Margins of Philosophy

181 Pages·1982·30.83 MB·French

by  Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida MARGINS
S
of Philosophy

Translated, with
Additional Notes,
by Alan Bass
THE HARVESTER PRESS
Contents
Translator's Note vii
Tympan ix
Differance 1 A•
Gush; and Gramme:
Note on a Note from
Being and Time 29
The Pit and the Pyramid:
Introduction to Hegel's
Semiology 69
The Ends of Man 109
The Linguistic Circle
of Geneva 137
Form and Meaning: A Note
on the Phenomenology of
Language c. 155
The Supplement of Copula:
Philosophy before
Linguistics a 175
White Mythology:
Metaphcir in the Text
of Philosophy 207
0
cG 01 11 3 333° Qual Quelle:
Valery's Sourcep 273
First published in Great Britain in 1982 by /Signature Event Context 307
THE HARVESTER PRESS LIMITED
Publisher: John Spiers
16 Ship Street, Brighton, Sussex
1982 by The University of Chicago
This work was published in Paris under the title
Marges de la philosophic, © 1972 by Les Editions de Minuit.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Derrida, Jacques
Margins of philosophy.
1. Philosophy
1. Title 1I. Marges de la philosophic. English
190 01322
ISBN 0-7108-0454-7
Manufactured in the United States of America
All rights reserved
V
Translator's Note
Many of these essays have been translated before. Although all the translations
in this volume are "new" and "my own"—the quotation marks serving here,
as Derrida might say, as an adequate precaution—I have been greatly assisted
in my work by consulting:
"Differance," trans. David Allison, in Speech and Phenomena (Evanston: North-
western University Press, 1973).
"Qusia and Gramme," trans. Edward Casey, in Phenomenology in Perspective, ed.
F. Joseph Smith (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970).
"The Ends of Man," trans. Edouard Morot-Sir, Wesley C. Puisol, Hubert L.
Dreyfus, and Barbara Reid, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30, no. 1
(1969).
"Form and Meaning," trans. David Allison, in Speech and Phenomena.
"The Supplement of Copula," trans. James S. Creech and Josue Harrari, The
Georgia Review 30 (1976).
"White Mythology," trans. F. C. T. Moore, New Literary History 6, no. 1 (1974).
"Signature Event Context," trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman, Glyph:
Johns Hopkins Textual Studies 7 (1977).
Although I read it after completing the work on this volume, I believe that
Philip Lewis's "Vern la traduction abusive" (in Les fins de l'homme—a partir du
travail de Jacques Derrida, Paris: Galilee, 1981) contains the criteria by which all
translations of Derrida will be judged.
ALAN BASS
New York City
July 1982
Tym pa n
The thesis and antithesis and their proofs therefore rep-
resent nothing but the opposite assertions, that a limit
is (eine Grenze ist), and that the limit equally is only a
sublated (aufgehobene frelevel) one; that the limit has a be-
yond with which however it stands in relation (in Bezie-
hung steht), and beyond which it must pass, but that in
doing so there arises another such limit, which is no
limit. The solution of these antinomies, as of those pre-
viously mentioned, is transcendental, that is.
Hegel, science of Logic
The essence of philosophy pro- The need for philosophy can be
vides no ground (bodenlos) pre- expressed as its presupposition
cisely for peculiarities, and in if a sort of vestibule (eine Art von
order to attain philosophy, it is Vorhof) is supposed to be made
necessary, if its body expresses for philosophy, which begins
the sum of its peculiarities, that with itself.
it cast itself into the abyss it corps Ibid.
perdu (sich a corps perdu hineitt-
zustilrzen).
Hegel, The Difference between the
Fichtean and Schellingian Systems
of Philosophy
Tympan
To tympanize'—philosophy. "And I have cho- by passing the limit? Or indeed does the limit, drawn by a slight
Being at the limit: these words do not yet form sen, as the sign be- obliquely, by surprise, always reserve one more pressure of the fin-
a proposition, and even less a discourse. But there neath which to place blow for philosophical knowledge? Limittpassage. gers from a pere-la-
is enough in them, provided that one plays upon them, the entirely In propagating this question beyond the precise colique,*
it, to engender almost all the sentences in this floral and subterra- context from which I have just extracted it (the the marblings that
book. nean name of Perse- infinity of the quantum in the greater Logic and the bloom on the edges
Does philosophy answer a need? How is it to be phon, which is thus critique of the Kantian antinomies), almost con- of certain bound
understood? Philosophy? The need? extracted from its stantly, in this book, I shall be examining the rel- books,
Ample to the point of believing itself intermi- dark terrestrial evance' of the limit. And therefore relaunching in the curved wrought
nable, a discourse that has called itself philosophy— depths and lifted to every sense the reading of the Hegelian Aufitebung, iron, "modem style,"
eventually beyond what Hegel, inscribing it,
doubtless the only discourse that has ever in- the heavens of a of the Metro entries,
understood himself to say or intended to mean,
tended to receive its name only from itself, and chapter heading. the interlace of em-
beyond that which is inscribed on the internal ves-
has never ceased murmuring its initial letter to The acanthus leave broidered figures on
tibule of his ear. This implies a vestibule in a del-
itself from as close as possible—has always, in- copied in school and pillow
icate, differentiated structure whose orifices may
cluding its own, meant to say its limit. In the fa- when, for better or cases,
always remain unfindable, and whose entry and
miliarity of the languages called (instituted as) for worse, one learns the kiss-curl pasted
exit may be barely passable; and implies that the
natural by philosophy, the languages elementary to use the fusain, with grease on the
text—Hegel's for example—functions as a writing
to it, this discourse has always insisted upon as- the stem of a morn- cheekbone of a pros-
machine in which a certain number of typed and
suring itself mastery over the limit (peras, limes, ing glory or other systematically enmeshed propositions (one has to titute in the old days
Grenze). It has recognized, conceived, posited, de- climbing plant, be able to recognize and isolate them) represent of Casque d'or,
clined the limit according to all possible modes;
the thin and browner
the helix inscribed the "conscious intention" of the author as a reader
and therefore by the same token, in order better
braid of the steel ca-
on the shell of a snail, of his "own" text, in the sense we speak today of
to dispose of the limit, has transgressed it. Its own
ble, the thick and
the meanders of the a mechanical reader. Here, the lesson of the finite
limit had not to remain foreign to it. Therefore it
small and the large reader called a philosophical author is but one blc ader one of the
has appropriated the concept for itself; it has be-
intestine, piece, occasionally and incidentally interesting, of string cable,
lieved that it controls the margin of its volume and
the sandy serpentine the machine. To insist upon thinking its other: its the cerebral convo-
that it thinks its other.
excreted by an earth proper' other, the proper of its other, an other lutions exemplified
Philosophy has always insisted upon this: think-
ing its other. Its other: that which limits it, and worm, proper? In thinking it as such, in recognizing it, one by, when you eat it,
from which it derives its essence, its definition, its the curl of childish misses it. One reappropriates it for oneself, one mutton brains,
disposes of it, one misses it, or rather one misses the corkscrewing of
production. To think its other: does this amount hair encased in a
(the) missing (of) it, which, as concerns the other, the vine, the image
solely to releper= (aufheben) that from which it de- medallion, the pu-
rives, to head the procession of its method only trid simulacrum
*TN. A pore-la-colique is a small porcelain toy representing an old man sitting on
a toilet seat. When a certain product is put into it, it excretes.
1.Translator's note (hereafter abbreviated as "TN"). In French, tumponiser is an
3. TN. Relevance is not the English "relevance" but a neologism from the trans-
archaic verb meaning to criticize, to ridicule publicly. I have transliterated it here.
lation of aullithen as relever. Like Alitheliung it is a noun derived from a gerund.
2. TN. On Derrida's translation of the Hegelian term auflieben as relever, see below,
4. TN. Le propre is one of the key terms of this book. In French, propre can mean
"La diff&ance," note 23, for a system of notes. There is an untranslatable play of
both "proper" and "own," as here with sou propre autre, its own other, the other
words here: "Penser son autre: cela revient-il seulement a r'i'ver faufheben) ce dont
proper to it. I have sometimes given simply "proper," and sometimes "own, proper"
elle velem . . . ?"
(e.g. "its own, proper other"). See also "La differance," note 1.
x
xi
Tympan Tympan
always amounts to the same. Between the proper of what later will be-- sianism. In order to teach them "to hear with their has not yet emerged.
of the other and the other of the proper. once the juice has eyes" too. Therefore, essen-
If philosophy has always intended, from its been bottled—the But we will analyze the metaphysical exchange, tially, in question is
point of view, to maintain its relation with the non- corkscrew (itself pre- the circular complicity of the metaphors of the eye a spiraled name—or
philosophical, that is the antiphilosophical, with figuring the endless and the ear. more broadly: a
the practices and knowledge, empirical or not, that screw of drunken- But in the structure of the tympanum there is curved name, but
constitute its other, if it has constituted itself ac- ness), something called the "luminous triangle." It is whose gentleness is
cording to this purposive entente with its outside, the circulation of the named in Les Chants de Maldoror (II), very close to not to be confused
if it has always intended to hear itself speak, in the blood, a "grandiose trinity." with the always more
same language, of itself and of something else, can the concha of the ear, But along with this triangle, along with the pars or less lenitive char-
one, strictly speaking, determine a nonphilosoph- the sinuous curves tense of the tympanon, there is also found the han- acter of that which
ical place, a place of exteriority or alterity from of a path, dle of a "hammer." has been dulled,
which one might still treat of philosophy? Is there everything that is In order effectively, practically to transform what since—quite to the
any ruse not belonging to reason to prevent phi- one decries (tvrnpanizes), must one still be heard
wreathed, coiled, contrary—what is
losophy from still speaking of itself, from borrow- and understood within it, henceforth subjecting
flowered, gar- piercing and pene-
ing its categories from the logos of the other, by
oneself to the law of the inner hammer?' In relaying
affecting itself without delay, on the domestic page landed, twisted, ar- trating about it is
the inner hammer, one risks permitting the noisiest
of its own tympanum (still the muffled drum, the abesque, confirmed by the
discourse to participate in the most serene, least
the spur (which for
tympanon, the cloth stretched taut in order to take rapprochement to be
disturbed, best served economy of philosophical
my purposes here I
its beating, to amortize impressions, to make the made between the
irony. Which is to say, and examples of this meta-
will imagine in a spi-
types (typoi) resonate, to balance the striking pres- syllables that com-
physical drumming are not lacking today, that in
ral) of an espadon,
sure of the typtein, between the inside and the pose its name and
taking this risk, one risks nothing.
outside), with heterogeneous percussion? Can one the twists of a ram's From philosophy—to separate oneself, in order the syllables forming
violently penetrate philosophy's field of listening horn, to describe and decry its law, in the direction of the civil status of the
without its immediately—even pretending in ad- all this I believe un- the absolute exteriority of another place. But ex- insect called jin
vance, by hearing what is said of it, by decoding covered in the name teriority and alterity are concepts which by them- French) perce-oreille
the statement—making the penetration resonate of Persephone, po- selves have never surprised philosophical discourse. (ear-piercer) [and in
within itself, appropriating the emission for itself, tentially, awaiting Philosophy by itself has always been concerned with English, "earwig"j.
familiarly communicating it to itself between the
only an impercepti- them. These are not the conceptual headings un- For not only do "Per-
inner and middle ear, following the path of a tube
ble click to set it off
or inner opening, be it round or oval? In other 5. The hammer, as is well known, belongs to the chain of small bones, along with
like the ribbon of steel
the anvil and the stirrup. It is placed on the internal surface of the tympanic mem-
words, can one puncture the tympanum of a phi-
tightly wound on it- brane. it always has the role of mediation and communication: it transmits sonic
losopher and still be heard and understood by vibrations to the chain of small bones, and then to the inner ear. Bichat recognized
him? self in the midst of that it has another paradoxical function. This small bone protects the tympanum
the pinions of a clock- while acting upon it. "Without it, the tympanum would be affected painfully by
To philosophize with a hammer. Zarathustra be- vibrations set up by too powerful sounds." Thu. hammer, thus, can weaken the
gins by asking himself if he will have to puncture work or the spring in blows, muffle them on the threshold of the inner ear. The latter—the labyrinth—
them, batter their ears (Muss man ihneu erst die the closed-cover box includes a vestibule, the semicircular canals, a cochlea (with its two spirals), that is, two
organs of balance and one organ of hearing. Perhaps we shall penetrate it more
Ohren zerschlagen), with the sound of cymbals or from which the deeply later. for the moment, it suffices to mark the role of the middle ear: it tends
to equalize the acoustic resistance of the air and the resistance of the labyrinthine
tympani, the instruments, always, of some Diony- bristly-bearded devil
liquids, to balance internal pressures and external pressures.
xii
Tympan Tympan
der which philosophy's border can be overflowed; sephone" and "perce- transparent partition separating the auditory canal of the organ by
the overflow is its object. Instead of determining oreille" both begin from the middle ear (the cavity), is stretched means of which au-
some other circumscription, recognizing it, prac- with the same allu- obliquely (loads). Obliquely from above to below, ditory sensations
ticing it, bringing it to light, forming it, in a word sion to the idea of from outside to inside, and from the back to the penetrate into us),
producing it (and today this word serves as the "piercing" (less de- front. Therefore it is not perpendicular to the axis and less directly in
crudest "new clothes" of the metaphysical dene- cided in Persephone, of the canal. One of the effects of this obliqueness play for the goddess
gation which accommodates itself very well to all because of the s is to increase the surface of impression and hence by means of the suf-
these projects), in question will be, but according which imparts some- the capacity of vibration. It has been observed, fix phone, also found
to a movement unheard of by philosophy, an other particularly in birds, that precision of hearing is in
thing undulating and in "telephone" and
which is no longer ifs other. direct proportion to the obliqueness of the tym-
grassy, chimerical "gramophone," the
But by relating it to something to which it has panum. The tympanum squints.
and fleeting, to the latter being an in-
no relation, is one not immediately permitting one- Consequently, to luxate the philosophical ear, to
name, to the extent strument for which
self to be encoded by philosophical logos, to stand set the loxes in the logos to work, is to avoid frontal
that one might be is more appropriate
under its banner?' Certainly, except by writing this and symmetrical protest, opposition in all the
tempted, by execut- than the former the
relationship following the mode of a nonrelation- forms of anti-, or in any case to inscribe autism and
ing an easy meta- very euphonic end-
ship about which it would be demonstrated si- overturning," domestic denegation, in an entirely
thesis, to call her the ing that beautifully
multaneously or obliquely—on the philosophical other form of ambush, of lokhos, of textual maneu-
Fay Person . .), but defines it as a musi-
surface of the discourse—that no philosopheme vers.
will ever have been prepared to conform to it or the one and the other Under what conditions, then, could one mark, cal mechanism.
translate it. This can only be written according to end with an appeal for a philosopheme in general, a limit, a margin The insect whose
a deformation of the philosophical tympanum. My to the sense of hear- that it could not infinitely reappropriate, conceive principal work is to
intention is not to extract from the question of ing, which is overtly as its own, in advance engendering and interning gnaw on the inside
metaphor—one of the most continuous threads of in play, for the in- the process of its expropriation (Hegel again, al- of fruit pits in order
this book—thelisure of the oblique. This is also, sect, due to the ways), proceeding to its inversion by itself? How to take subsistence
thematically, the route of Dissemination.' We know enunciation of the to unbalance the pressures that correspond to each from them, and
that the membrane of the tympanum, a thin and word "ear" (that is,
8. On the problematic of overturning and displacement, see Dissemination and
6. Without an inventory of all the sexual investments which, everywhere and at Positions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). To luxate, to tympanize phil-
all times, powerfully constrain the discourse of the ear, I shall give an example here osophical autism is never an operation within the concept and without some carnage
to indicate the topics of the material left in the margins. The horn that is called of language. Thus it breaks open the roof, the closed spiral unity of the palate. It
pavilion fpapilion) is a phallus for the Dogon and Bambara of Mali, and the auditory proliferates outside to the point of no longer being understood. It is no longer a tongue.
canal a vagina. ITN. Pavillon in French has multiple meanings. Here, the reference Hematographic music.
is to the end of the horn called the bell in English; it also designates the visible part "Sexual jubilation is a choice of glottis,
of the ear. Further, both senses of pavilion just given derive from its older sense of of the splinter of the cyst of a dental root,
"military tent," because of such tents' conic shape. Finally, pavilion can also mean
a choice of otic canal,
flag or banner, as in the sentence above that ends with the phrase "stand under
of the bad auricular ringing,
its banner (pavilion)."1 Speech is the sperm indispensable for insemination. (Con- of a bad instillation of sound,
ception through the ear, all of philosophy one could say.) It descends through the of current brocaded on the bottom carpet,
woman's ear, and is rolled up in a spiral around the womb- Which is hardly very of the opaque thickness,
distant from Arianism (from the name Anus, of course, a priest from Alexandria,
the elect application of the choice of the candelabra of chiselled string,
the father of Arianism, a heretical doctrine of the conception in the Trinity), from in order to escape the prolific avaric obtuse music
homocuesios, and from all the records of the Nicene Council.
without ram, or age, or ramage,
7..Cf. especially "La double séance." 1"The Double Session," in Dissemination,
and which has neither tone nor age."
trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981),) ARTAUD (December 1946)
xiv
XV
other on either side of the membrane? How to which occasionally, in a structure, enveloped in the hollow of an ear, already been broken
block this correspondence destined to weaken, so they say, perfo- which we will go into to take a look. To find out by too violent a
muffle, forbid the blows from the outside, the rates human tym- how it is made, how it has been formed, how it noise—it is equally
other hammer? The "hammer that speaks" to him panums with its functions. And if the tympanum is a limit, perhaps permissible to fear
"who has the third ear" (der das dritte Ohr hat). pincers, has in com- the issue would be less to displace a given deter- for the vocal cords,
How to interpret—but here interpretation can no mon with the mined limit than to work toward the concept of which can be broken
longer be a theory or discursive practice of philos- daughter of Demeter limit and the limit of the concept. To unhinge it on instantaneously
several tries.
ophy—the strange and unique property of a dis- that it too buries it- when, for example,
course that organizes the economy of its self in a subterra- But what is a hinge (signifying: to be reasoned one screams too
in every sense)?
representation, the law of its proper weave, such nean kingdom. The loudly, subjecting
that its outside is never its outside, never surprises deep country of Therefore, what legal question is to be relied them to excessive
upon if the limit in general, and not only the limit
it, such that the logic of its heteronomy still reasons hearing, described in tension (in the case
of what is believed to be one very particular thing
from within the vault of its autism? terms of geology of anger, grief, or
among others, the tympanum, is structurally
For this is how Being is understood: its proper. more than in those even a simple game
It assures without let-up the relevant movement of of any other natural oblique? If, therefore, there is no limit in general, dominated by the
that is, a straight and regular form of the limit?
reappropriation. Can one then pass this singular sheer pleasure of
science, not only by Like every linos, the limes, the short cut, signifies
limit which is not a limit, which no more separates
virtue of the cartila- the oblique. shrieking), so that
the inside from the outside than it assures their
one's voice gets
ginous cavern that But indefatigably at issue is the ear, the distinct,
permeable and transparent continuity? What form
"broken." An acci-
constitutes its organ, differentiated, articulated organ that produces the
could this play of limit/passage have, this logos
dent my mother
but also by virtue of effect of proximity, of absolute properness, the
which posits and negates itself in permitting its
sometimes warned
the relationship that idealizing erasure of organic difference. It is an
own voice to well up? Is this a well-put question?
unites it to grottoes, organ whose structure (and the suture that holds me against, whether
The analyses that give rise to one another in this
book do not answer this question, bringing to it to chasms, to all the it to the throat) produces the pacifying lure of or- she actually believed
ganic indifference. To forget it—and in so doing that it could happen,
neither an answer nor an answer. They work, pockets hollowed out
to take shelter in the most familial of dwellings— or whether—as I tend
rather, to transform and deplace its statement, and of the terrestrial crust
is to cry out for the end of organs, of others. to believe—she used
toward examining the presuppositions of the ques- whose emptiness
But indefatigably at issue is the ear. Not only the the danger as a sca-
tion, the institution of its protocol, the laws of its makes them into re-
sheltered portico of the tympanum, but also the recrow that might
procedure, the headings of its alleged homogene- sonating drums for
vestibular canal." And the phoneme as the "phe- make me less noisy,
ity, of its apparent unicity: can one treat of philos-
the slightest sounds.
ophy itself (metaphysics itself, that is, ontotheology)
lust as one might
9. "Anatomical term. Irregular cavity that is part of the inner ear. Genital vesti-
without already permitting the dictation, along
worry about the idea bule, the vulva and all its parts up to the membrane of the hymen exclusively. Also
with the pretention to unity and unicity, of the the name of the triangular space limited in front and laterally by the ailerons of the
of the tympanum, a nymphs [small lips of the vulva], and in back by the orifice of the urethra; one
ungraspable and imperial totality of an order? If
fragile membrane enters through this space in practicing a vestibular incision. E. Lat. vestibulum, from
there are margins, is there still a philosophy, the the augmentative particle ve, and stabulum, place in which things are held (see
philosophy? threatened with per- stable), according to certain Latin etymologists. Ovid, on the contrary, more rea-
forations by the min- sonably, it appears, takes it from Vesta because the vestibule held a fire lit in the
No answer, then. Perhaps, in the long run, not honor of Vesta [goddess of the proper, of familiarity, of the domestic hearth, etc.].
even a question. The copulative correspondence, ute pincers of an Among the moderns, Mommsen says that vestibulirm comes from tiestis, being an
the opposition question/answer is already lodged insect—unless it had entryway in which the Romans left the toga (vestis)." Littre.
xvii
xvi
Tympan Tympan
nomenon of the labyrinth" in which Speech and at least for a while. If Being is in effect a process of reappropriation, names, a durable su-
Phenomena, from its epigraph and very close to its Marginal to Perse- the "question of Being" of a new type can never ture is thus formed
false exit, had introduced the question of writing. phone and perce-or- be percussed without being measured against the between the throat
One might always think, of course, in order to soldered absolutely coextensive question of the proper. and the tympanum,
reassure oneself, that "labyrinthic vertigo" is the together by a cement Now this latter question does not permit itself to which, the one as
name of a well-known and well-determined dis- of relationships be separated from the idealizing value of the very- much as the other,
ease, the local difficulty of a particular organ. hardened—in broad near, which itself receives its disconcerting powers are subject to a fear

This is—another tympanum. daylight—by their only from the structure of hearing-oneself-speak. of being injured, be-
The propriiis presupposed in all discourses on econ-
sides both belonging
omy, sexuality, language, semantics, rhetoric, etc.,
Lodged in the vestibule, the labyrinthic receptors of balance are named vestibular to the same cavern-
receptors. These are the otolithic organs (utricle and saccule) and the semicircular repercusses its absolute limit only in sonorous rep- ous domain. And in
canals. The utricle is sensitive to the head's changes of direction, which displace resentation. Such, at least, is the most insistent
the otoliths, the ear's stones, small calcified granulations modifying the stimulation the final analysis
hypothesis of this book. A quasi-organizing role
of the ciliary cells of the macula (the thick part of the membraneous covering of the caverns become the
utricle). The function of the saccule in the mechanisms of balance has not yet been is granted, therefore, to the motif of sonic vibration
definitely ascertained. The semicircular canals, inside the labyrinth, are sensitive (the Hegelian Erzittern) as to the motif of the prox- geometric place in
to all the movements of the head, which create currents in the liquid (endolymph). which all are joined
The reflex movements which result from this are indispensable for assuring the imity of the meaning of Being in speech (Heideg-
stability of the head, the direction and balance of the body in all its movements, gerian Mize and Ereignis). The logic of the event together:
notably in walking upright. is examined from the vantage of the structures of chthonian divinithy,
Tympanum, Dionysianism, labyrinth, Ariadne's thread. We are now traveling
through (upright, walking, dancing), included and enveloped within it, never to expropriation called timbre (tympanum), style, and the insect piercer of
emerge, the form of an ear constructed around a harrier, going round its inner signature. Timbre, style, and signature are the same pits, the matrix in
walls, a city, therefore (labyrinth, semicircular canals—warning: the spiral walkways
do not hold) circling around like a stairway winding around a lock, a dike (dam) obliterating division of the proper. They make which the voice is
stretched out toward the sea; closed in on itself and open to the sea's path. Full every event possible, necessary, and unfindable. formed, the drum
and empty of its water, the anamnesis of the concha resonates alone on a beach.
ITN. There is an elaborate play on the words limacon and conque here. Limacon (aside What is the specific resistance of philosophical that each noise comes
from meaning snail) means a spiral staircase and the spiral canal that is part of the discourse to deconstruction? It is the infinite mas- to strike with its
inner ear. Conque means both conch and concha, the largest cavity of the external
tery that the agency of Being (and of the) proper wand of vibrating air;
ear.l How could a breach be produced, between earth and sea?
By means of the breach of philosophical identity, a breach which amounts to seems to assure it; this mastery permits it to in- caverns: obscure
addressing the truth to itself in an envelope, to hearing itself speak inside without
teriorize every limit as being and as being its own pipe-works reaching
opening its mouth or showing its teeth, the bloodiness of a disseminated writing
comes to separate the lips, to violate the embouchure of philosophy, putting its proper. To exceed it, by the same token, and there-
down into the most
tongue into movement, finally bringing it into contact with some other code, of an
fore to preserve it in itself. Now, in its mastery and secret part of being
entirely other kind. A necessarily unique event, non reproducible, hence illegible
as such and, when it happens, inaudible in the conch, between earth and sea, its discourse on mastery (for mastery is a signifi-
in order to bring even
without signature. cation that we still owe to it), philosophical power to the totally naked
l3ataille writes in "The Structure of the Labyrinth": "Emerging from an incon-
ceivable void in the play of beings as a satellite wandering away from two phantoms always seems to combine two types.
cavity of our mental
(one bristling with heard, the other, sweeter, its head covered with a chignon), it On theone har zierarchy: the particular sci-
----—
is first of all in the father and mother who transcend it that the minuscule human space the exhala-
ences and regional ontarogies are subordinated to
being encounters the illusion of sufficiency. (. ,) Thus are produced the relatively
stable gatherings whose center is a city, similar in its primitive form to a corolla general ontology, and then to fundamental ontol- tions—of variable
enclosing like a double pistil a sovereign and a king. (• ,) The universal god
destroys rather than'supports the human aggregations which erect its phantom. ogy.1° From this point of view all the questions that temperature, con-
He himself is only dead, whether a mythical delirium proposes him for adoration solicit Being and the proper upset the order that sistency, and orna-
like a cadaver pierced with wounds, or whether by his very universality he becomes
submits the determined fields of science, its formal mentation—that are
more than any other incapable of opposing to the loss of being the breached walls
of ipseity."
10. The putting into question of this ontological subordination was begun in Of
xviii Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).
xix
Tympan Tympan
objects or materials (logic and mathematics, or se- propagated in long cannot be achieved by means of a simply discursive chiseler of funerary
mantics, linguistics, rhetoric, science of literature, horizontal waves or theOretical gesture, for as long as these two marbles, to the miner
political economy, psychoanalysis, etc.), to philo- after rising straight types of mastery will not have been destroyed in with his pick, to the
sophical jurisdiction. In principle, then, these up from the fermen- their essential familiarity—which is also that of gravedigger, the
questions are prior to the constitution of a rigorous, tations of the outside phallacentrism and kNoceritrism'—and for as long ditchdigger, and (if
systematic, and orderly theoretical discourse in world.
by Frank Granger, New York: Putnam, 1934; Book IX, C. VIII, p. 259). One ought
these domains (which therefore are no longer sim- On the one hand,
to cite all the "corks or drums" which follow. Vitruvius also describes the axle of
ply domains, regions circumscribed, delimited, therefore, is the out- the anaphorical clock, ex qua pendet ex:true parte phellos (sire tympanum) qui ab aqua
and assigned from outside and above). side; on the other sublevatur ("On one end hangs a cork or drum raised by the water," ibid., p. 263),
and the famous hydraulic wheel which bears his name: a drum or hollow cylinder
On the other hand, an eriziament; the whole hand, the inside; be- is divided by wedges which are open on the surface of the drum. They fill up with
) is implied, in the speculative mode of reflection tween them, the cav- water. Reaching the level of the axle, the water passes into the hub and flows out.
and expression, in each part. Homogenous, con- ernous.
centric, and circulating indefinitely, the movement A voice is usually
of the whole is remarked in the partial determi- described as 'cavern-
nations of the system or encyclopedia, without the
ous' to give the idea
status of that remark, and the partitioning of the
that it is low and
part, giving rise to any general deformation of the
deep, and even a bit
space.
too much so. For ex-
These two kinds of appropriating mastery, hi-
ample: a basse faille,"
erarchy and envelopment, communicate with each Instead of the wedges of Vitruvius' tympanum, Lafaye's tympanum has cylindrical
in relation to a basse
partitions following the developables of a circle. The angles are economized. The
OMTr accordingto complicities we shall define. If
- chatttante with a water, entering into the wheel, no longer is lodged in the angles. Thus the shocks
one of the two types is more powerful here (Ar- are reduced, and so, by the same token, is the loss of labor. Here, I am reproducing
higher register and the perhaps Hegelian 'figure of Lafaye's tympanum (1717).
istotle, Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger) or
also more supple
there (Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel), they both follow
line, whereas that of
the movement of the same wheel, whether it is a
the basse faille rather
question, finally, of Heidegger's hermentutical cir-
would seem more
cle or of Hegel's ontotheological circle. ("White
proper—in that it
Mythology" deviates according to another wheel.)
For as long as this tympanum will not have been seems rough, as if
destroyed, (the tympanum as also a hydraulic hewn with an ax—to
wheel, described minutely by Vitruvius)," which the stone breaker, the
**TN. The basse-taille is the voice called in English and Italian the basso profundo,
while the basse chantante is the voice usually called "bass" (between basso profundo
and baritone). Leiris is playing on the mine in basse-taille, from the verb tallier mean-
ing to hew, to cut, to chisel, etc.
11. In De Architectura Vitruvius described not only the water clock of Ctesibius, 12. This ecorche (Dissemination too was to "skin the ear"), bares the phatiogocentric
who had conceived aquarion expressiones automatapoetasque machinas multaque delici- system in its most sensitive philosophical articulations. ITN. An ecorche; (from the
arum genera ("First he made a hollow tube of gold, or pierced a gem; for these verb ecorcher, to skin) is a model of a human or animal without its skin used to teach
materials are neither worn by the passage of water nor so begrimed that they the techniques of life drawing.] Therefore, it pursues the deconstruction of the
become clogged. The water flows smoothly through the passage, and raises an triangulocircular structure (Oedipus, Trinity, Speculative Dialectics) already long
inverted bowl which the craftsmen call the cork or drum (quad ati artificibus phellos since begun, and does so explicitly in the texts of Dissemination and of Positions.
sive tympanum dicitur). The bowl is connected with a bar on which a drum revolves_
The drums are wrought with equal teeth" (On Architecture, translated and edited 4-∎-• rtn, [ £.4 J tt: /1,--tr 1-11(
xx
tell AI AS