unanimously approved and renewable on
demand,for establishingin generalthe reality of the object of an idea. For example,
even in physics, there exists no such protocol for establishingthe reality of the
universe,becausethe universeis the object of an idea. As a generalrule, an object
which is thoughtunderthe categoryof the whole (or of the absolute)is not an object
of cognition (whose reality could be subjectedto a protocol, etc.). The principle
affirming the contrary could be called totalitarianism. If the requirement of
establishingthe reality of a phrase'sreferent accordingto the protocol of cognition
is extendedto any given phrase,especiallyto those phrasesthat refer to a whole,
then this requirementis totalitarian in its principle. That's why it is important to
,. The term is from Alexander Zinoviev's satirical novel The Yawning Heights, set in a fIctitious locale
- Ibansk - whose name is a derivative of Ivan, the stereotypicalRussianname. [Trans.]
424 Jean-Fram;ois Lyotard
distinguish between phrase regimens, and this comes down to limiting the
competenceof a given tribunal to a given kind of phrase.
6. The plaintiff's conclusion (No.2) should have been that since the only
witnessesare the victims, and since there are no victims but deadones,no place can
be identified as a gas chamber. He should not have said that there are none, but
rather that his opponentcannotprove that there are any, and that shouldhave been
sufficient to confound the tribunal. It is up to the opponent(the victim) to adduce
the proof of the wrong done to him or her!
7. This is what a wrong [tort] would be: a damage[dommage] accompaniedby the
loss of the meansto prove the damage.This is the caseif the victim is deprived of
life, or of all his or her liberties, or of the freedom to make his or her ideas or
opinionspublic, or simply of the right to testify to the damage,or even more simply
if the testifying phraseis itself deprived of authority (Nos 24-27). In all of these
cases,to the privation constitutedby the damagethere is addedthe impossibility of
bringing it to the knowledge of others, and in particular to the knowledge of a
tribunal. Should the victim seek to bypassthis impossibility and testify anyway to
the wrong done to him or to her, he or she comes up against the following
argumentation:either the damagesyou complain about never took place, and your
testimonyis false; or else they took place, and since you are able to testify to them,
it is not a wrong that has been done to you, but merely a damage, and your
testimony is still false.
8. Either you are the victim of a wrong, or you are not. If you are not, you are
deceived(or lying) in testifying that you are. If you are, since you can bear witness
to this wrong, it is not a wrong, and you are deceived(or lying) in testifying that
you are the victim of a wrong. Let p be: you are the victim of a wrong; not-p: you
are not; Tp: phrase p is true; Fp: it is false. The argumentis: either p or not-p; if
not-p, then Fp; if p, then not-p, then Fp. The ancients called this argument a
dilemma. It containsthe mechanismof the double bind as studiedby the Palo Alto
School," it is a linchpin of Hegelian dialectical logic (Hegel Notice, §2). This
mechanismconsistsin applying to two contradictory propositions, p and not-p, two
logical operators:exclusion(either ... , or) and implication (if ... , then). So, at once
[( either p or not-p) and (if p, then not-p )]. It's as if you said both, either it is white,
or it is not white; and if it is white, it is not white.
Protagoras
1. 'A story is told of the time Protagorasdemandedhis fee [misthosj from Euathlus,
a pupil of his. Euathlus refused to pay, saying, "But I haven't won a victory yet"
[oudepo niklm nenikekaj. Protagorasreplied, "But if I win this dispute [ego men an
,. The foremost memberof which was, of course,Gregory Bateson. [Trans]

nikeso], I must be paid becauseI've won loti ego enikesaJ,and if you win it I must be
paid becauseyou've won'" [ ...J. As is proved by the frequency of its occurrencesin
various guises [ . . .], the fable has a didactic value. It contains several paradoxes
[...J. The masterand the pupil haveconcludeda contract:the former will be paid only
if the latter has beenable to win, thanks to the teachinghe receives,at leastone of the
cases he will plead before the tribunals during the period of said teaching. The
alternativeis simple and the judgmenteasy: if Euathlushas won at leastonce, he pays;
if not, he is absolved. And since he has not won, there is nothing to pay. In its
brachylogicalconciseness,Protagoras'reply transformsthe alternativeinto a dilemma.
If Euathlushas won at least once, he must pay. If he never won, he still won at least
once, and must pay.
How can it be affirmed that Euathluswon when he always lost? It suffices to include
the presentlitigation betweenhim and Protagorasamongthe seriesof litigations to be
consideredin order to decide whether he always lost. In every previous litigation, he
lost. Therefore, in the caseagainstProtagoraswho maintainsthat he won one time,
he triumphsby ascertainingthat he never won. But, if he therebyprevailsin a litigation
against Protagoras,he has indeed won at least once.
2. The paradoxrests on the faculty a phrasehas to take itself as its referent. I did
not win, I say it, and in saying it I win. Protagorasconfusesthe modus(the declarative
prefix: Euathlussaysthat) with the dictum, the negativeuniversalthat denotesa reality
(Euathlusdid not win once). It is in order to prohibit this kind of confusionthat Russell
introducedthe theory of types: a proposition(here,the verdict in the litigation between
masterand pupil) that refersto a totality of propositions(here,the set of prior verdicts)
cannot be a part of that totality. Or else, it ceasesto be pertinent with regard to
negation(that is, to the principle of non-contradiction).It is not decidablein terms of
its truth value.
The phrasewhosereferentis all phrasesmust not be part of its referent. Otherwise,
it is 'poorly formed', and it is rejectedby the logician. (This is the casefor the Paradox
of the Liar in the form I lie.) The logician has nothing but scorn for the sophist who
ignores this principle; but the sophist doesn'tignore it, he unveils it (and in laughter,
while Ibanskian power makes one weep) (No.4).
The Russellianaxiom of types is a rule for forming logical phrases(propositions).
It delimits a genre of discourse,logic, in terms of its finality: deciding the truth of a
phrase.Protagoras'argumentis not acceptablewithin logic becauseit bars coming to
a decision. Is it acceptablewithin another genre?
3. The totality upon which the argumentbearsis serial: there are n litigations, the
'current' litigation betweenmaster and pupil is added to the precedingones, n + 1.
When Protagorastakesit into account,he makesn = n + 1. It is true that this synthesis
requiresan additional 'act': (n + 1) + 1. This act correspondsto Protagoras'judgment.
That is why he phraseshis decision using the aorist [enikesa], the tense for the
indeterminate:If you win, then I'm the winner. The seriality of totality introducesthe
considerationof time, which is excludedfrom the genre of logic. There are, though,
logics of time that at least allow for this aspectof the litigation to be made evident.
From this aspect,Euathlus'affirmation wouldn't be: None of my pleas is a winning
one (a negative universal, which we can designateby not-p); but: None of my pleas
was a winning one. Expressedin a logic of time [ ...J, this last phrasecould be written:
For all times prior to now, it is true during that time that not-po The pinpointing
of the true is axed on the 'now.' It is thus not ruled out for Protagorasto say: There
exists at least one time and that time is now or later, and it is true during that time
that p.
Now is indeedthe sametemporal-logicaloperator,eventhough in Protagoras'phrase
it is not in the sameplacein the seriesas is Euathlus'now. If we situatethem in relation
to an arbitrary origin to, the latter is called tJ and Protagoras'now t2. But the arbitrary
origin to is precisely what one calls now.
In this respect,Protagorashas done nothing more than use the faculty given him by
the temporal deictic 'now' for it to be both the origin of temporal series (before and
after) and an elementin theseseries [ ...J. Aristotle encountersand elaboratesthe same
problem when he analyzesthe dyad before/afterin its relation to the now (Aristotle
Notice). The paradoxical phrase cannot be eliminated here simply for its poor
formulation. The genreof discoursewhich ought to acceptit is not logic, but 'physics'
whose referent is not the phrase, but all moving objects (including phrases).
Generalizedrelativity will confer upon that phrasecitizenship rights in the physics of
the universe.
4. Phrasesform a physical universeif they are graspedas moving objectswhich form

an infinite series.The phrasereferring to this universeis thereforeby hypothesispart
of that universe: it will becomepart of it in the following instant. If we call history the
seriesof phrasesconsideredin this way (physically), then the historian's phrase'will
becomepart' of the universeto which it refers. The difficulties raisedby historicism and
dogmatismstem from this situation. The former declaresthat his phraseis part of its
referent, history; the latter that his phraseis not pan of it.
In the solution to the antinomiesof pure reason,Kant writes that the questionof the
seriesresumesin itself all the conflicts that are raised by cosmologicalIdeas. The 'last'
phrasesynthesizesthe precedingones. Is it or is it not part of their set? Dogmatism
answersno, empiricism yes. Criticism remarksthat the seriesis never given [gegeben),
but only proposed [aufgegebenl,becauseits synthesisis always deferred. The phrase
that synthesizesthe series(the judgmentactually born upon the set of Euathlus'pleas)
is not part of the series when it 'takes place' (as an occurrence),but it is inevitably
destinedto becomepart of the seriessynthesizedby the following phrase.The series
formed by the world, in particular the world of human history, is neither finite or
infinite (we can argue either one indifferently), but the synthesisof the series, for its
sake, is 'indefinite'.
5. Protagoras' argument is an antistrephon.It is reversible. In the version given by

Aulus-Gellius, the dispute betweenmasterand pupil takes place before a tribunal. It
could be retranscribedas follows: Protagoras:If you win (againstme), you will have
won; if you lose (against me), even if you say you always lose (againstothers), then
you will still have won. The judges are perplexed.Euathlus: If I lose (againstyou), I
will have lost; if I win (againstyou), even if I say I always lose, then I will still have
lost. The judges decide to put off their pronouncementuntil later. The history of the
world cannot passa last judgment. It is made out of judged judgments.
9. It is in the nature of a victim not to be able to prove that one has been done
a wrong. A plaintiff is someonewho has incurred damagesand who disposesof the
meansto prove it. One becomesa victim if one losesthesemeans.One losesthem,
for example,if the authorof the damagesturns out directly or indirectly to be one's
judge. The latter has the authority to reject one's testimony as false or the ability
to impede its publication. But this is only a particular case. In general,the plaintiff
becomesa victim when no presentationis possibleof the wrong he or she says he
or she has suffered. Reciprocally, the 'perfect crime' does not consist in killing the
victim or the witnesses(that adds new crimes to the fIrst one and aggravatesthe
difficulty of effacing everything),but rather in obtainingthe silenceof the witnesses,
the deafnessof the judges, and the inconsistency(insanity) of the testimony. You
neutralize the addressor, the addressee,and the sense of the testimony: then
everythingis as if there were no referent(no damages).If there is nobody to adduce
the proof, nobody to admit it, and/or if the argumentwhich upholds it is judged
to be absurd,then the plaintiff is dismissed,the wrong he or shecomplainsof cannot
be attested.He or she becomesa victim. If he or she persistsin invoking this wrong
as if it existed, the others (addressor, addressee,expert commentator on the
testimony) will easily be able to make him or her pass for mad. Doesn't paranoia
confuse the As if it were the case with the it is the case?
10. But aren't the others acting for their part as if this were not the case,when
it is perhapsthe case?Why should there be less paranoiain denying the existence
of gaschambersthan in affirming it? Because,writes Leibniz, 'nothing is simpler and
easierthan something'.The one who saysthere is somethingis the plaintiff, it is up
to him or her to bring forth a demonstration,by meansof well-formed phrasesand
of proceduresfor establishingthe existenceof their referent. Reality is always the
plaintiff's responsibility. For the defense,it is sufficient to refute the argumentation
and to impugn the proof by a counterexample.This is the defense'sadvantage,as
recognizedby Aristotle (Rhetoric 1402 b 24-25) and by strategists.Likewise, it
cannotbe said that a hypothesisis verifIed, but only that until further notice it has
not yet been falsifIed. The defenseis nihilistic, the prosecutionpleadsfor existents
[/'etant]. That is why it is up to the victims of exterminationcampsto prove that
extermination.This is our way of thinking that reality is not a given, but an occasion
to require that establishmentproceduresbe effectuatedin regard to it.
11. The death penalty is suppressedout of nihilism, out of a cogmtlve

considerationfor the referent, out of a prejudice in favor of the defense.The odds
that it is not the caseare greaterthan the odds that it is. This statisticalestimation
belongsto the family of cognitive phrases.The presumedinnocenceof the accused,
which obligates the prosecution with adducing the proof of the offense, is the
'humanist'version of the sameplaying rule of cognition. - If the rules of the game
are inverted, if everyoneaccusedis presumedguilty, then the defensehas the task
of establishinginnocencewhile the prosecutionhasonly to refute the argumentation
and to impugn the proofs advancedby the defense.Now, it may be impossibleto

establishthat the referentof a phrasedoesnot havea given property,unlesswe have
the right to resort to a refutation of the phrasein which the referentdoes have that
property. How can I prove that I am not a drug dealerwithout asking my accuser
to bring forth some proof of it and without refuting that proof? How can it be
establishedthat labor-power is not a commodity without refuting the hypothesis
that it is? How can you establish what is not without criticizing what is? The
undeterminedcannotbe established.It is necessarythat negationbe the negationof
a determination.- This inversionof the tasksexpectedon one side and on the other
may suffice to transform the accusedinto a victim, if he or she does not have the
right to criticize the prosecution,as we seein political trials. Kafka warnedus about
this. It is impossibleto establishone'sinnocence,in and of itself. It is a nothingness.
12. The plaintiff lodges his or her complaint before the tribunal, the accused
arguesin such a way as to show the inanity of the accusation.Litigation takesplace.
I would like to call a differend [differendl the casewhere the plaintiff is divested
of the meansto argue and becomesfor that reasona victim. If the addressor,the
addressee,and the senseof the testimonyare neutralized,everythingtakes place as
if there were no damages(No.9). A case of differend betweentwo parties takes
place when the 'regulation'ofthe conflict that opposesthem is done in the idiom of
one of the partieswhile the wrong sufferedby the other is not signifIed in that idiom.
For example,contractsand agreementsbetweeneconomicpartnersdo not prevent
- on the contrary, they presupposethat the laborer or his or her representative
has had to and will have to speakof his or her work as though it were the temporary
cession of a commodity, the 'service', which he or she putatively owns. This
'abstraction'as Marx calls it (but the term is bad, what concreteness doesit allege?),
is required by the idiom in which the litigation is regulated('bourgeois'social and
economiclaw). In failing to have recourseto this idiom, the laborerwould not exist
within its fIeld of reference,he or shewould be a slave. In using it, he or shebecomes
a plaintiff. Does he or she also ceasefor that matter to be a victim?
13. One remainsa victim at the sametime that one becomesa plaintiff. Doesone
have the meansto establishthat one is a victim? No. How can you know then that
one is a victim? What tribunal can pass judgment in this matter? In effect, the
differend is not a matter for litigation; economic and social law can regulate the
litigation betweeneconomicand social partnersbut not the differend betweenlabor-
power and capital. By what well-formed phraseand by meansof what establishment
procedurecan the worker affirm before the labor arbitrator that what one yields to
one'sbossfor so many hours per week in exchangefor a salary is not a commodity?
One is presumedto be the owner of something.One is in the caseof the accused
who has to establisha non-existentor at least a non-attribute.It is easy to refute
him or her. It all happensas if what one is could only be expressedin an idiom other
than that of social and economiclaw. In the latter, one can only expresswhat one
has, and if one has nothing, what one does not have either will not be expressed
or will be expressedin a certifiable manner as if one had it. If the laborer evokes
his or her essence(labor-power),he or she cannotbe heardby this tribunal, which
is not competent.The differend is signaledby this inability to prove. The one who
lodges a complaint is heard, but the one who is a victim, and who is perhapsthe
sameone, is reducedto silence.
14. 'The survivors rarely speak' (no. 1). But isn't there an entire literature of
testimonies... ? - That's not it, though. Not to speakis part of the ability to speak,
since ability is a possibility and a possibility implies somethingand its opposite.
Possible that p and Possiblethat not-p are equally true. It is in the very definition
of the possibleto imply oppositesat the sametime. That the oppositeof speaking
is possibledoes not entail the necessityof keeping quiet. To be able not to speak
is not the sameas not to be able to speak. The latter is a deprivation, the former
a negation. (Aristotle, De Interpretatione 21 b 12-17; MetaphysicsIV 1022 b
22 ff). If the survivorsdo not speak,is it becausethey cannotspeak,or becausethey
avail themselvesof the possibility of not speakingthat is given them by the ability
to speak? Do they keep quiet out of necessity,or freely, as it is said? Or is the
question poorly stated?
15. It would be absurdto supposethat human beings 'endowedwith language'

cannot speakin the strict sense,as is the casefor stones.Necessitywould signify
here: they do not speakbecausethey are threatenedwith the worst in the casethat
they would speak,or when in general a direct or indirect attempt is made against
their ability to speak. Let's supposethat they keep quiet under threat. A contrary
ability needsto be presupposedif the threat is to have an effect, since this threat
bearsupon the hypothesisof the oppositecase,the one in which the survivorswould
speak. But how could a threat work when it is exerted upon something(here, the
eventuality that the survivors will speak) which does not currently exist? What is
threatened?This is said to be the life, or happiness,etc., of the one who would
speak.But the one who would speak(an unreal, conditional state) has no life, no
happiness,etc., which can be threatened,since one is oneselfunreal or conditional
as long as one has not spoken, - if indeed it is that I am never but the addressor
of a current phrase.
16. What is subject to threatsis not an identifiable individual, but the ability to
speakor to keep quiet. This ability is threatenedwith destruction.There are two
meansto achievethis: making it impossibleto speak,making it impossibleto keep
quiet. Thesetwo meansare compatible:it is madeimpossiblefor x to speakabout
this (through incarceration,for example); it is made impossiblefor him or her to
keep quiet about that (through torture, for example).The ability is destroyedas an
ability: x may speakabout this and keep quiet about that, but he or she ceasesto
be able either to speakor not to speakabout this or about that. The threat ('If you
4]0 Jean-Fram;:ois lyotard
were to tell (signify) this, it would be your last phrase'or, 'If you were to keep quiet
aboutthat, it would be your last silence')is only a threatbecausethe ability to speak
or not to speakis identified with x's existence.
17. The paradox of the last phrase (or of the last silence), which is also the
paradox of the series, should give x not the vertigo of what cannot be phrased
(which is also called the fear of death), but rather the irrefutable conviction that
phrasingis endless.For a phraseto be the last one, anotherone is neededto declare
it, and it is then not the last one. At the least, the paradoxshould give x both this
vertigo and this conviction. - Never mind that the last phraseis the last one that
x says! - No, it is the last one that has x as its direct or 'current' addressor.
18. It should be said that addressorand addresseeare instances,either marked

or unmarked,presentedby a phrase.The latter is not a messagepassingfrom an
addressorto an addresseeboth of whom are independentof it [. . .J. They are
situated in the universe the phrasepresents,as are its referent and its sense.'X's
phrase,my phrase,your silence':do we, identifiable individuals, x, y, speakphrases
or make silences,in the sensethat we would be their authors?Or is it that phrases
or silences take place (happen, come to pass), presenting universes in which
individuals x, y, you, me are situatedas the addressorsof thesephrasesor silences?
And if this is so, at the price of what misunderstandingcan a threat exertedagainst
x threaten'his' or 'her' phrase?
19. To say that x can be threatenedfor what he or she might say or keep quiet
is to presupposethat one is free to use languageor not and therefore that this
freedom to use can be revoked by a threat. This is not false, it is a way of talking
about language,humanity, and their interrelationswhich obeys the rules of the
family of certain cognitive phrases(the humansciences).The phrase'Under threat,
undertorture, in conditionsof incarceration,in conditionsof "sensorydeprivation"
etc., the linguistic behavior of a human being can be dictated to him or to her', is
a well-formed phrase,and examplescan, alas, be presentedfor which the scientist
can say: here are somecasesof it. But the humanand linguistic sciencesare like the
juries of labor arbitration boards.
20. Justas thesejuries presupposethat the opponentsthey are supposedto judge

are in possessionof something they exchange,so do the human and linguistic
sciencespresupposethat the human beings they are supposedto know are in
possessionof somethingthey communicate.And the powers that be (ideological,
political, religious, police, etc.) presupposethat the humanbeingsthey are supposed
to guide, or at least control, are in possessionof somethingthey communicate.
Communication is the exchangeof messages,exchangethe communication of
goods. The instancesof communicationlike those of exchangeare definable only
in terms of property or propriety [proprieteJ: the propriety of information,
analogousto the propriety of uses. And just as the flow of usescan be controlled,
so can the flow of information. As a perverseuse is repressed,a dangerousbit of
information is banned.As a needis diverted and a motivation created,an addressor
is led to say somethingother than what he or she was going to say. The problem
of language,thus positedin terms of communication,leadsto that of the needsand
beliefs of interlocutors. The linguist becomesan expert before the communication
arbitration board. The essentialproblem he or she has to regulate is that of sense
as a unit of exchangeindependentof the needsand beliefs of interlocutors.Similarly,
for the economist,the problem is that of the value of goods and servicesas units
independentof the demandsand offers of economicpartners.
21. Would you say that interlocutors are victims of the scienceand politics of
language understood as communication to the same extent that the worker is
transformedinto a victim through the assimilationof his or her labor-powerto a
commodity? Must it be imagined that there exists a 'phrase-power',analogousto
labor-power, and which cannot find a way to expressitself in the idiom of this
science and this politics? - Whatever this power might be, the parallel must be
broken right away. It can be conceived that work is something other than the
exchangeof a commodity, and an idiom other than that of the labor arbitratormust
be found in order to expressit. It can be conceivedthat languageis somethingother
than the communicationof a bit of information, and an idiom other than that of
the humanand linguistic sciencesis neededin order to expressit. This is where the
parallel ends: in the caseof language,recourseis madeto anotherfamily of phrases;
but in the caseof work, recourseis not made to anotherfamily of work, recourse
is still madeto anotherfamily of phrases.The samegoes for every differend buried
in litigation, no matter what the subject matter. To give the differend its due is to
institute new addressees,new addressors,new significations, and new referentsin
order for the wrong to find an expressionand for the plaintiff to ceasebeing a victim.
This requiresnew rules for the formation and linking of phrases.No one doubtsthat
language is capable of admitting these new phrase families or new genres of
discourse.Every wrong ought to be able to be put into phrases.A new competence
(or 'prudence')must be found.
22. The differend is the unstablestateand instantof languagewherein something

which must be able to be put into phrasescannotyet be. This stateincludessilence,
which is a negative phrase, but it also calls upon phraseswhich are in principle
possible. This state is signaledby what one ordinarily calls a feeling: 'One cannot
find the words', etc. A lot of searchingmust be done to find new rules for forming
and linking phrasesthat are able to expressthe differend disclosedby the feeling,
unlessone wants this differend to be smotheredright away in a litigation and for
the alarm sounded by the feeling to have been useless. What is at stake in a
literature, in a philosophy,in a politics perhaps,is to bear witnessto differends by
finding idioms for them.
23. In the differend, something'asks'to be put into phrases,and suffers from the
wrong of not being able to be put into phrasesright away. This is when the human
beings who thought they could use languageas an instrument of communication
learn through the feeling of pain which accompaniessilence(and of pleasurewhich
accompaniesthe invention of a new idiom) that they are summonedby language,
not to augmentto their profit the quantity of information communicablethrough
existing idioms, but to recognizethat what remainsto be phrasedexceedswhat they
can presentlyphrase,and that they must be allowed to institute idioms which do
not yet exist.
24. It is possiblethen that the survivors do not speakeven though they are not
threatenedin their ability to speakshould they speaklater. The socio-linguist, the
psycho-linguist,the bio-linguist seek the reasons,the passions,the interests, the
context for these silences. Let us first seek their logic. We find that they are
substitutesfor phrases.They come in the place of phrasesduring a conversation,
during an interrogation, during a debate,during the talking of a psychoanalytic
session, during a confession, during a critical review, during a metaphysical
exposition. The phrasereplacedby silence would be a negativeone. Negatedby it
is at least one of the four instancesthat constitutea phraseuniverse:the addressee,
the referent, the sense,the addressor.The negativephrasethat the silence implies
could be formulated respectively: This case does not fall within your competence,
This case does not exist, It cannot be signified, It does not fall within my
competence.A single silence could be formulated by several of these phrases.-
Moreover, thesenegative formulations, which deny the ability of the referent, the
addressor,the addresseeand the senseto be presentedin the current idiom, do not
point to the other idiom in which these instancescould be presented.
25. It should be said by way of simplification that a phrasepresentswhat it is

about, the case,ta pragmata,which is its referent; what is signified about the case.
the sense,der Sinn; that to which or addressedto which this is signified about the
case,the addressee;that 'through' which or in the name of which this is signified
about the case,the addressor.The disposition of a phraseuniverseconsistsin the
situating of these instancesin relation to each other. A phrasemay entail several
referents,severalsenses,severaladdressees,severaladdressors.Each of these four
instancesmay be marked in the phraseor not [...J.
26. Silencedoesnot indicatewhich instanceis denied,it signalsthe denial of one

or more of the instances.The survivors remain silent, and it can be understood(1)
that the situationin question(the case)is not the addressee'sbusiness(he or shelacks
the competence,or he or she is not worthy of being spokento about it, etc.); or (2)
that it never took place (this is what Faurissonunderstands);or (3) that there is
nothing to say about it (the situation is senseless,inexpressible);or (4) that it is not
the survivors' businessto be talking about it (they are not worthy, etc.). Or, several
of these negationstogether.
From The Differend 4ll
27. The silence of the survivors does not necessarilytestify in favor of the non-
existenceof gas chambers,as Faurissonbelievesor pretendsto believe. It can just
as well testify againstthe addressee's
authority (we are not answerableto Faurisson),
against the authority of the witness him- or herself (we, the rescued,do not have
the authority to speak about it), ftnally against language'sability to signify gas
chambers(an inexpressibleabsurdity).If one wishesto establishthe existenceof gas
chambers, the four silent negations must be withdrawn: There were no gas
chambers,were there? Yes, there were. - But even if there were, that cannot be
formulated, can it? Yes, it can. - But even if it can be formulated, there is no one,
at least,who has the authority to formulate it, and no one with the authority to hear
it (it is not communicable),is there? Yes, there is.
5.5 0 Ethics of the
Infinite
Emmanuel Levinas
Interview with
Richard Kearney
[. ..J
Richard Kearney: How doesthe ethical relation to the other, so central a themein
your philosophy, serve to subvert the ontology of a presencein its Greek and
Heideggerianforms?
EmmanuelLevinas: The interhumanrelationshipemergeswith our history, with
out being-in-the-world as intelligibility and presence.The interhumanrealm can
thus be construedas a part of the disclosureof the world as presence.But it can also
be consideredfrom anotherperspective- the ethical or biblical perspectivewhich
transcendsthe Greek languageof intelligibility - as a theme of justice and concern
for the other as other, as a theme of love and desire which carries us beyond the
fmite Being of the world as presence.The interhumanis thus an interface: a double
axis where what is 'of the world' qua phenomenologicalintelligibility is juxtaposed
with what is 'not of the world' qua ethical responsibility. It is in this ethical
perspectivethat God must be thought and not in the ontological perspectiveof our
being-there or of some SupremeBeing and Creator correlative to the world, as
traditional metaphysicsoften held. God, as the God of alterity and transcendence,
can only be understoodin terms of the interhumandimension which, to be sure,
emergesin the phenomenological-ontological perspectiveof the intelligible world,
but which cuts through and perforatesthe totality of presenceand points towards
the absolutelyOther. In this senseone could say that biblical thought has, to some
extent,influencedmy ethical readingof the interhuman,whereasGreekthoughthas
largely determined its philosophical expression in language. So that I would
maintain, againstHeidegger,that philosophy can be ethical as well as ontological,
can be at once Greek and non-Greek in its inspiration. These two sources of
inspiration coexist as two different tendenciesin modern philosophy and it is my
From Kearney, R., Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The phenomenological
heritage, ManchesterUniversity Press,Manchester,1984, pp. 56-61,63-6,68-9.
434
Ethics of the Infinite 435
own personaltask to try to identify this dual origin of meaning- der Ursprung der
Sinnhaften- in the interhumanrelationship.
RK: One of the most complex and indeed central themesin your philosophy is
the rapport betweenthe interhumanand time. Could you elucidatethis rapport by
situating it in terms of the ethics/ontologydistinction?
EL: I am trying to show that man'sethical relation to the other is ultimately prior
to his ontological relation to himself (egology) or to the totality of things which we
call the world (cosmology). The relationship with the other is time: it is an
untotalizablediachrony in which one moment pursuesanotherwithout ever being
able to retrieve it, to catch up with or coincide with it. The non-simultaneousand
non-presentis my primary rapportwith the other in time. Time meansthat the other
is forever beyondme, irreducible to the synchronyof the same.The temporality of
the interhumanopensup the meaningof othernessand the othernessof meaning.
But becausethere are more than two people in the world, we invariably passfrom
the ethical perspectiveof alterity to the ontologicalperspectiveof totality. There are
always at leastthreepersons.This meansthat we are obliged to askwho is the other,
to try to objectively define the undefinable,to comparethe incomparablein an effort
to juridically hold different positionstogether. So that the first type of simultaneity
is the simultaneityof equality, the attempt to reconcile and balancethe conflicting
claims of each person.If there were only two people in the world, there would be
no need for law courts becauseI would always be responsiblefor, and before, the
other. As soon as there are three, the ethical relationship with the other becomes
political and enters into the totalizing discourse of ontology. We can never
completely escapefrom the language of ontology and politics. Even when we
deconstruct ontology we are obliged to use its language. Derrida's work of
deconstruction,for example,possesses the speculativeand methodologicalrigour of
the philosophy which he is seeking to deconstruct.It's like the argumentof the
sceptics: how can we know that we can't know anything? The greatestvirtue of
philosophy is that it can put itself in question, try to deconstructwhat it has
constructedand unsay what it has said. Science,on the contrary, does not try to
unsay itself, does not interrogate or challenge its own concepts, terms or
foundations;it forges ahead,progresses.In this respect,scienceattemptsto ignore
languageby constructingits own abstractnon-languageof calculablesymbols and
formulae. But scienceis merely a secondarybracketingof philosophical language
from which it is ultimately derived; it can never have the last word. Heidegger
summedthis up admirably when he declaredthat sciencecalculates but does not
think. Now what I am interestedin is precisely this ability of philosophyto think,
to question itself and ultimately to unsay itself. And I wonder if this capacity for
interrogationand for unsaying(dedire) is not itself derivedfrom the pre-ontological
interhuman relationship with the other. The fact that philosophy cannot fully
totalize the alterity of meaningin some final presenceor simultaneityis not for me
a deficiency or fault. Or to put it in anotherway, the best thing about philosophy
is that it fails. It is better that philosophy fail to totalize meaning - even though,
as ontology, it hasattemptedjust this - for it therebyremainsopento the irreducible
436 Emmanuel Levinas
othernessof transcendence.Greek ontology, to be sure, expressedthe strong

sentimentthat the last word is unity, the many becomingone, the truth as synthesis.
Hence Plato defined love - eros - as only half-divine in so far as it lacks the full
coincidenceor unification of differenceswhich he defined as divinity. The whole
Romantictradition in Europeanpoetry tends to conform to this Platonic ontology
by inferring that love is perfect when two people becomeone. I am trying to work
against this identification of the Divine with unification or totality. Man's
relationship with the other is better as difference than as unity: sociality is better
than fusion. The very value of love is the impossibility of reducing the other to
myself, of coinciding into sameness.From an ethical perspective,two have a better
time than one (on s'amusemieux a deux)!
RK: Is it possibleto conceiveof an eschatologyof non-coincidencewherein man
and God could coexist eternally without fusing into oneness?
EL: But why eschatology?Why shouldwe wish to reducetime to eternity?Time
is the most profound relationshipthat man can have with God precisely as a going
towards God. There is an excellencein time which would be lost in eternity. To
desire eternity is to desire to perpetuateoneself, to go on living as oneself, to be
always. Can one conceiveof an eternal life that would not suspendtime or reduce
it to a contemporaneouspresence?To accept time is to accept death as the
impossibility of presence.To be in eternity is to be one, to be oneselfeternally. To
be in time is to be for God (etre aDieu), a perpetualleavetaking(adieu).
RK: But how can one be for God or go towards God as the absolutely Other?
Is it by going towards the human other?
EL: Yes, and it is essential to point out that the relation implied in the
preposition towards [al is ultimately a relation derived from time. Time fashions
man's relation to the other, and to the absolutely Other or God, as a diachronic
relation irreducibleto correlation.'Going towardsGod' is not to be understoodhere
in the classicalontological senseof a return to, or reunification with, God as the
Beginning or End of temporalexistence.'Going towardsGod' is meaninglessunless
seenin terms of my primary going towardsthe other person. I can only go towards
God by being ethically concernedby and for the other person.I am not saying that
ethics presupposesbelief. On the contrary, belief presupposesethics as that
disruption of our being-in-the-world which opens us to the other. The ethical
exigencyto be responsiblefor the other underminesthe ontological primacy of the
meaningof Being; it unsettlesthe natural and political positions we have taken up
in the world and predisposesus to a meaning that is other than Being, that is
otherwisethan Being (autrementqu'etre).
RK: What role does your analysis of the 'face' (visage) of the other play in this
disruption of ontology?
EL: The approachto the face is the most basic mode of responsibility. As such,
the face of the other is verticality and uprightness;it spells a relation of rectitude.
The face is not in front of me (en face de moi) but aboveme; it is the other before
death,looking through and exposingdeath.Secondly,the face is the other who asks
me not to let him die alone, as if to do so were to becomean accomplicein his death.
Thus the face saysto me: you shall not kill. In the relation to the face I am exposed
as a usurper of the place of the other. The celebrated'right to existence'which
5pinoza called the conatus essendi and denned as the basic principle of all
intelligibility, is challengedby the relation to the face. Accordingly, my duty to
respondto the other suspendsmy natural right to self-survival, Ie droit vitale. My
ethical relation of love for the other stemsfrom the fact that the self cannotsurvive
by itself alone, cannot nnd meaningwithin its own being-in-the-world,within the
ontology of sameness.That is why I prefaced Totality and Infinity with Pascal's
phrase,'Ma place au soleil, Ie commencement de toute usurpation'. Pascalmakes
the same point when he declares that 'Ie moi est haissable'. Pascal's ethical
sentimentshere go against the ontological privileging of 'the right to exist'. To
expose myself to the vulnerability of the face is to put my ontological right to
existenceinto question.In ethics,the other'sright to exist hasprimacy over my own,
a primacy epitomizedin the ethical edict: you shall not kill, you shall not jeopardize
the life of the other. The ethical rapport with the face is asymmetricalin that it
subordinatesmy existenceto the other. This principle recurs in Darwinian biology
as the 'survival of the nttest', and in psychoanalysisas the natural instinct of the 'id'
for gratincation,possessionand power - the libido dominandi.
RK: 50 lowe more to the other than to myself ...
EL: Absolutely, and this ethical exigency underminesthe Hellenic endorsement,
still prevalenttoday, of the conatusessendi.There is a Jewish proverb which says
that 'the other's material needsare my spiritual needs';it is this disproportion or
asymmetrywhich characterizesthe ethical refusal of the nrst truth of ontology -
the struggle to be. Ethics is, therefore, against nature becauseit forbids the
murderousnessof my natural will to put my own existencenrst.
RK: Does going towards God always require that we go against nature?
EL: God cannotappearas the causeor creatorof nature.The word of God speaks
through the glory of the face and calls for an ethical conversionor reversal of our
nature. What we call lay morality, that is, humanisticconcernfor our fellow human
beings, already speaksthe voice of God. But the moral priority of the other over
myself could not come to be if it were not motivated by somethingbeyond nature.
The ethical situation is a human situation, beyond human nature, in which the idea
of God comesto mind (Gott faUt mir ein). In this respect,we could say that God is
the other who turns our nature inside out, who calls our ontological will-to-be into
question. This ethical call of conscienceoccurs, no doubt, in other religious systems
besidesthe Judeo-Christian,but it remainsan essentiallyreligious vocation. God does
indeed go against nature for He is not of this world. God is other than Being.
RK: How does one distil the ethico-religious meaning of existence from its
natural or ontological sedimentation?
EL: But your question already assumesthat ethics is derived from ontology. I
believe,on the contrary,that the ethical relationshipwith the other is just as primary
and original (ursprunglich) as ontology - if not more so. Ethics is not derived from
an ontology of nature; it is its opposite, a meontology which affirms a meaning
beyond Being, a primary mode of non-Being (me-on).
RK: And yet you claim that the ethical and the ontological coexist as two
inspirations without Western philosophy?
EL: Already in Greek philosophy one can discern tracesof the ethical breaking
through the ontological, for example in Plato's idea of the 'Good existing beyond
Being' (agathon epekeina tes ousias). (Heidegger, of course, conteststhis ethical
reading of the Good in Plato, maintaining that it is merely one among other
descriptions of Being itself.) One can also cite in this connection Descartes's
discovery of the 'Idea of the Infinite', which surpassesthe finite limits of human
nature and the human mind. And similarly supra-ontologicalnotions are to be
found in the pseudo-Dionysiandoctrine of the via eminentiaewith its surplusof the
Divine over Being, or in the Augustiniandistinction in the Confessionsbetweenthe
truth which challenges(veritas redarguens)and the ontological truth which shines
(veritas lucens), etc.
[...J
RK: In the structuralist and post-structuralistdebateswhich have tended to

dominate continental philosophy in recent years, there has been much talk of the
disappearanceor the demise of the subject. Is your ethical thought an attempt to
preservesubjectivity in some form?
EL: My thinking on this matter goes in the oppositedirection to structuralism.
It is not that I wish to preserve,over and againstthe structuralistcritique, the idea
of a subjectwho would be a substantialor masteringcentreof meaning,an idealist
self-sufficient cogito. These traditional ontological versions of subjectivity have
nothing to do with the meontologicalversion of subjectivity that I put forward in
Autrementqu'etre. Ethical subjectivity dispenseswith the idealizing subjectivity of
ontology which reduceseverything to itself. The ethical 'I' is subjectivity precisely
in so far as it kneels before the other, sacrificing its own liberty to the more
primordial call of the other. For me, the freedom of the subject is not the highest
or primary value. The heteronomyof our responseto the human other, or to God
as the absolutelyOther, precedesthe autonomyof our subjectivefreedom. As soon
as I acknowledgethat it is 'I' who am responsible,I accept that my freedom is
anteceded by an obligation to the other. Ethics redefines subjectivity as this
heteronymousresponsibilityin contrastto autonomousfreedom. Even if I deny my
primordial responsibility to the other by affirming my own freedom as primary, I
can never escapethe fact that the other has demandeda responsefrom me before
I affirm my freedom not to respondto his demand.Ethical freedom is une difficile
fiberte, a heteronymousfreedomobliged to the other. Consequently,the other is the
richest and the poorestof beings: the richest, at an ethical level, in that it always
comesbefore me, its right-to-be precedingmine; the poorest,at an ontological or
political level, in that without me it can do nothing, it is utterly vulnerable and
exposed.The other hauntsour ontological existenceand keeps the psycheawake,
in a state of vigilant insomnia. Even though we are ontologically free to refuse the
other, we remain forever accused,with a bad conscience.
RK: Is not the ethical obligation to the other a purely negativeideal, impossible
to realize in our everyday being-in-the-world? After all, we live in a concrete
historical world governedby ontological drives and practices,be they political and
institutional totalities or technologicalsystemsof mastery,organizationandcontrol.
Is ethics practicablein human society as we know it? Or is it merely an invitation
to apolitical acquiescence?
EL: This is a fundamentalpoint. Of coursewe inhabit an ontological world of
technologicalmasteryand political self-preservation.Indeedwithout thesepolitical
and technologicalstructuresof organizationwe would not be able to feed mankind.
This is the great paradoxof human existence:we must use the ontological for the
sakeof the other; to ensurethe survival of the other we must resort to the technico-
political systemsof meansand ends. This sameparadoxis also presentin our use
of language,to return to an earlier point. We have no option but to employ the
languageand conceptsof Greekphilosophyevenin our attemptsto go beyondthem.
We cannot obviate the language of metaphysicsand yet we cannot, ethically
speaking,be satisfied with it: it is necessarybut not enough. I disagree,however,
with Derrida's interpretation of this paradox. Whereas he tends to see the
deconstructionof the Westernmetaphysicsof presenceas an irredeemablecrisis, I
seeit as a goldenopportunityfor Westernphilosophyto openitself to the dimension
of othernessand transcendencebeyond Being.
RK: Is there any sensein which languagecan be ethical?
EL: In Autrementqu'etreI posethis questionwhen I ask: 'What is sayingwithout
a said?'. Saying is ethical sincerity in so far as it is exposition. As such this saying
is irreducible to the ontological definability of the said. Saying is what makes the
self-exposureof sincerity possible; it is a way of giving everything, of not keeping
anything for oneself. In so far as ontology equatestruth with the intelligibility of
total presence,it reducesthe pure exposureof sayingto the totalizing closureof the
said. The child is a pure exposureof expressionin so far as it is pure vulnerability;
it has not yet learnedto dissemble,to deceive,to be insincere.What distinguishes
human languagefrom animal or child expression,for example,is that the human
speakercan remain silent, can refuse to be exposedin sincerity. The human being
is characterizedas human not only becausehe is a being who can speakbut also
becausehe is a being who can lie, who can live in the duplicity of languageas the
dual possibility of exposureand deception.The animal is incapableof this duplicity;
the dog, for instance,cannotsuppressits bark, the bird its song. But man can repress
his saying, and this ability to keep silent, to withhold oneself, is the ability to be
political. Man can give himself in sayingto the point of poetry - or he can withdraw
into the non-sayingof lies. Languageas saying is an ethical opennessto the other;
as that which is said - reducedto a fixed identity or synchronizedpresence- it is
an ontological closure to the other.
RK: But is there not some sort of 'morality' of the said which might reflect the
ethics of saying in our everydaytransactionsin society? In other words, if politics
cannotbe ethical in so far as it is an expressionof our ontological nature,can it at
least be 'moral' (in your senseof that term)?
EL: This distinction betweenthe ethical and the moral is very important here. By
morality I mean a series of rules relating to social behaviour and civic duty. But
while morality thus operatesin the socio-political order of organizingand improving
our humansurvival, it is ultimately foundedon an ethical responsibilitytowardsthe
other. As prima phi!osophia, ethics cannot itself legislate for society or produce
rules of conductwherebysocietymight be revolutionizedor transformed.It doesnot
operateat the level of the manifestoor rappel a l'ordre; it is not a savoir vivre. When
I talk of ethics as a 'disinterestedness'(des-inter-essement), I do not meanthat it is
indifference; I simply mean that it is a form of vigilant passivity to the call of the
other which precedesour interest in Being, our inter-esseas a being-in-the-world
attachedto property and appropriatingwhat is other than itself to itself. Morality
is what governs the world of political 'interestedness',the social interchanges
betweencitizens in a society. Ethics, as the extremeexposureand sensitivity of one
subjectivity to another,becomesmorality and hardensits skin as soon as we move
into the political world of the impersonal 'third' - the world of government,
institutions, tribunals, prisons,schools,committees,etc. But the norm which must
continueto inspire and direct the moral order is the ethical norm of the interhuman.
If the moral-political order totally relinquishesits ethical foundation, it must accept
all forms of society including the fascist or totalitarian, for it can no longer evaluate
or discriminate betweenthem. The state is usually better than anarchy - but not
always. In some instances,fascism or totalitarianism, for example, the political
order of the statemay have to be challengedin the nameof our ethical responsibility
to the other. This is why ethical philosophy must remain the first philosophy.
[...J
RK: Your analysis of God as an impossibility of Being or being-presentwould
seem to suggestthat the ethical relation is entirely utopian and unrealistic.
EL: This is the greatobjectionto my thought. 'Wheredid you ever seethe ethical
relation practised?',peoplesay to me. I reply that its being utopian doesnot prevent
it from investing our everydayactionsof generosityor goodwill towardsthe other:
even the smallestand most commonplacegestures,such as saying 'after you' as we
sit at the dinner table or walk through a door, bear witness to the ethical. This
concernfor the other remains utopian in the sensethat it is always 'out of place',
[u-toposJ in this world, always other than the 'ways of the world'; but there are
many examplesof it in the world. I remembermeeting once with a group of Latin
American students,well versedin the terminology of Marxist liberation and terribly
concernedby the suffering and unhappinessof their peoplein Argentina. They asked
me rather impatiently if I had ever actually witnessedthe utopian rapport with the
other which my ethical philosophy speaksof. I replied: 'Yes, indeed, here in this
room.'
RK: So you would maintainthat Marxism bearswitnessto a utopianinspiration?
EL: When I spoke of the overcoming of Western ontology as an 'ethical and
prophetic cry' in 'Dieu et la philosophie' (De Dieu qui vient a !'idee), I was in fact
thinking of Marx's critique of Westernidealism as a project to understandthe world
Ethics 0/ the Infinite 441
ratherthan to transformit. In Marx's critique we find an ethical consciencecutting

through the ontological identification of truth with an ideal intelligibility and
demandingthat theory be convertedinto a concretepraxis of concernfor the other.
It is this revelatory and prophetic cry which explains the extraordinaryattraction
which the Marxist utopia exerted over numerousgenerations.Marxism was, of
course,utterly compromisedby Stalinism. The 1968 Revolt in Pariswas a revolt of
sadness,becauseit came after the Khrushchev Report and the exposureof the
corruption of the Communist Church. The year of 1968 epitomized the joy of
despair; a last grasping at human justice, happinessand perfection after the truth
had dawned that the communist ideal had degenerated into totalitarian
bureaucracy.By 1968 only dispersedgroups and rebellious pocketsof individuals
remained to seek their surrealist forms of salvation, no longer confident in a
collective movementof humanity,no longer assuredthat Marxism could survive the
Stalinist catastropheas the prophetic messengerof history.
RK: What role can philosophyservetoday? Has it in fact reachedthat end which
so many contemporarycontinental philosophershave spokenof?
EL: It is true that philosophy, in its traditional forms of ontotheology and
logocentrism- to use Heidegger'sand Derrida's terms - has come to an end. But
it is not true of philosophy in the other sense of critical speculation and
interrogation. The speculativepractice of philosophy is by no meansnear its end.
Indeed the whole contemporary discourse of overcoming and deconstructing
metaphysicsis far more speculativein many respectsthan metaphysicsitself. Reason
is never so versatile as when it puts itself in question. In the contemporaryend of
philosophy, philosophy has found a new leaseof life.
5.6 D Why Define Sexed
Rights?
Luce Irigaray
Christina Lasagni: Why are you now taking an interest in law, especially as you
have approachedproblemsin such a different way before?1
Luce lrigaray: As a philosopher, I am interestedin theorizing all domains of
reality and knowledge.Only very recently in the history of culture have philosophy
and the sciences been separated- the result of methodological specialization,
making them beyond the reach of anyone and everyone. The hypertechnical
tendenciesof current sciencelead to the creationof increasinglycomplex formulae
that correspond,so it's believed,to an increasinglytruthful truth. Consequently,it's
a truth that escapesconsideration in the light of wisdom, the scientist's own
included. This doesn'tbode well for our culture and its future development(d. on
this subject,'Sujet de la Science,Sujet Sexue?'in Senset place des connaissances
dans
la societe).2
So I have always beenconcernedwith the issueof law from the perspectiveof the
differencebetweenthe sexes.In Speculum,for instance,I discussit quite explicitly
on pages148-54 and 266-81 [of the French edition], but it pervadesthe whole
chapteron Plato. In This Sex Which Is Not One,3 two chapters- 'Women on the
Market' and 'Commodities Among Themselves' - consider the problems of
economicand social rights. I'm dealing with the question in a more concreteway
now. But as far as I'm concerned,there is no break betweenmy earlier and latest
texts, especiallyin this matter.
Why deal with legal questions more concretely? Becausesince 1970 I have
regularly worked with women or groups of women who belong to liberation
movements,and in theseI've observedproblemsor impassesthat can't be resolved
exceptthrough the establishmentof an equitablelegal systemfor both sexes.In the
absenceof such social structures,women and men are losing themselvesin spiraling
demands,legal or otherwise, while in the meantimethere's no protection for the
From Irigaray, L., Ie, tu, nous: Toward a Culture 0/ Difference,trans. A. Martin, Routledge,New York,
1993, pp. 81-92.
442
Why Define SexedRights? 443
basicrights of every individual and global disorderincreases.So the reestablishment

of a pseudo-orderis soughtthrough the restorationof order to anothercountry by
nations incapableof managingtheir own problems. It's better to give aid than to
leave people to die. But is it really a question of aid? Or is it more a question of
apparentlygenerousalibis in order to remain mastersof the situation?It's not clear.
And the laws of most use to us here and now, thoseto do with us, are always put
off as if the world had grown accustomedto disorder, and in this quasi-delugeof
our civilizations, all we haveto do is fmd a way of rescuingman'sidentity - without
taking any notice of the civilization women transmit. Any old excusewill do for not
taking accountof their truth. Men are even going back to archaicstagesof culture
by forcing their largely domesticatedanimals on the public as their latest totem.
Insteadof pursuing cultural development,the world is retreatingto the minimum
grounds for human definition. The consequences are that we no longer have any
religion appropriatefor our times, nor complete control of languageas a tool of
social exchange,as a meansto acquire or createknowledge. Our legislation is not
adequate to regulate private, religious, national, and international conflicts,
particularly when it comesto the protection of life. Therefore,we no longer have
any God(s), any language,any familiar cultural landscape .... What do we have,
then, to basesocial groups upon? I know some people think that the great eve of
universal well-being has arrived. But which universal? What new imperialism is
there lurking in all this? And who will pay the price for it? There is no universal
valid for all men and women aside from the natural economy.All other universals
are partial constructions and, as a result, authoritarian and unjust. The first
universalto establishwould be legislation valid for both sexesas a basicelementof
human culture. That doesn't mean enforcing sexual choices. But we are 'living'
women and men, that is to say sexuate, and our identity can't be constructed
without the benefit of a framework of relations, horizontal and vertical, that
respectsthis difference.
In the absenceof such an order, many people are nowadays looking for an
identity-spaceother than the human one. A man defines himself in relation to his
houseor his neighbor's,his car or any other meansof transport,the numberof miles
he's covered,the number of matcheshe's played, his favorite animals, his unique
Gods in whose name he kills others and looks down on women, and so on. Man
doesn'tconcern himself with improving the quality of man: 'Oh, I've got no time
for that.... That's old-fashioned.... It's a thing of the past, that is....' All these
indifferent responses,expressedpassively by irresponsiblecitizens, are in my view
the result of a lack of rights and obligationsappropriateto real civil persons.Which
leads to a great deal of authoritarianism,violence, and poverty.
CL: You talk about law that is sexed,law that encompasses female gender. It's
a very different idea from the traditional notion of 'parity'. So it's not a matter of
'equal laws for all' but rather a notion of law that takes into accountthe fact that
women are not equal to men. Can you explain the conceptof sexedlaw?
LI: I think that, in particularcases,the strugglehasto be for equalrights in order
to make the differencesbetweenwomen and men apparent.Or at least I used to
444 Luce Irigaray
think that. I now think that what appearsto be the reasonableway is utopian or
misguided.Why? Womenand men are not equal. And the strategyof equality, when
there is one,4should always aim to get differencesrecognized.For example,having
equalnumbersof men and womenin all sectorsof social activity in orderto get them
to progress.Of course,on one level this is a totally desirablesolution. But it's not
enough. And it's this insufficiency that brings about repressionand uncertainty
concerning the differences between men and women, which women themselves
maintain. Why is the equality strategynot enough?First, becausethe currentsocial
order, and that includesthe order defining occupations,is not neutral when viewed
in terms of the difference of the sexes. Working conditions and production
techniquesare not equally designed nor equally applied with respect to sexual
difference.Working targetsand systemsare not equally defined by, nor for, women
and men. At best, therefore, equality is achievedon pay. Of course,the right to
equalpay is legitimate, as is the right of women to work outsidethe home and gain
economicindependence.Somepeople(men and women) think that this is sufficient
in order to respecttheir human identity. Personally,I don't think it is. Thesenew
economic conditions can encourage us to rethink the whole of our social
organization, unless they give support to the fact that, in order to achieve a
minimum of freedom, women have to subject themselvesto the imperativesof a
culture that is not their own. Hence, should they have to help manufacture
armamentsor pollutants,or adjust themselvesto men'sworking patterns,or again
shouldthey haveto submit and contributeto the developmentof artificial languages
unrelatedto their natural language,which increasinglydepersonalizes them, and so
on? That doesn'tequatewith having equalrights. Becauseto have a chanceof living
freely, women are forced to subject themselvesto men's meansof production and
to enhancetheir capital or socioculturalinheritance.In spite of all this they do enter
the workplace,but in so doing they alienatetheir female identity. And the incentives
that exist for women to go back into the home have a good chanceof success,not
necessarilyamongthe most reactionarywomen, as is too readily believed,but also
amongwomenwho wish to try to becomewomen.What I meanby that is that there
is still hardly any sort of work that enablesa woman to earn her living as a male
citizen does without alienating her identity in working conditions and contexts
developedto suit men alone. Not consideringthis problem causesa great deal of
misunderstandingand disagreementamongpeopleworking for women'sliberation.
A good deal of time is lost in the mistakesthat are made, and many misunder-
standingsare fostered,cynically or unknowingly, by those in power on a micro or
macrolevel. As for womenthemselves,they are caughtin a dilemma: stuck between
the minimum social rights they can obtain by going out to work, gaining economic
independence,being seen somewhat in society, etc., and the psychological or
physical price they pay, and make other women pay, for this minimum, whether
they are totally aware of it or not. All thesemisunderstandingscould be resolved
by the recognition that different laws exist for each sex and that equivalentsocial
statuscan only be establishedafter theselaws have been encodedby civil society's
electedrepresentatives.So this must be aimed at as a priority.
CL: Can you give some examples,in order to explain how current law was
createdand has developedto suit men? What laws would be createdin accordance
with sexual difference?
LI: I think it's possiblefor me to answerboth questionsat once, in the sensethat
what hasto be defined as women'srights is what the male people,the between-men
culture, has appropriatedas possessions, including in this respectnot only women's
and children'sbodies,but also natural space,living space,the economyof signs and
images, social and religious representation.
I'll deal with the question, then, by way of what has to be assertednow as
women'srights:
1. The right to human dignity, which means:
(a) Stoppingthe commercial use of their bodies and images;

(b) Valid representationsof themselvesin actions, words, and images ill all
public places;
(c) Stopping the exploitation of motherhood,a functional part of women, by
civil and religious powers.
2. The right to human identity, that is:
(a) The legal encodi6cationof virginity (or physical and moral integrity) as a
componentof female identity that is not reducibleto money, and not cash-
convertible by the family, the State, or religious bodies in any way. This
componentof female identity enablesthe girl to be accordedcivil statusand
gives her a right to keepher virginity (including for her own relationshipwith
the divine) as long as she likes, as well as to lodge a complaint, with the
support of the law, against anyone who violates this right from within or
outside the family. If it is true that girls are less the objects of exchange
between men in our cultures, there are still plenty of places where their
virginity is traded, and girls' identity status as a cash-convertiblebody
between men has been neither reformulated nor rethought. Girls need a
positive identity to refer to as individual and social civil persons.Such an
autonomousidentity for girls is also essentialfor the free consentof women
to sexual relationshipsand for the institution of marriageif women are not
to be alienatedby male power.
What's more, this institution should be legally modified, especially in
relation to the marriage of minors. At the moment, the law allows the
family, the State,or religious bodies to be the legal guardiansof the young
married couple, and especiallythe woman, who can be married well before
she reachesthe age of majority. In my opinion we should increasethe age
of legal marriageor reducethat of civil majority and not allow marriageto
operateas, in effect, an uncivil institution - that is, without the couplebeing
in any way legally responsible.
446 Luce Irigaray
Theserights would enableus to get away from simple penalsanctionsand

to enjoy civil legality as far as women'srights are concerned.I'm thinking
of rape and incest cases,for example,or casesagainstforced prostitution,
pornography,etc., which are always enactedwith a view to punishing the
guilty rather than in accordancewith civil society's guaranteeof positive
rights appropriateto women. But it's not a good thing, either for women or
for relations betweenthe sexes,that women as the injured party be put in
the position of simply being accusers.If there were civil rights for women,
the whole of societywould be the injured party in the caseof rape or all the
other forms of violence inflicted on women; society, then, would be the
plaintiff or co-plaintiff against the harm causedto one of its members.
(b) The right to motherhoodas a component(not a priority) of female identity.
If the body is a legal concern,and it is, then the female body must be civilly
identified as a virgin and potential mother. Which meansthe mother will
have the right to choose whether to be pregnant and the number of
pregnancies.The mother herself, or her legal representative,will be the one
to register the child's birth with the civil authorities.
3. The mutual obligations of mothers-childrenshall be defined by civil law. This
is so that the mother can protect her children and be supportedin this by law.
That will enableher to be the plaintiff in the nameof civil society in incest,rape,
abuse, and kidnapping cases concerning children, particularly girls. The
respectiveobligations of the mother and the father will be defined separately.
4. Women shall have a right to defend their own and their children's lives, their
living space,their traditions, and their religion against all unilateral decisions
emanatingfrom male law (including in this respectarmamentsand pollution).
5. On a strictly financial level:
(a) Celibacy shall not be penalizedby the tax systemnor any other charges;
(b) If the Stategrantsfamily benefits,they shall be of equalvalue for eachchild;
(c) Media broadcasts,such as television, for which women pay the sametaxes
as men, shall be half of the time targetedtowards women.
6. Systems of exchange,such as linguistic exchange,for example,shall be revised
in order to guaranteea right to equivalentexchangefor men and women.
7. Women shall be representedin equal numbersin all civil and religious decision-
making bodies, given that religion also representscivil authority.
CL: Somewomen have theorizedtheir exteriority and aversionto law, their lack
of interest in theseissues.What do you think of this?
LI: I think this position is a poor analysisof what are the current conditionsfor
the recognitionof female identity. But I can appreciatethat thesewomen - kept by
men-citizens(who generallyuselaw in a way that is foreign to female interests)and
not being citizens in their own right - forget this essentialdimensionof the social
structure. I can particularly understandit given that, at the time when female law
existed, it wasn't generally written and was exercisedwithout the weight of the
institutionsthat haveproliferatedunderpatriarchalregimes.But this female law did

exist. The era when womengovernedthe social order did not end in chaos,as some
claim. Among other things, female law was characterizedby:
1. The transmissionof possessionsand namesbetweenmothersand daughters

2. The privilege of sistersand of the last-born in a later transmission
3. The significanceof divinity and the religious in filiation
4. The designationof the country of birth as the motherland
5. Respectfor local places and divinities
6. Respectfor naturally producedfood: fruits most of all, then cereals
7. A temporalitythat respectsthe rhythmsof life, the light cycle, the seasons,and
the years
8. A higher morality basedupon love and peace
9. A community of all the membersof humankind
10. Arbitration entrustedto women on mattersof alliances and the resolution of
conflicts
11. Symbolic systemslinked to art
One can find tracesof theseelementsof female law in the works of JohannJacob
Bachofen,as well as in Mircea Eliade'sdescriptionsof aboriginal culturesthat still
exist in India, for example.Thesereferencesare far from being exclusive.They, and
their bibliographies,may be able to provide a lead for research.I have chosento
cite men partly to illustrate male theorists'recognition of this reality.
In order for these rights to be respectedtoday, rights that seem to me to
correspondto female subjectivity, we will have to resort to written law. Otherwise,
written law will continueto be enforcedto the detrimentof girls, who are alienated
from it from birth and by their genealogies.Moreover, I think it would be a good
thing for women to create a social order in which they can make use of their
subjectivity with its symbols,its images,its dreamsand realities- thus, the objective
meansof subjectiveexchange.
CL: I'd like to finish off this interview by asking you for someadvice for women
(and men too) who are interestedin the law.
LI: As a priority, they should guaranteethe conservationof nature in so far as
it's what enables everyone to live and feed themselvesthrough work without
speculativeand alienating mediations.
1. Specify the basic rights for everyone'slife: women and men, girls and boys,
mothersand fathers, female and male citizens, women and men workers, etc.,
startingwith womenand men, or at leastretainingthis differenceas a framework
if other priorities come to the fore.
2. Reducethe rights of groupsor companiesgovernedby one or only a few people.
Democracyitself still does not exist in the sensein which it is invoked, and its
principles needto be looked at, particularly in the light of the time and manner
in which it was defined and establishedby men alone.
448 Luce Irigaray
3. Redefine and value adequatelaws on housing, and indeed private property in

general.Women, men, and children need a place to live without being cheated
of this need, this desire, this rightful investment, by environmentalpollution
(cars, airplanes,noisy machines,etc.), by lack of safety or faulty construction,
liberties taken in building places initially denied permission to be built, and
thereforedepriving existing residentsof light, air, and peace,and forcing them
into a semi-nomadismthrough a lack of legal protection regardingreal estate.
4. Reducethe power money has, particularly the surplus-valueassociatedwith the
capriciousdesiresof the rich or thosenot so rich (take, for example,real estate
agentswho speculateon human greed by pretendingthat a smaller apartment
can be more expensive since it's sought after by purchasershaving trouble
moving, but the sellersknow that'snot the case),and get back to valid exchanges
basedon the cost of products and the choice of meansof production (which
meansgoing back to more natural methodswithout increasingproduction or
overproducingwith respectto the earth, the air, the oceans,and humanbodies,
too).
5. Questionthe origins of the law currently in force, particularly in relation to the
time when women really were civil persons, a time misleadingly termed
Prehistory.This will lead you to considerwhat has to be changedin currentlaw
and to question the notions of the civil and the religious as assimilable or
differentiated and guaranteeingfree choices.
May 1988
Notes
1. Christina Lasagni asked me these questionsfor the first issue of II diritto delle donne,
journal of Emilia Romagna,published in Bologna, Italy.
2. 'Is the subjectof sciencesexed?'trans. Carol MastrangeloBove, Hypatia 2 (Fall 1987):
65-87.
3. Trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1985), originally published (Paris: Minuit, 1977).
4. And it's presentin the very conceptof law, though not simply as a strategy.
Human5.7 D
Functioning and Social
Justice: tn defenseof
Aristotelian essentialism1
Martha C. Nussbaum
[.•.J
Antiessentialist conversations
[..•J
At a conferenceon value and technology,an Americaneconomistwho haslong been
considereda radical delivers a paperurging the preservationof traditional ways of
life in a rural areaof India, now underthreatof contaminationfrom Westernvalues.
As evidenceof the excellenceof this rural way of life, he points to the fact that,
whereaswe Westernersexperiencea sharp split betweenthe values that prevail in
the workplaceand the valuesthat prevail in the home,here,by contrast,thereexists
what the economistcalls 'the embeddedway of life'. His example: just as in the
home a menstruatingwoman is thoughtto pollute thekitchen and so may not enter
it, so too in the workplace a menstruatingwoman is taken to pollute the loom and
may not enterthe room wherelooms are kept. An economistfrom India objectsthat
this example is repellent rather than admirable, for surely such practices both
degradethe women in question and inhibit their freedom. The first economist's
collaborator, an elegant French anthropologist (who would, I suspect, object
From Political Theory, vol. 20, no. 2, May 1992, pp. 202-10, 212-34, 237, 239-46.
449
450 Martha C. Nussbaum
violently to a purity check at the seminar room door), addressesthe objector in

contemptuoustones. Doesn'the realize that there is, in thesematters,no privileged
place to stand?Doesn'the know that he is neglectingthe radical othernessof these
village people by bringing his Western essentialistvalues into the picture?
The sameFrenchanthropologistnow deliversher paper.She expressesregret that
the introduction of smallpox vaccinationto India by the British eradicatedthe cult
of Sittala Devi, the goddessto whom one usedto pray in order to avert smallpox.
Here, she says, is another example of Western neglect of difference. Someone(it
might have been me) objectsthat it is surely better to be healthy rather than ill, to
live rather than to die. The frosty answercomesback: Westernessentialistmedicine
conceivesof things in terms of binary oppositions:life is opposedto death, health
to disease.But if we cast away this blinkered way of seeing things, we will com-
prehendthe radical othernessof Indian traditions. At this point, Eric Hobsbawm,
who has been listening to the proceedingsin increasingly uneasysilence, rises to
deliver a blistering indictmentof the traditionalismand relativism that prevail in this
group. He lists examplesof how the appealto tradition has beenused in history to
defend various types of oppressionand violence.
[ .•.J
Theseexamplesare not unusual; I could cite many more. What we see in such
cases is an odd phenomenonindeed. Highly intelligent people, people deeply
committed to the good of women and men in developing countries, people who
think of themselves as progressive and feminist and antiracist, are taking up
positionsthat converge,as Hobsbawmcorrectly saw, with the positionsof reaction,
oppression,and sexism. Under the banner of their radical and politically correct
'antiessentialism'march ancient religious taboos, the luxury of the pampered
husband,ill health, ignorance,and death. (And in my own essentialistway, I say
it at the outset. I do hold that death is opposedto life in the most binary way
imaginable, and slavery to freedom, and hunger to adequate nutrition, and
ignoranceto knowledge.)
Essentialismis becominga dirty word in the academyand in thosepartsof human
life that are influenced by it. Essentialism - which for these purposes I shall
understandas the view that human life has certain central defining features - is
linked by its opponentswith an ignoranceof history, with lack of sensitivity to the
voices of women and minorities.2 It is taken, usually without extendedargument,
to be in league with racism and sexism, with 'patriarchal' thinking generally,
whereasextremerelativism is taken to be a recipe for social progress.In this essay,
I question these connections. I grant that some criticisms of some forms of
essentialismhave been fruitful and important: they have establishedthe ethical
debateon a more defensiblemetaphysicalfoundation and have redirectedour gaze
from unexaminedabstractassumptionsto the world and its actual history. But I
argue that those who would throw out all appealsto a determinateaccountof the
humanbeing, humanfunctioning, and humanflourishing are throwing away far too
much - in terms even, and especially, of their own compassionateends.
Human Functioning and Social Justice 451
I argue, first, that the legitimate criticisms of essentialismstill leave room for
essentialismof a kind: for a historically sensitiveaccountof the most basic human
needsand humanfunctions. I then sketchsuch an account,which I have developed
at length elsewhere,showinghow it can meet the legitimate objections.I then argue
that without such an account,we do not have an adequatebasisfor an accountof
social justice and the endsof social distribution. With it, on the other hand,we have
- what we urgently need at this time - the basis for a global ethic and a fully
international account of distributive justice. Finally, I argue that without
essentialismof a kind, we are deprivedof two moral sentimentsthat are absolutely
necessaryif we are to live togetherdecentlyin the world: compassionand respect.3
The assault on essentialism
[...J
Attacks on Metaphysical-Realist Essentialism
Metaphysicalrealism claims that there is some determinateway that the world is

apart from the interpretive workings of the cognitive faculties of living beings. A
description of the world is true just in case it correspondsto that independently
existing structure, false in so far as it does not so correspond. Unless the
metaphysicalrealist is also a skeptic -a combinationrarely found, since it is hard
to sustain confidence in realism without the belief that someonecan adequately
graspreality - realismis accompaniedby somerelatedaccountof knowledge.Some
mind or other - whether God's alone or certain human minds also - is said to be
able to graspthis real structureas it is in itself; knowledgeis defined in termsof this
grasp.
[ •..J
The commonobjectionto this sort of realismis that this sort of metaphysicaltruth
is not in fact available. Sometimesthis is put skeptically: the independentstructure
may still exist, but we can know nothing of it. More often, today, doubt is cast on
the coherenceof the whole realist idea that there is someone determinatestructure
to the way things are, independentof all humaninterpretation.This is the objection
that nonphilosopherstend to associate with Jacques Derrida's assault on the
'metaphysicsof presence',which he takes to have dominated the entirety of the
Western philosophical tradition.4 But it actually has a much longer and more
complicatedhistory. It begins in the Western tradition at least as early as Kant's
assaulton transcendentmetaphysics- and perhapsfar earlier, since somescholars
have found a version of it in Aristotle's anti-Platonistarguments.5 Its contemporary
versionsare themselvesmany and complex - involving, frequently, technicalissues
in the philosophy of scienceand the philosophy of language.In this sophisticated
literature - whose major contributors include such outstandingphilosophersas

Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V.O. Quine, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and
Nelson Goodman- the argumentsof Derrida are relatively minor contributions,
which do not evenconfront a greatmany of the pressingquestionsthat are at issue.6
The attackon metaphysicalrealismis far too complexto be summarizedhere,but
its implications for essentialismare clear. If the only available (or perhapseven
coherent)picture of reality is one in the derivation of which human interpretations
playapart, if the only defensibleconceptionsof truth and knowledgehold truth and
knowledge to be in certain ways dependenton human cognitive activity within
history, then the hope for a pure unmediatedaccountof our human essenceas it
is in itself, apart from history and interpretation, is no hope at all but a deep
confusion. To cling to it as a goal is to pretendthat it is possiblefor us to be told
from outside what to be and what to do, when in reality the only answerswe can
ever hope to have must come, in some manner,from ourselves.
Attacks on Internalist Essentialism
But one might accepttheseconclusionsand still be an essentialist.One might, that

is, believethat the deepestexaminationof humanhistory and humancognition from
within still revealsa more or less determinateaccountof the humanbeing, one that
divides its essentialfrom its accidentalproperties.Such an accountwould say: take
away propertiesX, Y, and Z (a suntan,let us say, or a knowledgeof Chinese,or
an incomeof $40,000a year) and we will still havewhat we count as a humanbeing
on our hands.On the other hand, take away propertiesA, B, and C (the ability to
think about the future, say, or the ability to respondto the claims of others,or the
ability to chooseand act) and we no longer havea humanlife at all. Separatingthese
two groups of propertiesrequires an evaluative inquiry: for we must ask, which
things are so important that we will not count a life as a humanlife without them?
Such an evaluativeinquiry into what is deepestand most indispensablein our lives
need not presupposean external metaphysicalfoundation, clearly: it can be a way
of looking at ourselves,askingwhat we really think aboutourselvesand what holds
our history together. Later on, I shall proposeone version of such a historically
grounded empirical essentialism- which, since it takes its stand within human
experience,I shall now call 'internalist' essentialism.7 Such internalist conceptions
of the human being are still vulnerableto some, if not all, of the chargesbrought
against essentialismgenerally. So even though the opposition rarely makes the
externalist/internalistdistinction, I shall myself introduce it, mentioning three
chargesthat I think any good internalist accountwill need to answer.
1. Neglect of Historical and Cultural Differences

The opposition chargesthat any attempt to pick out some elementsof human life
as more fundamentalthan others, even without appealto a transhistoricalreality,
is bound to be insufficiently respectfulof actual historical and cultural differences.

People, it is claimed, understandhuman life and humannessin widely different
ways, and any attemptto producea list of 'essentialproperties'is boundto enshrine
certain understandingsof the human and to demoteothers. Usually, the objector
continues,this takesthe form of enshriningthe understandingof a dominantgroup
at the expenseof minority understandings.Such objectorsusually also suggestthat
only an actual unanimousagreementwould be sufficient to justify an essentialist
conclusion. But in practice, such agreementsare not forthcoming, so essentialism
is bound to consist of the imposition of someone'sauthority on someoneelse.
2. Neglect of Autonomy
A different objection is pressedby liberal opponentsof essentialism;usually these
opponentsare themselveswilling to be essentialistabout the central importanceof
human freedom and autonomy8The objection is that by determiningin advance
what elementsof human life have most importance, the essentialistis failing to
respectthe right of people to choosea plan of life according to their own lights,
determiningwhat is most central and what is not. Such evaluativechoicesmust be
left to eachcitizen. For this reason,politics must refuse itself a determinatetheory
of the human being and the human good.
3. Prejudicial Application
If we operatewith a determinateconceptionof the human being that is meant to
have somenormativemoral and political weight, we must also, in applying it, ask
which beingswe take to fall underthe concept.Here, the objector notesthat all too
easily the powerlesscan be excluded.Aristotle himself, it is pointed out, held that
women and slaves were not full-fledged human beings; and since his politics was
basedon his essentialism,the failure of these beings (in his view) to exhibit the
desiredessenceled to their political exclusionand oppression.The suggestionis that
renouncingthe use of such a determinateconceptionof the human will make it
easierfor such people to be heard and included.
The Collapse into Subjectivism
Each of theseobjectionshas someforce. Later on in the essay,I ask how much force
each of them has and whether there is a version of essentialismthat can survive
them. But what is alarming about the current debatein a variety of fields - literary
theory, someparts of legal theory, and much of economictheory and development
studies - is that this further inquiry has not taken place. Very often, as in my
Helsinki examples,the collapseof metaphysicalrealism is taken to entail not only
the collapse of essentialismabout the human being but a retreat into an extreme
relativism, or even subjectivism, about all questionsof evaluation.9
The retreat usually takes the following form. First, an impossible demand is
made, say, for unmediatedpresentnessto reality as it is in itself or for an actual
universal agreementabout matters of value. Next, it is claimed that this demand
cannotbe met. Then, without any further ado - without looking at internal realist
positions,such as thoseof CharlesTaylor and Hilary Putnam,and without asking
what more moderatecognitive demandscan be met - the theorist concludesthat
everythingis up for grabs and there are no norms to give us guidancein mattersof
evaluation. For some theorists, evaluation then becomesa matter of power: the
criterion of truth will derive from one'scontingentposition of social authority.10 For
others,it becomes,instead,a matterof play and self-assertion:what is good is what
I (whether for reasonsor arbitrarily or whimsically) choose to assert.11 For still
others, as we shall see,value collapsesinto utility: to judge somethinggood is part
of a transactionin which one seeksto maximize one'sutility (understoodas desire-
satisfactionor wealth or whatever).
[.•.J
Furthermore,in a more generalattack on distinction-making,all 'binary oppositions'
are frequently called into questionas if it is always both illegitimate and somehow
bad to oppose one thing clearly to another, as if such distinction-making were
always a preparationfor somecruelty or oppression.12 By thesestepswe arrive, in
some cases,at the complete banishmentof logic - that allegedly male patriarchal
imperialist phenomenon.
[ ...J
Confronting the Objections
Let me say very directly where I stand on the objections to essentialism.I believe
that Kantian and related contemporaryarguments(by Quine, Davidson, Putnam,
and Goodmanin particular) have indeedsuccessfullyestablishedthe untenability of
extrememetaphysicalrealism. I cannotarguethis here, but I hope it can at least be
agreedthat it would be extremelyunwisefor a political proposalto rely on the truth
of metaphysicalrealism, given our current argumentativesituation. On the other
hand, it does not seem to me that such a result shows anything like what the
relativist objectorsthink it shows. When we get rid of the hope of a transcendent
metaphysicalgroundingfor your evaluativejudgments- about the humanbeing as
about anything else - we are not left with the abyss. We have everything that we
always had all along: the exchangeof reasonsand argumentsby human beings
within history, in which, for reasonsthat are historical and humanbut not the worse
for that, we hold some things to be good and others bad, some argumentsto be
sound and others not sound. Why, indeed, should the relativist concludethat the
absenceof a transcendentbasisfor judgment-a basisthat, accordingto them, was
never there anyway - should make us despairof doing as we have done all along,
distinguishingpersuasionfrom manipulation?
In fact, the collapseinto extremerelativism or subjectivismseemsto me to betray
a deep attachmentto metaphysicalrealism itself. For it is only to one who has
pinned everything to that hope that its collapsewill seemto entail the collapseof
all evaluation- just as it is only to a deeply believing religious person,as Nietzsche
saw, that the news of the death of God brings the threat of nihilism. What we see
here, I think, is a reaction of shame-a turning away of the eyes from our poor
humanity, which looks so meanand bare - by contrastto a dreamof anothersort.
What do we have here, these critics seem to say? Only our poor old human
conversations,our human bodies that interpret things so imperfectly? Well, if that
is all there is, we do not really want to study it too closely, to look into the
distinctions it exhibits. We will just say that they are all alike, for, really, they do
look pretty similar when comparedto the heavenlystandardwe were seeking.It is
like the moment reportedby Aristotle when some studentsarrived at the home of
Heraclitus,eagerto see the great sageand cosmologist.They found him - not on
a hilltop gazing at the heavensbut sitting in his kitchen or, perhaps,on the toilet
(for there is a philological dispute at this point!). He looked at their disappointed
faces, saw that they were about to turn away their eyes, and said, 'Come in, don't
be afraid. There are gods here too.' Aristotle usesthis story to nudge his reluctant
studentsout of the shamethat is preventingthem from looking closely at the parts
of animals. When you get rid of your shame,he says, you will notice that there is
order and structure in the animal world. 13
So too, I think, with realism: the failure to take an interest in studying our
practicesof analyzingand reasoning,humanand historical as they are, the insistence
that we would havegood argumentsonly if they camefrom heaven- all this betrays
a shamebefore the human. On the other hand, if we really think of the hope of a
transcendentground for value as uninterestingand irrelevant, as we should, then
the news of its collapsewill not changethe way we do things: it will just let us get
on with the businessof reasoningin which we were already engaged.
And as Hilary Putnamargues,14 the demiseof realism may even boost the status
of ethical evaluation.For the metaphysicalrealist frequentlymadea sharpdistinction
between fact and value, believing that truth of the sort the realist is after was
availablein the scientific realm but not in the realm of value. Bringing scienceinside
humanhistory makeswhat was alreadybelievedto be in therelook better,not worse
- becauseits claims are no longer contrastedsharplywith claims that look 'harder'
and more 'factual'. Thus the polarity betweenscientific fact and subjectiveethical
value on which much of neoclassicaleconomicsrests is called into questionby the
collapseof realism - from the side of science,to be sure, but this reopensthe whole
question of the relationship betweenethics and science and makes it possibleto
argue, as does Putnam, that ethics is no worse off than any science.
As for the objections to internalist essentialism,each of them has some force.
Many essentialistconceptionshave beeninsular in an arrogantway and neglectful
of differencesamongculturesand ways of life. Somehave beenneglectful of choice
and autonomy.And somehave beenprejudicially applied - sometimesevenby their

inventors (as in the casesof Aristotle and Rousseau).But none of this, it seemsto
me, showsthat all essentialismmustfail in one or more of theseways. And if one
feels that there are urgent reasons why we need such an account of human
functioning, one will be motivatedto try to constructone that will in fact meet the
objections. I now propose such an account and then return to the area of
developmentpolicy, offering my reasonsfor thinking that we do in fact urgently
need such an account.
An Essentialist Proposal: the Basic Human

Functions
Here, then, is a sketch of an internal-essentialistproposal,an accountof the most

important functions of the humanbeing, in terms of which human life is defined.15
The idea is that oncewe identify a group of especiallyimportantfunctions in human
life, we are then in a position to ask what social and political institutions are doing
about them. Are they giving people what they need in order to be capable of
functioning in all thesehumanways? And are they doing this in a minimal way, or
are they making it possiblefor citizens to function well? I will considerthe political
implications of the account in the next section; now I must describethe account
itself.
I call this accountof the human functions the 'thick vaguetheory of the good'.16
The point of this nameis to insist, first of all, on the normativecharacterof the list.
We are not pretending to discover some value-neutral facts about ourselves,
independentlyof all evaluation; instead,we are conducting an especially probing
and basicsort of evaluativeinquiry. The nameis also chosento contrastthe account
with John Rawls's'thin theory of the good', which insistson confining the list of the
'primary goods'that will be usedby the membersof the Original Positionto a group
of allegedlyall-purposemeansthat have a role in any conceptionof the humangood
whatever.By contrast,my Aristotelian conceptionis concernedwith endsand with
the overall shapeand contentof the humanform of life. 17 Finally, the list is 'vague'
and this deliberatelyso and in a good sense,for, as we shall see,it admits of much
multiple speciftcationin accordancewith variedlocal and personalconceptions.The
idea is that it is betterto be vaguelyright than preciselywrong; I claim that without
the guidanceoffered by such a list, what we often get in public policy is precise
wrongness.
This conceptionis emphatically not metaphysical;that is, it does not claim to
derivefrom any sourceexternalto the actual self-interpretationsand self-evaluations
of humanbeingsin history. 18 Nor is it peculiarto a single metaphysicalor religious
tradition. It aims to be as universal as possible, and its guiding intuition, in fact,
directs it to crossreligious, cultural, and metaphysicalgulfs. For it beginsfrom two
facts: first, that we do recognizeothersas humanacrossmany divisions of time and
place. Whateverthe differenceswe encounter,we are rarely in doubt as to when we
are dealing with a human being and when we are not. The essentialistaccount
attemptsto describethe basesfor these recognitions,by mapping out the general
shapeof the human form of life, those features that constitute a life as human
whereverit is. Second,we do have a broadly sharedgeneral consensusabout the
featureswhoseabsencemeansthe end of a humanform of life. We havein medicine
and mythologyalike an idea that sometransitionsor changesjust are not compatible
with the continuedexistenceof that being as a memberof the humankind (and thus
as the same individual, since speciesidentity seemsto be necessaryfor personal
identity). This is really just anotherway of coming at the first question,of asking
what the most central features of our common humanity are, without which no
individual can be counted(or counted any longer) as human.19
[ •.• J
Here, then, as a first approximation,is a story about what seemsto be part of

any life that we will count as a human life:
Level I of the Thick Vague Conception: The Shape of the Human

Form of Life
Mortality. All humanbeingsface deathand, after a certainage, know that they face
it. This fact shapesmore or less every other elementof human life. Moreover, all
humanbeingshavean aversionto death.Although in many circumstancesdeathwill
be preferredto the available alternatives,the death of a loved one or the prospect
of one's own death is an occasion for grief and/or fear. If we encounteredan
immortal anthropomorphicbeing or a mortal being that showed no aversion to
deathand no tendencyto avoid death,we would judge, in both thesecases,that the
form of life was so different from our own that the beingcould not be acknowledged
as human.
The human body. [ ...J The experienceof the body is, to be sure, culturally
shaped,but the body itself, not culturally variant in its nutritional and other related
requirements,sets limits on what can be experienced,ensuring a great deal of
overlap.
There is much disagreement,of course,about how much of humanexperienceis
rooted in the body. Here, religion and metaphysicsenter the picture in a nontrivial
way. Therefore,in keeping with the nonmetaphysicalcharacterof the list, I shall
include at this point only those featuresthat would be agreedto be bodily even by
determineddualists. The more controversialfeatures,such as thinking, perceiving,
and emotion, I shall discuss separately, taking no stand on the question of
dualism.20
[ .•• J
1. Hunger and thirst; the needfor food and drink.
[ ...J
2. Needfor shelter.
[ ..•J
3. Sexualdesire.
[ ..•J
4. Mobility.
[ ...J
Capacityfor pleasureand pain. Experiencesof pain and pleasureare commonto
all human life (though once again both their expressionand, to some extent, the
experienceitself may be culturally shaped).
[. .•J
Cognitive capability: perceIVmg, imagmmg, thinking. All human beings have
senseperception,the ability to imagine, and the ability to think, making distinctions
and 'reachingout for understanding'. 21
[...J
Early infant development.
[...J
If we encountereda tribe of apparenthumansand then discoveredthat they never
had been babiesand had never, in consequence,had those experiencesof extreme
dependency,need, and affection, we would, I think, have to conclude that their
form of life was sufficiently different from our own that they could not be considered
part of the same kind.
Practical reason. All human beings participate (or try to) in the planning and
managingof their own lives, asking and answeringquestionsabout what is good
and how one should live.
[.•• J
Affiliation with other human beings.
[... J
We define ourselvesin terms of at least two sorts of affiliation: intimate family
and/or personalrelations and social or civic relations.
Relatednessto other speciesand to nature.

[ •..J
[AJ creaturewho treated animals exactly like stonesand could not be brought to
seeany differencewould probably be regardedas too strangeto be human. So, too,
would a creaturewho did not in any way respondto the beautyand wonder of the
natural world.
Humor and play. [...J Laughterand play are frequently amongthe deepestand
also the first modes of our mutual recognition.
[...J
An entire societythat lacked this ability would seemto us both terribly strangeand
terribly frightening.
Separateness. Howevermuch we live with and for others,we are, eachof us, 'one
in number', proceedingon a separatepath through the world from birth to death.
Each personfeels only his or her own pain and not anyoneelse's.Each persondies
without entailing logically the deathof anyoneelse. When one personwalks across
the room, no other personfollows automatically. When we count the number of
human beings in a room, we have no difficulty figuring out where one begins and
the other ends. These obvious facts need stating becausethey might have been
otherwise. We should bear them in mind when we hear talk of the absenceof
individualism in certainsocieties.Even the most intenseforms of humaninteraction,
for example,sexual experience,are experiencesof responsiveness, not of fusion. If
fusion is made the goal, the result is bound to be bitter disappointment.
[ ...J
[A] s the next level of the conceptionof the human being, I now specify certain
basic functional capabilities at which societies should aim for their citizens (in
accordancewith the political idea more fully investigatedin the next section). In
other words, this will be an account of the secondthreshold - although in some
areas,it seemsto me to coincide with the first. I shall actually introducethe list as
one of relatedcapabilitiesrather than of actual functionings, since I shall arguethat
capability to function, not actual functioning, should be the goal of legislation and
public planning.
Level 2 of the Thick Vague Conception: Basic Human Functional

Capabilities
1. Being able to live to the end of a completehumanlife, as far as is possible;not

dying prematurely,or before one'slife is so reducedas to be not worth living.
2. Being able to have good health; to be adequatelynourished;to have adequate
shelter; having opportunitiesfor sexual satisfaction;being able to move from
place to place.
3. Being able to avoid unnecessaryand nonbeneficialpain and to havepleasurable
experiences.
4. Being able to usethe five senses;being able to imagine, to think, and to reason.
S. Being able to have attachmentsto things and personsoutsideourselves;to love
thosewho love and care for us, to grieve at their absence,in general,to love,
grieve, to feel longing and gratitude.
6. Being able to form a conceptionof the good and to engagein critical reflection
about the planning of one's own life.
7. Being able to live for and with others,to recognizeand show concernfor other
human beings, to engagein various forms of familial and social interaction.
8. Being able to live with concernfor and in relation to animals, plants, and the
world of nature.
9. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreationalactivities.
10. Being able to live one'sown life and nobodyelse's;being able to live one'sown
life in one's very own surroundingsand context.
The Aristotelian essentialistclaims that a life that lacks anyoneof these,no matter
what else it has, will be lacking in humanness.So it would be reasonableto take
thesethings as a focus for concern,in asking how public policy can promote the
good of humanbeings. The list is, emphatically,a list of separatecomponents.We
cannotsatisfy the need for one of them by giving a larger amount of anotherone.
All are of centralimportance,and all are distinct in quality. This limits the trade-offs
that it will be reasonableto make, and thus limits the applicability of quantitative
cost-benefitanalysis.
[ .•.J
Answering the Objections

I must now try to show how the thick vague theory of the good can answer the
objectionsmost commonly madeagainstessentialism.First of all, it should be clear
by now that the list does not derive from any extrahistorical metaphysical
conception,or rely on the truth of any form of metaphysicalrealism. As I have said,
its guiding intuition is that we do recognizeas human,peoplewho do not shareour
own metaphysicaland religious ideas;it aims to get at the root of thoserecognitions.
It doesso by conductingan inquiry that is, frankly, both evaluativeand internal to
humanhistory. Furthermore,the conceptiondoesnot even demanduniversalactual
agreementamong human beings in order to play the moral and political role that
we want it to play. I have tried to arrive at a list that will commanda very wide
consensus,and a consensusthat is fully international.Its very close resemblanceto
other similar lists worked out independentlyin parts of the world as divergent as
Finland and Sri Lanka22 gives some reasonfor optimism about consensus.On the
other hand, unanimity is not required; for people who have not been willing to
engagein the cross-culturalstudy and the probing evaluationthat is behind the list
may well refuseassentfor varied reasons.Even amongthosewho do engagein the
inquiry, there may be differencesof opinion. With regard to some componentsof
the list, the very act of enteringa disagreementseemsto be an acknowledgmentof

the importanceof the component:this seemstrue, for example,of both practical
reasoningand affiliation. But with regardto others,there will be room for ongoing
debate and reformulation. The aim is, simply, to achieve enough of a working
consensusthat we can use the list as a basis for the kind of political reflection that
I describein the next section.(We may usefully compare,at this point, JohnRawls's
idea of an 'overlappingconsensus'that is political and not metaphysical.23) So, the
objectionsto essentialismthat assumeits dependenceon realism seemto fail, in this
particular case.
As for the three objectionsto 'internalist' essentialism,each one of them is, and
should remain, a central concern of the Aristotelian essentialist.For the list will
commandthe sort of broad consensusshe wishes only if these objections can be
successfullymet.
Concerningneglectof historical and cultural difference,the Aristotelian beginsby
insisting that the thick vague conceptionis vague for preciselythis reason.The list
claims to have identified in a very generalway componentsthat are fundamentalto
any human life. But it allows in its very design for the possibility of multiple
specificationsof eachof the components.This is so in severaldifferent ways. First,
the constitutivecircumstancesof human life, while broadly shared,are themselves
realizedin different forms in different societies.The fear of death,the love of play,
relationshipsof friendship and affiliation with others, even the experienceof the
bodily appetites- theseneverturn up in simply the vagueand generalform in which
they have been introduced here but always in some specific and historically rich
cultural realization, which can profoundly shapenot only the conceptionsused by
the citizens in these areasbut their experiencesthemselves.None the less, we do
have in theseareasof our common humanity sufficient overlap to sustaina general
conversation,focusing on our common problems and prospects.Sometimes,the
commonconversationwill permit us to criticize someconceptionsof the grounding
experiencesthemselves,as at odds with other things that human beingswant to do
and to be.24
[ ...J
The liberal chargesthe Aristotelian with neglectof autonomy,arguing that any
such determinate conceptionremovesfrom the citizensthe chanceto maketheir own
choices about the good life. This is a complicated issue; four points can be
stressed.25 First, the list is a list of capabilities,and not actual functions, precisely
becausethe conceptionis designedto leave room for choice. Governmentis not
directedto pushcitizens into acting in certain valued ways; instead,it is directedto
make sure that all human beings have the necessaryresourcesand conditions for
acting in those ways. It leavesthe choice up to them. A personwith plenty of food
can always choose to fast; a person who has access to subsidized university
educationcan always decideto do somethingelse instead.By making opportunities
available, government enhances,and does not remove, choice.26 Second, this
respectfor choice is built deeply into the list itself in the architectonicrole it gives
to practical reasoning. One of the most central capabilities promoted by the

conceptionwill be the capability of choosingitself, which is made amongthe most
fundamentalelementsof the humanessence.27 Third, we shouldnote that the major
liberal view in this area,the view of John Rawls, doesnot shrink from essentialism
of our internal sort in just this area. Rawls insists that satisfactionsthat are not the
outgrowth of one'svery own choiceshave no moral worth, and he conceivesof the
'two moral powers' (analogous to our practical reasoning) and of sociability
(correspondingto our affiliation) as built into the definition of the parties in the
original position and thus as necessaryconstraintson any outcomethey will select.28
In this way, the liberal view and the Aristotelian view convergemore than one might
initially suppose.Finally, the Aristotelian insiststhat choice is not pure spontaneity,
flourishing independentlyof material and social conditions. If one cares about
autonomy,then one must care aboutthe rest of the form of life that supportsit and
the materialconditionsthat enableone to live that form of life. Thus the Aristotelian
claims that her own comprehensiveconcernwith flourishing acrossall areasof life
is a better way of promoting choice than is the liberal's narrower concern with
spontaneityalone, which sometimestoleratessituationsin which individuals are in
other ways cut off from the fully human use of their faculties.
The Aristotelian conceptioncan indeed be prejudicially applied. It is possibleto
say all the right things abouthumannessand then to deny that women or blacks or
other minorities fall under the concept. How should the essentialistdeal with this
problem? First of all, it should be stressedthat the fact that a conceptioncan be
withheld for reasonsof prejudiceor lack of love underminesnot the conceptionitself
but the personwho withholds it. One may, looking at a minority whom one hates,
speakof them as beetlesor ants, and one may carry this refusal of humanity into
the sphereof law and public action. Doesthis undermineour idea that a conception
of the humanbeing is a good basisfor moral obligation?It seemsto me that it does
not. For what such casesreveal is the greatpower of the conceptionof the human.
Acknowledging this other personas a memberof the very same kind would have
generateda senseof affiliation and responsibility; this was why the self-deceptive
stratagemof splitting the other off from one'sown speciesseemedso urgent and so
seductive.And the stratagemof denying humannessto beingswith whom one lives
in conversationand someform of humaninteractionis a fragile sort of self-deceptive
tactic, vulnerableto sustainedand consistentreflection and also to experiencesthat
cut through self-deceptiverationalization.29
[ ...J
So far, I have focused on the higher-level (developed)human capabilities that
make a life a good human life but have not spokenat length about the empirical
basis for the application of the concept'humanbeing' to a creaturebefore us. The
basis cannot, of course, be the presenceof the higher-level capabilitieson my list,
for one of the main points of the list is to enableus to say, of some being before
us, that this being might possibly come to have thesehigher-level capabilities but
doesnot now have them. It is that gap betweenbasic (potential) humannessand its
full realizationthat exertsa claim on society and government.What, then, is to be

the basisfor a determinationthat this being is one of the human beings,one of the
oneswhose functioning concernsus? I claim that it is the presenceof a lower-level
(undeveloped)capability to perform the functions in question, such that with the
provision of suitablesupportand education,the beingwould be capableof choosing
thesefunctions.30
[ ..• J
Our Need for Essentialism in Public Policy
I have said that we urgently needa version of essentialismin public life. If we reject
it, we reject guidancethat is crucial if we are to constructan adequateaccountof
distributive justice to guide public policy in many areas. It is time for me to
substantiatethese claims. I shall focus on the area with which I began: the
assessment of the 'qualityof life' in developingcountries,with a view to formulating
policy, both within each separatecountry and betweenone country and another.
The generaldirection of my argumentshould by now be clear: we cannottell how
a country is doing unlesswe know how the peoplein it are able to function in the
central humanways. And without an accountof the good, howevervague,that we
take to be shared, we have no adequatebasis for saying what is missing from the
lives of the poor or marginalizedor excluded, no adequateway of justifying the
claim that any deeply embeddedtradition that we encounteris unjust.
Public policy analysesof the quality of life in developing countries often use
measuresthat are extremelycrude.31 It is still common to fmd countriesranked in
accordancewith their gross national product per capita, even though this measure
doesnot evenconcernitself with the distribution of resourcesand thus can give good
marks to a country with enormousinequalities.
[.•. J
One step up in level of sophisticationis an approachthat measuresthe quality of
life in terms of utility. This would be done, for example,by polling people about
whether they are satisfied with their current health statusor their current level of
education.This approachat least has the merit of focusing on people and viewing
resourcesas valuable becauseof what they do in humanlives. But its narrow focus
on subjectiveexpressionsof satisfactionbringswith it a numberof seriousproblems.
First of all, desiresand subjectivepreferenceare not always reliable indices of what
a personreally needs,of what would really be requiredto makethat life a flourishing
one. Desiresand satisfactionsare highly malleable. The rich and pamperedeasily
become accustomedto their luxury and view with pain and frustration a life in
which they are treated just like everyoneelse. The poor and deprived frequently
adjust their expectationsand aspirationsto the low level of life they have known;
thus their failure to expressdissatisfactioncan often be a sign that they really do
have enough. This is all the more true when the deprivationsin question include
deprivation of education and other information about alternative ways of life.
Circumstancesconfme the imagination.32
Thus, if we rely on utility as our measureof life quality, we most often will get
results that support the statusquo and opposeradical change.
[ ••. J
To treat deepparts of our identity as alienablecommoditiesis to do violence to the
conceptionof the self that we actually haveand to the textureof the world of human
practiceand interactionrevealedthrough this conception.As Marx put it, 'Assume
the humanbeing to be the humanbeing and its relation to the world to be a human
one, then you can exchangelove only for love, trust for trust, etc.'33
Finally, utilitarianism, neglectingas it does the inalienability of certain elements
of the self, neglectsalso the ethical salienceof the boundariesbetweenpersons.As
a theory of public measurement,utilitarianism is committed to the aggregationof
satisfactions.Individuals are treated as centersof pleasureor pain, satisfactionor
dissatisfaction,and the fact of their separatenessone from another is not given
special weight in the theory, which proceedsby summing. But in the world we
actually inhabit, it is a highly relevantfact that my pain is not yours, nor yours mine.
If trade-offsbetweenfunctions are problematicwhere a single life is concerned,they
are all the more problematicwhen they crossthe boundariesof lives, purchasingone
person's satisfaction at the price of another's misery. It is easy to see what
consequencesthis can have for policy. For the utilitarian is frequently willing to
tolerate huge inequalities for the sake of a larger total or average sum. The
Aristotelian's fundamental commitment, by contrast, is to bring each and every
person across the threshold into capability for good functioning. This means
devotingresourcesto getting everyoneacrossbefore any more is given to thosewho
are alreadycapableof functioning at somebasiclevel. If all cannotbe broughtacross
the threshold, to this extent the ends of public policy have not been met.
The local tradition relativism endorsedin my Helsinki examplesclaims to be
different from prevailing economic-utilitarian views, on account of its close
attentionto the fabric of daily life in traditional societies.But it actually sharesmany
of the defectsof the utilitarian view, for it refusesto subjectpreferences,as formed
in traditional societies,to any sort of critical scrutiny. It seemsto assumethat all
criticism must be a form of imperialism, the imposition of an outsider'spower on
local ways. Nor does it simply claim (as do utilitarian economists) to avoid
normative judgmentsaltogether,for it actually endorsesthe locally formed norms
as good and even romanticizesthem in no small degree.It confers a bogus air of
legitimacy on these deeply embeddedpreferencesby refusing to subject them to
ethical scrutiny.
[ •..J
One more antiessentialistapproachto questionsof distributive justice must now
be considered.It is by far the most powerful alternativeto the Aristotelian approach,
and its differencesfrom it are subtle and complex. This is the liberal idea, defended
in different formsby JohnRawls and Ronald Dworkin, that distribution should aim
at an equal allotment of certain basic resources(or, in the caseof Rawls, should
tolerateinequalitiesonly wherethis would improve the situationof the worst off). 34
The Rawlsianliberal insistson distributing basicresourceswithout taking a stand
on the human good, even in the vague way in which the 'thick vague theory' has
done so. The aim is to leave to eachcitizen a choice of the conceptionof the good
by which he or she will live. As we have said, Rawls does take a standon someof
the componentsof our conception.For sociability and practical reasonare treated
as essentialto any conceptionof human flourishing that can be entertained;liberty
is on the list of 'primary goods',as are the 'social conditionsof self-respect';and in
argument against utilitarianism, Rawls commits himself very strongly to the
centrality of the separateness of persons.35 On the other hand, as we have seen,the
Aristotelian conception does itself insist on the fundamental role of choice and
autonomy.But thereare still signifIcant differencesbetweenthe two conceptions,for
the Rawlsian view treats income and wealth as 'primary goods' of which more is
always better, independentlyof the concreteconceptionof the good. And he does
define the 'better off' and 'worse off' in terms of quantitiesof thesebasic resources
rather than in terms of functioning or capability.
To this, the Aristotelian has three replies. First, [ ...J wealth and income are not
good in their own right; they are good only in so far as they promote human
functioning. Rawls's view, which appearsto treat them as having independent
significance,obscuresthe role that they actually play in human life.
Second, human beings have variable needs for resources,and any adequate
defInition of the better off and worse off must reflect that fact. A pregnantwoman
has nutritional needsthat are different from those of a nonpregnantwoman and a
child from thoseof an adult. The child who hasexactly the sameamountof protein
in her diet as an adult is less well off, given her greater needs. A person whose
mobility is impaired will need a significantly greateramount of resourcesthan will
a personof averagemobility in order to achievethe samelevel of capability to move
about. Theseare not just rare exceptions;they are pervasivefacts of life. Thus the
failure of the liberal theory to deal with them is a seriousdefect. And yet, to deal
with them, we need a general conception of what functions we are trying to
support.36
Third, the liberal, by defining being well off in terms of possessionsalone, fails
to go deep enough in imagining the impedimentsto functioning that are actually
presentin many human lives. Marx argued,for example,that workers who lack
control over their own activity and its productsleadlives lessthan fully human,even
if they do get adequatewages.In general,the structureof labor relations, of class
relations,and of raceand genderrelationsin a societycan alienateits membersfrom
the fully human use of their faculties even when their material needsare met. It is
possible to hold that a pamperedmiddle-classhousewife is well off, despite the
barriersthat preventher from expressingherselffully in employmentand education.
What is very unclear is whether Rawls - who does indeed decide to postpone
considerationof structuresof power within the household- should allow himself

to be in this position, given his commitment to the realization of the two moral
powers for each and every citizen. At the very least, there is a tension internal to
the view, which can be dispelled only by a more explicit considerationof the
relationshipbetweenthe two moral powersand variousother humanfunctions and
their material and institutional necessaryconditions.37 With political liberty , Rawls
fully seizesthis problem; thereforehe placesliberty amongthe primary goods. My
claim is that he needsto go further in this direction, making the list of primary goods
not a list of resourcesand commoditiesat all but a list of basic capabilitiesof the
person.
[ . . .J
Compassion and Respect
A new dimension of our question emergesif we now ask ourselveswhat moral

sentimentswe are encouragedand permittedto have by antiessentialistsubjectivism,
on one hand, or by Aristotelian essentialism,on the other. I now argue that two
moral sentiments that we take to be particularly important for the human
community can have their home only within a view that recognizesa determinate
conceptionof the human being. In so far as relativist and subjectivistviews appear
to incorporatethem, they do so only by being partially or tacitly essentialist.These
two sentimentsare compassionand respect.38
Eleos, pity or compassion,is, accordingto ancient Greek analysesthat are still
unsurpassed,a painful emotion felt toward the pain or suffering of anotherperson.
It has three cognitive requirements:first, the belief that the suffering is not trivial
but serious; second,the belief that the person who is suffering did not causethe
suffering by deliberatefault; third, the belief that one'sown possibilities are similar
to thoseof the personsuffering. It involves, then, in its very structure,the injunction
to recognizecommon human limits and vulnerabilities; and the plausible claim is
that the person who does not recognize him- or herself as sharing a common
humanity with the sufferer will react to the suffering with an arrogant hardness,
ratherthan with compassion.This structureis built into many literary and historical
situationsin which people appealto others for compassion:and in such situations
we see that the response that acknowledgesshared possibilities is a humane
response,closely connectedwith beneficentaction.
[ •..J
I claim [with the ancient Greek tradition and RousseauthatJ compassiondoes
require the belief in a common humanity. We do not grasp the significance of
suffering or lack or impedimentunless and until we set it in the context of a view
of what it is for a humanbeing to flourish. And we do not respondcompassionately
to that gap betweennorm and fulfillment unless we think that this is a possibility
in which we too partake. Compassionrequiresus to say: howeverfar thesepeople

are from us in fortune or class or race or gender, those differences are morally
arbitrary and might have befallen me as well. And if we are not in a position to say
that, it is not at all clear on what grounds we can be persuadedto give to these
people.
[ ...J
There is a deepmoral tradition that saysthat compassionis not required, for we
can be sufficiently motivatedto other-regardingaction by respectfor the dignity of
humanity. This tradition, exemplified in the thoughtof the ancientStoics, Spinoza,
Kant, and in a different way, Nietzsche, still makes central use of a notion of
common humanity, for respectis not groundlessor arbitrary. It has a foundation:
the recognition in the object of certain powers or capabilities. Usually, these are
taken to be specifically humanpowers- although one might motivate respectfrom
a broadernotion of the animal or, on the other hand, from notions of the rational
being or the personthat might be narrower in their application. For Kant, respect
is due to humanity; a basicmoral principle is to treat humanity,whereverit is found,
as an end in itself. For the ancient Stoics similarly, respectis owed to that which
is recognizedas a human being, having certain powers and capabilities.One needs
to have an accountof what thosepowers and capabilitiesare, and it had better be
an accountthat links many times and placestogether. Otherwise,we will have no
moral motive for other-regardingaction toward people at a distance or toward
people of other races and genders.
I have suggestedthat without a notion of common human functioning, we will
haveto do without compassionand without a full-blooded notion of respect.What,
by contrast,are the moral sentimentsof extremerelativism? Here, we must say, I
believe, that most relativists are not fully consistent.In so far as they do show for
humanlife everywherea concernthat they do not show for rocks or stones,or even,
in the sameway, for all animals,they trade tacitly on beliefs and relatedsentiments
that their official view does not allow them. Some utilitarians, especially those
intensely concernedwith animal rights, really are willing to jettison the species
boundaryin favor of a broadergenericnotion of concernfor all creaturescapable
of the experienceof pleasure and pain; some pursue this goal with reasonable
consistency.But we must say, I think, that even that view attains what coherence
and power it has by being essentialistat the genericlevel. It is certainly very far from
being a subjectivist view. And, unlike these thinkers, most alleged subjectivists
cheat. They commendtheir view to us on the groundsof compassion,saying that
it will help the situation of the excluded, of minorities, and of women. Yet the
theoreticalapparatusthey then introduce is insufficient to make senseof that very
compassion.It permits only narrow, self-regarding sentiments and a relatively
detachedand curious attitude to the situation of others.
Even when subjectivismhas moderateditself into local tradition relativism, as in
the examplesgiven in my Helsinki conversations,its range of moral sentiments
seemsnarrow indeed. How quaint, thesetheoristsseemto be saying, how curious.
They do not appear to be able to delve very deeply into the lives in question,
imagining for themselveswhat it really is like to be told that you cannotwork when
you have your period or that you must pray to a terrifying goddessto avert a life-
threatening disease.There is both distance and a certain condescensionin this
refusal of imagination and acknowledgment.But anything more would require the
admissionthat it is relevantto ask themselveshow they would feel in that situation.
And this their theory forbids them to do. That menstrualperiod and that work they
must treat as somethingdifferent in kind (or at least not the samein kind) as the
comparableelementsin their own lives. It is not surprising, then, that they do not
think of the pain of exclusion as something that might be their own or see its
signifrcancein and for a life that could have beentheir own. The moral sentiments
of this sort of relativism, I claim, are the sentimentsof the tourist: wonder,curiosity,
and amused interest. But the pain of the stranger is seen as pain only if its
signifrcanceis understoodas that of pain: as similar, then, to the pain that we know.
And it is only in the light of such an acknowledgmentthat wonder turns to grief,
curiosity to practical determination,and amusedinterest to compassion.
[.•• J
[C] ompassionateidentifrcation need not ignore concretelocal differences;in fact,
at its best, it demandsa searchinganalysisof differencesin order that the general
good be appropriatelyrealizedin the new concretecase.But the learningabout and
from the other is motivated as it is in Aristotle's own studiesof other cultures: by
the conviction that the other is one of us.
Somewherein the vast reachesof literary-theoreticalspace,there is a planet known

as Textualite. Its inhabitantslook very much like humanbeings - exceptthat they
are very large and eachone hasonly a single eye. Their mythology reportsthat they
are the descendantsof some emigrantsfrom Earth, who fled that planet in search
of a homewherethey could escapepatriarchalauthority and binary thinking to take
delight in the free play of difference, utility, and power.
There are on Textualite many nations. Some are rich and some are very poor.
Within most of the nations, there are also large inequalitiesthat have perceptible
effects on the health and mobility and educationallevel of the inhabitants. The
peopleof Textualite,however,do not seesuchthings as we seethem. For they really
havediscarded- not just in theory but in the fabric of their daily lives - the Earthly
tendenciesof thought that link the perception of one's neighbor's pain to the
memory of one's own and the perceptionof a stranger'spain to the experienceof
a neighbor's, all this through the general idea of the human being and human
flourishing. To thesepeople, strangerssimply look very strange.They are seen as
other forms of life, who havenothing in commonwith their own lives. Occasionally
they share perceptions and ideas with a few other beings in locally bounded
communitiesthat establishgroup norms. At other times, eachone goesout after his
or her own utility or power, treating every other being as foreign.
Do the peopleof Textualite feel pain when they seea strangerwho is hungry or
ill or abused?They do dislike the sight of such ugly things. But they do not feel the
pain of fellow-feeling, for that has been declareda remnantof outmodedEarthly
thinking. How should we know, they say, that this being is suffering from lack of
food? For that is a different form of life from ours, and we have been brought up
to appreciatethe play of difference. Saying this, they go on with their play and turn
away their eyes. Do the people of Textualite construct governmentprograms to
improve literacy or health care or agriculturein the distant poorer regions of their
planet? Why, indeed, should they? Doing so is unlikely to maximize their own
expectedutility, and they cannotbring themselvesto make any judgmentaboutthe
form of life in a strangepart of the globe, aboutpeoplewith whom they could never
be in conversation.Perhapsthose inhabitantsare enjoying their embeddedway of
life, they remark at conferences.Do the people of Textualite feel love for one
another?Or isn't love of one's fellow humansone of those shopworn essentialist
ideals that they left behind on Earth?
We do not live right now on the planet of Textualite. Right now, the new
subjectivism - whether in economics or in literary theory - is false of our
experiencesand responses.But we can choose to follow theory into our lives,
focusing on our differencesfrom one anotherand refusing to acknowledgewhat is
commonto all. And then perhapsone day, the texture of the humanworld will be
differently perceived,perceivedthroughthe play of differenceand strangeness. Then
we will, I think, not be human beings any longer.
Notes
1. The argumentof this essayis closely related to that of severalothers, to which I shall
refer frequently in what follows: 'Nature, function, and capability', Oxford Studiesin
Ancient Philosophy, suppl. vol. 1 (1988): 145-84 (hereafter NFC); 'Non-relative
virtues: an Aristotelian approach',Midwest Studiesin Philosophy 13 (1988): 32-53,
and, in an expandedversion, in The Quality of Life, edited by M. Nussbaumand A.
Sen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992) (hereafter NRV); 'Aristotelian social democracy',in
Liberalism and the Good, edited by R. B. Douglasset al. (New York: Routledge,1990)
203-52 (hereafter ASD); 'Aristotle on human nature and the foundations of ethics',
forthcoming in a volume on the philosophyof BernardWilliams, edited by R. Harrison
and J. Altham (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,1992) (hereafterHN); 'Human
capabilities,female humanbeings',in Human Capabilities: Women,men, and equality,
edited by M. Nussbaumand J. Glover (Oxford: Clarendon,forthcoming) (hereafter
HC).
2. Becauseof such pervasiveassumptions,in general I have not used the vocabulary of
'essentialism'in describing my own (historically embeddedand historically sensitive)
accountof the central human functions. I do so here, somewhatpolemically, in order
to reclaim the word for reasoneddebate,and I assumethat the readerwill look closely
at my account of what the 'essentialism'I recommend,in fact, entails. For further
commentson this, see HN, ASC, and He.
3. It is important to note at the outsetthat my accountof an Aristotelian position is very
different from other accountsof Aristotle that are well known in currentpolitical thought
- in particular,both from the Aristotle that is criticized in BernardWilliams's Ethics and

the Limits of Philosophy(Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press,1985), and from
the Aristotle of Alasdair Macintyre's WhoseJustice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). I discuss Williams's Aristotle in HN,
MacIntyre's in a review in The New York Reviewof Books, 7 December,1989.
4. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press,1977).
5. For my accountof Aristotle's position, see The Fragility of Goodness:Luck and ethics
in Greek tragedy and philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986),
ch. 8. Relateddebatesin Indian philosophy are given a most illuminating discussionin
B. K. Matilal, Perception (Oxford: Clarendon,1985).
6. In two areasabove all, the argumentfamiliar in the literature of deconstructionhave
gaps: they do not confront debateswithin the philosophy of science - for example,
concerningthe interpretationof quantum mechanics- that have great importancefor
the realism question, and they rarely confront in a detailed way the issuesconcerning
referenceand translation that have been debatedwith considerablesubtlety within the
philosophy of language.
7. In this category, as close relatives of my view, I would place the 'internal-realist'
conception of Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press,1981), The Many Facesof Realism(La Salle: Open Court, 1987), and
Realism With a Human Face (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press,1990); and
also Charles Taylor, Sourcesof the Self: The making of modern identity (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). For my discussionof Taylor's arguments,see
New Republic, April 1990.
8. See esp. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press,
1971). Rawls'sposition and its relationshipto the Aristotelian view is discussedin NFC,
in HC, and especiallyin ASD, with referencesto other later articles in which Rawls has
further developedhis position concerningthe role of a conceptionof the good in his
theory.
9. By relativism I mean the view that the only available standardto value is some local
group or individual; by subjectivismI mean the view that the standardis given by each
individual's subjectivepreferences;thus relativism, as I understandit here, is a genusof
which subjectivismis one extremespecies.
10. A clear exampleof this view is StanleyFish: seeDoing What Come Naturally: Change,
rhetoric, and the practice of theory and legal studies(Durham, NC and London: Duke
University Press,1989). I criticized Fish's position in 'Sophistry about conventions',in
Love's Knowledge: Essayson philosophyand literature (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990), 220-29, and in 'Skepticism about practical reason', a Dewey Lecture
delivered at the Harvard University Law School, October 1991, and forthcoming.
11. This is the position that Derrida appearedto take up in a number of works - for
example,in Eperons:Les stylesde Nietzsche(Paris, 1979); he has more recently insisted
that his position does leave room for one view to be better than another, see his
Afterword to Limited Inc., trans. SamuelWeber and Jeffrey Mehlmann (Evanston,IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1988). Certainly, the former position is the one
frequently found in the writings of followers of Derrida in literary theory and criticism.
12. S. A. Marglin (pp. 22-3) suggeststhat this sort of thinking is peculiarly Western. My
(entirely typical) epigraphs from non-Westerntraditions already cast doubt on this.
Opponentsof such oppositions have not explained how one can speak coherently
without bounding off one thing againstanother, opposingone thing to another.
13. Aristotle, Parts of Animals 1.5, 645a5-37.Aristotle notes that anyone who has this
shame about looking at the animal world is bound to take up the same attitude to
himself, since an animal is what he is.
14. Seeesp. Reason,Truth, and History and also Putnam'schapterin Nussbaumand Sen,
eds, The Quality of Life.
15. For further elaboration,see HN, ASD, and He.
16. SeeASD; for detailed argumentconcerningthe normative characterof such an inquiry
into 'essence',see HN.
17. For a detailed accountof this contrast, see ASD and NFC.
18. For a closely related idea, see CharlesTaylor, Sourcesof the Self.
19. HN discussesthe relation of this idea to some debates about the end of life in
contemporarymedical ethics.
20. On the questionof cultural variation in the constructionof thesebasic experiences,see
NRV and ASD.
21. See Aristotle, Metaphysics1.1.
22. For Scandinavianconceptions, see the chapters by E. Allardt and R. Erikson in
Nussbaumand Sen, eds, The Quality of Life. On capabilitiesin Sri Lanka, see Carlos
Fonseka, Towards a Peaceful Sri Lanka, WIDER Researchfor Action series, World
Institute for DevelopmentEconomicsResearch,Helsinki, 1990.
23. John Rawls, 'The idea of an overlappingconsensus',Oxford journal of Legal Studies7
(1987).
24. For some examples,see NRV.
25. See the longer treatmentof this issue in ASD.
26. This distinction is central in the political theory of Amartya Sen. See, among others,
'Equality of what?', in Sen, Choice, Welfare, and Measurement(Oxford: Blackwell,
1982) 353-69,and Commoditiesand Capabilities (Amsterdam:North-Holland, 1985).
27. See also Sen, Commoditiesand Capabilities.
28. Seeesp. Rawls, 'The priority of the right and ideas of the good', Philosophyand Public
Affairs 17 (1988); for further referencesand discussions,see ASD.
29. Comparethe remarks on slaves in Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason(New York:
Oxford University Press,1979).
30. This idea is developedmore fully in NFC and He.
31. See Nussbaumand Sen, 'Introduction', The Quality of Life.
32. For theseobjections,seealso Sen'Equality of what?'and Commoditiesand Capabilities.
Recent utilitarian work in philosophy has to some extent addressedthese objections,
introducing many corrections to actual preferences,but the practice of development
economistshas not been much altered.
33. Marx, Economicsand Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, trans. M. Milligan, in The
Marxl Engels Reader,edited by R. e. Tucker (New York 1978). On the texture of the
human work, in connection with a related criticism of utilitarianism, see Putnam,
Reason, Truth and History. From the debate about the adequacy of economic
utilitarianism as a basisfor legal judgment,seeMargaretJaneRadin'soutstandingarticle
'Market-inalienability', Harvard Law Review 100 (1987) 1848 fE., which criticizes
Richard Posner for speakingof a woman's body as a commodity of which she may
disposein the market.
34. For a long accountof these criticisms, see ASD.
35. Rawls, A Theory of justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922)
189-92.
36. See Sen, 'Equality of what?'.
37. On this point, seeOkin, justice, Genderand the Family, and my review of her in New
York Reviewof Books, forthcoming.
38. I discusscompassionfurther in 'Tragedyand self-sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on fear
and pity', in Essayson Aristotle's Poetics,edited by A. Rorty (Princeton,NJ: Princeton
University Press,1992), and in a longer version in Oxford Studiesin AncientPhilosophy
10 (1992). Here I use 'compassion'ratherthan the more usual 'pity' for both Greek eleos
and French pitil! because'pity' in contemporaryuse often connotesa condescension

toward the suffererand a lofty distance.Theseattitudesare not only not implied but are
actually repudiatedin the accountsstandardlygiven of the original Greek and French
words.
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Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgementis made to the following sourcesfor permission to reproduce

material in this book previously publishedelsewhere.Every effort has been made to trace
copyright holders,but if any havebeeninadvertentlyoverlookedthe publisherwill be pleased
to make the necessaryarrangementat the first opportunity.
PART 1
1.1: Reprintedby permissionof the estateof the author,the translator,JonathanCape,and
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc., 1972.
1.2: © The University of Chicago Press,1981.
1.3: Revolution in Poetic Language,Julia Kristeva, 1984, © Columbia University Press,
New York. Reprintedwith permissionof the publisher.
1.4: From Power/Knowledgeby Michel Foucault © 1972, 1975, 1976, 1977 by Michel
Foucault. Reprintedby permissionof PantheonBooks, a division of RandomHouse Inc.
1.5: Paul de Man, 'The Resistanceto Theory', Yale French Studies,1982.
1.6: The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, Benjamin, 1987, ©
Columbia University Press,New York. Reprintedwith permissionof the publisher.
PART 2
2.1: © The University of Chicago Press,1979.
2.2: From Eros and Civilisation by Herbert Marcuse, © 1966 BeaconPress.Reprintedby
permissionof BeaconPress.
2.3: From SexualPolitics by Kate Millett, © 1970 by Kate Millett. Reprintedby permission
of GeorgesBorchardt, Inc. for the author.
2.4: From Ecrits by JacquesLacan, translatedby A. Sheridan.Routledge,London, 1977.
2.5: Breakingthe Chain: Women,Theoryand French RealistFiction by Naomi Schor, 1985,
© Columbia University Press,New York. Reprinted with permissionof the publisher.
2.6: © University of MinnesotaPressand Athlone PressLtd, 1984.
PART 3
3.1: © South End Press,Boston, MA, 1981.
3.2: © University of Minnesota Pressand ManchesterUniversity Press,1986.
3.3: Reprinted from Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993), by permission of the
publisher, Routledge,New York.
3.4: Woman, Native, Other: Writing, Postcolonialityand Feminismby Trinh T. Minh-ha,
Indiana University Press,1989.
3.5: From The Straight Mind by Monique Wittig. © 1992 by Monique Wittig. Reprinted
by permissionof BeaconPress.
3.6: Reprintedby permissionof the publishersfrom In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan,
Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, © 1982 by Carol Gilligan.
493
494 Acknowledgements
PART 4
4.1: From Illuminations by Walter Benjamin. © 1973, JonathanCape.
4.2: From Prisms by TheodorAdorno, translatedby S. and S. Weber,The MIT Press,1967.
4.3: © Verso, London, 1971.
4.4: © Oxford University Press,1977. Reprintedfrom Marxism and Literature by Raymond
Williams (1977) by permissionof Oxford University Press.
4.5: Reprinted with permission from The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially
Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson,Routledge,1983.
PART 5
5.1: From Objectivity, Relativism,and Truth: PhilosophicalPapers, Volume 1, Cambridge
University Press,1991.
5.2: © Polity Press,1985.
5.3: © Polity Press,1992.
5.4: © ManchesterUniversity Pressand University of MinnesotaPress,1983.
5.5: © ManchesterUniversity Pressand University of Minnesota Press,1984.
5.6: Reprintedwith permissionfrom fe, tu, nous: Toward a Culture of Difference by Luce
Irigaray, translatedby A. Martin, Routledge,New York, 1993.
5.7: © SagePublicationsInc., 1992.
Index
abortion, moral dilemmas 254-60 Bass, A. 64

Abraham, K. 130 Baudrillard, J. 347
Ackerman, B. 410 Beauvoir, S. de 176, 178,237,241
Adorno, T.W. 1,4,6, 101,216,268, Bell, D. 348
270, 272, 287-97, 323, 328, 365, Bellah, R. 371, 383
371, 373, 374, 381 Benhabib,S. 5, 182,358,365-6,367,
aesthetics,relationship to meaning79 401-16
Afro-American feminism 180 Benjamin, W. 1,269,270,278-86,327
allegory, Bennett, T. 275
ethics 90-1 Benveniste,E., 13, 61
see also ethics of reading Bernstein,R.J. 358, 359, 364, 365, 368
Althusser, L. 1, 161,216,267,270-2, birth control 254
298-313, 320, 321, 339 bisexuality 209-10
Anderson, P. 1,267-8,270,277 Bloch, E. 322, 323, 329, 401
Anzaldua, G. 233 Bloom, H., 19
Anzieu, D. 156, 160 Bloomfield, M. 80
apartheid232-3 body, relationship with text 106
Apel, K.-O. 388, 404 Bonaparte,M. 149
arbitrary sign 13 Braverman,H. 185
Arendt, H. 5, 362-5, 366, 367, 390, 407, Brecht, B. 269
410, 412 Broverman,1. et al. (1972) 257
Aristotle 451, 453, 461, 464, 465 Brunswick, R.M. 143, 151
Arnold, M. 5 Buckharin, N. 267
Artaud, A. 65 Burckhardt,J. 12
Atkinson, T.G. 249
Auerbach, E. 5 Caillois, R. 137
Austin, J.L. 391 Calvinism 17
autonomy453, 461 canon 1-7
capital, partnershipwith patriarchy
Bachelard,G. 270 189-93
Bachofen,J.-J. 207, 447 capitalism,
Bakhtin, M. 2, 322 and desire 153-9, 164-9
Barbault, M.e. 61 and psychoanalysis153-72
Barnum, P.T. 155 Castells,M. 346
Barrett, M. 177 castration165-8
Barthes, R. 1,2, 11, 12, 14,26,27-42, Chesler,P. 151
80-1,246,271 child, mirror stage 135-9
Elementsof Semiology11 child care 188-9
Empire of Signs 11 children, changingstatus 191
Mythologies 11, 26 Chodorow, N. 181
The Pleasureof the Text 26 Chomsky, N. 61
S/Z 26 chora 22, 53-6, 57
495
496 Index
Chrisman,L. 7, 357 differend 417-33

Christianity 114-15 Dilthey, W. 388
see also God; religion Dinnerstein,D. 141, 181
civil rights movement347, 383 discontinuity, conceptof 66-7
Cixous, H. 7, 105, 179-80, 181,200-11 discourse68, 246-52, 407
class consciousness324-5 Docherty, T. 7,276
class struggle 303, 311-13 Dostoevski,F.M. 109
and feminism 194-6 dreams30, 111
clitoris 105, 130, 147-9 drives 53-6, 64
compassion466-9 Ducrot, O. 61
Cooper, D. 170 Dworkin, R. 371, 372, 386, 414, 465
Culler, J. 13
cultural criticism 287-97 Eagleton,T. 274
cultural differences461 ecology 346, 351
Cultural Studies 1, 2, 6-7 ego 139, 140
culture process314-18 Ehrmann,J., Structuralism 11
emergent315, 316-17, 318 Eisenstein,Z. 177
residual 315-16,317 Eliade, M. 447
Eliot, T.S. 5
Dahrendorf, R. 328 Emerson,R.W. 381
Darwin, C. 330, 334 Engels, F. 46, 330-1, 334, 335, 339
Davidson, D. 370, 386 English Studies5-6
death 436, 457 Enlightenment289,370,371,372,374,
deconstruction435 381
and feminism 105-6, 212-30 Erikson, E.H. 258-9
graphematicstructure 220-1 eschatology436
Deleuze,G. 106-7, 153-72 essentialism106, 178-9, 236, 449-72
Deloria, V. 236 ethics 434-41
Delphy, C. 177-8, 178 of discourse407
de Man, P. 3,5,6,7,17, 18-19,20, of reading 20-1,88-95
78-87, 88-95 event, conceptof 67-8
democraticrevolution,
conditions required 343-4 family wage system 190-1, 197-8
new antagonisms345-51 fanaticism 374
Derrida, J. 1, 2, 3,4, 6, 7, 14,43-50, Fascism281, 282
149, 157, 179,214,220-4,228, female castration105, 129, 131-2
328,357,359,365,412,435 female identity 236-8
Of Grammatology15, 17,212,220, female law 446-7
361, 451, 470 female orgasm 148
Positions 43-50, 56-7 female paranoia142-7
Speechand Phenomena15, 18, 25, 361 female sexuality 104, 186,205-7
Spurs 215-19 feminine other 367
Writing and Difference 15-16, 64, 367 feminism 180,344,345,351
desire 153, 204, 463-4 and class struggle 194-6
and capitalism 153-9, 164-9 and deconstruction212-30
and production 153-9, 164-9 and Marxism 182-99
Dewey, J. 371, 372, 373, 374, 379, 381, materialism 177-9
382, 393 and motherhood181
dialectics 293-5 patriarchy 175-6, 185-9
Didion, J. 254 ligures of speech84
Dietzgen,J. 282 Firestone,S., The Dialectic of Sex 176,
differance 57-60, 64, 221-2, 224 191, 192
Index 497
Flaubert, G. 280 grammatology56-60

Foucault, M. 1,4,5,6,66-77,155, 159, Gramsci, A. 268,274,276,312
171, 225-6, 228, 270, 343, Green, A. 64, 162
359-60,412 Greimas,A.J. 12, 14,85
The Order of Things 14, 15, 16, 24-5, Guattari, F. 106-7, 153-72
155, 159
Fourier, C. 112, 282 Haan, N. 253
Frankfurt School 101, 191, 198,267,268, Habermas,J. 7, 358, 362, 365, 366, 367,
269, 271, 322, 358, 365 388-400,404,407,408,411,415
freedom 126, 453 Harris, Z. 51
absolute366 Hartmann,H. 5, 127, 175, 177, 183-99
and politics 363-5 Hegel, G.W.F. 79,201,203-4,294,374,
Freud, A. 139, 140 398, 412, 414
Freud, S. 4, 45, 103, 108-18, 120-7, hegemony274-5
154, 155, 156, 172,204,228 Heidegger,M. 64, 93, 215-19, 228, 370,
Christianity 114-15 371, 380, 434, 435
Civilization and its Discontents100-1 hermeneuticprocess321
Collected Papers 99 hierarchy among men 192
dreams30, 34, 111 history, conceptof 12, 43-5
female paranoia142-7 Hobsbawm,E. 450
Female Sexuality 143 Homan, M. 214
female sexuality 206-7 Horkheimer, M. 101,268,272,323,328,
Feminity 104 365, 371, 373, 374, 381
memory 110-11 housewives190-1
neurotics 115 housework184, 188-9, 190, 198
normality 116 Hull, G.T. 238
Oedipuscomplex 206, 207, 210-11 human body, characteristics457-9
phallic primacy 205 human dignity 445
pleasureprinciple 123-5 human functional capabilities459-60
reality 115-16, 123-5 human rights 370
repression123, 125-6 see also civil rights
sexual politics 102 Humboldt, K.W. von 391
sexuality 111-14 Husser!, E. 18,61,388
theory on drives 55, 64
women 128-34 identity politics 413
Friedan, B., The Feminine Mystique 102 ideology 271, 304-12
Fromm, E. 166 ideology, notion of 69-70
Fukuyama,F. 414-15 Imaginary 22, 103
Fuss, D. 178-9, 182 imago 137
infantile sexuality 71
Gadamer,H.-G. 370, 390, 394 Institute for Social Researchsee Frankfurt
Gardiner,J.K. 237 School
gay liberation movement249 intellectual, role of 73-7
Genet,]. 103 Irigaray, L. 2, 105, 106, 141, 148, 179,
Genette,G. 12, 14, 81 181,218,366,367,442-8
German Idealism 392 Iser, W. 85
Gilligan, C. 5, 180-2, 253-63, 366
Gilman, c.P. 102-3 Jakobson,R. 61, 80, 103, 151
God 436-7, 438, 440 James,W. 363
see also Christianity; religion Jameson,F. 5,270,272-3,274-5,
Gotha Program282 319-29
governmentrole 461 Jaspers,K. 388
498 Index
jauss, H.R. 85 linguistics 51-65, 246

jay, M. 269 terminology 80
jefferson, T. 369, 373, 374, 376, 377, see also language
382 literary discourse,historical nature 20
jones, E., Early Feminine Sexuality 206 literary theory 5-6, 7, 80
jouissance147-8 resistanceto 78-87
justice 372-4 logocentrism45, 47, 391-2
political conception406 Lorde, A. 180,231,233,241
Loyola 377, 378
Lukacs, G. 267, 269, 272
Kant, I. 79, 91, 374, 384, 419, 426, 451
Luporini, C. 335-6, 337
Kautsky, K. 349
Luxemburg, R. 267, 349
Kearney, R. 434-41
Lyotard, J.-F. 5,360,361-2,365,366,
Kierkegaard,S., PhilosophicalFragments
413,417-33
386
King, R.H. 357, 364, 365
McCarthy, T. 393-7
Klein, M. 52, 63
Macintyre, A. 5, 99, 361, 371, 381
Kohlberg, L. 255, 256, 260
Mailer, N. 103
Kolakowski, L. 388
MaIIarme, S. 23, 56
Korsch, K. 267
Mandel, E., Late Capitalism 277
Kris, E. 127
Mannoni, O. 160-1
Kristeva, j. 6, 7, 22-4, 51-65, 105,
Marcuse,H. 5, 6, 100-2, 106, 120-7,
146-8, 179, 180, 239, 242, 243
268, 270
Kuhn, T., The Structure of Scientific
marriage445
Revolution 270
Marx, K. 4, 45, 100, 112, 157-8,334,
339,398,440-1,464,465
labour legislation, protective 190 Capital 334
Labriola, A. 349 The German Ideology 305-6, 333
Lacan, j. 1,4, 15,22,64,103-5, 106, Theseson Feuerbach334
135-40, 148, 149, 163, 164, 165, Marxism 46, 101, 175,319-29
223-4, 246, 247 and feminism 182-99
Laclau, E. 7, 275-6, 340-54 materialism 330-9
Laing, R.D. 170 superstructures320
language, theory of the State 300-3
acquisition 54 women'slabour force participation 184
ethics 439 masculinedesire 204-5
signi&er and signifIed see separateentries masculinesexuality 112
of the Unconscious246, 247 masturbation130
Lask, E. 395 materialism 177-9, 330
Lawrence,D.H. 103, 112 materialism,historical 278, 279-80,
Leclaire, S. 164, 172 284-5
legal system, sexual equality 442-8 materialist text 45, 46-7
Leibniz, G.W. 427 memory 100, 110-11
Lemoine-Luccioni, E. 148 men,
Lenin, V.r. 46, 267, 303 homosexuality248, 250
lesbianism178, 248, 249, 250, 252 sexual aggression102
Levi-Strauss,C. 1, 12, 246 see also masculine
U:vinas, E. 4, 5, 229, 357, 366-7, mental alienation 170
434-41 Merleau-Ponty,M. 267
liberal democracy,philosophical metaphor103
justifIcation 372 metaphysicalconceptof history 43-4
liberty 126 metaphysicalrealism 451-2
Index 499
metonymy 103 Pankow, G. 169

Michelet, J. 12 parenting,dual 181
Miller, H. 103 patriarchy 175-6
Miller, J.H. 5, 7, 18, 19-22, 88-95, 155, defInition 185-6, 188-9
357-8 and feminism 185-9
Millett, K. 4, 5, 102-3, 104, 128-34, partnershipwith capital 189-93
175-6 Peirce, C.S. 80, 404
SexualPolitics 102 Pence,E. 234
Mills, C.W. 25-6 penis envy 102, 105, 128-34
mirror stage 135-9 phallic primacy 205
misreading19 phallocentrism207
Mitchell, J. 103, 104, 141, 176-7 phallus 104
monarchy 315 phantasy124
monumentalhistory 43 philosophy, role today 441
Moore, G.E. 108 Piaget,J. 63, 261
moral point of view 403,405-6,407,408 Plato 22, 54, 62
morality 440 pleasureprinciple 123-5
comparisonof men and women 253-60 pluralism 349
and ethical life 398 Poe, E.A. 149-51
motherhood181,446 politics and philosophy 369-87
motivation 38-9 Popper,Sir K.R. 388
Mouffe, C. 7, 275-6, 340-54 pornography248-9
Mulvey, L. 105 postmodernism7
Murphy, J.M. 259 Poulet, G. 19
myth 30-1 power,
alibi 39 methodsover people 73
concept32, 33-5 and war 72
form 32, 33 pre-Oedipalphase63
power of motivaton 38-9 production and desire 153-9, 164-9
reading and deciphering39-41 Protestantethic 106
second-ordersemiological system 30 psychoanalysisand capitalism 153-72
mythical speech27-42 public policy, essentialism463-6
examples31-2 public sphere410-11
Puritanism 17
Nagel, T. 213, 226-7, 414 Putnam,H. 454, 455,470
Nairn, T. 326-7
negativity 57 Quine, W. 370
neurosis115
New Criticism 2, 5 racial hierarchies188
Nietzsche,F. 19,25,45,79, 215, racism 233
216-19, 222, 225, 226, 228, 288, radical democracy,alternativefor a new
377,378,391 left 351-3
1968 25, 64, 441 Ranke, 0.12
Nirvana principle 113 Rawls, J. 5, 359, 366, 367, 371, 372-4,
normality 116 375, 376-7, 378, 379, 381,383,
Norris, C. 1, 3, 4, 5, 360 384,385,386,387,406,414,456,
Nussbaum,M. 5, 358, 366, 367-8, 461,462,465-6,470
449-72 ReaderResponsecriticism 5
reading, ethics of 20-1, 88-95
Oedipuscomplex 106, 116, 139, 159-60, reality principle 101, 123-5, 140
162-3, 165-8,206,207, 210-11 reason 100, 370
ontology 434-8 Reich, W. 166, 168
500 Index
religion 315, 337 sex!gendersystems187

tolerance372-3 sexism 192-3
seealso Christianity; God sexual division of labour 187, 193
religion and public policy 369-70 sexual equality 442-8
repression70-1, 123, 125-6 sexual politics 102
reproduction187 sexuality, Freud 111-14
of relations of production 310-11 signifted 11, 12,13,16-17,29-31,32,
of working class 185 33-5, 52
resources,distribution 465 signifter 11, 12, 13, 16-17,29-31,32-3,
rhetoric 85, 86-7 34, 52
Ricardo, D. 155 signs 11, 29-31
Rich, A. 178, 180-1 see also semiology
Rickert, H. 395 Skinner, Q. 275
Ricoeur, P. 321,322 Smith, B. 180,234-5,238
Rieff, P. 4, 5, 6, 99-100, 107, 108-19 social alienation 170
Riffaterre, M. 85 Social Democracy282, 283
Rorty, R. 5, 7, 230, 276, 360-1, 366, socialist feminism 175-8
369-87,388,389-90,392,402 society, transition from capitalism to
Rose,J. 214-15,217,218,219,223-4 socialism 188
Rosolato,G. 145, 147, 151 Sollers, P. 141
Roszak,T. 101 Spartacistgroup 283
Rousseau,J.J. 288 speech,mythical see mythical speech
Roussel,R. 169 Spengler,O. 289-90
Rowbotham,S. 177 Spivak, G.c. 5, 7, 180,212-30,233,358
Rubin, G. 186-7 Stalin, J. 331, 339
RussianFormalism 5 State, power of 71-2
State Apparatus(Repressive)300, 301-3
Sade,Marquis de 112 State Ideological Apparatuses300-3,
Safouan,M. 161 311-12
Sahlins, M. 320 structural linguistics 247
Sandel,M. 371,375-6,381, 386-7, 406 subordination34, 344
Sapir, E. 80 Sullivan, W.M. 384
Sargent,L. 177 superstructureconcept334-6
Sartre,J.-P. 12, 30, 328 Symbolic Order 22, 103-4, 105, 106
satisfactions463-4 synchronicity 12
Saussure,F. de 11, 12-13, 16-18, 28, 30,
80 taboos 110
Schachtel,E.G. 127 talk, therapeuticnature 111
Schiller, J.C.F. 288 Taylor, C. 25, 359-60, 361, 365, 371,
schizoanalysis 106, 153, 165,167-8 372,454
SchlegelSchelling, C.M. von 414 text, truth of 92-4
Schnadelbach,H. 390 the Other 366-8
Scholem,G. 270 Thierry, A. 334
Schor, N. 5, 105-6, 141-52 Third World women 231-45
Schorske,C. 392 Thompson,E.P. 271, 274, 328
Scott, P.B. 238 Thoreau,H.D. 13
Seeley,J.R. 192, 199 Timpanaro,S. 5,276-7, 330-9
Sellar, W. 415 Tocqueville, A. de 12, 345
semiology 11, 22-3, 28-32, 80 Todorov, T. 12, 14, 61
seealso signs totalitarianism 362-3
Sen, A. 471 Trinh, T.M. 7, 180,231-45
Sennett,R. 198 tropes 84
Index 501
truth 75-7, 404 Williams, P. 7, 357

of text 92-4 Williams, R. 5, 273-5, 277, 314-18
Truth, S. 240 withdrawal therapy 110
Turnbull, C. 325 Wittgenstein,L. 388,389,391, 419
Wittig, M. 178, 246-52
Unconscious103-5, 251 Wollstonecraft,M. 344
languageof 246, 247 women,
understanding,objectvity 393-4 conflict betweenself and other 254
Unger, R. 371, 380-1 entry into public sphere411
Utopia and ideology 319-29 labour force participation, Marxism 184
non-wage-workingwife 190, 198
vaginal orgasm 148 occupationof subordinatepositions 177
vaginal pleasure105 rights 445-6
Valery, P. 31,287,288 in Third World 231-45
value spheres395 visions of maturity 260-2
virginity 445 see also female
Vogel, L. 192, 199 word,
notion of 42
wages,women's 190 phonic properties80-1
Walker, A. 233 sound convergencewith meaning81
war, and power 72 workers' struggles349-50
Weber, M. 100, 101, 268, 381, 388,
395-7 Yamada,M. 233
Weedon,C. 23 Young, I. 177,413
White, H. 12

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Introduction: Critical Theory: Canonic Questions 1

1: Structuralism and Post-Structuralism 9

1.1 Roland Barthes Myth T oday 27

2.1 Philip Rieff The Emergenceof PsychologicalMan 108

3.1 Heidi Hartmann The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism:

3.2 He:ltme Cixous Sorties: Out and Out: attacks/waysout/forays 200

5: Post-FoundationalEthics and Politics 355

5.1 Richard Rorty The Priority of Democracyto Philosophy 369

Although there is no ideal moment to produce a Critical Theory Reader, the

Reader. There are bound to be omissions, of course, though in some instances

when categories and the metanarrativesthey generate seem to be especially

ambivalenceabout 'theory' as practised by post-structuralists,post-modernistsand

5.4 and 5.5, by Jean-Fran<;oisLyotard and EmmanuelLevinas, indicate that there

identifies the conditions of knowledge in any regime of discourse, than by yet

In the Course in General Linguistics (first published in 1916), reconstructed

in languagethere are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally

Saussure'sinsight leads off in a number of directions. The idea of a differential

contestedthe assumptionthat there is a natural meaning inherent in a sign, or at

No wonderthat the earth expressesitself outwardly in leaves,it so laborswith the idea

Saussurean structuralisminstituted a gap betweenthe world of signs and the world

trumpeted as the clarion call of the structuralist (and then post-structuralist)

Foucaultis setting asidethe transcendental,eventheological, self dating back to the

In tensionwith Saussure'saim of marking out an areafor study - in his case,the

Perhapssomethinghas occurred in the history of the conceptof structurethat could

If totalization no longer has any meaning, it is not becausethe infmitenessof a fIeld

that is to say, becauseinstead of being an inexhaustible field, as in the classical

'Supplementarity' refers back to the differential relationship between signs in

The first consequenceto be drawn from [Saussure'sstatement] is that the signified

Respectfulof Saussure'sgreat contribution in bringing languageto the fore rather

dependupon an initial exclusionof 'writing'. 'Writing' is understoodin the common-

Derrida'spassingcomparisonwith John Calvin is quite apt, since Calvinism and its

It is Saussure'sinsight still, but pursuedaccordingto a deconstructivelogic which

A nameon being mentionedremindsus of the Dresdengallery.... We wander

Certainly nothing has precededthis situation. Assuredly nothing will suspendit. It is

The broaderpoint of Derrida'sreadingof Saussure'sCoursein GeneralLinguistics

and Insight (1971), and this coupling is an indispensableelementin de Man's and

In literary studies, structuresof meaningare frequently describedin historical rather

the linguistics of literarinessis a powerful and indispensabletool in the unmaskingof

The extractreprintedfrom The Ethics of Reading(1987; Reading1.6) could easily

The ensuing foregroundingof material, phenomenalaspectsof the signifier createsa

Miller's essayon Paul de Man is part of a determinedeffort to identify 'the ethical

interviewer of Derrida (in one of the interviews reprinted in Positions) before

In making femininity and masculinity universal aspectsof language,rather than the

In fairness,the extract from Revolutionin Poetic Language(Reading1.3) and the

In attemptingto uncover the deepeststrata of Westernculture, I am restoring to our

... a philological critique, by means of a certain form of biologism, Nietzsche

Interestingly, near the end of Speechand Phenomena,Derrida happensupon a

Myth is a type of speech

Of course,it is not any type: languageneedsspecial conditions in order to become

conceiveof very ancientmyths, but there are no eternalones;for it is humanhistory

Myth as a semiological system

accurately,there are here only 'passionified'roses.But on the plane of analysis,we

first from an observationby V alt~ry.