[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The blindness can then be diagnosed as a direct consequence of an ontology of unmediated presence.It remains for the commentator to undo, with some violence, the historically established pattern or, as Derrida puts it, the “orbit” of significant misinterpretation—a pattern of which the first example is to be found in Rousseau's own writings—and thus, by a process of “deconstruction,” to bring to light what had remained unperceived by the author and his followers.Within the orbit of my own question, the attention has to be directed toward the status of this ambivalent “knowledge” that Derrida discovers in Rousseau.The text of De la Grammatologie necessarily fluctuates on this point.At times, it seems as if Rousseau were more or less deliberately hiding from himself what he did not want to know: “Having, in a way … identified this power which, by opening up the possibility of speech, disrupts the subject that it creates, prevents it from being present to its own signs, saturates its speech with writing, Rousseau is nevertheless more eager to conjure it out of existence than to assume the burden of its necessity.”10 “Conjurer” (as well as the weaker “effacer” that is used elsewhere in the same context) supposes some awareness and, consequently, a duplicity within the self, a degree of deliberate self-deception.The ethical overtone of deceit, implying some participation of the will, is apparent in several other descriptions that use a vocabulary of transgression: “The replacement of mere stressed sound by articulated speech is the origin of language.The modification of speech by writing took place as an extrinsic event at the very beginning of language.It is the origin of language.Rousseau describes this without openly saying so.In contraband.”11 But at other moments it appears instead as if Rousseau were in the grip of a fatality that lies well beyond the reach of his will: “Despite his avowed intent [to speak of origins] Rousseau's discourse is governed (se laisse contraindre) by a complication that always takes on the form of an excess, a “supplement” to the state of origin.This does not eliminate the declared intent but inscribes it within a system that it no longer controls (qu'elle ne domine plus).”12 “Se laisser contraindre” unlike “conjurer” or “effacer” is a passive process, forced upon Rousseau by a power that lies beyond his control.As the word, “inscrite” (italicized by Derrida), and the next sentence13 make clear, this power is precisely that of written language whose syntax undermines the declarative assertion.Yet the act of “conjurer” also occurred by means of written language, so the model is not simply that of a pre-lingual desire that would necessarily be corrupted or overtaken by the transcendental power of language: language is being smuggled into a presumably languageless state of innocence, but it is by means of the same written language that it is then made to vanish: the magic wand that should “conjure” the written word out of existence is itself made of language.This double valorization of language is willed and controlled as the crux of Derrida's argument: only by language can Rousseau conquer language, and this paradox is responsible for the ambivalence of his attitude toward writing.14 The exact epistemological status of this ambivalence cannot be clarified: things do not happen as if Rousseau were at least semi-conscious when engaged in the recovery of an unmediated presence and entirely passive when engaged in undermining it.A terminology of semi-consciousness is made to apply to the two contrary impulses: to eliminate awareness of non-presence (conjurer) as well as to assert it (en contrebande).Derrida's text does not function as if the discrimination that concerns us, namely, the mode of knowledge governing the implicit as opposed to the explicit statement, could be made in terms of the orientation of the thought (or the language) away from or toward the recouping of presence.The awareness of distance, in Rousseau, is at times stated in a blind, at times in a semi-conscious language, and the same applies to the awareness of presence.Rousseau truly seems to want it both ways, the paradox being that he wants wanting and not-wanting at the same time.This would always assume some degree of awareness, though the awareness may be directed against itself.The “difference between an implied meaning, a nominal presence and a thematic exposition”15 and all such distinctions within the cognitive status of language are really Rousseau's central problem, but it remains questionable whether he approached the problem explicitly or implicitly in terms of the categories of presence and distance.Derrida is brought face to face with the problem, but his terminology cannot take him any further.The structurization of Rousseau's text in terms of a presence-absence system leaves the cognitive system of deliberate knowledge versus passive knowledge unresolved and distributes it evenly on both sides.This observation should by no means be construed as a criticism of Derrida; on the contrary.His aim is precisely to show, by a demonstration ad absurdum, that a crucial part of Rousseau's statement lies beyond the reach of a categorization in terms of presence and absence.On the all-important point of the cognitive status of Rousseau's language, these categories fail to function as effective indicators; Derrida's purpose in discrediting their absolute value as a base for metaphysical insight is thus achieved.Terms such as “passive,” “conscious,” “deliberate,” etc., all of which postulate a notion of the self as self-presence, turn out to be equally relevant or irrelevant when used on either side of the differential scale.This discredits the terms, not the author who uses them with an intent similar to that of parody: to devalue their claim to universal discriminatory power.The key to the status of Rousseau's language is not to be found in his consciousness, in his greater or lesser awareness or control over the cognitive value of his language.It can only be found in the knowledge that this language, as language, conveys about itself, thereby asserting the priority of the category of language over that of presence—which is precisely Derrida's thesis.The question remains why he postulates within Rousseau a metaphysics of presence which can then be shown not to operate, or to be dependent on the implicit power of a language which disrupts it and tears it away from its foundation.Derrida's story of Rousseau's getting, as it were, a glimpse of the truth but then going about erasing, conjuring this vision out of existence, while also surreptitiously giving in to it and smuggling it within the precinct he was assigned to protect, is undoubtedly a good story [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]