1

The Aesthetics of Desire

and Surprise
The Aesthetics of Desire
and Surprise
Phenomenology and Speculation

Jadranka Skorin-Kapov

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For Darko
 Contents

Acknowledgmentsix
Prefacexi
Introduction 1

1 Desire and Excess 15

2 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 67
3 Surprise 107
4 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 145

Conclusion: Desire||Surprise and the Irreducible

in an Aesthetic Encounter 173
Bibliography177
Index181
About the Author 187

vii
 Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Department of Philosophy

at Stony Brook University for providing a fertile environment for insightful
discussions with faculty and students. I am greatly indebted to Edward S.
Casey for his erudite comments that stimulated various directions of research.
David Allison, Robert Harvey, Mary Rawlinson, Lorenzo Simpson, and Jeff
Edwards provided many useful suggestions resulting with improved manu-
script. I also benefited from discussions with the faculty and students from
the Art Department at Stony Brook University. Joseph Monteyne, Donald
Kuspit, John Lutterbie, Andrew Uroskie, and Zabet Patterson contributed
to my understanding of art exemplifying various philosophical positions.
The support of my colleagues from the College of Business at Stony Brook
University is very much appreciated. I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer
for useful suggestions that contributed to the presentation of this work.
The help from the editorial team at Lexington Books was indispens-
able for the book in its present form. It was a pleasure to work with Jana
Hodges-Kluck and with Kari A. Waters, and I thank them sincerely for their
support for the project, for their professional suggestions, and for enjoyable
communication.
Finally, I would like to thank my family, my husband Darko and our
younger generations, who always expressed their approval for my philosophi-
cal endeavors. This work is dedicated to Darko who—after forty years—
remains an irreducible surprise for me.

ix
 Preface

Our encounters with the environment, both natural and manmade, sometimes
surprise us, because most of the time we proceed in an automatic, everyday
fashion (a nod to Heidegger), dulled by the overabundance of sensual impres-
sions, and its annoying and meaningless information overload. However, in
rare situations, if we allow ourselves such a “luxury,” we get surprised in an
irreducible way—such an encounter belongs to a limit experience.
Two issues need explanation. First, I wrote “if we allow ourselves”—
which implies a conscious effort. In this work such a conscious effort is
approximated by the notion of the “expectation of the unexpected.” This
effort is related to desire, as a drive overstepping consciousness and concep-
tual determination. However, unlike in the Lacanian description of desire,
one is not smitten by the unattainable “object of desire”—this desire is
directed to the experience of newness and as such it might not be interesting
for a psychoanalyst; there are no unresolved past issues haunting one’s cur-
rent sense of subjectivity. Since notions of desire, expectations, attunement,
and courage can be interpreted in light of lived experience, they allow for
hermeneutical and phenomenological analyses and descriptions. The lived
experience is the first part, or a prerequisite for encounters generating irre-
ducible surprise, the not yet. However, my desire for the unexpected is not
enough—there has to be a trigger from the outside to provoke the encounter.
This trigger creates excess overflowing one’s representational capabilities.
Such excess arises from the interaction with the outside, so that it is made up
of a combination of immanence and transcendence. Here the phenomenology
of excess fades, giving way to speculations about excess, so there is a shift in
the direction of analysis.

xi
xii Preface

The second issue is the fact that we all get surprised. Hence, surprise is a
down-to-earth phenomenon often taken for granted and with neglected sig-
nificance due to the banality of the more or less meaningless surprises that
fade away in the instant following the encounter. Nevertheless, in some situ-
ations one gets a sense of an irreducible surprise, a feeling that does not fade
away completely, that lingers even after the orderly everyday phenomenality
is restored and life goes on as usual.

ON THE TERM DESIRE||SURPRISE

Desire for the unexpected (or for irreducible newness) is a desire for trans-
gression apart from objectivity, for overstepping the limit of representability,
and for encountering a presence that cannot be represented. If the unexpected
indeed happens, it happens beyond one’s consciousness and intentionality.
The only representation that one gets is the follow-up sense of surprise and
its further metamorphosis into other emotions. We are stuck with the recur-
ring phenomenological riddle of not yet and no longer. The intensity of such
an encounter allows us to experience how the process of being surprised
evolves, offering interpretations of its significance in various domains of
human interactions, such as aesthetics and ethics. The moment of the break
separating the not yet and the no longer, the moment of the transformation
of desire into surprise, is a speculative moment because we cannot represent
it, but can feel its presence—it is the force that carries surprise. This moment
of the breakup of phenomenality is the rupture, the pause, Blanchot’s neu-
ter (neutre), Levinas’s face, Lacoue-Labarthe’s caesura, Deleuze’s plane of
consistency, Merleau-Ponty’s flesh—to name a few philosophical efforts to
characterize the “active passivity,” or commonality, or continuity, escaping
phenomenal representation.
The term proposed here is desire||surprise, and it tries to capture the
complexity and the speculative-phenomenological character of the pair not
yet and no longer. The complexity might be evident by the invocation of a
number of philosophical positions and their relevancy to the task in front of
us. At times, it might look as if fitting interpretations in a Procrustean bed.
However, a good philosophical position allows various interpretations on the
subject, and the subjects of desire, excess, origin, beginning and becoming,
astonishment, wonderment, responsibility—and this is not the complete list
of relevant subjects—are discussed by philosophers throughout the history of
philosophy. When talking about caesura, Lacoue-Labarthe says that he will
work by the example of Hölderlin. I wish to propose a trial-like approach of
argumentation and to call upon philosophical “witnesses” to be able to offer
a characterization of a very prosaic phenomenon having a speculative black
 Preface xiii

hole in its center. I call this approach the trial of immediacy at the tribunal
of mediation. The problem is that most of the philosophers offer a partial
picture: either an analysis of desire which includes the whole spectrum from
Kantian ethics to Lacanian psychoanalysis, or an analysis of aesthetic experi-
ence that unfolds following the surprise of the encounter. The relevant issue
is often the beginning, how to deal with it and with the prerequisite for it as
the origin belonging to the outside. The two philosophers that give primacy to
the origin are Eugen Fink in his efforts to modify Husserl’s phenomenology,
and Schelling in his invocation of the ground of existence as different from
existence itself. Their work is interesting when trying to join the speculative
with the phenomenological. In the present work, I wish to start even earlier,
because before the break there is excess, and before excess there is the interac-
tion of a willing interiority and the anonymous exteriority. This is why the cur-
rent argumentation is organized around philosophical figures relevant in the
sequence desire—excess—pause (rupture, break)—recuperation (surprise).
This approach brings into question the disagreements about what comes
first, aesthetics or ethics. In contrast to Levinas, for whom ethics is the first
philosophy, my argument is that the impact of the breakup of phenomenal-
ity is aesthetic before being the ethical face of the Other. This position is
not unethical, it just starts a bit earlier to honestly acknowledge the break
as a break. Levinas discusses the radical exteriority beyond phenomenality,
and calls it face, which hints at the relation to representability. Lyotard calls
the radical exteriority a figure, Martin Seel calls it an appearance—so it is
en route to presentation. Why not call it simply the break (the pause, the
rupture) that separates the not yet from the no longer? We can speculate
about it, denote it paradoxically as a “bridge,” a commonality, or a continuity,
and leave representation and objectivity outside it.

EXAMPLES

I wish to characterize a certain type of experiential encounter when a pres-

ence exceeds a presentation, when one’s receptivity to manifold data is over-
whelmed by a presence that cannot conform to the formality of one’s sensible
intuition. There are such experiences, and they are all ecstatic experiences
pointing to what is outside the ordinary turn of events. These are experien-
tial encounters when one’s expectation is exceeded irreducibly, not just due
to a wrong expectation. The power of expecting is exceeded. But, even in
such cases, there are experiences of the A-ha! type as when a new cogni-
tion suddenly becomes available. Two most famous examples are those of
Archimedes discovering his law while taking a bath, and Newton discovering
the law of gravity when supposedly an apple fell on his head.
xiv Preface

In my limited way, I experienced situations in which a mathematical for-

mula shows itself and helps me in proving a certain result. Usually there is
sudden excitement, a type of disbelief, a fear of overlooking something and
impatience to write it down, to verify that nothing was overlooked. These
experiences are valuable and they help in career development, tenure and pro-
motions. They start by exceeding expectations or with something unexpected,
but are not irreducible. Why? The result is a new theorem or a new equation
in front of me—it is objective; hence in retrospective analysis I can expect it.
These are not the experiences considered here.
I consider encounters when a given presentation cannot capture the com-
plete presence, when there is excess of presence spilling over, beyond the
objectivity of presence. Such experiences are not necessarily experiences of
artworks; they can occur in any of life’s domains. The excesses considered
in this work are useless for the purposes of objectively acquired knowledge;
they do not yield new facts. Take an example apart from art evaluation,
such as studying a theorem and its proof. It can happen that suddenly one is
overwhelmed by a presence beyond the formality of formulas. For example,
a presence of simplicity or elegance is suddenly revealed. And then, of
course, one recuperates and has to deal with the encounter. There is no equa-
tion to help publish a paper and, yet, there is significance that can surpass the
utility of any type.
Let me offer another example. Once while enjoying a morning coffee,
my eyes stopped on an orchid plant. In a carefree fashion I admired the beauty
of its flowers, their form and color. Suddenly and beyond my expectation,
the plant revealed a sense of harmony that paralyzed my representational
capabilities. As if symmetry and dissymmetry, revelation and concealment,
innocence and eroticism, order and disorder fused; elegance and nobility,
pride and arrogance, all different and possibly opposing concepts fused in
a surprising sense of harmony, negating my conceptual powers. The plant’s
presence spilled beyond my faculties of representation. For a split second we
shared a proximity different from subject-object distance. It almost feels inap-
propriate to talk about it: words do not do justice to the moment of proximity
or intimacy shared with this plant. It is as Levinas would want it: a passivity
more passive than any passivity, a breakup of phenomenality. I just do not
see it as a face, a neighbor, as my substitution for another, as responsibility—
I do not see it through ethical glasses. It is a properly aesthetic encounter,
revealing something beyond conceptuality, culture, and taste.
However, judgments of taste and cultural upbringing are certainly valu-
able. The more one knows about an art form, the more pleasures one can
find in admiring that art form. Yet, when an artwork suddenly reveals more
than the objectively present, it oversteps the bounds of one’s culture, taste,
and understanding of art. It paralyses one’s sensibility. But, one recovers
 Preface xv

and this process of recovery is termed an irreducible surprise. Reflection

following surprise leads to the admiration for the artwork; however, the
initial excess of presentation resulting with the breakup of one’s sensibility
testifies to the irreducible nature of the artwork. While a work in any art form
can generate irreducible surprise, let me offer some examples from the filmic
art, as the most complex art form. As a production involving many talents,
film contains elements of visual arts (painting, sculpture), performing arts
(theater), literature, and music, but in addition it has something specific, edit-
ing, in Kubrick’s words, “the only unique aspect of filmmaking which does
not resemble any other art form.”1 With editing, cutting, and special effects,
a film can disorient one’s intuitive senses of space and time, and can paralyze
one’s sensibility. Of course, the irreducible surprise results from the first
viewing since in repeated viewings the spectator already expects the images
on the screen, and the irreducibility of the initial surprise lingers as a trace
of an encounter not subsumable to the passage of time. When I recall my
first viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), I remember
most vividly the “shock” of seeing the unexpected bone to spaceship cut, the
stargate sequence, and the unexpected ending in the mysterious Louis XVI
style bedroom. Prior to any reflection about film’s possible interpretations,
and prior to the range of induced emotions, from awe and hope, to fear and
inevitability, and prior to admiration of Kubrick’s artistic creativity, I remem-
ber the impossibility of my conceptual power to understand the images on
the screen, being drawn into the images, involuntary and pre-consciously.
In retrospective, such an experience loses the objectivity of presentation
and the subject-object dichotomy, leaving the trace of unity and continuity
surpassing the customary concepts of space and time.
Avant-garde art usually challenges established artistic canons, creating
surprises with unexpected presentations. Sometimes surprise is irreduc-
ible, sometime it is not. The work of the experimental artist and filmmaker
Robert Breer (1926–2011) is interesting in the way he challenges conven-
tional views. Various techniques that could capture movement led artistic
efforts into augmenting conventional notions of, for example, perception,
movement, stillness, continuity, artificiality, paradox, reality. Breer experi-
mented with various means (camera, photography, cartooning, animation,
mutascopes, rotoscopes)—all in efforts to capture the complexity of the sur-
rounding world (natural and social), limitations of human perception, and
illusiveness of the (inner) sense of time and the (outer) sense of space. Breer’s
mixing of abstract and non-abstract elements challenges the limitation of con-
ventional representation by augmenting it with abstract elements, pointing to
the futility of strict dichotomy between the abstract and the representational.
The short film REcreation (Robert Breer, 1956) is an experiment to see the
effect of the 24th of a second. Namely, in ordinary films, the norm is to
xvi Preface

have 24 images per second to give the illusion of movement. Breer wants to
experiment what happens if the 24 images are not related. The viewer’s sen-
sibility is bombarded with unconnected images and unrelated sound, in effect
disabling reflection and triggering viewer’s brain neuronal activity preceding
consciousness.
While Breer’s films are not narrative, the allure of cutting in order to
stimulate a viewer’s sensibility preceding reflection is present in a number of
narrative films, be it through hallucinatory scenes, or through special effects
and the use of CGI. For example, Darren Aronofsky is an auteur often using
fast and irrational cutting in depicting extreme mental states of his characters,
creating a mix of horror and melodrama genres. His visual style of projecting
the extreme psychic turbulence of a cinematic character onto his or her body
disorients a viewer’s perception, resulting with surprise. Extreme fast cutting
attacks a viewer’s sensibility, triggering brain’s neuronal activity, prior to
reflection, as for example in the club scene from his Black Swan (2010) and
the creation sequence from Noah (2014). I analyze Aronofsky’s filmography
in the book Darren Aronofsky’s Films and the Fragility of Hope.2

DEFINITION OF THE PROPERLY AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

There is something that connects the exceeding of expectations when a theo-

rem reveals the elegance beyond the formality of its proof, when an orchid
plant reveals a harmony beyond the represented, and when the images on the
screen reveal reality beyond formal representations. It seems that in all cases
one’s receptivity is not just passively receiving data to be formalized by sen-
sible intuition. The receptivity is such that the capacity for reception is para-
lyzed as if frozen in passivity, more passive than any other passivity (to echo
Levinas). This passivity is an encounter with alterity, not with the other
defined by my standards, but with the irreducibly other, such that I am not a
subject in opposition to an object. The process of regaining my representa-
tional powers begins with the acknowledgment of this indifference between
alterity and me. This acknowledgment is the startup of surprise. Hence, the
argument elaborated in this work is that surprise starts with indifference.
I set out to trace a trajectory of the properly aesthetic encounter as ecstatic,
as pointing outside culture and taste—this is its properly aesthetic character.
In this exploration, I acted as a scientist (a mix between a biologist and a
mathematician), and as a lawyer.
First, as a biologist who takes an invisible cell and puts it under a micro-
scope, exaggerating its size in order to see its significance to matters of life
and death, I occasionally exaggerated in vocabulary. However, it seems that
exaggeration is often the language of philosophy. It is the matter of putting
 Preface xvii

things under the microscope to uncover their significance (maybe it started

with the first philosopher, Thales of Miletus and his statement that all is
water).
Second, as a mathematician trying to prove an assertion, I proposed a for-
mula and then constructed a “proof” using as available arguments my inter-
pretations of various philosophical positions. The assertion is: An instance of
the properly aesthetic experience is composed of the prerequisite (desire) and
the following three phases: excess, rupture (break, pause), and recuperation
(surprise). The properly aesthetic component is the rupture separating desire
form surprise.
Third, as a lawyer who calls upon many witnesses trying to prove the case
for the defense, I called upon many philosophers, used their quotes, and inter-
preted them (of course bending them to fit my case) to establish the irreduc-
ibility of the immediate against reflection in the court of mediation. And not
only that; as a good lawyer, I tried to establish the merit of the immediate to
earn well-deserved recognition in the development of the properly aesthetic
component of experience.

INDIFFERENCE VERSUS DIFFERENCE

The irreducibility of the properly aesthetic, denoted as desire||surprise,

indicates a break separating the desire that stems from one’s past experienc-
ing, and the surprise that acknowledges the rebirth of one’s sensibility and
reflection.
Desire corresponds to the expectation of the irreducibly exceeded expecta-
tion. It is the passion for the outside. For Levinas, it characterizes responsi-
bility as signification of a difference which is non-indifference. In this work,
desire is also difference which is non-indifference but its signification is
acceptivity, openness to alterity. Excess is the immediate presence beyond
presentation that disorients and incapacitates one’s representational capa-
bilities. The pause (or rupture, or break) is the consequence of excess, when
receptivity overrides the power of sensible intuition and intellectual under-
standing. It is Blanchot’s neuter or difference in indifference (the origin).
Surprise presents a difference. It is the recuperation in which the properly
aesthetic fuses with one’s cultural upbringing. It is described as a series of
announcements. An announcement is viewed as indifference in difference,
as a commonality between a subject and an object. The announcement of
sensibility is depicted in the work of Merleau-Ponty and his notion of flesh
as a commonality between a seer and the visible. Next, the announcement of
reflection is provided via astonishment as the commonality between sensibil-
ity and reflection, as a pause in reflection. Astonishment provokes sublimity
xviii Preface

and transforms into wonderment. Wonderment further transforms either into

admiration, characterizing judgments of taste and evaluations of art, or into
responsibility, characterizing moral judgments.

NOVELTY VERSUS NEWNESS

It is important to distinguish between novelty and newness. Novelty is a

property of an objective presence, of something that allows presentation;
yet, when presented, it ceases to be a novelty. To be distinguished from
the novelty of objective presence, newness can be viewed as surpassing
the objectivity of presence, or as a presence that cannot be presented, the
non-representable and the origination of a true beginning. Past experiencing
carries forward in expectations. Sometimes, however, one’s expectation is
exceeded: what is experienced is not what was expected, in the sense that
the encounter provides more than expected. If this exceeding negates one’s
expectation due to novelty, it is just an accidental exceeding related to objec-
tive presence. In retrospective analysis, if one becomes acquainted with this
novelty as objectively present, it could have been expected and would then
cease to be a novelty.
Sometimes one gets a feeling of an irreducible exceeding of expectation, of
encountering something irreducibly new that in no way can be called novelty
because there is no objective presence that can be labeled as the “thing” that
exceeded one’s expectation. It is a feeling of encountering irreducible alterity
surpassing one’s capability for representation. In an encounter defying the
objectivity of presence, my representational capability is blocked: I am not
a subject evaluating an object, because the dichotomy of subject-object does
not exist in this instance. Even in retrospective analysis, after regaining rep-
resentational capability, I cannot dispense with the newness of this encounter:
it remains irreducible. And because this newness cannot be attached to an
objective presence (otherwise it would be a mere novelty), it characterizes
an instance of alterity or otherness that occasionally reveals itself at particular
moments in one’s life. The paradox is that the alterity that cannot be objec-
tively present undermines one’s role of controlling subject, yet it reinforces
the sense of one’s subjectivity by pointing to openness and the possibility for
growth.

IMMEDIACY VERSUS SUDDENNESS

The encounter with irreducible newness creates a rupture due to the inability
of representing it, because before the encounter one was active in creating
 Preface xix

representations. However, one recuperates from such a break and the recu-
peration results in regaining one’s sensibility and reflection—the representa-
tional powers. This is experienced as the phenomenon of surprise. As with
novelty versus irreducible newness, a surprise can be merely accidental, or it
can be irreducible. An accidental surprise is the consequence of an encoun-
ter with novelty, and it disappears completely when the objective presence
ceases to be novel. In contrast, an encounter with irreducible newness, with
non-representable alterity, engenders a surprise that can be labeled irreducible
because it is the surprise of a true beginning, of something that characterizes
a new “birth.” Such a surprise entails a complex process in which one first
regains sensibility, then reflection, but the irreducibility persists in reflection,
and influences reflection by not allowing it to reach a well-defined conclu-
sion. It is commonly perceived that surprise is sudden, but suddenness does
not translate to simplicity; something sudden can be irreducibly complex.
The consideration of surprise brings us to the notion of immediacy. Some-
thing immediate is also experienced as something sudden. Yet, it seems that
my feeling or experience of suddenness follows the encounter perceived as
immediate: suddenness is a characteristic of my reaction to an immediate
action from the outside. The sense of the sudden emanates from me (from
the inside) while immediacy emanates from the otherness (from the out-
side). For this reason, it seems appropriate to say that my surprise is sudden,
but that the encounter is immediate. The suddenness of my surprise follows
the immediacy of the encounter; suddenness belongs to my activity, imme-
diacy engenders my response. When surprise is perceived in terms of the
birth of selfhood, it resembles a slow-motion waking up: the announcement
of sensibility followed by the announcement of reflection (astonishment),
followed by the announcement of admiration and of responsibility. Yet,
when perceived in terms of vulgar (clock) time, surprise has no interval;
it is just a dimension-less point. But, it leads to a different perception of
time, a “tick” time, a pregnant time that is still but at the point of bursting,
of exploding. Surprise presents a birth of time: it adds a new strand to the
fabric of time, making it tick, and the clock time can start from that moment.
Time is not eternal because it flows from past to future; it is eternal because
it has the possibility of being recovered and rejuvenated. This character
of time is accomplished by suddenness, as the proper form of the time of
surprise.
Suddenness is my response to the immediate. Immediacy involves a lack of
mediation, a presence that cannot be represented: it has the character of irre-
ducible otherness.3 Hence, immediacy is not a property of something; it is the
excess beyond one’s capacity for reflection or mediation because one cannot
be prepared for it. Immediacy is a revelation of presence before presentation,
and thus before representation as well.
xx Preface

There is a distinct difference between the origin and the beginning.

The origin is the non-representable, the unreachable outside that triggers
the beginning. The origin is the grounding of the beginning, but it always
stays outside it. In this vocabulary, immediacy is the origin of the beginning
of surprise.

DESIRE AS THE EXPECTATION OF THE

IRREDUCIBLE EXCEEDING OF EXPECTATIONS

When one’s capacity for mediation is oriented toward the future, it mani-
fests itself as a set of expectations with varying levels of determination.
On the completely determinate end of the spectrum there is, for example,
the expectation of encountering a certain person or a certain thing. On the
indeterminate end of the spectrum there is the expectation of the irreducibly
unexpected, or the expectation of an irreducible exceeding of any expectation.
Such expectation is not determined because it is related to the unknown rather
than to a definite objective presence. Desire may be defined as the formal
expectation of the irreducible exceeding of expectation, that is, as the limit of
one’s indeterminate expectation. Hence, desire is a looking forward toward
an irreducible excess, toward the encounter with irreducible alterity. Surprise
is the emergence from such an encounter, and the resulting excess happens in
immediacy, in the “interval” between desire and surprise.
The startup of surprise and the realization that one is just emerging from
an encounter with irreducible alterity carries the signification of the properly
aesthetic, independently of culture and taste. And because such encounters are
not tied up with the objectivity of presence, they all contribute (as instances)
to the unique and properly aesthetic experience that unfolds during one’s
lifetime. This work analyzes the properly aesthetic in one’s experiencing.
Where does one start?—On the surface, on what one experiences on the ontic
level, unburdened by philosophical speculations. From there we will look for
relevant philosophical justifications of such experience and will attempt to
develop the significance of the properly aesthetic in one’s life. The phrase
“irreducible exceeding of expectation” is a repeated phrase in this work and
it seems appropriate for two reasons.
First, expectations are experienced regularly and allow for variation from
foreclosure to openness in one’s outlook toward the future. Something that
happens as a negation of expectation, either the unexpected or the exceeding
of expectation, by default signals a break: ties with the past are severed, and
something new starts. The irreducibly unexpected can be viewed as a special
case of the exceeding of expectation since even in hindsight one cannot pro-
vide an expectation that is adequate to it. Hence, the phrase “exceeding of
 Preface xxi

expectation” gives reality to the encounter with immediacy, with irreducible

alterity.
Second, the consideration of the “expectation of the irreducible exceeding
of expectation” characterizes desire as the longing for openness latently pres-
ent in one’s encounters with the environment. This desire makes one accep-
tive (non-indifferent), inclined to accept the encounter with alterity. Finally,
the surprise following an encounter with irreducible alterity is experienced as
a phenomenon in which one comes to terms with this encounter.

FINK AND SCHELLING

The phenomenology of the irreducible encounter denoted as desire||surprise

addresses the speculative phenomenon which, though it sounds like an oxymo-
ron, is basic to our experiencing. As presented in this work, many philosophers
have addressed different aspects of this phenomenon, albeit under different
names and in different contexts, as aspects relevant in the question of being,
of knowledge, of ethics, and of aesthetics. I wish to present this speculative
phenomenon in its own right, quoting various philosophers as pertinent with
regard to different phases of the phenomenon’s unfolding. For Eugen Fink,
the most basic question—presupposing all other questions regarding phe-
nomenology—is “the question in what sense phenomenologizing, that which
basically goes in phenomenological cognitive performance, is on the whole
to be addressed as theoretical experiencing.”4 He continues to ask: “must we
not in the end before all else formulate the concept of theoretical experience
in a radicality such as is not possible on the basis of the natural attitude? . . .
Already allusion to the start of phenomenological theorizing gets us into
trouble. How is it at all possible that phenomenological ‘theoretical experi-
ence’ can begin?”5 It seems that here the natural attitude of surprise can help:
the capacity for irreducible surprise provides the mundane equivalent of the
transcendental notion of origin. An answer to Fink’s question could be: yes,
it is possible to have a mundane or natural attitude toward the beginning of an
experience, and this is provided by the phenomenon of surprise. The specula-
tion of the break preceding surprise leads to trancendentality, but the break
as such is a very natural phenomenon: break a leg, break an object, break a
meeting, so we do have a consciousness of a break in general. Hence, with
the analysis of desire||surprise we go an inverse route: the transcendental is
explicated via the natural, and not vice versa. But, this is precisely what Fink
argues for. He writes, “Transcendental reason and transcendental logic and
all the theoretical habitual dispositions of the ego are ultimately nothing other
than reduced worldly-human reason, worldly logic.”6 To have consistency
in the analysis, it seems appropriate to stay on the phenomenological plane
xxii Preface

throughout the whole analysis. Remaining on the phenomenological plane

necessitates a phenomenological characterization for the desire, the excess,
and the subsequent surprise to which this investigation attends.
This work has elements of Fink’s and Schelling’s philosophies, the two
philosophers working under the shadow of dominant figures: Fink under
the shadow of Husserl and Heidegger, and Schelling under the shadow
of Hegel. Yet, Fink and Schelling articulate a strand of philosophy that
goes beyond being and speculation grounded in experience. In fact, for
various philosophers it was unsatisfactory to start with essence and/or being:
Schelling introduces the “ground of being” in addition to being; Fink intro-
duces the source of a phenomenon prior to consciousness representing that
phenomenon; Levinas in disagreement with Heidegger introduces “the oth-
erwise than being”; and Merleau-Ponty talks about the birth of sensibility
before having the intuition about separate senses. Whoever wants to consider
something beyond consciousness, representation, or objectivity needs to
invoke speculative thinking. The fact that many philosophers felt the need to
go beyond testifies that the issues of otherness, transgression, and beyondness
are defying and alluring subjects, leaving a trace in subsequent reflection.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF SURPRISE

A number of philosophers attack the elusive boundary between exteriority

and interiority, folding and unfolding, limit and transgression, immediacy
and mediation, the real and the symbolic. The relevant philosophical posi-
tions include those taken by Levinas, Deleuze, Foucault, Blanchot, Bataille,
Lacan, and Žižek. Deleuze said that the encounters of philosophers occur in
the blind zone. This assertion resonates very strongly with the subject of this
enquiry and I tried to see where the seemingly different philosophies over-
lap. In illustration, looking at Mondrian one can discover points that connect
Hegel’s and Deleuze’s different positions.
In the encounters with irreducible otherness proposed in this work, imme-
diacy originates the beginning of surprise. Hence, the phenomenology of the
properly aesthetic experience includes the phenomenology of irreducible
aesthetic surprise. The phenomenology of surprise as a process, both of res-
toration of one’s capabilities and of appropriation of the encounter, has affin-
ity with numerous post-modern thinkers (mostly French): Merleau-Ponty,
Lyotard, Bachelard, Nancy, and Ricoeur. The progression of surprise is a
peculiar form of processing, denoted as the sequence of announcements in the
dialectic of indifferences and differences. Such a process resembles in certain
aspects the Hegelian dialectic in reverse. Hegel’s dialectic ends in absolute
knowing, which can be interpreted as the absolute identity characterized by
 Preface xxiii

formal indifference between the terms. The progression of surprise proposed

here starts with the origin as pure indifference (as absolute); continues with
indifference of difference as the announcement of interiority (where only the
content is given, without form, when the indistinctness of senses acknowl-
edges that there are senses, without differentiating them); continues with
astonishment as the announcement of reflection or indifference of reflection,
proceeding via sublimity to wonderment and the intertwining of inside and
outside; and finally resolves in the appropriation of the effect of the encounter
with otherness in one of life’s domains through admiration and responsibility,
leaving the domain of the properly aesthetic experience.
In describing the becoming of knowledge and the phenomenology of con-
cept formation, Hegel goes from immediate particularity (sense-certainty)
toward mediated universality (the identity of the same and the other).
In contrast, the process of surprise goes from immediate universality toward
mediated particularity. Immediate universality can be characterized as
sense-uncertainty due to the rupture of one’s sensibility. The process of recu-
peration can be viewed as mediated particularity because it is the recovery of
subjectivity (to echo Levinas).
Schelling viewed art as superior to philosophy because art can show
or express something that cannot be said, even in philosophical specula-
tion. That is why the absolute for Schelling is in immediacy; mediation
only follows afterward. In this respect, my current position is very close to
Schelling. Encounters that originate irreducible surprise are not constrained
to encounters with artworks since any encounter with the environment, with
otherness, carries a possibility for triggering irreducible surprise. In any
case, the present argument is that the absolute is attained in immediacy, in
the moment of the break in one’s representational capabilities. As soon as
something is presented to senses as certainty, Hegel is right: it is already
mediated.

NOTES

1. Alexander Walker, Stanley Kubrick, Director: A Visual Analysis (W.W. Noron &
Company, 1999), 22.
2. Jadranka Skorin-Kapov, Darren Aronofsky’s Films and the Fragility of Hope
(Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).
3. For Levinas, “Immediacy is the collapse of the representation into a face.”
Emmanuel Levinas, Oherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis
(Doquesne University Press, 1998), 91. For Blanchot, “the immediate . . . is the
infinite presence of what remains radically absent.” Maurice Blanchot, “The Infinite
Conversation,” in Theory and History of Literature (University of Minnesota Press,
1993), 38.
xxiv Preface

4. Eugen Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory

of Method (with Textual Notations by Edmund Husserl), trans. Ronald Bruzina
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 67.
5. Ibid., 68.
6. Ibid., 69.
 Introduction

In various experiential situations one might experience an irreducible exceed-

ing of expectation pointing to what is beyond one’s historical experiential
horizon. Irreducible should be understood as opposed to accidental or banal,
something standing as indispensable even in hindsight analysis. In every
experiential situation where this occurs, it seems that there is something
common, the same type of the initial response—surprise, as if it is the same
experience. Such a response marginalizes the content, the material of the
experience, and this marginalization stems from the experiences exceeding
one’s capability for processing it. The content (or the environment) attacks
me, and I attack it in response. Such a clash is instantaneous, a complete
seizure or pause, after which I recuperate, start processing it, and culture and
cognition step in. Because of the perceived importance of such an encounter,
it is tempting to call it a properly aesthetic experience; it is memorable as an
experiential situation. However, because it negates the individuality of any
specific situation, each encounter appears as an indistinguishable component
in unity that could be called the properly aesthetic component in experience,
indivisible in its instances.
Flipping between two related yet different terms might be misleading:
a properly aesthetic component of an experience versus the properly aesthetic
experience. So, let us clarify the difference and settle on the appropriate
term. Experience involves a determined object, the experience of something
(in analogy to Husserl’s consciousness), and happens in one’s interac-
tion with one’s environment. The term experience, better expressed as the
stream of experience, implies continuity and duration, a unified whole that
gets augmented as we live our lives and accumulate more and more experi-
ence. How can we define something in experiencing that has a more or less
discrete character and a kind of unity so that it can be set apart from the rest of

1
2 Introduction

experience? We can talk about experiential situations. An experiential situ-

ation provides a scenario that gives unity to a part of experiencing as related
to something in common. Such a situation is characterized by its duration,
by the impact it leaves in memory, and by the impact it projects upon future
experiencing. I can talk about the experience of being an undergraduate stu-
dent. This experience comprises a period of four years and inside this period
and this experiential situation there are many experiences with their separate
scenarios that are memorable in their own right. Or, I can recall the experi-
ence of reading a certain poem for the first time, being swept by its force.
The duration of such an experience measured by clock time is very small,
yet its impact is significant. Dewey would call it “an experience,” in order to
underline the unity and cohesiveness of what is experienced.1 As Dewey says,
“The existence of this unity is constituted by a single quality that pervades the
entire experience in spite of the variation of its constituent parts.”2 He labels
such a quality as aesthetic. I wish to extract the aesthetic quality as the prop-
erly aesthetic component in experience and am characterizing it as the break
in one’s representational capabilities. However, since the break or rupture has
to be contextualized, so to speak, it has to have a (phenomenological) start,
and a (phenomenological) aftermath. To be true to the representation-less
nature of the rupture (since it cannot be represented), both the prerequisite
and the consequence have to be abstract, yet phenomenologically present-
able. In this work I consider desire as object-less desire for the unexpected.
On the other end of rupture, I consider the beginning of surprise as object-less
astonishment (outside culture and ethics), and its further metamorphoses as
changes into either admiration or responsibility, or a combination of both.
To summarize, the properly aesthetic component in experience happens
around the break, the rupture of the objectivity of representation. The break
per se is nothing to write about and the interesting development is the not yet
preceding it, and the no longer following it. The break’s indescribable nature
is the reason for introducing the notion of desire||surprise, as the notion of
break enriched with its object-less context. Of course, desire is much more
general than abstract desire for the unexpected, and of course surprise is much
more general than abstract astonishment. But, I wish to delineate the leap
from desire to surprise in its abstract universality, apart from any objectivity
of an experiential encounter. Because the augmented notion of rupture
includes the generic desire preceding it, as well as the generic surprise follow-
ing it, it provides an abstract experiential template—hence, it makes sense
to call rupture experience. However, because such an experience is detached
from the objectivity of representation, it makes sense to call it the properly
aesthetic experience that can surface as part of any experiential situation.
Many philosophers write about the interval separating the not yet and the
no longer, as the impossibility of immediacy and the issue of otherness or
 Introduction 3

radical exteriority. Many philosophers write about aesthetic experiences, in

transcendental and in phenomenological terms, struggling with the descrip-
tion of presence that escapes presentation, of presenting “more than meets
the eye.” Here I combine the issues of immediacy, of origin preceding the
beginning, and of absence as presence, underlining their aesthetic import.
The wish is to extract the naked speculative break (the impossibility of
immediacy) and to clothe it with the object-less desire (for the unexpected)
and the object-less surprise (astonishment), labeled with the composite sign
desire||surprise. Instead of a standard view of an experiential encounter
including a break or rupture signaling its aesthetic nature, I argue that any
experiential encounter can possibly incorporate the properly aesthetic expe-
rience, that is, the generic desire||surprise component independent of the
objectivity of the underlying experience. The notion desire||surprise is the
notion of contextualized break—contextualized but not objectified. On one
hand, desire||surprise is a component—a properly aesthetic component—of
any experiential situation, but on the other hand, due to its object-less charac-
ter and consideration of it as an experiential unity comprising prerequisite and
consequence, it merits being called the properly aesthetic experience. Due to
their non-objectivity, all such encounters repeat the same template and only
their positioning afterward attains value for a fully fledged experience, be it
aesthetic or cultural and ethical. Each such encounter per se leaves some-
thing unexplainable, unrepeatable, non-closable; it illustrates the repetition
of difference (to invoke Deleuze), and indicates that it cannot stand by itself
as a fulfilled experiential situation, as an experience in the Deweyan sense.
The properly aesthetic experience consists of the repetition of all (indistin-
guishable) instances of a properly aesthetic component (desire||surprise or
the “contextualized rupture”) embedded in experiential situations.
The later Husserl articulated his concept of life as embracing both subjec-
tivity and objectivity intertwined in “productions of life.” The intentionality
pertaining to the all-embracing world horizon of the life-world is anonymous,
it is not a “consciousness of” something objectively present and specific, but
grounds intentionality as such. Similarly, the properly aesthetic experience
is not “experience of” but is an anonymous, or formal, or abstract, experi-
ence embracing all points of discontinuity of one’s conscious experience in
a repository of indistinguishable instances. Every instance as an occurrence
of this experience carries the whole of this experience, yet the experience
appears incomplete. It carries in itself all the paradoxes of aesthetics: uni-
versal versus particular, distant versus close, disinterested versus interested.
An experiential situation can include a moment of the irreducible exceed-
ing of expectation that, in unleashing the aesthetic quality of the encounter,
dominates the situation. We would say that such a moment is pregnant with
meaning, pointing to its importance in the experiential situation. Yet, such a
4 Introduction

moment in any experiential situation is indistinguishable from any other such

moment. The properly aesthetic experience is always the same, but, when
contextualized in a specific experiential situation, it appears individualized
and unique. A simple analogy is that the act of opening a door is always the
same, but, when contextualized and the door is actually open, the view is indi-
vidualized and it can include anything in the environment behind that door.

ON EXCESSES, EXPECTATIONS, AND DESIRE

My characterization of the properly aesthetic experience is based on the

notion of desire||surprise, and a related notion is the exceeding of expecta-
tion. What, if any, is universal in our expectations and in excesses beyond our
expectations? Upon characterizing the excess beyond expectation, the ques-
tion becomes whether experiences in general can have a properly aesthetic
component, as instances of the properly aesthetic experience embedded in
a wider experiential situation. I argue that every experience, regardless of
its objects, can have a properly aesthetic component. The analysis requires
preliminary characterization of the notions of excess and expectation as such.
Commonly speaking, excess denotes a surplus, exceeding something else
in amount or degree. If the basic thing is deterministically defined, such as
the weight of my luggage, then the amount of excess can likewise be deter-
ministically measured, for example, the excess of twenty pounds. Even my
body of knowledge, as a set of facts that I know, can be viewed as determin-
istically measurable: this is the fact that I know, that is the fact that I don’t
know. Hence, when I say that my knowledge of zoology was exceeded when
I learned that sea horses are the only animal species in which the males give
birth, a new fact enters into my body of knowledge. Again, this excess is
measurable. Such excesses are not interesting for our analysis. The character-
ization of excess becomes interesting when the corresponding basic entity is
not deterministically determined. But, what can be exceeded, which was not
determined deterministically? Can I say that my pleasure in visiting a certain
city was exceeded because, upon my visit, I discovered that the city had an
extraordinary ancient temple? Or, can I say that my courage was exceeded
when I had to act in a threatening situation? It seems more appropriate to
say that my expectation of either pleasure or courage was indeed exceeded.
My pleasure was created in the excess beyond the initial expectation. I can-
not say that my courage was exceeded, but I can say that my expectation
of my courage was exceeded. It seems that whenever we experience excess
over a non-deterministically defined notion (something that cannot be quan-
titatively measured), the excess relates to our current expectation of this
notion. My expectation of X can be viewed as a non-precise, approximate,
 Introduction 5

quantitative label I attach to the notion of X in question. The excess, then, is

beyond my expectation, it is more than expected. Using the above examples,
the result is, respectively, that I can view myself as experiencing more plea-
sures and as being more courageous. Such experiences can augment my
future expectations. This augmentation can be either accidental or irreducible,
depending on whether, in hindsight analysis, I can—or cannot—dispense
with the excess.
One’s set of expectations is a complex conglomerate of influences and
personal traits, conditioned by culture. There are two broad types of expecta-
tions: cognitive and cultural, as dealing with, respectively, objective nature
and society.
Expectation of the exceeding of an expectation (regardless of whether it
is cognitive or cultural) has the form of an expectation, but no direct empiri-
cal content. One can argue that the validity of this statement is questionable
because the excess as such is the excess beyond an expectation, and hence
it depends on the primary expectation that is exceeded. However, if one
considers that expectations pertaining to every type of experience could
be exceeded, one can think of the excess as being a priori in the sense of
characterizing every expectation as if wired into its structure—otherwise we
would talk about deterministic knowledge, not expectations. The expectation
of experiencing the irreducible excess beyond any given expectation is for-
mal in nature and it points to desire as such.3 I formally define desire as the
expectation of the irreducible exceeding of expectation, that is, as the prop-
erly aesthetic expectation (“desire” will be further analyzed in chapter 1).The
question is whether the properly aesthetic expectation can be exceeded. Can
there be excess to it? No—and this is important because it allows the inclu-
sion of the irreducible excess in one’s experiential space: the irreducible
excess is a quasi-fulfillment of the (formal) properly aesthetic expectation.
Desire belongs to one’s experience and it cannot be exceeded. “Excess
beyond desire” bears a contradiction in terms; it undermines the nature of
desire as such. But, can desire be fulfilled? The fulfillment of desire sounds
contradictory also because this “fulfillment” is fleeting; “fulfillment” does not
exhibit inherent constancy. As soon as fulfillment is achieved, it is negated in
the projected experience of the non-closure. Desire can only be quasi-fulfilled
and such “fulfillment” is intrinsically bound up with the properly aesthetic.
Using Heidegger’s language, it seems that desire belongs to the ontology
of Da-sein. With desire, I project. If I do not have desire, excesses beyond
expectations will bypass me, unnoticed. Desire can be viewed as the formal
(or “anonymous”) anticipation that any anticipation will be exceeded. Desire
is an attitude toward life.4 Technically speaking, when saying that I desire a
new car, I am saying that I wish to have a new car. When actually getting it,
my wish ceases to be. Desire is never annihilated; it can never be consumed.
6 Introduction

It is formally (or abstractly) fulfilled by the irreducible excess beyond expec-

tation, but in any particular instance the “fulfillment” is not attained: there is
a sense of one’s inability to perceive the excess beyond expectation as leading
to a closure.
Given the characterization of the irreducible exceeding of expectation,
there are many important questions that need to be addressed: What is the
temporal dimension of the excess beyond expectation? Where does the irre-
ducible exceeding of expectation originate, that is, what are the conditions for
its possibility? What is the relationship between expectation and possibility?
I argue that the irreducible exceeding of expectation leads to the recognition
of irreducible otherness—which is the quintessential ethical issue. When my
capacity for expecting is exceeded in an irreducible way, the subject-object
relationship is lost: I am removed from the pedestal of a judging subject and
acknowledge the other no longer as an object, but as an equal.
Cognitive expectations serve as a driving force in our explorations of
objective nature and the nature of cognition in general. They are grounded in
understanding. Based on a darkened sky and moisture in the air, I expect rain.
Based on recursive functions and induction, I expect that an algorithm will
converge. My cognitive expectations stem from past cognitive experiences
and allow for future cognitive experiences.
Cultural expectations are based on the cultural umbrella encompassing
both ethics and art as objectively present in actual works of art. For example,
based on my ethical conditioning, in relationships with others I expect mutual
recognition of otherness. My expectation in approaching an artwork is not
exclusively based on my sophistication or refinements of taste, but cultural
conditioning certainly contributes to what I expect when reading a poem, or
when visiting a gallery.
To distinguish the properly aesthetic experience from a cultural or a cogni-
tive experience, we need a characterization independent from either culture or
knowledge. In line with the characterization of the properly aesthetic expec-
tation, it seems justifiable to state that only the irreducible excess beyond
expectation can trigger the properly aesthetic experience. Consequently,
viewing excess as something that initially “is not there” implies that the prop-
erly aesthetic experience is triggered by absence. But, what characterizes
absence in aesthetics? To answer this, let us first consider absence in contexts
other than aesthetics.
In terms of cognition and understanding, absence can be perceived as
non-presence. Look around the room: there are lots of chairs, but there is no
table—the table is absent. Or, analyze a formal mathematical model, and a
certain constraint is missing—that constraint is absent from the model. Even in
terms of culture and ethics, that is, in terms of relationship structure with oth-
ers, the notion of absence attains its vulgar identification with non-presence.
 Introduction 7

When we go to a restaurant, the absence of manners in accordance with

culturally accepted norms is identical with not applying those manners (non-
presence of those manners). Or, consider an ethical example: the absence of
courage in a risky situation is identical with the non-presence of courage.
In contrast to the vulgar characterization of absence as non-presence,
aesthetic absence is characterized as an overabundance of presence, as
something revealed beyond the objectivity of representation in experiences
with artworks and nature. This absence is a presence that cannot be pre-
sented. This absence will, in turn, induce the possibility for the irreducible
exceeding of expectation. When does an artist produce a work that is per-
meated by aesthetic absence? When does a spectator experience a work as
pregnant with aesthetic absence? Due to its nature, it seems inappropriate to
address absence directly because that would amount to attributing presence
to absence, creating a contradiction in terms. The plausible way to approach
absence—restricted to aesthetic absence—is indirectly, via an identifying
term. In this work, aesthetic absence is identified with the condition for the
possibility of the irreducible exceeding of expectation. The character of this
absence is dual, arising in the relationship between the artwork (or nature)
and the spectator. Simplistically speaking, if an artwork or nature provides
the excess, and a spectator provides the expectation, the irreducible excess
beyond expectation (as triggered by the aesthetic absence) is provided in their
interplay—neither the artwork itself, not the spectator herself, can generate
it on its or her own.

THE EXCESS BEYOND EXPECTATION AND SURPRISE

Figuratively speaking, when all that we expect at a current moment with

respect to nature (cognitive expectations), and with respect to society
(cultural expectations), is subtracted from the space of all currently possible
situations—what remains? A vast residual of unexpected situations, including
the excesses beyond expectations, and they all take us by surprise. An unex-
pected situation that was unexpected only by accident is not relevant to my
analysis. Suppose that, while walking, I unexpectedly run into an acquain-
tance. This is an unexpected situation, but if I knew in advance that I would
meet that person, our encounter would have been completely expected. Such
surprises do not carry substantial excess because they are only accidental. The
power of expecting is capable of dealing with such situations.
The question is whether there are surprises that cannot be dispensed with,
that cannot be characterized as accidental because, no matter how we try, we
can never prepare ourselves to completely deal with them and reduce them
to the expected. Are there surprises that surpass our capability for expecting?
8 Introduction

Yes, there are—and these are precisely the surprises that can be used to char-
acterize properly aesthetic experience. In contrast to the accidental surprises,
these are the irreducible surprises. Irreducible means “non-dispensable,”
something that did not happen just by chance and that could have been oth-
erwise; on the contrary, it happened because of the inability of our power of
expecting, which even in retrospective analysis cannot provide an adequate
expectation. If I read a poem and for a moment feel petrified as if in a state of
shock, with a sense of getting much more than expected, I have a feeling that
I was essentially unprepared for the magnitude of this encounter with a work.
I get a feeling for which no learned commentary of this poem could have
prepared me completely adequately, and that no increase in expectation could
have been high enough to annihilate the surprise/excess the poem generated.
The poetry is the irreducible surprise. The irreducible surprise is the phenom-
enological manifestation of the irreducible excess beyond expectation. This
is the character of particularity when appropriating and contextualizing the
irreducible exceeding of expectation.
In an encounter with the artwork as a framed entity we usually have a
certain expectation because the work was labeled as art, and the invitation to
view it implicitly asks us to receive it critically. Surprise in such a context is
related to the excess beyond expectation generated upon encounter with the
artwork. Encounters with the environment often generate surprises due to
the unexpected. If, in hindsight analysis, the unexpected appears irreducibly
unexpected (I cannot provide an adequate expectation), then the surprise is
irreducible, manifesting the irreducible excess beyond expectation. But how
does that irreducibility fit with the formal expectation labeled as the properly
aesthetic expectation? If I expect the irreducible excess of any given expec-
tation, and if my expectation is indeed fulfilled, how can I be surprised?
If I expect the surprise as such, how can there be any surprise? Can we state
that the fulfillment of the formal properly aesthetic expectation is surprise?
Regardless of whether we formally expect the irreducible exceeding of any
given expectation, its factual realization always surprises: it is—commonly
speaking—unexpected. The unexpected character is apparent; this is how it
appears in any concrete situation. The irreducible surprise characterizes the
“fulfillment” of desire as the manifestation of the irreducible exceeding of
expectation that fulfills the formal properly aesthetic expectation. However,
such quasi-fulfillment does not bring closure, it is open and boundless, it is
not a full-fillment; it has a fleeting and discontinuous character.
In sum, the expectation of the irreducible exceeding of any given expecta-
tion is desire. The realization of this expectation, that is, the “fulfillment” of
desire, is contradictory in nature (as fulfillment that is never fulfilling) and is
experienced as irreducible surprise. The realization is never complete because
it points beyond one’s factual experiential space, and this is why it appears
 Introduction 9

as a surprise. In contrast to some aesthetic theories, I argue that there is noth-

ing tranquil in the properly aesthetic: the properly aesthetic underscores the
inability of my capacity for expecting by mercilessly exceeding it. What is the
implication of such an essential exceeding of expectation? The augmentation
of my set of expectations.
Heidegger states that “Da-sein is always its possibility.”5 He also states
“It is for its reality that what is expected is expected. By the very nature of
expecting, the possible is drawn into the real, arising from it and returning
to it.”6 Intuitively, expectations serve as articulations of possibilities and
precede their realization. Non-realized possibilities lack reality. Hence, the
realization of a possibility is induced by a relevant expectation. Without
expectations we don’t have a driving force for realizing possibilities. It seems
important, then, to have occasional enrichments of our set of expectations:
it translates to an increase in the set of realizable possibilities, since a non-
articulated possibility remains an empty possibility (a possibility lacking any
reality). An expectation can be enriched only in an irreducible way, when we
experience an irreducible excess beyond expectation, and this experience of
excess amounts to the generation of a new realizable possibility. To para-
phrase Heidegger: by the very nature of the irreducible exceeding of expecta-
tion, the new realizable possibility is drawn into one’s reality. This process of
assimilation is the implication of the irreducible excess beyond expectation
and results with the augmentation of one’s possibilities. It precedes subjectiv-
ity and the subject-object dichotomy, and it precedes relationships with oth-
ers, or ethics as such. Without the irreducible exceeding of expectations, one
is reduced to a foregone conclusion, and to being a completely predictable
identity-thinking creature, with all aspects determinable.

THE BREAKING POINT OF SPECULATION: CAESURA

AND LACOUE-LABARTHE’S EXAMPLE OF THE TRAGIC

Speculation deals with the breakup of phenomenality. As argued in this

work, an encounter with irreducible newness generates a break (a caesura) in
Husserl’s intentional consciousness and phenomenology. Such an encounter
invites speculation on the characterization of the break. The desire for the
unexpected as the attentive expectation for irreducible otherness has in itself
something of a Greek tragedy: the sense and anticipation that something
non-representable will happen. When it indeed does happen and the process
of subsequent surprise starts to unfold, the surprise can be understood as
a kind of catharsis, the relief at survival of such an encounter. This notion
of caesura brings us to the work of Lacoue-Labarthe and his invocation of
Hölderlin.
10 Introduction

Lacoue-Labarthe characterizes the tragic as “the caesura of the speculative,”

the breaking point of speculation. What are his arguments? In the Introduction
to Typography, a compilation of Lacoue-Labarthe’s works, Derrida positions
him between Heidegger and Levinas, between Heidegger’s Being and Levi-
nas’s “otherwise than Being.”7 The essence of Heidegger’s being is existence;
the essence of Levinas’s “otherwise than being” is his passivity in the face of
the Other. Lacoue-Labarthe’s being exists in a world where intrusions of the
Other (the face) create caesuras, breaks in one’s existence, where speculation
intrudes into phenomenology, where the transcendental disturbs the immanent.
This intrusion of speculation into phenomenology is related to the term
désistance, as something ceasing to be and being the ineluctable (unavoid-
able) at the same time. It denotes something that in its presence already
carries the necessity of its absence; the end result is presupposed at the begin-
ning. Désistance relates to the interval between the not yet (unavoidable in
the future), and the no longer (ceased to be). There is a break, the caesura,
in between, that escapes intelligibility and consciousness. Désistance denotes
a middle ground between activity and passivity. Greek tragedy serves as an
illustration of désistance, since the tragic hero is bounded by fate to the acts
leading to tragedy, and then is punished for the acts that were mandated by
fate in the first place. So, the not yet of his acting is already imprinted in the
past “verdict” by fate. The future frees the past, and this liberation has to do
with human freedom. But, what is human freedom in the grip of fate? The
paradox of freely acting while knowing the situation will end badly, hence of
acting without consideration for utility or outcome.
In The Caesura of the Speculative, Lacoue-Labarthe writes, “The question
I am posing therefore has to do with the possibility, in general, of a demarca-
tion of the speculative: of the general logic of differentiation, of the ordered
contradiction, of the exchange of the passage into the opposite as the produc-
tion of the Same, of the Aufhebung and of (ap)propriation, etc.”8 The paradox
of the speculative seems to be the following: the speculative ceases to be at
the same moment that it starts to be. Hence, speculation occurs in the moment
that escapes representation, the moment between the not yet and the no lon-
ger. I wish to argue that the caesura allows for a dual interpretation. It can
be viewed as the demarcation of the speculative, “the caesura of the specu-
lative” as Lacoue-Labarthe argues, but it can also be viewed as the trigger
for inserting speculation into phenomenology. Along this line I characterize
desire||surprise as the oxymoronic phenomenological-speculative-phenome-
nological “phenomenon,” having a speculation of caesura in its core. To indi-
cate the composite nature of desire||surprise, let me propose a neologism (in
the spirit of Derrida’s inclination for “bending” the language): sphenomenon.
In discussing the caesura, Lacoue-Labarthe asserts the need to proceed by
example and takes the Hölderlin’s “case” as a singular case “within a certain
 Introduction 11

history” to deal with the demarcation of the speculative, with the caesura escap-
ing the duality of oppositions characterizing philosophy. He senses the impor-
tance of the tragic as “the place where the system fails to close upon itself,”9 so
that it allows for the intrusion of otherness, for the break or the caesura.
In the present study my approach is not one of example, but of the “witness
stand” of defense argumentation. The witnesses are various philosophical
positions, all dealing in one way or another with the ineluctable, singular, and
fleeting moment of the irreducible break (as speculation) that separates the
drive of desire as openness, from the feeling of surprise as a springboard to
more pronounced feelings of admiration and/or responsibility. In contrast to
the tragic as the origin of the speculative, I wish to propose a more generic
term: lack. The tragic is a special case of lack: lack of fortune, a lack that
brings suffering. However, a lack can also be purposive and beneficial. Hence,
lack can be considered as a common route to good and to evil, to comedy and
to tragedy. For Hölderlin, tragedy is “the metaphor of intellectual intuition,”
a conduit of meaning that precedes conceptual characterization. The caesura
indicates a pause or a break and is often related to the breakup of a metrical
pattern in a verse in order to bring it closer to natural speech patterns. In the
drama of tragedy, in its reversals and representational ambivalences, Hölder-
lin sees the same intensity provided by the use of caesura in poetry, as “the
counter-rhythmic intrusion.” In tragedy representations follow a certain order,
but there is a sense of an impending disaster: the reversal, or the breakup of
representation. The reversal happens in a moment of pause, when the suc-
cession of representations comes to a halt, before the sense of representation
changes and what was only implicit in tragedy becomes explicit. There is
the break, the disarticulation, of the succession of representational mean-
ings developed in the work. As Lacoue-Labarthe writes, “The disarticulation
represents the active neutrality of the interval between [entre-deux]. This is
undoubtedly why it is not by chance that the caesura is, on each occasion, the
empty moment—the absence of “moment”—of Tiresias’s intervention: on the
intrusion of the prophetic word. . . .”10 The prophetic word—any prophetic
word and not only the word of the blind prophet of Thebes—carries ambigu-
ity in its meaning; it can be understood in this or in that way. Such ambigu-
ity presents a pause because the representational (sensible and intellectual)
apparatus is in the state of active passivity, before deciding how to process it.
For Aristotle the catharsis of the individual spectator characterizes tragedy
as a dramatic work. According to Aristotle, in order to acquire virtuous dispo-
sitions, we need to develop proper habits, so that, when we do good actions,
we feel good at the same time. Feeling good perfects an activity, hence we
need to seek ways to induce pleasures of the right kind, that is, pleasures that
accompany actions that accord with virtue. In other words, we need to harmo-
nize our desires and our reason. A tragic spectacle, as a form of art, can help
12 Introduction

in purifying emotions of pity and fear by introducing a level of cognition to

our emotional response. It seems that the initial displeasure or pain caused by
fear and pity is purposive: it is by means of such painful emotions that we can
induce pleasure (i.e. via the catharsis of such emotions). Both pity and fear are
painful emotions, pity being more complex and including fear (for oneself) as
well as compassion for others. Fear is more basic and, hence, universal, and
is triggered by probable or necessary evil events that can happen in the near
future. A good tragic spectacle will induce pity and fear in a simulated envi-
ronment involving proper actions and allowing for proper interplay between
the universal and the particular. Such an environment provides a clearer
outlook on pleasures and pains in one’s life, and since “. . . ethical virtue
is concerned with pleasures and pains,”11 such an environment provides an
appropriate ground for acquiring right habits leading to virtuous dispositions.
The tragic drama stays in between the speculative and the phenomenal,
between the universal and the particular, which can be presented schemati-
cally as: desire (provided by an individual spectator)—tragic work (provides
suspense)—pause, break, or caesura (leads to catharsis as the transformation
between particular/universal, speculative/phenomenal)—enjoyment follow-
ing catharsis (provided by individual spectator). Since I wish to inquire into
aesthetic experience, the schema starts and ends with the individual specta-
tor. The transformation from initial expectations to catharsis happens in the
break, the caesura. Hence, the caesura inherent in a tragic work results in
catharsis as the relief of emotions.
Consider a more general problem by replacing tragedy with lack in gen-
eral, and by replacing catharsis with surprise. Thus generalizing, we can leave
Antiquity and classic Greek drama, and consider current everyday encoun-
ters. What we carry on from the Greeks is the power of speculation, the drive
to transgress limits, the desire for the unexpected. In reference to Hölderlin
and the Greeks, Lacoue-Labarthe writes, “The Greece thus discovered by
Hölderlin is, in short, tragic Greece—if the essence of the tragic is, as the
Notes say, the monstrous coupling of god and man, the limitless becoming-
one and transgression of the limit (hubris) that tragedy (a remote echo here
of Aristotle) has the function of purifying.”12 The properly Greek character is
the caesura, the break, the inimitable happening in the moment of tragic trans-
formation, the active neutrality of the interval between not yet and no longer.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK AND

RELEVANT PHILOSOPHICAL POSITIONS

Introduction presents the motivation for an inquiry of the irreducible exceed-

ing of expectation. It provides the characterization of the properly aesthetic
 Introduction 13

experience and the preliminary definitions of the terms such as expectation,

excess, desire, surprise, suddenness, and aesthetic absence, further developed
in subsequent chapters.
Chapter 1 deals with desire and excess. Levinas’s work on desire and
irreducible otherness is interpreted and analyzed in light of the present argu-
ments. Levinasian desire is different from desire as considered in psycho-
analysis, so an outline of Žižek’s work on Lacanian desire is also presented.
Bataille’s work on general versus restricted economies and on excess as such
is interpreted and compared with the proposed position. A consideration of
some of Duchamp’s work exemplifies Bataille’s fascination with eroticism.
Blanchot’s questioning of literature and the impossibility of immediacy is
presented, followed by Foucault’s answer to both Bataille and Blanchot.
Finally, excess viewed as absence leads to consideration of the indirect use of
language in metaphorical communication, and to the work of Ricoeur.
Chapter 2 considers the consequence of excess, the so-called limit expe-
riences carrying a break simulating “the little death.” The repetitive occur-
rence of limits indicates difference in repetition. Nietzsche’s view of Eternal
Return in his Zarathustra is further employed by Deleuze in his consideration
of difference and repetition. By way of the dialogue between Foucault and
Deleuze, and throwing in Hegel and Žižek, I argue that the encounter of these
various positions happens in “a blind zone” (to evoke Deleuze). Mondrian’s
approach to universality and particularity illustrates a (possible) meeting
place for Hegel and Deleuze. The notion of singularity, this physical notion
of the breakup, and its philosophical importance to personal differentiation,
takes on a new meaning in a future leading to “technological singularity.”
Accordingly, the work of the futurologist Kurzweil is also interpreted and
questioned.
Chapter 3 proposes the phenomenology of surprise. Surprise follows upon
the break in one’s representational capabilities. Such a break originates a phe-
nomenon, but belongs to speculation, which is evocative of Fink’s work on
“speculative phenomenology.” The subsequent announcement of sensibility
invokes Merleau-Ponty’s work on perception. The metamorphosis of sur-
prise then includes astonishment as the announcement of reflection, and here
Nancy’s work on the surprise of the event is relevant. My argument’s sub-
sequent development of wonder relates to Kantian sublimity, bringing into
focus Lyotard’s work on sublimity as related to art. Wonder branches into
admiration of works of art, and into ethical responsibility. When considering
judgments about art, Dufrenne’s and Bachelard’s works are interpreted with
respect to the interplay between reflection and its negation. Seel’s “aesthetics
of appearing” considers presentations en route to objectivity, acknowledging
something irreducible pertaining to aesthetic experiencing. This irreducibility
feeds subsequent desire, which is argued with the help of Lyotard’s “radical
14 Introduction

connivance between the figure and desire,” and we are back to the beginning,
to unquenchable desire.
Chapter 4 argues for the beginning of reflection and mediation where the
properly aesthetic ends. In Hegel’s dialectical approach, absolute knowledge
is achieved after a number of different shades of consciousness—amounting
to the becoming of knowledge as identity-thinking. In contrast, the argument
in this work is that the becoming of the aesthetic starts with the “absolute
aesthetic” (the irreducible exceeding of expectation), and is then—through
announcements of sensibility and reflection—gradually transformed into
taste, as the aesthetic-cultural shadow following the properly aesthetic.
Schelling’s approach to the absoluteness of aesthetics is in line with the cur-
rent proposal; hence, the consideration of Schelling (and his influence on
Jaspers) concludes the arguments for the primacy of aesthetics versus ethics,
and for the irreducibility of immediacy to mediation.

NOTES

1. Dewey asserts that “we have an experience when the material experienced runs
its course to fulfillment.” John Dewey, Art as Experience (A Wideview/Perigee Book,
1980), 35.
2. Ibid., 37.
3. The notion of desire is an important philosophical concept in aesthetics as well
as in ethics. For Kant, it is a mental power (in addition to the cognitive power and the
feeling of pleasure and displeasure as the mediating link between them) connected
with practical reason and the transcendental concept of freedom. According to Kant,
reason provides the a priori principle—final purpose—in guiding our mental power
of desire toward efforts to achieve freedom (“a supersensible characteristic of the
subject”) in purely intellectual domain, which in practical domain translates to moral
consciousness.
4. For Lacan desire is infinite and “begins to take shape in the margin in which
demand rips away from need” Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink (W.W. Noron
& Company, 2002), 814.
5. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (State University of
New York Press, 1996), 40.
6. Ibid., 262.
7. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, ed.
Christopher Fynsk (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 23.
8. Ibid., 211.
9. Ibid., 224.
10. Ibid., 235.
11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H.G. Apostle (The Peripatetic Press,
1975), 1104b9.
12. Lacoue-Labarthe, Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, 244.
 Chapter 1

Desire and Excess

In considering the properly aesthetic experience, four phases emerge: desire

(the prerequisite), the irreducible exceeding of expectation, the pause (or rup-
ture), and recuperation (the irreducible surprise). I am conscious of the possi-
bility of excess and I desire it through the expectation of the unexpected. I am
also conscious of the surprise and the awe following from such an encounter.
Yet, between the possibilities of excess and surprise there is an ungrasp-
able instant—the rupture—the void that I cannot appropriate. Philosophers
discussed in this chapter (Levinas, Žižek, Bataille, Blanchot, Foucault, and
Ricoeur) provide valuable insights regarding the encounter with irreducible
otherness. As suggested in my interpretations of their work, each emphasizes
one of the phases of properly aesthetic experience as presented in this study.
Levinas and Žižek consider desire, albeit in different lights. While Levinas
emphasizes responsibility for the other, providing the ethical orientation
that carries one to recuperation, Žižek writes about Lacanian desire. Bataille
is stuck with the exigency of capturing excess and transgression, while
Blanchot is fascinated with the neutrality of the pause, the indeterminacy
of disintegration of contradictions. Foucault considers transgression and
limitlessness and comments on both Bataille and Blanchot. At first glance,
the thought of Levinas and Bataille seems to be distant in relation to one
another, as they emphasize opposite endpoints of the void. The thought of
Blanchot emphasizes the in-between, the void, and he seems to provide the
bridge between Levinas and Bataille, yet retaining the irreducible difference
of all three positions. Ricoeur wants to capture expressions that go beyond
ordinary language, hence his need for metaphor.
In Passion and Excess Steven Shaviro discusses Blanchot and Bataille,
acting as a “ventriloquist,” and arguing that such is a desirable position for
the critic. He writes:

15
16 Chapter 1

I am mobilizing, making productive use of, the writings of Blanchot and

Bataille; what’s important is not the totality of what they actually or potentially
say but the new directions they open up, the places they help me get to, the
things they can be made to say. I’m using them, abusing them, making them say
what I want them to say . . . They are what I never could have said myself, but
what I find myself compelled to say.1

As stated in the Preface of this work, I likewise put various philosophers on

a witness stand in an effort to defend my view of immediacy. This implies
bending their views to fit my case, but with all due admiration for the creativ-
ity and the force of their thought.
The key issue is our inability to deal with immediacy. Immediacy cannot be
presented since presentation involves mediation. Due to the impossibility of
presenting immediacy (it is the absence in presence, or the presence that can-
not be represented), the challenge is to come as close as possible to the pre-
sentation of this absence in presence. Immediacy, for Levinas, is the face; for
Bataille it is the ecstasy of the void; and for Blanchot it is the impossibility of
the neuter and the origin preceding the surprise. I will argue for characterizing
immediacy as the rupture between desire and surprise, implicit in the notion
of desire||surprise. Desire embodied in the formal expectation of the irre-
ducible exceeding of any expectation (equivalently, the expectation of the
unexpected) is the acceptive inclination toward the encounter with irreducible
otherness. This inclination “feeds” one’s possibility of being irreducibly
surprised. The surprise starts upon recuperation from the rupture and it is
the embodiment of the absence of immediacy. The properly aesthetic expe-
rience as experience (involving consciousness) is the phenomenological-
speculative-phenomenological description of desire||surprise. The further
unfolding adds non-aesthetic components to this experience, for example,
ethical or cultural components.

LEVINASIAN DESIRE AND IRREDUCIBLE OTHERNESS

Levinas uses the language of ethics in his elaboration of irreducible alterity,

but his model is not a model of morality. Here is his disclaimer: “The ethical
language we have resorted to does not arise out of a special moral experi-
ence. . . The ethical situation of responsibility is not comprehensible on the
basis of ethics. . . The tropes of ethical language are found to be adequate for
certain structures of the description: for the sense of the approach in its con-
trast with knowing, the face is in contrast with the phenomenon.”2 The task
of the present work is to characterize the encounter with irreducible alterity
in aesthetic terms.
 Desire and Excess 17

I fully agree with Levinas that the encounter starts as “the passivity prior to
the passivity-activity alternative,”3 but would like to describe it in terms other
than “accusation, persecution, and responsibility for the others.”4 Adequate
aesthetic terms such as acceptivity, excess over expectation, and desire as
the expectation of the unexpected, all lead to one term in particular: surprise.
Levinas’s challenge is that the ethical Other is much more radical than any
other Other, including that found in art. The consideration of otherness in the
present work is not restricted to art evaluation; the emphasis is on otherness
encountered as irreducible excess over any expectation, on the immediacy of
the encounter preceding the ethics of the encounter.
Face, for Levinas, is the “way in which the other presents himself exceed-
ing the idea of the other in me.”5 This is infinity that overflows or exceeds the
idea of infinity—it is the mode of excess. Face is “the presence of exteriority”
and “never becomes an image or an intuition.”6 Levinas’s face captures the
otherness that “escapes representation” and “it is the very collapse of phe-
nomenality.”7 This view has an analogy with, and is relevant for, the other-
ness encountered in properly aesthetic experience considered in the present
work. In aesthetic terms, upon recuperation from the shock (the pause) of
a properly aesthetic encounter, the properly aesthetic component gradually
disappears and the aesthetic-cultural or ethical experience starts. The aes-
thetic pause as defined in this work is in effect the “break-up of time,” a term
Levinas uses to define proximity.8 The mode of excess that Levinas calls
face and that he describes in ethical language, I wish to leave as “faceless”
excess over any expectation (hence, escaping representation and defying
phenomenality), revealed in immediacy and describable only in aesthetic
terms. What is at stake here is the consequence of the startup of revelation,
prior to revelation itself.
Levinas contrasts the Western metaphysical view of the Other as an alter
ego with the view of otherness preceding consciousness and intentional-
ity, and writes, “The Other imposes himself . . . as more primordial than
everything that takes place in me.”9 In contrast, if the Other is perceived in a
symmetrical relation with myself, in a system of mutual relationships where
everything is measurable and can be evaluated in terms of criteria defined
by myself—the Other is, then, reduced to the same. It becomes a part of the
totality in a closed system framed by the fundamental concepts of Western
thought, such as subjectivity, consciousness, and intentionality. The Other
conceived in such a way serves to elucidate and define myself; hence it loses
its otherness. Yet, life manifests deficiencies of such a totality: there are situ-
ations that cannot be subsumed within intentional consciousness. The idea of
infinity points to attempts to grasp the outside of totality.
For Levinas, the idea of totality is purely theoretical, while the idea of
infinity is moral.10 In this work I argue that the idea of infinity revealed
18 Chapter 1

through irreducible otherness is aesthetic in the first place (as excess), but
gains an ethical note in the Levinasian sense. Levinas distinguishes between
disclosure and revealing. Disclosure is related to totality, production, truth,
openness, and possible inspection, while revealing manifests multiplicity,
gradual uncovering, and defiance to total reflection. The Other is revealed,
not disclosed. Difference between exposure and production is that exposure
reveals the Other, the Other is inherent in the exposure, while in production
the Other is subsumed and annihilated by the product.
However, the revelation starts as pure immediacy. Levinas writes, “Immediacy
is the collapse of the representation into a face, into a ‘concrete abstraction’
torn up from the world, from horizons and conditions.”11 Immediacy is the
revelation of presence before presentation. It presents the irreducible alterity
and surpasses the objectivity of representation; it is void as “concrete abstrac-
tion.” This “concrete abstraction” contrasts with an experience of knowledge
acquisition whereby the use of concepts presents an “abstract concretion,”
subordinated to the universality of concepts. Concepts capture concretion,
albeit in an abstract way necessitated by their universality. It is not the case that
irreducible otherness should be viewed as the direct negation of knowledge,
since such a conception would undermine otherness’s irreducibility; however,
immediacy indirectly negates knowledge as a system because it negates total-
ity. Subjectivity spills over the boundary delineated by the ontology of being.
The defiance of immediacy bringing the collapse of the representation is a
breakup, a void, a shock, from which revelation starts. This startup merits an
analysis in its own right. Whereby Heidegger subordinates the relation with
the Other to ontology, Levinas uses the relation with the Other to expand
ethics. The immediacy of the encounter resulting in irreducible otherness is
not only beyond being, it is also beyond ethics—it is properly aesthetic as the
irreducible excess that leads to the phenomenon of surprise and prepares me
for both ethics and ontology.
My relationship with the irreducibly other is non-symmetric only if
I forgo the power of subjectivity and intentional consciousness; if I do not,
I will annihilate otherness by making it serve my purposes. The only way to
acknowledge irreducible otherness is to acknowledge it in pure passivity, or in
Levinas’s words, “more passive than any other passivity.” This passivity leads
to the desire not directed to a specific object, but to the metaphysical desire
for infinity, which breaks the totality and encapsulation of one’s subjectivity.
Levinas argues, against Heidegger, that the meaning of being is preceded by
the encounter with absolute otherness, which stays outside being: it is other-
wise than being and beyond essence. I interpret two main works by Levinas in
light of desire as it is formulated here, as the expectation of the exceeding of
any expectation, and in light of the proposed characterization of the properly
aesthetic experience.
 Desire and Excess 19

In Totality and Infinity, Levinas puts forward his ethics based on the
difference between totality and infinity; totality as permeated by sameness,
and infinity as the basis for subjectivity beyond intentional consciousness.
He writes, “The other metaphysically desired is not ‘other’ like the bread
I eat . . . The metaphysical desire tends toward something else entirely,
toward the absolutely other.”12 This “absolutely other” is excess, something
beyond, which I cannot appropriate by any category or previous experience.
The other can be absolutely other, according to Levinas, only “with respect
to a term whose essence is to remain at the point of departure, to serve as
entry into the relation, to be the same not relatively but absolutely. A term
can remain absolutely at the point of departure of relationship only as I.”13
Hence, a reference point for the absolutely other has to be the absolutely
same. This is I. The absolute sameness of I is not immovability, its “exist-
ing consists in identifying itself, in recovering its identity throughout all
that happens to it.”14 Hence, I is not defined via a set of attributes (as an
objective presence might be), but as the capacity for identification. Granting
that the I is the capacity for identification, one can ask how is this capac-
ity triggered, how can identification start? There is no identification with-
out alterity. How is this “concrete relationship” provoked? It seems that,
according to Levinas, identification starts with the “reversion of the alterity
of the world to self-identification.”15 But, reversion can come only after the
appearance of alterity. How does alterity appear? Levinas writes, “Alter-
ity is possible only starting from me.”16 In this work, I propose a concrete
approach to the startup of irreducible alterity. It starts as a pause, a void, a
total annihilation, a point of discontinuity—as an excess over my totality,
which I nonetheless desire.
Levinas extends the notion of intentionality (of representation) to intention-
ality of enjoyment whereby exteriority is preserved. The things we enjoy do
not come delineated and framed apart from surroundings; Levinas calls them
“elemental.” The elements (e.g. earth, air, wind) do not have a form; they
are indeterminable. According to Levinas, “Indetermination . . . precedes
the distinction between the finite and infinite.”17 The elements are enjoyed
“in pure expenditure,” without concern for their utility, and this enjoyment
underlines humanity. Sensibility, for Levinas, is a mode of enjoyment that
precedes and is independent of the process of representation. He writes,
“In sensibility itself and independently of all thought there is announced
an insecurity . . .,”18 and “. . . the unreflected and naïve consciousness con-
stitutes the originality of enjoyment.”19 This view seems to be relevant to
aesthetics as considered in the present study, and is congruent with the view
of sensibility as sometimes inadequate to the processing of encountered
exteriority, with subsequent reflection acknowledging this inadequacy. The
insecurity is clearly announced in the moment of pause when excess happens.
20 Chapter 1

The enjoyment of encountering beyond-ness originates in this unreflective

moment of sensibility’s weakness.
Because of the fleeting nature and mystery of elements, the enjoyment of
the elemental is fragile, without security. This insecurity is neutralized by the
labor and possession with which the I finds a more secure ground. Levinas
develops the notion of the interiority of separation by considering enjoy-
ment of the elements, followed by dwelling in a home, followed by labor
and possession. The I has to be individualized and separated to acknowledge
irreducible exteriority, that is, to break the grip of sameness. But, according
to Levinas, “Metaphysical desire which can be produced only in a sepa-
rated, that is enjoying, egoist and satisfied being, is then not derived from
enjoyment.”20 He continues, “. . . a shock must be produced which, without
inverting the moment of interiorization . . . would furnish the occasion for a
resumption of relations with exteriority. Interiority must be at the same time
closed and open.”21 I could not agree more: this shock can be viewed as the
rupture caused by the irreducible excess over expectation. It is an occasion
to encounter exteriority, to acknowledge my limitation, and to subsequently
intrude into my interiority.
Levinas writes, “The exteriority foreign to needs would then reveal an
insufficiency full of this very insufficiency and not of hopes, a distance more
precious than contact, a non-possession more precious than possession, a
hunger that nourishes itself not with bread but with hunger itself.”22 The exte-
riority foreign to needs provokes desire outside the opposition between
satisfaction and non-satisfaction of needs, desire that calls into question the
totality of one’s world. The aesthetic acceptivity, as desire for the irreduc-
ible exceeding of any expectation, points to openness, to the questioning of
totality, and to the acknowledgment of irreducible exteriority. I agree with
Levinas that “The idea of infinity implies a soul capable of containing more
than it can draw from itself. It designates an interior being that is capable of a
relation with the exterior, and does not take its own interiority for the totality
of being.”23 It points to the beyond of enjoyment and satisfaction of needs.
Levinas contrasts expression with action. He states that “the epiphany of
infinity is expression and discourse.”24 I wish to go deeper in understanding
the immediacy of this epiphany, the startup. How does epiphany start if not
with a shock (or equivalently, with a pause), a break with ordinary experi-
ence? Such a shock introduces violence to an activity, abruptly stopping the
activity and signaling the pause. The pause is both expression and action at
the start. After that, the unfolding goes into different directions: ethical or
cultural/aesthetic. For Levinas, the presentation of the face is nonviolence,
“for instead of offending my freedom it calls it to responsibility and founds
it . . . It is peace.”25 In the present work the encounter with absolute otherness
is as much violence as it is nonviolence; it is at the same time a shock and a
 Desire and Excess 21

pause, a passivity at the core of any activity. In encountering the irreducible

excess over expectation, the presentation is not violence toward my I-ness,
instead, it is suspense—not against me, but as an invitation, an opening.
Because of the unknown, it is not peace—it is excitement. To paraphrase
Levinas, the encounter with the irreducible excess of expectation instead of
offending my freedom, it calls it to enjoyment and founds it. It is the acceptiv-
ity preceding responsibility and allowing for a new beginning.
Levinas uses the term fecundity to denote the possibility of a new beginning,
as when a child is born and surpasses the totalities of both parents. Departing
from Heidegger, he defines fecundity as a relation with future, a future that is
“irreducible to the power over possibles.”26 In contrast to Heidegger’s finite
temporality, Levinas argues that the infinity of being constitutes time.27 Due to
interruptions by alterity and resurrections by fecundity, time is discontinuous
and only as such can capture the infinity of being. Levinas writes, “There
must be a rupture of continuity and continuation across this rupture.”28 This is
akin to the proposal in the present work since it complies with the experience
of the irreducible excess over expectation carrying an aesthetic connotation.
I have stated that instances of properly aesthetic encounters belong to unique,
properly aesthetic experience unfolding during one’s lifetime. The irreducible
excess provides discontinuity, but all such excesses taken together, indepen-
dent of the objectivity that induced them, create an underlying continuity of
being and lead to continuity on a different level.
Levinas concludes Totality and Infinity by stating that “The ethical, beyond
vision and certitude, delineates the structure of exteriority as such. Morality is
not a branch of philosophy, but first philosophy.”29 The aim of present work
is to argue that the startup of the encounter with exteriority is—in the first
place—delineated by the aesthetic. Not aesthetics viewed as philosophy of art
or judgments of aesthetic/cultural taste, but viewed as the experience of the
irreducible excess over expectation. In the first instance, the encounter with
irreducible exteriority is aesthetic—immediacy, a rupture, a pause, a discon-
tinuity, followed by recuperation and appropriation recreating subjectivity.
Desire, as the expectation of the irreducible exceeding of expectation, opens
being toward its beyond-ness. For Levinas, desire is translated into responsi-
bility for the other and it is viewed ethically. Desire viewed in aesthetic terms
as described in the present work is not responsibility for the other (thought it
might come subsequently), but is rather an openness to and longing for the
irreducible surprise, the inclination to go further, to transgress.
In Violence and Metaphysics Derrida discusses Levinas’s position pre-
sented in Totality and Infinity and asks, “would the experience of the face be
possible, could it be stated, if the thought of being were not already implied
in it? In effect, the face is the inaugural unity of a naked glance and of a right
to speech.”30 Derrida concludes his analysis by stating,
22 Chapter 1

Thus, in its most elevated nonviolent urgency, denouncing the passage through
Being and the moment of the concept, Levinas’s thought would not only
propose an ethics without law, as we said above, but also a language without
phrase. Which would be entirely coherent if the face was only a glance, but it is
also speech; and in speech it is the phrase which makes the cry of need become
the expression of desire.31

Hence, according to Derrida, only the glance is beyond being; what follows
after the glance involves Being and the violence that comes with it. Derrida
obviously senses the duality of the encounter: the initial glance followed by
the unfolding of the relation. The argument in the present work is that a naked
glance comes first and that it could result in the impossibility of speech. This
result would present a breaking point in experience, a rupture that is associ-
ated with the properly aesthetic. Recuperation and the possibility of and right
to speech follow, and are ethical. I would like to emphasize the necessity of
the initial naked glance in encountering the irreducible excess over expec-
tation. The nakedness of the glance implies the void, the rupture with the
previous experience, and this characterizes the immediacy of the encounter.
Levinas responded to Derrida’s concerns with Otherwise than Being:
Or Beyond Essence. The association of temporality with essence assumes
that time is economized in that the past has an impact on the present and that
subjectivity is subsumed by essence. The question is: what is subjectivity,
and “does temporality go beyond essence?”32 Levinas argues that “subjec-
tivity . . . is the breaking point where essence is exceeded by the infinite.”33
Further, in his model, essence is preceded by signification and signification is
a substitution that implies “substituting itself for another.”34 This substitution
is sensibility, the sense of which is proximity, a term denoting the nearness of
the Other to me. In contrast to Husserl, Levinas argues that the time associ-
ated with sensibility cannot be recuperated and used by intentional conscious-
ness; it is a time beyond essence.
Levinas argues that language carries in itself an otherness that cannot be
appropriated. Language is not just “a system of signs” used for denomina-
tion (that function is achieved with nouns as universal signs supporting
objectivity and the theme of the said), it also conveys sensibility due to verbs
because “The lived sensation, being and time, is already understood in a
verb.”35 The special place is occupied by the verb to be, and sensations can
be captured via its adverbs. As opposed to the Husserlian distinction between
noesis and noema, Levinas proposes the distinction between saying and said.
The restriction of saying to manifestation of objective presence would imply
the reduction of the saying to the said, but Levinas argues that the significa-
tion of saying is not encompassed in the said, but rather precedes and spills
beyond it. He argues against giving priority to the said over the saying, which
 Desire and Excess 23

is characteristic of ontology where all is subsumed within Being. If the say-

ing is considered in its full significance, it can add to the objectivity of the
said, as well as to its meaning and interpretation. Levinas’s task is to expose
“signifyingness prior to ontology.”36
For Levinas, saying is not giving signs, since that would presuppose inten-
tionality; it is rather exposure, the condition for all communication. Exposure
is sensibility related to vulnerability. He writes, “The exposure to another is
disinterestedness, proximity, obsession by the neighbor, an obsession despite
oneself, that is, a pain.”37 This concept of exposure goes beyond the notion
of essence employed by ontology. Levinas distinguishes between sensibility
in its immediacy and sensible intuition as “already of the order of the said.”38
Immediate sensibility is beyond being and beyond universality.
When irreducible alterity is presented in an ethical framework as does
Levinas, enjoyment has to precede vulnerability because one needs to “first
enjoy one’s bread, not in order to have the merit of giving it, but in order to
give it with one’s heart, to give oneself in giving it.”39 This is what makes
the encounter an ethical encounter. However, when irreducible alterity is
considered from the aesthetic standpoint, as in the present study, one can
examine the experience from a point even earlier than “enjoying one’s bread”
and describe the shock of experiencing the bread for the first time. In order to
enjoy bread, I have to encounter it and be surprised by its appeal.
In experiencing the irreducible excess that surpasses expectation, the pause
in the initial moment is the passivity preceding intuition, but also preceding
enjoyment and vulnerability. The pause entails indifference followed up with
Levinasian enjoyment and vulnerability. Hence, in arguing for the aesthetic
origin of the encounter with irreducible otherness, I wish to begin even ear-
lier in my investigation than does Levinas with respect to ontology. Levinas
defines proximity (the nearness of the Other to me) in terms of enjoyment and
vulnerability. But, it seems that proximity should be announced in terms of
indifference turning to non-indifference, a surprise, before I can emit some-
thing starting from myself, such as enjoyment. When I am taken by irreduc-
ible surprise, I am vulnerable beyond my control. Hence, vulnerability indeed
characterizes proximity, but as a surprise. If my desire can be characterized
as the expectation of irreducible excess over expectation, then enjoyment
follows as soon as I recuperate from the pause induced by my vulnerability.
The pause does not imply vulnerability in the usual sense of the word; it is
not pain. It is a frozen state, a collapse of time and space, of Kantian forms of
intuition, an irreducible breaking point of my consciousness, the antecedent
of a new beginning.
Levinas defines obsession as the relationship with alterity in which
“the subject is affected without the source of the affection becoming a theme
of representation” and where “The relationship with exteriority is ‘prior’
24 Chapter 1

to the act that would effect it.”40 Hence obsession “pollutes” the clarity of
intentional consciousness, it is an incessant murmur that testifies to the insuf-
ficiency of a closed system. This obsession echoes as desire, a passion for
exteriority. In the current study, this passion for exteriority is the desire for
surprise. For Levinas, this obsession or passion is responsibility. Responsi-
bility allows “substitution of me for the others”41 which is inspiration or the
psyche as “the other in the same, without alienating the same.” In inspira-
tion I go out of myself, I am open to and welcome exteriority. However,
inspiration defined in aesthetic terms would not coincide with responsibility.
Substitution as passivity is inherently present in my desire defined as the
expectation of the irreducible excess over expectation, because I long for the
passivity that would allow annihilation of my conditioning as an ego: this is
my only way out of the closed system. Such substitution precedes responsi-
bility for the other; it can at best point to responsibility without the intentional
direction “for the other.” This lack if intentional direction is responsibility’s
antecedent aesthetic character—only subsequently can responsibility relate to
ethics, as directed “for the other.” Levinas emphasizes the passivity of substi-
tution; he writes, “Substitution is not an act; it is a passivity inconvertible into
an act, the hither side of the act-passivity alternative.”42 While Levinas identi-
fies substitution with responsibility, I wonder whether there is a characteristic
of substitution that precedes responsibility—say, a pure acceptivity—that is
“a passivity inconvertible into an act.”
Sensible is, according to Levinas, the other in me. My sensibility sub-
jects me passively to exteriority, it is a stirring of my consciousness and
other pillars of my being; this is what it means to be human, to go beyond
essence (a “strict book-keeping where nothing is lost nor created”) and to
acknowledge freedom (“a contestation of this book-keeping by a gratuity”).
For Levinas this gratuity can be either “absolute distraction of a play without
consequences, without traces or memories,” or it can be “responsibility for
another and expiation.”43 These are two extremes; is there any possibility
for something in between? Aesthetically speaking, a gratuity that contests
the book-keeping of essence can be a distraction of a play, but with conse-
quences and with traces, yet without constituting responsibility for another,
not even “a responsibility for creation.” These traces open the space for pure,
irreducible surprise.
The encounter with alterity stirs the sensibility of the ego, shattering its
concepts and animating its psyche, uncovering a layer beyond conceptual
universality and uncovering proximity that cannot be described in spatial
terms alone. It seems that for Levinas the only possibility for the ego to
“survive” and actually carry on the movement from conceptuality to alterity,
and back to conceptuality and its re-installation, is responsibility. Accord-
ing to him, responsibility allows me to come back from the shock caused by
 Desire and Excess 25

encountering irreducible otherness, it is the salvation of my individuality and

makes me irreplaceable. In this work I argue for the total breakup: at one end
there is the desire to encounter irreducible alterity, at the other there is sur-
prise, and in-between there is a void. Replacing Levinas’s responsibility with
the desire||surprise pair (indicating the two endpoints and a void between)
allows abandonment of ethical language and disclosure of the properly
aesthetic character of the encounter with irreducible alterity.
Objectivity, according to Levinas, “signifies the indifference of what
appears to its own appearing.”44 A system is indifferent to whatever is outside
it, and the essence absorbs the subject that identifies it. This is closedness
of a system. Levinas defines responsibility as “signification which is non-
indifference.”45 However, this definition does not imply that responsibility
and non-indifference coincide. It seems that non-indifference is a wider term
than responsibility. Responsibility is directional, we could almost say inten-
tional, it spoils the surprise. Non-indifference is generic, open, it is an accep-
tivity and inclination toward surprise. It is a prerequisite for surprise because,
if I am indifferent, how can I be surprised at all? It seems as if, toward the
end of his book, Levinas uses less ethical and more neutral language to deal
with alterity. Nonetheless, he states again, “Proximity, difference which is
non-indifference, is responsibility.”46
In describing the movement between universality and individuation Levi-
nas writes, “But, I am capable of conceiving of a break with this universal,
and the apparition of the unique I which always precedes the reflection which
comes again. . . . to include me in the concept—which I again evade or am
torn up from.”47 The description of this movement fits the dynamics of aes-
thetic encounters considered in the present work. With expectation of the
irreducible excess over expectation, one is certainly capable of conceiving a
break with the totality of one’s experience. This formal expectation is desire
that individualizes and provides a way back via surprise and a recuperating
reflection: thanks to this desire, one can posit the significance of the aesthetic
encounter, independently of the objectivity of the encounter. Thanks to sur-
prise, one can enjoy it. Do we really need to call it responsibility?
To Levinas’s question “can openness have another signification than that
of disclosure?”48 I have tried to answer with a question: Can desire have
another signification than that of responsibility? Is non-indifference coinci-
dent with responsibility? In experiencing the irreducible excess over expec-
tation there is supreme passivity of exposure to the other—the pause—but
that is not responsibility. Where does responsibility come from, if one is
supremely passive? Can supreme passivity and responsibility go together?
Faced with irreducible otherness, in the initial instant of supreme passivity,
I am expressionless and mute. Expression should follow exposure in the
process of recuperation.
26 Chapter 1

Finally, Levinas concludes with a consideration of newness, so relevant in

the present work. He writes, “It is not because the other is new, an unheard
of quiddity, that he signifies transcendence, or more exactly, signifies, purely
and simply; it is because newness comes from the other that there is in new-
ness transcendence and signification. It is through the other that newness
signifies in being the otherwise than being.”49 This statement is compatible
with my proposal. The signification of the encounter with otherness is not
in its novelty (or banal newness); on the contrary, newness has signification
because it reveals otherness, because it allows the experience of otherness.
Newness is related to surprise, it is a consequence of the encounter. Certainly
it is not because of surprise that the otherness is irreducible; it is because of
irreducible otherness that there is surprise. Metaphysical desire is the accep-
tivity of irreducible otherness. Surprise is the consequence of the encounter.
Between desire and surprise there is a pause, a void, a rupture, an immediacy
that cannot be captured and presented.

ŽIŽEK ON LACANIAN DESIRE

Moving away from the Levinasian ethical otherness and desire, let us turn
now to Lacan, Žižek, and the psychoanalytic view of desire. Lacan, in “The
Split Between the Eye and the Gaze,” talks about the “privilege of the gaze
in the function of desire,”50 acknowledging the visual as having an eminent
position in the structure of desire. According to Lacan, the gaze disorganizes
the field of perception. However, can a sound or a smell, in the domain of
their respective senses, create something analogous to the gaze in its domain
of vision? I wish to look at desire in more general terms, not only with regard
to the visual dimension, but taking into account all senses. This alternate per-
ceptual investigation could have affinity with the desire for the unexpected.
For Lacan and Žižek the Real is lack, hence unstructured negativity, or
negativity alongside the abstract immediacy, and different from Hegel’s
negativity as the mediation of the immediate. Negativity is mediation because
it is derivative, not primary: to have negation we need to have something that
can be negated. Lack, on the other hand, is primary in the sense that it does
not need a specific thing to negate. Lack relates to negativity in the same
way that angst relates to fear: a generality surpassing objective instances
versus the specificity of something objectively represented. Lack is absence,
negativity is non-presence. Absence and presence are both primary, whereas
non-presence is derived, mediated by the primacy of presence.
Lacan’s objet petit a is the lack as the remainder of the Real that starts the
process of interpretation. The Real is opposed to the symbolic, without the
opposition between presence and absence; hence, Real is “without fissure.”
 Desire and Excess 27

Žižek sees the irruption of the Real on the boundary separating the inside
from the outside. Comparing inside and outside he writes, “Continuity and
proportion are not possible, because this disproportion, this surplus of inside
in relation to outside, is a necessary structural effect of the very separation of
the two; it can only be abolished by demolishing the barrier and letting the
outside swallow the inside.”51
Therefore, there is a flux, a discontinuity, eruptions of outside to inside,
swallowing the inside. In such moments, nothingness or the “pre-symbolic
substance” (as Žižek illustrates with regard to the novel The Unpleasant
Profession of Jonathan Hoag) pervades. This pre-symbolic substance is
evocative of Blanchot’s neutral. Then the symbolic order has to take over
again. According to Lacan and Žižek the “Other of the Other” is posed as a
way to restore symbolic order because of the conviction that there is some-
body (a puppeteer) behind the eruption from the outside, so that chaos or
indifference is surpassed and there is an order.
The encounters considered here attest to the eruption of the outside, swal-
lowing the inside (to use Žižek’s vocabulary). However, I am not concerned
with psychoanalysis and restoration of the symbolic order; my task is much
more modest: I wish to offer a phenomenology of surprise as an emotional
state en route to restoration of the symbolic order, or of conscious subjectivity.
The Real is neutral, indifferent, and we endow it with meaning. So, argues
Žižek, the communication with the Real is asymmetrical: the Real is indif-
ferent and provides purely arbitrary situations (it does not communicate
anything endowed with meaning), but the subject endows this “answer of the
real” with meaning and considers it a successful communication. We provide
meanings to outside encounters to smoothen the disruptions and discontinui-
ties of outside intrusions. But, the outside seems to be indifferent. Blanchot
says it poetically: “. . . the essence of the image is to be altogether outside,
without intimacy, and yet more inaccessible and mysterious than the thought
of the innermost being; without signification, yet summoning up the depth
of any possible meaning; unrevealed yet manifest, having that absence-as-
presence which constitutes the lure and the fascination of the Sirens.”52
The outside, the real, provides images without intimacy, waiting to be
endowed with meaning by a look giving them significance. Hence, appear-
ances are elusive and contain presence beyond presentation, allowing for
multiple meanings; images can serve as general templates, indifferent but
allowing possibilities for the creation of meaning.
The symbol cannot encapsulate one’s whole being: there is something
that escapes it, so there is a gap between the signifier representing one as
a subject and the excess that does not allow symbolization. Subjects com-
municate and this gap creates problems in intersubjective communication.
Communication takes into account “the signifier not yet enchained but still
28 Chapter 1

floating freely, permeated with enjoyment: the enjoyment that prevents it

from being articulated into a chain.”53 This surplus of meaning is denoted in
Lacan’s neologism le sinthome, to indicate the excess in the subject that can-
not be put under the symbolic order. It can be interpreted as follows: there
is something that escapes conceptualization and allows the other to reside
inside me. This is what makes the limits of my subjectivity porous, allowing
for the intrusion of otherness, and acknowledges my singularity. In thinking
about the implications for psychoanalysis, Žižek writes, “What, then, do we
do with it [le sinthome]? Lacan’s answer, and at the same time the Lacanian
definition of the ultimate moment of psychoanalysis, is identification with the
sinthome.”54 We would like to get rid of symptoms because they go against
the symbolic order. We do not want to annihilate le sinthome because it pro-
vides an additional, non-symbolic determination of subjectivity: it is what
individualizes, what cannot be put under generality and order, and what sets
one apart from all others in the social sphere.
Žižek elaborates on the notion of le sinthome, this residual that resists
inclusion in the signifying chain and leads to the singularity of the subject.
It is related to jouissance, the singularity of forms of one’s enjoyment. In con-
trast to “the symptom” that can be decoded by interpretation, le sinthome
resists interpretation and mediation, and is defined as “the fragment of a
meaningless letter the reading of which produces an immediate jouis-sense
or ‘meaning in enjoyment’”55 The Symbolic mediates the Real and produces
appearances in our objective world. However, behind appearances lurks the
Real, the presence that cannot be represented, the immediacy (hence mean-
ingless, since meaning is produced by mediation) of enjoyment. But enjoy-
ment is already mediation because, if I enjoy it, I am aware that I like it, so
jouissance is “meaning in enjoyment.” Hence, following Lacan and Žižek,
le sinthome denotes immediacy of mediation, the intertwining of immediacy
and mediation, of outside and inside, which sounds very Hegelian, except that
Hegel considered it in relation to thought. Which is fine, because the abstract
immediacy (pre-conscious and pre-sensible nothingness) triggers thought
as the mediated immediacy. Between Hegel’s immediacy and mediation,
the abstract and “the power of negative,” there is space to insert Lacan and
Žižek and le sinthome as sensuous mediation, preceding consciousness and
thought—mediation. This pre-conscious sensibility evokes Merleau-Ponty
and his approach toward the “birth of sensibility.”
But, how is immediacy treated in Lacan? Is it a part of the Real that
cannot be mediated? If the Real presents “a fissure” in the symbolic, does
this also mean that there is propensity for breaking points, where the Real
announces itself, tearing apart the fabric of the Symbolic? When Žižek
exclaims “Love thy Sinthome as Thyself!” does he also imply the desire for
the unexpected?
 Desire and Excess 29

If the excess of the Real over the Symbolic (the enjoyment) is repressed, its
return or eruption requires a psychoanalyst. The properly aesthetic encoun-
ters denoted desire||surprise considered in this work have nothing to do with
repression and the question is (to put it in Lacan’s terminology): can the Real
erupt into the Symbolic without being repressed in the first place? Let us
assume that the Real is the outside, the reminder that escapes symbolization.
The exteriority is wider: it contains the Real that exists in a subject as le sin-
thome, the singular form of enjoyment, and presents a hole in the symbolic
order of the subject. However, exteriority is not encompassed by the Real:
there is more to it. The neutral space indifferent to enjoyment and pain, to
schizophrenia and paranoia, to absence and presence, offers itself to a subject
suddenly, unexpectedly, indicating only one’s limitation of perceptual and
mental powers. It triggers surprise that afterward is appropriated within one’s
experiential space. The encounters considered here as producing irreducible
excess over expectation indicate that an exteriority exists which is not a hole
in my interiority, which has nothing to do with myself. In order to accept it
and to acknowledge it in surprise, I have to have the attitude of openness.
To be able to open myself to such encounters, my subjectivity cannot be
encapsulated in a fixed symbolic form, it cannot be a self-enclosed circle—it
has to be porous, allowing the exterior to reach the inside. Otherwise, I might
just pass by something (a work of art, a scene in the environment) or some-
body, without experiencing any depth, without becoming aware of my lack.
Psychoanalysis might say that the singularity inside one provides a screen and
decides how and when to let exteriority in. Maybe psychoanalysis can help
one to become less uptight, more attentive to the environment, but it cannot
guarantee such encounters: the exteriority has to provoke it. However, if on
one end the exteriority is indifferent, and on the other end I value my surprise,
there has to be a metamorphosis in this process. This metamorphosis is what
I try to articulate.
In this context Derrida’s notion of the spectre is relevant. Spectre serves
as an in-between in relation to objective reality (the symbolic world) and
the reality that cannot be represented. As Žižek writes, it is “elusive pseudo-
materiality.”56 According to Lacan, the spectre is a necessary accompani-
ment of reality since what is experienced is already symbolized, it already
has some objective form; hence, reality is already mediated—attesting to the
impossibility of immediacy, of grasping the reality “in itself.” Žižek writes,
“To put it simply, reality is never directly ‘itself’; it presents itself only via
its incomplete-failed symbolization, and spectral apparitions emerge in this
very gap that forever separates reality from the real, and on account of which
reality has the character of (the symbolically structured) reality.”57
In order to express the impossibility of presenting immediacy, the beginning
of an aesthetic encounter can be termed non-experience, indicating a break
30 Chapter 1

in the continuity of one’s experience (contradicting Husserl). The notion of

spectre goes toward exteriority, the real, preceding the symbolic order and
the world of objective representations, and this is as far as one can go and
still be tied to the notion of experience. What I try to understand further is the
gap that Žižek talks about. The inability to say something more is termed a
pause, and is denoted in the expression desire||surprise. This seems the right
place to turn to Bataille.

BATAILLE AND EXCESS

Bataille’s work is centered on excess, transgression, limits of experiencing,

and their importance in human life. In “The Notion of Expenditure,” he
talks about “nonproductive expenditure” that falls below the radar of human
rationality, and this expenditure is what defines humanity because, he writes,
“human life cannot in any way be limited to the closed systems assigned to
it by reasonable conceptions.”58 Humanity is characterized by its impulse to
negate the utilitarian—the possession of goods, both material and moral, as
well as an orderly and calculating existence. In “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,”
he writes, “The life thus broken into three pieces has ceased to be life; it is
nothing more than art, science, or politics . . . A totality of life has little to
do with a collection of abilities and areas of expertise.”59 He emphasizes
the importance of eroticism as the way to explore life’s innermost secrets
and emotions. I argue that the aesthetic encounters considered in the present
work (as related to birth) are as much part of life as eroticism or mysticism
(related to death). One can purposely strive for a non-productive expenditure
via negations of utility, but one can also surprisingly encounter newness as
the breakup of totality.
In Literature and Evil, Bataille holds that literature expresses the concept
of Evil because evil is “the basis of intense communication,” and literature
as such is communication. For Bataille, communication is proximity without
the objectivity of discursive talk. He wants to stress “the value of ‘mystical
participation,’ of identification of the subject with the object which it is in the
power of poetry to express.”60 Poetry takes upon itself the impossible task of
uniting opposites, “the unchangeable and the perishable,” the subject and the
object, the horror and the ecstasy of life. The aesthetic experience undergone
while reading and feeling poetry is a paradigmatic aesthetic experience that
brings one to the limit of her sensibility. According to Bataille, poetic feel-
ing is “the perception which cannot be reduced to the sense-data.”61 Poetry
reveals a deeper reality by going beyond objective limitations, beyond the
world reduced to objects having only use value. Its absence of limitations
relates poetry to the sacred and to religion as such. Bataille writes, “religion
 Desire and Excess 31

and poetry never fail to propel us outside ourselves in great bursts in which
death is no longer the opposite of life.”62 Death as part of life, and not as its
opposite, is one of Bataille’s recurring themes.
In The Tears of Eros, Bataille tells the story of eroticism as linked to the
awareness of death. The orgasm is “the little death”; it is the instant of loss
of consciousness and a preview of the loss of life. Eroticism carries a sacred
value, but this sacred value is basically related to the aesthetic. Bataille
writes, “A sacred value remains an immediate value: it has meaning only in
the instant of this transfiguration wherein we pass precisely from use value to
ultimate value, a value independent from any effect beyond the instant itself,
and which is fundamentally an aesthetic value.”63 This definition captures
the instant of what I termed the properly aesthetic, independent of any recu-
peration afterward that would bring into play non-aesthetic elements, such as
culture or ethics. The ultimate value—the immediate value—is severed from
the past; hence it cannot be related to a goal, it is independent from any util-
ity. This is the aesthetics of the instant: disinterestedness in the past prior to
its occurrence, and indifference to whatever happens after it.
In Erotism: Death and Sensuality, Bataille ponders the continuity and
discontinuity of being. The discontinuity of being is due to reproduction and
birth, and only death brings back the continuity of an anonymous existence.
Bataille wants to explore the limits of human life: when are we closest to
death, but still being alive? When can we discontinuous beings get a glimpse
of the continuity of existence? He identifies eroticism as a part of human life
akin to death.64 In erotic activity, discontinuous and separate beings fuse,
negating their discontinuity and revealing the continuity of being. However,
Bataille affords the same role to poetry. He writes, “Poetry leads to the same
place as all forms of eroticism—to the blending and fusion of separate objects.
It leads us to eternity, it leads us to death, and through death to continuity.”65
In the expectation of the irreducible excess over expectation, as considered
in this work, there seems to be the desire for the discontinuity of disconti-
nuity, that is, a desire for continuity. Granting that there is continuity and
discontinuity of being, and that we ordinarily live in a discontinuous mode,
this mode has to be stopped to experience continuity. The properly aesthetic
experience starts with a pause, with the inability of my sensibility to acknowl-
edge the encounter with a presence spilling beyond the boundary of my expe-
rience. The pause as such is a point of discontinuity; however, recuperation
from and acknowledgment of the encounter follow it. The objective presence
that triggered the encounter (whether an art object or something from the
environment) is insignificant (though necessary) as such; what imparts a last-
ing significance to the encounter is this moment of discontinuity. My memory
records my reaction (in a certain time and place) and the objectivity of it
falls into oblivion; the reaction itself becomes an “object” for memory.
32 Chapter 1

Because of the discarding of the objectivity of presence, all such properly

aesthetic encounters are repeated instances of the same experience scattered
throughout one’s life. This repetition provides continuity apart from clock
time and objective space. In memory, I will record them as separate instances
because I can remember where each instance happened and when. How they
happened, though, is irrelevant. I cherish my reaction, the encounter with
irreducible otherness that led me beyond my experiential space. Objectively
speaking, such experiences are separate, but they achieve fusion or proxim-
ity and continuity on a different level, surpassing the objectivity of presence.
Bataille characterizes eroticism as “the disequilibrium in which the being
consciously calls his own existence in question.”66 The emphasis is on con-
sciously, hence “I am losing myself.”67 This is directional, in contrast to the
disequilibrium that surfaces in an instant of properly aesthetic experience.
The irreducible excess over my expectation signals a disequilibrium of my
existence to which I was not consciously attuned. Desire as the expectation of
excess and, subsequently, as the expectation of irreducible surprise, implies
that the irreducible surprise should not be surprising, and yet it always is,
bringing into play the contradictory nature of desire: when it risks being satis-
fied, it withdraws only to resurface again when the risk is gone.
For Bataille, “excess manifests itself in so far as violence wins over rea-
son.”68 Is this the only way excess could manifest itself? In experiencing the
irreducible excess over expectation and the pause it generates in an instant
of pure void—timeless, placeless and sightless—could it not be the case
that excess manifests itself in so far as passivity wins over reason? One can
argue that the implication of winning as such is by necessity violence. Yet, it
is a special type of violence as well as of passivity: a violence more violent
than any violence (akin to death), and a passivity more passive than any pas-
sivity (echoing Levinas). The excess in properly aesthetic experience leads
beyond the opposition of violence and passivity; to passivity and violence
intertwined, to a loss and a gain at the same time, hence allowing (actually,
leading to) opposing views and interpretations.
Bataille’s desire is “a desire to live to the limits of the possible and the
impossible with ever-increasing intensity. It is a desire to live while ceasing
to live, or to die without ceasing to live . . . .”69 It is a desire for sacrificing
and surrendering oneself, succumbing to ruinous temptations—all out of
“the nostalgia for a moment of disequilibrium”70 that can expel one from the
utilitarian and rational order imposed by norms. Bataille exposes eroticism
and its importance in human life, but there exists another way out, another
valve to neutralize the suffocation of rational existence. Eroticism with its
underlying desire is directional; it is directed toward expected pleasure.
In general, the irreducible surprise encountered in properly aesthetic expe-
rience comes as a bonus. One might desire it, but it is a desire for surprise
 Desire and Excess 33

as such, not fixed in any objective way—it cannot be objectively fixed;

otherwise, it would contradict itself. Thus, it comes seemingly effortlessly:
I do not work for it, I do not spend any energy on it, I do not hold my breath
for it. And yet, when experienced, it brings the world to me—without longing
for death, to be thrown again into the eternal continuity of being, I experi-
ence the little birth leaving my mark on the eternal flow of continuity. Emily
Dickinson writes, “Because I could not stop for Death,/ He kindly stopped for
me.” Indeed, I do not want to stop for Death—He will stop for me, anyway.
In the meantime I allow myself to be irreducibly surprised by being acceptive
and by not shunning myself from the world, from the beyond of my limited
existence. The bonus character of the irreducible sur-prise or over-getting
via exceeded expectation, of getting something that I absolutely did not
bargain for, imprints the encounter with aesthetic disinterestedness in which
everything is at stake. The irreducible excess over expectation is beyond the
dichotomy of equilibrium and disequilibrium.
Bataille stresses the necessary character of transgression and transcendence
related to erotic desire. In his Preface to “Madame Edwarda” he writes,
“If there is nothing that transcends us, transcends us in spite of ourselves,
something that at all costs ought not to be, we shall not attain the insensate
moment toward which we are striving and which we are at the same time
resisting with might and main.”71 The excess related to transcendence attains
its significance by running contrary to our “ordinary” self and by projecting
the sweet flavor of forbidden fruit. However, what if something transcends us
without being in spite of ourselves, without the constraint that it ought not to
be? Irreducible excess over expectation simply transcends me as an aesthetic
transcendence, whereby I do not resist the proof of my limitation. On the con-
trary, I am acceptive to it. This is why we like surprises that follow excesses
beyond expectations, and we like being in awe.
Levinas encounters (in pure passivity) the irreducible otherness that
catapults him outside being and beyond essence. For him, the only thread to
which one holds, in order to be able to return to the totality of being and its
consciousness, is the responsibility for the other. This responsibility is enjoy-
ment and vulnerability combined. Bataille encounters (in pure activity) the
transcendent continuity of being. The only thread to which one holds, to return
to (discontinuous) life, is excess, because “the being within us is only there
through excess, when the fullness of horror and joy coincide.”72 While Levinas
survives the encounter thanks to responsibility, Bataille survives it thanks to
excess. Excess is necessary for transcendence as exceeding, and exceeding
creates something irreducibly new. But, excess should be as much related to
birth as it is to death. The nature of excess defies strict classification, yet when
considering the irreducible excess over expectation that results in irreducible
surprise, what gives it the aesthetic flavor is the sense of openness and awe.
34 Chapter 1

Bataille contrasts inner experience as a state of ecstasy or rapture that

cannot be put properly in words, to the ethical, scientific, and aesthetic expe-
riencing that has external goals. For example, for him, the aesthetic attitude
serves the purpose of finding enriching states. This characterization might be
accurate, but, in the encounter of irreducible excess over expectation, there
is no prior goal: the encounter is neither pre-meditated nor utilitarian. Desire
as the expectation of the irreducible exceeding of expectation is merely a
forward orientation, and not the goal.
The essential, for Bataille, is “the extreme limit of the ‘possible,’”73 which
is that point where “one cannot conceive of the possibility of going further.”74
This extreme limit is fundamentally important because “without the extreme
limit, life is only a long deception, a series of defeats without combat fol-
lowed by impotent retreat—it is degradation.”75 The extreme limit of the
“possible” implies the endpoint of the possible, where possibility ceases to
be. But, how does the “possible” start? Life is an equal degradation without
new starts. An encounter resulting in irreducible surprise indicates a new
beginning, and adds to a density of the “possible.”
Bataille opposes poetry to the experience of the extreme limit of the
possible. Experiencing the extreme limit requires decisiveness to go to
the end, to experience rupture, without too much contemplation. “Poetic
femininity,” for him, is characterized by succumbing to words and being
decisionless, and cannot compare with the experience of the extreme limit
of the possible. As Bataille puts it, a poet is raped by words. However,
why wouldn’t it be possible for the poet and the words mutually consent to
engage in “erotic” play, sometimes reaching the extreme limit? Or, from
the reader’s point of view, why wouldn’t poetry be a rupture, as the nega-
tion of the possible, resulting in the irreducible surprise engendered in the
encounter? Bataille would not agree. He writes, “The extreme limit . . . is
never literature. If poetry expresses it, the extreme limit is distinct from it:
to the point of not being poetic, for if poetry has it as an object, it doesn’t
reach it. When the extreme limit is there, the means which serve to attain
it are no longer there.”76 Maybe the extreme limit is evasive and “we can’t
really attain it.”77 I agree with this assessment, although it is a matter of
interpretation what the extreme limit is. When experiencing irreducible
excess over expectation as a rupture and a pause, as the freeze and the blind
spot of my (inadequate) sensibility, I do and I do not reach the extreme
limit. In one instant I still did not reach it, in a subsequent instant I am
already recuperating from the encounter and acknowledging newness in
awe and surprise. The extreme limit is the pause or rupture between desire
(i.e. expectation of the irreducible exceeding of expectation) and surprise.
As a rupture, it is inaccessible to me; it somehow got lost in the amnesia of
the instant of pause.
 Desire and Excess 35

Bataille’s “schema of the . . . pure experience” resembles in some way the

proposed properly aesthetic experience. He writes, “As long as ipse perse-
veres in its will to know and to be ipse, anguish lasts, but if ipse abandons
itself and knowledge with it, if it gives itself up to non-knowledge in this
abandon, then rapture begins.”78
Bataille’s description is akin to the perception of the properly aesthetic
experience, except for the following: as ipse I do not abandon myself because
the experience does not start consciously—I am taken by the irreducible
exceeding of expectations. It is not the case that I search for a specific excess;
excess approaches me. I do not experience rapture—it is a pause or rupture
that leaves me in an instant of pure passivity. Upon recuperation I appropriate
this experience of rupture in surprise and awe and with some kind of respect.
This is not respect for the other in moral terms; it is the respect for otherness,
acknowledging the newness and the power of whatever surpasses my limited
existence. Such an instance of the properly aesthetic experience is a reminder
that I do not live in a closed system where all is predictable and subject to
knowledge. The encounter adds absolutely nothing to the objectivity of my
knowledge since its facticity is fleeting, but what I do get is a sense of open-
ness. If a presence reveals to me more than what is contained in its objective
presentation, then I must be somehow significant. On the other hand, this
excess points to my insignificance because of my limitation. This intertwin-
ing of significance and insignificance reveals one’s humanity.
Such a chance encounter might have a bigger importance in one’s life
than a carefully prepared meeting with an up-front and clearly calculated
utility. Actually, Bataille said something poignant that reverberates along
these lines, “But where others may see a trap, I see the sovereignty of chance.
Chance, inescapably the final sentence, without which we are never sovereign
beings.”79 Irreducible surprise in an instant annihilates my desire as being sat-
isfied (the expectation of the exceeding over expectations has been satisfied),
hence in Bataille’s vocabulary, in that instant I am a sovereign being. The
problem is that such satisfaction further feeds the resurrection of desire, again
and again, and I am thrown back into the circle. Bataille would agree with this
formulation. He distinguishes art from knowledge (or a well-defined project).
A work of art is a project, but it is not as harmonious and clean-cut as knowl-
edge would be; art opens a door to dissonance, and hence spills over the limits
of the project. Artistic impulse is to go beyond, to create something new, a
presence that spills over its physical limitations; this impulse is basically the
desire to annul desire. Yet, it is at the same time a desire to provoke desire, to
arouse and to stimulate desire due to the presence that cannot be pinpointed.
Bataille acknowledges the newness inherent in ecstasy because ecstasy
would have no meaning for the subject “if not that it captivates, being new.”80
Also, even if one is seeking ecstasy, the ecstasy is provoked by the outside.
36 Chapter 1

Bataille writes, “There exists an irreducible discord between the subject seek-
ing ecstasy and the ecstasy itself. However, the subject knows ecstasy and
senses it—not as a voluntary direction coming from itself, but like the sensa-
tion of an effect coming from the outside.”81 Hence, the outside is required to
provoke my sensation, regardless how desperately I might seek it—I cannot
do it by myself. The provocation triggers excess over my expectation that by
necessity has to be provoked from the outside. However, in a properly aes-
thetic encounter one is not seeking ecstasy; the encounter is an instant of pure
passivity preceded by desire as the expectation of the unexpected. The experi-
ence itself brings disequilibrium—a positive one—that affects and rearranges
the order of things in one’s life.
Bataille gives the account of a properly aesthetic encounter on the Stresa
pontoon bridge in Italy, where he unexpectedly heard “voices of an infinite
majesty.” It was a broadcast of a chorus singing Mass. He describes the expe-
rience using the following phrases

“I remained frozen on the spot . . . . an instant of transport occurred . . . The

sacred nature of the incantation only made firmer a feeling of strength, made
one cry out even more to the sky and to the point of rupture the presence of a
being exultant in its certitude as though assured of its infinite chance.”82

Another similar experience he mentions is when hearing Don Juan for the
first time, “. . . as though the skies opened up—but the first time only, for
afterwards, I expected it: the miracle no longer had effect.”83
These are the types of experiences considered in the present work and, unlike
in Bataille’s work, are considered here in their own right. For Bataille such
experiences “express the movement which proceeds from exultation (from its
blatant, carefree irony) to the instant of rupture,”84 and attain their “full mean-
ing at the moment of expiation (moment of anguish, of sweat, of doubt).”85
The authority to justify inner experience must be expiated; there is no objective
authority as there is over a project. For Bataille an instance of properly aesthetic
experience is expiatory, serving almost as a “safety flotation device.” It seems
true that an instance of properly aesthetic experience when invoked can serve
as a way out, as a surrogate when speaking of the unspeakable. After all, with
its instantaneous rupture such an experience is closest to an ecstatic experience.
However, this account does not encompass the whole picture. Let me
propose an inversion. Suppose that one experienced terror (or anguish, or
doubt, or pain) and then an aesthetic surprise crosses her path. The anguish
might enforce and magnify the impact. Of course, in another direction, due
to anguish, one might be incapable of experiencing surprise. Assuming that
one indeed does experience surprise, maybe then if one starts from a very low
point in life, the impact of surprise might be stronger, the senses might be more
 Desire and Excess 37

receptive. Bataille himself describes how he felt very sick and “at the end of a
contemptible odyssey”86 prior to experiencing the surprise on the Stresa pon-
toon bridge. In such a case it is conceivable that a moment of terror, or a period
of anguish, attains its “true meaning” when it is used to magnify the pleasure
one gets upon recuperating from an irreducible surprise. Hence, instead of
using aesthetics to diminish the blow of anguish or dread, it is conceivable to
use anguish or dread to magnify the aesthetics of the encounter. When I feel
vulnerable, I might be more susceptive to otherness. This susceptibility sug-
gests the intertwining of pain and joy, of ups and downs, of birth and death.
And then, there is a third possibility. When I am in a relatively balanced
mode without terror on my shoulders and without anxiety wrapped around
my fragility, but also without ecstatic joy or exuberant and vivacious energy
to the point of bursting; when I am in a simple contemplative mode with the
underlying thought that “it’s a wonderful life” after all (and despite all), that
life is wonderful only because it is life—simple and plain, where complexity
shows its true nature—I might then be in the most sincere mode for experi-
encing a properly aesthetic encounter. This seems to hold for the experience
of contemplation of which Kant speaks. What I feel is fairness (so, it is ethical
to some extent, after all) to give its due to a properly aesthetic encounter, in
a fundamentally disinterested way, without projections or utilitarian flavor.
My desire, as the expectation of irreducible excess over expectation, can be
generic, not a way out or a way in: just a pure childlike desire without an
underlying strategy. It might be a propensity of human nature to go beyond,
to go beyond for no particular reason; hence a desire to do so, without any
specific goals in mind. But, we also have a life-preserving impulse, despite
non-productive expenditures. Bataille says that we want to experience death,
but without ceasing to live. Maybe it is human to seek assurances to still have
a firm ground beyond one’s feet, or to at least recover one’s ground upon
letting everything go. Different personalities seek different ways out, be they
through ethics, aesthetics, consciousness, truth, beauty, etc. Whereas Levinas,
upon his return from beyond being, resorts to ethics via responsibility for the
other, Bataille seems to resort to aesthetics to expiate his ecstatic torment.
Bataille writes, “Rupture is the expression of richness. The insipid and
weak man is incapable of it.”87 Without rupture there is no real growth.
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases in a closed
system. Hence, without something breaking into the closed system, into the
totality of being, existence would adhere to a lifeless schema, and the branch
on which one sits would break. In addition to aesthetic experiences, Bataille
recognizes the power of laughter to create rupture. For his purposes, laughter
actually serves much better than aesthetics, since laughter allows “intense
communication” among humans because absurdity doesn’t know separations.
Each ipse is separated within its own consciousness, but in absurdity such a
38 Chapter 1

separation is annihilated—absurdity is shared by everyone in the same way.

Laughter is intrinsically connected to anguish, or, as Bataille puts it, “Shared
laughter assumes the absence of a true anguish, and yet it has no other source
than anguish.”88
In telling the “Tale of a Partly-Failed Experience,”89 Bataille starts with
the description of an instance of properly aesthetic experience. He writes,
“At the very least, as I had passed suddenly from inattention to surprise,
I felt this state with more intensity than one normally does and as if another
and not I had experienced it.”90 After mentioning another such state, Bataille
concludes matter-of-factly, “I was far from knowing what I see clearly today,
that anguish is linked to [such states].”91 And this works well for Bataille: the
meaning given through knowledge is fleeting, the real significance can never
be encapsulated in a discontinuity detached from the eternal continuity of
being. Anguish, as a directive that forces one to break the bondage of a sys-
tem, subtends all exulting experiences and engenders one’s heightened sense
of well-being, although this is only temporarily a sense of well-being and of
“banal felicity.” The problem with such states for Bataille is the accompany-
ing wish to prolong them, to prolong their “felicity.” This wish is an indica-
tion that I and my attention still have a hold, a grip over being, and that the
unknown cannot be reached; I am still a subject enjoying an object.
For the current consideration of the properly aesthetic experience, the
whole stake is in the moment when “I had passed suddenly from inattention
to surprise.” What is indispensable is the experience of rupture, of the gulf
between inattention and surprise, building up surprise on the way to restora-
tion and recuperation. The rupture results from the encounter with immediacy
and signals the possibility of a new beginning, redrawing the boundaries of
my experience.
Bataille wants to use such “partially-failed” experiences to somehow attune
himself to the possible experiencing of the “unknown,” the non-objectivity
of the ultimate depths of human nature in which life is coincident with death,
and in which the discontinuity of being approaches the eternal continuity of
death. Trying to express the evasive moment of the passage from discontinu-
ity to continuity, Bataille writes that, “. . . at this moment which hardly lasted,
the movement of flight was so rapid that the possession of the “point” which
usually limits it, was from the start surpassed, so that, without transition, I had
gone from a jealous embrace to utter dispossession.”92
And here Bataille and I part ways—which only confirms the fragility of
this condensed point embracing pain and joy, life and death. What Bataille
describes is what I try to bring out in this work, called properly aesthetic
experience. Bataille and I share the experience of the moment “that hardly
lasted,” the blind spot that is a rupture. The difference is that Bataille is drawn
toward this moment, puts all his efforts and powers of inner experience in the
 Desire and Excess 39

service of being able—albeit in vain—to peek into this blind spot, to observe
the point as an ipse. He tries “to grasp once again in vain the ungraspable
which had definitely just escaped.”93 Bataille wants to experience death,
without ceasing to live; this is the extreme limit of the “possible.” I, on the
other hand, do not want to stop for death—it will stop for me, anyway. I like
and cherish this hardly-lasting, ungraspable moment of pause during which
I, as well as my ipse, am annihilated. I do not seek it specifically, apart from
my being open as a squid with tentacles flowing in all directions, in a state of
a lightly-veiled exuberance due to the silly thought of gratitude for just being
alive. The moment of “recuperation” and the awe of experiencing annihila-
tion gives me an experience of birth, the feeling of a fresh, seductive moun-
tain brook streaming into the slightly lazy river that I am, stirring its waters
to create the foam through which the sun’s reflection is magnified a thousand
times over . . . I look forward to the surprise.
Bataille writes, “Suddenly, I stood up and was completely taken . . . the
new chance experience answered to nothing which one could have evoked in
advance.”94 So, forget initiation, or preparation to reach the “point” en route to
experiencing the “unknown”—what matters is, after all, the sudden, irreduc-
ible surprise that has it all. The problem for Bataille is that upon recuperation,
when the words take over, the “exactitude” comes back and “we discover in
ourselves that which is not yet consumed and will not be able to be consumed,
not being commensurate to the fire.”95 The opposing circumstances of want-
ing complete annihilation and of not being able to achieve it, create a feeling
of shame and exhaustion. And a desire that cannot be quenched. It is prob-
ably a function of where one is with regard to life as such, when the shock of
encounter ceases and the rupture starts to be overcome. One can either feel
gratitude and respect for life and its mysterious surprises, adding density to
the flow, or one can feel the inability of finite existence to supersede life, to
go beyond—and yet to be. But this point of difference is so tenuous, so labile
and unstable, that the feeling encompasses both seemingly opposed senses of
joy and pain. This is why I sense that Bataille and I speak of the same experi-
ence; there is maybe only a small shift in emphasis of this experience: while
Bataille thirsts for the moment preceding the pause (or, in his vocabulary, the
moment of continuity and “little death”), I thirst for awakening immediately
after the pause, for the “little birth.”
At the end of Inner Experience Bataille resorts to poetry and to Proust’s
fascination with time. He links poetry to sacrifice: in poetry words are sacri-
ficed, they lose their everyday meaning; hence “poetry leads from the known
to the unknown.”96 However, the sacrifice of words is insufficient for reaching
the “extreme limit”—poetry is “the most accessible sort” of sacrifice. But,
this assertion is negated by the writing of Proust who wants to tame the time
that is the ultimate protector of the unknown. When a sound, a smell, or some
40 Chapter 1

other sensation evokes a past instant, the continuity of time is ruptured, and
this instant attains a greater duration. When the smell of sweet basil suddenly
transports me to a past almost forgotten, to a girl holding a stalk of basil and
my grandma’s hand, walking toward the church on a dusty country road, in
that instant my state itself becomes an “object” in memory. The objectivity
of the remembered scene falls into the background, while the arresting of
time fills the void of memory. The annihilation of objectivity characterizes all
instances of properly aesthetic experience—they become indistinguishable,
which is as close as one can come to “the unknown,” to the “continuity” of
being, to the “extreme point.” Such sensations are impressions, different from
knowledge. Poetic images bring back past impressions, where the “I” sur-
vives and relates the images to itself. Yet, the feeling of desire as absence
of satisfaction persists and opposes the fulfillment of the impression. The
contradictory nature of desire, for fulfillment and for non-fulfillment, keeps
poetry beyond a simple sacrifice of words. Not only poetry, but reminiscences
also maintain desire. Both reminiscences and poetry deal with the world of
images, or of “the known which gives it form.”97 Hence, they cannot lead to
the ultimate sacrifice that is the image-less void of the unknown. Yet, Bataille
ends with a note of recovery: a ray of light asking him gently to raise a hand
dropped in distress. If the collapse is not irrecoverable and one can return, the
rupture (or pause) creates a beginning, a new thread added to life’s weave.
Although the rupture is experienced as pleasure at first, by the necessity of
unquenched desire such experience soon creates a fertile ground for new
encounters with irreducible otherness, by exceeding expectations, suddenly,
finding one unprepared, over and over again.

ARTISTIC PRESENTATION OF TRANSGRESSION:

EROTICISM OF DUCHAMP

Bataille was a contemporary of Duchamp, and they both were initially asso-
ciated with Breton and surrealism, but later on dissociated from Breton and
went their separate ways. They did not seem to influence each other, but both
put a considerable emphasis on eroticism, a term indicating the propensity of
human nature for unquenchable desire, for the wish to go beyond boundar-
ies and accustomed ways of living and understanding. Eroticism underlines
a wish for satisfaction, and the impossibility of holding on to it, since the
instant of satisfaction eliminates desire: desire as such can never be satis-
fied. Both Bataille and Duchamp stress the value of laughter in dealing with
anguish and insecurity. Both stress the role of chance in surpassing expecta-
tions. Bataille acknowledges the power of aesthetic encounters, specifically
those with poetry, to create “rupture” (moving away from well-established
 Desire and Excess 41

paths), and Duchamp’s oeuvre is based on the wish to force the viewer/reader
to think differently, outside of a box, using parody and verbal puns.
In Duchamp’s oeuvre eroticism appears in many forms, and he states that
eroticism should be considered as respectable an ism as any other. Eroticism
is related to the desire that can never be completely quenched and that defies
representation by a fixed image. Since it is never fixed, but vibrant, uncontain-
able, and outside complete grasp, it serves as the perfect example with which
to address what is outside of purely retinal experience. The problem with
such desire is that, in the moment it is satisfied, it is lost—hence, in effect, it
can never be satisfied and serves as a perpetuum mobile. For Duchamp, eroti-
cism can be viewed as a way out of conventions, of static representations.
He wanted to present eroticism’s inherent dynamics, hence his work is often
taken with the “eroticism of precision” of the machine, avoiding “all formal
lyricism.”98 This type of attention to machinic eroticism certainly relates
to Duchamp’s fascination with optical machinery, vibrations and constant
movement, illusions of added dimension and volume, and disdain for purely
visual effects (retinal), the “pleasing” and the “useful.”
In a book following the colloquium dedicated to Duchamp and eroticism,
Mark Decimo writes, “Eroticism is the tension that allows us to discover the
other as we have never before imagined, charged with an unspoken—and sex-
ual—function . . . . Eroticism is the very instant when the “click” takes place,
the rendezvous, the moment when our vision changes and approaches what is
there, before our eyes, in a new way.”99 Hence, eroticism is related to desire
and to the capacity to be astonished. Duchamp was a combination of a painter
and a researcher, an inquiring mind, on the lookout for exceptions. How does
one bring out his or her capacity to be surprised, to be astonished, and to see
things in a different way? How does one surpass customary representations,
both objective and linguistic? After all, as Decimo writes, “We are done with
life, checkmate—intellectually dead—the day that capacity to be astonished
no longer functions and we accept the obvious, apparent, conventional inter-
pretation. The very image of dépassement and what, according to Duchamp,
life should be, intellectual life, are one and the same: Eroticism. Eros, c’est
la vie.”100
When faced with something so basic to human life, and with the history
of artworks and literary works glorifying everlasting love and being deadly
serious about human sexual relations, full of larger-than-life characters and
emotional and lyric representations, it might not be surprising that an inquisi-
tive artistic mind such as that of Duchamp turned to parody and humor. After
all, irony, parody, and laughter are great shields against the seriousness of
human existence, as Bataille would agree. In addition to Duchamp’s art-
works, the introduction of his alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, speaks eloquently
about Duchamp’s fascination with gender relations, outside the “official”
42 Chapter 1

view of a dominant male and a submissive female. In fact, his complete

oeuvre is an attempt to think differently, to see beyond accustomed ways of
seeing, to get to the bare, naked, human existence, apart from the dictates of
customary and everyday “rules.”
Reference to his two masterpieces, The Large Glass and Given101 will
allow us to elaborate a bit on Duchamp’s relationship to eroticism and trans-
gression, and to relate Duchamp’s work to the views of Bataille and Deleuze.
Duchamp’s term inframince (ultra thin, bellow thin) indicates something that
can be felt, but hardly described. For example, “The warmth of a seat (which
has just been left) is inframince.”102 Another note indicates “inframince sepa-
ration,” as a separation in two senses, of interval and screen, of male and
female. This separation, ultra-thin separation, results in a delay in achieving
identity between the two terms. This concept seems to be close to Deleuze’s
consideration of difference. The small difference that will never go away, in
turn keeps both desire and the inability to achieve closure, complete satisfac-
tion, and it leads us back to eroticism.
Duchamp worked on The Large Glass from 1915 to 1923, declaring it
unfinished and turning away from art to play chess. The understanding of
this work is impossible without the notes that Duchamp published in 1934
as The Green Box. The elaborate machinery of the Bride’s unsatisfied desire
and her Bachelors’ inability to satisfy her is composed of a number of sepa-
rate works (such as Chocolate Grinder, Malic Moulds, Oculist Witnesses,
Sex Cylinder, etc.),103 both in physical form (composed of oil paint, varnish,
lead foil, lead wire and dust on two cracked glass plates), as well as in written
form (notes and sketches).104 Being at the same time a parody of desire, and
the acknowledgment of its grip which makes us vulnerable and unable to con-
trol it, The Large Glass is a first-rate example of an artistic activity that is as
much mental as it is visual. It would be in vain to try to decipher it (and such
an attempt would defy its purpose) because it does not succumb to a closed
system—elements of various relationships (male/female, strong/weak, domi-
nant/obedient, mechanical and algorithmic/aleatory and random) emanate
from this work, making it enigmatic and surprising. Looking at Duchamp’s
notes for The Large Glass, the word “desire” appears many times. In describ-
ing the Bride, Duchamp writes about the “. . . blossoming of this virgin who
has reached the goal of her desire . . . It is, in general, the halo of the Bride,
the sum total of her splendid vibrations: graphically there is no question of
symbolizing by a grandiose painting this happy goal—the Bride’s desire.”105
The Large Glass seems to present desire as fuel for an irrational machine.
It cannot be deciphered without notes given in The Green Box, we need the
explanation, some pointers to help in experiencing the delay from visual
comprehension to mental understanding. Breton gave one of the first reviews
on this work in the article “Phare da la mariee” [Lighthouse of the Bride]
 Desire and Excess 43

that appeared in the journal Minotaure in 1934. He wrote, “In this work it
is impossible not to see at least the trophy of a fabulous hunt through virgin
territory, at the frontiers of eroticism, of philosophical speculation, of the
spirit of sporting competition, of the most recent data of science, of lyricism
and of humor.”106 Breton obviously recognized the multidimensionality of
The Large Glass, its relation to mental efforts and technological develop-
ments, as well as its eroticism that is only augmented and made lyrical
through parody and humor.
Duchamp’s last work, Given, made in secrecy over twenty years
(1946–1966) and seen only after Duchamp’s death, is a complex installa-
tion at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is a mixed media assemblage,
comprised of a wooden door, bricks, velvet, aluminum, iron, glass, Plexiglas,
linoleum, cotton, electric lamps, gas lamp, etc.107 The spectator has to peep
through two small holes in an old wooden door, starting the experience as a
voyeur. He sees a brick wall with a hole in it through which a naked female
torso is holding a gas lamp in the foreground, and a lush landscape with a
waterfall in the background. Due to its realistic presentation, without the need
for verbal explanation, yet dealing again with eroticism, Given has often been
described as the alter ego of The Large Glass. Many associations between
the two works can be made, for example, Michael Betancourt writes, “The
fixed perspective/view places the audience looking through the door not only
in the role of voyeur, but shifts the spectator into the role of the bachelors in
the Large Glass.”108
What is seen in Given are more or less realistic shapes, so one could ask,
what happened to Duchamp’s aversion toward the retinal pleasing of the eye?
However, this work, pointing in numerous artistic and philosophical direc-
tions, and referencing Duchamp’s previous works, speaks to the artistic need
for continual reinvention, to keep on addressing an elusive subject in ever
new ways, yet to provide clues (only speculated clues) as to its significance.
Eroticism as a motivating force lurking underneath social and visual conven-
tion, as a desire for intimacy with another human being, but forever slightly
separated in time (delay) and space (inframince), so that desire can persist—
such eroticism emanates from Duchamp’s works in his efforts to challenge
questions of artistic production and evaluation or admiration. With primacy
given to eroticism’s driving force, and with a turn to laughter that diminishes
the anguish felt when faced with such a basic drive, Duchamp invites com-
parison with Bataille. Duchamp’s art is discussed by Lyotard, and in summa-
rizing his comments on Duchamp’s two masterpieces, Lyotard writes,

Compendium: you can say all that ex tempore. That is, the laying bare: before
it, the body is hidden from the gaze; after it, it is exposed to it. It is the instant
of transformation or metamorphosis of this before into this after. It is graspable
44 Chapter 1

only as this limit. So: two “solutions.” That of the Glass, where the gaze comes
always too soon, because the event is “late,” the corpus remaining to be stripped
without end. With that of Given, it’s the gaze that arrives too late, the laying
bare is finished, there remains the nudity. Now makes a hinge between not yet
and no longer. That goes without saying for any event, erotic, artistic, political.
And does not give place to mysticism.109

Lyotard’s statement points to the impossibility of presenting immediacy, the

moment of break, of the leap from not yet to no longer. Artistic efforts testify
to the allure of capturing the impossibility of immediacy and of going beyond
descriptive representations. The break encountered in representational capa-
bility is not something mystical, transcendental, or metaphysical. As already
said, the break is a very prosaic phenomenon, experienced daily in numerous
contexts, so that experiencing a break in my representational capabilities that
results in surprise is nothing out of the ordinary. I can speculate on what is
going on in the break separating my desire (not yet) and my surprise (no lon-
ger), and can talk about passivity more passive than any other passivity,
a neutrality, a commonality between myself and my surroundings as the con-
tinuity on a level different from the discontinuity of separated beings. I can
speculate about “the space of literature” and “the plane of consistency”—
these are philosophical speculations when trying to say the unsayable, to
express something I did not experience. However, speculation about the leap
from not yet to no longer, resulting in the transformation of my experiential
space and in event generation, is indispensable for understanding the properly
aesthetic encounter with irreducible newness.

BLANCHOT AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF IMMEDIACY

The question of literature, of writing, is an evasive one: in taking a “pen”

I assert my “power,” my will and determination to express something impor-
tant, an “eternal truth”; yet, I feel insecure and somehow lost in the elusive
text that emerges beneath my hands, realizing right away that my task and my
effort are prone to limitations and bound for insignificance. The more I strive
to be relevant, the more I sense a distant laughter neutralizing my relevance
and neutralizing the opposites (truth-untruth, relevance-irrelevance) by an
ethereal veil of indifference. This indifference is not pure indifference as
opposed to difference: it is indifference in a state of flux which shows itself
to be a core of difference and relevance. And this feeling is indispensable
and priceless.
The question of the exigency of writing is crucial within Blanchot’s oeuvre:
why does one write and how is this related to creativity? What is the space
 Desire and Excess 45

of literature? Blanchot writes, “. . . the work is a work only when it becomes

the intimacy shared by someone who writes it and someone who reads it, a
space violently opened up by the contest between the power to speak and the
power to hear.”110 The work (as opposed to the book, the product) is a relation
in which the two parties communicate in proximity apart from objectivity.
Whereas everyday language uses words as instruments to convey information
and to designate the universality of concepts, “essential” or poetic words are
ends in themselves, indifferent to utilitarian purposes. Because they are not
constrained by either fixed meanings or concern for the objectivity of knowl-
edge, they carry wider significance, unconstrained and unlimited in what they
say to me or to you. Because a poetic word cannot be subordinated to a fixed
meaning, it does not exist in a purely objective way and it remains irreducibly
other. It can surprise us every time anew, subsisting in the interval between
possibility and impossibility. The nature of the poetic word coincides with
the work of art in general: a work of art defies the incarceration of fixed and
universal meaning, projecting a sense of indifference regarding instrumental-
ity, yet this indifference carries in itself the core of relevance.
Blanchot emphasizes the irreducible difference between concepts of
beginning and origin. Regarding the origin, he writes, “The central point of
the work is the work as origin, the point which cannot be reached, yet the
only one which is worth reaching.”111 As origin, the work is beyond, sur-
passing the artist’s intentions and the receiver’s comprehension. As argued
in the present study, a receiver attains closest proximity to an artwork in a
properly aesthetic encounter when one is blinded or overwhelmed by the
overabundance of presence that reveals itself, resulting in a pause that anni-
hilates one’s sensibility. This pause is the origin preceding the beginning.
The beginning only starts upon recuperation, when the senses start function-
ing again, the images emerge from the receiver’s blindness, and objectivity
and appropriation by one’s understanding step in. The origin is never reach-
able—it can only leave a trace (to employ a much-used word by Levinas and
later Derrida). The trace in a properly aesthetic encounter, as something that
points toward the encounter’s unreachable origin, is the feeling of irreduc-
ible surprise in which one is—at the same time—absolutely insignificant and
absolutely important: insignificant as a witness to something that irreducibly
exceeds my limited existence, and important as being worthy of experienc-
ing irreducible otherness. Hence, a work of art (or any trigger of properly
aesthetic experience, as is found in the environment) sets off the unreach-
able origin that shatters the established order of things in one’s world.
The irreducible surprise as the trace of the origin of the aesthetic encounter
marks the starting point of the beginning of aesthetic/cultural or aesthetic/
ethical experience, and the appreciation of art, or environment, or society,
can commence.
46 Chapter 1

Blanchot links the necessity of writing to the necessity of dying and writes,
“Artist is linked to the work of art in the same way in which the man who
takes death for a goal is linked to death.”112 Death can be viewed either as a
possibility, or as something ungraspable. In suicide, one mistakes one death
for another: one views death as its own possibility, which it is not because
death is the impossibility of a possibility. Similarly, the artist takes a book
for the work, which it is not because a book is the impossibility of a work.
Dying includes a “radical reversal”: death as “my power” when I am still
alive, becomes my impossibility in an instant, “the unreality of the indefi-
nite.”113 There is a difference between suicide and work: “Suicide is oriented
toward this reversal as toward its end. The work seeks this reversal as its
origin.”114 The artist driven by the exigency of writing produces a book as his
or her possibility; the book announces the expulsion of the author from the
interiority of the work, attaining separate subsistence in the literary space;
the author becomes just the first receiver of the work, indistinguishable from
other receivers. This is the origin of a work, this reversal from the constrained
artist’s space to the indefinite literary space. And why is one drawn to writ-
ing? Blanchot writes, “Writing begins with Orpheus’s gaze.”115 Orpheus
couldn’t do otherwise than turn back, despite the tragic consequence of losing
Eurydice; the desire was too strong and no constraint or law could annul it.
This is the inspiration for Blanchot, “the impatience and imprudence of inspi-
ration which forgets the law.”116 The artist cannot do otherwise than surrender
to desire, impatiently, without calculating possible consequences.
The reader of a literary work has to surrender to the work as well: one
should not look for reinforcing pillars to carry the totality of one’s experi-
ences, but should be open to the work’s communicating itself. This openness
is a kind of acceptivity (i.e. the inclination to accept) that translates to fasci-
nation—the experience of a new beginning with the trace of a properly aes-
thetic encounter, the origin, which is the work itself. The fascination with a
work of art acknowledges the infinite otherness of the work. Blanchot writes,
“. . . in a poem a possibility subsists for which neither culture nor historical
effectiveness nor even the pleasure of beautiful language can account.”117 Art
surpasses boundaries set by culture and taste; it carries the unexpected, the
excess over any possible expectation; and only as such can it be an origin.
The origin has neither beginning, nor end: it is a rupture in time, a present
with no past and no future; it is “time’s absence,”118 that cannot be appropri-
ated by any dialectic. The contradictions are neither excluded nor reconciled:
it is pure absence and indifference that invites fascination.
For Blanchot, to be “able to pronounce the word beginning,” the work
“must escape with a leap the implacable insistence of something having nei-
ther beginning nor end.”119 In fact, continues Blanchot, “the work is this leap
and . . . it immobilizes itself mysteriously between the truth which does not
 Desire and Excess 47

belong to it and the prolixity of the unrevealable which would prevent it from
belonging to itself.”120 This dual character of the leap (as an instantaneous
action indicating immediacy, and as an ungraspable passivity arrested in the
interval separating immediacy from its absence in representation) character-
izes work as origin. When the work escapes with a leap to pronounce the
word beginning, the I of the receiver (including the artist as well) starts the
recuperation from the instant of pause, from a passivity more passive than any
other passivity (to invoke Levinas, and why not, since the leap indicates the
irreducible exteriority?).
The great refusal is the refusal of death, “the temptation of the eternal.”121
Philosophy idealizes death and transforms dissolution into new beginning.
Speech is the disappearance of what “is” in order to be named, the death of
particularity necessary for the life of concepts. The challenge is “to recap-
ture this prior presence that I must exclude in order to speak, in order to
speak it.”122 The presence that must be excluded in order to speak is the
immediate presence. Blanchot writes, “the immediate, infinitely exceeding
any present possibility by its very presence, is the infinite presence of what
remains radically absent, a presence in its presence always infinitely other,
presence of the other in its alterity: non-presence.”123 The relation with the
immediate is “impossibility” because “there cannot be an immediate grasp
of the immediate.”124 It seems that Blanchot’s perception of the immediate
comes very close to the immediate as discussed in the present work. The irre-
ducible exceeding of expectation leading to a rupture in one’s sensibility and
resulting in a pause is the immediate, unreachable otherness. One receives the
immediate “in the dark,” or blinded by the excess of presence—so that there
is no “immediate grasp of the immediate.” Only when one starts recuperating
and first reacts with irreducible surprise, one can start processing the encoun-
ter with the immediate—which is by that time already gone and accessible
only in a trace, a trace “embodied” in the surprise of the encounter. The sud-
denness of surprise is “seemingly” immediate, but in effect it is already the
response to exteriority; the encounter with exteriority (i.e. the immediate) is
antecedent to it.
Blanchot characterizes impossibility as “the form of the relation with
the immediate”: the time of impossibility is the “incessant,” the instant that
never passes, without past or future. The immediate is “the ungraspable
that one cannot let go of.” Impossibility, concludes Blanchot, “is the pas-
sion of the Outside itself.”125 Now, “impossibility” is different from “non-
possibility,” similar to the “unexpected” differing from the “non-expected.”
The prefix non- designates the opposing pair to whatever comes after the
hyphen; the non-possibility is the impossibility that is closest to possibility.
Blanchot is fascinated by the impossibility, by pure neutrality, antecedent to
opposing pairs.
48 Chapter 1

The inability to grasp the immediate, and yet the incessant drive to do
so, is desire. My characterization of desire as the expectation of the irreduc-
ible exceeding of expectation seems compatible with Blanchot’s view of
“the desire of a self not only separated but happy with the separation that
makes it a self, and yet still in relation with that from which it remains sepa-
rated and of which it has no need: the unknown, the foreign, autrui.”126 The
expectation (of encountering the unexpected) is a looking forward to the other
as other and is a testimony to happiness with separation. Blanchot writes,
“Desire is separation itself become that which attracts: an interval become
sensible, an absence that turns back into presence.”127 Desire is the perpetual
expectation to encounter the unexpected, to subsequently experience the irre-
ducible surprise resulting in awe and a sense of satisfaction. In the heart of
this satisfaction is peculiar dissatisfaction—the reverberation of desire that is
not pacified and not tamed.
In discussing the limit experience, Blanchot evokes the work of Bataille
and his inner experience. In homage to Bataille, he writes, “Bataille’s entire
work expresses friendship, friendship for the impossible that is man.”128 The
exigency of dealing with the immediate, the futile effort to transgress the
boundary of possible experience and to experience the limit, manifests itself
as “an essential lack” that characterizes man, “the impossible that is man.”
The limit experience is “the experience of non-experience.”129
Regarding art and culture, Blanchot writes, “There is an a-cultural part
of literature and of art to which one does not accommodate oneself easily,
or happily. . . . art has always surpassed every acquired cultural form, to
the point that art might best be qualified as postcultural.”130 I believe this
a-cultural part of art is a consequence of the immediacy inherent in the work
of art; culture mandates norms that disallow immediacy in its unrestricted
otherness, hence it cannot encompass an artwork. Yet, art is not pre-cultural
in the sense of savage naturalness; it is post-cultural due to its own spilling
beyond cultural norms; the norms are insufficient to contain the work of art.
Culture signifies established traits and consensus, belonging to a milieu. Lit-
erature, or a work of art in general, contains the non-presentable presence, the
impossibility of standardization and the force of creativity. Culture wants to
appropriate works of art, but they—nonetheless—spill over.
Blanchot defines the neuter designating “difference in indifference.”131
It is “the gentle prohibition against dying, there where, from threshold to
threshold, eye without gaze, silence carries us into the proximity of the dis-
tant.”132 This prohibition against dying is the arrested movement of dying
and the impossibility of closure. It is beyond ontology, beyond objectivity
of presence, and beyond any presence-absence pair. The neuter, the space of
literature, or more generally, the space of art, is beyond complete comprehen-
sion, consciousness, and understanding. As such, it cannot be reached, but we
 Desire and Excess 49

know that it is because it leaves a trace. It is the impossibility characterizing

one’s life, absence revealing itself without actually disclosing itself, the ori-
gin of a beginning. It is a container of residuals when filling in the concepts,
the space for singularities that cannot fit into concepts.
Considering writing, or any creative artistic effort, the work in an
instance—suddenly—announces its transgression of the artist’s efforts and
limitations. Writing then becomes an origin, a work announced in a book
or in an art product through its absence. The absence allows receivers to be
absorbed into the neutral space where art speaks and their consciousness and
understanding do not help in attributing meaning. Only upon recuperation,
upon the irreducible surprise that follows from encountering the origin of an
artwork, can the receiver begin processing the encounter. The phenomenology
of aesthetic experience (which is not properly aesthetic any longer) can start.

FOUCAULT’S RESPONSE TO BATAILLE AND BLANCHOT

Opposed to Plato and Hegel, harboring a love/hate relation toward Kant,

and espousing admiration for Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Blanchot, Bataille, and
Deleuze, Foucault inclined toward understanding transgression, excess,
otherness, and the relation between ethics and aesthetics. In his essay titled
“A Preface to Transgression” (1963), Foucault pays homage to Bataille and
his consideration of excess, eroticism, and the never-ending desire for trans-
gression. He notes that sexuality does not point to anything beyond itself.
He writes that “sexuality is a fissure—not one which surrounds us as the basis
of our isolation or individuality, but one which marks the limit within us and
designates us as a limit.”133 Sexuality is related to the death of God because,
without God, there is no exteriority of being and one’s experience is interior
and sovereign (as Bataille argued). With God, the transcendental being,
the consideration of transgression is meaningless because, as opposed to
God, I am finite and my limit is externally (transcendentally) posed. Without
God I have to search for limitlessness inside, without safe haven to guard and
“protect” me against transgression. Sexuality and eroticism are not the same,
“And if it were necessary to give, in opposition to sexuality, a precise defini-
tion of eroticism, it would have to be the following: an experience of sexu-
ality which links, for its own ends, an overcoming of limits to the death of
God.”134 In eroticism the transcendental being ceases to be, the transgression
swallows the transcendence: I experience the internal transcendence. This is
the value of transgression, but is it liberating? Foucault writes, “Transgres-
sion is an action which involves the limit, that narrow zone of a line where
it displays the flash of its passage, but perhaps also its entire trajectory,
even its origin; it is likely that transgression has its entire space in the line it
50 Chapter 1

crosses.”135 This is Bataille’s view also, the fleeting nature of transgression,

“this moment which hardly lasted . . . . so that, without transition, I had gone
from a jealous embrace to utter dispossession.”136
Transgression or excess as considered in this work results in the break
of one’s representational capabilities and is a moment without duration, an
overwhelming intensity that paralyses one’s capabilities. Whether the excess
comes from outside (the irreducible otherness of Levinas), or whether it
comes from inside (according to Bataille, Foucault, Deleuze) is basically
irrelevant. In any case, transgression or irreducible excess creates a break,
a pause, a neutrality—following which everybody can go his or her own
way: Levinas can acknowledge the ethicality of the encounter; Bataille can
despair over the impossibility of being arrested in transgression; Foucault
can continue to elaborate on the issues of power and knowledge, genealogy
and archeology; and Deleuze can find space for improvisation. The bridge
(actually, the set of bridges) connecting seemingly disparate views is best
articulated by Blanchot: this is why he can be equally supportive of Levinas
and of Bataille, and why he is not (to my knowledge) questioned by any of
these thinkers. It is impossible to oppose Blanchot because he speaks of the
neutral space, of dissolution of all incompatibilities, inconsistencies, contra-
dictions. It seems that the closest thinker to Blanchot is Deleuze, allowing
analogies to be made between some of their key terms. Deleuze’s vocabulary
is more philosophical, while Blanchot’s is more poetical, but if “perhaps one
day this century will be known as Deleuzean,”137 it might also have a partner
in Blanchot. Foucault invokes Blanchot’s principle of “contestation,” as “a
radical break of transitivity” in which nothing is affirmed as a fact; contesta-
tion has no objective presentation—it has only a form free from any specific
content. Therefore, transitivity has to be broken since there is no objective
index to direct the transition. Foucault views transgression similarly and, in
his wish to free it from negative connotation, he writes, “Transgression con-
tains nothing negative, but affirms limited being—affirms the limitlessness
into which it leaps as it opens this zone to existence for the first time. But,
correspondingly, this affirmation contains nothing positive: no content can
bind it, since, by definition, no limit can possibly restrict it.”138
This statement on transgression can be interpreted as follows: in the pres-
ence of God transgression is related to the negative since man is a limited
creature, unlike the God. In the absence of God transgression points to one’s
capability to go over limits, hence affirming one’s limitlessness, without any
objectivity attached to limitlessness—it just indicates that one is capable of
transgression. The important wording here is “for the first time”—hence,
transgression is related to irreducible newness: one could not have been there
already because, if she had been, her act could not have been a transgres-
sion. There is no content and no objectivity in the moment of transgression,
 Desire and Excess 51

implying that one’s representational apparatus (mental, perceptual, and

emotional) is put on hold.
When does an encounter signal transgression or surpassing of the limit?
When one is not prepared for it, when the past is insufficient to provide
proper expectations or even anticipations (as projections of past into the
future). This insufficiency is not a function of experience as the space of past
encounters. One is not prepared for it, because one’s perceptual and mental
capabilities are limited but allow for transgression—which makes them lim-
itless in their capacity to acknowledge newness. The encounter contests one’s
experiential “space” and finds one unprepared. If this encounter is the nega-
tion of one’s experience, it is not the negation of a specific fact, hence it is not
a negativity to be employed in a dialectical system of negation–affirmation;
it does not affirm anything specific, it only affirms openness as such, hence
limitlessness.
Questioning the form of thought in which transgression is expressed, a form
which, claims Foucault, we carelessly call “the philosophy of eroticism,” and
asking if there is a proper language for it, analogous to dialectical language
in which contradiction is expressed, Foucault writes, “What natural space can
this form of thought possess and what language can it adopt?”139 Finding a
language for transgression seems like a contradiction—as soon as I express
my transgression in language, it is not transgression any more. And this cre-
ates uneasiness, or even embarrassment. Hence, maybe irony and parody are
the best forms by which to frame thoughts of transgression—which Bataille
understood when he claimed that laughter allows “intense communication”
surpassing subjectivity because absurdity (springing from anguish) does not
allow for the separation of individuals. As already stated, the works of Marcel
Duchamp illustrate the connections between transgression, eroticism, and
parody communicated by the language of art.
Dialectic builds upon contradiction in its thesis-antithesis-synthesis devel-
opment. Transgression and excess, as Bataille well sensed, cease to be
when achieved. It is pure immediacy which leads to the impossibility of its
representation, since each representation is mediation. Foucault puts it well,
referring to Bataille’s texts as “a dwelling place for what may already be a
ruined project.”140 Of course representing excess or transgression is a ruined
project. Try to come at it from various angles, but the first premise is that
it is a break indicated by a pause and the only “language” to describe it is
non-language—absolute silence. This observation leads to the notion of the
limit and impossibility of language. It indicates the breakup of subjectivity,
and so Foucault writes, “The breakdown of philosophical subjectivity and its
dispersion in a language that dispossesses it while multiplying it within the
space created by its absence is probably one of the fundamental structures of
contemporary thought.”141
52 Chapter 1

I am aware of the double standard in the present work since many of its
sentences are written in the first person and “I” is a common word. This
choice just underlines my inability to escape from subjectivity before and
after the break. The nameless, subject-less pause is devoid of the “I”—it is
anonymity, disinterested, and indifferent. Foucault invokes “the possibility
of a mad philosopher”142 who has the option (as an interior experience) to
transgress his philosophical being. It seems that Foucault places transgression
of being at the inner core of one’s possibilities—but why would his example
subject need to be a philosopher? Is transgression of one’s being possible for
any individual? Not everybody can produce “the non-dialectical language of
the limit,” but everybody has limitations and the possibility of being caught
unprepared, and thus of experiencing a breakup of objectivity and representa-
tion. For someone entrenched in “what you see is what you get,” such a break
might be too insignificant, the surprise afterward will not follow—and every-
thing will seem to be in order and going according to plan. What is needed
is the desire for transgression and, although this seem to be an inclination,
maybe it can be acquired to some degree through art and education, by open-
ing one’s horizons to the seemingly insignificant intensities and movements
in one’s perception.
It can be argued that excess comes from inside, as excess over one’s capa-
bilities; excess “brings to light this relationship of finitude to being.”143 Outside
presents just an occasion, and one may pass by without noticing, as one can
read a poem with the sensibility required for reading a cooking recipe, and can
look at a painting only as the adornment of a wall. In the final analysis—one is
responsible for transgression, and since transgression is nothing else than the
encounter with the Other, we are pointed again to Levinas and his discussion
of the Other. The encounter with the Other might belong to the domain of eth-
ics, but it still does not belong to the domain of morality; this encounter is the
aesthetic trigger of ethics. It is in the porous interval intertwining the inside
with the outside, the neutral interval between the opposites, containing origins.
The thinker most fascinated by this neutrality of the breaking point and
the immediacy of origin is Blanchot. He and Foucault engaged in a dialogue
and each wrote about the other. In the essay entitled Maurice Blanchot:
The Thought from Outside (1966) Foucault interprets Blanchot’s philosophi-
cal views and restates that “the being of language” opens up with the anni-
hilation of the subject because when language is employed in a discourse
about contradiction, consciousness and subject-object relation, it is subsumed
within its utilitarian function of guiding representation. Only when such
discourse is abandoned is language freed from the utility requisite to the rep-
resentational communication related to objective reality, and can it attain its
character in direct communication; it can allow communicability as such, not
merely the communication of something.
 Desire and Excess 53

An author creates a work, and a spectator/reader encounters it, provoking

a break within his or her representational capabilities—incomprehensible,
sudden, and unprepared-for. Yet, one has to have a certain disposition allow-
ing this break to happen, allowing the fortress of knowledge, consciousness,
and subjectivity to have some “weak” points, or hidden tunnels for possible
escape or possible outside infiltration (whichever direction one considers).
Is this not also the capability for surprise?
In discussing Hölderlin and in agreement with Blanchot regarding the limit
experience of joining madness and artistic work, Foucault writes, “. . . the
continuity of meaning between a work and madness can only be realized
if it is based on the enigma of similarity, an enigma which gives rise to the
absolute nature of the breaking point. The dissolution of a work in madness,
this void to which poetic speech is drawn as to its self-destruction, is what
authorizes the text of a language common to both.”144 A number of authors
write on the limit, trying to say the unsayable (e.g. Sade, Bataille), to write
about transgression. However, Blanchot is different: his writing possesses
the attractive proximity-distance feeling, illustrating what is being written
about. His writing is about writing itself, “language about the outside of
all language, speech about the invisible side of words.”145 Foucault writes,
“Attraction is for Blanchot what desire is for Sade, force for Nietzsche,
the materiality of thought for Artaud, and transgression for Bataille: the
pure, most naked, experience of the outside.”146 To experience attraction is
“to experience in emptiness and destitution the presence of the outside;” so it
is also characterizable as the desire for otherness. Foucault senses the radical
break and passivity in Blanchot’s thought, the discontinuity in the world of
representations and resemblances, but he also senses continuity on a differ-
ent level (reminiscent of Bataille). He does not mention Levinas, but Levinas
is crucial for trying to understand Blanchot’s thought. As already argued,
Blanchot’s thought thrives in the impossibility of neutral space between
Levinasian desire and Bataille’s transgression and excess—and this is why
Blanchot is so relevant to the present work.
Blanchot returns a nod by writing about Foucault, in the essay titled Michel
Foucault as I Imagine Him (1986). He emphasizes the “imperative of discon-
tinuity” in Foucault’s thought and writes, “Thus, Foucault proposed event,
series, regularity, and condition of possibility as the notions he would use to
oppose, term by term, those principles he thought had dominated the tradi-
tional history of ideas; event was opposed to creation, series to unit, regularity
to originality, and condition of possibility to meaning, that buried treasure of
concealed meanings.”147 But, he continues, it seems that Foucault’s “adver-
saries” are “somewhat outdated” because it is not, as they argue, the case
that the subject disappears; rather, Foucault’s argument is a consideration of
disappearance as such, and of the being of disappearance, which brings into
54 Chapter 1

view “a plurality of positions and a discontinuity of functions (and here we

reencounter the system of discontinuities, which, rightly or wrongly, seemed
at one time to be a characteristic of serial music).”148 Blanchot implies that
Foucault does not dismiss the notions of subjectivity and truth, but provides
ways to augment the discourse, to raise the consideration of discontinuity
to the level granted to considerations of continuity. Similarly, Schoenberg’s
serial music wanted to put dissonance in organization, to counterpose har-
mony to rule-based dissonance in order to bring out the value of dissonance.
As Schoenberg would argue, good music is not about method, it is about
substance. The augmentation of musical definition increases the possibility
for musical substance to come through.

AESTHETIC ABSENCE AS AN EXCESS OF PRESENCE:

RICOEUR AND THE USE OF METAPHOR

Metaphor presents a use of language beyond its representational aspect of

conveying information, often used in a poetic way since, as Nietzsche states,
“For a genuine poet, metaphor is not a rhetorical figure but a vicarious image
that he actually beholds in place of a concept.”149 Heidegger states that specu-
lative metaphors present revealing-concealing interplay. Metaphors precede
understanding in that the unity of something to be conveyed is grasped in
intellectual intuition (to use Fichte and Schelling’s term), before its realiza-
tion in intentional consciousness. The use of metaphor attests to the openness
of language and its possibility to disclose something, to express; it augments
meaning with expression, it says the unsayable, albeit in an indirect way.
With metaphor, a new meaning is expressed by using something already
known. Metaphor is a shortcut, a leap that bypasses analysis and reflection.
In talking about his inspiration in Ecce Homo Nietzsche writes, “The invol-
untary nature of image, of metaphor is the most remarkable thing of all: one
no longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents
itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest mean of expression. It really
does seem, to allude to a saying of Zarathustra’s, as if the things themselves
approached and offered themselves as metaphors.”150 Nietzsche stresses the
involuntary nature of the encounter, its sudden and unexpected character, and
the dissolution of the difference between complexity and simplicity, generat-
ing a feeling of the absolute. Metaphors invoke directness of communication,
when the subject-object dichotomy is annulled and “the things” approach
me with the same intensity that I approach them; communication precedes
conceptuality.
In The Rule of Metaphor Ricoeur proposes the idea that talking about evil
and finitude requires indirect and symbolic language. A purposive action can
 Desire and Excess 55

be described in ordinary language; however, description of evil requires indi-

rect words, such as “estrangement” and “bondage.” This distinction resonates
with that observed in descriptions of presence versus descriptions of absence.
Presence can be described directly, since presence has objective attributes:
the instrumental use of language can depict it. Absence, on the other hand,
has to be described indirectly, as seems to be the case when describing any
lack in general. In such cases, metaphorical and symbolic language, using the
polysemic structure of ordinary language, describes the meaning indirectly,
but reveals it in a direct way. Ordinary language is not an ideal language (as
is the language of mathematics) that is independent of context—in ordinary
language words have polysemic structure, and in different contexts provide
different meanings.
Ricoeur quotes Aristotle’s saying that a good use of a metaphor “implies
an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.”151 This statement
implies a kind of a shortcut in understanding and interpretation: something
is grasped in its totality, skipping some descriptive “steps” as would be done
when using the instrumental function of ordinary language. Such “intuitive
perception” goes beyond the objectivity of presentation and incorporates
absence as presence. Use of metaphors in art is analogous to the use of mod-
els in science—they provide a setting for disclosure. The special significance
of the metaphor is discovered in the use of the verb “to be,” because the “is”
stated in a metaphor stands at the same time for “is not.” A metaphor creates a
link between two seemingly disparate states: the objective representation, and
the absence as revealed presence. There is a discontinuity, a break “wired”
into the use of metaphor: what is objectively present is there (by objectivity),
but is also annihilated by a metaphorical statement that describes something
which “is not” there objectively. In a sense, there is a double use of the pair
“is/is not,” or “presence/absence” because it applies to both the objectivity of
representation and to the virtual setting of the metaphorical description. Due
to its dual nature and to its “split reference,” a metaphor is useful in poetry, or
in art in general. Because of its indirect relation to the work, yet more direct
than a descriptive statement could be, a metaphor allows for a proximity in
approaching an artwork that could not be attained by descriptive statements.
The use of metaphor relates to the present study because a metaphor opens
a space for a great possibility—the possibility for irreducible surprise. A met-
aphor (either a verse or image in a poem, or metaphorical imagery in paint-
ing, or a scene in a play) starts with an ordinary (or literal) meaning, and so
initially leads the spectator away from the intended meaning. Then, suddenly,
when the “intuitive perception” hits, the distance (so to speak) from the meta-
phor and the intended meaning is bigger than it would be if the representation
were described objectively, leading a spectator “by the hand.” The metaphor
is a creative deception intended to magnify the surprise at the moment of
56 Chapter 1

realization when the work is revealed. The use of metaphor incorporates the
break inherent in any beginning, a discrete start of something new. The new
meaning attained by seemingly ordinary language surprises the spectator.
A metaphor prolongs the path from sense to reference, so when there is a
sudden leap, the sense of surprise following the leap (or break) is magnified.
The concepts of reference and denotation are not synonymous, and they
differ when one identifies a meaning of something, when one proceeds from
a thing to a symbol, as is the case when one uses metaphors. Metaphor refers
but does not denote—it expresses. Ricoeur writes that “representing is the
case of denoting, and expressing is a variant by transference of possess-
ing, which is a case of exemplifying.”152 Metaphor represents by expressing
something indirectly, but this indirect route leads to a direct access of mean-
ing—which is a paradox. This indirect expression creates the conditions for
achieving proximity without hindrance from descriptive language. Proximity
is achieved by erasing bounds between interior and exterior, feeling and cog-
nition, sense and reference, and spectator and artwork. A metaphor facilitates
the leap into the work (to use Blanchot’s expression), surpassing the “middle-
man” (i.e. descriptive language tied to the objectivity of representation).
In the indirect representation by a metaphor, the language is turned on itself:
it annihilates its descriptive function, testifying to its richness and polysemy.
Poetic experience, argues Ricoeur, “expresses the ecstatic moment of lan-
guage—language going beyond itself.”153 With a metaphor, ordinary words
with established meaning are used to convey new meaning, to create a new
experience. The new meaning is not “spelled out,” leaving the possibility for
augmentation by active and creative participation of a reader or a spectator.
The metaphorical utterance is open, yet very centered, so again, it displays a
paradoxical character fit for artistic work. The metaphorical process contains
a break, a leap from one interpretation to a revelation of another, the discov-
ery of similarity in the dissimilar. It provokes the interplay of perception and
thinking, of imagination and understanding.
Ricoeur compares poetic and speculative discourses and the role of
metaphor, and asserts (in agreement with Heidegger) that there is a
difference—a poet’s metaphors differ from a philosopher’s metaphors. Poetry
(or art in general) provides a “sketch” of truth by indicating tensions “between
subject and predicate, between literal interpretation and metaphorical inter-
pretation, between identity and difference.”154 Such tensions are felt first
(hence the primacy of aesthetic encounter), triggering thinking that follows
the surprise of the encounter. To philosophically speculate “is to seek after
the place where appearing means ‘generating what grows.’”155 The appear-
ance is not restricted to an objective entity, but is viewed as appearance
in general, as a whole. Hence, speculative thought comes after the poetic
encounter, to deal with its signification for the experience.
 Desire and Excess 57

Ricoeur affords primacy to the poetic encounter, with its dialectic of con-
traction and repulsion creating proximity through the abandonment of objec-
tive appearances, which paradoxically creates distance from representations
at the same time when the utmost proximity is attained (since the dichotomy
between subject-object is erased). Philosophy, that is, speculative thinking,
then follows and tries to come to grips with the experience triggered by the
aesthetic encounter. It seems that Ricoeur’s discourse on metaphor complies
with the work of Levinas and Blanchot in its elucidation of the proximity of
the encounter with (non-objective) otherness and the neutrality of the encoun-
ter since only in such neutrality can one simultaneously achieve belonging
and distancing. The utmost proximity (which for Levinas is ethics) outside
objective appearances, and the neutrality of subject-object dichotomy (which
is distancing), precedes the speculative reflection that needs distancing to be
meaningful and valuable. The task in this work is to argue for the primacy of
the aesthetic encounter between the disparate and separated entities (a subject
or a spectator versus the environment or a work of art) leaping to proximity
erasing their objective boundaries. Metaphorical expression, employed in art
as an indirect shortcut to surpass the laborious descriptive path which spoils
the surprise, allows language (in words as in images) to express the “unsay-
able” in a direct way, creating fertile ground for a break in one’s representa-
tional capabilities since there is a break “wired” into the use of a metaphor.
If I have to leap from one reference to another, seemingly disparate, the leap
is more pronounced than if I just continue along a descriptive path. Ricoeur’s
work on the role of metaphor clarifies this “augmented” leap indispensable
to the language of art.
The movie Il Postino (Michael Radford, 1994) nicely illustrates the role
of metaphor in poetic discourse. As Neruda in exile instructs a young post-
man—a poet in the making—metaphors are used to express more forcefully
what a prosaic description cannot. The movie’s plot and its scenery converge
toward a general metaphor of poetic creativity, that is, the movie as such
can be taken as a metaphor for poetic struggle in order to express the depths
of humanity, the sacrifice and the staying power of human sensibility, the
struggles characterizing human existence.
In Oneself as Another, Ricoeur writes about Levinas’s work on other-
ness and reiterates that the Levinasian movement of the other toward me
includes a break of phenomenology and ontology. Levinas’ radical exterior-
ity breaks with representation and phenomenology in the epiphany of the
face, in the movement of the other approaching me. Levinas argues for the
primacy of the movement of the other toward me to conclude the primacy
of ethics as first philosophy. I have argued that the break in the encounter
with radical exteriority is aesthetic in the first place because it has to start
with my response—I have to overcome the breakup of my representational
58 Chapter 1

capabilities. Only by following the aesthetic impulse, can the ethical dimen-
sion start. Ricoeur seems to hold a similar view. He writes, “Now the theme
of exteriority does not reach the end of its trajectory, namely awakening a
responsible response to the other’s call, except by presupposing a capacity of
reception, of discrimination, and of recognition that, in my opinion, belongs
to another philosophy of the Same than that to which the philosophy of the
Other replies.”156
This work argues for acknowledging “a capacity of reception,” intrigued
by the moment of break when encountering radical exteriority. One can
answer the call of the Other only if one’s interiority is porous and allows
radical intrusion, from which one needs to recuperate by receiving and giv-
ing significance to the encounter. The recuperation prior to significance is the
reason why the aesthetic impulse precedes the ethical, starting the dialectic
of inside and outside, admiration and responsibility. I propose to identify the
Absolute with the beginning of irreducible surprise. Such an identification is
much more mundane than is the invocation of infinity, God, and transcen-
dental freedom, but the fact is that we all get surprised. The wish is to probe
deeper into the mystery of surprise. In surprise, immediacy as non-knowledge
persists, and it is incorporated into reflection as something outside it, escaping
complete encapsulation.

PHASES OF THE PROPERLY AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE:

DESIRE, EXCESS, PAUSE, AND RECUPERATION

When considering properly aesthetic experience, the issue at stake is the

encounter with immediate presence, with irreducible otherness from which
one has to recover. The schematic representation of the encounter with irre-
ducible otherness as the properly aesthetic encounter proposed in this work
has a prerequisite (desire), and three subsequent phases (excess, pause or
rupture, and recovery or surprise). In Proximity: Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille
and Communication Joseph Libertson juxtaposes the views of the three
philosophers as related to proximity, and to communication and alterity that
escapes comprehension, and writes: “The essential link between Bataille and
Blanchot, with their apparent annihilation of a traditionally defined interior-
ity, and Levinas, in his insistence on the irreplaceable unicity of the cogito
and of the moi in recurrence, is the fact that the general economy produces
interiority, even though its modality may be that of the impossible exi-
gency.”157 General economy is characterized by inspiration and incompletion,
and “the only rapport with alterity in proximity is the passivity of inspired
desire.”158 While Libertson provides a comprehensive analysis of the views
proposed by Levinas, Battaile and Blanchot on interiority and otherness,
 Desire and Excess 59

elucidating their differences and similarities, and relating their views to

Hegel’s and Deleuze’s views, I wish to interpret Levinas, Bataille, and Blan-
chot in relation to the proposed “phases” of the properly aesthetic experience.

1. Desire as the prerequisite: One has to be somehow acceptive, a fertile

ground for an encounter with immediacy. In the present work the prerequisite
for aesthetic acceptivity is desire characterized as the expectation of excess
that surpasses expectation. This desire is the metaphysical desire to encoun-
ter irreducible otherness. Levinas characterizes this desire with the “responsi-
bility for the other,” which is “signification which is non-indifference,”159 or
“difference which is non-indifference.”160 Bataille’s desire is the propensity
for transgression, for excess, for going contrary to ordered and rational exis-
tence. It is a desire for “irresponsibility,” if responsibility is conceived in a
vulgar way, as a compliance with the restricted economies of normative and
ordered existence. However, if responsibility is viewed on a different level as
toward “the impossible that is man,” Bataille’s desire is driven by the respon-
sibility for self. Blanchot’s desire is the exigency of writing, the allure of the
neutral space of literature designating “difference in indifference”: neither
the desire for the other, nor for myself, but the desire for annihilation of the
difference between the other and myself in neutrality without beginning and
without end.
The characterization of desire as the (formal) expectation of excess
surpassing every expectation incorporates both responsibility and non-
responsibility, and Levinas’s ethical language seems insufficient for captur-
ing the properly aesthetic side of it. Desire as the expectation of exceeding
the expectation, as a looking forward to the unexpected, that is, as expect-
ing the unexpected, points to one’s non-indifference toward the closure of
a system, a longing for otherness. This is why identifying signification of
this non-indifference with responsibility seems too restricted: I do not look
that far into the consequence of the encounter—I just desire the rupture, to
“wake up” with the feeling of irreducible surprise. One can soften the notion
of “signification which is non-indifference” and replace the strictly ethical
term “responsibility” with “responsivity,” or even “receptivity.” However,
the prefix re- usually implies going back, as in something approaches me
and I re-’act’ in one way or another. But, in my desire (which is an expecta-
tion) I look forward, not backward. I would like to capture the encounter
with newness that remains new, despite my looking forward to it. This desire
makes me acceptive as being inclined to accept the encounter with irreducible
otherness. Without desire, my sensibility is passively receptive; desire creates
my inclination toward openness; it creates a certain level of activity. Hence,
the term acceptive is a more fitting term than receptive. Putting aside ethical
connotations, the term responsibility, response-ability, indicates my capacity
60 Chapter 1

for response: this response can only come after an encounter with otherness;
it cannot characterize my desire (I further argue that the ability for response
upon an encounter with irreducible otherness is surprise). Desire considered
in this work is characterized by accept-ability that indicates its forward ori-
entation. Levinas’s theory is coherent; his subject answers the call of the
Other, hence responsibility as response-ability is justified. My subject does
not answer the call of the Other: the subject is overwhelmed by the presence
of that Other and cannot answer anything; the answer or response comes only
subsequently.
The argument in the present work is that the non-indifference embodied in
desire for the unexpected, for the immediate, is acceptivity. The consequence
of this acceptivity is the possibility of the breakup of stale existence, and the
initial response is—simply—surprise.
The characterization of desire as the expectation of the unexpected evokes
Heraclitus’s Fragment 18: “He who does not expect will not find out the unex-
pected, for it is trackless and unexplored” (Clement, Stromateis II, 17,4).161
In fact, there are a few different translations of this fragment, for example,
“If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be
sought out and difficult,” or, “If you do not expect the unexpected you will
not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.” Wheelwright trans-
lates it as “Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find [truth], for it
is hard to discover and hard to attain.”162 It seems that Fragment 18 states that
the unexpected can only be encountered if one is attentive or inclined to it, not
if one sets it as the goal of a search. The unexpected can only come as a bonus
to openness. If I make it my task to pursue the unexpected, a specific goal to
achieve—such an effort undermines itself. The incessant quest for surprise
annihilates surprise; it is a futile effort. The conscious effort to transgress
is destined for anguish in the end (as Bataille has most eloquently written).
Excess attains its full (aesthetic) impact when it is not actively pursued, but
one is just attentive enough to allow it to happen.

2. Excess. The encounter starting with irreducible excess over expectation

overflows one’s capacity for representation. This is the moment that Bataille
longs to experience—the limit of the possible, the approach of the blind spot.
Bataille’s work is a testimony to the human desire to see in the dark, to know
the unknown. For Levinas it is the startup of “the epiphany of the Other in
the face,” the announcement of exteriority in a non-symmetrical relation
with the same. For Blanchot it is the transgression at the origin of a work, in
which language leaves behind its representational function and turns on itself.
In this work, excess is viewed as the startup of a relationship with exterior-
ity, a relationship desired yet unexpected, for which one is equally prepared
and non-prepared, in which one’s activity is instantly frozen into passivity.
 Desire and Excess 61

Excess is the sudden breaking point in which objectivity is irrelevant; the

significance of the excess is the announcement of exteriority, independent
of the “text of the announcement.” Say that I expect to hear some news. The
instant the news-bearing voice cuts through silence, prior to hearing the news
itself, in the breakup of silence I already encounter the signification of excess.

3. The pause (the rupture, the break). This is the instantaneous interval defy-
ing the continuity of time. I can talk about it, but it remains an enigma; it
is—and it will always be—the impossibility of my representation. This is
the timeless “interval” that attracts Blanchot’s fascination, the impossibility
outside contradiction and non-contradiction. The pure neutrality and passiv-
ity of existence, without beginning and without end, the origin to beginning,
outside beginning. In general, a beginning indicates the startup of something
presentable, at least in words. The beginning is the beginning of something.
For example, birth is the beginning of one’s life; however its origin is in the
anonymous continuity of existence.
Characterizing something as a beginning implies that one’s (intentional)
consciousness is already at work. But, where does a beginning start, what
triggers a beginning? There has to be a point outside beginning, an indepen-
dent point or space—a pure immediacy without intimacy, without constraints
of any sort, yet containing the power to start true beginnings. Such a point is
beyond my power to represent it. Absence is a prerequisite for presence, not
the Hegelian absence as the opposite of presence that aids in the formation of
the concept of presence, but pure absence, a void, preceding the opposition
of the absence-presence pair: the common origin of both the objectivity of
absence and the objectivity of presence (the “objectivity of absence” denotes
Hegelian negativity).

4. Recuperation and surprise. This is a phase when one starts regaining the
capacity for representation and can represent, to the best of one’s abilities,
the encounter with immediacy, already gone and irretrievable. This recupera-
tion is most relevant for Levinas, due to its capacity to aid one in “identify-
ing oneself, in recovering its identity throughout all that happens to it.”163
Levinas gets at a lot—namely, at subjectivity itself. He talks about “a plane
both presupposing and transcending the epiphany of the Other in the face, a
plane where the I bears itself beyond death and recovers also from its return
to itself. This plane is that of love and fecundity, where subjectivity is posited
in function of these movements.”164 A plane indicates continuity between pre-
supposing and transcending, hence the break (transcendence) doesn’t seem to
be absolute; there is a thread connecting presupposition and transcendence.
For Levinas, that guardian of recuperation is responsibility, “signification
which is non-indifference.” Hence, it seems then that the plane of love and
62 Chapter 1

fecundity subtends the responsibility for the other. But, why love? Why
fecundity? What is more originary than that which subtends them? Fecundity
implies fertility, which in turn implies new beginnings. A new beginning can
only start as a break from continuity, otherwise it would not be characterized
as a beginning.

NOTES

1. Steven Shaviro, Passion and Excess (The Florida State University Press,
1990), 179–80.
2. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 120.
3. Ibid., 121.
4. Ibid.
5. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis
(Doquesne University Press, 1998), 50.
6. Ibid., 297.
7. Otherwise Than Being, 88.
8. Levinas writes, “Proximity is a disturbance of the rememberable time. One
can call that apocalyptically the break-up of time.” ibid., 89.
9. Totality and Infinity, 87.
10. Ibid., 83.
11. Otherwise Than Being, 91.
12. Totality and Infinity, 33.
13. Ibid., 36.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 38.
16. Ibid., 40.
17. Ibid., 132.
18. Ibid., 137.
19. Ibid., 139.
20. Ibid., 148.
21. Ibid., 149.
22. Ibid., 179.
23. Ibid., 180.
24. Ibid., 200.
25. Ibid., 203.
26. Ibid., 267.
27. Ibid., 281.
28. Ibid., 284. This point will be further discussed in the context of Bataille’s
thought.
29. Ibid., 304.
30. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (The University of
Chicago Press, 1978), 143.
 Desire and Excess 63

31. Ibid., 147.

32. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 30.
33. Ibid., 12.
34. Ibid., 13.
35. Ibid., 35.
36. Ibid., 46.
37. Ibid., 55.
38. Ibid., 62.
39. Ibid., 72.
40. Ibid., 101.
41. Ibid., 114.
42. Ibid., 117.
43. Ibid., 125.
44. Ibid., 131.
45. Ibid., 138.
46. Ibid., 139.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., 179.
49. Ibid., 182.
50. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, the
Seminar of J. Lacan, Book Xi, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (W.W.
Norton & Company, 1998), 85.
51. Slavoj Žižek, The Žižek Reader, ed. Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright
(Blackwell Publishing, 1999), 20.
52. Maurice Blanchot, “The Experience of Proust,” in The Book to Come
(Stanford University Press, 2002), 14.
53. Žižek, The Žižek Reader, 30.
54. Ibid., 31.
55. Ibid., 17.
56. Ibid., 73.
57. Ibid., 74.
58. Georges Bataille, “Visions of Excess,” in Theory and History of Literature
(University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 128.
59. Ibid., 227.
60. Literature and Evil, trans. Alastair Hamilton (Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd.,
2001), 42.
61. Ibid., 83.
62. Ibid., 84.
63. The Tears of Eros, trans. Peter Connor (City Lights Books, 2002), 23.
64. Erotism: Death and Sensuality, trans. Mary Dalwood (City Lights Books,
1986), 11.
65. Ibid., 25.
66. Ibid., 31.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., 41.
64 Chapter 1

69 Ibid., 239.
70. Ibid., 240.
71. Ibid., 269.
72. Ibid., 268.
73. Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt (State University of New York
Press, 1988), 36.
74. Ibid., 39.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid., 50.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid., 53.
79. Eroticism, 250.
80. Inner Experience, 60.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid., 75, 76.
83. Ibid., 77.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid., 76.
86. Ibid., 75.
87. Ibid., 80.
88. Ibid., 96.
89. Ibid., 112.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid., 126.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid., 127.
95. Ibid., 128.
96. Ibid., 136.
97. Ibid., 147.
98. Juan Antonio Ramirez, Duchamp: Love and Death, Even, trans. Alexander R.
Tulloch (London: Reaktion Books, Ltd, 1998), 13.
99. Mark Decimo, Marcel Duchamp and Eroticism, ed. Mark Decimo (Newcastle,
UK: Cambridge Scolars Pulishing, 2007), 2.
100. Ibid.
101. La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (The Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors, Even or The Large Glass) and Etant donnés: 1) La chute
d’eau, 2) Le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1) The Waterfall, 2) The Illuminating Gas
or Given)
102. Gavin Parkinson, “The Laughter and Tears of Eros,” in Marcel Duchamp and
Eroticism, ed. Marc Decimo (Cambridge Scolars Publishing, 2007), 156.
103. See, for example, Gloria Moure, Marcel Duchamp (New York: Rizzoli Inter-
natioal Publication, Inc., 1988), plates 78–79.
104. Marcel Duchamp, Notes and Projects for the Large Glass, ed. Arturo
Schwarz (Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1969).
 Desire and Excess 65

105. Richard Hamilton, A Typographic Version of Marcel Duchamp’s Green Box,

trans. George Heard Hamilton (New York: Jaap Rietman Inc., 1960).
106. Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1996), 298.
107. Moure, Marcel Duchamp, Plates 129–30.
108. Michael Betancourt, “Precision Optics / Optical Illusions:Inconsistency,
Anemic Cinema, and the Rotoreliefs,” EUROARTMagazine, no. 12 (2010).
109. Jean-Francois Lyotard, Duchamp’s Trans/Formers, trans. Ian McLeod
(Venice, CA: The Lapis Press, 1990), 198.
110. Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (University of
Nebraska Press, 1989), 37.
111. Ibid., 54.
112. Ibid., 105.
113. Ibid., 106.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid., 176.
116. Ibid., 173.
117. Ibid., 216.
118. Ibid., 30.
119. Ibid., 244.
120. Ibid.
121. “The Infinite Conversation,” 33.
122. Ibid., 36.
123. Ibid., 38.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid., 46.
126. Ibid., 53.
127. Ibid., 188.
128. Ibid., 205.
129. Ibid., 210.
130. Ibid., 346–48.
131. The Step Not Beyond, trans. Lycette Nelson (State University of New York
Press, 1992), 75.
132. Ibid., 76.
133. Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, trans. Donald F.
Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 30.
134. Ibid., 33.
135. Ibid.
136. Bataille, Inner Experience, 126.
137. Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, 165.
138. Ibid., 35.
139. Ibid., 40.
140. Ibid.
141. Ibid., 42.
142. Ibid., 44.
66 Chapter 1

143. Ibid., 49.

144. Ibid., 85.
145. Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside, trans. Brian Massumi
(New York: Zone Books, 1987), 25.
146. Ibid., 27.
147. Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault as I Imagine Him, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman
(New York: Zone Books, 1987), 76.
148. Ibid.
149. F Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Random House,
Inc., 1967), 63.
150. Ecce Homo, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1979), 73.
151. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, trans. Robert Czerny, Kathleen
McLaughlin, and John Costello (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1977), 6.
152. Ibid., 234.
153. Ibid., 249.
154. Ibid., 313.
155. Ibid., 309.
156. Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1992), 339.
157. Joseph Libertson, Proximity: Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille and Communication
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 55.
158. Ibid., 338.
159. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 138.
160. Ibid., 139.
161. Charles H. Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge University
Press, 1979), 30.
162. Philip Ellis Wheelwright, Heraclitus (Princeton University Press, 1959), 20.
163. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 36.
164. Ibid., 153.
 Chapter 2

Limit Experiences, Difference,

Repetition, and Singularity

The experience of irreducible excess surpassing expectations signals the

break with representational abilities, implying a break with reasoning. In that
sense it has affinity with madness, but madness concentrated in a moment
and reversible: analogous to orgasm as a “little death,” such a break could
be termed a “little madness.” It is no wonder that some artists and writers
who take up the onset of madness have produced work that carries breaks
within it, a new stylistic or verbal expression, as a testimony of the limit
experience. Blanchot names “Goya, Sade, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Nerval, Van
Gogh, Artaud” and asks, “Is it possible that thought cannot arrive at what is,
perhaps, the ultimate dimension without passing through what is called mad-
ness and, passing by way of it, falling into it?”1
Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) is a film that illustrates the limit
experience and disintegration of reality when an artist seeks perfection—
which implies letting go of rules, giving oneself completely, surpassing one-
self by trying to go to a new territory, being ruled by passion to the point that
reality gets distorted, and reaching the limit of which Bataille speaks.2 Nina
Sayers, a ballerina in the movie, gets immersed in the dual role of the white
and the black swans, the dichotomy of good and evil, oversteps the thin line
between reality and imagination, between reason and madness, and perishes
in that role, with what seems to be a peaceful, content look, as if saying: it
was worth it! And the audience senses that her performance is extraordinary,
something new, not seen before, a possible trigger of pure aesthetic experi-
ence, exceeding expectations in the irreducible way. Bataille again comes to
mind with regard to his wish to reach the limit, to experience it, but to be able
to come back. But, who can guarantee the return?
Some artists and writers left memorable works while reaching the limit of
madness because the level of sincerity projected in such works unequivocally

67
68 Chapter 2

speaks about boundary, transgression, a disintegration of reality based on

representations, reason, continuity, concepts, and analysis. In his essay,
“Madness par excellence,” Blanchot invokes Jaspers’ study on Van Gogh,
Strindberg and Hölderlin in relation to schizophrenia, writing,

Jaspers says this forcefully: Goethe is capable of everything, except the late
poems of Hölderlin and the paintings of Van Gogh. In such works the creator
perishes; not of exertion, not from excessive creative expenditure; but the sub-
jective experiences and emotions, in relation with the upheaval of the soul—the
experiences whose expression the artist creates and which he raises to the truth
of an objective form—comprise at the same time the development which leads
to collapse.3

This statement might not resonate as being a fair one if we consider the author
of The Sorrows of Young Werther. Goethe wrote that book with passion and,
at least as his biography indicates, in large part from subjective experience.
The suicide of Werther maybe did save young Goethe and the further devel-
opment did not lead to his collapse; in fact this work propelled him into fame.
Hence, it seems possible to create from subjective experience, almost perish-
ing of it, and yet also to come back; creation does not have to end in madness
or suicide. However, it is not unusual that authors or artists gain popularity
after going mad or after committing suicide, since these events ignite curios-
ity in an audience, and the voyeuristic desire to find the biographical elements
that underscore the sincerity in their work.
Madness seems to be the irreducible otherness of reason, unlike “unreason,”
which is its other, defined by the same. The break of madness is complete,
the neutral space between reason and unreason. When its testimony is sensed
in an artistic or literary work, it can speak compellingly about transgression,
about excess, about the unexpected—and it can trigger excess in reception
and provoke a representational break in the sensibility of a spectator or a
reader. But, we—the spectators—have the privilege of “recuperating” from
it, of experiencing surprise starting with astonishment as a surprised thought
and passing into admiration in witnessing something new. Under a certain
interpretation, this new seems nothing other than the repetition of differ-
ence. To argue for it, let us invoke the related work of Nietzsche on “Eternal
Return,” and its influence on Blanchot, Deleuze, and Foucault.

NIETZSCHE: AN INVOLUNTARY MASK

AND THE ETERNAL RETURN

The author of the Eternal Return was, maybe, predestined to write at the
boundary of poetry and philosophy, as if finding escape from one in the other.
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 69

I wish to underline the impact of Zarathustra on Nietzsche’s subsequent writ-

ings, and to discuss why Zarathustra seems to be the appropriate setting for
the affirmation of the “Eternal Return” as a philosophical-poetic concept of
inspiration, creativity, difference, and repetition. It is the perfect example of
combined poetic inspiration and philosophical insight, and thus is influential
to future thinkers.
In the chapter of Ecce Homo titled “Why I am So Clever,” Nietzsche
writes, “To ‘want’ something, to ‘strive’ after something, to have a ‘goal,’
a ‘wish’ in view—I know none of this from experience.”4 This quote is a
good introduction to the feeling that Nietzsche, to a large extent, held an
involuntary mask: for somebody who “wrote in blood,” the above quote does
not seem sincere. It seems that Nietzsche is the premature child of twentieth-
century poetry, a poet with the multiple intertwined threads of his ability as a
thinker, his initial professorial career and education as a philologist, and his
inner contradictions between his need to reevaluate all values and free human
existence of non-natural human-made constraints, and his reluctance (until
the very end) to clearly advocate for complete freedom of verse.
Nietzsche’s education and career in philology resulted in the significant
scholarly insight that Greek verse lacked regular metrical stress.5 After leav-
ing philology, two sets of strong forces shaped the style and subject of his
output: poetry and philosophy, art and scholarship. He remarked to Rhode
on 15 February 1870, “Science, art, and philosophy coalescence so much in
me at present that one day in all probability I shall give birth to centaurs.”
One could only imagine the laughter (and rage) of Nietzsche’s readers at my
suggestion that Nietzsche played it safe: toggling between philosophy and
poetry, asking questions and creating answers, finding refuge in one from
the other. It seems that he did not have a choice: it was his fate to create
“centaurs,” capturing sensitivity of the modern man—not the Overman, not
the last men, just the modern man.
In the period 1883–1884, Nietzsche indeed gave birth to a “centaur” named
Zarathustra (first three parts). Part III was written during January 1884. The
book fell on “deaf ears”—with devastating consequences for its author. From
his own written “confessions,” it seems that Nietzsche invested a great deal of
creative energy and wrote “in blood,” resulting in beautiful poetry born at the
heights of supreme inspiration—only to receive cold silence from everybody,
including his friends. Unfortunately, he did not have an Ezra Pound on hand
to help him push forward his poetry even more forcefully. Some years later, in
Ecce Homo, he would write “As for my Zarathustra, who of my friends would
have seen more in it than an impermissible piece of presumption but one that
was fortunately a matter of complete indifference? . . . Ten years: and no one
in Germany has made it a question of conscience to defend my name against
the absurd silence under which it has lain buried . . . .”6�
70 Chapter 2

In addition to the claim that he was breaking ground for a poetry free from
the formal and attitudinal conventions suppressing its strength, Nietzsche
could well be seen as a pioneer in unmasking reality through philosophical/
poetical proclamation of “war” with values created and/or accepted from
fear, pity, ignorance, or weakness, indebting us to the enormous originality
and complexity of his books, his “children” springing up from the extremely
successful “marriage” of philosophy and poetry—marriage which is for him,
of course, “the will of two to create the one that is more than those who
created it.”7
Zarathustra is a work combining poetic expression, wit, and philosophical
teachings. Unfortunately, the work was not welcomed by its readers. After the
“disaster” with the first three parts, Nietzsche put on a mask of a parody, and
produced Part IV (not in harmony with the other three parts) in a short time,
and privately distributed copies to his friends, without intending to publish
them. He then closed the door for other poetical Zarathustras that could have
come, developing his philosophical ideas, and along these lines became more
and more bitter, still unread. In 1888, while summing up his “children,” the
wounds left by Zarathustra are fully reopened, and he “bleeds,” despite the
sarcasm, hyperbolas, and humor intertwined with his delusion.�
In the section “On Poets” in Part II of Zarathustra, Nietzsche articulates
his frustration with accepted poetical forms: “Alas, I cast my net into their
seas and wanted to catch good fish; but I always pulled up the head of some
old god.”9 It took until some years later, and maybe the sense that his “battle”
was nearing its end, before Nietzsche could clearly say, in his recognizable
style, “The art of grand rhythm, the grand style of phrasing, as the expression
of a tremendous rise and fall of sublime, of superhuman passion, was first
discovered by me; with a dithyramb such as the last of the third Zarathustra,
entitled ‘The Seven Seals,’ I flew a thousand miles beyond that which has
hitherto been called poesy.”10
And this statement brings us to the affirmation of Eternal Return in
“The Seven Seals: Or the Yes and Amen Song.” Why would one accept
eternal recurrence? Why would that be desirable? Nietzsche is passionate and
eloquent about it: creativity, extremes, the unexpected. In Part III he wishes
for a moment of creativity, in Part IV he longs for extremes, for indifference in
diversity, and in Part V he yearns for the unexpected and lusts after eternity.�
Moments of creativity, of transgression, and of experience of the
boundaries of existence create the unquenchable desire to relive them, even
if one has to relive everything else encountered in life, exactly as is, in line
with Nietzsche’s famous concept of amor fati. A moment of sensing the
otherness of representation—of absence as presence—brings the breath of
eternity, surpassing one’s finite and perishable physical existence and objec-
tivity; hence the wish to experience this moment again and again—eternally.
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 71

However, in pondering the idea of the Eternal Return as containing a moment

of break carries a contradiction: a break is outside the past/future dichotomy;
it does not have a presence, hence it cannot repeat itself.
Blanchot was fascinated by the idea of Eternal Return and the difference
between singularity and uniqueness, especially in relation to writing and
presence. In The Step Not Beyond, he considers three ideas: the neuter, the
fragment, and the “Eternal Return of the Same” (ERS). The neuter is the
neutrality of opposites: neither their contradiction, nor their fortification.
It penetrates fragmentary writing by displacing its particularities. The ERS
is repetition—of difference. This is because the ERS negates the present; the
present disappears. Blanchot writes, “In the past what is given as repetition of
the future does not give the future as repetition of the past. Dissymmetry is at
work in repetition itself. How then think dissymmetry in terms of the Eternal
Return? That is what is perhaps most enigmatic.”�
The rupture created by neutrality where the presence is dissolved separates
writing from speech. There is constant “combat between language and pres-
ence,”� in which presence wins because language as such is also presence.
Blanchot writes, “the defeat that writing would seem to inflict on presence
in making it no longer presence, but subsistence or substance, is a defeat
for itself. From this point of view, writing alienates presence (and alienates
itself).”� Fragmentary writing approaches the “incessant murmur” which car-
ries the language to its limit, to disintegration of presence as such. It char-
acterizes the space of writing with “points of singularity.”� Such points or
marks retain their singularity despite losing their uniqueness to the repetition
of Eternal Return. An interesting question takes up the difference between
singularity and uniqueness. Singularity implies irreducible difference and
discontinuity, it is neither presence nor absence, and hence it points to a void.
Uniqueness, on the other hand, is destroyed by repetition because it is the
carrier of oneness, of cohesion, and of closure. This discussion of uniqueness
asks for Deleuze’s analysis on difference and repetition.

DELEUZE ON DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION

In representational thought relying on concepts, we have the relations of

negation and of identity. Deleuze wants to substitute “negation” for differ-
ence and “identity” for repetition, and proposes “to think difference in itself,
independently of the forms of representation which reduce it to the Same.”16
He contrasts generality and repetition since, “Generality, as generality of
the particular, thus stands opposed to repetition as universality of the sin-
gular.”17 A concept presents generality, subsuming all instances under its
umbrella. For example, a concept of “dog” generalizes all dogs by extracting
72 Chapter 2

commonalities, and leaves aside particularities. Concept creation requires the

death of individuality in order to give rise to generality, as Hegel well under-
stood in his dialectic. Concepts deal with identities in representation, while
“repetition is difference without a concept.”18 The repetition of something
preserves the form of its particularity, but repetition cannot be reduced to the
same because there is something in addition to the form of representation. If
we take only representational form into account, repetition will not produce
any difference; but if we take into account nonrepresentational factors, rep-
etition will create essential difference. Take, for example, a theatrical play,
showing on different nights. The plot and the representation are the same, but
there is difference in how an actor approaches it at that specific moment, and
in how a spectator reacts to it (even if this spectator saw it on two consecutive
nights). A good actor, an improviser, will act each time as if he performs for
the first time, will carry a play within himself, and will produce new gestures
(This is how Artaud envisioned performances). A spectator might perceive
the same play completely differently: different thoughts and emotions might
be triggered, depending on other thoughts and events preceding the play. The
fact is that each repetition has to start, and each start is immediacy. According
to Deleuze, Hegel “betrays and distorts the immediate.”19 He writes about the
philosophies of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and their objections to Hegel’s
dialectic of mediation as a system where everything is employed in the
service of building a systematic thought.
Repetition provides space for improvisation, for remaining inside
conceptual boundaries, but gives priority to “minor” elements, freeing
particularities that produce novelty inside the representational template.
As Deleuze writes, “. . . repetition is attributed to elements which are really
distinct but nevertheless share strictly the same concept. Repetition thus
appears as a difference, but a difference absolutely without concept; in this
sense, an indifferent difference.”20
Although termed “an indifferent difference,” repetition nevertheless
does not result in indifference. On the contrary, repetition is the sprout to
the creative movement that goes outside prescribed conceptual boundar-
ies. The willing of difference characterizes the Eternal Return of the Same,
according to Nietzsche. In contrast, diversity (as opposed to difference)
indicates only the mere appearance of difference.
Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, built around notions of repetition and
difference, is the predecessor of his joint work with Guattari. In defiance of
conceptual and systematic thinking which serves to elucidate great Western
concepts such as the One, Subject, and Identity, Deleuze and Guattari instead
develop the idea of rhizomatic thought: non-entrenched and non-rooted,
freely moving outside of a conceptual framework. They develop a number
of concepts to explicate their view, some taken from botany, some from
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 73

mathematics. For example, in botany a rhizome signifies a horizontal growth

system spreading stems in all directions. A piece taken from a rhizome can
be used to propagate a new plant. Hence, each piece of a rhizome contains
in itself the possibility for regeneration. In mathematics, an n-dimensional
multiplicity (or a manifold) designates an abstract mathematical space where
each point has a neighborhood resembling n-dimensional Euclidean space.
Hence, a multiplicity, as well as a rhizome, is a higher dimensional compo-
sition of elements that carries the whole structure. Disregarding the content
of its elements (the representation), a rhizomatic structure is characterized
by relationships among elements, their movements leading to growth and
modification.
Deleuze and Guattari propose a non-dialectical philosophy of becoming,
built on a number of philosophical concepts, such as the plane of immanence
(or the plane of consistency), lines of flight, deterritorialization, and body
without organs. The suddenness of immediacy allows the possibility for
improvisation, for a creative move unguided by structural thought. But, what
are the triggers of new, hence creative, moves? Are the triggers immanent or
transcendent? Based on habits and past experiences (both bodily and mental)
we have certain expectations for both future encounters and our actions in
given situations. Granting that our thoughts follow a combination of arborial-
rhizomatic structures (since some thoughts are systematic and some are
involuntary, moving freely outside organization or composition), we can
ask: When does it happen that a thought is surprised, as if uprooted from its
habitual territory?
The question is whether excess created by the inadequacy of expectations
in an encounter is something coming from outside to disrupt the system, or
a self-interruption of immanence? Relevant questions might be posed using
Deleuze and Guattari’s vocabulary: What triggers lines of flight? Can we
somehow increase our capacity for deterritorialization?
Let me try to interpret Deleuze and Guattari’s “abstract machine”
(a plateau) of rhizomatic thought. Unlike in the model of systematic thinking
(arborial model), thoughts move along a freely connected network of impres-
sions. Disregarding the content (representation) of thought, what is left is
movement, hence it cannot be represented with a single point; it has to be a
line, but a line without beginning and without end, a continuation, continuous
movement, with different speed, intersecting other lines of thought. What
triggers a thought, an event of thinking? There must be something outside
that triggers one’s sensibility, and Deleuze calls it intensity, but one’s mental
capacity contributes as well.
My experience denotes the territory where my thoughts intersect in rhi-
zomatic lines crossing, providing non-conceptual residuals, individuations
and differences in repetitions, creating plateaus of dimension n−1, always
74 Chapter 2

excluding the unity, The Concept or The One, since that inclusion would
disrupt the smoothness of the plateau: “the only way the one belongs to the
multiple: always subtracted.”21 Subtracting The One creates a degree of free-
dom, since not all is determined and organized, and there is no representa-
tion into which all elements are subsumed. Characteristics (principles) of a
rhizome are: connection and heterogeneity (network structure), multiplicity
(without subject or object, only determinations, magnitudes and dimensions),
a-signifying rupture (breaks that do not signify, breaks along lines of flight
that are part of the rhizome, new sprouts), and mapping as opposed to tracing
(the rhizome as map, open in all directions, unlike a tracing, which follows a
lead or a competent directive). The One (the unity, the concept, the hierarchi-
cal or arborial structure) is either a subject or an object—in any case, a formal
representation. In contrast, a multiplicity has only determinations such as
magnitudes and dimensions; it is not an image or a word and does not repre-
sent something. The important concept is the concept of lack, of absence-as-
presence, of something only implicitly present. The rhizome is best described
by lack: it does not have an arboreal root structure. So its structure remains
undefined: we specify what is not, in turn allowing a level of freedom when
thinking what is. A definition by lack leaves space for improvisation.
An improvisation is not restricted to rules; it is made possible by the lack of
complete determination. Take, for example, improvisation in music. Deleuze
and Guattari talk about becoming-music, becoming from the rhizomatic
structure developed both from bodily experience and from one’s environ-
mental context. Environment provides experiences with natural and artificial
elements. When the representational form is subtracted, what are left in
one’s mind are patterns of connectivity among elements, movements, and
intensities. Patterns create a repository of elements to use in novel organiza-
tions, leading to new experiences.
A book by Gary Peters titled The Philosophy of Improvisation analyses
the process of improvisation apart from the common view of a completely
chance event in the spur of the moment. Presenting examples from theater,
music, and dance, Peters draws from many thinkers (including Heidegger,
Nietzsche, Adorno, Kant, Benjamin, and Deleuze) to develop a philosophical
concept of improvisation. He writes, “Perhaps above all else the overriding
ambition here is to demonstrate deep rooted entwinement and entanglement
of the old and the new, which is often obscured by the desires and claims of
improvisers themselves heirs to a modernist aesthetic (or ideology) of innova-
tion and novelty that is often at odds with the real predicament of the artist at
work.”22 Hence, again, it seems that a new creation comes from a combina-
tion of the known and the unexpected new direction, but the old is present
as a ground from which a new beginning can start (as a line of flight, to use
Deleuze and Guattari’s vocabulary).
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 75

The question concerning creativity and newness, either in production as

an artist or experienced as a spectator, relates to lines of flight, leading to
directions outside known territory, to deterritorialization and subsequently
to enrichment and reterritorialization. What triggers a line of flight? It seems
that desire for newness is a prerequisite for actually being able to accept
the new as new. This desire requires openness of thought, and, according to
Deleuze and Guattari, it is best achieved via a rhizomatic structure of thought,
where the past (the old) is stored as a set of multiplicities, free from represen-
tational chains, open to new associations and assemblages.�
New rhizomes may sprout everywhere, even in the heart of a tree, indicat-
ing possibilities for the unexpected in perception. Memory is always tied up
with the past. However, there are two different types of memories: long-term
memory related to arborescent thinking and tracing following the trajectory
of past events, and short-term memory (or minute memory) that allows for
discontinuity and rupture. The rhizome does not contain units; instead, it
contains directions of movement. It does not have a specified beginning or
end; every part of it is “a middle.” Those middles are plateaus: “A plateau is
always in the middle, not at the beginning or the end. A rhizome is made of
plateaus.”24 The middle between things, a region with flat intensities, avoid-
ing culmination or directive for aiding in representation, is a plateau, a region
with—mathematically speaking—zero derivative.�
The new comes from the environment, while the old is entrenched in one’s
experiential territory. The concept of becoming is a key concept for Deleuze
and Guattari. Hegel in his Phenomenology explicates the becoming of knowl-
edge, in a dialectic of thesis and anti-thesis culminating in absolute knowing.
Deleuze and Guattari see a becoming differently: “A becoming is not a cor-
respondence between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation,
or, at the limit, an identification . . . To become is not to progress or regress
along a series . . . . Becoming produces nothing other than itself . . . Becom-
ing is certainly not imitating, or identifying with something . . .”26
The question is: how does immediacy relate to a becoming? For Deleuze
and Guattari, becomings are written on either the plane of immanence or
the plane of consistency (because there are no inconsistencies when formal
representation is abandoned and only movements and intensities are present;
there is only a structure of thought, without its content). This plane functions
as an abstract machine where each concrete assemblage is a multiplicity, a
becoming. In the plane of consistency, as Deleuze and Guattari write, “It is no
longer a question of organs and functions . . . It is a question not of organiza-
tion but of composition; not of development or differentiation but of move-
ment and rest, speed and slowness.”27 The plane of consistency is “the body
without organs,” indicating the residual reverberation of an organism, when
its fixed organization is abstracted. The plane of organization (or the plan(e)�
76 Chapter 2

of organization-development) runs contrary to the plane of consistency, in

trying to stop deterritorialization, and in reconstituting forms and subjects.
The plane of consistency works in opposite directions, trying to break down
organization by movement, speed, flight. The two planes serve as “two
abstract poles,” and the most fruitful work happens in the balance between
form and content, and in flights into the unexpected and formless, where, as
in music, “expanding and contracting microintervals are at play within coded
intervals.”29
In discussing improvisation, the question is how to take a line of flight
from the plane of consistency, to build on top of a systematic and organic
body. Improvisation entails co-presence of preservation and destruction of
the past. It not only needs freedom to begin but also rules to create meaning.
The proper place for improvisation might be in a passage from arboreal to
rhizomatic thought, and to this end it might be useful to present Deleuze and
Guattari’s distinction between smooth and striated space.
Deleuze and Guattari argue that smooth space is nomad space, while stri-
ated space is sedentary space. They intersect, but passages from one to the
other are not symmetric and vary among different models: is it the case that
a smooth space gets captured and enveloped in a striated space, while a stri-
ated space dissolves into a smooth space, allowing its development, or some
other combination? For example, in “The Aesthetic Model: Nomad Art” there
is a distinction made between close-range vision and haptic space, and long-
range vision and optical space. Close-range vision operates “step by step,”30
allowing for the possibility of unexpectedness and for newness since there is
no long-term memory to entrench vision in a fixed position. In contrast, long-
range vision requires orientation, points of reference, perspective, boundaries,
horizons; it calls for constancy and invariance. Deleuze and Guattari write,
“What interests us in operations of striation and smoothing are precisely the
passages or combinations: how the forces at work within space continually
striate it, and how in the course of its striation it develops other forces and
emits new smooth spaces.”31
This process is related to deterritorialization and reterritorialization.
Deterritorialization, as the movement of leaving the territory by a line of
flight, can be either negative (unable to proceed with the line of flight), or
positive (leaving the territory). Positive deterritorialization can be either
relative (the line of flight is not free but segmented and the new territory
is not reached) or absolute (the creation of a new territory). The possibility
of positive absolute deterritorialization seems very relevant to the current
work. It is the movement outside one’s experiential space and known terri-
tory, feeling the glimpse of a break as the encounter with “the body without
organs,” apart from the objectivity of representations. After a break—which
is by definition outside one’s experiential space—there is recuperation, a new
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 77

start, or a beginning. The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari is concerned

with becoming. But, what about beginning, how does it relate to becoming?
They are both processes, but beginning needs an origin, unlike Deleuze and
Guattari’s becoming that has neither beginning nor end. At this point it seems
appropriate to again invoke Blanchot and his work on immediacy, the origin,
and the beginning.
Blanchot’s neuter is the unrepresentable space of literature and it cor-
responds to Deleuze and Guattari’s plane of immanence or plane of consis-
tency. Blanchot’s term “origin” seems to correspond to the term “becoming”
in Deleuze and Guattari. Blanchot’s leap, in which the work is pronounced
and beginning starts, seems to be akin to Deleuze and Guattari’s line of flight.
Hence, in such an interpretation, a plane of anonymous becomings is a space
of origins, a space of immediacy. The plane of immanence is the immediacy,
the repository of creative triggers, a combination of multiplicities composed
of movements, affects, and intensities, allowing creativity.
Thinking devoid of specific content proceeds in a rhizomatic fashion,
characterized by movement in different directions and at different speeds.
A consolidated thought obtains unity; it is spread across a certain terri-
tory, bounded by a circle, and characterized by rhythm and harmony. Then,
suddenly, the circle is opened: there is a crack and something else gets in.
The subsequent newness is the result of “internal impulses and external
circumstances.”32 This positions excess over expectations (triggering new-
ness) as the joint “culprit” thriving at the intersections of immanence and
transcendence. In discussing artistic creativity, Deleuze and Guattari provide
the example of Klee, who said that the artist starts by looking around in
order to capture “the trace of creation in the created,”33 to subsequently turn
to elements of “immanent movement”: not already organized entities, but
possibilities for new assemblages, new creations.
Anonymous becomings as multiplicities of movement and intensity carry
seeds for new beginnings, switching from a smooth to a striated space. After
all, we need works, representations, objects, and they announce themselves
with a beginning, a line of flight resulting in deterritorialization. From a
spectator’s point of view, the reception of work should follow a similar
trajectory since the artist is, after all, the first spectator of an emancipated
work beginning its own “life.” Hence, a spectator has to “open up to the
Cosmos” to be receptive to newness. This seems only possible if thought is
not completely arborified, if the concepts do not subsume all particularities,
and if the system and organization are not completely determined and ossi-
fied. Receptivity is a desire for the unexpected, for difference. It is a desire to
move away from the known, seen, experienced. Receptivity implies passivity,
letting go the grip of concepts, and being alert to differences in repetition.
Desire is a wish to feel difference before it is appropriated by a concept.
78 Chapter 2

ŽIŽEK, DELEUZE, AND HEGEL: IMMANENCE AND

TRANSCENDENCE, IMMEDIACY AND MEDIATION

In Valences of the Dialectic Jameson analyses the concept of the dialec-

tic, from Hegel, to Marx, to postmodern critics. In chapter 5 (Deleuze and
Dualism) he presents Deleuze’s view of dualism (Nomads versus the State,
rhizomatic versus arborescent). Jameson is critical of Deleuze’s philosophy,
arguing that it tries to annihilate traces of the dialectic by introducing a
plethora of new terms and by proclaiming an ideological dualism (Nomads
versus the State), but that all these efforts only lead to the monism of the prin-
ciple of desire because, argues Jameson, in Deleuze “everything is libidinal
investment, everything is desire; there is nothing which is not desire, nothing
outside of desire.”34 According to Jameson, dualism as such is an unstable
structure in need of progression, of movements and occasionally of islands of
stability. We cannot exist in a perpetually schizophrenic state. The principle
of the dialectic implies a progression toward something, rejecting both dual-
ism (incompatibilities) and monism (no real opposites).
This discussion of direction brings us again to the importance of trans-
gression. Indeed, if transgression or excess should indicate unproductive
negativity (contrasting Hegel)—why would it then be important to experi-
ence it? Transgression must be beneficial in a certain way, so it has a certain
utility function. The transgression of my limit proves my limitlessness. So, a
subject can be defined either from the interior as in classical ontology, with
the full power of concepts such as consciousness, contradiction, the One, etc.,
or it can be defined from the exterior by lack of coherence, by differences
and by singularity. However, if there is a limit, either coming to it from the
interior, or from the exterior—both directions end up in the same blind spot.
As Deleuze said, differing philosophical positions coincide in the blind zone.
There, in the blind zone of the pause (time break) and the neutral (space
break), one can find Hegel’s philosophy and the philosophical positions of
French postmodernists equally relevant to the current investigation.
In his critique of Deleuze’s dualism, Jameson invokes the work of Slavoj
Žižek on the contemporary development of Lacanian thought and on the
combination of subjective (desire, libido) and objective (political, economic)
spheres. Žižek considers Deleuze in the light of Hegel and vice versa, and
provides some insightful connections and points of connectivity. He identi-
fies Deleuze’s philosophy with “transcendental empiricism,” which sounds
paradoxical, but it puts together Deleuze’s consideration of pre-reflexive
multiplicities in the plane of consistency, and the subject-less intentionali-
ties and virtuality needed for the constitution of reality, within lived experi-
ence. Deleuze’s philosophy is concerned with the notion of the New and of
the difference between becoming and being, and the notion of immanence.
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 79

He writes against Hegel and Hegelian transcendence, but, as Žižek observes,

the difference is sometimes annihilated and Deleuze comes very close to
Hegel. This closeness is the fate of philosophical positions and their inter-
pretations, which could be more or less slanted toward the target position of
the one who interprets; that is, the interpretation could be more or less free to
conjecture, or more or less in line with the source, supported by quotations.
In his consideration of the relationship between Deleuze and Hegel, Žižek
includes Foucault in the picture. Foucault and Deleuze shared many philo-
sophical convictions, but Žižek points to their “strange complementarity.”
While Foucault emphasizes power’s unity of itself and resistance to itself,
Deleuze considers desire uniting itself and its repression: for Foucault
emancipation from power is inherent to power itself; for Deleuze the force
of repression is inherent to desire.� The Hegelian dialectic, in which desire
passes into power, leading back to the subject, presents a dialectical synthesis
of Deleuze and Foucault, argues Žižek.
Instead of opposing the particular and the (abstract) universal, Deleuze
opposes the Singular and the Universal. The concept of singularity is crucial
for Deleuze, since it picks up difference in repetition, and designates the
New as universal singularity. Žižek observes, “What Deleuze renders here is
the (properly Hegelian) link between true historicity and eternity: a truly New
emerges as eternity in time, transcending its material conditions . . . A truly
new work stays new forever—its newness is not exhausted when the ‘shock-
ing value’ passes away.”36 I argue similarly that the encounter with the irre-
ducibly new generates subsequent surprise which cannot annihilate newness.
This newness is in opposition to mere novelty related to something novel
in representation, which ceases to be novel when absorbed in representa-
tion. The New that Deleuze considers cannot be appropriated by appear-
ance. Multiplicities as singularities belong to the Virtual, beyond the Actual
composed of empirical experience. Similar to Schelling, who distinguishes
between the ground of existence and existence itself, Deleuze distinguishes
between the Virtual and the Actual that is realized from the Virtual.
To the Deleuzean concept of the “body without organs,” which indicates
the surplus of the whole beyond the simple unity of its parts, Žižek responds
with the contrasting concept of “organs without body,” in which something
(e.g. gaze) takes a dominant position and indicates the wholeness inherent in
a part. The two concepts differentiate between the two identifications of the
Virtual in Deleuze: either with productive Becoming, or with non-productive
Sense-Event. Žižek writes,

Is this opposition of the virtual as the site of productive Becoming and the vir-
tual as the site of the sterile Sense-Event not, at the same time, the opposition
of the ‘body without organs’ (BwO) and ‘organs without body’ (OwB)? Is, on
80 Chapter 2

one hand, the productive flux of pure Becoming not the BwO, the body not yet
structured or determined as functional organs? And, on the other hand, is the
OwB not the virtuality of the pure affect extracted from its embeddedness in a
body, like the smile in Alice in Wonderland that persists alone, even when the
Cheshire cat’s body is no longer present?�

In this work I argue not for the duality of the two identifications of the virtual,
but for their consecutive impact: the virtual subtending productive Becoming
comes prior to the virtual preceding the non-productive Sense-Event. Hence,
the two identifications of the virtual are not in contradiction. The “body with-
out organs” as the announcement of the composition preceding organization,
or the announcement of unity preceding the organization of its parts, comes
prior to the “organs without body” as the announcement of the sensual effect
preceding thought and reflection that can provide a unified and conscious
response. Since becoming should precede a Sense-Event, their respective
virtualities are consecutive.
In positing reality and virtuality, Žižek writes, “How can a space for virtu-
alization emerge within reality itself? The only consistent answer is that the
reality in itself, to put it in Lacanian jargon, is not all: there is a certain gap in
reality itself, and fantasy is precisely what fills this gap in reality. Virtualiza-
tion is made possible precisely because the Real opens a gap in reality which
is then filled in by virtualization.”38 Žižek’s argument is that appearances
point to a failure in reality, because reality without failure would not need
appearances.
This is an interesting line of thought. Let me adapt it to the encounters
considered here, the unexpected encounters resulting in irreducible surprise.
The gap opens when the world of appearances is put on hold and one cannot
process the encounter with his or her sensibility and consciousness. This is
the origin of surprise which can be represented only afterward; in a sense
the origin is a fantasy, an appearance of something non-representable which
cannot appear. We can speculate that the reality without appearances is the
Ultimate Real with regard to proximity à la Levinas, and with regard to
passivity and neutrality à la Blanchot. The Lacanian Real is there also, as a
disgruntled troublemaker (which makes life interesting and worth living, no
question), but there is also another side to this Ultimate Real, the Unexpected
Real as the welcoming intruder that for no particular reason announces the
gap in reality, without the need for psychoanalysis and its invocation of the
death drive. The two sides bring duality into the Ultimate Real, the eternal
duality of good and evil (evocative of Schelling), except that we now argue
for giving equal priority and primordial status to something “good” or “posi-
tive,” analogous to Schelling’s argument for primordial evil, in addition to
primordial good. This duality does not question the Lacanian Real, indicating
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 81

unquenchable lack to which we are driven irresistibly. With the Unexpected

Real I wish to add a part to the Real based on abundance, not on lack, that
has the power to overwhelm by freezing one’s representational capabilities,
without asking for it or desiring the objet petit a. If the Real is “more real than
reality,” it should be all encompassing, a repository where reality turns to fill
in the gap based on lack, as well as where reality gets a deserved break and
accepts abundance from the Real as an influx of new energy. This notion of
the Real gives fullness to life, a pulsating that tries to break out of the sym-
bolic to deal with the lack at its center, but that also accepts the intrusion of
abundance in the already populated symbolic, finding a space for it. In talking
about how life is not just life, Žižek puts it in very uplifting terms: “I think
that we should rehabilitate the sense of full commitment and the courage to
take risks.”39 When I desire the unexpected—am I not desiring and commit-
ting myself to taking a risk? The unknown has the allure of exploration, the
passion of non-instrumental commitment.
In comparing Kant and Hegel, Žižek argues that Kant identifies a boundary
between the thing-in-itself (noumenon) and the phenomenon, while Hegel
extends the analysis to the boundary space in between the phenomenon and
the noumenon, hence extending the speculation to the so-to-speak near-
est transcendental. This, according to Žižek, is the most interesting space,
the limit in between. He writes, “Our freedom persists only in a space IN
BETWEEN the phenomenal and the noumenal . . . the Kantian Real is the
noumenal Thing beyond phenomena, whereas the Hegelian Real is the
gap itself between the phenomenal and the noumenal, the gap that sustains
freedom.”40 Can we extend this line of thought and speculate that there is
a space in between the two Virtuals, as the “space” in between “the body
without organs” and “the organs without body”? Both concepts are already
away from the Kantian Real and reside in the space between the phenomenal
and the noumenal. In a sense, this space reverberates with Levinas and the
proximity of the Other, with the Lacanian Real as repository of drives, with
the Deleuzean plane of consistency populated with intensities, and with the
space of transgression that Bataille so passionately wanted to experience—
all those “spaces” belong to the pre-conscious. Schelling’s transcendental
as the ground of existence; Fink’s transcendental “constitutive becoming”;
Blanchot’s neuter, or the space of literature (although akin to Deleuze’s plane
of consistency): these concepts seem to go a bit further into the unknown
(to use a spatial analogy), belonging to the unconscious.
Deleuze’s notion of the “plane of consistency” asserts immanence and
there is no need for transcendent principles because only movements and
intensities are present. However, argues Žižek, Hegel is also a philosopher
of immanence since, for him, it is the subject who experiences the difference
between appearances (for-us) and the way the object is in-itself. Hence, the
82 Chapter 2

difference between Hegel and Deleuze is not in their notions of transcendence

versus immanence, but in the difference between their explications of gap
and flux. Hegel’s phenomenology asserts the gap separating phenomena from
the things in-themselves, the gap that can be annihilated in the infinity of the
absolute, while Deleuze builds his philosophy upon the notion of flux char-
acterizing restless Becomings. In both cases, the excess is immanent, coming
from inside, asserting the hole at the center of subjectivity. Hegel struggles
to achieve a concrete universal by moving through the dialectical procedure,
while Deleuze looks for universal singularity in the constant flux of intensi-
ties characterizing difference in repetition. For Hegel, the phenomena possess
a gap in their immanence that has to be filled with some illusory material
from the outside; hence there is a need for transcendence. Žižek argues that
“immanence is not the starting point but the conclusion: immanence is not an
immediate fact but the result that occurs when transcendence is sacrificed
and falls back into immanence.”41
I argue that in Hegel the interplay of immanence-transcendence is related
to the interplay immediacy-mediation. For Hegel, an immediate relationship
is viewed as an accident, “detached from what circumscribes it”42; it is a self-
enclosed circle. Abstract immediacy is something preceding appearances, it
is the pre-mediated encounter. The encounter occurs suddenly and creates
a break (because it is self-enclosed, hence separated), and thus it negates
continuity. This self-reliance and freedom from surroundings is “the tremen-
dous power of the negative; it is the energy of thought, of the pure ‘I.’”43
This negativity allows the process of subject creation. It is appropriated in
the process of mediation, giving rise to “immediacy whose mediation is not
outside of it but which is this mediation itself.”44 This, according to Hegel
is “authentic substance.” But, how can we understand immediacy that is the
mediation itself? It has to be related to thought as the vehicle for mediation,
but it has to be apart from any specific thoughts because specificity would dis-
pense with immediacy. So, it can be viewed as the energy, the driving force
of thought, the invigoration of thought, preventing thought from coming to a
standstill. This power of tarrying with the negative is, for Hegel, the Subject.
But, there is a paradox of power: on one hand, power is something unrelated
to representation, as if coming from the outside, preceding its working on a
specific instance; but, on the other hand without an instance showing itself,
power is nothing. So, this argument invites analogy to the interplay of imme-
diacy/mediation: abstract immediacy is nothing if it is not transformed into
mediation, which, on the other hand, cannot start without provocation from
the outside. Immediacy is provocation, pro-vocation, preceding the represen-
tation or instant-realization.
As opposed to ancient times, argues Hegel, when there was a process of
formation of universality and forms—abstract forms—by which to understand
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 83

the world, in modern times, the abstract forms are already available and the
need is to give life to such forms. In other words, there is a need to give life
to abstraction, to bring to life a particularity, a singularity, a specificity lack-
ing in universal forms. Hegel says, “Hence the task nowadays consists not so
much in purging the individual of an immediate, sensuous mode of apprehen-
sion, and making him into a substance that is an object of thought and that
thinks, but rather in just the opposite, in freeing determinate thoughts from
their fixity so as to give actuality to the universal, and impart to it spiritual
life.”45 Hegel continues to argue that it is more difficult to free the thoughts
from fixity than to free the senses since the fixed thoughts have the “I,” or
“the power of the negative,” while senses can only deal with abstract imme-
diacy. Since the “I” for Hegel is “the power of the negative,” giving that up
would mean abandoning the utilitarian role of the negative: does the abandon-
ment of the power of the negative leave space for unproductive negativity,
negativity that cannot be (directly) used in concept creation? Does this invoke
Bataille? With the displacement of fixity and affirmation of movement, Hegel
comes somewhat close to his fierce critic, Deleuze. In describing experience
as the movement involving the encounter and the appropriation of otherness,
Hegel writes, “And experience is the name we give to just this movement,
in which the immediate, the unexperienced, i.e. the abstract, whether be it of
sensuous [but still unsensed] being, or only thought of as simple, becomes
alienated from itself and then returns to itself from this alienation, and is only
then revealed for the first time in its actuality and truth, just as it then has
become a property of consciousness also.”46
This movement of immediacy and mediation, of exteriority and interiority
could well go under the name of folding and unfolding. Deleuze’s inter-
twining of interiority and exteriority, in which the thought is the interiority
of exteriority, comes very close to Hegel’s description of subject creation.
In fact, Hegel proposes that the fixity of the “I,” that is, the Subject endowed
with intentional consciousness, based on the power of negativity, is being
moved from such a dominant position and the movement is possible when the
power of negativity is lost—which can imply that the encountered negativity
is at that time unproductive, and only indirectly in the service of concept cre-
ation. One can argue that the philosophy of differences, rhizomatic thought,
and smooth and striated spaces in Deleuze and Guattari, employed in the
process of subjectification (i.e. the subject’s construction), indirectly feeds
striated spaces and eventually gets appropriated in making one the person he
or she is.
It might be interesting here to ponder again the difference between negativ-
ity and lack. Negative is the opposite of positive and it operates on the same
level. Lack, on the other hand is non-directional, nonspecific, and indicates
that something is missing without specifying what. Let’s say that “what is” is
84 Chapter 2

interiority, and the rest (“what is not”) is exteriority. They do not operate on
the same level: if we want to prove that something is—that specific thing is
the proof itself. But, if we want to prove that something is not, we can only do
it by enumerating all that is, searching the whole interiority to be able finally
to conclude that something is not, that it is lack. Hence, lack can be viewed
as generalized nonrepresentable negativity without the specific opposition
apart from interiority itself. This lack seems to accompany abstract imme-
diacy (to use Hegel’s term) because it points to the outside, to exteriority.
In the process of mediation, when the power of thought is put in motion,
and lack transforms into negativity, it attains power, and we can proceed
with Hegel. Hence, lack is the (still) powerless negativity, yet endowed with
ultimate power: not the power of negativity, but the power to put movement
in motion, combining both positivity and negativity. Žižek seems to be right
that Deleuze and Hegel are not incompatible after all: Deleuze’s folding and
unfolding considers lack and pre-subjective movements, and Hegel’s power
of negativity appropriates it for the creation of consciousness. Both seem to
acknowledge the power of movement, of freeing the fixity of thoughts in
order to free the subject of foregone conclusions, to free the reified concept
of anemic universality, and to dispense with generality and make space for
universal individuality, which leads to singularity.
Žižek writes about Hegel’s logic of essence and the antagonism between
ground and conditions, that is, between the inner essence and the external
circumstances needed for the realization of essence. In Logic Hegel starts
with the developed concept of the notion (whose becoming was given in the
Phenomenology). The developed concept of the notion posits an equality sign
between ground and conditions: it is the result of the last stage in phenom-
enology, Absolute Knowing, as the indifference between subject and object,
essence and external circumstances, in-itself and for-itself. Žižek writes that
Hegel “undermines the usual notion of the relationship between the inner
potentials of a thing and the external conditions which render (im)possible the
realization of these potentials, by positing between these two sides the sign
of equality.”47 The sign of equality, according to Žižek, indicates the “anti-
evolutionary character of Hegel’s philosophy” because it dispenses with the
dialectical process of one passing into the other: the equality sign indicates
the mutual intrusion of inside into outside and vice versa. In other words,
the inner potential of an object is present in external conditions, and external
conditions are reflected in the inner potential. Indeed, Hegel, in closing the
circle states that, at the end, we have reached the beginning from which we
started. He does not resort to immanency, to a reduction of external conditions
to internal mediation, which would bring him close to Spinoza (and would
reduce the distance from Deleuze), but maintains the reciprocity between
external and internal and their mutual intertwining.
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 85

Žižek continues to argue for the implications of Hegel’s equality sign

between ground and conditions for psychoanalysis and the relevance of the
Lacanian objet petit a, and asks, “when a thing ‘reaches its notion,’ what
impact does this have on its existence?”48 He argues that the developed
notion necessitates the disintegration of existence. The specific thing ceases
to be, and the notion takes over. In psychoanalysis, the notion amounts to the
interpretation of the symptom after which the Real is subsumed within the
symbolic; it is annihilated and the interpretation stands for it, indicating that
the symbolic order has taken over. However, things do not work like that.
Lacan introduces the objet petit a to indicate the irreducible remainder of the
Real, un-subsumable within the symbolic order. There is something from the
Real that escapes symbolization. In order to deal with this incompatibility
between outside and inside, necessity and contingence, ground and conditions
(we could also add immediacy and mediation), Hegel at the end resorts to a
tautology, a logical positing of the equality sign.
Necessity and contingency are two expressions of the relationship between
actuality and possibility. Necessity, as a relationship between actuality and
possibility, indicates an objective stance, a determinate being. By positing
the object itself, actuality is affirmed and possibility disappears as a mere
possibility by passing into actuality. On the other hand, contingency requires
a process of establishing connections and of building up content, leading the
movement of possibility toward actuality; it comes from the subjective side.
In order to seal the relation between actuality and possibility, the two expres-
sions of their relationship have to become indistinguishable (necessity and
contingency have to coincide). But this can only be done formally: to state
it as a tautology, the two expressions have to become undecidable. This is
where logic can start.
Žižek’s interpretation of Hegel indicates the irreducibility of the objet
petit a nested in between becoming and being: “In so far as the relationship
between contingency and necessity is that of becoming and being, it is legiti-
mate to conceive of objet a, this pure semblance as a kind of ‘anticipation’
of being from the perspective of becoming.”49 Hence, it is the form that is
incomplete, that cannot properly capture the content. We know how Hegel
deals with this: in the last stage of absolute knowing in Phenomenology, the
new content is completed, and we need to go back one step to realize that the
“true” form is already there. Otherwise, the process would go on ad infinitum
and we would never be able to complete the circle and go back to the begin-
ning that has the end as its presupposition. Žižek comments Hegel’s step
backward with the question,

is not a kind of leap from ‘not-yet’ to ‘always-already’ constitutive of the Hege-

lian dialectics: we endeavor to approach the Goal (the absolute form devoid of
86 Chapter 2

any matter) when, all of a sudden, we establish that all the time we were already
there? Is not a crucial shift in a dialectical process the reversal of anticipation,
not into its fulfillment, but—into retroaction? If, therefore, the fulfillment never
occurs in the Present, does this not testify to the irreducible status of objet a?�

It is interesting how Hegel actualizes possibility (the “not-yet”). The nature

of possibility is that it can be actualized, so it has inherent actuality, and yet
it is not actual since it is merely possible. The nature of possibility is that it
ceases to be possibility in the instant it is realized or actualized. This surplus
in the nature of possibility, overstepping the bounds of mere possibility, is the
unpresentable, the reality that cannot be put under the symbolic order.
The film Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008) illustrates very
well the impossibility of form to capture the content, that is, the impossibility
of the absolute unity of the two sides. Kym, an institutionalized addict, comes
home to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel. The marriage is a (suppos-
edly) proper union of the two (or more) individuals. It starts with the formal
act (the wedding) and the content (married life afterward) is developed over
time. In the movie, the preparation for the act of marriage goes on with incred-
ible attention to formal details (who will sit where, who will say what, with
all the horde of wedding planners, and the full wedding rehearsal). However,
the content-differences are felt on many levels: the bride and the groom are
white and black, she is a psychologist (exploring matters of the mind), he is
a musician (intuitive, sensual), her family is dysfunctional, his seems to be
very much functional with the inevitable grandma. Going to the level of the
bride’s family, the two sisters are very different from each other, but there is
felt connection between them. Their parents (who are divorced, attesting to
the impotency of formality) are themselves very different (emotional father
and a distant cold mother). They all struggle to fit their insoluble differences
into a perfect form, and, along the way, in this perfect act of planning, there
are unplanned situations (such as Kym’s speech at the dinner rehearsal, or
the former tragedy of the death of a younger brother that keeps coming up
to the surface, invoked either by naming him, or by incidentally seeing his
plate). The form (the preparations for the wedding from rehearsals to the
actual moment) goes through changes and improvements, adding more and
more details to assure absolute form, a perfect wedding. A perfect marriage
act is viewed as the beginning of life together, the union of two individuals.
Here, the bride is already pregnant, implying that there is already the content
pertaining to the union, even before the formal act of marriage.
Going back to Hegel (and leaving aside Hegel’s view of marriage) this
movie can serve as an illustration of the struggle to provide a union of form
and content, to have a form (abstract, universality) able to capture content
(concrete, particular). What is the power of negativity in a marriage? With
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 87

the formal act of marriage, both parties negate their single status, but should
not negate their personalities. This presents the possibility for the dissolution
of the union. In the case of Kym and Rachel’s parents, they are presented as
different personalities and the tragic death of their son (content entered as an
immediacy while they were married) contributed to their divorce. Watching
the movie and thinking about Hegel, the following interpretation unfolds:
the wish to start formally (with the developed notion as formal identity), to
subsume all differences within a harmonious unity. But, there are two prob-
lems here. First, the use of the notion afterward, in specific instances, might
bring to light its inefficiency, the impossibility of its capturing all content
within a form (Lacan and Žižek would say the impossibility to subsume the
Real within the Symbolic). This impossibility gives rise to the objet petit a
and other implications for psychoanalysis. In the movie, the whole drama of
the family, following the wedding of the parents, attests to this impossibility.
Second, there is another aspect of the failure of formal enclosure, apart from
that recognized within psychoanalysis. The pregnancy of the bride is the
implicit yet real “content” of the unity, but still formless content on different
levels (the unborn, hence not completely developed, child, and its formless
unity because of its missing the marriage act). This formless content is first
just present, then it is formally announced resulting in surprise. Or, dare we
say it: astonishment—when the mind accepts the mystery of a new begin-
ning, changing into joy by suddenly realizing the grandchild in the making.
This work proposes a phenomenology of irreducible surprise starting with
the announcement of the senses (a nod to Merleau-Ponty), then the begin-
ning of reflection or the immediacy of thought which can be described as
astonishment, changing into different levels of reflection, but never being
quenched, never reaching that illusive unity of immediacy and mediation.
The concept of excess over expectations is useless to psychoanalysis. It is
simply a testimony of a new becoming and it can originate different feelings
in a person.
According to Lacan and Žižek, objet petit a is related to desire, indicates
lack, lurks behind an appearance, and is the intrusion of the Real into the
Symbolic. What is considered in this work, the desire for the unexpected, is
the remainder of the Real beyond lack existing in subjectivity: it is the origin
of lack, outside, preceding the beginning of the intrusion of the Real. It is
beyond objet petit a. As such it is nothing to psychoanalysis, an irrelevancy,
yet we do experience irreducible surprise just as we experience desire.
The importance of the break considered here is smaller than the importance
of the objet petit a, but it is important in its own insignificant way. The objet
petit a contributes to subjectivity, to singularity that is akin to the differences
Deleuze considers. It is the subjectivity of experience that sets one apart from
everybody else. The intrusion of the Real considered here, the irreducible
88 Chapter 2

encounter with otherness as unexpected, goes in a different direction: it leads

to the continuity of discontinuity (to evoke Bataille). The unexpected can
never be mediated, it is immediacy that creates singular points in one’s con-
sciousness and subjectivity. The break between desire and surprise is univer-
sal in the sense that it is always the same, regardless of who will be surprised
and what the trigger of surprise is. It is passivity more passive than any other
passivity, it acknowledges the continuity of being. It is the origin preced-
ing the beginning. Yet, the encounter with this anonymity of origin and the
subsequent process of experiencing irreducible surprise makes one singular,
since experiencing surprise, this universal, yet always different phenomenon,
is singular when contextualized—otherwise it would not be a surprise, by
definition related to newness.

MONDRIAN—A HEGELIAN OR A DELEUZEAN?

Throughout his writings, Mondrian repeatedly emphasized the need to depict

the universal and to represent the harmony and the rhythm of pure relation-
ships, unburdened by the particularities of individual existence. But, why
painting? For Mondrian, the value in painting is not in the representation of
objective nature (because the colors of nature cannot be reproduced), nor is it
in the creation of illusion; it is in the path to represent in a concrete way the
universal that appears in contemplation—inwardness, unburdened by subjec-
tive particularity. He does not want to create an illusion of a third dimension
in a picture, which is by definition only two dimensional. He wants to destroy
the illusion of space, and to trigger a pure feeling, disconnected from a par-
ticular objective presence. In order to present the universal, the presentation
has to be detached from a particular image, and it has to abolish the difference
between a figure and its ground, and between a form and its meaning.
Apart from separate elements used in a painting, one cannot overempha-
size the importance of their composition as a unity in which each element
contributes to the whole. In fact, Mondrian explicitly identifies “universal
consciousness, which is unity.”51 A composition needs to represent the unity
of individual and universal, and of inward and outward. Mondrian writes,
“Composition expresses the subjective, the individual, through rhythm . . .
At the same time it expresses the universal through the proportions of dimen-
sion and color value, and through continuous opposition of the plastic means
themselves.”52
Hegelian dialectic process, through the interplay between parts and the
whole, particularity and universality, and the role of negation, influenced
Mondrian’s search for compositional coherence and harmony. The destruc-
tion of one element allows something else to appear; individual death is the
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 89

magical power allowing universality to appear. Hence, the Hegelian “tremen-

dous power of the negative” influences Mondrian in combining the elements
(plane, line, color, non-color) to annihilate and reinforce each other at the
same time. Mondrian said that “the destructive element is too much neglected
in art.”53 In addition, the creation of multiplicity allows the destruction of the
individual. This conception of multiplicity could have influenced Mondrian’s
interest in the “starry sky.” In fact, Mondrian states that the “multitude of
stars produces a more complete expression of relationship.”54 Through mul-
tiplicity one can express harmony and can escape from the symbolic import
created by a single entity.
According to Mondrian, there is a difference between generality and
abstractness: generality shows the “broad contour of things,”55 while abstract-
ness leads to pure or exact relationships. Mondrian is not interested in pre-
senting a generality whereby a contour of natural forms is preserved; instead,
he wants to dispense completely with natural forms. He states that “In the
capriciousness of nature, form and color are weakened by curvature and by
the corporeality of things.”56 Curvature is associated with natural (or female)
element, as opposed to spiritual (male) element, and leads to a tragic feeling.
To express universality and harmony, one has to dispense with tragic feelings
and has to reduce natural forms to horizontal-vertical compositions, to the
pure ideality of relationships.
In discussing primary colors, Mondrian differentiates between yellow
and blue as “most inward,” and red as the “most outward,” and writes that
“a painting in yellow and blue alone would be more inward than a plastic in
the three primary colors.”57 Hence, the use of various positions of colored
planes creates a rhythmic play between inwardness and outwardness, result-
ing in the manifestation of depth. It is useful to distinguish between reality
and nature: reality incorporates both inwardness and outwardness and extends
beyond visible, outward nature. Hence, primary colors in an abstract-real
painting remain real, even without representing outward nature. In order
to depict abstract reality, one needs to dispense with naturalistic colors.
Mondrian’s artistic quest was consistently directed toward the presentation
of universality in relationships by combining colors, non-colors, lines, and
planes in equilibrium. In his later writings and paintings he moved from
repose (as static equilibrium) to dynamic equilibrium, which might be viewed
as a repose that reinvents itself all the time, a destruction and construction at
the same time, all the opposing forces working in harmony—this equilibrium
would capture the true spirit of universality.
Mondrian’s writings attest to the importance of rhythm and composi-
tion in painting. Discussing how to express the absolute or the universal,
and which should be art’s task, Mondrian writes, “Composition leaves the
artist the greatest possible freedom to be subjective—to whatever extent
90 Chapter 2

this is necessary. The rhythm of the relationship of color and dimension

(in determinate proportion and equilibrium) permits the absolute to appear
within the relativity of time and space.”58 Hence, composition and rhythm
serve different purposes: the subjective and the individual can be expressed
through composition, while the universal can be expressed through rhythm.
Since the new plastic has to express a relationship between the universal
and the subjective, both composition and rhythm are mandatory. Rhythm is
achieved through proportions of dimension and colors, and by the opposition
of different elements present in the painting. Mondrian’s aim in painting is
“to express relationships plastically through oppositions of color and line.”59
In “Dialogue on the New Plastic” (1919), Mondrian presents a dialogue
between a singer and a painter, and this gives him an opportunity to carry
even further a musical vocabulary to describe the tasks facing the new plastic.
The harmonious element is related to the constant and the universal, while the
melodic represents variability and subjectivity. The vocal adds a naturalistic,
lyric, and descriptive element. Music does not represent natural objects; so,
in that sense, it is abstract, but Mondrian argues that “abstraction alone is
not enough to eliminate the naturalistic from painting. Line and color must
be composed otherwise than in nature.”60 Painting cannot escape from the
visual; hence there must be a way to present some form and, yet, to have the
presentation be unrelated to naturalistic forms, in order to capture the essence
of relationships, unburdened by any particular natural appearance. Hence,
Mondrian’s planes, colored and non-colored, represent only relationships,
without reference to form.
Asymmetry in the visual arts may be related to dissonance in music, and
Mondrian expressed his liking for dissonance. The question of symmetry ver-
sus asymmetry is relevant for the rhythm of the painting as follows. Mondrian
regards symmetry as characterizing nature’s rhythm which carries in itself the
“the law of repetition.”61 Symmetry is related to regularity, and the task of the
new abstract-real plastic is to “transform symmetry into equilibrium, which
it does by continuous opposition of proportion and position; by plastically
expressing relationships that change each opposite into the other.”62 It seems
that a certain asymmetry, which is always present in Mondrian’s work, gives
an impression of dynamic equilibrium. It destroys natural regularity, yet it is
present in nature.
Disharmony, on another level, can be a “more profound harmony” if it
brings into reconciliation the universal and the particular. There is a profound
difference between natural harmony, and the harmony of art. The harmony
of art presents neutralization of oppositions, and this, on the natural level can
appear quite disharmonious. Mondrian wanted to create an image of pure
rhythm, proportion and harmony, a point where simplicity and complexity
merge into one another, where surface and depth become indistinguishable,
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 91

where static and dynamic fuse. He wanted to present a moment that is pro-
longed indefinitely, a representation of the non-representable, the Idea trans-
formed into Sensation. His goal was to find perfect equilibrium between mind
and matter. His task was to express a “dynamic movement in equilibrium,”
emotion in impassivity.
New developments in music and, correspondingly, in dance signaled for
Mondrian a new spirit bringing humanity closer to the ideal of abstract real-
ity. According to Mondrian, rhythm can be liberated only if it is disengaged
from limiting form. Jazz, with its free expression, as well as modern dances,
serve much better to bring the rhythm into the foreground. And since rhythm
is mandatory for the achievement of dynamic equilibrium and for the expres-
sion of a pure relationship of opposition to equilibrium, it is necessary to free
rhythm from limiting form.
Mondrian equates jazz and Neo-Plasticism as the two expressions with
liberated rhythm, that is, with rhythm unconstrained by form, hence without
hindrance in presenting pure relationships. This signals that art is converg-
ing toward life, unifying the material and the spiritual. The new man creates
his own unique rhythm, different from repetitive natural rhythms, which can
be free of form only when a unity of material and spiritual is achieved. To
facilitate this evolution, man has to be in an artificial environment, apart from
nature; hence both the metropolis, with its “open rhythm that pervades the
great city,”63 and the bar, because “Everything in the bar moves and at the
same time is at rest,”64 serve as proper environments for human evolution.
How to save singularity that escapes conceptual incarceration? The Hege-
lian dialectic is a “war” between the universal and the particular. Mondrian,
being a good Hegelian, in fact becomes more of a Deleuzean: universality
is stripped to its bare skeleton through the use of limited shapes and colors.
Mondrian’s compositions are repetitive (as far as the elements used), but are
all different in the composition of their elements and in their acknowledge-
ment of asymmetry. (Blanchot argues that asymmetry justifies the under-
standing of the Eternal Return of the Same as the repetition of difference).
So, part of his oeuvre, those neoplastic compositions, can be used to illustrate
Deleuze’s concept of difference and repetition.
New York City’s vitality, its rectangular grid of streets, its high elegant
skyscrapers, and the vibrant rhythm of jazz and boogie-woogie that fasci-
nated Mondrian proved an excellent impetus for new directions in his art.
The influence of the vibrancy of New York City diminished Mondrian’s
desire for complete abstraction and he started to give specific names to paint-
ings, for example Place de La Concorde (1938–1943) and Trafalgar Square
(1939–1943). It is a change in direction from pure intellectual abstraction,
to abstraction in presentations of objective world. Repetition now becomes
a destructive element. Mondrian writes, “Similar forms do not show contrast
92 Chapter 2

but are in equivalent opposition. Therefore they annihilate themselves more

completely in their plurality.”65
In Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942–1943), the solid lines are broken with
small blocks of color. Mondrian’s “vocabulary” of lines and planes, colors
and non-colors, is now combined and there is no clear distinction between
planes and lines. Colors are enclosed in other colors, rectangles are inside
and outside, and the overall feeling and impression is one of pulsating rhythm
and vibrancy. The identity of the plane is destroyed by parallel lines; the
identity of line is destroyed by colored patches. Hence, the two elements
of composition, colors and forms (planes and lines), become mutually sup-
portive and destructive at the same time. Mondrian’s last paintings attest to
his fascination with the new rhythm. In his last (unfinished) painting Victory
Boogie-Woogie, Mondrian indeed expressed the “dynamic movement in
equilibrium.” He writes, “Not only in abstract art but in all plastic art, the
expression of form is subordinate to the expression of dynamic movement.
Form appears only as means of expression.”66 This sounds like Deleuze.

FOUCAULT AND DELEUZE ON THE EVENT,

THE VISIBLE, AND THE SAYABLE

In Theatrum Philosophicum, Foucault writes about Deleuze’s concept of

a phantasm proposed in The Logic of Sense. Deleuze’s philosophy of becom-
ing, of movement and intensity, affords priority to events as opposed to
objects or static entities. For Deleuze the “pure event” has no extension, nei-
ther in time nor in space. He defines phantasm by three characteristics: it is a
pure event as effect (not an action that could be represented); it is a movement
of pre-individual singularities opening the ego; it is expressed by the infini-
tive verb form. For example, “to die” or “to give” both express a phantasm.
A phantasm is an event “in play,” contrasted or expanded to fit the scale and
the story of which it is part.
Foucault likewise gives priority to the event over the object and considers
the event of thinking specifically. Thought considered as an event contrasts
thought considered as providing the structure contributing to a system.
The “metaphysics of the phantasm” revolves “around atheism and trans-
gression,”67 because it stands apart from The One, functioning at the limit
of bodies and defying objective representation and the dichotomy between
inside and outside. Phantasm is the non-representable, outside conceptual
determination, yet it serves as singularity, an incorporeal event. An event is a
becoming: neutral, intangible, neither beginning nor ending. Phenomenology
dealing with consciousness “places the event outside and beforehand, or
inside and after, and always situates it with respect to the circle of the self.”68
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 93

But, what about an event that happens in the gulf between outside and inside,
between beforehand and after? What is the significance of this gap where
there is no subjectivity and no consciousness to position it neatly in the
schema of subject-object relationship? Deleuze rejects the utilitarian char-
acter of the event and frees it from signification for the subject. The phan-
tasm and the event resonate jointly in “the incorporeal and the intangible.”
The intangibility of the event provides difference in repetition, a singularity
that cannot be subsumed by conceptual unity. The phantasm provides excess
but apart from objective presence; “it presents itself as universal singularity:
to die, to fight, to vanquish, to be vanquished.”69 Phantasm occurs in the
repetition of the intangible event; it allows singularity as universal. Fou-
cault writes, “Determining an event on the basis of a concept, by denying
any importance to repetition, is perhaps what might be called knowing; and
measuring the phantasm against reality, by going in search of its origin, is
judging.”70 Thinking—not knowing and not judging, just forming thoughts—
proceeds in the construction of events and phantasms, the intangible, and
the incorporeal. Thought (e.g. “to die”) is an event repeating a phantasm.
It is intensive irregularity, while intensity is pure difference (outside of
representation).
Instances of purely aesthetic encounters considered here are repetitive, yet
each is different; however, they possess indifferent diversity, which is in line
with the Deleuzean event, outside of common sense and the philosophy of
representation or concept creation. Deleuze’s “pure event” resonates closely
with description of “the properly aesthetic experience” as the moment when
desire transgresses to excess, a moment without extension in time or space,
without objectivity or representation. Dialectic does not liberate differences
because it subsumes them within negation. Difference can be freed if dialectic
and contradiction are abandoned—which requires immediacy and discards
mediation. I propose the event of astonishment as surprised thought. In aston-
ishment there is no contradiction, no dialectic, no negation—it is pure sur-
prise, the event of surprise, always repetitive, yet always different. And each
time the event of astonishment happens, it has to be related to something new
(hence different), yet the event “astonishment” is repetitive: every astonish-
ment seems to be identical (with respect to representation). No objectivity is
present, and yet astonishment incarnates pure difference.
The way Foucault argues for stupidity is reminiscent of the way Bataille
argues for absurdity: stupidity leads to the abandonment of oneself, while
absurdity allows intense communication. Stupidity involves freeing the
thought from categories. To paraphrase Bataille, one is intelligent and knowl-
edgeable in one’s own way, but it seems that we are all stupid in the same
way: stupidity illuminates multiplicity itself. I propose to consider astonish-
ment as another illustration of multiplicity: different triggers can surprise
94 Chapter 2

us, but we are all being astonished in the same way because astonishment
precedes “organized” thoughts.
Foucault invokes “schism” happening in thought because one cannot cap-
ture the moment when the future becomes the past (“time is always more
supple than thought”), hence there is a break—unaccounted for—in one’s
thought. What is interesting here are the instances when such a break is pro-
nounced and experienced more forcefully. Granting Deleuze’s rhizomatic
thought and events and phantasms produced as intangible and incorporeal,
I am fascinated by certain events—call them absolutely positive (in line
with Deleuze and Guattari’s vocabulary)—that more strongly pronounce the
schism.
At the end of the essay, Foucault credits Deleuze with unifying different
philosophies. Philosophizing about break and pause creates a black hole
and the space of disintegration of sensibility, perception, and thinking, and,
as such, allows various philosophical paths to either reach their breaking
points, or to provide exits from them. Philosophizing about break leads to
the point where philosophy reaches its limit, since the limit of thought has
to be the limit of philosophy. Hence, it seems that, at the limit, seemingly
incompatible philosophical views converge and continue on in the same
direction.
In 1986, two years after Foucault’s death, Deleuze published a book
about his philosophy simply titled Foucault. He elaborates on Foucault’s
understanding of a “statement” as opposed to a proposition. A proposition is
about a certain fact or a state of things asserted by a clearly defined subject
(the one who proposes something about something). A statement dethrones
the speaking subject, it projects anonymity; it appears more like a murmur.
Deleuze notes the attraction of Blanchot’s thought on Foucault and writes,
“Foucault echoes Blanchot in denouncing all linguistic personology and see-
ing the different positions for the speaking subject as located within a deep
anonymous murmur.”71 Deleuze goes on to associate Foucault’s statement
with his own notion of multiplicity (stemming from a geometric construct).
In this direction, argues Deleuze, Foucault is following the path of Blanchot
in denouncing the difference between different poles indicated in objective
representations, such as the singular and the plural, the neutral and repetition.
In talking about opposing positions, Deleuze argues that the “encounters
between independent thinkers always occur in a blind zone.”72
Deleuze invokes Foucault’s thesis on the difference between the visible
and the sayable (the articulable), and between the form of content and the
form of expression. While, for Blanchot, speaking is primary, Foucault
accords priority to seeing and irreducible visibility. He distinguishes between
the visible (as determinable) and the articulable (as determined), stating that
“the receptivity of light and the spontaneity of language”73 are disconnected,
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 95

having a “non-place,” a break or distance, in between. Deleuze likens this

position to that of Kant, who had to connect the space opened up by the
consideration of nature versus freedom within reflective judgment. Foucault
needs a “new axis” to co-adapt the visible and the sayable.
Deleuze points to the difference between exteriority and the outside in
Foucault’s thought. There are two forms of exteriority (seeing and speaking),
and this requires an outside in which forces operate, different from forms, and
in which thinking occurs. He notes Foucault’s inclination toward Blanchot’s
and Nietzsche’s thought, and writes, “If seeing and speaking are forms of
exteriority, thinking addresses itself to an outside that has no form. To think
is to reach the non-stratified. Seeing is thinking and speaking is thinking,
but thinking occurs in the interstice, or the disjunction between seeing and
speaking.”74 The intrusion of the outside provokes seeing, in turn creating an
intrusion of the outside to the internal (thinking), provoking speaking.
Deleuze proposes that, in addition to the two axes of power and knowl-
edge, Foucault needs a third axis to attain “a sense of serenity . . . and life
truly affirmed.”75 This third dimension was always present, as the relation
to the outside—a thought. But, if a thought is the relation to the outside—
what about thought as interiority? A thought is triggered by the outside, and
becomes interiority, but the link with the outside remains, though as the
“unthought” (the “impossibility of thinking”) in the heart of thought. Deleuze
argues that the relation between outside-inside is a movement of folding
and unfolding, of their mutual intertwining as proximity and distance. This
intertwining evokes the interplay between otherness and intimacy. Deleuze
invokes Blanchot who writes, “The demand to shut up the outside, that is,
to constitute it as an interiority of anticipation or exception, is the exigency
that leads society—or momentary reason—to make madness exist, that is,
to make it possible.”76 Blanchot credits Foucault with making clear this exi-
gency. It seems that the outside cannot be swallowed by neither power nor
knowledge.
One can ask: what is the interiority of anticipation, or of expectation? This
interiority should be something that is immanent to expectation and what
distinguishes expectation as expectation. It has to be something outside rep-
resentation, outside boundaries of definition and certainty—the unexpected,
the irreducible otherness escaping enclosure or encapsulation. Expectation
has to allow for transgression and to acknowledge it not as an anomaly (mad-
ness), but as its integral part, the heart of its interiority. I have termed the
expectation of the unexpected as desire and it seems that such an expecta-
tion has a special place among expectations since it is oriented toward lack,
toward outside, acknowledging the outside as its integral or interior part.
But, the expectation of the unexpected can be viewed as an attitude, the atti-
tude of welcoming irreducible otherness. If otherness is allowed to be a part
96 Chapter 2

of interiority, it indicates that there is the other in me, a doubling. Deleuze

underlines Foucault’s recurring theme of “the doubling” that links “games
of repetition” and of difference, that comes from “an interiorization of the
outside,” and he writes that “It is not a doubling of the One, but a redoubling
of the Other. It is not a reproduction of the same, but a repetition of the
Different.”77
This statement can be interpreted as follows: the coexistence of the other
in me allows for openings and possibilities for change. Foucault writes about
the “aesthetics of existence” and about the care of the self since the care of
the self is prerequisite to care for others. This aesthetic of existence affords
primacy of aesthetics over ethics, but of an aesthetics viewed, not narrowly
as the evaluation of art, but as the sensibility toward otherness, toward the
limitlessness immanent to a person—aesthetics as a porous boundary of sub-
jectivity, allowing its modifications and underlining its inabilities, as Deleuze
would argue: a movement of folding and unfolding, of intertwining of outside
and inside, “a power to affect itself, an affect of self on self,” which is force.
The impossibility of neutralizing these oppositions, as the force from out-
side, implies points of disconnection and breakup of intentionality: not all
can be subsumed by intentionality. The limiting lines or strata separating and
connecting the outside and the inside “have the task of continually produc-
ing levels that force something new to be seen or said.”78 This is the “zone
of subjectivation,” the celebration of life, the announcement of limitlessness
and the surpassing of constraints that would shut off possibilities, the freeing
of life within oneself.
Man is a changing entity. In fact, there is a God-form (containing infinity)
and a man-form (encapsulated in finitude). Deleuze asks whether Foucault’s
proposition that there is no point in lamenting the disappearance of the man-
form, giving rise to “the superman” of Nietzsche as a man that “frees life
within man himself,”79 is appropriate, and questions prophetically, “what new
form will emerge that is neither God nor man?”80 Nietzsche’s Eternal Return
is, according to Deleuze, a Superfold or an “unlimited finity” (which is nei-
ther infinity, invoking God, nor the finitude of limited Man). The affirmation
of the Eternal Return as the repetition of difference preserves singularity
and dispenses with the suffocation of finitude. Indeed, in The Logic of Sense
Deleuze credits Nietzsche with discovering and exploring “a world of imper-
sonal and pre-individual singularities.”81 The notion of singularity carries the
idea of unconditional break within itself, unlike the notion of uniqueness.
Deleuze and Foucault seem to disagree on a very important point: while
Foucault believes that “life and labour . . . did not lose the regrouping of their
being,”82 Deleuze, analogous to language freeing itself from representation
and becoming literature, argues for the need of life and labor to free them-
selves from biology and economics. The wish to have life free from biology
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 97

and economics, is a dangerous wish: beware what you wish for because it
might happen! The new form of man, the superman, neither God nor man,
involves technological changes, genetic research, and the wish to dominate
the unknown. To Deleuze’s wish that the new form of superman, which is
neither God nor man, “will not prove worse than its two previous forms,”
I wish to attach an uneasy feeling about both the future of humanity as we
know it and the predicted point of technological singularity in the relatively
near future.

SINGULARITY: NON-TECHNOLOGICAL
VERSUS TECHNOLOGICAL

In an Appendix to his Logic of Sense, titled “The Simulacrum and Ancient

Philosophy,” Deleuze argues for the difference between a copy and a simu-
lacrum. A copy is based on resemblance, while a simulacrum is “built upon
a dissimilarity, implying an essential perversion or a deviation.”83 A copy
is based on the model of the Same and it is an imitation of the original; it
presupposes the original, the center, the true, and the identity. A simulacrum
is based on the model of the Other in the sense that it displaces the center,
replaces the original (the notion of original becomes obsolete), dispenses with
uniqueness, and proclaims singularity as difference in repetition.
Simulacra imply thinking about similitude (or even identity) as resulting
from difference or disparity. This difference is not difference from the origi-
nal (judged by representation); this difference is judged for itself, apart from
representation. Deleuze writes, “The simulacrum is not a degraded copy.
It harbors a positive power which denies the original and the copy, the model
and the reproduction. Resemblance subsists, but it is produced as the external
effect of the simulacrum . . . .”84 In the world of simulacra, the same and the
similar have relevance only as simulated. The power of simulacra is related to
modernity. Deleuze identifies the artificial and the simulacra as characterizing
modernity in their opposition as two “modes of destruction.” The simulacra is
the destruction of Platonism, while the artificial is the destruction of disorder
for the purpose of retaining the order of representations, copies, and models.
Deleuze writes, “The artificial and the simulacrum are not the same thing.
They are even opposed to each other. The artificial is always a copy of a
copy, which should be pushed to the point where it changes its nature and is
reversed into the simulacrum (the moment of Pop Art).”85
Nowadays “the artificial” pervades all pores of human interactions, with
one another and with the environment. Our early interactions with computers,
in which the computer was predominantly used for subordinate rule-based
activities, gave way to adaptive computers, neural networks, virtual reality,
98 Chapter 2

and unprecedented processing power, bringing in question the future for

humanity as we know it. This consideration of future follows from predic-
tions of the exponential growth of technology leading to the point when arti-
ficial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, creating a break in any future
predictions, the Singularity point. Indeed, current technological advances in
biology, genetics, and biochemistry, coupled with the exponential increase in
computing power and telecommunication technology, raise numerous ethical,
cultural, and political questions. The underlying theme, both thrilling and
stimulating on the one hand, and upsetting and disturbing on the other, con-
cerns the future: where are we going? Predictions led by prominent computer
scientists and experts in artificial intelligence indicate that humanity, as we
know it, will disappear. In his book The Singularity is Near (2005), and in
the documentary film Transcendent Man (2009), Ray Kurzweil argues that
in the near future there will be a drastic paradigmatic change, after which we
will have to redefine what it means to be human. This point in time is the
moment of Technological Singularity. The Singularity (Doug Wolens, 2012)
is a documentary addressing technological singularity and its consequences
for humanity. The subtitle is: “Will we survive our Technology,” and the film
presents a number of interviews with scientists and futurologists, addressing
a question of what it means to be human in the age of ever-increasing tech-
nological pervasiveness.
As a believer in technology and as a mathematician who has worked on
development of combinatorial algorithms and heuristic procedures based on
genetic search and neural networks (belonging to the artificial intelligence
toolkit), I took Kurzweil’s book with excitement. However, knowing approxi-
mately what it is about, I first went for the index, to hopefully discard an
uneasy thought. Kurzweil’s book has a large index of about fifty pages. I was
looking for “surprise”—but there is no mention of it in the index; then I was
looking for “wonder”—again, no mention. This experience induced unset-
tling thoughts: if this is a book about our impending future and the paradig-
matic change in humanity—does that mean that there is no place for surprise
in our future? No place for wonder? Wouldn’t that be the end of philosophy
according to Plato, and probably the end of the humanities?
But, let us consider “emotional intelligence.” Kurzweil writes, “The most
complex capability of the human brain—what I would regard as its cutting
edge—is our emotional intelligence.”86 Research on the architecture of the
brain shows that “emotionally charged situations appear to be handled by
special cells called spindle cells, which are found only in humans and some
great apes.”87 Hence, according to neurological researchers, a small number
of cells with a special structure with very long dendrites (branching fibers
extending from a cell) that allow connectivity to various brain regions, are
responsible for our emotions, social interactions, and our response to art
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 99

and to moral dilemmas. To indicate how small a portion of our brain this is,
Kurzweil writes, “We have fifty billion neurons in the cerebellum that deal
with skill formation, billions in the cortex that perform the transformations
for perception and rational planning, but only about eighty thousand spindle
cells dealing with high-level emotions. It is important to point out that the
spindle cells are not doing rational problem solving, which is why we don’t
have rational control over our responses to music or over falling in love.”88
Does that mean that our humanity (i.e. what we often consider “more real
than reality”), encrypted in irrational and non-analytic emotions and behav-
iors, underlying “big” notions such as love, art, and ethics, and imprinted in a
tiny percentage of cellular brain architecture, is very vulnerable in comparison
to a superior analytical and computational brain-power? Hence, do we have
a chance against the technological rise of supercomputer power? Kurzweil’s
book is full of praise for the future, for the possibilities it offers to extend the
life and the rational part of the new artificial entity, discarding with the trou-
blesome biological entity called “the human.” For example, the analogy to
old-fashioned love would be a direct combination of the two neural circuits,
directly accessing another’s “thoughts.” Kurzweil writes, “Machines can pool
their resources, intelligence, and memories. Two machines—or one million
machines—can join together to become one and then become separate again.
Multiple machines can do both at the same time: become one and separate
simultaneously. Humans call this falling in love, but our biological ability to
do this is fleeting and unreliable.”89 What is there to say if one believes that
the strength of love is in its continuity and proximity of the beloved, despite
this notion of our “fleeting and unreliable” biological ability? Let us grant
that love becomes easy and that it can be manipulated with a few directions
and keystrokes—but, what about unhappy love, the culprit behind so many
poetic expressions and great tragedies, and so much emotional turmoil? Are
we willing to let that go, conceding that a simple random factor included
in the algorithm can simulate unhappy love? But, who needs that, anyway
(except for a few poets)?
As already said, it seems that, according to Kurzweil, there is no place for
surprise or for wonder (as we know it) in the future development of “human-
ity” in which biological deficiencies are surpassed. Would the absence of
surprise be due to the fact that surprise is difficult to simulate, or because it is
worthless, not concluding or analyzing anything? If love can be simulated by
merging various machines tasked with simulating soul-mates, how could we
simulate surprise? Maybe it can be programmed by chance encounters, based
on random number generators or by devising different chance procedures,
so that unexpected combinations are generated. But, what is the meaning of
the unexpected for a machine? How would machines have the capacity to be
surprised? If a machine can find a logical explanation for everything, in an
100 Chapter 2

instant’s time, surprise as such is ruled out, being part of deficient biological
creatures at lower levels of development.
Surprise that I have in mind is surprise that we—the biological entities—
can experience, involving bodily changes as well (e.g. increased heart rate).
It is possible that all matter can be surprised in the sense of molecular changes
upon an encounter. For example, when a pebble is thrown into the ocean,
maybe both the ocean and the pebble are surprised in some sense in the
instant of the encounter, and maybe both “welcome” it—but this is outside
my capabilities for experiencing, and I can only speculate about it. Likewise,
sentient machines independent of biology may have their emotions, but it
seems unlikely that such emotions are compatible with emotions of humans
as biological entities. In Kurzweil’s future world, there is no place for wonder
or admiration resulting from our finitude, in comparison with the infinity of
the cosmos and eternal time. This brings to mind Nietzsche’s Eternal Recur-
rence and amor fati, and I would welcome to relive my life over and over
again, to eternity, but the thought of becoming immortal leads to absolute
indifference.
Technology is alluring and its development cannot be stopped. It brings
many benefits and makes life easier, more exciting, and more productive.
However, it indeed goes in unpredictable directions and toward dras-
tic changes in our life-world by redefining what it means to be human.
Kurzweil’s book seems too radical from the current point of view, but many
of the directions indicated by Kurzweil might well be in our future.
In answering his critics, mostly John Searle and William A. Dembski,
Kurzweil argues that they do not accept the notion of a computer system
and Artificial Intelligence different form a rule-based computation, and
that they “cannot seem to grasp the concept of the emergent properties of
complex distributed systems.”90 Indeed, it is true that today advanced search
techniques are based on pattern recognition and the so-called “deep learn-
ing,” with a number of biologically inspired combinatorial approaches using
self-organizational methods, such as genetic algorithms, simulated annealing,
neural networks, and ant colonies. Such meta-heuristic approaches are quite
efficient in suboptimally solving difficult problems involving the so-called
combinatorial explosion. In addition, I can accept the development of “more
complex paradigms based on brain reverse engineering,”91 and adaptive
algorithms surpassing human control.
However, going back to Kurzweil’s future predictions and sophisticated
machines that are self-adaptive, can simulate randomness, and can perform
analytic decision-making (and do it way better than biological humans), I still
cannot envision how to simulate surprise originating in the breakup of human
limited capacity for representation. Artificial intelligence and self-adaptive
computational procedures incorporate randomness (or pseudo-randomness of
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 101

algorithmic generators) to enhance the search, for example to avoid entrap-

ment in a local optimum. This use of randomness in an algorithm seems akin
to the systematic use of negativity (as in Hegel’s dialectic), to progress to a
higher stage, toward absolute knowing, or infinite reflection. Except that the
immersion of Hegelian dialectic in history and additional dialectical moves
invalidate the complete analogy of Hegelian “power of negativity” with the use
of random components in the methods of artificial intelligence. What about
other philosophical positions, arguing for the importance of non-instrumental
negativity as negativity that cannot be appropriated toward concept cre-
ation? What about arguments by Schelling, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Adorno,
Bataille, Lacan, Žižek, to name a few? How to simulate the singularity of a
sudden break of representation, occurring randomly, with non-measurable
intensity, serving as a black hole, creating a moment of non-measurable prox-
imity, inducing a subsequent feeling of irreducible surprise and providing a
taste of transgression? These are our current singularity points: always the
same in repetition, yet always different and fascinating us each time anew.
Maybe such points are biological errors and the occurrence of Technological
Singularity in the year 2045 (according to Kurzweil) will dispense with such
a glitch in the neural networks of our biological brains, and the new race of
cybernetic creatures will never be able to understand or “feel” the allure of an
irrational decision or of weakness as a sign of strength. There is no question
that a machine can be a much better pattern recognizer than a human being,
and a much better decision-maker based on analytical reasoning.
In 1979 Douglas Hofstadter published his seminal book Gödel, Escher,
Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, and in the new preface for the twentieth-
anniversary edition in 1999, he writes, “In some sense, GEB was a ‘forward
looking’ book, or at least on its surface it gave that appearance. Many hailed
it as something like ‘the bible of artificial intelligence,’ which is of course
ridiculous, but the fact is that many young students read it and caught the bug
of my own fascination with the modeling of mind in all its elusive aspects,
including the evanescent goals of ‘I’ and free will and consciousness.”92
In his paper “Moore’s Law, Artificial Evolution, and the Fate of Human-
ity,” Hofstadter questions “the Kurzweil-Moravec scenario” as something
elusive and unlikely happening in the near future of a couple of decades.93�
While he argues for the possibility of one day having computational entities
with emotions such as desires,94� Hofstadter identifies “the twin constraints
of finiteness and mortality” characterizing our humanity, and laments their
possible loss because “At the very moment that creatures switch over from
being mortal to immortal, all meaning, desiring, hoping, fearing, caring, and
indeed, all thinking would go out the window.”95 In an interview from 2008,
when asked whether he shares Kurzweil’s view of universal machinery as
hardware allowing the execution of software, producing human souls, and
102 Chapter 2

allowing immortality, Hofstadter answers, “Well, to me, this ‘glorious’ new

world would be the end of humanity as we know it. If such a vision comes to
pass, it certainly would spell the end of human life. Once again, I don’t want
to be there if such a vision should ever come to pass.”96
It is always difficult to speculate about the future, especially due to fast and
profound technological changes. However, it seems that the problem is not
only the changing technology, it is also the changing human subject. Condi-
tioned by the ease of getting an enormous amount of irrelevant information,
relieved by the allure and “security” provided by computer-generated virtual
reality, and dulled by the lack of empathy resulting from relationships rarely
going below the surface—it seems that the biological entity known as human
is preparing to surrender to the anonymous world ruled by machines. Let us
hope for more time. Although the future might be devoid of the surprise and
wonder that belongs to underdeveloped biological entities, I would like to
believe in the future of surprise. Hence, let us now turn back to philosophy,
and the still unresolved issues of surprise, immediacy, origin, subject, con-
sciousness, etc.

NOTES

1. Blanchot, “The Infinite Conversation,” 199.

2. In Darren Aronofsky’s Films and the Fragility of Hope, Black Swan is inter-
preted as a metaphor for achieving artistic perfection. Aronofsky depicts the disin-
tegration of reality with scenes of hallucinations, the use of mirrors and multiple
reflections, the use of CGI in presenting bodily transformation, and extreme closeups.
Skorin-Kapov, Darren Aronofsky’s Films and the Fragility of Hope.
3. Maurice Blanchot, The Blanchot Reader, ed. M Holland (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers, Ltd, 1996), 117.
4. F. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, trans. R.J. Hol-
lingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1979), 35.
5. Anticipating Nietzsche, Hölderlin already understood Greek culture as emo-
tional, ecstatic, irrational, led by Dionysus.
6. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 94.
7. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books,
1966), 70.
8. In the last moments he prepares Dionysus Dithyrambs, as if determined to
resort to poetry once again.
9. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 128.
10. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, 44.
11. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 229–30.
12. Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond, 42.
13. Ibid., 31.
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 103

14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 50.
16. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1994), xix.
17. Ibid., 1.
18. Ibid., 23.
19. Ibid., 10.
20. Ibid., 15.
21. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (The University of Minessota Press, 1987), 6.
22. Gary Peters, The Philosophy of Improvisation (University Of Chicago Press,
2009), 1.
23. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 14.
24. Ibid., 21.
25. Mathematically speaking, a point where the first derivative vanishes is an opti-
mal point. It is a plateau with highest intensity, hence no directive for either increasing
it or decreasing it; it has the same intensity in all directions.
26. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 237–39.
27. Ibid., 255.
28. The term plan(e) underlines the planned organization which characterizes
arborescence.
29. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 270.
30. Ibid., 493.
31. Ibid., 500.
32. Ibid., 318.
33. Ibid., 337.
34. Fredric Jameson, Valences of the Dialectic (Verso, 2009), 196.
35. Slavoj Žižek, Organs without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences (Routledge,
2004), 71.
36. Ibid., 15.
37. Ibid., 30.
38. Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly, Conversations with Žižek (Polity, 2004), 95.
39. Ibid., 107.
40. Žižek, Organs without Bodies, 42.
41. Ibid., 61.
42. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford University
Press, 1977), 19.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 20.
46. Ibid., 21.
47. Žižek, The Žižek Reader, 228.
48. Ibid., 231.
49. Ibid., 241.
50. Ibid.
104 Chapter 2

51. H Holtzman and M.S James, The New Art—the New Life: The Collected Writ-
ings of Piet Mondrian (G.K. Hall and Co., 1986), 30.
52. Ibid., 39.
53. Ibid., 357.
54. Ibid., 90.
55. Ibid., 52.
56. Ibid., 75.
57. Ibid., 36.
58. Ibid., 31.
59. Ibid., 75.
60. Ibid., 77.
61. Ibid., 40.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., 221.
64. Ibid., 222.
65. Ibid., 349.
66. Ibid.
67. Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, 171.
68. Ibid., 176.
69. Ibid., 177.
70. Ibid.
71. Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, trans. Sean Hand (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 1988), 7.
72. Ibid., 42.
73. Ibid., 68.
74. Ibid., 87.
75. Ibid., 96.
76. Blanchot, “The Infinite Conversation,” 196.
77. Deleuze, Foucault, 98.
78. Ibid., 120.
79. Ibid., 130.
80. Ibid.
81. The Logic of Sense, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, trans. Mark Lester and Charles
Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 107.
82. Foucault, 131.
83. The Logic of Sense, 256.
84. Ibid., 262.
85. Ibid., 265.
86. Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near (Viking, 2005), 191.
87. Ibid., 192.
88. Ibid., 194.
89. Ibid., 26.
90. Ibid., 477.
91. Ibid., 461.
 Limit Experiences, Difference, Repetition, and Singularity 105

92. Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Basic
Books, 1999), P-21.
93. “Moore’s Law, Artificial Evolution, and the Fate of Humanity,” in Perspectives
on Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems, ed. L. Booker, et al. (Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2005).
94. Hofstadter writes: “In some sense, a human brain is nothing other than an
amazingly powerful, massively parallel, brute-force, chemical-reaction machine that
interacts with a very complex environment in real time . . . . In any case, if computers
are strictly determined by the laws of physics, that same fact holds no less true for
brains, since they too are physical objects. If there is room in brains for the laws of
physics to coexist with teleonomy—goal-drivenness (i.e., the existence of desires)—
then why should there not be the same potential in objects made of other substrates?”
Ibid., 178.
95. Ibid., 195.
96. Tal Cohen, “An Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter, Following ‘I Am a
Strange Loop,’” in Tal Cohen’s Bookshelf: (2008).
 Chapter 3

Surprise

What is surprise? Is it a relationship between a subject and an object, or is it

an affect of a subject? It will be argued that surprise is both, starting as the
announcement of anonymous sensibility common to the subject and to the
object, evolving into astonishment announcing the affectivity of the subject,
and further evolving into the announcement of reflection and wonderment.
In fact, this makes sense: if the encounter with the irreducibly unexpected
creates a rupture (a pause or a break), then the recovery of one’s subjectivity
starts as a trace of this rupture. The passivity of exteriority as anonymous
indifference has to give way to the activation of interiority as affectivity and
reflectivity—at some point they have to share a commonality allowing the
transition. A commonality is characterized by an announcement that breaks
the passivity but is still not the action; it is an incarnation of a possibility.
The nature of announcement is looking forward toward something that is not
yet here, something that is revealed in the announcement, but not yet fully
disclosed. Commonly speaking, it is strange to say that surprise starts with
the announcement—isn’t this contradictory to the view that “the announce-
ment spoils the surprise?” It depends on the announcement. To announce
(in Latin, nuntiare stemming from nunc, now, at present), is to begin the
surprise. The announcement considered in this work is not an outside procla-
mation, and has nothing whatever to do with words or with actions. Instead,
here the announcement is defined as indifference of difference, a commonality
allowing transition. I argue that surprise is a sequence of announcements.
In the core of a sudden surprise, there is a sequential processing of “waking
up.” In contrast to a perceived view that surprise is simple because it is sud-
den, I argue that, despite its suddenness, surprise is not a simple affect but a
complex process, the irreducibly new beginning to an experiential situation.

107
108 Chapter 3

Let us go back to the desire preceding the encounter with irreducible other-
ness. It was viewed as the acceptivity inherent in the expectation of excess
over any expectation. Levinas’s desire is characterized by the responsibility
for the other, defined as the “difference which is non-indifference.”1 In fact,
acceptivity can also be defined in this way, as non-indifference. Blanchot’s
neuter, as the impossibility of closure and the exigency of writing, is defined
as the “difference in indifference.”2 The void of the neuter separates desire
from surprise: in the neuter, desire has already ended but one cannot let it go,
and surprise did not begin yet but it is already at stake. Neuter’s “difference
in indifference” leaps into surprising indifference of difference. The dis-
continuity of desire—neuter—surprise carries over to its characterization
as “difference which is non-indifference”—“difference in indifference”—
indifference of difference announcing difference. The three characterized
“situations” are non-indifference (desire)—indifference (neuter, rupture,
pause)—difference (surprise). Hence, surprise starts as indifference in the
core of a difference—as an announcement—and is further transformed by
bringing out other characterizations of difference. As previously defined, “the
announcement” is here used as a term indicating a commonality allowing a
transition from the situation before it to the one after it. During the announce-
ment, old and new situations are both present: the old is not independent of
the new anymore, and the new is still not in place or revoking the old. Hence,
during the announcement, both old and new (i.e. difference) coexist jointly
and the announcement is that “glue” that connects them, as if pointing to
indifference of difference.
Commonly speaking, surprise arises in an experience induced by encoun-
tering something new. First, let us distinguish between banal and irreducible
surprise, and discard the banal ones. The banal surprise is an accidental sur-
prise. If, in retrospect, I can dispense with surprise as being non-surprising in
light of my past experiences, that surprise is reducible to an accident. When
I surprisingly meet an acquaintance, it is a banal surprise, since the encounter
could have been expected as perfectly non-surprising. If, on the other hand,
I cannot reduce the surprise to an accident, even when the combined strength
of my total past is evoked, then the surprise is irreducible and the newness is
acknowledged as genuinely new. Leaving banal surprises aside, the irreduc-
ible surprise can be characterized either as aesthetic or as non-aesthetic. This
has to do with beginnings and endings. The encounter with irreducible oth-
erness, the immediacy that breaks up the totality of one’s world, signals the
pause and a breaking point of one’s representational abilities, including the
desire of looking forward to it. This is the origin outside beginnings and end-
ings, Blanchot’s neuter, a “difference in indifference.” From this origin starts
an announcement—with a leap (i.e. suddenly)—putting in motion either a
process of a beginning or of an ending. Such an announcement disrupts the
 Surprise 109

continuity of one’s everyday existence by inserting irreducible signification

into some encounters.
A birth, when a child emerges from a woman’s womb, originates the
surprise of the beginning and it is a paradigmatic surprise of creation in
general. The surprise that transforms into wonder is aesthetic. The wonder
as such might be philosophic or scientific, but wonder is beyond the initial
surprise. Because the surprise leading to wonder signals a beginning, an
openness characteristic of wonderment, it seems appropriate to label it
aesthetic.
Death of a close person, on the other hand, presents an irreducible sur-
prise, but it is the surprise of the ending and it is a paradigmatic surprise of
extinguishment, stoppage, annihilation; it is non-aesthetic. This is a surprise
of a major tragedy directly hitting either myself, or a person close to me, or
descending upon humanity in general. The surprise that transforms into grief,
anxiety, or despair is non-aesthetic.
Hence, the classification of either an aesthetic or non-aesthetic character of
surprise unfolds upon the recovery of one’s representational capacity. In the
first instant upon emerging from the shock produced by the encounter with
irreducible otherness, I feel the indifference of my senses, as an echo of the
indifference characterizing the origin: I do not feel my senses functioning
separately, I just feel that they are there. The anonymous Il y a of existence
announces itself in the indistinguishable Il y a of my senses, my sense-ness.
This is the switching point from which the transition toward my sensibil-
ity, intuition, reflection and understanding emanates in one of two direc-
tions: either aesthetic (related to a beginning) or non-aesthetic (related to an
ending). In this work, I opt to follow the aesthetic direction, leading to the
acknowledgment of a beginning. Hence, in what follows, when considering
surprise, I restrict the analysis to the irreducible aesthetic surprise.

METAMORPHOSIS OF THE IRREDUCIBLE

AESTHETIC SURPRISE

The irreducible aesthetic surprise starts as an unconditional beginning,

unasked and unbidden. But, it begins from me; it is my surprise. Surprise
originates in the moment of pause or shock caused by the encounter with
immediacy, but it begins as my reaction to a relationship with the irreducible
otherness. Between origination and beginning there is an insurmountable
void: the impossibility of representing immediacy. Granting that surprise
begins as my reaction, how does it unfold afterward? I do not live in a per-
petually surprising mode; hence it has to cease somehow. Indeed, how does
surprise end?
110 Chapter 3

The surprise begins unconditionally (this is its properly aesthetic element),

but it then gradually fuses with other elements (culture, ethics) contributing
to the flow of one’s experience, engendering signification, and serving as the
base for the buildup of one’s subjectivity. Imagine a river slowly flowing,
nested comfortably in its riverbed among majestic mountain peaks, gently
turning its direction as if being considerate toward obstacles and benevolently
acknowledging them in passing. Suddenly, at an unexpected turn, a waterfall
tumbles down, immerses its waters in the river and creates a stir and commo-
tion, catching the river in its naïve acceptivity, yet without its being ready for
fusion. A bit further along the way the river recuperates, the fresh water is wel-
comed, accepted, and incorporated into the flow; it becomes indistinguishable
from the “old” waters. It is not the case that the new water disappears; some
of it gets appropriated by the river contributing to its flowing, making its flow
more assertive and confident, while some of it evaporates in the air, unpro-
ductively, for no particular reason, only to come eventually back, disguised in
the rain feeding the waterfall and the river. And some of it simply disappears
without ever coming back. Yet, the waterfall tumbled down with its full force,
with all the water that it had, indifferent to the fate of its waters afterward.
This is how a surprise gets appropriated or engaged: the flow of experi-
ence assumes some of it, and some of it just disappears after the initial fuss
and storm. A part of surprise without measurable utility, a “nonproductive”
part that eventually “evaporates,” only to (partially) come back again, unex-
pectedly, is astonishment. The productive or appropriated part, the part that
continues further with the flow is wonder. Surprise seems to be indivisible
and concentrated as a sudden eruption, yet it allows metamorphosis and
transformation. In this transformation, astonishment presents discontinuity, a
strand that disappears, the capacity to let go, while wonder is the insistence
to continue, the impossibility of indifference, and the power of processing
and transformation.
But, this characterization might suggest that surprise is an entity with
divisible parts. This is misleading: surprise is commonly perceived as
“compact,” as an instantaneous affect of one’s interiority. It seems that there
is a capacity for surprise, commensurable with a desire for surprise, that is,
commensurable with the acceptivity of exteriority and otherness exceeding
one’s expectations. If I am not acceptive, the encounter might pass by me;
if I am indifferent, the encounter with irreducible otherness will not happen.
The exceeding of expectation cannot happen if there is no expectation; the
unexpected will not happen if there is indifference. In Levinas’s terms, the
irreducible Other still needs the Same, not as its opposition, but as its refer-
ence point. Hence, I need to be acceptive, to be attuned, to be open to surprise.
In further transformation, wonder begets both admiration as the pleasure
of the senses and of contemplation, and responsibility as the signification
 Surprise 111

of non-indifference. Contrasting amazement and admiration, Kant defines

amazement as “an affect [that occurs] when we present novelty that exceeds
our expectation,” and admiration as “an amazement that does not cease once
the novelty is gone.”3 Amazement seems to be akin to pure bewilderment,
while admiration presents the interplay between reflection and its stoppage
due to suspicion regarding its limitation. Although a cognitive act, admira-
tion seems to flourish on surprises of reflection that happen as echoes of the
originating surprise and that are heard each time when reflection is caught up
in its inability for processing. To paraphrase Kant’s admiration-amazement
parallel, the surprise of reflection is a surprise that does not cease once the
originating surprise is gone. It is a derivative yet irreducible surprise in a
sequence of such surprises, characterizing admiration as a dialectic of reflec-
tion and its annihilation. Its derivative character follows from being a surprise
triggered by the original surprise; its origin is the surprise from which it
metamorphosed.
Plato said that philosophy begins with wonder. Levinas might be right that
ethics is the first philosophy, because the signification of non-indifference
(responsibility in Levinas’s vocabulary) inherent in wonder precedes the
question-answer interplay. But, wonder is announced by astonishment, hence
pure aesthetics (non-productive, useless, fleeting) precedes it. Astonishment
lasts but a moment, while wonderment persists. Perceived suddenness of sur-
prise is related to astonishment as independent of any reflection. Wonderment
transformed into either admiration (the aesthetic strand) or into responsibil-
ity (the ethical strand) induces reflection that needs time to proceed and that
appropriates the initial (originating) surprise.
The transition from astonishment to wonderment induces a feeling of
sublimity due to the shock of overwhelming presence that provokes reflec-
tion. Sublimity as viewed here presents a bridge between astonishment and
wonderment: it partially appropriates astonishment to start wonderment.
A sublime feeling incorporates nobility and respect, branching out to, respec-
tively, admiration and responsibility. Kant talks about a noble “cast of mind”4
related to sublimity. Nobility distinguishes admiration from astonishment,
and contemplation from the initial realization of excess beyond expectation;
it signals leaving the purity (disinterestedness) of the aesthetic encounter en
route to invoking the full capacity for reflection, “which happens when ideas
in their exhibition harmonize, unintentionally and without art, without our
aesthetic liking.”5 Such harmonization fits in the metamorphosis of surprise
proposed here, when the initial astonishment or amazement gives rise to
admiration. Respect, on the other hand, is a “big” ethical concept, and Kant
uses it to express the feeling produced by consciousness of the moral law.6
For Kant, respect is “a special and peculiar modification of the feeling of
pleasure and displeasure which does seem to differ somehow from both the
112 Chapter 3

pleasure and displeasure we get from empirical objects.”7 It is a feeling that

does not require a presentation to serve as its cause. In contrast, a feeling of
pleasure and displeasure is an effect of a presentation. Such a view of respect
as being a priori to a presentation is compatible with Levinasian responsibil-
ity as “significance which is non-indifference,”8 beyond the facticity and
particularity of moral norms.
In wonderment, hence, the properly aesthetic surprise is transformed into a
complex reflection, proceeding in different directions (aesthetic/cultural, ethi-
cal, or scientific). One then starts feeling admiration, enjoyment, fulfillment,
and responsibility (in different shades and proportions), and the experience is
not properly aesthetic any more.
To summarize the proposed unfolding of the irreducible aesthetic sur-
prise: the origin (the immediacy or the encounter with irreducible otherness)
triggers the beginning of surprise. Surprise begins with the announcement
of senses characterized by an indistinctness regarding their specific func-
tions—let us call this beginning sense-ness. The first distinct sensation is
astonishment that further invokes sublimity. Sublimity incorporates nobility
and respect and leads to wonderment. Wonderment begets either admiration
or responsibility. Admiration is a feeling of acknowledgment of difference,
a feeling of pleasure because of the other. Responsibility is a feeling of my
accountability for the other, a need for my response because of the other.
Admiration contains an inherent passivity (as when admiring an artwork) and
it stays with me—I can admire in solitude, which projects an aura of nobility.
Responsibility, on the other hand, subtends coexistence in society, be it
characterized by culture, morality, or scientific endeavors, by tainting reflec-
tion with awareness of others and of self in relation to others. Responsibility
contains an inherent activity (as when doing something for the other) and
it necessarily goes toward the other, another human being or environment.
From admiration arises artistic evaluation, which is not necessarily restricted
to artworks because I can evaluate a scene in nature artistically. From respon-
sibility arises morality. Artistic admiration and moral activity develop further
from diminishing surprise, when pure surprise disappears, appropriated by art
criticism, moral norms, and the logic of scientific understanding.
The philosophical views summarized in the following sections seem
relevant for the proposed metamorphosis of surprise as the sequence of
announcements. Despite the perceived suddenness, the phenomenology of
surprise proposed in this work views surprise as a complex process, with
different sequential phases. Each of the philosophical views presented subse-
quently is interpreted in the light of one of the phases. It is not my intention
to interpret the role of surprise in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, or in any other
subsequently presented philosophical view. Those positions are interpreted
as they fit in a specific phase of the proposed framework of surprise as a
 Surprise 113

sudden (yet complex and composite) process characterizing the beginning of

an experience as aesthetic.
To emphasize again: I propose to look at the phenomenon of surprise as
a series of announcements, starting with the announcement of sensibility,
leading to astonishment as the announcement of reflectivity, further trans-
forming (in a leap) from astonishment to wonderment inherent in sublimity,
and subsequently branching out to either admiration grounding aesthetic-
cultural-scientific experiences, or responsibility grounding ethical experi-
ences. Considering surprise as sudden astonishment seems too simplistic and
does not give due credit to its impact in one’s experience.
In order to acknowledge the newness necessary for the startup of sur-
prise, Fink’s speculative phenomenology and his inquiry into the origin of
a phenomenon is presented first. The next philosophical view relevant to
the beginning of surprise includes Merleau-Ponty’s writing on chiasm and
intertwining as it fits with the announcement of sensibility, prior to the defi-
niteness of separate senses. Next, Nancy’s description of the surprise of the
event, as characterizing the happening of the event and related to the surprise
of thinking, fits with astonishment as the announcement of reflectivity. Then,
Lyotard’s writing on sublimity brings in focus the transition from astonish-
ment to wonderment. The development of wonderment toward admiration
leads to the aesthetic branch, hence Dufrenne’s writing on the phenomenology
of aesthetic experience is relevant. In addition, Bachelard’s dialectics of
outside and inside captures the play of reflection and its annihilation in the
continuous force of admiration of a poetic image. The aesthetics of appear-
ing proposed by Seel underlines the nature of appearance apart for objective
representation, and seems relevant to the encounters considered in this work.

ON FINK’S SPECULATIVE PHENOMENOLOGY

Speculative philosophy makes claims that cannot be verified by everyday

experience. Hence, when I talk about the break of my representational
capabilities, I can only speculate about indifference. Speculative thought is
contrasted with phenomenology as a study of conscious experience. Being
conscious of something, one can write about it and propose a phenomenology
of such an encounter. But, one can only speculate what is beyond one’s con-
sciousness. The present work is an example of speculative phenomenology,
since I move between phenomenology and speculation. I started by develop-
ing a phenomenology of desire for the unexpected. This was followed by
speculation about the break, continuing with a phenomenology of surprise.
A mix of speculation and phenomenology appears in the work of Eugen
Fink, whose thesis is titled, Representation and Image: Contributions to the
114 Chapter 3

Phenomenology of Unreality. Working under the dominance of Husserl, Fink

nevertheless questioned some elements of Husserl’s notion of intentional
consciousness. For Fink, a phenomenon invites both analysis as the power
to discriminate and to generate knowledge, and speculation as the power of
questioning and philosophizing. Fink’s philosophical position was influenced
by both Husserl and Heidegger, and in turn he was influential for Merleau-
Ponty’s study on the primacy of perception.
The question is: how to do a philosophy of origin? For Fink the notion of
becoming amounts to a mutual joining of the constituted world as being, and
its constituting life as pre-being. He states that philosophy in essence is play,
which is a concept characterizing human nature (this invites comparison with
Gadamer’s proposal of art as play). Fink argues for the “phenomenology of
phenomenology,” for going beyond the natural attitude to the transcendental
“constitutive becoming” of the world, to witness the “birth of the world.”
His view is that phenomenology has to contain a certain level of speculation,
since otherwise it becomes mere psychology. Phenomenology of reflection
is too constrained and cannot address existential issues properly. Fink argues
that phenomenology should originate in something other than phenomenol-
ogy. This is my point also: the origin or immediacy beyond representation
precedes the representation as given in consciousness.
While Kant theorizes the transcendental ego and Husserl the concrete I;
Fink posits a transcendental ego—not as a being, but instead as a source
of being, a pre-being. His philosophy looks beyond being, at the source of
being, the origin preceding the beginning. What is prior to consciousness,
as a source or origin to a conscious fact, precedes intuition and its forms.
The consideration of origin points to the limits of phenomenology and asserts
the possibility of speculative reflection.
In the Sixth Cartesian Meditation, Fink proposes a transcendental theory
of method as an inquiry into the origin, the speculation of the pre-existing
environment for phenomenology. It is a critical answer to Husserl and his
Cartesian Meditation, which begin with the ego. Fink wants to inquire
into inter-subjectivity and the problem of becoming, and, by inquiring into
the transcendental theory of method, he in fact does a “phenomenology of
phenomenology.”9 The problem is to situate the conditions justifying the
transcendental phenomenology and the ego performing the analysis. Fink
writes, “In the field of ‘transcendentality’ there remains, therefore, something
still uncomprehended, precisely the phenomenological theorizing ‘onlooker.’
Nothing other than this very onlooker is the theme of the transcendental
theory of method, which therefore is the phenomenological science of phe-
nomenologizing, the phenomenology of phenomenology.”10
The onlooker is the subject performing the theorizing, so what is support-
ing his or her functioning, what justifies his or her “expertise” in performing
 Surprise 115

such acts? Husserl’s phenomenology goes from the ontic level to the inquiry
of transcendental phenomenology. This transition is possible due to the
transcendental ego and the intentional consciousness. But, what grounds the
transcendental ego? What are the pre-conditions for establishing the con-
sciousness of the ego, that is, what about transcendental inter-subjectivity
or commonality of being and its environment? Fink seems to hold a middle
ground between Husserl’s transcendental ego performing phenomenological
reductions, and Heidegger’s Da-sein as being in the world. The problem is
to acknowledge the primacy of the origin outside the transcendental ego that
allows the ego to perform phenomenology. The beginning of phenomenology
has to acknowledge the origin outside and its presence inside.
The I reflects, but transcendental reflection performing the phenom-
enological reduction discloses the transcendental I, pulling it out of the
anonymity inherent in the word-constitution, and “steps out of darkness
and ‘being-outside-itself’ into the luminosity of transcendental ‘being-for-
itself.’”11 This disclosure seems to be the prerequisite for development of
self-consciousness. The phenomenological onlooker performs the phenom-
enological reduction uniting the human I of natural attitude and the transcen-
dental I of phenomenologizing.
Husserl’s phenomenology starts with the ego as a pole of intentionali-
ties and transcendental subjectivity in the living present. The intentionality
includes the past as memory and recollection. But, what about the transcen-
dental past? Fink wants to develop a “transcendental critique of recollection,
of the consciousness of the past that is indicated in the habitualities of this
actual moment.”12 Is the past of intersubjectivity, of pre-being, relevant to the
present and to the phenomenological reduction? This is the question of ori-
gin: how is origin that precedes the beginning, the outside, incorporated into
the present? Birth and death are “the great realities of human existence,”13
but I—being already born and not yet dead—do not have a first-hand experi-
ence of either birth or death. Still, my analysis is heavily dependent of it—
what justification do I have for speculating about beginnings and ends? Is it
possible that some transcendental recollection of intersubjectivity becomes
relevant as a recollection of the multiplicity of births and deaths shared in
intersubjectivity and implanted in the transcendental onlooker, justifying
the intuitive use of the phenomena of birth and death in phenomenological
reduction?
The speculative phenomenology of Fink certainly adds to Husserl’s phe-
nomenology. In addition, I wish to go somewhat further than Fink: can we
identify mundane phenomena that provide intuition about birth and death,
giving the flavor of natural attitude to the transcendental recollection of
beginning and ending? The phenomenon of surprise as the aftermath of
an irreducible break in the stream of consciousness incorporates both the
116 Chapter 3

intuitions of death and of birth, since something came to a stop following

the break of the stream of experience, only to give rise to birth in the waking
up of sensibility. The work of Merleau-Ponty, who was influenced by Fink,
complies with the interplay between commonality and individuality, between
the flesh of the world and the subjectivity of perception.
Here we leave the territory marked by Husserl and enter the territory of
Heidegger—and Fink seems to be the “bridge.” Indeed, commentators such
as Ronald Bruzina have viewed Fink as a middleman between Husserl and
Heidegger, writing, “There is no doubt that Fink was indebted to Heidegger for
his appreciation of the importance of the question of being for philosophy . . .
what Fink does in the Sixth Meditation is something Heidegger could not do,
namely, raise the issue in such a way as to make it both accessible to Husserl
and appreciated by him (even if he might not agree entirely with Fink’s way
of treating it).”14
The analysis of the phenomenon of surprise presupposes a representa-
tional break that lies outside it. This break is a logical necessity stemming
from the concept of surprise based on experiencing newness, but it is at the
same time a transcendental necessity preceding the logic of the notion since
the consciousness of break presupposes “being-outside-itself.” This tran-
scendental necessity leads to the problem of transcendental idealism and its
positioning regarding transcendence and immanence. The direction from a
natural attitude based on transcendental pre-conditions, in order to move to
transcendental phenomenology, shows the intertwining of inside and outside,
of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and discards the differences between
idealism and realism.15
The phenomenon of surprise seems to be the paradigmatic phenomenon,
analogous to Dewey’s and Gadamer’s assertions that the aesthetic experi-
ence is the paradigmatic experience that can elucidate what experience is by
being an experience (Dewey) representing “the essence of experience per se”
(Gadamer). Similarly, I argue that the phenomenon of surprise carries in itself
the basic questions of phenomenology and most forcefully provides insight
into the relationship between the transcendental and the immanent, between
presence and absence, and between the Other and the Same, subjectivity and
intersubjectivity.
Fink’s contribution to phenomenology is, in his own words, “an anticipa-
tory look at a meontic philosophy of absolute spirit.”16 The word “meontic”
(without appearing again in the text of the Sixth Meditation) is the key notion
connecting the transcendental to the mundane. The notion of the absolute
unites the existent (natural attitude) as such, which is the world, and the
pre-existent (transcendental) which is the world-origin. Fink’s speculative
phenomenology is characterized by its meontic combining of constitution and
transcendence, its analysis of observable and experienced phenomena by way
 Surprise 117

of the speculative consideration of the origin. The meontic approach is trying

to reproduce and situate the non-present.
As already stated, this work has affinity with Fink’s speculative phenom-
enology since the proposed speculative phenomenon titled desire||surprise
requires a combination of analysis and speculation; it iterates among descrip-
tion-speculation-description. How can we speculate in phenomenology?
By considering the origin of a phenomenon, outside of phenomena yet indis-
pensable for its analysis and its position in experiencing.
Husserl’s phenomenology is transcendental regarding the elements
(e.g. time and space), but he takes the phenomenological method without
questioning. Fink wants to augment the phenomenological approach by
considering the “transcendental theory of the method,” which necessarily
includes the phenomenological onlooker and justification for the startup of
phenomenological analysis. Fink’s work influenced Merleau-Ponty’s articu-
lation of commonality, or the “flesh” beyond intentional consciousness as an
acknowledgement of intersubjectivity. Intentional analysis cannot grasp the
origin outside the phenomenon, the origin transcending consciousness of the
noema and justifying the primacy of perception.

MERLEAU-PONTY’S INTERTWINING OR CHIASM

The phenomenology of surprise proposed in the present work characterizes

the start of surprise as a true beginning, a leap from the anonymity of exis-
tence (indifferent immediacy) toward perception, toward the employment
of senses and, further on, toward reflection. The presence of something
overflowing the presentation by one’s senses is necessary for signalling a
break or pause, when sensibility is caught in its passivity. Awareness of this
passivity, emerging from a blinding, overwhelming, image (or encounter)
announces—merely announces—one’s senses. In such an instant I am aware
of my senses, but in a strange way: not that I sense a touch or a smell, or see
anything objective, I do not feel the result of functioning senses. I become
aware—so to speak—of the birth of my sensibility, my sense-ness. In the
moment of birth, a child is still connected to the mother’s body through the
umbilical cord; he or she is and is not a separate being yet, despite all the
organs having developed properly; the oxygen absent from the child’s lungs
indicates mortal dependence on the mother’s nurturing body. The cut of the
umbilical cord and that first breath and cry indicate the necessary separation,
so that all the organs can assume their functions and subjectivity can start to
be ascertained and shaped.
In the initial instant of surprise, I am connected with the “umbilical cord”
to the encounter that triggered it. I sense myself sensing, not yet separated
118 Chapter 3

from the encounter that originated the delivery, and, as in a perverse logic,
my body is extended beyond its physical confines to encompass the encoun-
ter. The separation, the cut of the umbilical cord, the retreat of my shapeless
body to its physical confinement, is announced by feelings of astonishment
or amazement, analogous to the first breath and the first cry. In astonish-
ment, I start asserting my territory, indicating my inclination to put things
under my control—which is in vain, of course; astonishment transforms
into admiration, resembling a game of hide-and-seek between reflection and
non-reflection.
Merleau-Ponty’s work is indispensable for the phenomenology of percep-
tion while the umbilical cord’s connection to the environment is still in place,
when I see myself seeing, and touch myself touching. For him phenomenol-
ogy is “a study of the advent of being to consciousness, instead of presuming
its possibility as given in advance.”17 “The Intertwining: The Chiasm” chapter
in The Visible and the Invisible articulates most forcefully Merleau-Ponty’s
elaboration of the pre-reflective phase of experience between empiricism
and rationalism, when one’s senses are turned on themselves to sense sen-
sibility itself, at the birth of sensibility, as the antecedent to separate senses.
He writes, “Since the same body sees and touches, visible and tangible belong
to the same world.”18 The notion of “flesh” as the equivalence of sensibility
and the sensible thing, provides Merleau-Ponty with the notion of embodi-
ment of the intermediary between the subject and the object, the seer and the
visible. He writes, “It is that the thickness of flesh between the seer and the
thing is constitutive for the thing of its visibility as for the seer of his corpore-
ity; it is not an obstacle between them, it is their means of communication.”19
The seer and the thing have a commonality, bringing them into proximity,
defying objective distance, and allowing communication different from that
of a question-answer discourse. The flesh is “midway between the spatio-
temporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate principle that brings a
style of being wherever there is a fragment of being.”20 This view is relevant
for the initial phase of the metamorphosis of surprise in the present work. In
irreducible surprise, a “fragment of being” emerges after the instant of pause
or shock. The sense of sensibility announces itself, announces being, yet there
is still indeterminacy and non-recognition of separate senses, and reflection
is still missing. Each separate sense of each separate body with every other
body “is bound in such a way as to make up with them the experience of one
sole body before one sole world . . . and all together are a Sentient in general
before a Sensible in general.”21 This is the “anonymous visibility” of the
flesh residing in all bodies and allowing communication. In some sense, the
anonymity is reminiscent of Levinas: whereby Levinas wants to go beyond
being as existent and resorts to the anonymous Il y a of existence, Merleau-
Ponty goes beyond senses and resorts to the anonymous Il y a of sensibility,
 Surprise 119

“the flesh of the world”22 as he names it, its visibility, and, one could add,
its touch-ability, its smell-ability, etc. The intertwining (the communicabil-
ity) of outside and inside, and of body and world, is made possible by this
commonality.
Merleau-Ponty’s primary interests are in the senses of sight and touch. In a
long sentence he writes,

when, starting from the body, I ask how it makes itself a seer, when I examine
the critical region of the aesthesiological body, everything comes to pass . . . as
though the visible body remained incomplete, gaping open; . . . as though,
therefore, the vision came suddenly to give to the material means and instru-
ments left here and there in the working area a convergence which they were
waiting for . . .: the current making of an embryo a newborn infant, of a visible
a seer, and of a body a mind, or at least a flesh.23

All this results in animation or inspiration, and in the visible body: “suddenly
it will see, that is, will be visible for itself . . .,”24 hence it will start a new
beginning, and add a new signification.
This process of making of a visible a seer parallels the evolving of an
aesthetic encounter considered in the present work: the desire is inherent in
“waiting for” and the beginning of surprise is inherent in the sudden arrival.
The void, or the break separating desire from surprise, is inherent in the
irreducible difference characterizing the “making of an embryo a newborn
infant.” The break is due to the difference between an embryo ceasing to be,
and a newborn infant arriving; it is the origination of a true beginning.
It is interesting how Merleau-Ponty describes the impossibility of expe-
riencing the “reversibility of the seeing and the visible, or the touching and
the touched,” which becomes impossibility precisely “at the moment of real-
ization.”25 This impossibility happens because, in the moment of touching
and being touched, my body and that of the world “adhere to one another,”
and become indistinguishable. In touching I am an active subject; in being
touched I am passive: there is a void in between. For Merleau-Ponty, this void
is “the zero point of pressure between two solids that makes them adhere to
one another.”26
This void seems to be akin to the void between desire and surprise consid-
ered in the present work and characterizing the properly aesthetic experience.
In desire, as in touching, I am active and still a subject. In encountering the
irreducible exceeding over expectations, I reach the zero point of my subjec-
tivity and I am engulfed in a pause in which surprise originates. My desire, as
the expectation of the exceeding of any expectation, and this excess itself, are
fused: they “adhere to one another,” as if my body and the body of the world
are becoming one. This void is the origin of my surprise, and the beginning of
120 Chapter 3

surprise starts with the announcement of my sensibility, viewed as the indif-

ference of difference. In a sense, Merleau-Ponty’s flesh is the indifference of
difference between my body and the body of the world. The indifference of
difference inherent in flesh passes into difference, and this transition corre-
sponds to Merleau-Ponty’s feeling of being touched. Hence, the impossibility
of experiencing the overlapping of touching and being touched is due to a
commonality between myself and the world—the flesh—where touching and
being touched are indistinguishable, disorienting my experiential capacity
to clearly distinguish between the activity of touching, and the passivity of
being touched.
Merleau-Ponty concludes his “Chiasm” chapter by considering language
that “refers back to itself”27—not the language of discourse, but the language
as the gaze of the mind. Analogous to the “reversibility of the seeing and the
visible,” there is “a reversibility of the speech and what it signifies.”28 They
share “the same fundamental phenomenon of reversibility which sustains
both the mute perception and the speech and which manifests itself by an
almost carnal existence of the idea, as well as by a sublimation of the flesh.”29
Such reversibility subtends both sensibility and reflection, making possible
their intertwining. And this intertwining is a relevant point for the further
metamorphosis of surprise, in the instant of astonishment and its transforma-
tion into wonderment, characterized by sublimity manifesting the sensibility
of thought (vulnerability and enjoyment combined). Astonishment is the
announcement of thought, of reflectivity. It is the indifference between reflec-
tion and non-reflection, the indifference of difference, passivity in the core
of activity that goes by the name of thinking. Merleau-Ponty’s reversibility
is possible only if there is common ground for both terms that are involved.
The reversibility of reflection (as an activity) and of what is being reflected
upon occurs in the passivity of reflection when it is taking the place of the
reflected upon. This passivity of reflection precedes the eruption of astonish-
ment. Hence, astonishment can be viewed as the surprise of thinking. Nancy’s
work regarding the surprise of the event is relevant here.

NANCY’S SURPRISE OF THE EVENT

For Nancy, surprise is the essence or being of the event, “the event-ness
of the event.” Without surprise there would be no event. He writes, “What
makes the event an event is not only that it happens, but that it surprises.”30
In evoking Hegel, he argues that becoming should not be identified with
“passage into” indicating procession, but with the agitation of unrest, “which
has not yet passed and does not pass as such—but happens.”31 In the word
that Hegel uses for event as occurrence or happening (Geschehen) implying
 Surprise 121

“precipitation and suddenness,” Nancy senses that “Hegel lets the Geschehen
come and go, happen and leave, without seizing it.”32 What cannot be seized
is the “as such,” the event-ness regardless of the factuality of what happens.
This event-ness, according to Nancy, “can only be a matter of surprise, can
only take thinking by surprise.”33
In “pure occurring” not effectuated by some cause but starting ex nihilo, the
time is “empty time” as the time itself (it is not in time, it is not successivity).
This “empty time” characterizes “the present without presence,” “it is the
unexpected arrival of the thing itself.” Nancy continues, “It is neither (succes-
sive) time, nor (distributive) place, nor (extant) thing, but rather the place of
something—the event.”34 The event is not “presentable”; in Nancy’s words,
“it is the unpresentifiable of the present.”35 Blanchot calls it “the absence of
presence.” The unexpected arrival divides abstraction from the result, so that
“There is a rupture and a leap,”36 a rupture indicating severance of all presup-
positions, and a leap indicating the appearance.
The surprise, for Nancy, “is not anything,” not a newness of compari-
son with the existing, but a leap of—concurrently—the “not yet” and the
“already.” Nancy writes, “The surprise is nothing except the leap right at
Being, this leap where the event and thinking are ‘the same.’”37
Let me interpret this statement in relation to the present work. As argued
in the previous section, immediacy is the precedent of re-presentation,
a presence that cannot be represented because it is prerequisite to representa-
tion. The impossibility of presenting immediacy leads to a rupture (a pause
and empty time), and the leap originates the beginning as a creation, not as
a transformation of something into something else. This leap from imme-
diacy to mediation and presence induces a leap of thought, a recovery
of the “frozen” capacity for reflection, beginning as irreducible surprise.
It seems that Nancy’s article can be summarized in the following state-
ment: event-ness of the event is immediacy as the origin that leaps into the
beginning. The impossibility of representing immediacy results in surprise,
the acknowledgment of the breaking point of representation. Nancy defines
the constitution of the event as “the nonpresence of the coming to presence,
and its absolute surprise.”38 The surprise he considers “is not a surprise for a
subject,” the surprise is the event itself which is not representable, but rather
is “the leap into the space-time of nothing,” where this space-time “is the
originary division and chiasm that opens them up to one another.”39 Again, it
seems misleading to name “surprise” that which is, in fact, pure immediacy.
The title of Nancy’s essay could have been “The Immediacy of the Event,” or
“The Immediacy: Of the Event” to indicate the originality and non-intimacy
of the leap. In contrast, surprise is mine, intimate, it follows the leap; it is
a trace of immediacy. While immediacy “is not anything,” surprise carries
my world on its shoulders. Immediacy characterizes event-ness of the event
122 Chapter 3

and is completely indifferent, while surprise—from its beginning—clings to

a “fragment of being,”40 to use a phrase of Merleau-Ponty, and proceeds as
my feeling triggered or induced by immediacy: immediacy precedes surprise
and there is a void between, which is transgressed in a leap. Immediacy and
surprise are related as cause and effect, and while immediacy characterizes
the event-ness of the event, we might say (in analogy) that surprise character-
izes the self-ness of self. Without surprise, there would be no self; without
immediacy there would be no event, no origination of self. However, one
can argue: and what about the event of thinking? The surprise induced by the
immediacy of the outside induces in turn the immediacy of thinking as an
event, resulting in the surprised thought. Every true beginning originates from
immediacy, anonymous and indifferent. Hence, a new thought also originates
from immediacy outside thinking. For a thought, such immediacy is the
sensation of astonishment, which is outside thought and originates the begin-
ning of thought as the surprise inherent in the sublimity characterizing the
transition from the sensation of astonishment toward the reflection of won-
derment. Astonishment is the surprise of thinking. Surprise, as the surprise of
encountering irreducible otherness, starts even earlier, in the announcement
of sensibility. What is in play afterward is the dialectics of outside and inside,
the intertwining of the other and the same (or the other in the same). Surprise
leads to the immediacy of the event of thinking, hence to the leap from a
banal thought to a creative one.
The perceived complexity of surprise carries over to its proposed phenom-
enology as a series of sequential and gradual announcements. In the process
of the metamorphosis of surprise proposed in the present work, astonishment
as the announcement of reflection is followed by the transformation (leap) to
wonderment. The leap from astonishment to wonderment can be character-
ized by sublimity. Hence, this seems to be the appropriate place for interpret-
ing Lyotard’s work on sublimity.

LYOTARD AND SUBLIMITY

In the metamorphosis of irreducible aesthetic surprise, after the pre-reflective

instant announcing sensibility, followed by astonishment as announcement
of reflection, wonder starts. Wonder can lead to either admiration, or to
responsibility, or to any combination of admiration/responsibility in differ-
ent proportions. This, in turn, leads to a startup of either an aesthetic/cultural
experience, or an ethical experience, or a cultural/social experience, respec-
tively. Hence, the transition from astonishment into wonderment seems to be
a common ground of aesthetics, ethics, and culture, whence artistic evalua-
tion and moral norms can go separate ways. It has already been stated that this
 Surprise 123

transition is characterized by sublimity, incorporating the feelings of nobility

and respect. In progressing through the proposed metamorphosis of surprise,
Lyotard’s work from the Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime seems to fit
best when arriving at the point of considering wonder and sublimity, after the
initial astonishment starts retreating to give more “space” to reflection.
Contrasting aesthetics—ethics, Lyotard considers the following contrasts:
beautiful—good; indirect presentation—unrepresentable object; presenta-
tion of absence—absence of presentation; presentation without adequate
concept—concept without adequate presentation. Sublimity arises when
reflection reaches its limit, when it attempts to reflect on the absolute, be
it the absolute in aesthetic presentation, or in morality, or in speculative
thought. Lyotard writes, “The consequence for thought is a kind of spasm.
And the Analytic of the Sublime is a hint of this spasm.”41 This seems very
much in line with the proposal in the present work to characterize properly
aesthetic experience as rupture with both sensibility and reflection “on hold”
in the instant of pause (seizure, spasm) due to their inability to handle the
encounter, or to deal with presence. It is difficult to conceptualize the unlim-
ited, argues Lyotard, because understanding in employing concepts works
under the assumption of limitation, of the definiteness implicit in conceptual
description.
In comparing the aesthetic idea to the rational idea, Lyotard reminds us that
whenever the presence of an object surpasses the boundaries of the concept
of that object in the sense of exceeding our experience, an aesthetic idea
arises—in contrast to a rational idea, which is a concept of an object that can-
not be presented. Hence, an aesthetic idea is characterized by a presence trig-
gering the excess of its reception, that is, a presence that goes beyond simple
objective presentation and somehow captures absence (non-presentable pres-
ence) as well. The aesthetic idea cannot possibly be exhausted in descriptive
phrases; it cannot be subsumed under a definite concept of understanding.
A work of art can be viewed as an implicit nod to absence as presence.
The lure of the absolute and the exigency of going beyond limits charac-
terize human nature and present a driving force for encountering sublime
feelings. Lyotard writes, “The absolute is never there, never given in a presen-
tation, but it is always ‘present’ as a call to thing beyond the ‘there.’ Ungrasp-
able, but unforgettable. Never restored, never abandoned.”42 It seems that the
absolute has many forms: it is Levinas’s irreducible Other, it is Bataille’s void
or the unknown in the core of the ecstatic moment, it is Blanchot’s neuter and
the incessant need to write, it is the impossibility of presenting (i.e. mediat-
ing) immediacy. The absolute is a “presence” that cannot be objectively
presented. It can only implicitly manifest itself; it can be felt. Whenever we
encounter something irreducibly unexpected originating a new beginning,
a facet of the absolute unveils itself, if only for an instant. The irreducible
124 Chapter 3

surprise resulting from such an encounter in its metamorphosis toward won-

der invokes sublime feelings.
Lyotard asks, “is it possible, and how would it be possible, to testify to
the absolute by means of artistic and literary presentations, which are always
dependent on forms?”43 This is a challenging question that guides artistic
efforts. The underlying assumption is that thinking of the absolute is incom-
patible with thinking of forms, because forms imply limitation, running
counter to the limitlessness attributed to the absolute. Let me pose another
question: Is there a way of testifying to the absolute with a formal presenta-
tion, that is, in an artwork that has a “beautiful” form, yet whose content spills
beyond it as if the form were made purposively restrictive to underline its
own inadequacy? Let us ask again: what is the absolute and why is this con-
cept of reason singled out? The absolute is irreducible otherness, experienced
in encounters with nature and art. It is irreducibly unexpected. A glimpse of
the absolute can be obtained whenever the presentation (as formed matter)
ceases to be complete or closed and points to a presence beyond the surface
of the factual presentation. The presence of the absolute is the absence of
presentation; its “form” can only be defined in negative terms as inability.
Artistic presentations of the absolute should not be concerned with the form
of the form, instead they should be concerned with the surpassing of whatever
form is available; for example, they should go beyond a style or movement
labeled with an –ism, such as modernism, postmodernism, minimalism,
expressionism, impressionism, etc.
Discussing the affective quality of sublime feelings, Lyotard recalls Kant’s
distinction between enthusiasm and respect: enthusiasm is an affect and as an
affect it agitates the mind, hence it is a hindrance to free contemplation, while
respect is a pure moral feeling. Nonetheless, enthusiasm, and any other affect
“of the vigorous kind”44 that is strong enough to point to our strength in over-
coming obstacles and resistance, is aesthetically sublime in that it induces
consciousness of our strength. Interestingly, Kant singles out “[the state of
being] without affects . . . in a mind that vigorously pursues its immutable
principles”45 as being sublime “in a far superior way” because it allows the
purity of reason. Such a state, says Kant, is “noble” and arouses admiration.
This characterization of nobility fits the metamorphosis of surprise proposed
in this work, when astonishment as the announcement of reflection gives way
to wonder, and to the startup of admiration as the interplay between reflection
and feeling. Astonishment clears the mind of its every affect; only affectiv-
ity as such is announced. This clearance allows a firmness of mind that is
not burdened by specific affects; hence wonderment can start. The feeling
of nobility guides wonderment in the direction of admiration. Admiration
indeed projects something noble in the sense of being firm, unshakable in
determination, and principled, hence significant, or something opposed to
 Surprise 125

insignificance and vulgarity. In another direction, the feeling of respect leads

wonderment in the (ethical) direction of responsibility.
Maybe we should dwell a little bit more on the difference between feelings
of nobility and respect. I feel nobility as a reaction triggered by the outside
but applying back to me, as a noble state of my mind, involving strength as
something that subtends my acknowledgment of principles. Respect, on the
other hand, is at its best when I can turn toward something or somebody else
and evaluate it in a disinterested way, as a fair judge would do, according to
pure lawfulness. Emotions can make judgments impure; they involve sensi-
bility and disable the contemplation of lawfulness. But, what to make of this
difference between nobility and respect regarding the phenomenology of the
irreducible surprise? In sum, following astonishment and its transformation
into wonderment engendered in sublimity, the feeling of nobility announces
admiration oriented toward art evaluation and the cultural significance of
the aesthetic encounter, transforming into an aesthetic-cultural experience.
The feeling of respect signals the metamorphosis of the sublime, resulting in
responsibility, and the initial aesthetic encounter transforms into an ethical
experience. Not that experiences can be neatly separated by type, but one
mode can be predominant: I can go to a museum, and I can also give my time
to a worthy social cause, and the two can go together.
Lyotard views sublimity as the irreducible break between Kant’s specu-
lative and practical philosophies, between judgment and reason, between
nature and freedom. He writes, “Sublime violence is like lightning. It short-
circuits thinking with itself.”46 In one sense, the rupture caused by encoun-
tering irreducible otherness or irreducible excess over any expectation is
certainly a break of my “powers of the mind”—all three of them (cognitive
power, the power to feel pleasure and displeasure, and the power of desire).
However, the sublime can also be viewed as a bridge over the void or abyss
between presentation (Levinas’s Same) and non-presentable “presence”
(Levinas’s Other). Since sublime is a feeling both of pleasure and displea-
sure, it has a break “wired” into it. Sublimity allows the discontinuity of
discontinuity, hence continuity on a higher level. On the other hand, in the
metamorphosis of surprise proposed here, sublimity arises with the restora-
tion of the power of reflection, after the instant of pure astonishment. Then,
displeasure, regarding sensitivity’s inability, and pleasure, regarding subse-
quent recuperation, serve as a composite mending power that appropriates
the excess beyond expectation. Desire, as the expectation of the irreducible
exceeding of any expectation, finds its repose—albeit temporary—and allows
considering such a break as one’s own victory. Maybe in such an experience
I do not feel dominance over nature, or dominance of reason over sensibility,
as Kant would want it, but I do feel a kind of dominance over the situation,
the break that did not break me, but allowed me to get a glimpse of a new
126 Chapter 3

beginning, as if a new strand were added to my experiential “space,” adding

to its thickness.
Lyotard concludes his Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime with the
forceful statement, “The sublime feeling is neither moral universality, nor
aesthetic universalization, but is, rather, the destruction of one by the other
in the violence of their differend. This differend cannot demand, even sub-
jectively, to be communicated to all thought.”47 In the framework proposed
in the current work, the rupture that occurs during the encounter with excess
signals the failure of universality, because universality assumes communi-
cability, and the void destroys every communication. According to Kant,
universalization of taste requires sensus communis, while the universality of
moral communicability requires the a priori idea of freedom. The universal-
ization of taste is severed in the instant of rupture, as if disappearing into a
black hole, and the a priori idea of freedom does not guide the beginning of
surprise, it does not start with an implicit “ought.” The acceptivity inherent
in the desire for the unexpected, leading to some kind of appropriation of the
incompatibility between desire and surprise, does not possess the universal-
ization based on either sensus communis or on moral “ought.” The properly
aesthetic experience revealed in sublimity is beyond both taste and morality.
Both artistic and moral judgments may follow afterward, when sublimity
changes into admiration or responsibility.
In judging encounters as instances of the properly aesthetic experi-
ence, four consecutive phases were proposed, namely desire, excess, pause
(rupture), and recuperation (surprise). The metamorphosis of the irreducible
aesthetic surprise was characterized as a series of consecutive announce-
ments: the announcement of sensibility, followed by the announcement
of reflection (astonishment), triggering wonderment inherent in sublimity,
further branching to admiration and/or responsibility. Kant explicates the
reflective aesthetic judgments (of taste and about sublime) via the four
moments, corresponding to the four logical functions of the understanding,
namely quantity, quality, relation, and modality. He specifies the moments
involved in judging about sublime as follows, “in terms of quantity, as uni-
versally valid; in terms of quality, as devoid of interest; in terms of relation,
[as a] subjective purposiveness; and in terms of modality, as a necessary
subjective purposiveness.”48 With the augmented notions of sublimity and
morality as pertaining to the judgments about the irreducible aesthetic expe-
rience, it is interesting to compare the four proposed phases with the four
moments in Kantian judgments about sublime, that is, to describe the desire
in terms of quantity, excess in terms of quality, pause in terms of relation, and
recuperation in terms of modality.
According to Kant, sublimity uncovers the supersensible in us, leading to
the idea of supersensible freedom pointing to morality. The mathematically
 Surprise 127

sublime uncovers the imagination’s inability to comprehend the absolute

whole, despite reason’s demand to obey its laws, albeit without specifying
which law. The dynamically sublime uncovers the mind’s superiority over
sensible nature, pointing toward the moral law proclaimed by practical reason
as the only way to achieve supersensible freedom. The encounters judged as
instances of the properly aesthetic experience do not have to be provoked by
something absolute in size or might, and the result is not the feeling of one’s
superiority over sensible nature. However, they do uncover a sense of moral-
ity by acknowledging otherness and one’s place inseparable from the rest of
the environment, and by providing a glimpse of the origin as necessary for a
birth or for any true beginning. In that sense, they point to one’s limitlessness,
as the possibility of encountering new beginnings. In judging that an encoun-
ter resulted with the properly aesthetic experience, with respect to quantity
we consider the boundless desire as the inclination to accept the encounter
with irreducible otherness. The universal validity of such desire follows from
the wish to probe deeper into reality surpassing objective presence and to
surpass the finitude of human nature and the limitations of sensibility. With
respect to quality, the judgment about encountering excess (unmeasurable
magnitude) points to the ability of surpassing the interest of sensibility, hence
it is devoid of interest. With respect to relation, the pause or rupture when
one’s sensibility and reflection are put on halt, disabling the senses of space
and time, and disabling the mental power, is subjective and purposive in gen-
erating a sense of the continuity of being and the primordial origin of both
aesthetics and ethics. While this is not the ability “to judge nature without
fear and to think of our vocation as being sublimely above nature,” 49 as Kant
would argue, it is the ability to judge nature without fear and to judge our
place as inseparable from nature, in the state of innocence, beyond artificial-
ity of social regulations. Kant states that sublime is best described in relation
between a sensible presentation and its consequence for one’s humanity.
With respect to modality, the recuperation resulting with irreducible surprise
points to the capability of accepting something new; it points to the openness
of reason, provoking the esteem for human nature. When writing about laugh-
ter as a result of a surprising presentation in a naiveté, going contrary to one’s
expectation, Kant acknowledges “the eruption of the sincerity that originally
was natural to humanity and which is opposed to the art of dissimulation that
has become our second nature.”50 Similarly, the irreducible surprise result-
ing from an instance of the properly aesthetic experience, when the power
of expecting was irreducibly exceeded, uncovers our primary, uncorrupted
nature and the innocence grounding the ethical.
As conjectured in the present work, sublimity has a break “wired into itself”
as the appropriation of the rupture. It further evolves into either admiration
or responsibility, or all possible combinations of admiration/responsibility
128 Chapter 3

between. The phenomenology of responsibility is developed by Levinas, and

interpreted in chapter 2. I wish to trace a bit further the strain of admiration
in the metamorphosis of surprise, leading to artistic judgments and aesthetic
appreciation. In the next two sections, Dufrenne’s and Bachelard’s philo-
sophical positions relevant for admiration of works of art are presented and
put into the proposed framework of the phenomenology of surprise. Admira-
tion unfolds in the interplay between the power and failure of reflection to
deal with a work of art, and both Dufrenne and Bachelard acknowledge this
interplay: as the “dialectic of reflection and feeling”51 for Dufrenne, and the
dialectics of outside and inside for Bachelard. I subsequently present Seel’s
aesthetics of appearing dealing with the process of appearing, in a sense
comparable to the proposed process of the metamorphosis of surprise. Since
the metamorphosis of irreducible surprise leaves something undeterminable,
it seems appropriate to end this chapter with the irreducibility of desire that
started the process in the first place. For this I turn back to Lyotard.

DUFRENNE’S RELATION OF A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI

In the Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, Dufrenne asserts that aes-

thetic experience incorporates the “aesthetic object” and “aesthetic percep-
tion.”52 The aesthetic object is a peculiar sort of presence: it is both in the
world and the source of a world. This is possible because there are two worlds
relevant to the aesthetic object: it is an object in the “represented world,” and
it is the source of an “expressed world.”
According to Dufrenne, the expressed world created by the aesthetic object
is revealed by feeling, “an immediacy that has undergone mediation.”53
Feeling is a peculiar reflection (or knowledge) that reveals a world. Expres-
sion is a capacity of a subject, “the revelation of the self”54 that brings inte-
riority into the exterior. Nonetheless, the exterior induces interiority because
the aesthetic object is the source of the expressed world.
Dufrenne senses the immediacy at the heart of aesthetic experience,
something where there is “nothing to anticipate.” He writes, “Everything is
in expression and what is expressed is given to me immediately.”55 There
are two types of reflection: a reflection that reduces an object to its physical
appearance, and a reflection where the appearance is treated as a quasi-
subject to which one adheres. This other type of reflection “culminates in
feeling.”56 This feeling coincides with “being-in-depth” or profundity, and
depth indicates being beyond measurement, something hidden. Dufrenne
writes, “But the hidden is not the merely unexpected, that surprise which
one encounters at the turn in the road.”57 This is compatible with the present
argument: the desire inherent in the expectation of the unexpected surpassing
 Surprise 129

everyday banalities is imprinted in acceptivity toward the aesthetic object

spilling over its representation of a physical object. The unexpected starts
with surprise, and Dufrenne writes,

The surprise seems to be no more than a first moment, however indispensable

it is for purging our perceptions and drawing them into required state of disin-
terest. It is, however, something more than that. Compared with that wonder,
which Aristotle calls the starting point of science and which Husserl and his
commentators consider to be the inspiration of the philosophy as well, aesthetic
wonder has the peculiarity of provoking reflection only eventually to reject it.58

However, it seems that in Dufrenne’s analysis the properly aesthetic part of

the aesthetic experience is somehow brushed away, without being given its
proper due. The task in the present work is to fill in some gaps regarding the
initial phase, the beginning of the experience in its immediacy. The announce-
ment of sensibility is the initial phase in the evolution of surprise, it signals
the recovery of one’s sensibility and starts with the “state of disinterest.”
Following the astonishment at such an encounter, wonder and admiration
unfold further and derivative surprises of thought might be engendered in the
dialectics of reflection and its rejection, extricating layers of signification.
Going back to the phenomenology of feeling, how does feeling start?
Dufrenne follows Kant’s strategy. Reflection and understanding lead to
determinative judgments, and categories as pure concepts of understanding
provide a priori conditions for the possibility of representation. Analogous
to the relation between understanding and representation, Dufrenne proposes
the relation between feeling and expression. Kant associates the ability to feel
pleasure and displeasure (as a power of the mind) with reflective judgment,
but leaves it as a composite power. Analogous to Kant’s categories as a priori
and pure concepts of understanding, Dufrenne proposes a priori affects as the
basis for an explication of a feeling. The “representation” of the expressed
world can follow the representation of the world of appearances. Analogous
to the impossibility of imagination turning to reason, Dufrenne writes, “Since
reflection exhausts itself in the attempt to come to know an inexhaustible
object, it turns to feeling.”59
Dufrenne asserts the “dialectic of reflection and feeling”60 as leading to
better comprehension of the aesthetic object, and concludes that “aesthetic
experience culminates in feeling without being able to eliminate reflection.
It is located in the alteration of these two activities.”61 Dufrenne defines an
aesthetic experience in a wider sense than used in this work. I distinguish
between properly aesthetic and aesthetic/cultural experiences. Regardless of
how fulfilling my admiration for a work of art might be, or how it might lead
my reflection to open itself more and more, or how much more respectful
130 Chapter 3

I might be toward human creativity and toward the mysteries of nature—

nonetheless, the initial moment of surprise when I become conscious of
emerging from a rupture, from a pause annihilating my senses, has a special
(properly aesthetic) significance since it originates admiration following it
(this sense of emerging from a rupture is close to Bataille). It seems that,
for Dufrenne, the progression of an aesthetic experience follows a trajectory
similar to that followed by the progression of a cognitive experience, in the
sense of starting up with surprise, and then culminating in a dialectic between
reflection and feeling. In contrast, I argue that aesthetic experience starts with
culmination (its proper aesthetic culmination is in the instant of beginning),
and then progressively loses its purely aesthetic character in conglomeration
with culture and ethics, in a dialectic of reflection and feeling.
Dufrenne asserts that the culmination of aesthetic experience is “in feeling
as the reading of expression.”62 It is, then, important to inquire into conditions
for the possibility of feeling, that is, into a priori affectivity. This affectivity is
important because “Affective quality is the soul of the expressed world, which
itself lies at the origin of the represented world.”63 The affective a priori is
subjective but nevertheless universalizable, argues Dufrenne. He proposes
affective categories as ideas that occur prior to a concrete feeling and argues
for the possibility of pure aesthetics (analogous to Kant’s possibility of pure
mathematics). Although a priori knowledge is incomplete and inexhaustible,
it moves us in categorizing aesthetic qualities (the beautiful, the sublime, the
gracious, etc.—indefinitely). There is no finite table of affective categories,
and a pure aesthetics cannot be defined. The categories serve to apply the
general to the singular (e.g. sincerity to a poem), and Dufrenne attempts to
prove the validity of affective categories by arguing that “something general
resides at the heart of the singular.”64 Feeling as an intimate knowledge is
possible because of an implicit knowledge supplied by “a system of affec-
tive categories.” Dufrenne concludes, “such implicit knowledge . . . is the a
priori idea of man and of the human world, just as the pure concepts of the
understanding constitute the a priori idea of nature.”65
Dufrenne’s phrase that “the a priori is revealed only in the a posteriori”66
suggests that the feeling needs to be aroused in order to be, the exteriority
needs to induce the implicit knowledge of intimacy. He concludes poetically,
“Art is a form of service which nature expects from men.”67

BACHELARD’S DIALECTICS OF OUTSIDE AND INSIDE

Further illustrating the proposed metamorphosis of surprise, after it pro-

gressed into admiration characterized by the interplay between reflection and
its failure when encountering a work of art, Bachelard’s dialectics of outside
 Surprise 131

and inside offers valuable insights. In admiration, the original encounter with
an artwork, when one’s expectation is irreducibly exceeded, reverberates over
and over again, making closure of reflection impossible.
Bachelard’s study of intimate places, The Poetics of Space, is a phenom-
enology of poetic imagination. In contrast to everyday images, poetic images
bring newness and a kind of intimacy with regard to which cultural condition-
ing doesn’t help much. He talks about the “very ecstasy of the newness of
the image,” “the essential novelty of the poem”68 which is “not an echo of the
past.”69 The poetic image is not en effect of a cause—it is irreducibly unex-
pected. Due to newness, the poetic image “comes before thought.”70 It seems
that Bachelard senses that the impact of the poetic image is most strongly
felt in the initial instant. He writes about “the evolution of poetic images
from the original state of reverie to that of execution.”71 Poetic images, says
Bachelard, induce reverberations, unlike other arts that induce “sentimental
resonances.” Reverberations bring newness, “a change of being”: they exca-
vate “new depths in us.”72 Bachelard writes, “Through this reverberation, by
going immediately beyond all psychology or psychoanalysis, we feel a poetic
power rising naively within us. After the original reverberation, we are able to
experience resonances, sentimental repercussions, reminders of our past. But
the image has touched the depths before it stirs the surface.”73
This description bears affinity with the proposed properly aesthetic experi-
ence. Except, what for Bachelard is “the original reverberation,” for me is
the startup of irreducible surprise as the trace of immediacy already gone.
Reverberation implies the persistence of something after the source has
gone, while resonance connotes the source’s prolongation. I propose the
transformation of the initial phase of surprise into astonishment and then
wonder, from the depth of pre-reflection to the intertwining of reflection and
non-reflection. Using Bachelard’s vocabulary, one could say that reverbera-
tion starts with surprise and is further transformed into multiple resonances
reflecting the interplay of reflection and non-reflection. This interplay applies
to the poetic image created by a work of art in general, not only to poetry
as literature. Bachelard implicitly acknowledges the rupture or the shock
(or pause) created by a poetic image as an annihilation of senses, “the entire
life of the image is in its dazzling splendor, in the fact that an image is a tran-
scending of all premises of sensibility.”74
In the chapter entitled The Dialectics of Outside and Inside, Bachelard fur-
ther exposes the reverberations and resonances of a poetic image. The notions
of outside and inside are burdened by geometric connotations and imply
mutual opposition. In contrast to this “geometrism, in which limits are bar-
riers,”75 argues Bachelard, we should perceive outside and inside as “both
intimate—they are always ready to be reversed, to exchange their hostility.”76
The poetic image is ephemeral, it strikes instantly, and it is received as
132 Chapter 3

something exaggerated. The task of the phenomenology of imagination is

to emphasize this exaggeration because “in prolonging exaggeration, we
might have the good fortune to avoid the habits of reduction.”77 In contrast
to psychology, which attaches geometric spatial connotations to the space of
intimacy, phenomenology should follow poets and stir away from geometry.
Man is a being “of a surface, of the surface that separates the region of the
same from the region of the other,” at the same time open and closed, vis-
ible and invisible, subject to numerous inversions of openness and closure.78
This statement is evocative of Levinas, who states that “Interiority must be at
the same time closed and open.”79 Surface is the boundary, at the same time
separating and connecting, the most interesting place where beyond-ness is
announced. And because human being is the being “of a surface,” human
being can incorporate irreducible excess beyond expectation into his or her
experiential space, and this is why aesthetic surprises are so valuable.
For the intimate space (home) he considers, Bachelard emphasizes doors
as a transitory element that acknowledges at the same time limits and their
negations, openings and closings. This dialectics of inside and outside,
embodied in a door and inherent in a poetic image, arises from the depths
of “the most restricted intimate space.” As if one is most exposed to the
“osmosis between intimate and undetermined space”80 when one feels the
concentration of interiority, where the narrowness of space is at the limit of
bursting (the point prior to ecstasy, as Bataille would say). Levinas has also
pointed to this dialectics of outside and inside by defining interiority as the
other in the same.
It seems that the crucial point in the dialectics of outside and inside is the
elusive point of mutual acknowledgment and annihilation between imme-
diacy (the attack of the outside) and intimacy (the persistence of the inside).
Intimacy and immediacy appear to go in different directions. Immediacy
presents a rupture, a new origin, a possibility of birth, and it is embodied in
irreducible surprise. Intimacy projects continuity and the aversion of media-
tion, the distrust of change and the shakeup of one’s world. Immediacy leads
to the impossibility of attaining closure, and is manifested in the incessant
need to write and to speak; intimacy leads to the impossibility of living
without closure and is manifested in the exigency of silence. The opposite of
immediacy is not mediation—it is intimacy, the mediation more mediate then
any mediation. Yet, both immediacy and intimacy reverberate in a work of
art (a poetic image), and the two, in the final analysis, are indistinguishable.
Bachelard’s description of the dialectics of outside and inside eloquently
presents the intertwining of “intimate and undetermined space,”81 the porous
ground where inside and outside share immediate intimacy, a commonality
allowing transgressions from one to the other, and vice versa. This common-
ality allows the acknowledgment of irreducible otherness. It seems that such
 Surprise 133

transgressions characterize admiration when encountering an artwork in its

irreducible otherness, what cannot be confined by one’s reflection.

SEEL’S AESTHETICS OF APPEARING

The encounters generating a break in representational abilities have to be

questioned in the context of appearing and appearance. Hence, Martin Seel’s
work on the aesthetics of appearing is relevant and I wish to propose some
affinities and differences between Seel’s and the present work. According to
Seel, the main point of aesthetic perception is to “apprehend something in the
process of its appearing for the sake of its appearing.”82 Seel argues that aes-
thetic perception is not tied to art objects exclusively and that any encounter
can result in aesthetic perception,83 but he nonetheless credits artworks with
the capacity to most forcefully invoke aesthetic perception because they are
made with the intention of provoking aesthetic perception. In any case, in
order to involve art objects or anything in the environment, argues Seel, in an
aesthetic perception, there has to be a process of appearing.
Following Kant (and the implications of his Third Critique), Seel is a phi-
losopher of aesthetics and insists on its importance, not as a companion piece
to epistemology or ethics, but as an independent philosophy in its own right.
He writes, “Aesthetics is an independent part of philosophy because it is con-
cerned with a relation to the world that cannot be traced back to theoretical
or ethical approaches. Aesthetics is indispensable for other philosophical
disciplines—and therefore for philosophical thinking itself—because it is
concerned with irreducible aspects of world and life.”84 Hence, aesthetics
merits a category of its own, which implies the need to set aesthetics apart
from other branches of philosophy. Seel’s solution is the consideration of
appearance as an exclusive concept of aesthetics, apart from the objective
representation that characterizes knowledge and science, and apart from the
interest and responsibility inherent in ethical considerations. Though he does
not argue that aesthetics should have a preferred position above other philo-
sophical disciplines, he states his conviction that “Acts of aesthetic percep-
tion can enrich the possibilities of human perception in almost all areas—and
that’s all.”85
Seel distinguishes between objects of perception and aesthetic objects,
which is related to difference between ordinary perception and aesthetic
perception. Aesthetic perception involves at the same time the perception
of something (object, event, smell) and the perception of my perception.
Ordinary perception perceives an object in its objectivity, determined by
both objectively present attributes and clearly defined sensual response; it
perceives an object in a “sensuous being-so appearing,” as a conceptually
134 Chapter 3

determinable entity. Aesthetic perception, on the other hand, perceives an

object in its “aesthetic appearing,” which contains a level of indeterminacy,
and the sensual response is synergetic—the appearance is a totality contain-
ing more than the unity of its parts; there is a surplus of presence unaccounted
for by the objectivity of the object and by the employment of one’s sepa-
rate senses; the appearing process reveals an aesthetic object.86 In aesthetic
perceiving one’s perception is open to the immediacy of presence, uncon-
strained by the spatial and temporal requirements necessary for ordinary
sensuous perception. According to Seel, there is a wide range of aesthetic
objects leading to three different dimensions of appearing: mere appearing,
atmospheric appearing, and artistic appearing. Mere appearing concerns the
sensual givenness of an object, its mere presence. Atmospheric appearing
adds the various appearances of the situation (smells, sounds, gestures), what
enriches the mere appearing as awareness of surroundings. Finally, artworks
are presentations meant to appear. Seel writes, “In contrast to objects of mere
appearing or atmospherically articulated appearing, they are formations of an
articulating appearing.”87 Artworks are produced with the intention of evok-
ing the process of appearing; they can only be approached and brought to life
by the process of artistic appearing.
In the aesthetic sense, Seel wants to free sensual perception from its repre-
sentational chains. Hence, from an “ordinary” object perceived in a “sensuous
being-so” appearing, he resorts to an “aesthetic object” as an object of appear-
ing. The process of appearing carries aesthetic signification, but to be com-
patible with artistic production (i.e. there has to be an end result, an artwork
and not only a conceptual idea, as Seel argues against Danto), the process of
appearing retains objectivity with its end result, an appearance.
The concepts of appearance and of presence are related yet fundamentally
different: while an appearance pertains to the experience of something present
in the environment, the presence is a more ephemeral concept of “a relation
of human beings to their life surroundings.” Seel continues, “In agreement
with Heidegger, we can speak of an ecstatic presence, of position in the midst
of extensive spatial, temporal, and meaningful relations.”88 A presence is an
occurrence of reality. Seel remarks, “there is a common root of the two con-
trary driving forces of aesthetic perception: to lose oneself in the real or to go
beyond everything that is (so far) real.”89 But, going beyond everything that
is (so far) real implies irreducible newness and the augmentation of reality.
Also, losing oneself in the real acknowledges the possibility of absence in
presence. Hence, presence in aesthetic perception is a relational concept that
bears affinity to the process of appearing, yet it is different from the concept
of an appearance. Presence is revealed in the process of appearing. Absence
as presence allows a blind spot, a break in appearing about which we can
only speculate.
 Surprise 135

The concept of appearing, argues Seel, “is a minimal concept of aesthetic

encounter.”90 But, the concept of appearing can be viewed simplistically
as a conduit for appearances, or it might be analyzed in depth, relating
origins, becomings, beginnings, ends, and the whole array of speculative/
phenomenological concepts. Analogous to Fink’s work, which augments
Husserl’s phenomenology with a speculative component under the title of
the transcendental critique of method, I wish to augment Seel’s work on
the process of aesthetic appearing with the speculative origin, or the pre-
requirement to this process. Seel rightly views the importance of the process
by stating, “The basic concept of appearing is not the appearing of something,
but appearing, period.”91 He goes on to offer a critique of “fundamentalist
interpretations” of the process because such interpretations bring the pre-
conceptual, “raw being” into consideration, but they cannot escape from the
fact that the process of appearing remains dependent upon the concept of
appearance. Seel writes, “No appearing without appearances; indeterminacy
accompanies determinacy. Only where there is determinacy can interest in
indeterminacy develop. Only where appearances are identifiable is the path to
a play of appearances open.”92 Again, I wish to interject here by stating that—
in general, as well as in particular analogy with a play—the end result does
not characterize the process, nor does the end justify the means, as is well
known. The other direction, the inference from the process toward the end
result, might be more interesting. To paraphrase Seel, we could say that there
is no appearance without the process of appearing. The process of appearing
starts with an encounter, and ends with an appearance. A transformation of
an ordinary encounter to an aesthetic appearance happens somewhere in the
process—such a transformation is complex on multiple levels as an example
of discontinuity pointing to continuity on a different level.
Most of the exposition and argumentation in Seel’s Aesthetics of Appearing
seems very much in agreement with the consideration of aesthetic encounters
in the present work. However, when it comes to consideration of the (specu-
lative) phenomenon of desire||surprise, we have to part ways. I consider
the (augmented) process of appearing, denoted by desire||surprise, which
includes attentiveness (desire), break, and subsequent recovery (called the
metamorphosis of surprise and akin to Seel’s appearing). Seel’s process of
appearing belongs to phenomenology as a process of delivering a phenom-
enon of appearance and does not want to be caught up in speculation about
“raw being.” Maybe he is right: a speculation as such should be a thing of the
past, resonating with German Idealists and Romantics. However, the specu-
lation proposed here stays clear of the “big” metaphysical concepts of God
and Infinity. I simply wish to designate a break as the simultaneous ending
of something (an objective representation) and beginning of something else
(an appearance). Logically speaking, if I look and perceive my surroundings
136 Chapter 3

in an ordinary way, entailing objective representations and ordinary daily rou-

tine, then when I come to a position to encounter an aesthetically perceived
object instead of a mere object of perception, there has to be a discontinuity in
my representational powers. If the difference between an ordinary object and
an aesthetically perceived object indeed exists, that is, the difference between
my ordinary perception and my aesthetic perception, then the switching
between the two modes of perception creates points of discontinuity in my
representational capabilities. The discontinuity as the leap from ordinary to
aesthetic perceiving should also be part of the analysis of aesthetic encounter.
The appearance of an object of perception is its “conceptually discrim-
inable sensuous composition,”93 either in reality or in imagination. As already
said, Seel’s approach is not an “aesthetics of appearance,” but an “aesthetics
of appearing,” emphasizing the process, not the end result. He writes,
“The appearance of an object can therefore be grasped either in its being-so
or in its appearing.”94 The process of appearing unfolds, at the end result-
ing in an appearance. This process, according to Seel (and reminiscent of
Kant’s “free play” and Gadamer’s concept of play), invokes a play of “quali-
ties that are perceivable in an object from a particular perspective and at a
particular point in time,” surpassing conceptual determinations of attributes
and qualities. As Gadamer would insist, a play is the activity of players pro-
ducing something in addition to the unity of the individual performances of
players. I wish to add that in a well-regulated game (take football or basket-
ball), as in a “free” game (wrestling unconstrained by rules), there are stops
or discontinuities of play that bring to a halt all activities before re-starting
the game. Often halts such as time-outs are used strategically to recuperate
and re-invigorate the game, or are the result of a deviation in the rules (as in
football), necessitating the intervention of the judges. Analogously, aesthetic
perception and the process of appearing ask for consideration of stops or
blind spots, invigorating the process itself.
Seel invokes the “passion for what appears”95 and likens it to the passion
for playing, when the movement is for the sake of movement, and not for
some ulterior motive. A game or a play provides possibilities to measure
performance, argues Seel: it is action-oriented, but with a limited duration
and stands apart from “ordinary” everyday actions. The “game of aesthetic
perception” possesses a double character: a subjective part related to the
specificity of what is being perceived, and an objective part dealing with
“a play of appearances” in general. Hence, a work of art stands as a spe-
cific work itself, but also as a presence in general (this is reminiscent of
Gadamer’s statement that an aesthetic experience is a paradigmatic example
of an experience in general).
It seems that the second part of Seel’s aesthetics of appearing is included
in the aesthetics of desire||surprise, following the break. Hence, of Seel’s
 Surprise 137

argument, that “if it was plausible to attribute a specific objectivity to the

appearance of an object, then the same must apply to the appearing of the
object,”96 one can ask: why would that be so? The appearing as a process
is in a different category of an appearance as an object’s “conceptually
discriminable sensuous composition.” For an appearance, the consideration
of continuity or discontinuity is meaningless, while it essentially character-
izes the process itself. Indeed, following Adorno, Seel distinguishes between
“determinable appearance and indeterminable appearing.”97 The current
addition to the characterization of the process of appearing is the exploration
of discontinuity present in the leap from an ordinary to an aesthetic perceiv-
ing, as the origin of an aesthetics or appearing. Seel explores the differences
between ordinary and aesthetic perception but does not consider the change
from one to the other. However, he takes into account the so-called “limit
experiences,” but is very careful never to abandon the end-result of the pro-
cess, the appearance. His strategy is as follows.
First, an appearance is different from an objective representation of some-
thing (This difference seems analogous to the difference between the use of
descriptive statement and metaphor in speech or writing). Next, in rare situa-
tions, the process of appearing involves resonances of appearance, adding to
the undefined character of what is appearing (this invokes comparison with
Bachelard and his invocation of reverberations and resonances). Resonances,
according to Seel, are types of appearance even further from objectivity than
“regular” appearances. He simply cannot let go of appearances completely.
However, he is aware that aesthetic encounters often come unprovoked and
unexpected, and writes, “Frequently, however, there is no actual doing at all
required—when what is appearing suddenly holds us spellbound, or when the
conversion to aesthetic consciousness befalls us.”98
This quote implicitly asserts the possibility of discontinuity in the process
of appearing. But, Seel argues against Nietzsche’s term of “intoxication,”
related to the Dionysian intrusion into an otherwise ordered Apollonian
world, and against Nietzsche’s affirmation of transgressions in the human
life-world. For Nietzsche, transgression defends against suffocation due to
the principium individuationis that separates man from man. In The Birth of
Tragedy Nietzsche writes, “Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the
union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature which has become alien-
ated, hostile, or subjugated, celebrates once more the reconciliation with her
lost son, man.”99 The “intoxication” that Nietzsche talks about results in the
loss of the spatial-temporal shape of whatever is appearing, so according to
Seel, it leads to “the wrong track,” to a consideration of the transcendence of
what is appearing, and hence to metaphysics. Seel continues, “I believe that
this transcending is to be understood not as going beyond the world of appear-
ance but rather as losing oneself in this world. Resonating is a phenomenon
138 Chapter 3

not of transcendence but of the radical immanence of appearing.”100 Indeed,

Nietzsche’s intoxication is more radical than resonating can ever be.
Resonating, as Seel defines it, is not the same as intoxication, because it
retains a level of objectivity, an “acoustic or visual phenomenon,” “an occur-
rence without something occurring.”101 In “intoxication” one is not conscious
of what is going on; the hangover after is the occurrence, the result of a break
in conscious processing due to intoxication. Why not allow Nietzsche, and
other philosophers of transgression, to affirm the value of breaks in objective
reality, leading to an intuition of the continuity of being, and to an intuition
of the impossible phenomenon of one’s own birth and death? The relation of
an occurrence versus the process of occurring goes in the inverse direction
from the previous writing, in which the process of appearing relates to an
appearance (“no appearing without appearances”). Seel now switches to an
occurrence (the end-result) obtained without the process of occurring. This
missing of the process seems to be an implicit acknowledgement of a break
in the process since we have the end result, or occurrence, but the process
or occurring is hidden from us. Hence, if the process is “hidden,” Seel needs
another notion to remain consistent. He resorts to an occurrence instead of
an appearance, and proclaims that we get “an occurrence without something
occurring.”
The limiting concept for Seel is the “absolute” resonating as the “occur-
rence without any trace whatsoever of what is occurring.”102 The notion of
“absolute resonating” as giving up all determinations of the phenomenal world
and of oneself should leave out the misleading verb “resonating,” because it
misleads us into tracing the previous situation, preceding the encounter. Why
not call it simply a break, a pause in the stream of experience, the newness
indispensable to a properly aesthetic encounter? Is it a mystical experience?
I do not think so: there is nothing mystical in it since one recuperates after
the break and feels surprised, both because of the object that triggered it,
and because of one’s inability to deal with it. The aesthetic surprise invokes
a positive feeling, since it provides an intuition of birth, one’s own re-birth.
Seel concludes, “Resonating leads us to the edge of our developed capacity
to perceive—to where we can no longer recognize anything but can nonethe-
less perceive with the greatest intensity. Resonating, that extreme of appearing,
thus acquaints us with a limit of conscious being.”103 Resonating thus defined is
consistent with Seel’s definition of the process of appearing as tied to audible
or visual perception. I propose to augment the process of appearing with the
inherent break of one’s representational capabilities. The term “absolute reso-
nating” sounds misleading. “Absolute,” even when used in quotes, belongs
to the realm of the transcendental. Resonating implies a leftover, a trace of
something that happened before. Hence, is “absolute” resonating a break or
not? Why not call it simply: a break. After all, the concept of “break” is a very
 Surprise 139

down-to-earth concept. The phenomenon of break is experienced regularly in

various contexts: it implies that something is modified, and this in turn implies
a need to deal with the modification (e.g. let it go, try to repair it, get some-
thing new, etc.). The realization of the break in my representational capacity
surprises me, because most of the time I am able to perceive the world around
me. However, in rare but extremely valuable situations, when such a break
happens, it is not resonating—it is the intrusion of radical otherness and the
breakup constitutive of the properly aesthetic experience. Nonetheless, I get
my appearance at the end. Hence, the current approach is not in disagreement
with Seel’s approach: what I wish to do is to extend the process of appearing
to its prerequisite, the attentiveness for encountering appearances. This aug-
mented process (denoted by desire||surprise) is called the properly aesthetic
experience, containing the process of appearing. This provides the possibility
for a more detailed analysis and “dissection” of the process, pronouncing more
clearly the break resulting with an occurrence without consciousness of how
it occurred. Such an analysis and augmentation of the process of appearing
has space for Nietzsche’s intoxication, for Bachelard’s reverberations and
resonances, and for Seel’s “absolute resonating.”

LYOTARD’S “RADICAL CONNIVANCE

BETWEEN THE FIGURE AND DESIRE”

Lyotard’s work in aesthetics affirms the importance of disruption, but in a

positive sense. Aesthetic encounters testify to the defiance of the self as a
closed structure. The openness and passivity inherent in aesthetic events,
when a habitual representation is disrupted and the recuperation invokes a
sense of newness, leads to surprise. The concept of surprise is a neglected
concept in philosophy, as something that is a byproduct, a passing emotion
en route to something more dignifying. I wish to underline the importance
and the complexity of surprise. The way to achieve it is to include the pre-
conditions, the origin of a surprise as an event. In fact, surprise is an event
par excellence: a philosopher should turn to surprise in order to analyze the
event in general. An event is different from a structure, since it contains a
temporal dimension and constitutes a mutual relationship between a subject
and its surrounding objectivity. It is relational and temporal, ending with its
perceived importance in defining the subjectivity involved in it. The event has
a consequence—it is part of its characterization. Without any consequence,
there would be no event. Hence, an event has a distinctive start (which is
to say implicitly that it follows from a disturbance, a discontinuity of the
flow of experience), and it has a consequence (e.g. a sense of admiration,
or of responsibility, or just a neutral sense of openness and beyond-ness in
140 Chapter 3

general). Because of its consequence, an event transforms one’s experiential

space. The distinctive start of the event is a shock of some kind, by no means
with a negative connotation.
Lyotard advocates openness of the self, and argues for the deficiency of
the explicit characterizations appropriate to scientific knowledge. We need
aesthetics to deal with the surplus of meaning and presence that cannot be
captured by either descriptive language or structural analysis. Lyotard ques-
tions Merleau-Ponty’s view of the primacy of perception and argues for the
primacy of desire as the part of sensibility that escapes the encapsulation of
Plato’s intelligibility of ideas and forms. He wants to go beyond perception.
However, perception and desire should not be cast into the same category:
they are different concepts in all aspects, temporal and visible. Desire can
orient perception, and open its depths beyond Kantian space/time intuitions.
A body, a perceptual body, is charged with desire as an active passivity, as
responsiveness to what can be revealed without being presented. An encoun-
ter can trigger surprise as the inability of representation (either verbal of
visual) to capture presence.
The notion of figure presents the sensible in the intelligible. A figure is not
a mere appearance, it is “the very play of presencing and absencing in which
desire figures itself forth.”104 The figure and the figural as viewed by Lyotard
have affinity with the work proposed by Seel, the appearance and the process
of appearing, and especially for an occurrence without anything that occurs.
The aesthetics of appearing accounts for the nonconceptual, for the presence
spilling beyond presentation. The figure (as the appearance) has a connotation
of a perceptive and a representational world. Both Lyotard in his formulation
of the figural (as opposed to a figure), and Seel in his insistence on the process
of appearing (as opposed to appearance) acknowledge the need to go beyond
ordinary perception. However, Lyotard and his consideration of desire as
active passivity, and of the excess revealed in surprise and astonishment,
goes further than Seel in attacking the intelligible with the sensual. Lyotard
is more radical. He could be positioned before and after Merleau-Ponty, and
not simultaneous with Merleau-Ponty: Lyotard’s desire precedes Merleau-
Ponty’s perception, and Lyotard’s astonishment follows afterward. Hence,
he seems to hold a position similar to the one presented in the current work,
denoted as desire||surprise.
Following Freud’s analysis of dreams, Lyotard describes the “radical
connivance between the figure and desire” belonging to transgression.105
In Freudian desire, a figure as something that cannot be described and intel-
ligibly comprehended contains three components: the image, the form, and
the matrix. The image-figure appears in dreams as a visible object, the form-
figure presents the perceptible, not necessarily visible, and the matrix-figure
deals with the invisible in the discourse, the nonstructural belonging to the
 Surprise 141

unconscious. The matrix-figure points to otherness, to the impossibility of

immediacy (as Blanchot would say). It demonstrates “that our origin is an
absence of origin.”106 So, lack is wired into the space of the figural. This lack
points to the impossibility of satisfied desire, since the absence of the object
of desire characterizes desire. The figural related to desire is “the antipode of
the verbal and the motor, that is, of the reality principle with its two functions,
language and action. To these two functions, desire turns its back.”107 Hence,
the figural is desire’s specific relation to representation in words and in pro-
cessing or activity. Desire possesses activity, but a kind of passive activity,
apart from “objective” activity. This is why I compared Seel’s and Lyotard’s
(following Freud) description of appearance and figure. Seel’s appearing has
three dimensions and one can compare them with the three dimensions of
figure in Freud. However, Seel’s appearing is an action in reality, it is a “real”
process of appearing, while the figural that Lyotard writes belongs to desire,
the defiance of objective reality (in Lacanian terms, belonging to the Real
outside the objective). It points to the residual outside conceptual determina-
tion and scientific knowledge. Lyotard concludes, “Such are the fundamental
modes of the connivance that desire establishes with figurality: transgression
of the object, transgression of form, transgression of space.”108 Artistic efforts
point to such directions by various transgressions of image and form to cap-
ture the unsayable and the nondescriptive, yet figural.
This last section served to argue for the unquenchable character of irreduc-
ible surprise. Following initial astonishment, and the whole spectrum of the
follow-up feelings and emotions, something undefined remains as the trigger
of subsequent desiring, leading to new surprises.

NOTES

1. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 139.

2. Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond, 75.
3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Hackett Pub-
lishing Company, Inc., 1987), Ak. 273. Kant also writes, “Amazement [Verwunder-
ung] consists in the mind’s being struck by the fact that a presentation, and the rule it
provides, cannot be reconciled with the principles that the mind already presupposes,
so that we begin to doubt whether we saw or judged correctly. Admiration [Bewunde-
rung], on the other hand, is an amazement that keep returning even after that doubt is
gone.” ibid., Ak.366.
4. Ibid., Ak. 273.
5. Ibid.
6. Kant writes, “Consequently, respect for the moral law is a feeling that is
produced by an intellectual ground, and this feeling is the only feeling that we can
cognize completely a priori and the necessity of which we can have insight into.”
142 Chapter 3

Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge University Press,

1997), 5:73.
7. Critique of Judgment, Ak. 222.
8. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 138.
9. Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of
Method (with Textual Notations by Edmund Husserl), 8.
10. Ibid., 12.
11. Ibid., 14.
12. Ibid., 49.
13. Ibid., 62.
14. Ibid., l.
15. Ibid., 159.
16. Ibid., 1.
17. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith
(Routledge, 1992), 61.
18. “The Visible and the Invisible,” in Studies in Phenomenology and Existential
Philosophy (Northwestern University Press, 1997), 134.
19. Ibid., 135.
20. Ibid., 139.
21. Ibid., 142.
22. Ibid., 144.
23. Ibid., 147.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., 148.
27. Ibid., 154.
28. Ibid.; ibid.
29. Ibid., 155.
30. Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Surprise of the Event,” in Being Singular Plural
(Stanford University Press, 2000), 159.
31. Ibid., 163.
32. Ibid., 164.
33. Ibid., 165.
34. Ibid., 168.
35. Ibid., 169.
36. Ibid., 170.
37. Ibid., 172.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 173.
40. Merleau-Ponty, “The Visible and the Invisible,” 142.
41. Jean-Francois Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans.
Elisabeth Rottenberg (Stanford University Press, 1994), 56.
42. Ibid., 150.
43. Ibid., 153.
44. Kant, Critique of Judgment, Ak. 273.
 Surprise 143

45. Ibid., Ak. 272.

46. Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, 54.
47. Ibid., 239.
48. Kant, Critique of Judgment, Ak. 247.
49. Ibid., Ak. 264.
50. Ibid., Ak. 335.
51. Mikel Dufrenne, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, trans. Edward
S. Casey, et al. (Northwestern University Press, 1998), 419.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 277.
54. Ibid., 380.
55. Ibid., 386.
56. Ibid., 393.
57. Ibid., 398.
58. Ibid., 409.
59. Ibid., 416.
60. Ibid., 419.
61. Ibid., 424.
62. Ibid., 437.
63. Ibid., 446.
64. Ibid., 479.
65. Ibid., 484.
66. Ibid., 492. This statement is reminiscent of Kant’s statement, “But even
though all our cognition starts with experience, that does not mean that all of it arises
from experience.” (Critique of Pure Reason, B1)
67. Ibid., 554.
68. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Beacon Press,
1994), xv.
69. Ibid., xvi.
70. Ibid., xx.
71. Ibid., xxi.
72. Ibid., xxiii.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid., 215.
76. Ibid., 218.
77. Ibid., 219.
78. Regardless of arguing against geometry, it almost seems that Bachelard
cannot run away from employing concepts from geometry (surface, inversion) and
physics (reverberation, resonance).
79. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 149.
80. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 230.
81. Ibid.
82. Martin Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing, trans. John Farrell (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2005), 15.
144 Chapter 3

83. Seel writes, “In principle, anything that can be perceived sensuously can also
be perceived aesthetically.” Ibid., 21.
84. Ibid., 17.
85. Ibid., 18.
86. According to Kant, an appearance is, basically, an undetermined object of
our sensible (i.e. empirical) intuition. In contrast, experience provides determinate
objects, determined by the forms of intuition (space, time), by the forms of thought
(categories), and by the matter of intuition as contributed by sensation.
87. Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing, 96.
88. Ibid., 97.
89. Ibid., 98.
90. Ibid., 35.
91. Ibid., 54.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid., 41.
94. Ibid., 45.
95. Ibid., 134.
96. Ibid., 48.
97. Ibid., 15.
98. Ibid., 34.
99. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 37.
100. Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing, 141.
101. Ibid., 143.
102. Ibid., 144.
103. Ibid., 158.
104. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Lyotard Reader and Guide, ed. Keith Crome and
James Williams (New York: Columbia Uiveristy Press, 2006), 27.
105. Ibid., 293.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid., 295.
108. Ibid., 299.
 Chapter 4

The Properly Aesthetic Experience

and Knowledge

As argued in the present study, a properly aesthetic encounter originates with

a rupture of one’s sensibility and reflection, caused by the encounter with irre-
ducible otherness, with the irreducibly unexpected. The beginning starts with
irreducible surprise as a leap from immediacy to mediation. It is commonly
perceived that surprise is but an instant occupying “empty time,” interesting
not in its own right, but as a trigger of subsequent reflection. In contrast to
such a view, it has been argued here that surprise is a complex process that
originates in the break of one’s representational capabilities, begins with the
announcement of sensibility, continues with the announcement of reflectivity
(astonishment), further pointing to the refined announcements of admiration
and responsibility, and then diminishing in a play of reflection, giving rise
to complex experiences combining culture and morality. The metamorphosis
of surprise follows the sequence of announcements. The announcement is
characterized as the indifference of difference, as a commonality allowing a
transition, when something is pronounced or revealed, but not yet disclosed.
In analogy, the umbilical cord presents the indifference between the mother
and the child, although their difference has been already pronounced when
the child is out of the womb. One can say that the umbilical cord signifies the
announcement of birth.
Hence, the phenomenology of surprise starts with absolute indifference
and is further transformed, contributing to our experiences involving con-
ceptual thinking. In ending with the absolute in knowledge, Hegel has the
right content and has to go back one step to recognize the right form. In
starting with the absolute in surprise, there is a unity of right content and
right form, and to move from there the form needs to be modified to—so to
speak—“spoil” the absolute, to start grasping it. Since this invites the com-
parison with the Hegelian dialectic taken “in reverse,” we need to go back to

145
146 Chapter 4

Hegel and inquire into his notions of immediacy, mediation, becoming, and
beginning. The encounter with irreducible otherness results in the breakup of
consciousness (sensibility and conceptuality). This brings us to the beginning
of this study: to the characterization of the properly aesthetic encounter as
rupture, an unconditional break. As the last “actor” in this trial of immediacy
before the court of mediation, I wish to call upon Schelling, and to conclude
this study with him.

ON HEGEL’S NOTION AT THE END OF

PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE BEGINNING OF LOGIC

In Phenomenology, Hegel provides a systematic way to find out what is

universal in our actualization of knowledge. His answer is that the becoming
of knowledge is universal, the dialectical process of asserting and proving.
Indeed, in the Announcement of the Phenomenology he writes: “This first
volume represents knowledge in its becoming.” The becoming of knowledge
is the process of acquiring the knowledge itself, the phases or the shapes
that human spirit goes through to be able to claim “This is True.” To certify
the truth, the shapes of Spirit have to be necessary and sufficient. Necessity
has to be shown at each phase; otherwise, the phase would be irrelevant.
Sufficiency can only be established at the end of the process of the becom-
ing of knowledge because sufficiency signals that all that needs to be there
to assert knowledge is available. When necessity unites with sufficiency, the
process of absolute knowing is completed. This process of the becoming of
knowledge as certification of truth necessarily ends with the beginning from
which it started.
The result, the certification of truth or the proof of identity is not inter-
esting as a particular knowledge. It grounds the knowledge as an origin
outside knowledge. Knowledge is only interesting in its becoming when the
process of struggling and reconciliation between immediacy and mediation,
between particular and universal, is going on. The end of reconciliation,
absolute knowledge, is actually non-knowledge; as absolute, it is ungrasp-
able and beyond limits. We can only feel its anonymous indifference, yet
it is “the ungraspable that one cannot let go,”1 to borrow Blanchot’s phrase
characterizing the impossibility of immediacy. The formal identity at the end
of Hegel’s becoming of knowledge is the elusive identity of immediacy and
mediation, or non-knowledge.
Hegel’s Phenomenology starts with abstract immediacy as immediacy
of the senses and proceeds with the development of self-consciousness and
mediation, going through different stages in the development of Spirit, result-
ing in absolute knowing, or the unity of universal and particular formalized
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 147

in the Notion. Hegel’s Logic starts with the abstract identity inherent in the
notion (as needed for the beginning of a scientific inquiry), but then struggles
to give life to it, a content from which a scientific exposition can proceed.
To some extent, Hegel’s accomplishment is established based on what he did
not write, on what is only a presence in his writing. Namely, looking at the
Table of Contents in Logic, the strict methodological procedure characteristic
of Hegel’s triad comes out right away: Each book in the Objective Logic has
three sections, each section has three chapters, each chapter has A, B, C sub-
sections, most of them with further sub-subsections a, b, c, and some further
with α, β, γ . . . . Likewise, the Subjective Logic has three sections each with
three chapters, etc. Hence, the form required for rigorous scientific inquiries
is undoubtedly present, and it is reminiscent of the strictness and rigor of a
mathematical proof. However, Hegel then struggles to fit in the content, to
assert that being and nothingness unite in essence, that immediacy passes
over into mediation and unites in mediated immediacy, which is thought.
But, how closed is his system? In this dialectic of sublating and moving to a
higher level of unity until absolute unity is reached, is there any content that
is left out of the system, or is everything instrumental in achieving unity?
Hegel’s critics (e.g. Bataille) accuse him of leaving no space for unproduc-
tive negativity. This criticism would be true if the development would stop
unconditionally. However, Hegel considers history and the development of
the notion in the present utilizes the past—but it does not cut off the future:
the future might take the development up to its time in an immediate way, and
filter it through mediation, ending anew in absolute unity.
According to Hegel, being (immediacy) and nothing (reflection) unite in
becoming. He writes, “Becoming is an unstable unrest which settles into a
stable result.”2 This sentence implies transformation, because how can unsta-
ble unrest settle into a stable result? It has to undergo a discontinuity, a break
separating unstability and stability. In the present work, desire is the unstable
unrest, and surprise following upon the irreducible excess over one’s expec-
tations settles into a quasi-stable result (the beginning). The stability is only
in the acknowledgment of the beginning. The process afterward is not com-
pletely stable, as surprise partially lingers. Hence, the stability of this result
(the beginning) is always challenged and irreducible encounters attest to the
never-ending process of becoming. Becoming is constituted by beginnings,
as the continuity of discontinuity. The possibility of experiencing irreducible
surprise as a beginning implies that one is still in the process of becoming.
Logic, as a science, is different from other sciences which have their own
subject matters. The subject matter of Logic is its inquiry into the scientific
apparatus, that is, subject matter and scientific method coincide. By having
the apparatus of logical reasoning, specific sciences can develop their argu-
mentation, can start with some propositions. However, logic has to inquire
148 Chapter 4

into presuppositions. Hegel’s Logic was published in 1812. In 1831, in the

Preface to the Second Edition of Logic, Hegel provides a “disclaimer” for
his efforts:

Such presuppositions as that infinity is different from finitude, that content is

other than form, that the inner is other than the outer, also that mediation is not
immediacy (as if anyone did not know such things), are brought forward by
way of information and narrated and asserted rather than proved. But there is
something stupid—I can find no other word for it—about this didactic behavior;
technically it is unjustifiable simply to presuppose and straightway assume such
propositions; and still more it reveals ignorance of the fact that it is the require-
ment and the business of logical thinking to inquire into just this, whether such
a finite without infinity is something true, or whether such an abstract infinity,
also a content without form and form without content, an inner by itself which
has no outer expression, an externality without an inwardness, whether any of
these is something true or something actual.3

Hegel goes on to claim that “the magnitude of the task” requires incredible
effort, but the author “had to content himself with what it was possible to
achieve in circumstances of external necessity, of the inevitable distractions
caused by the magnitude and many-sidedness of contemporary affairs . . . .”4
This sounds almost like a confession of failure—the failure to provide abso-
lute unity of immediacy and mediation, of content and form.
Hegel defines becoming as “a movement in which both [being and noth-
ing] are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately
resolved itself.”5 This sounds like an indifferent diversity. Becoming has
two moments, coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be, indicating the inseparable
nature of being and nothing. This duality provides a double determination:
coming-to-be affords immediacy to being and its relation to nothing, while
ceasing-to-be affords immediacy to nothing and its relation to being. Hence,
both being and nothing are already unities of both of them and becoming is
both a beginning and a ceasing at the same time. Becoming is a continuous
anonymous process in which being and non-being coexist without any con-
tradictions, while beginning is the simple “leap” (i.e. immediacy, to evoke
Blanchot) pronouncing being, and then mediation can start, and the dialectic
can strive for unity. Hegel would argue that the beginning is already medi-
ated as the negation of ending; accordingly, he concludes, “Becoming is an
unstable unrest which settles into a stable result.”6 As already mentioned,
this statement seems to be an implicit acknowledgment of the gap between
unstable unrest and stable result.
Hegel discusses the relation of causality as the relation of cause and
effect. He argues that the content of effect is contained in the cause, and vice
versa—that whatever is in the cause shows in the effect, so that “the cause
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 149

is therefore truly actual and self-identical only in its effect.”7 In causality,

which relates cause to effect, the content of cause and the content of effect
are outside their causal relation, or external to it. Causality, argues Hegel, is
“external to itself because here its originativeness is an immediacy.”8 In finite
reflection, the chain connecting causes and their effects stops at immediacy
and cannot unite cause and effect. Uniting causes and effects would require
infinite reflection. This inability of finite reflection is shown whether we start
from cause, or from effect. Starting with effect, the first effect “arrives at
substance externally,” while the next effect depends on the previous effect.
The reciprocity of cause and effect is the reciprocity of active and passive
substance. First, the immediate substance vanishes and the cause originates.
Hegel writes, “Causality is this posited transition of originative being, of
cause, into illusory being or mere positedness, and conversely, of posited-
ness into originativeness; but the identity itself of being and illusory being
is still an inner necessity.”9 Hence, Hegel has to acknowledge the “origina-
tive being” as a cause leading to illusory being, “the remainder of being,”10
beyond essence. He continues with the argument that illusory being is only
the first determination of essence, and that “the truth is rather that essence
contains the illusory being within itself as the infinite immanent negativity
that determines its immediacy as negativity and its negativity as immediacy,
and is thus the reflection of itself within itself.”11 Hence, in infinity, at the end
of infinite movement, essence can appropriate illusory being, and there is no
remainder of being, outside essence. But, we should consider a finite being,
a subjectivity with consciousness, with perceptual capabilities, and mental
powers. In the case of a finite being, the Hegelian unity of immediacy and
mediation is not absolute.
The publication of Hegel’s Logic of Being (the First Book) in 1812 was
received with criticism from a mathematician Johann W.A. Pfaff, who wrote
to Hegel asking for explanation along the following lines: “How does the
thinking [subject] develop? How does the new, which is not already present
in thinking, arise or break forth out of the old? How is synthesis possible?
How does thought progress, etc.? How do freedom and necessity, creation
and construction, invention and proof interpenetrate?”12 Unfortunately,
Hegel’s response to Pfaff is lost. The criticism seems to be justified, because
Hegel does not discuss in much detail the “originativeness” or the start-
ing point of something, as pure immediacy, origin to mediation. Similar
objections to some aspects of Logic were raised by von Sinclair who, in
1812, wrote to Hegel discussing the opposites that contradict each other in
dialectical movement: “Moreover, there cannot yet be any talk of external
reflection where everything still appears in a single undifferentiated intercon-
nection. I believe I have clearly indicated my point of entry into speculation
(paragraphs 52–65). From this moment on I no longer abandon the synthetic
150 Chapter 4

path, and nothing immediate any longer comes forth.”13 It seems that von
Sinclair senses the irreducibility of the immediacy starting an encounter.
The origin to irreducible surprise as immediacy, resulting with the break in
one’s representational capabilities, is the “undifferentiated interconnection”
between externality and oneself. When this first moment (of indifferent dif-
ference between the outside and oneself) is passed, and reflection starts in
astonishment as the surprise of thought, pure immediacy is gone. Hence,
von Sinclair’s statements resonate in line with what I wish to expose. At the
beginning of 1813, Hegel gave an answer to von Sinclair saying,

But I hold generally that, however much trouble one is justifiably used to tak-
ing in philosophy about the proper beginning, in another respect one ought not
to make much fuss over it . . . For the beginning, precisely because it is the
beginning, is imperfect . . . The philosopher himself will let the objection arise
for a reader at its own time and necessary place. His entire philosophy itself is
nothing but a struggle against the beginning, a refutation and annihilation of his
starting point . . . I likewise hold that the beginning can only have the form of a
fact or—better—of something immediate. For it is precisely because of this that
it is a beginning, i.e. because it has not advanced.14

For Hegel, only a simple fact can be immediate, while doubt implies reflection,
so it cannot be immediate. It is obvious that Hegel considers immediacy as
the immediacy of representation, not something preceding the representation,
as the non-presentable presence that initiates the encounter with exteriority.
This first sense-certainty (a fact) signals the starting point of philosophy, and
the reflection begins in—as what he calls it—the advance. A philosopher has
to start with speculative thinking leading back to the initial, albeit sensual rep-
resentation: a specific object, a fact. In this sense, the immediate considered in
this work precedes Hegel’s immediate, precedes sense-certainty (to recall the
beginning of the Phenomenology). Hegel writes, “An actual sense-certainty is
not merely this pure immediacy, but an instance of it.”15 The word “certainty”
already indicates mediation—because my sensual representation mediates the
encounter with exteriority, be it a taste or smell.
The argument in the present work is that, only after my representational
capabilities are restored (first sensual then reflective), can I indeed represent
something. That something can be the beginning of philosophical specula-
tion, or (if one is not a philosopher) it can be the (unimportant) beginning of
one’s mild surprise, or (if one is a poet or an artist) it can be an irreducible
surprise acting as the creative trigger of future work. Hence, I am propos-
ing a phenomenology of irreducible surprise following the break in one’s
representational capabilities. One cannot quote Hegel when quoting, for
example, Blanchot because their concepts of immediacy are not the same.
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 151

Hegel becomes relevant upon the “advancement” or metamorphosis of

surprise when reflection starts to interfere with immediate thought, in the
dialectic of inside and outside (to quote Bachelard). In further progressing
either to admiration and art appreciation, or to responsibility and ethics,
Hegel’s movement can take over. However, Hegelian dialectics ends in an
absolute idea, as the absolute identity of the universal and the particular, but
the absolute identity can only be achieved in infinity—a finite reflection is
always deficient and unity is not absolute. Hegel implicitly acknowledges the
impossibility of the absolute in finitude.
In a letter to Hegel from 1822, Duboc writes, “. . . according to your own
philosophical belief, truth resides in ‘becoming,’ the unity of being and noth-
ing. For Schelling it resides in absolute identity, the indifference of infinite
and finite being.” To this letter Hegel replied,

I define the Idea as becoming, as the unity of being and nothing . . . I note the
necessity of exhibiting definitions such as that the Idea is the unity of being
and nothing, of the concept and objectivity, of the variable and the invariable,
and so forth, as also propositions such as that being is nothing, the concept is
objectivity, the ideal is the real, along with the converse, and so on. At the same
time, however, it is necessary to realize that all definitions and propositions of
this sort are one-sided, and that to this extent the Opposition has a right against
them. The defect they exhibit is precisely that they express only the one side,
the unity, the is, but give equal expression neither to the existing difference—
being and nothing, and so on—nor to the negative that lies in [the] relation of
such determinations. . . . My view is to this extent that the Idea can only be
expressed and grasped as a process within such unification—for example as
becoming, i.e. as movement.16

In this paragraph, Hegel clearly acknowledges the one-sidedness of defini-

tions proposing identity between two terms, hence their inability to complete
the identity: becoming indicates that unity is never realized, that the identity
of the two terms is only an ideal, and, though a philosopher can strive for it,
in reality there is always some content that escapes formalization.

ADORNO’S AFFINITY WITH HEGEL

Adorno was not a straightforward Hegelian, but had affinity with Hegel.
He was opposed to Hegel regarding the issues of identity and nonidentity, and
argued that Hegel, by equating identity and nonidentity in his dialectic, takes
the subjective stance, that is, puts the subject in the driver’s seat, so to speak.
Adorno wants to get rid of the “subjectness” characteristic of German Ideal-
ists and wants to allow the nonidentity of identity and non-identity. This leads
152 Chapter 4

to a non-subjectivistic dialectic (negative dialectic) as a method coming, not

from a subject, but capturing the interplay between the subject and the object,
with influences going in both directions. Nonidentity indicates a residual that
cannot be annihilated by unity. Adorno wants a dialectic that is not purely
formalistic like an algorithm, since that would mandate dialectic’s subjective
nature: if the method is purely formal, it is guided by the analytical capac-
ity of the one applying the method, a subject directs its performance. On the
other hand, if the method is “open” to the moves coming from the outside,
then the method is not rigid—it is adaptive.
In the essay titled Aspects of Hegel’s Philosophy, Adorno acknowledges
the importance of rupture in Hegel’s critical thought and writes, “His critical
thought goes beyond both the stating of the unconnected and the principle
of continuity; in him, connection is not a matter of unbroken transition
but a matter of sudden change, and the process takes place not through the
moments approaching one another but through rupture.”17
Hence, Adorno senses the importance of rupture and suddenness in
Hegel’s thought: this is how connections are made and how the dialectic
works. What is interesting with respect to the present work is the rupture
separating the old from the new. This new resulting in irreducible surprise
is not an object or impression—it is the newness itself, the feeling of some-
thing beyond one’s representational capabilities, regardless of its objectivity.
Newness itself can be experienced numerous times and is always the same
feeling, yet it triggers a feeling of difference each time due to the nature
of newness. Hegel struggled to reconcile the immediate and the mediation
and was convinced that something immediate is already mediated, which
seems appropriate if the immediate is something present to the senses as
“this thing here,” because it implicitly negates everything other than “this
thing here.” Analogous to Hegel’s immediacy-mediation relation, one can
look at the difference-repetition structure intertwined with the notion of
newness. Newness should present something different than before, since this
is the nature of newness, yet this difference results in repetition because it
always repeats the same feeling, the same origin preceding the beginning of
surprise. Newness in its nature is difference, and at the same time it repeats
always the same startup for surprise. Here we come to Deleuze and his analy-
sis of difference and repetition. The notion of surprise illustrates Deleuze’s
difference and repetition.
Hegel’s philosophy is essentially a critique of what exists, a negative
philosophy because of his insistence on the power of negativity. However,
Hegel’s philosophy is a philosophy of becoming—as such, it seems inher-
ently positive. His dialectic concerns the present time, learns from the past,
and does not consider the future. The finite dialectic ending in the present
time cannot achieve absolute unity; it can only be done in infinity when the
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 153

process of becoming is complete. With absolute knowing or the absolute

idea, Hegel provides a limiting case which is unattainable in finite time.
The inability of finite dialectic to achieve absolute unity provides a space for
the un-subsumable elements in concept creation.
In the world of exchange, everything is mediated by the exchange itself,
everything gets a value, so immediacy is not tolerated. Yet, argues Adorno,
philosophy attempts to affirm the importance of immediacy as what grounds
things. He emphasizes that, for Hegel, there is no pure immediacy because if
something exists, it is already mediated. Regarding Hegel’s method, Adorno
writes, “It is characteristic of his method that he evaluated immediacy by its
own criterion and charged it with not being immediate.”18
It seems clear that mere immediacy is incompatible with knowledge,
but mere immediacy is the trigger, the origin for possible knowledge. I say
possible and this signals the neutrality of immediacy. If immediacy would
necessarily lead to knowledge, it would already be implicated in knowledge,
tied to it; hence it would not be a pure immediacy. Pure immediacy carries
a sense of freedom: freedom as indifference, as passivity, without the need
to act and achieve something (e.g. truth). There are many facets of freedom,
and one possibility for freedom should be the possibility of passivity. It might
not sound humanistic to link freedom with passivity, but tying up freedom
with humanity and goodness only misses the point, as Schelling understood
very well.
Through Hegel’s view of immediacy, Adorno concludes that Hegel’s
philosophy proceeds from individual experience toward consciousness of
intersubjectivity. He writes:

Experience’s advance to consciousness of its interdependence with the experi-

ence of all human beings acts as a retroactive correction to its starting point in
mere individual experience. Hegel’s philosophy formulated this. His critique of
immediacy gives an account of how what naïve consciousness trusts as immedi-
ate and most intimate is, objectively, no more immediate and primary than any
other kind of possession.19

As stated previously, Hegel considers immediacy as already mediated: as

soon as something is sense-certain (“this thing here”), it includes reflection.
The encounters considered in this work are immediate and, in the moment
of break in one’s representational capabilities, one achieves intimacy with
otherness that surpasses language’s powers of explication. I can only specu-
late about this intimacy because I can be conscious about it only afterward.
However, in the metamorphosis of surprise, that is, in the development of
the phenomenon of surprise, I became conscious of the moment of intimacy
shared with something in the environment that is at the same time particular
154 Chapter 4

and universal. However, this universal is my universal, my generality. First,

this reverberation of past immediacy is indeed personal or individual; it
is between the environment and me, without intersubjective interactions
(The “environment” or otherness provoking the encounter could be another
person, but in the moment of break I do not perceive him or her as another
person, since that would imply reflection). Consciousness of such an encoun-
ter considers its non-objective character and asserts its general nature: all
such encounters are repetitions, since forms of intuition (space and time) do
not apply; I get the sense that such an encounter is at the same time the most
intimate and individual, and the most universal or general for me. Assuming
that others get a posteriori feelings about such encounters (i.e. that irreduc-
ible surprise is a human possibility), it seems that, in the immediacy preced-
ing sense-certainty and originating irreducible surprise, the absolute unity of
the general and the individual is achieved. When the senses get a hold of it,
the unity dissolves and reflection starts filling the details of the encounter,
first adding the spatial and temporal intuition, following with reflection,
then moving toward admiration or responsibility—or just acknowledging
the surprise, without further development. This seems to be the Hegelian
move “in reverse”: from absolute unity toward the startup of dialectic that
can never reconcile the unity in finite time. However, one can argue that the
moment, the Augenblick, the moment of Kierkegaard and of Heidegger, is
time encompassing infinity because it is the breakup of time. The condensa-
tion in a moment becomes akin to an infinite dialectic—only infinity or a
timeless moment can allow speculation over the absolute unity of the indi-
vidual and the universal, the two extremes. The finite reflection succumbing
to time, space, and consciousness leaves a gap between particularity and
universality.
Kant had put a veil between the noumena and us, arguing that we cannot
know things-in-themselves. According to Adorno, “Hegel would like to rend
the veil: hence his polemic against Kant’s doctrine of the unknowability of the
thing in itself.”20 The current position is that noumenon (or immediacy that
we do not know) influences us, so the boundary is porous. I wish to introduce
some “wind” to play with the veil, to give a glimpse to the unknown—but
just a glimpse, without generating any new knowledge. Goethe’s observation
that everything perfect points beyond its own kind is very lucid and poetic,
acknowledging the need to transgress boundaries. Maybe the desire for the
unexpected, for beyond-ness, is the desire for perfection, but perfection not
as a dead matter, not in the style of a dead intellectual (to evoke Schelling).
Perfection can be viewed as a becoming, a perpetual movement, per-fection
sharing the same Greek root “per,” meaning “thoroughly, through,” and
appearing in, for example, perpetual, perennial, permanent, persistent.
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 155

Perfection is a continuous probing, a continuous search, and it cannot be paci-

fied by accomplishments, praise, or empty rhetoric.
According to Adorno, Hegel’s dialectic underlines the conviction that phi-
losophy strives in unsettled areas, where the atmosphere is different from the
lifeless atmosphere of overarching tradition. Hence, the current undertaking
to probe into the phenomenon of surprise might be justified, since surprise is
often brushed off. Philosophers, starting with Plato, love its “cousin,” won-
der. But, what precedes wonder? I speculate that it is the possibility of letting
loose and abandoning oneself in the encounter with otherness. If philosophy
begins in wonder, its origin is the break signaling the startup of irreducible
surprise.

SCHELLING’S INCOMPATIBILITY BETWEEN THE

GROUND OF EXISTENCE AND EXISTENCE ITSELF

Hegel provided a meticulous and explicit form of presentation in his works

(as visible right away from his Table of Contents, divided in books, sections,
and subsections), always following the triad of immediacy—mediation—
comprehension. Then, inside every section, he struggled (especially in Logic)
to provide arguments for unity, as if implicitly attesting to the impossibility
of absolute unity in the finite horizon. In contrast to Hegel, Schelling’s essay
from 1809, titled Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human
Freedom and Matters Connected Therewith, is a work flowing freely, without
any sections or formal divisions in argumentation. By explicitly rejecting the
constraints of form for the presented material, Schelling implicitly proclaims
the unity of content and form, since free form seems appropriate for inves-
tigations about freedom. However, in the essay he explicitly argues for the
impossibility of unity between the ground of existence and existence itself.
Hence, Schelling and Hegel seem to be complementary to each other, yet they
are closer than they appear to be. Hegel argues for absolute unity when the
dialectic is taken to infinity, but he also acknowledges that, in the finite hori-
zon, absolute unity cannot be achieved. Schelling, in his way, argues about
the impossibility of a system containing its own ground of existence, that is,
the condition for existence must lie outside existence—ground and existence
do not coincide. This is also due to finitude: precisely because human being is
finite, there has to be disunity between the ground of existence and existence
itself—otherwise being would be infinite, would be God, since only God
includes the condition of existence. Humanity is characterized by mortality
and digressions in life, providing dynamism, struggle, and a wish to go out-
side the boundaries, always desiring something in addition to the finitude of
156 Chapter 4

existence. This desire asserts the irreducible character of the origin (ground)
to the beginning (existence).
In Philosophies of Nature after Schelling, Iain Hamilton Grant considers
Schelling’s concept of naturphilosophie as the concept combining physics
and metaphysics, uniting the organic and inorganic nature, and rejecting
the split between idea and nature, or between self and world, resulting with
“speculative physics.”21 Speculation in encounters with environment (natural
as well as man-made), in encounters with organic and inorganic nature, is in
the heart of the experiences considered here. The representational break in
desire||surprise denotes inability to avoid speculation.
Is there freedom for humanity? Schelling argues that human freedom
stems from the inability of the system to encompass it all: if everything could
be explained and accounted for (as in a closed systematic approach), there
would be no freedom whatsoever, everything would be predestined. He goes
on to reproach Kant for stopping at “negative” philosophy as the inability to
approach things-in-themselves. For Schelling, philosophy can be either nega-
tive or positive: negative philosophy analyses possibilities as presented for
our mental powers, without reflection upon actualities; positive philosophy
begins with immediate experience as an actuality, and then includes reflection
to analyze the subsequent process.
Immediate experience as an actuality is relevant for the current approach.
The encounters considered here start as irreducible excess over expecta-
tions, and only subsequently unfold into the phenomenology of surprise.
Schelling writes, “Only one who has tasted freedom can feel the longing to
make everything analogous to it, spread it throughout the whole universe.”22
Could an irreducible surprise give a taste of freedom? In contrast to negative
philosophy, which posits the boundaries of things that we can know, a posi-
tive approach to philosophy tries to go over those bounds, so it has to start
with triggers of experience. The desire to encounter the unexpected, some-
thing for which one is utterly unprepared because it is outside one’s sensi-
bility and understanding, provides proof of the inclination to overstep the
bounds of a finite and ordered existence. Such an encounter, in which reality
is manifested but defies representation and appearance, reminds one that his
or her existence is not “closed” and logically explainable, that there is space
for freedom and augmentation. Schelling writes,

This is the incomprehensible base of reality in things, the indivisible remainder,

that which with the greatest exertion cannot be resolved in understanding but
rather remains eternally in the ground. The understanding is born in the genuine
sense from that which is without understanding. Without this preceding dark-
ness creatures have no reality; darkness is their necessary inheritance . . . All
birth is birth from darkness to light . . . .23
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 157

Without going into theodicy and religious overtones, this quote seems
very relevant for the statement that, between origin and beginning, there has
to be a gap, from death to life, from darkness to light, from no understand-
ing to luminous thought. Yearning, this object-less desire, is a force leading
to incomprehensible encounters in which past experience is severed (“die in
darkness”) and the subsequent metamorphosis leads to surprise (“more beau-
tiful shape of light”) through which one’s experience is enriched, maybe not
in an objective (representational) way, but by the thought of freedom, of the
outside and of openness. As Schelling writes, “. . . something comprehen-
sible and individuated first emerges in this manner and, indeed, not through
external representation but rather through genuine impression . . . .”24
Schelling equates desire, or “the pure craving,” or yearning, with a “blind
will,” and it is a consequence of the incompatibility of the ground of existence
(darkness) and existence with its understanding (light). Unlike God who has
ground of existence united with existence, argues Schelling, man has this
yearning, this unsatisfied desire as a reminder that darkness and light, ground
and existence are not completely dissolved into each other in humanity.
This for Schelling justifies the consideration of good and evil with the same
priority: evil being natural to men as much as goodness. As Schelling says,
“the ground of evil could not in any way lie in lack or deprivation.”25 Evil
resulting from lack or deprivation would mean that evil is derived, not
primary. The reason for evil is much more primordial: the incompatibility
of ground and existence. Since it is not predestined, an action as actualiza-
tion of existential ground can be as much evil as it can be good. Without this
duality of good and evil, and without blind will or non-specified desire, man
would approximate an infinite being, and would lose humanity. Schelling
argues that, in fact, evil is needed to provoke goodness, to achieve revelation.
Although Schelling’s essay is religiously “colored,” as is appropriate for
the time of its appearance, nevertheless it expresses freedom of choice and
underlines the need for evil, digressions, and unreason (i.e. darkness), so that
from it something good can appear (light). This negativity is different from
Hegel’s “tremendous power of negativity.” For Hegel, negativity is in the
domain of self-reflection: it is already mediation, since to negate something
we have to have that something present before its negation. For Schelling,
evil as negativity belongs to the ground of existence and precedes existence,
and it remains incomprehensible, outside of systems of conceptual thinking
and understanding. This incomprehensibility results in unsettled elements of
existence and consciousness, forever feeding the desire and yearning to probe
into the mystery of the beginning, the mystery of the “distinction between
that which exists and that which is the ground for existence.”26 Because
there is an irreducible gap in principles of good and evil, man is rational as
well as irrational, and can never succumb to perfect unity—otherwise he or
158 Chapter 4

she would be God. Hence, the irrational principle characterizes humanity.

Schelling here foresees future philosophers, such as Bataille, who advocate
transgression and excess. He writes, “The irrational and contingent, which
show themselves to be bound to that which is necessary in the formation of
beings, especially the organic ones, prove that it is not merely a geometric
necessity that has been active here, but rather that freedom, spirit, and self-
will were also in play.”27
For Schelling, desire belongs to the ground of existence, as a driving force
for the movement that characterizes the existence of a natural being. This
movement is becoming as a sequence of beginnings and endings. Since the
ground of existence is not subsumed under existence, the irrational or evil
can spring up in existence. An answer to evil forces is revelation. Revelation
reminds man of God’s presence and annuls the evil forces that are needed
so that the good may appear. Schelling asks whether revelation is an action
“that ensues with blind and unconscious necessity, or is it a free and con-
scious act?”28 Indeed this is a very intriguing question, on the same level with
the question of human freedom. Schelling argues for the middle ground: it
is not a conscious will, but also it is not completely unconscious and blind
necessity. Conscious will, for Schelling, is the will of love. Revelation is trig-
gered by forces grounding existence and is made possible by the will of love.
Turning to the encounters considered in this work, and to excess beyond
anticipation, the guiding question might be whether the origin of excess is
external or internal. It seems to be in the middle, neither external nor internal
exclusively, but occurring in the encounter between exterior and interior:
desire for the unexpected is conscious, because I am aware of it; however,
because of its indeterminacy, it is free. Desire for the unexpected and desire
for transgression are not the same: desire for transgression is more directed,
more definite, and is more naturally related to sexual desire, overstepping
taboos. Desire for the unexpected is the most undefined desire, undirected in
its perceived utility because, if satisfied, it brings only surprise, which might
be significant as a trigger of a creative or an ethical act, but it may as well
be without any significance whatsoever, just pure surprise acknowledging
life’s vitality. Schelling acknowledges the vitality of life, “the rigor of life,”
since “where there is no struggle, there is no life.”29 Hence, setbacks, evils,
breaks—all are necessary for reviving life, for revelatory positive forces,
for goodness, and for the struggle for survival. The unexpected can result
in something either good or bad. However, when I desire the unexpected,
I desire openness or something good, something important, but without spe-
cific utility. The considered encounters may be called revelations, but they
are object-less revelations, revealing always the same thing: the openness
of existence, the porousness of boundaries, the acceptance of something
new via irreducible surprise. A break is needed so that something new can
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 159

start, indicating at the same time an ending and a new beginning, and this is
what characterizes life: a series of beginnings and endings. In the encounters
considered here, there are no religious connotations as there are in Schelling;
rather, the encounters considered here come closer to the revelation that
Jaspers talks about.
Revelation is the acknowledgment of surprise. Desire considered here is
the desire for the unexpected (for me), so it is a generic desire, individual-
ized yet universal. The break between desire and surprise is indicated as
desire||surprise, with desire as the force moving from the individual toward
the universal, while surprise goes from the universal toward the individual.
Hence, in the movement and transition from desire to surprise, the trans-
formation from the individual to the universal and back to the individual is
accomplished, resulting in an enriched individual. This sounds Hegelian, but
it does not contribute to concept formation. On the contrary, it underlines
the deficiency of conceptual thinking and systematic and orderly existence,
attesting to the mystery and irrationality of human nature as a seed for
future creativity (artistic creation and admiration), or awareness of ethical
considerations and empathy due to life’s imperfections and still unclaimed
possibilities. Such desire presents an inner necessity, as opposed to empirical
necessity based on objective needs. For Schelling, this inner necessity is itself
freedom. He writes that the essence of man is “his own act.” The act com-
bines formal necessity and freedom, two seemingly incompatible notions.
Yet, it can be argued that man is by necessity a free being, which stems from
the fact that the ground of existence is irreducible to existence itself: necessity
of freedom is the freedom to will and to act.
Die Weltalter is Schelling’s unfinished and fragmentary philosophical
poem, published after his death.30 The third version (written in 1815) was
published by Schelling’s son Karl in 1861, and he created a “Synoptic Table
of Contents” to accompany it. The translator J. Wirth included it in the Eng-
lish translation from 2000. This “Table of Contents” and its insertion in the
text might produce a more readable text for readers, but would not Schelling
himself have created one if he had wished to have it? I would have preferred
to read the poem without chapter and sections insertions, as a continuously
flowing discussion, uninterrupted by the formal arrangement of the text,
resembling the essay on freedom.
Schelling writes about the importance of presence that cannot be repre-
sented, of presence preceding perception and reflection, of an irreducible
remainder of the ground of existence that cannot be subsumed under exis-
tence. He reflects on the paradoxical character of the system. On the one
hand, a system presents a set of constraints because parts have to fit into the
whole, restricting freedom; on the other hand, a systematic approach and
thinking, especially if adaptive and changeable over time and with respect to
160 Chapter 4

the subject, facilitate scientific findings, artistic creativity, and the manifesta-
tion and use of freedom. It seems that the middle ground is the most benefi-
cial here: no extremes, such as that of a rigid system or that of a completely
anarchic approach, can be useful—the best advancement is achieved with
systematic thinking, but allowing for moments of gaps, “madness,” excesses,
and transgression, abandoning the dry and overused path. To be creative,
one has to stray from the overused path, but has to return to known space in
order to represent the creative effort, either as a piece of art or as scientific
or philosophical writing. Freedom for Schelling is divine madness, and free
will is the will that wills nothing in particular, a desire or yearning that is
not objectively directed. It is present as a force of life’s vitality. The desire
for the unexpected considered in this work is the object-less desire for a true
beginning. It points to the outside of the already visited and revisited space
of experience. To encounter the unexpected, one has to be attuned to the
presence that is not objectively present, but that can manifest itself. Schelling
says something relevant to such encounters: “This incomprehensible but not
imperceptible being, always ready to overflow and yet always held again, and
which alone grants to all things the full charm, gleam, and glint of life, is that
which is at the same time most manifest and most concealed.”31
Schelling wants to afford significance to what he calls “the intermediate
concepts,” as concepts presenting something in between the complete con-
cepts of what is scientifically explainable, and the lack of any concepts for
non-explainable entities. He argues that the intermediate concepts combining
the presentable and the non-presentable are the most interesting ones, since
they capture reality as it is, incomprehensible and surpassing mechanical
conceptual identification. Life is constant movement, with opposing forces of
expansion and contraction, openness and closure, distance and intimacy, and,
as Schelling says, “This is the poison of life that needs to be overcome, yet
without which life would pass away.”32
This statement describes poetically the force of life’s vitality. Yet, over-
coming does not have to be triggered by the “poison of life.” Actually, the
interesting case is when life is not grim after all, because if life is grim we look
for an exit (the survival impulse), but when “life is beautiful,” why would we
look for something new? (As the saying goes: if it’s not broken, don’t fix it).
In trying to answer this question, I will borrow Schelling’s vocabulary: when
the forces get a taste of their accomplishment and become comfortable, they
desire (out of curiosity and idleness) to go out of their comfortable unity to
explore further. This is the vitality of life. It pulsates between contractions and
extensions, between cozy intimate places and unbounded neutral spaces. Who
wouldn’t wish to be in a small yet comfortable boat in the midst of a (calm)
sea, to experience at the same time the intimacy of life’s existence and the
promise of an unbounded exteriority? Who would not like to meditate in a
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 161

cozy room with large windows overlooking the majestic mountain range cov-
ered with snow, or gaze from a cliff overlooking either the serenity of a calm
sea or the rage of wind and waves mercifully attacking the cliff? It is easily
recognizable that these examples lead to Kantian sublimity. However, for an
encounter to create “anew something that has being,” encounter does not have
to have such a sublime setting. Something can reveal newness in seemingly
insignificant details—smells, sounds, unexpected relationships, all of which
can disarm one’s armory of cultural upbringing and perceptiveness, scientific
proficiency and cleverness, and can assert anew the value of life in its full
simplicity and mystery. This is a kind of surprise originating from the unex-
pected excess coming from exteriority, and from the acceptivity of my inner
constitution: I am attentive after all and still belong to the universality of life
as an integral part; I am not a completely separate being. Such encounters
(apart from religion, politics, morality, as the immensely important “depart-
ments” of human existence and interactions) are significant to asserting anew
the old wisdom that small things in life, simple things in life, often carry a big
import and contribute to one’s sense of happiness. As already argued, such an
irreducible surprise seems to present fertile ground for the further evolution
of either admiration or responsibility, or of all shades and combinations of
the two in between.
Shelling uses the word Sehnsucht, which is translated as yearning, indicat-
ing a non-objective desire, an undetermined desire as a forward movement,
for something out there, as a longing. This can also be viewed as the desire for
the unexpected, for the beyond of objective representations. Schelling writes,
“All conscious creation presupposes an unconscious creating. Conscious
creating is just the unfolding and setting into opposition of unconscious creat-
ing.”33 This is very relevant for the current proposal, since “true” beginning,
which carries the seed of creativity, has to originate beyond consciousness
and intentionality, has to originate beyond habitual experiential space, in the
open, beyond consciousness—which is unconsciousness. Schelling recalls
Aristotle and the saying that a touch of madness is necessary to accomplish
something great. Otherwise, one would be stuck with situations already
seen, experienced, and thought. Hence, it is beneficial to go sometimes
beyond reason—that is, to experience a touch of madness or a situation in
which reason is defenseless and helpless, in which it is not functioning. This
happens when an encounter freezes one’s representational capabilities and the
neutrality of the transformation of desire to surprise (as the two processes in
one’s conscience and personality) disallows any objectivity.
Schelling identifies three types of people: one kind of person governs
madness and is oriented toward the full force of intellect (dead intellectu-
als), another kind of person is governed by madness (as being completely
mad)—these are the two extremes. A third type of person balances in the
162 Chapter 4

middle, being governed by reason but with occasional touches of madness.

This is the most desirable type of person since, says Schelling, “where there
is no madness, there is also certainly no proper, active, living intellect (and
consequently there is just the dead intellect, dead intellectuals.)”34 This con-
sideration of reason and madness leads to Schelling’s influence on Jaspers.

JASPERS’ REASON, ANTI-REASON,

EXISTENZ, AND ENCOMPASSING

Jaspers considers reason as essentially different from intellect. In a work titled

Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time, he first offers a criticism of both Marx-
ism and psychoanalysis as being unscientific due to a misleading employment
of reason, bending “science” to conform to the desired findings. Science is not
a mere technology and a set of procedures, techniques, and algorithms used to
prove something, or the application of intellect to secure some ends—it needs
Reason—that is, the will to know, the will to truth. Reason is related to desire:
the acknowledgement of never-satisfied desire and the openness, the will to
always go further, is a prerequisite for a genuine science, unlike the “pseudo-
sciences” that proclaim desire and demand that it be fulfilled.35
The satisfaction with the “totality” of knowledge, the quest for the totally
planned society and order, the wish to explain everything in analytical terms,
all such tendencies undercut reason from its bloodline, the freedom character-
izing authentic personality. Jaspers writes, “Reason has no assured stability:
it is constantly on the move . . . It leads to self-knowledge and knowledge
of limits, and therefore to humility—and it is opposed to intellectual arro-
gance . . . Thus reason works itself out of chains of dogma, of caprice, of
arrogance, of passion . . . It is in itself a boundless openness.”36 Hence, reason
has built-in the desire for transgression, for encountering something new, for
escaping incarceration, for getting a glimpse of freedom. This is reason’s
propensity for openness. Jaspers implies the possibility for encountering
something irreducibly new without actively asking for it: reason’s “humility”
encompasses at the same time a certain passivity allowing otherness to mani-
fest itself, and the activity of the will to enlarge experiential horizons.37 This
is a nod to Schelling and his arguments that the essence of human freedom
is the irreducibility of the ground of existence and actual existence, leaving
space for the irrational as well as the rational, for powers that work against
order to disable the system’s encapsulation. What is most alien to Reason and
to which Reason is attracted, is the passivity of indifference as an origin to a
beginning, to put Reason on the move. Anti-Reason as the negation of Reason
is simply a closed, dead intellect, the impossibility of irreducible surprise,
and, instead, work in the domain of derivative statements.
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 163

Jaspers acknowledges the “boundless will to communication” character-

izing Reason. But, such communication could not be a banal exchange of
information related to objective reality—this would be non-authentic com-
munication among separated beings. The authentic communication that
Reason demands is communication with exteriority, “in the presence of Tran-
scendence” according to Jaspers, something that is beyond one’s experiential
space. In accordance with Schelling’s question, “Why does anything at all
exist; why does not nothing exist?” Jaspers answers, “The question makes
us conscious of the presence of Being as the unintelligible and impenetrable
mystery that approaches us and exists before all our thought.”38
Hence, there is a mystery preceding thought, as the origin outside begin-
ning. There is presence that cannot be represented, something escaping objec-
tivity. Jaspers writes, “When we imagine that we sometimes know more than
we can think and express in historical forms, we are forced to look round for
metaphors.”39 I have discussed Ricoeur’s work and the use of metaphors in
“short-cutting” communication, directly expressing something that escapes
descriptive narration in ordinary language. Reason is triggered by externality,
by something alien to it, which it then processes and makes a part of existence.
Yet, Jaspers is strongly against yearning for “mystery, irrationality, absurdity,
wizardry, magic, adventure, and finally for blind unrestraint and blind obedi-
ence at one and the same time.”40 Such desire appears, argues Jaspers, when
mere intellect takes over and creates a sense of dissatisfaction. In the current
interpretation, such desire would be the desire for mere novelty, without leav-
ing the world of objects and petty intrigues, the desire for accidental surprises
that in retrospect would not be surprises after all. Desire for the unexpected,
for an irreducible surprise—not because one is bored and needs some action,
but because the openness of being asks for continuity of existence—reflects
the “humility” of reason in acknowledging the incompleteness and disunity
of the world around it. Jaspers writes,

The very substance of our being yearns for fulfillment, for satisfaction and
incarnation in the present. But the access to such fulfillment can be of two
kinds. It can lead to a genuine fullness under the guidance of reason and to a
historically continuing development through reason. Or it can produce a merely
deceptive realization, lost in the dispersal and anarchy of random multifarious-
ness, without reason and contrary to reason.41

Here we can question Jaspers. Is it really the case that “fullness” can be
achieved in only one of the two extreme cases: under the guidance of reason,
or as a merely deceptive realization?—It depends on how reason is defined.
The “fullness” achieved in encounters triggering an irreducible surprise in the
aesthetic sense does not contribute to objective knowledge. It does, however,
164 Chapter 4

contribute to self-knowledge and to the knowledge of limits (tells us some-

thing about ourselves), but without any scientific fact: a chance encounter
resulting in irreducible surprise is surprise at oneself. Such “fullness” can
stop there—without any further developments leading to something creative
or something good (to employ ethical language), or it can indeed propagate
further artistic creation, admiration, or responsibility, all under the wings of
a restless reason. Hence, I wish to acknowledge the possibility for simple
aesthetic fulfillment without any immediate propagation to something
more than that. This wish for simple aesthetic fulfillment is not advocating
“aesthetic license and poetic anarchism,”42 it is a wish to free reason from the
requirement that it has to be productive all the time. It would be an unbear-
able burden. The possibility of non-productive reason is a prerogative for its
openness. Through reason we acquire knowledge. However, Jaspers senses
that knowledge cannot encompass it all, so knowing should be open, and
knowledge as such is a defiant notion.43
In trying to differentiate philosophy from art, Jaspers argues that phi-
losophy is reflection, or “thinking in life in which I extricate my life from
untruth,”44 while “in art, in the form of a vision externalized into an image,
fulfillment comes in a leap.”45 Philosophy and art serve different purposes in
our lives, since in philosophy we try to come to grips with the reality of life,
while art testifies to the difference between life and contemplation; hence,
“while the goal of philosophizing is to think in the reality of life itself, the
very point of adopting art is to separate reality from contemplative enthrall-
ment.”46 Jaspers distinguishes between “true” and “untrue” art, and positions
true art above philosophy, since true art can provide fulfillment beyond what
philosophy and reflection can provide. However, philosophy has the possibil-
ity to uncover “untrue” art, to dissect it and disregard it as worthless.47
There is part of philosophy that comes close to art and that is on the same
level as art—this is metaphysical speculation.48 When “fulfillment,” such
as that provided by true art, leaves us speechless and incapable of objective
representation, we afterward feel a need to talk about it, to speculate on the
mystery of such fulfillment. Such metaphysical speculation testifies to our
need to probe into encounters that transgress our experiential space with
reflection, being aware, at the same time, that such reflection cannot have
any scientific validity—because metaphysical speculation approaches the
poetics of language. It points to the inability of reflection and actually proves
its unlimited ability.
Following Kierkegaard, Jaspers develops the notion of Existenz to indicate
an individual’s concern with self-knowledge, apart from objective presence
and concerned with freedom and authenticity. It is different from the common
use of “existence” as empirical existence, that which indicates the attributes
of an objective presence. Existenz is characterized as the will to explore the
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 165

limits of human reason, the basis for developing humanity, the impulses
directing one’s actions, the transcendence of limited human experience. The
related concept of Encompassing indicates the transcendence of all experien-
tial horizons, as the beyond-ness of one’s habitual experiential space contain-
ing possibilities for the augmentation of self-knowledge.49
In the quest of Existenz to surpass the finitude of the objective world,
of appearances and particularity, there is a need to go beyond horizons, to
transcend the limit of empirical existence. Whenever one is dissatisfied with
the pettiness and accidental truths in one’s life, there is a need, a will to go
beyond. The externality that Jaspers names Encompassing can be viewed as
the externality “closest” to the experiential space, and it is there that possi-
bilities for surpassing the limits of objective presence reside. As an Existenz,
I wish to go beyond my horizons; to engage in more meaningful communi-
cation; to know more about my inclinations; to understand my underlined
humanity hidden below cultural, political, and professional conduct; and
to discover my real self, a self open for communication without strategic
wishes to dominate or usurp another’s space. It is a way out of a closed and
organized existence in which all is accounted for. According to such a view,
Encompassing presents the needed transcendence, answering the call of the
unsatisfied in existence; it is “a self-supported ground of Being.”50 I am aware
that my self-knowledge is limited and I wish to augment it, without adding
any factual knowledge. Instead, I wish to add to my capacity for authentic
communication, and to get a sense of my possibilities.
The exteriority of the Encompassing and the striving of the Existenz toward
self-creation by self-elucidation, as arising from being unsatisfied with empir-
ical existence, is one way to approach exteriority. Maybe Jaspers’ training
in psychiatry made him attuned to the unsettled depths of human interior-
ity, of humanity extending beyond intellect, beyond objectively verifiable
and verbally explainable encounters and activity. His Existenz is based on
dissatisfaction with habitual relationships and the need for “existential com-
munication.” For authentic communication, one needs to be an independent
self, but equally open to another Existenz, to a being like oneself. Due to the
conflicting poles of self-discipline and of self-abandon, existential communi-
cation is manifested in the struggle between keeping one’s “stable” empirical
existence and the attainment of one’s possible Existenz.51 This is the fight for
truth of one’s existence, not a factual truth but the truth as self-knowledge.
The struggle based on equality is binding one Existenz to another, bringing
out what is relevant in their beings.
Can we “open” Jaspers’s exteriority outside Encompassing and look
beyond Existenz? Due to situations of encountering irreducible excess
beyond expectations, we experience irreducible surprise. The desire for the
unexpected, as an object-less desire or yearning, creates attunement and
166 Chapter 4

openness, a fertile ground for encountering exteriority. Such desire does not
have to be tied up with unsatisfied being so that it is triggered by deficien-
cies of empirical existence, in turn resulting in the necessary augmentation
of reason, and in authentic communication among similar beings. I like to
leave room for the possibility of encountering exteriority in a balanced mode,
with no struggle, for no particular reason, and in the passivity (sensual and
mental) that enables exteriority to approach in an unexpected way. Such an
encounter does not lead to communication with others like me, and it stops
in self-communication as my surprise. The encounter was not asked for, and
it might not be useful whatsoever—yet it seems immensely important as an
unequivocal “proof” that my being is open, welcoming exteriority, joyful and
playful, despite the anxiety and dissatisfactions of empirical reality. I am not
always calm and balanced—but neither am I always in the state of anxiety.
From a philosophical point of view, death, struggle, and anxiety are more
desirable concepts to dwell in because they open possibilities for searching
for unity, truth, and authenticity. However, the origin of a beginning, outside
of a beginning, can trigger a beginning independent of one’s striving for
it. I argue for a neutral openness of being—it is more difficult to justify it
philosophically than justifying openness based on the search for a way out.
In the movie industry, it seems that making a good comedy is much more
difficult than making a good tragedy (not many comedies have received
an Oscar). There is something in dissatisfaction that serves as a perpetuum
mobile, a wish to exit, a wish to explore and to transgress. But, there is noth-
ing to prevent transgression without explicitly asking for it—life would be
just a constant struggle without it. Sometimes it seems soothing to welcome
exteriority of its own. It is a properly aesthetic encounter just to acknowl-
edge one’s openness, and it may (I am not saying that it must) develop into
something more, for example, admiration or responsibility. This openness is
far away from Leibniz’s optimism, is not claiming that life is beautiful, calm,
and balanced. The world around us is, in fact, awful: natural and man-made
disasters, ecological suicide and cultural decline, alienation and increased
shallowness of relationships due to the imperative for instant gratification,
replacement of the real environment with the virtual one due to technological
advancements, etc.—but it is not my intention here to lament the current state
of affairs. All the philosophers concerned with being and existence certainly
have fertile ground for philosophizing about the way out, about changing
one’s attitudes to achieve an existence that is more meaningful. However, it
seems worthwhile to ask for the possibility for moments of openness when
the armory of one’s habitual seeing and acting is disabled, when one is not
burdened with “heavy” thoughts and lets his or her interiority be porous,
welcoming the outside, desiring the unexpected but not as a way out—on
the contrary, as a way in, in the continuity and indifference between “in” and
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 167

“out.” Hopefully, somebody like Voltaire would not find such a possibility
ridiculous.

SCHELLING AND HEGEL: ABSOLUTE

INDIFFERENCE VERSUS ABSOLUTE IDENTITY

Schelling proclaims the highest point of his investigation to be the discov-

ery of why there is a difference between the ground of existence and actual
existence. He said that there must first be indifference, absolute indifference
between the ground and the non-ground, which is absolute lack or neutrality.
It is important here to distinguish between identity and indifference: absolute
identity is different from absolute indifference. Absolute identity is only the
indifference of form, but content can escape identity. Indifference asserts the
neutrality of content as well, the two sides (ground and non-ground, light and
darkness, good and evil, etc.) have content that is indifferent to one and the
other. Moreover, there is no form, no identity of form, just formless indiffer-
ence in content.
This is why Schelling and Hegel can coexist: what Schelling talks about
precedes Hegel’s development of concepts. Hegel’s immediacy as sense-
certainty is not Schelling’s immediacy of indifference between ground and
non-ground. In his earlier essay from 1801 entitled The Difference between
Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, Hegel rejects Fichte’s as well
as Schelling’s position. He rejects Fichte’s position by saying that Fichte’s
equation “Ego = Ego” shows only the subjective Subject-Object relation,
that is, “‘Ego = Ego’ is transformed into the principle ‘Ego ought to be equal
to Ego.’”52 Hegel rejects Schelling’s position by saying that Schelling shows
only the objective side of the identity “Ego=Ego,” that is, Schelling puts the
principle of identity as the absolute principle of his system as a whole, with-
out reflection, and only by the immediate feeling. In the Difference essay,
Hegel writes “For absolute identity to be the principle of an entire system
it is necessary that both subject and object be posited as Subject-Object.”53
However, Schelling does not talk about absolute identity: his principle is
absolute indifference, which precedes any formal (and non-formal) identity.
In the “Freedom” essay, Schelling states firmly, “Thus we have shown the
particular point of the system where the concept of indifference is indeed the
only possible concept of the absolute.”54
In surprise, freedom can be viewed as indifference, but indifference not
in the sense of carelessness, inattention, or negligence; instead, it should
be viewed as indifference in the sense of acceptance, or productive passiv-
ity. Productive passivity sounds like an oxymoron; nonetheless, it indicates
mutual recognition and honoring of differences. A philosophy of surprise
168 Chapter 4

is a philosophy of productive passivity, of welcoming otherness on its own

terms. What do we get in return? Just a surprise carrying the sense of mutual
belonging to the same world—and this is a lot. I might be a nervous, egoistic,
and domineering subjectivity trying to assert my freedom and to deal with my
fear and trembling, my psychoses, angst, death drive, and castration anxiety,
but should I not possess the potential for “undirected jouissance” as well?
Desire for enjoyment is a “directed” desire looking to satisfy the end result,
enjoyment. Desire for surprise is neutral: I don’t know if the surprise will
be enjoyable or not, but the adrenalin rises with the thought of encountering
something new. I have to be productive to work on my capacity to accept sur-
prise encounters. This work implies that an effort is needed to curb my ego-
tistical subjectivity and to allow otherness to override my consciousness. The
result is a state of passivity but on a different level than passivity with respect
to the objective world—passivity more passive than any other passivity, as
Levinas would say. Such passivity characterizes the origin of the beginning
of surprise. Plato said that philosophy begins in wonder. But, what is the
origin of wonder, the ground of wonder, outside it and preceding it? Wonder
in itself carries some positive energy, or the force of the wish to discover, to
probe deeper, to unravel a mystery. Hence, it seems that wonder should not
originate in negative forces. I suggest productive passivity that incorporates
all the relevance there is, indifference pregnant with one’s whole being.
Discussion of the wish to encounter exteriority on its own, without trying
to escape from everyday suffocation, brings us to a psychoanalytic descrip-
tion of desire and Žižek’s interpretation of Schelling. Žižek acknowledges
Schelling’s term “absolute indifference” as “the abyss of pure Freedom that
is not yet the predicate-property of some Subject, but rather designates a
pure impersonal Willing (Wollen) that wills nothing.”55 Žižek argues that
Schelling’s insistence on the impossibility of inducing a passage from poten-
tiality into actuality, which can only be narrated after the fact because it is
a free act (it does not have to happen), leads to an “implicit admission” of
“retroactive fantasy.” This psychoanalytic reading of Schelling finds place
for desire, psychosis, and the irreducible part of subjectivity in defiance of
the symbolic order. In answering why he is returning to German idealism,
Žižek responds that “a certain fundamental malfunction” cannot be explained
in “cognitivist evolutionism.” Both German idealism and psychoanalysis,
argues Žižek, provide terms for this malfunction. For German idealism, this
is self-relating negativity, while for psychoanalysis it is the death drive. These
terms both point to the inherent power of negativity and the power of lack.
The subject persists as a radical negativity. It disrupts the symbolic order,
reminding us of the Real as the repository of excesses that cannot be pin-
pointed, and that assert the radical otherness defying explanations, causality,
argumentations, and strategic and political manipulations.
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 169

The desire for the unexpected addressed in this work carries a level of
indifference, unlike desire as exemplified in the objet petit a. Lacan’s and
Žižek’s uses of negativity (evil), characterizing the freedom and struggle
inherent in the movement of contraction-expansion, is a type of instrumental
negativity since it is used to augment subjectivity and to make it defiant of
symbolization. Freedom is indispensable and should be fought for, opening
possibilities for a subject’s willing and acting. To the freedom to will and the
freedom to act, I wish to add the freedom to be passive.
Heidegger wrote about Schelling’s essay on freedom in Schelling’s Trea-
tise on the Essence of Human Freedom and slanted the interpretation toward
his own philosophical position. Žižek interprets Schelling in the triangle
Schelling-Hegel-Lacan, and finds in Schelling’s writing implicit and explicit
references relevant to the psychoanalytic domain. I wish to add another
interpretation of Schelling, in the triangle Schelling-Fink-Levinas, addressing
the primordial indifference of the ground and the non-ground, the specula-
tive origin of consciousness and phenomenology, and the passivity in the
encounter with otherness. It is Fink’s origin encountering Levinas’ Other in
Schelling’s primordial indifference of the ground and the non-ground. Within
this “triangle,” I wish to augment the speculation over the sudden leap from
potentiality into actuality by allowing for productive passivity.
In his disagreement with Hegel, Schelling credits aesthetics and the imme-
diacy with absolute indifference going beyond formal identity, which is very
much in line with current proposal. At the end, this work is about defend-
ing the immediate against mediation. It seems paradoxical to invoke a large
number of philosophers, all writing very eloquently about immediacy and the
unexpected. The use of so much reflection to prove the importance of non-
reflection testifies to the allure of the ungraspable, to the wish to attain the
unattainable.

NOTES

1. Blanchot, “The Infinite Conversation,” 46.

2. G.W.F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (Amherst: Humanity
Books, 1969), 106.
3. Ibid., 42.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 83.
6. Ibid., 106.
7. Ibid., 559.
8. Ibid., 564.
9. Ibid., 571.
10. Ibid., 399.
170 Chapter 4

11. Ibid.
12. Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler, Hegel: The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and
Christiane Seiler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 267.
13. Ibid., 292.
14. Ibid., 293.
15. Hegel, Phenomenology, 59.
16. Butler and Seiler, Hegel: The Letters, 493.
17. Theodor W. Adorno, Hegel: Three Studies, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen
(The MIT Press, 1993), 4.
18. Ibid., 58.
19. Ibid., 63–64.
20. Ibid., 64.
21. Iain Hamilton Grant, Philosophies of Nature after Schelling (Continuum,
2006).
22. F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human
Freedom, trans. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt (State University of New York Press,
2006), 22.
23. Ibid., 29.
24. Ibid., 31.
25. Ibid., 36.
26. Ibid., 40.
27. Ibid., 43.
28. Ibid., 58.
29. Ibid., 63.
30. Schelling intended to produce a genealogy of time, but only The Past survived.
31. F.W.J. Schelling, The Ages of the World (Third Version C.1815), trans. Jason
M. Wirth (Albany: State University of New York, 2000), 61.
32. Ibid., 89.
33. Ibid., 102.
34. Ibid., 103.
35. This work was written in 1950. If should be noted that later Lacan (in 1957)
realized the impossibility of satisfied desire and developed the notion of objet petit a
as the never satisfied object of desire, the impossibility to subsume the Real under the
Symbolic order.
36. Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time, trans. Stanley Godman
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), 39.
37. Ibid., 40.
38. Ibid., 45.
39. Ibid., 47.
40. Ibid., 68.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 70.
43. Jaspers writes, “No knowledge exists as a closed system. Whatever I know
will leave a remainder, as a boundary. I think and I know in specific categories, but
those are not absolute . . . The ‘entire world’ is thus no true entity, since even as an
 The Properly Aesthetic Experience and Knowledge 171

idea it achieves no true concretion. It is a boundary concept.” Philosophy, trans. E.B.

Ashton, vol. Volume 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), 170–71.
44. Ibid., 327.
45. Ibid., 328.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., 334.
48. Ibid., 335.
49. Reason and Existenz, trans. William Earle (New York: The Noonday Press,
1957), 52.
50. Ibid.
51. “Excerpts from Philosophy (Volume 2),” in Existentialism, ed. Robert C.
Solomon (New York: The Modern Library, 1974), 143–44.
52. G.W.F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of
Philosophy, trans. H.S Harris and W. Cerf (Albany: State University of New York,
1977), 83.
53. Ibid., 155.
54. Schelling, The Freedom Essay, 73.
55. Žižek, The Žižek Reader, 258.
 Conclusion

Desire||Surprise and the Irreducible

in an Aesthetic Encounter

The properly aesthetic component in an encounter with either the environ-

ment or the work of art is characterized by a break: the severance of all
things past and the announcement of a beginning. Hence, a properly aesthetic
encounter is an encounter with irreducible otherness, creating rupture in one’s
capacities. It happens when one’s expectation has been irreducibly exceeded,
implying that one has stepped into uncharted territory. The start of surprise
begins the recovery. The factuality of the encounter originating the surprise
falls into oblivion; the recognition of excess as irreducible carries the entire
signification of the encounter, and all particular instances of such an encoun-
ter belong to the properly aesthetic experience that is spread over the course
of one’s life, subtending one’s subjectivity. Properly aesthetic expectation, as
the (formal) expectation of the irreducible excess over any expectation, corre-
sponds to desire. It is acceptivity as the subjective preparation for welcoming
otherness. And when excess indeed does happen, one is defenseless, engulfed
in the encounter, blended into it in indifference and anonymity beyond one’s
sensibility. This indifference is not abstract nothingness, the opposite of
being. It is rather the indifference between subject and object, fusing their
subjectivity and objectivity in a neutrality pregnant with the possibility of
a beginning, asserting anew the subjectivity of a subject. We can talk about
this indifference only by projection, and then only indirectly. Upon recovery,
beginning with surprise defined as a sequence of announcements, whereby
difference starts its assertion, slowly, carefully—yet suddenly—one can
pronounce the excess and the irreducible newness of the encounter. Surprise
incorporates a metamorphosis from a mere announcement of sensibility
toward a complex reflection in admiration (characterizing aesthetic-cultural
experiences) and responsibility (characterizing ethics and morality), and the
properly aesthetic component diminishes in the process. However, it cannot

173
174 Conclusion

be quenched completely, and the failure of closure provokes further desire.

And this is a feedback loop, a dialectic of sameness and otherness that
grounds one’s subjectivity.
Starting with what is at hand, or experienced, brings us to the surprise
and we can propose a phenomenology of surprise. However, what is prior to
surprise? One can talk about desire, and especially about desire for the unex-
pected, as a concrete but object-less and undefined desire. This desire can
be described in a phenomenology of desire. The in-between (the rupture, the
break, the pause) belongs to speculative thinking, to transcendence. We can
only speculate about it; so the present approach is a combination of phenom-
enology and speculative thinking. In phenomenology we describe the train of
thought, but in speculation we propose something that cannot be proven or
disproven, here the origination of surprise.
The inherent break separating desire from surprise (denoted as
desire||surprise) is the result of the impossibility to present immediacy.
Indeed, a presentation as such is mediation, implying that a presentation of
immediacy is impossible. However, immediacy leaves a trace as a presence
that cannot be presented, as the absence of presence. One encounters it when
the presence exceeds presentation, be it in a work of art or in either natural or
cultural environments. The resulting immediacy characterizes beyond-ness,
excess, irreducible unexpectedness, bringing mediation to a halt: it points
to a breakup of totality by adding a new strand (something that was not
there before) to one’s flow of experience. One’s time is finite (as Heidegger
argues), but it has infinite moments intertwined into it (nodding to Levinas).
This is a consequence of new beginnings.
I have interpreted a number of philosophical positions trying to understand
how they would fit into the proposed interplay between desire and surprise.
After the introduction, desire and excess were discussed in chapter 1, and
the works of Levinas, Žižek, Bataille, Blanchot, Foucault, and Ricoeur were
interpreted and positioned according to the proposed template of desire—
excess—rupture. The wish to further explore the issue of limits in one’s
experiencing led to consideration of so-called limit experiences in chapter 2,
and the interpretation of work by authors fascinated by transgression, excess,
and the question of whether excess is immanent or transcendent. This discus-
sion took up works by Nietzsche, Deleuze, Žižek, and Foucault. Surprise and
the beginning of recovery after the rupture caused by excess were discussed
in chapter 3, putting into context relevant works by Fink, Merleau-Ponty,
Nancy, Lyotard, Dufrenne, Bachelard, and Seel. Analyzing the phenomenon
of surprise led to characterization of the transformation from the void of
annihilated subjectivity in the encounter with the irreducible otherness, to the
play of reflection in admiration and responsibility of a recovered subjectivity.
The effort was undertaken in order to extract the properly aesthetic part
 Conclusion 175

grounding both culture and ethics. The proposed metamorphosis of surprise

was traced along various works, but the trajectory, so to speak, was viewed as
the Hegelian dialectic in reverse. The argument is that surprise begins where
the concept reaches its ending, hence that the limit of speculative think-
ing at its ending is the limit of aesthetics at its beginning. The last chapter,
chapter 4, considers Hegel’s Concept, developed at the end of Phenomenol-
ogy and employed at the beginning of Logic, as it argues for the failure of
closure in a dialectical system. Finally, the work of Schelling and his influ-
ence on Jaspers are discussed in order to argue for the beginning of aesthetics,
there where knowledge ends.
Adorno suggested that reading Hegel provides elements of an aesthetic
experience. This probably implies that one gets a sense of a complete work
(as if dealing with an artwork), but includes the sense of the work’s resistance
to being carefully dissected and analyzed in parts. Some other philosophers
could fit into such an “aesthetic category,” for example, Kant and Heidegger.
Receiving a philosophical work in an aesthetic manner involves approaching
it actively and passively at the same time: actively to interrogate the work in
efforts to probe its depth, and passively to let the work speak for itself. This
combination of activity and passivity seems to be the appropriate attitude
with which to welcome surprise as well. In reading a philosophical text, as
any other text (a literary text or a mathematical proof), I have to be attuned:
I have to be both active, allowing text’s processing, and passive, allowing the
text to reach me. The interplay and mutual intertwining of activity and pas-
sivity, of breaks and recuperations of my representational capabilities creates
possibilities for experiencing surprise. It can be a surprise of realizing the
richness and speculative force of a philosophical thought, or the simplicity of
a mathematical proof, or the manifestation of continuity of being in a work
of art.
Why do I invoke so many philosophers in this work? In order to come to
grips with a defiant subject (immediacy versus mediation) surfacing in one
way or another in various philosophical schools, at various historical times,
and within various contexts. This is not a study of a specific philosopher, and
it risks the misrepresentation of somebody’s view (as if this would be unheard
of in philosophy). But, is not philosophy a clever set of dueling misrepre-
sentations? The considered encounters invert Wittgenstein’s dictum from
the Tractatus, that one should throw away the ladder once one has reached
the top, that is, to disregard the process after achieving the goal. The present
encounters work backward: as if I suddenly found myself up in the air, on a
cloud, and throw down a rope to descend slowly to the ground, still uncertain
how and why I found myself in the air in the first place.
The surprise as achieved by a great work of art can also be triggered by
a seemingly unimportant encounter in one’s environment. The factor of the
176 Conclusion

unexpected is indisputable. Modern art, with its wish to provide something

new, imitates life itself. Modern art is not aesthetic in terms of some canons
of beauty; instead, it is capable of invoking an aesthetic response by provid-
ing surprise, a new outlook to an entrenched concept. The works of a selec-
tion of artists (Duchamp, Mondrian) were discussed in order to illustrate
some philosophical views.
There are books and books on aesthetics, but I felt that some important
insights were still left vague. I interpreted different positions viewed as rel-
evant, in admiration of their impact and lucidity, hoping to add something
to their thought. In the end, maybe, too much has been said; after all, how
can one write so many pages on surprise? This brings a comparison to mind.
After reading one of my favorite philosophical texts, Kant’s Analytic of the
Sublime, I couldn’t brush off the feeling that the main tenet of that work is
well summarized in a short poem by Dickinson, “The brain is wider than the
sky.”1 Of course, this doesn’t take anything away from Kant’s masterpiece,
but it shows a tender point related to aesthetics, a proximity that defies reflec-
tion, that teases it. Literature is at the limit of philosophy, and it goes where
philosophy tries to follow. At best, they are indistinguishable, as the two sides
of the same coin, indifferent to their differences.

NOTE

1. Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, Part One: Life (126)
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1924).
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 Index
absence, 3, 6–7, 16, 26–30, 38, 46–55,
61, 70–71, 74, 116, 121,
123–24, 134, 141, 174
absolute identity, xxii, 151, 167
absolute indifference, 145, 167–69
absolute knowing, xxii, 75, 84–85, 101,
146, 153
acceptive inclination, 16
acceptivity, xvii, 17, 20–21, 24–26, 46,
59–60, 108, 126, 161, 173
actual, 79, 86, 148–50.
See also virtual
admiration, xv, xviii–xix, xxiii, 2, 11,
13, 58, 68, 110–13, 118, 122,
124–31, 145, 151, 154, 164,
173–74
Adorno, Theodor W., 74, 101, 137,
151–55, 175;
Adorno’s affinity with Hegel, 151
aesthetic absence, 7, 13, 54
aesthetic experience, xiii, 30, 113, 116,
128–30, 136;
the properly aesthetic component in
experience, xvii, 1–2;
the properly aesthetic experience,
xvii, xxii, 1–4, 6, 15–16,
58–59, 126–27, 145;
definition of, xvi;
phases of, 58
181
aesthetic-cultural experience, 173
alterity, xvi–xxi, 16, 18–19, 21, 23–25,
47, 58
announcement, xvii, xix, xxiii, 13, 87,
107–8, 112–13, 120, 122, 124,
126, 129, 145–46, 173
Aristotle, 11–12, 55, 129, 161;
catharsis, 11–12
Aronofsky, Darren, xvi, 67, 102n2
astonishment, xii, xvii, xix, xxiii, 2–3,
13, 68, 87, 93, 107, 110–13,
118, 120, 122–26, 131,
140–41, 145
Bachelard, Gaston, xxii, 13, 113, 128,
130–32, 137, 139;
dialectic of outside and inside,
113, 130
Bataille, Georges, xxii, 13, 15–16,
30–43, 48–51, 53, 58–60, 88,
123, 132;
Bataille and excess, 30;
extreme limit of the possible, 34;
inner experience, 34, 36, 38–39
becoming, xii, xxiii, 14, 73–75, 77–81,
84–85, 92, 114, 120, 146–48,
151–52
Betancourt, Michael, 43
Black Swan, xvi, 67, 102n2
182
Blanchot, Maurice, xii, xvii, xxii, 13,
15–16, 27, 52–54, 56–61,
67–68, 71, 77, 94–95, 108,
121, 146;
Blanchot and the impossibility of
immediacy, 44–49;
neuter, xii, xvii, 16, 48, 71, 77, 81,
108, 123;
space of literature, 44, 48, 59, 65,
77, 81
Breer, Robert, xv
death, 13, 30–33, 37–39, 46–47, 49, 61,
67, 72, 80, 88, 109, 115–16,
166, 168
Decimo, Mark, 41
deep learning, 100
Deleuze, Giles, xii, xxii, 13, 50, 71–79,
81–84, 87, 91–97;
body without organs, 73, 75–76,
79–81;
deterritorialization, 73, 75–77;
difference and repetition, 13, 71,
91, 152;
lines of flight, 73–75;
plane of consistency, xii, 44, 73,
75–78, 81;
plane of immanence, 73, 75, 77;
rhizome, 73–75;
simulacrum, 97
Derrida, Jacques, 10, 21–22, 29, 45, 62;
désistance, 10;
spectre, 29–30
desire:
as the expectation of the irreducible
exceeding of expectations, xx;
for the unexpected, xi–xii, 2, 9,
12, 26, 28, 60, 77, 87, 113,
126, 154, 158–61, 163, 165,
169, 174
desire||surprise, xii, xvii, xxi, 2–4, 10,
16, 25, 29–30, 117, 135–36,
139–40, 156, 159, 173–74
Dewey, John, 2, 14n1, 116
Dickinson, Emily, 33, 176
disclosure, 18, 25, 55
Index
discontinuity of discontinuity, 31, 125
dualism, 78
Duchamp, Marcel, 13, 40–43, 51, 176;
Given, xxiii, 43–44;
inframince, 42–43;
The Large Glass, 42–43
Dufrenne, Mikel, 13, 113, 128–30;
dialectic of reflection and feeling,
128–30;
expressed world, 128–30;
relation of a priori and
a posteriori, 128;
system of affective categories, 130
emotional intelligence, 98
encounters of philosophers, xxii
eroticism, 13, 49, 51;
and Bataille, 30–32;
and Duchamp, 40–43
essence, xxii, 10, 22–25, 33, 84, 116,
120, 147, 149, 155, 159,
162, 169
Eternal Return, 13, 68–72, 91, 96
See also Blanchot, Maurice; Deleuze,
Giles; Nietzsche, Friedrich
ethics, xii–xiii, 2, 6, 9, 14, 16–19, 24,
49, 52, 57, 96, 111, 122–23,
127, 151, 173, 175
event, 13, 44, 53, 73–74, 79–80, 92–93,
113, 120–22, 139–40
excess, xi–xv, xvii, xix–xx, xxii, 13,
15, 17–25, 27–37, 39, 41,
43, 45–47, 49–55, 57–63, 65,
67–68, 73, 77–78, 82, 87, 93,
108, 119, 123, 140, 147, 156,
158, 161, 173–74;
excess beyond expectation, 4–9, 33,
111, 125, 132, 165;
excess of presence, xiv, 47, 54
expectations, xi, xviii, xx, 4–7, 9,
12, 51, 67, 73, 77, 95, 147,
156, 165;
cognitive expectations, 6–7;
cultural expectations, 6–7;
exceeding of expectations, xvi, xviii,
xx–xxi, 1, 3–9, 12, 110;
 Index
irreducible exceeding of
expectations, xviii, xx–xxi, 1,
3, 5–9, 12, 14–15, 21, 34–35,
47–48
expectation of the unexpected, xi,
15–17, 36, 60, 95, 128;
exteriority, xiii, xxii, 3, 17, 19–21,
23–24, 29–30, 57–58, 60–61,
83–84, 95, 107, 110, 130, 150,
160–61, 163, 165–66, 168
Fink, Eugene, xiii, xxi–xxii, 13, 81,
113–17, 135, 169;
speculative phenomenology, xxi, 13,
113, 115–17
Foucault, Michel, xxii, 13, 15, 49–54,
79, 92–96
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 68, 154
Grant, Ian Hamilton, 156
Greek tragedy, 9–10
Guattari, Felix, 72–77, 83, 94.
See also Deleuze, Giles
Hegel, G.W.F., xxii–xxiii, 13, 75, 78,
81–87, 145–55, 169, 175;
Hegelian dialectic, xxii, 79, 85, 88,
91, 101, 145, 155, 175;
Hegel’s notion, 146;
sense-certainty, xxiii, 150, 154
Heidegger, Martin, xxii, 5, 9–10, 18, 21,
54, 114–16, 134, 154, 169
Hofstadter, Douglas R., 101–2, 105n94
Hölderlin, Friedrich, xii, 9–12, 49, 53,
67–68, 102n5
humanity, 19, 30, 35, 91, 97–99, 101–2,
127, 165;
human freedom, 10, 155–56, 158,
162, 169
Il Postino, 57
immanence, xi, 73, 75, 77–78, 81–82,
116, 138.
See also transcendence
immediacy, xiii, xviii–xxiii, 16–18,
121–23, 131–32, 152–55;
183
impossibility of, 2–3, 13, 29, 44,
141, 146;
and mediation, xxii, 28, 78, 83, 85,
87, 146, 148–49;
versus suddenness, xviii.
See also mediation
improvisation, 50, 72–74, 76, 103
indifference, xvi–xvii, xxiii, 23, 25, 44,
48, 59–61, 107–12, 120, 151,
153, 162, 173.
See also absolute indifference;
non-indifference
infinity, 17–21, 96, 148–49, 151–52,
154–55
interiority, xiii, xxii–xxiii, 20, 58,
83–84, 95–96, 128, 132
irreducible otherness, xix, xxii, 6, 9,
13, 15–16, 23, 25–26, 32–33,
40, 45, 50, 58–60, 68, 95,
108–10, 112, 122, 124–25,
127, 132–33, 145–46, 173–74
Jameson, Fredric, 78
Jaspers, Karl, 68, 159, 162–65, 170n43;
anti-Reason, 162;
Encompassing, 162, 165;
Existenz, 162, 164–65
Kant, Immanuel, 14n3, 111, 124–27,
129–30, 141n3, 141n6,
144n86;
Kantian sublimity, 13, 161;
noumenon, 81, 154
Kierkegaard, Søren, 72, 101, 154, 164
knowledge, xiv, 4–6, 14, 18, 35, 38, 50,
130, 133, 145–46, 162–65,
170n43
Kubrick, Stanley, xv
Kurzweil, Ray, 98–101.
See also technological singularity
Lacan, Jacques, xi, xxii, 13, 14n4,
26–29, 80–81, 141, 169;
Lacanian psychoanalysis, xiii;
le sinthome, 28–29;
objet petit a, 26, 81, 85, 87, 169–70
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lack, 11–12, 24, 26, 48, 55, 74, 81, 83–84,
87, 95, 141, 157, 167–68
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, xii, 9–12;
the breaking point of speculation,
9–10;
caesura, xii, 9–12
Levinas, Emmanuel, xvi–xvii,
xxii–xxiii, 15–26, 32–33,
118, 132, 168–69;
face, xii–xiv, xxiii n3, 10, 16–18,
20–22, 57, 60–61;
fecundity, 21, 61–62;
Levinasian desire, 13, 16, 53;
obsession, 23–24;
otherwise than being, xxii, 10, 18,
22, 26
Libertson, Joseph, 58
limit experience, 13, 48, 53, 67, 137, 174.
See also Bataille, Georges
Lyotard, Jean-Francois, xiii, xxii, 13,
43–44, 113, 122–26, 128,
139–41;
radical connivance between the
figure and desire, 139–40
madness, 53, 67–68, 95, 160–62
mediation, xix–xx, xxiii, 26, 28, 78,
82–85, 128, 132, 145–50, 152,
155, 174–75.
See also immediacy
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, xii, xvii, xxii,
13, 28, 87, 112–13, 116–20,
122, 140;
chiasm, 113, 117–18, 120–21;
flesh, xii, xvii, 116–20;
intertwining, 117
metaphor, 11, 13, 15, 54–57, 102,
137, 163.
See also Ricoeur, Paul
Mondrian, Piet, xxii, 13, 88–92, 176;
Neo-Plasticism, 91
multiplicity, 73–75, 77–79, 89, 94.
See also Deleuze, Giles
Nancy, Jean-Luc, xxii, 13, 113, 120–21;
surprise of the event, 13, 113, 120
Index
negativity, 26, 51, 61, 78, 82–84, 101,
147, 149, 152, 157, 168–69
newness, xi–xii, xviii–xix, 9, 26, 34–35,
50–51, 59, 75–77, 79, 131, 152
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 13, 49, 53–54,
67–70, 72, 95–96, 100–101,
137–39;
amor fati, 70, 100;
Zarathustra, 13, 54, 69–70, 102
non-aesthetic, 16, 31, 108–9
non-experience, 29, 48
non-indifference, xvii, 23, 25, 59–61,
108, 111–12.
See also indifference
non-presence, 6–7, 26, 47
novelty, xviii–xix, 26, 79, 111, 131, 163;
novelty versus newness, xviii
objective presence, xviii–xx, 19, 22,
31–32, 88, 93, 127, 164–65
origin, xx–xxi, xxiii, 3, 11, 16, 45–47,
49, 52, 60–61, 77, 87–88,
93, 102, 108–9, 111–17, 119,
121, 127, 130, 141, 149–50,
155–58, 162–63, 168–69
passivity, xii, xiv, xvi, 10–11, 17–18,
23–25, 32, 35–36, 44, 47, 58,
88, 107, 112, 117, 120, 153,
162, 169
Peters, Gary, 74
phantasm, 92–93.
See also Deleuze, Giles
phenomenon, xii, xix, xxi–xxii, 10, 16,
81, 113–17, 120, 135, 137–39,
153, 174.
See also sphenomenon
power of the negative, 82–83, 89.
See also Hegel, G.W.F.
proximity, 17, 22–25, 30, 45, 48, 55–58.
See also Levinas, Emmanuel
Rachel Getting Married, 86
recuperation, xiii, xvii, xxiii, 15–17,
21–22, 31, 38–39, 58, 61, 76,
125–27
 Index
reflection, xvii, xix, xxiii, 13–14,
18–19, 25, 87, 107, 109,
111–15, 117–18, 120–31,
147, 149–51, 164
responsibility, xiv, xvii, 15–17, 20–21,
24–25, 33, 58–62, 110–13,
122, 125–28.
See also Levinas, Emmanuel
Ricoeur, Paul, xxii, 15, 54–58;
the use of the metaphor, 54
Schelling, F.W.J., xiii, xxi–xxiii, 14,
54, 79–81, 151, 155–63,
167–69;
ground of being, 165;
incompatibility between the ground
of existence and existence
itself, 155;
the intermediate concepts, 160;
Sehnsucht, 161;
yearning, 157, 160–61, 163, 165
Seel, Martin, xiii, 13, 113, 128, 133–41;
aesthetics of appearing, 128, 133,
135–36;
an occurrence without something
occurring, 138
sensible intuition, xiii, xvi–xvii, 23
Shaviro, Steven, 15
singularity, 13, 28–29, 67, 78–79,
82–84, 91–93, 96–98;
non-technological versus
technological, 97.
See also Deleuze, Giles
Skorin-Kapov, Jadranka, 102n2
speculation, xxi–xxiii, 3, 9–13, 43–44,
81, 113–14, 117, 135, 149–50,
156, 164, 169
sphenomenon, 10
stream of experience, 1, 116, 138
subjectivity, 3, 9, 17–19, 21–22, 27–29,
51–54, 61, 87–88, 114–17,
168–69
sublimity, xvii, xxiii, 13, 111–13,
122–23, 125–27
substitution, xiv, 22, 24.
See also Levinas, Emmanuel
185
suddenness, xviii–xix, 13, 47, 73, 107,
111–12, 121.
See also immediacy
surprise:
accidental surprise, xix, 108;
irreducible surprise, xi–xii, xv, 8, 15,
32–35, 55, 87–88, 108–9, 125,
127–28, 131–32, 145, 150,
154–56;
irreducible aesthetic surprise, xxii,
109, 112, 122, 126
metamorphosis of, 13, 111–12, 118,
120, 122–25, 145, 175;
sequence of announcements, xxii,
107, 112, 145, 173
phenomenology of, xxii, 13, 27,
112–13, 117, 128, 145,
156, 174;
technological singularity, 13,
97–98, 101.
See also Kurzweil, Ray
technology, 98, 100, 102, 162
temporality, 21–22.
See also Heidegger, Martin
totality, 16–21, 30, 108, 134, 162, 174.
See also Levinas, Emmanuel
transcendence, xi, 26, 33, 49, 61, 77–79,
82, 137–38, 163, 165.
See also immanence
transgression, xii, 12, 33, 40, 42, 49–53,
78, 101, 137–38, 140–41, 158.
See also Bataille. Georges
van Gogh, Vincent, 67–68
virtual, 79–80.
See also actual
Wheelwright, Philip Ellis, 60
wonder, xii, xvii, xxiii, 13, 107,
109–13, 120, 122–26, 129,
131, 155, 168
Žižek, Slavoj, 13, 15, 26–30, 78–82,
84–85, 168–69;
organs without body, 79–81
 About the Author

Jadranka Skorin-Kapov is Professor at Stony Brook University, New York,

with a diverse educational background. After graduating mathematics at the
University of Zagreb, Croatia, in 1987 she received her PhD in Operations
Research from the University of British Columbia, Canada. While working
as a full time professor at Stony Brook University, Skorin-Kapov studied
philosophy, receiving her PhD in Philosophy in 2007. Being a perennial stu-
dent by choice, in 2009 she enrolled in the graduate program in Art History
and Criticism at Stony Brook University and received her third PhD in 2014.
Professor Skorin-Kapov also serves as the Head of Management Area at
the College of Business, Stony Brook University. In addition, she recently
founded, and currently directs, the Center for the Integration of Business
Education & Humanities (CIBEH), in an effort to enhance business educa-
tion with ideas framed by philosophy and art. Skorin-Kapov is the author
or coauthor of over seventy scholarly publications in Operations Research
and Combinatorial Optimization, the recipient of a number of grants and
awards, including five National Science Foundation grants, and the author of
a book on Aronofsky’s filmography entitled Darren Aronofsky’s Films and
the Fragility of Hope.

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