On the Name: Jacques Derrida (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) - Softcover

Derrida, Jacques

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804725551 ISBN 13: 9780804725552

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1995

Synopsis

"The name: What does one call thus? What does one understand under the name of name? And what occurs when one gies a name? What does one give then? One does not offer a thing, one delivers nothing, and still something comes to be, which comes down to giving that which one does not have, as Plotinus said of the Good. What happens, above all, when it is necessary to sur-name, renaming there where, precisely, the name comes to be found lacking? What makes the proper name into a sort of sur-name, pseudonym, or cryptonym at once singular and singularly untranslatable?"

Jacques Derrida thus poses a central problem in contemporary language, ethics, and politics, which he addresses in a liked series of the three essays. Passions: "An Oblique Offering" is a reflection on the question of the response, on the duty and obligation to respond, and on the possibility of not responding―which is to say, on the ethics and politics of responsibility. Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum) considers the problematics of naming and alterity, or transcendence, raised inevitably by a rigorous negative theology. Much of the text is organized around close readings of the poetry of Angelus Silesius.

The final essay, Khora, explores the problem of space or spacing, of the word khora in Plato's Tmaeus. Even as it places and makes possible nothing less than the whole world, khora opens and dislocates, displaces, all the categories that govern the production of that world, from naming to gender. In addition to readers in philosophy and literature, Khora will be of special interest to those in the burgeoning field of "space studies"(architecture, urbanism, design).

About this title

About the Author

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was director of studies at the ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Paris, and professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of many books published by the University of Chicago Press.

From the Back Cover

"A major new book by Derrida that represents his most recent thinking, and includes landmark readings of Plato and the German poet-mystic Angelus Silesius. The essays are wonderfully rich and provocative, and, in spite of their apparent diversity of topic, are bound together as three ways of approaching the problematic of naming and speaking of something that exceeds 'isness.' " --J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine

From the Inside Flap

"The name: What does one call thus? What does one understand under the name of name? And what occurs when one gies a name? What does one give then? One does not offer a thing, one delivers nothing, and still something comes to be, which comes down to giving that which one does not have, as Plotinus said of the Good. What happens, above all, when it is necessary to sur-name, renaming there where, precisely, the name comes to be found lacking? What makes the proper name into a sort of sur-name, pseudonym, or cryptonym at once singular and singularly untranslatable?"
Jacques Derrida thus poses a central problem in contemporary language, ethics, and politics, which he addresses in a liked series of the three essays. Passions: "An Oblique Offering"

is a reflection on the question of the response, on the duty and obligation to respond, and on the possibility of not responding--which is to say, on the ethics and politics of responsibility. Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum)

considers the problematics of naming and alterity, or transcendence, raised inevitably by a rigorous negative theology. Much of the text is organized around close readings of the poetry of Angelus Silesius.
The final essay, Khora,

explores the problem of space or spacing, of the word khora

in Plato's Tmaeus

. Even as it places and makes possible nothing less than the whole world, khora

opens and dislocates, displaces, all the categories that govern the production of that world, from naming to gender. In addition to readers in philosophy and literature, Khora

will be of special interest to those in the burgeoning field of "space studies"(architecture, urbanism, design).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ON THE NAME

A Comedy

By Jacques Derrida

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 1995 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-2555-2

Contents

Translating the Name? by Thomas Dutoit.....................................
ix
Passions: "An Oblique Offering"............................................
3
Sauf le nom {Post-Scriptum)................................................
35
Khora......................................................................
89
Notes......................................................................
131

CHAPTER 1

§ Passions:"An Oblique Offering"

Let us imagine a scholar. A specialist in ritual analysis, he seizesupon this work, assuming that someone has not presented himwith it (something we will never know). At any rate, he makesquite a thing of it, believing he can recognize in it the ritualizedunfolding of a ceremony, or even a liturgy, and this becomes atheme, an object of analysis for him. Ritual, to be sure, does notdefine a field. There is ritual everywhere. Without it, there wouldbe no society, no institutions, no history. Anyone can specialize inthe analysis of rituals; it is not therefore a specialty. This scholar, letus call him an analyst, may also be, for example, a sociologist, ananthropologist, a historian, whatever you prefer, an art critic or aliterary critic, perhaps even a philosopher. You or me. Throughexperience and more or less spontaneously, each of us can to somedegree play the part of an analyst or critic of rituals; no one refrainsfrom it. Moreover, to play a role in this work, to play a role whereverit may be, one must at the same time be inscribed in the logic ofritual and, precisely so as to perform properly in it, to avoidmistakes and transgressions, one must to some extent be able toanalyze it. One must understand its norms and interpret the rulesof its functioning.

Between the actor and the analyst, whatever the distance ordifferences may be, the boundary therefore appears uncertain.Always permeable. It must even be crossed at some point not onlyfor there to be analysis at all but also for behavior to be appropriateand ritualized normally.

But a "critical reader" would quite properly object that not allanalyses are equivalent. Is there not an essential difference between,on the one hand, the analysis of him or her who, in order toparticipate properly in a ritual, must understand its norms, and ananalysis which, instead of aligning itself with the ritual, tries toexplain it, to "objectify" it, to give an account of its principle and ofits purpose? A critical difference, to be exact? Perhaps, but what is acritical difference? Because in the end if he is to analyze, read, orinterpret, the participant must also maintain a certain criticalposition. And in a certain manner, an "objectifying" position. Evenif his activity is often close to passivity, if not passion, the participantgoes on to critical and criteriological acts: a vigilant discriminationis required from whoever, in one capacity or another, becomesan interested party in the ritual process (the agent, thebeneficiary, the priest, the sacrificer, the property man, and eventhe excluded, the victim, the villain or the pharmakos, who may bethe offering itself, because the offering is never a simple thing, butalready a discourse, at least the possibility of a discourse, putting asymbolicity to work). The participant must make choices, distinguish,differentiate, evaluate. He must operate according tosome krinein. Even the "spectator," here the reader, in the volumeor outside the volume, finds himself in the same situation in thisregard. Instead of opposing critique to noncritique, instead ofchoosing or deciding between critique and noncritique, objectivityand its contrary, it would be necessary, then, both to mark thedifferences between the critiques and to situate the noncritical in aplace which would no longer be opposed to, nor even perhapsexterior to, critique. Critique and noncritique are surely not identical,but, deep down, they may remain the same. In any case, theyparticipate in the same.

I

Let us then imagine this work being proposed (delivered, offered,given) to a reader-analyst concerned with objectivity. Thisanalyst may be among us: any recipient or sender of this book. Wecan imagine that without making available an unlimited credit tosuch a reader. At any rate the analyst (I choose this word, of course,with the use that Poe made of it in mind) would be sure, perhapsrashly, that he had come across the coded unfolding of a ceremony,an unfolding both foreseeable and prescribed. Ceremony is doubtlessthe most precise and the richest word to bring together all theaspects [traits] of the event. How could I, then, how could you,how could we, how could they, not be ceremonious? What preciselyis the subject of a ceremony?

But it is here in the description and the analysis of ritual, indeciphering it or, if you prefer, in reading it, that a difficultysuddenly arises, a sort of dysfunctioning, what could be called acrisis. In short, a critical moment. Perhaps it would affect the veryunfolding of the symbolic process.

What crisis? Was it foreseeable or unforeseeable? And what if thecrisis even concerned the very concept of crisis or of critique?

Some philosophers have got together or have been gatheredtogether by academic and editorial procedures familiar to us. Let usemphasize the critical determination (impossible because open,open to you, precisely) of this personal pronoun: who is "us," whoare we precisely? These philosophers, university academics fromdifferent countries, are known and nearly all know each other (herewould follow a detailed description of each of them, of their typeand of their singularity, of their sexual allegiance—only one woman—of their national affiliation, of their socio-academic status, oftheir past, their publications, their interests, etc.). So, on theinitiative of one of them, who cannot be just any one and issomeone whose interests are certainly not uninteresting, theyagreed to get together and participate in a volume whose focus(relatively determinate, thus indeterminate, one could say secret upto a certain point—and the crisis remains too open to merit thename of crisis yet) will be such and such (relatively determined,etc., relatively identifiable, in principle, by his work, his publications,his proper name, his signatures, "signatures" being perhapsbest left in the plural, because it is impossible, at the outset, andeven if legal, illegitimate, to preclude their multiplicity). If a criticaldifficulty arises in this case, one likely—but this is not yet certain—toput in difficulty the programmes of ritual or of its analysis, itdoes not necessarily have to do with the content, the theses, thepositive or negative evaluations, most often infinitely overdetermined.It need not, in short, concern the quality of the discourse ofthis or that person, what they translate, or what they make of theirrelation to the title, to the pretext, or to the object of the book. Thecritical difficulty concerns the fact that it has been thought necessaryto ask, propose, or offer (for reasons which it is possible toanalyze) to the supposed signatory of the texts which are the focusof the book ("me," surely?) the opportunity of intervening, as theysay, of "contributing," which means bringing one's tribute, butdoing so freely, in the book. We will have something to say in duecourse about the extent of this freedom; it is almost the entirequestion. The editor of the work, head of protocol or master ofceremonies, David Wood, had suggested that the book might hereeven begin with a few pages of text which, without truly respondingto all the others, could appear under the suggestive title of "AnOblique Offering." What? From whom? To whom? (More of thislater.)

But straightaway, as we were saying, the unfolding of the ritualrisks losing its automatic quality, that is to say, it risks no longerconforming to the first hypothesis of the analyst. There is a secondhypothesis. Which? At a certain place in the system, one of theelements of the system (an "I," surely, even if the I is not always,and "with all ... candor" [sans façon: also "without further ado"]"me") no longer knows what it should do. More precisely it knowsthat it must do contradictory and incompatible things. Contradictingor running counter to itself, this double obligation thus risksparalyzing, diverting, or jeopardizing the successful conclusion ofthe ceremony. But does the hypothesis of such a risk go against [àl'encontre] or on the contrary go along with [à la rencontre] thedesire of the participants, supposing that there were only onedesire, that there were a single desire common to all of them or thateach had in himself only one noncontradictory desire? Because onecan imagine that one or more than one participant, indeed themaster of ceremonies himself, may somehow desire the failure ofthe aforementioned ceremony. More or less secretly, it goes withoutsaying, and that is why we must tell the secret, not reveal it, butwith the example of this secret, pass judgment on the secret ingeneral.

What is a secret?

Certainly, even if this work in no way corresponds to a secretceremony, one may imagine that there is no ceremony, howeverpublic and exposed, which does not revolve around a secret, even ifit is the secret of a nonsecret, if only what one calls in French a secretde Polichinelle, a secret which is a secret for no one. On the analyst'sfirst hypothesis, the ceremony would unfold normally, according tothe ritual; it would achieve its end at the cost of a detour or of asuspense which not only would not have at all threatened it, butwould perhaps have confirmed, consolidated, augmented, embellished,or intensified it by an expectation (desire, premium ofseduction, preliminary pleasure of play, foreplay [prélude], whatFreud calls Vorlust). But what would happen on the second hypothesis?This is perhaps the question that, by way of a replay andas a token of boundless gratitude, I would like to ask, I, in my turn,and in the first instance to all those who have generously broughttheir tribute [apporter leur tribut] to this work.

Friendship as well as politeness would enjoin a double duty:would it not precisely be to avoid at all cost both the language ofritual and the language of duty? Duplicity, the being-double of thisduty, cannot be added up as a 1 + 1 = 2 or a 1 + 2, but on thecontrary hollows itself out in an infinite abyss. A gesture "offriendship" or "of politeness" would be neither friendly nor polite ifit were purely and simply to obey a ritual rule. But this duty toeschew the rule of ritualized decorum also demands that one gobeyond the very language of duty. One must not be friendly orpolite out of duty. We venture such a proposition, without a doubt,against Kant. Would there thus be a duty not to act according toduty: neither in conformity to duty, as Kant would say (pflichtmässig),nor even out of duty (aus Pflicht)? In what way would sucha duty, or such a counter-duty, indebt us? According to what?According to whom?

Taken seriously, this hypothesis in the form of a question wouldbe enough to give one vertigo. It would make one tremble, it couldalso paralyze one at the edge of the abyss, there where you would bealone, all alone or already caught up in a struggle with the other, another who would seek in vain to hold you back or to push you intothe void, to save you or to lose you. Always supposing—we shallreturn to this—that one ever had any choice in this matter.

Because we already risk no longer knowing where the evidencecould lead us, let us venture to state the double axiom involved inthe hypothesis or in the question with which we inevitably had tobegin. Doubtless it would be impolite to appear to be making agesture, for example, in responding to an invitation, out of simpleduty. It would also be unfriendly to respond to a friend out of duty.It would be no better to respond to an invitation or to a friend inconformity with duty, pflichtmässig (rather than out of duty, ausPflicht, and we cite once more the Groundwork for a Metaphysics ofMorals of Kant, our exemplary "critical reader" [in English inoriginal—Ed.], indebted as we are, as his heirs, to the great philosopherof critique). That would indeed add to the essential dereliction,one further fault: to consider oneself beyond reproach byplaying on appearances just where intention is in default. It isinsufficient to say that the "ought" [il faut] of friendship, like thatof politeness, must not be on the order of duty. It must not even takethe form of a rule, and certainly not of a ritual rule. As soon as ityields to the necessity of applying the generality of a prescription toa single case, the gesture of friendship or of politeness would itselfbe destroyed. It would be defeated, beaten, and broken by theordered rigidity of rules, or, put a different way, of norms. Anaxiom from which it is not necessary to conclude further that onecan only accede to friendship or politeness (for example, in respondingto an invitation, or indeed to the request or the questionof a friend) by transgressing all rules and by going against all duty.The counter-rule is still a rule.

A critical reader will perhaps be surprised to see friendship andpoliteness regularly associated here, each distinguished, by a singletrait, from ritualized behaviour. For whatever cultural tradition islinked to (Western or otherwise), the hypothesis about politenessand the sharp determination of this value relates to what enjoins usto go beyond rules, norms, and hence ritual. The internal contradictionin the concept of politeness, as in all normative concepts ofwhich it would be an example, is that it involves both rules andinvention without rule. Its rule is that one knows the rule but isnever bound by it. It is impolite to be merely polite, to be polite outof politeness. We thus have here a rule—and this rule is recurrent,structural, general, that is to say, each time singular and exemplary—which commands action of such a sort that one not act simply byconformity to the normative rule but not even, by virtue of the saidrule, out of respect for it.

Let's not beat around the bush [N'y allons pas par quatre chemins]:what is at issue is the concept of duty, and of knowing whether orup to what point one can rely on it, on what it structures in theorder of culture, of morality, of politics, of law, and even ofeconomy (especially as to the relation between debt and duty);that is to say, whether and up to what point one can trust what theconcept of duty lays down for all responsible discourse aboutresponsible decisions, for all discourse, all logic, all rhetoric ofresponsibility. By speaking of responsible discourse on responsibility,we are implying already that discourse itself must submit tothe norms or to the law of which it speaks. This implication wouldseem to be inescapable, but it remains disconcerting: what could bethe responsibility, the quality or the virtue of responsibility, of aconsistent discourse which claimed to show that no responsibilitycould ever be taken without equivocation and without contradiction?Or that the self-justification of a decision is impossible, andcould not, a priori and for structural reasons, respond absolutelyfor itself?

We have just said: "n'y allons pas par quatre chemins [an almostuntranslatable French expression which invokes the cross or thecrucial, the crossing of ways, the four and the fork of a crossroad(quadrifurcum) in order to say: let us proceed directly, withoutdetour, without ruse and without calculation]: what is at issue [ils'agit de] is the concept of ... and knowing whether...." What isimplied by an expression of such an imperative order? That onecould and one should tackle a concept or a problem frontally, in anonoblique way. There would be a concept and a problem (of thisor that, of duty, for example, it matters little for the moment), thatis to say, something determinable by a knowing ("what matters isknowing whether") and that lies before you, there before you(problema), in front of you [in English in the original—Tr.]; fromwhich comes the necessity to approach from the front, facingtowards, in a way which is at once direct, frontal, and head on[capitale], what is before your eyes, your mouth, your hands (andnot behind your back), there, before you, like an object pro-posedor posed in advance [pro-posé ou pré-posé], a question to deal with,therefore quite as much a subject proposed (that is to say, surrendered,offered up: in principle one always offers from the front,surely? in principle). Continuing the semantics of problema, therewould also be the question of an ob-subject extended like a jetty orthe promontory of a headland [cap], an armor, or protectivegarment. Problema also means, in certain contexts, the excuse givenin advance to shirk or clear oneself of blame, but also somethingelse that would perhaps interest us here more. By metonymy, if youwill, problema can come to designate that which, as we say inFrench, serves as a "cover" when assuming responsibility for anotheror passing oneself off as the other, or while speaking in thename of the other, that which one places before one or behindwhich one hides. Think of the passion of Philoctetus, of Ulysses theoblique—and of the third (terstis), at once innocent witness (testis),actor-participant but also an actor to whom it is given to play a role,instrument and active delegate by representation, that is the problematicchild, Neoptolemus. From this point of view responsibilitywould be problematic to the further [supplementaire] extent that itcould sometimes, perhaps even always, be what one takes, not foroneself, in one's own name and before the other (the most classicallymetaphysical definition of responsibility) but what one must takefor another, in his place, in the name of the other or of oneself asother, before another other, and an other of the other, namely thevery undeniable of ethics. "To the further [supplementaire] extent,"we said, but we must go further: in the degree to which responsibilitynot only fails to weaken but on the contrary arises in astructure which is itself supplementary. It is always exercised in myname as the name of the other, and that in no way affects itssingularity. This singularity is posited and must quake in theexemplary equivocality and insecurity of this "as."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from ON THE NAME by Jacques Derrida. Copyright © 1995 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804725551
• ISBN 13: 9780804725552
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168