language violence and history
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Language, Violence, and History
Author(s): Hélène Merlin-Kajman and Roxanne Lapidus
Source: SubStance, Vol. 32, No. 1, Celebrating Issue # 100, (2003), pp. 35-38
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685691
Accessed: 31/07/2008 10:59
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Christie McDonald, H6kne Merlin-Kajman 35hristie McDonald, H6kne Merlin-Kajman 35
I want to look more at those who have found choice and agency in
places seemingly devoid of them, so that anxiety and failure can serve notonly an understandingof personaland cultural imits,but an abilityto changethem.
HarvardUniversity
Notes
1. Addressof the Presidentof the CzechRepublic,His ExcellencyVaclavHavel, on theoccasionof the LibertyMedalCeremony,Philadelphia, uly4,1994.
2. SigmundFreud,Inhibitions,ymptomsndAnxiety.TransJamesStrachey.New York:W.W.
Norton,1959,p.100.
Seealso CivilizationndItsDiscontents. rans
JamesStrachey.New York:W.W.Norton,1961.3. See "TheAnxiety of Change,TheAnxietyof Change:ReconfiguringamilyRelationsn
Beaumarchais'rilogy"ModernLanguageQuarterly5:1(Spring,1994),47-79;"Wordsof
Change:August 12,1789." n TheFrenchRevolution789-1989, ditedby SandyPetrey,33-47.Lubbock:TexasTechUniversityPress,1989; Operateurs u changement: e Miss
PollyBakera MurphyBrown."Ed.NicoleBoursier.OeuvrestcritiquesXIX,1 (1994), 0-
78; "Changing he Stakes:Pornography,Privacy,and the Perils of Democracy,"YaleFrench tudies 00(2001),88-119;"ChangingheStakes," onferenceon ReadingEthics,StateUniversityof New Yorkat Buffalo,March29-30.
4. "Civilizationalmprisonments:
How to MisunderstandEverybody
n the World,"TheNewRepublicJune10,2002),pp. 28-33.
Language, Violence, and HistoryHelene Merlin-Kajman
The questions that fascinate me are also the ones over which I agonizethemost-those thatseem quasi-insoluble,which one never ceases to ponder,which one never finishes traversing: the living together of mankind, the
difference between the sexes, physical violence and its causes, generationsand history, the body itself, language, the abyss-likedifferencebetween each
of us, which is sometimes glaring, sometimes invisible...
On no matterwhat subject,these are the questions I ask myself, and it is
my own anguish, my own aporias, that I mobilize in order to think and
write. If not, what's the point?ButI'mnot sure thatIwant to knowanything. No, in fact,I don't believe
that there is anything to know. I even think that we should renounce the
idea of knowing.
I want to look more at those who have found choice and agency in
places seemingly devoid of them, so that anxiety and failure can serve notonly an understandingof personaland cultural imits,but an abilityto changethem.
HarvardUniversity
Notes
1. Addressof the Presidentof the CzechRepublic,His ExcellencyVaclavHavel, on theoccasionof the LibertyMedalCeremony,Philadelphia, uly4,1994.
2. SigmundFreud,Inhibitions,ymptomsndAnxiety.TransJamesStrachey.New York:W.W.
Norton,1959,p.100.
Seealso CivilizationndItsDiscontents. rans
JamesStrachey.New York:W.W.Norton,1961.3. See "TheAnxiety of Change,TheAnxietyof Change:ReconfiguringamilyRelationsn
Beaumarchais'rilogy"ModernLanguageQuarterly5:1(Spring,1994),47-79;"Wordsof
Change:August 12,1789." n TheFrenchRevolution789-1989, ditedby SandyPetrey,33-47.Lubbock:TexasTechUniversityPress,1989; Operateurs u changement: e Miss
PollyBakera MurphyBrown."Ed.NicoleBoursier.OeuvrestcritiquesXIX,1 (1994), 0-
78; "Changing he Stakes:Pornography,Privacy,and the Perils of Democracy,"YaleFrench tudies 00(2001),88-119;"ChangingheStakes," onferenceon ReadingEthics,StateUniversityof New Yorkat Buffalo,March29-30.
4. "Civilizationalmprisonments:
How to MisunderstandEverybody
n the World,"TheNewRepublicJune10,2002),pp. 28-33.
Language, Violence, and HistoryHelene Merlin-Kajman
The questions that fascinate me are also the ones over which I agonizethemost-those thatseem quasi-insoluble,which one never ceases to ponder,which one never finishes traversing: the living together of mankind, the
difference between the sexes, physical violence and its causes, generationsand history, the body itself, language, the abyss-likedifferencebetween each
of us, which is sometimes glaring, sometimes invisible...
On no matterwhat subject,these are the questions I ask myself, and it is
my own anguish, my own aporias, that I mobilize in order to think and
write. If not, what's the point?ButI'mnot sure thatIwant to knowanything. No, in fact,I don't believe
that there is anything to know. I even think that we should renounce the
idea of knowing.
SubStance 100,Vol.32,no. 1,2003ubStance 100,Vol.32,no. 1,2003
355hristie McDonald, Helene Merlin-Kajmanhristie McDonald, Helene Merlin-Kajman
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3e
This is by no means a declaration of irrationalism. I find nothing
reassuringin the renewed prestigeof the religious,of the sacred,of mysticism,of the silent sharing of a certaincommunal ecstasy in, for example, sports or
a shared identity. Rather,it's that in a way, there is nothing new under the
sun, and in this sense, nothing more to know than what is already known,
except in the sciences. Butthe progress in the sciences does not ask any new
ethical questions; it "only"asks them in new terms.
On the other hand, everything has to be done differently; we must
unceasingly undertake this if we want to sustain a certain humanity. And
my skepticism is not a relativism; I do not believe that all the ideas of
humanity, all the ideas of the collective areequally valid, even if I also don't
believe that we will ever realize an idea of Humanity.Thus we must endlessly begin again to re-work things that go badly,
and the only really new thing, in my view, is that things can go very badlyon a truly unheard-of scale...
So it is not a desire to know that animates me; practice alone interests
me-or, moreaccurately,
calls out to me. For I cannot envisionthinking
or
writing outside of a certainurgent rapportwith the present-that is, outside
of a political horizon.
And lately, in view of recent historic events, this is what I imagine:
planes are passing over our heads-us, Europeans-planes that carry
spectacular violence. The Empire-imperium and studium-has passed to
the other side of the Atlantic;this can be seen for example in the successive
episodes of Star Wars,which incorporate our children in a new political
body and create new subjectivities by borrowing features from very oldmodes of subjectification. And this Empire inculcates in us a univocal
language that for the moment seems incapable of being subverted, except
by using its own impoverished grammar-one of power and its visible
evidence (a near-pleonasm), one of Good and Evil, of God. In the face of
this, all traces of political inventiveness, of patience in deeds, and of modestyin forms, seems to have disappeared.
So, pursued by this urgency, I wonder how to sustain language and
signs in the face of terrifyingpower or the scorn of the half-educated.
Our era, seen from the point of view of civilized countries during a
time of peace-in France,at least-is passively indignant or laughsa lot,and
for nothing. I wonder what this laughter is about-from what cruelty it is
born,what venomous vows and unconscious memories of death it conveys?I wonder how the historicpassions thathave been the most catastrophicfor
peace pass throughhuman language, oftenwithout ourknowing it. Iwonder
SubStance# 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
36 Helene Merlin-Kaiman
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37
how laughter and terror mirror the words of a flexion, often long
unperceived, that reactivates, several generations later (two? three?) whatthe preceding generation/s had sworn never to let happen again. Is it
preciselybecauseof this obsessive fear,becauseof their vow that is impossibleto keep, that the worst is perpetuated?
I wonder about the circulation of that subterraneanmeaning that is not
the silence of madness studied by Foucault,but that inhabits the interiorof
discourses andbodies, and haunts the unconscious-all unconsciousnesses-
and ends by resurfacingin the form of inappropriateawareness, inadequate
for its historical present among the next generation of children or
grandchildren. I also wonder how long this involuntary transmission may
last, while the living simultaneously convince themselves that they do
everything better han theirparents.So I wonder how the deaths and atrocitiesof history render us unfit to
think about the present. And how to avoid always missing the "case" in
which we are embarked. How can we maintainenough theoreticalflexibilityand
enough psychicresources to avoid
always beingcondemned to
repeatthings-since we only have a discourse that knows approximately (at best)
how to take charge of the past, but not of the present, which is alwaysunmarked terrain? wonder how we canavoid being paralyzed by questionsthat are precisely not those of our own situation, immobilized by
catastrophicallyoutdated systems of seeing things, while underground, the
forces of death transmittedby past horrorscirculatevia laughter, anger and
terror...
I am currently working on language, the body, and signs. In France,modernity's rejectionof civility and classical language arose out of scorn for
their historical meaning. The function of classical civility was to resolve
community violence-the violence of identification seen in civil wars of
religion-by establishing a universe of gestures and linguistic precautionsthat could differentiate bodies from bodies, inserting between subjects a
world of common but not communal forms.
I am not saying that this civility is a model thatcan be re-imported as is.
I'msaying thatto have rejectedit out of scornforits function risks activatingthe return of thatsame communal violence, clothed with apublicity signifier,a logo, and a "Halloween-style" neo-gothism.
These, in simplified form, are the questions that plague me, and this is
the sketch of what preoccupies me. I seek to understand what has
immobilized us in modernity so that we are led to this historic scorn. And
how to untangle this scorn, as well as so many other blunders of the same
SubStance 100,Vol.32,no. 1,2003
Helene Merlin-Kajman
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38 H6lne Merlin-Kajman, Warren Motte8 H6lne Merlin-Kajman, Warren Motte
involuntary nature, how to better recognize the dangers that threaten us
without confusing them with those that threatened our parents or ourgrandparents,but which perhaps areanalogous to those thatthreatened our
most distant ancestors...
Universitede Paris III-Sorbonne ouvelle
translatedbyRoxanneLapidus
Perfect BooksWarrenMotte
Having accepted SubStance's kind invitation to contribute to its
hundredth issue, I found myself more and more troubledby the questions I
had been asked to address, "What are the questions that fascinate you?"and "What do you want to know?" Not that they are unreasonable ones;
quite to the contrary in fact. I realized nonetheless that, while there are agreat many questions that fascinateme, the ones that fascinate me the most
are the ones I find most difficult to articulate.Moreover, as fascinating as
those questions may be to me, they are undoubtedly far less interesting to
the readers of SubStance. came to that sad recognition much less calmlythan my account here may suggest, gnashing my teeth and wailing like any
good academic will when confronted with an ugly truth. In the end, with
iron in the soul, I accepted it. Somewhat later it occurred to me that there
might be anotheravenue of approach.Since afterall Iprofess literature,and
since many of SubStance's eaderslikewise profess literature,why not recast
those questions in literary terms, changing their shape but remaining
relatively faithful to their original spirit?Faced with questions of this new
ilk-"What are thebooks thatfascinateyou?""Whatdo you want to read?"-
I could begin to see my way. Theverbs are far too weak however: allow me
to substitute "obsess" for "fascinate,"and "ache"for "want." Here, then,
aremy short answers: I am obsessed by perfectbooks. I ache to read perfectbooks.
Let me explain. Throughout my whole career as a reader, for reasons
that I will not attemptto elucidatehere,Ihave been convinced of the existence
of perfect books. By "perfectbook" I mean neither the Talmudic ideal nor
the Mallarmean one, but something that shares aspects of both of those,closer perhaps to what Edmond Jabescalls "theBook." Nor do I mean what
we habitually refer to when we invoke the term "classic."Allow me to recall
involuntary nature, how to better recognize the dangers that threaten us
without confusing them with those that threatened our parents or ourgrandparents,but which perhaps areanalogous to those thatthreatened our
most distant ancestors...
Universitede Paris III-Sorbonne ouvelle
translatedbyRoxanneLapidus
Perfect BooksWarrenMotte
Having accepted SubStance's kind invitation to contribute to its
hundredth issue, I found myself more and more troubledby the questions I
had been asked to address, "What are the questions that fascinate you?"and "What do you want to know?" Not that they are unreasonable ones;
quite to the contrary in fact. I realized nonetheless that, while there are agreat many questions that fascinateme, the ones that fascinate me the most
are the ones I find most difficult to articulate.Moreover, as fascinating as
those questions may be to me, they are undoubtedly far less interesting to
the readers of SubStance. came to that sad recognition much less calmlythan my account here may suggest, gnashing my teeth and wailing like any
good academic will when confronted with an ugly truth. In the end, with
iron in the soul, I accepted it. Somewhat later it occurred to me that there
might be anotheravenue of approach.Since afterall Iprofess literature,and
since many of SubStance's eaderslikewise profess literature,why not recast
those questions in literary terms, changing their shape but remaining
relatively faithful to their original spirit?Faced with questions of this new
ilk-"What are thebooks thatfascinateyou?""Whatdo you want to read?"-
I could begin to see my way. Theverbs are far too weak however: allow me
to substitute "obsess" for "fascinate,"and "ache"for "want." Here, then,
aremy short answers: I am obsessed by perfectbooks. I ache to read perfectbooks.
Let me explain. Throughout my whole career as a reader, for reasons
that I will not attemptto elucidatehere,Ihave been convinced of the existence
of perfect books. By "perfectbook" I mean neither the Talmudic ideal nor
the Mallarmean one, but something that shares aspects of both of those,closer perhaps to what Edmond Jabescalls "theBook." Nor do I mean what
we habitually refer to when we invoke the term "classic."Allow me to recall
SubStance# 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003ubStance# 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
388 Helene Merlin-Kajman, Warren Motteelene Merlin-Kajman, Warren Motte