philosophy before literature deconstuction, hisoricity, and the work of pal de man

8/13/2019 Philosophy Before Literature Deconstuction, Hisoricity, And the Work of Pal de Man

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Philosophy Before Literature: Deconstruction, Historicity, and the Work of Paul de Man

Author(s): Suzanne Gearhart and Paul de ManSource: Diacritics, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 63-81Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464712.

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RESPONSE

PHILOSOPHYEFORELITERATURE:DECONSTRUCTIOHISTORICITYN D

T H W O R OP U L E M N

SUZANNEGEARHART

The word deconstruction has always bothered me.... I had the impressionthat it wasone word among many others, a secondary term of the text that was destined todisappearor in any case take its place in an ensemble where it commanded nothing.Forme it was a word in a chain with many other words like trace anddiff6rance ... It happens, and this meritsanalysis, that this word that I wrote once ortwice, I don't even remember very well where, all of a sudden leaped outside of thetext and others took it up and used it in such a way that afterwards,faced with thisresult, I had to justifymyself, explain it, try to play with it.-Jacques Derrida, L'Oreillede I'autre

1The question of the relationship between literatureand philosophy hastaken on new meaning at a time when assumptions central to the languages ofboth disciplines- assumptions about language, form, representation,etc. - are

being challenged. Ifthese assumptions are indeed fundamental to philosophyitself, and if literary criticism and interpretation have in their own waydepended on these same assumptions, then to challenge them is in some senseto move "beyond"both literatureand philosophy, to a region that is "strictlyspeaking no longer philosophical"["Deconstructionas Criticism"hereafterDC)188], or literary critical.Any attemptto move "beyond"a given state of a prob-lem or a discipline, however, must pay scrupulous attention to that state if theattemptto move "beyond" s not to result instead in a "regression."nsofaras therelationship between literatureand philosophy is concerned, a certain specifi-city of each must be respected if the challenge to the assumptions underlyingthe languages of both disciplines is not to result in a simple blurringof dif-ferences and a confusion of tongues. Clarificationof the meaning and context ofthe terms that figure prominently in the vocabulary of each discipline is thusindispensable. But the necessary labor of clarificationis limited by the simplefact that there is no such thing as a language of philosophy or a language ofcriticism,no matterwhat the level at which one analyzes discourse within thesetwo disciplines. The riskof a "blurring nd toning down" [DC 180] of the effectsof a critique written, say, in philosophy does not merely begin when that cri-diacritics/ winter 1983

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tique is "translated"nto another languageand itsspecificitydistorted- saywhen deconstruc-tion is appropriatedby literarycriticism.The risk s justas greatwhen one seeks to clarify hestakes of such a critique from a position totally within philosophy.In two recent articles, "Deconstructionas Criticism" nd "'Setzung'and 'Ubersetzung':Notes on Paulde Man"[cited hereafter as SU], Rodolphe Gasche undertakes a clarificationof-the relationshipbetween philosophy and literature n a recent phase in the historyof thatrelationship. Moreover, it is as a philosopher that Gasche writes: his aim is to subject torigorous philosophical analysis terms that, he argues, have been used loosely andunrigorously by "philosophically untrained readers"[DC 1831- notably by literarycritics.Gasche's position is in many ways an ironicone, for the literary ritics he is criticizingare notthose who reject what could be called a philosophical approach to literaturebut preciselythose who ostensibly accept such an approach. Gasche calls them the deconstructive criticsand argues that their use of philosophy (or theory) and particularly heir attempt to "apply"the theoretical insights of Jacques Derrida to the study of literature result in a literaryaestheticism or formalismthat is in almost all ways the antithesis of the philosophy of Der-rida. Thus Gasche must use philosophy against precisely the deconstructive literarycriticswho claim it for themselves, or, as he puts it, he must restore the "rigorousmeaning"ofdeconstruction "against ts defenders" [DC 182]. Two terms in particularare the focus ofGasche's clarificationand analysis:self-reflexivityand deconstruction. According to Gasche,it is when they are placed in their philosophical context that the virtuallyantitheticalmean-ings of these two terms become clear.The lack of rigor in the use of philosophical categories by deconstructive criticism ismost evident for Gasche when it equates deconstruction with self-reflexivity:

Deconstruction is not what is assertedby positive definitions in Newer [deconstruc-tive] criticism. Here deconstruction is said to representthe moment in a text wherethe argument begins to undermine itself;or, in accordance with Jakobson'snotionof the poetic and aesthetic function, the relation of a messageof communication toitselfthat, thus, becomes its own object; or, finally,the self-revelationand indicationby the text of its own principlesof organizationand operation .... Deconstructivecriticism... assertsand simultaneouslydepends on the autonomy of the text. It isthis rationale of almost all of modern criticism that totally distorts the notion ofdeconstruction. [DC 180-81]

ForGasche, deconstruction is virtually he opposite of self-reflexivity,hence the opposite of"deconstruction" s it is used by deconstructive criticism:"Putanother way, deconstruction isan operation which accounts for and simultaneously undoes self-reflection" DC 194]. Justhow deconstruction does this becomes evident, Gasche argues, when one considers that itcomprises two stages: a reversal and a reinscription.The deconstructive critic is guilty ofequating deconstruction with what is only its firststage: reversal.Thus he takes the colloquialmeaning of writing as it appears in the philosophical tradition and, simply reversing thehierarchybetween speech and writing, privilegeswritingin a traditionaland colloquial senseover speech. By stopping with this simple reversal,deconstructive criticismmanages easilyto assimilateecritureto literatureand to equate the negative, criticalthrustof deconstructionwith a revelation of the autonomy and auto-referentialityof the text.In its complete and philosophically rigorousform, deconstruction necessitates not onlyreversal but reinscription.Thus Derrida not only upsets the hierarchybetween writingandspeech when he gives writinga thematic privilege in Of Grammatology,he also displaces orreinscribes"writing"o that it no longer coincides with itscolloquial meaning. According toGasch6, in reinscription,the hierarchyand hence the newly privilegedterm are situated inrelationto an absolute other, that is, "an rreduciblenon-phenomenal structure hataccountsfor the difference under examination"[DC203]. Ecriture orthe arche-trace) hen, is as muchthe "other" f writingin a colloquial sense as it is of speech in a colloquial sense. And yet, it isnecessary to have recourse to an arche-trace in order to understand the phenomenal dif-ference between speech and writing,presence and absence, forthese differences cannot beaccounted for by either speech or presence (or writing and absence) "inthemselves." Thephilosopher can never explain the irruptionof writingif he startsby defining the essence of64



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implicit mapping of it is a key to his analysis.As the title to his essay on Allegoriesof Readingsuggests, a certain Heidegger provides the fundamental link between de Man and Derrida,and this link is used to substantiatethe claim that despite specific differences, the work ofDerrida and of de Man'sAllegories of Reading are fundamentally compatible when con-sidered from the standpoint of the critique of self-reflexivity.

In order to bring rigorand clarityto the work either of de Man, Derrida,or Heidegger,Gasch6 implies, crucially relevant parts of the work of the others must be simultaneouslyclarifiedand comprehended as well. But Gasch6's clarificationof the relationshipbetweenthe work of these three thinkersand, ultimately,his clarificationof the relationshipbetweenliteratureand philosophy are, of course, interpretations.That is, there is an irreducible per-formative aspect to his analysis: his "clarification" s in this sense already formed by an"ethico-theoreticaldecision" [DC 190]. More specifically, Gasch6's reading of de Man is notmerely an exercise in the properclassificationof the work of a (highlyinfluential)critic;nor isit the mere application of pre-existingcriteriato the judgment of a particularcase. Gasch6'sinterpretationof de Man is an interpretationof deconstruction as well. The problem, then,will be to analyze both de Man's work and Gasch6's interpretationof it in order to elucidatethe most forceful but also the most problematicaspects of Gasch6'sand de Man's"decisions"concerning deconstruction.The firstextremely forceful- and problematic- point to consider in Gasch6'sanalysis isthe relationshiphe establishes between Heidegger on the one hand and de Man (and Der-rida)on the other. Inhis review of Allegoriesof Reading,Gasch6 introduces his briefanalysisof Heidegger's concept of positing as "useful" n understandingde Man's utilization of thenotion of the performative in his literaryanalyses. The comparison of the two concepts,Gasch6 argues, can enable the reader to understand better the relationshipof de Man toRomantic theories of auto-reflexivity,for de Man is to a Romantic aestheticism like that ofSchleiermacher what Heidegger is to a philosophy of self-reflexivity ike that of Fichte. InGasch6's earlier "Deconstruction as Criticism,"however, Heidegger's role is even morecrucial, and in considering it closely, one can come to understandwhy it is that the possibil-ity of establishing a simple comparison between de Man and Heidegger should be so con-clusive a proof in Gasch6'seyes of the impossibilityof interpretingde Man'swork as a theoryof self-reflexivity.In "Deconstruction as Criticism,"Gasch6 draws his reader'sattention toDerrida'sdefinition of deconstruction and underlines precisely the passages in Of Gram-matology where Derrida discusses the meaning of the term arche-trace and where hisindebtedness to Heidegger is clearest. Those passages and the termsthey employ are essen-tiallythe same as the ones Gasch6 himself later uses in his clarifyingcomparison between deMan and Heidegger. Thus Gasch6 quotes from Derrida:"'When the other announces itselfas such, it presents itself in the dissimulation of itself'" DC 199; Of Grammatology47]. In"'Setzung'and 'Obersetzung,"'explaining Heidegger's notion of positing, Gasch6 writes:"positing[Setzen] is a translation[Uber-setzung]of the concealed into what is present, thedistorting gesture of the revelation of which is at once reversed again by a foreclosing re-translation [Uber-setzung] into what is concealed" [SU 55]. Finally, Gasch6 writes of deMan's notion of text: "Inother words, the text, in the lastresort, sconstituted (butis this still aconstitution?),by a notion of performative,of positingwhich makes it unconceal itselfonlyas the displaced totalityof paired, but incompatible textual functions"[SU 56]. ForGasch6,the possibilityof reconciling the "materialdifferences" between Heidegger and Derridaonthe one hand and on the other the "originality"f de Man with respect to Derridahinges onthe central importance of the concepts of Setzung (unconcealing, positing)and Obersetzung(translation,concealing) to an understandingof the work of all three.The question of the relationshipbetween Derridaand Heidegger is,of course, extremelycomplex. Even to begin to analyze it fullywould requirean interpretationof the entiretyofthe work of each, an interpretationthat would have to respect and not confuse different"levels, paths and styles"[DC 202]. It would have to take account of a growing body ofliteratureconcerning this relationship,a literatureof which Gasch6's work is an importantpart.' Itwould also have to take account of the points in Derrida'swork where he explicitly

IIn addition to the articles discussed here, see Rodolphe Gaschc, "Dutrait non adequat: Lanotion durapportchez Heidegger,"Les Fins de I'Homme,Colloque de Cerisy[Paris:EditionsGalile, 1981]. Since66



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situateshimselfwith respect to Heidegger. These statementscannot, of course, be given anyexclusive privilege, but clearly an interpretation hat would not account for them in someway is inadmissible.They would include both points in hiswork where Derridaexpresses hisrelativelackof reserve towards (a)Heidegger, and others, more criticalin thrust,which Der-ridamakes in what he has called a "deconstructivemode"["Le etraitde la metaphore"109].Letus assume, however, for the sake of argument,that the veryfundamentalrapproche-ment between Heidegger and Derridathat Gasche is making in his two articles has beenestablished. The rapprochement between de Man and Heidegger would no doubt requirean equally complex analysis, and, analogous to the analysis of the relationship betweenHeidegger and Derrida,it too would have to be concerned with de Man'sexplicit referencesto Heidegger. As is the case with Derrida,they are not of a piece. Butthough he does notreferto them, their general sense seems, at least at firstglance, highlyfavorable to Gasch"'sHeideggerean analysisof de Man, and, moreover, they seem to foreground precisely thoseaspects of Heidegger's thought privileged by Gasch&.One could go even furtherand saythatinsofaras de Man criticizes certainaspects of Heidegger's philosophy, it is from a perspectivethat could itself be qualified as Heideggerean. Thus, in an early article, he comments onHeidegger's interpretationof Hilderlin:

H1lderlin is the only figure Heidegger cites as a believer citesScripture. .. Hilderlin tellsof the presence of Being, his word is Beingmade pres-ent, and he knows that it is so; metaphysicians,on the other hand, tell of theirwillthat Beingbe present, but, since it is of the essence of Beingto reveal itselfthroughahiding of itself in what it is not, they can never name it (Being).... H61lderlin, nthe other hand, knows the movement of Being. ["LesExegeses de H61derlinparMartinHeidegger"805]

Heidegger, then, is the philosopher who, through the themes of concealment and uncon-cealing, points to the illusoriness of any immediate access to Being. But his interpretationofHblderlin is strikinglyat odds with his analysis of the metaphysicians: the poet will begranteda privilegeof direct access to Beingthat Heidegger has categoricallydenied to them.An incredible privilege, according to de Man, as if Icaruswere allowed to return from thesun. Indeed, de Man suggests, the privilege Heidegger gives H61derlin"invitesparody, itseems so excessive" ["LesExegeses"808], not only in relation to H61derlin,but in relation toHeidegger himself,whose own pretentionto have found a way beyond metaphysics hingesin some sense on the incredible privilegehe accords the poet, H61lderlin.2 e Man,then, willargue that "H61lderlinays the exact opposite of what Heidegger makes him say"[809].But though such an interpretationwould seem to place de Man directlyat odds withHeidegger, in an importantsense it does not. The poet, Hblderlin,does not claim a privi-leged access to Being,according to de Man. Rather,his poetry pointsto the illusorynature ofmy essay was written,Gasche has published an additional articleon this subject: "Joininghe Text: fromHeidegger to Derrida," n The Yale Critics:Deconstruction in America. Ed.Jonathan Arac, Wlad God-zich,and WallaceMartin.Minneapolis: niversityf Minnesota ress,1983.2Thiselementof de Man's ritique f Heideggeriguresntwo laterarticlesncludedn BlindnessndInsight: Formnd Intent nAmericanNew Criticism"30]and"TheLiteraryelfasOrigin"100].diacritics / winter 1983 67



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all claims to accede directly to Being, and, thereby, it points to its own mediate status. IfBeing is intended by all poetry, as it is by all metaphysics, Hilderlin's poetry tells us that itcan only be intended: "It s not because he has seen Being that the poet can name it; hisword prays for parousia, but it (his word) cannot establish it. It cannot establish parousiabecause as soon as the word is pronounced, it destroys immediacy and revealsthat, insteadof telling of Being, it can only tell of mediation"[812]. Inthis instance at least, poetry is morerigorousthan philosophy. But its privilegewith respect to metaphysicsdoes not derive fromits abilityto give us direct access to Being. Rather t lies inthe fact that poetryopenly declaresthat there is no direct, immediate access to Being. As de Man puts it, apropos of Hilderlin'shymn, Wie wenn am Feiertage:"We can deduce ... from this hymn a conception of thepoetic as an essentially pure, free act, a pure intention, a concerted and conscious prayerthat becomes conscious of itself in its failure" o accede directlyto Being [816]. 'This poetryconstitutes a constant critique of its certitudes, recognized as illusory" 817].The philosopher, then, is a "bad" iterarycritic. His rigoras a philosopher does not holdup when he considers poetry. To use Gasch6'sterms, one could say that his philosophy is aparadigmfor all critiquesof self-reflexivity,but his literarycriticismnonetheless constitutes atheory of the totalityand self-reflexivityof the literaryor poetic work. Heidegger points to "apersistent negative moment that resides in Being"[Blindness73], a negative moment that isconstitutive of the necessity that there only be mediation and mediacy, never parousia. Butthe philosopher forgetsthis insightwhen he turns to the work of H61derlin.He forgetsthat allunveilingor positing is also a concealing or an occultation, and he overlooks the elements ofthe poet's work that equate poetry with a "consciousness"of its own failure to accededirectly to Being.A later essay on Blanchot establishes with equal clarity the link between de Man'snotion of a literary ext and the Heideggerean concepts of Setzung and Ubersetzung. Heretoo de Man criticizes Heidegger (but from a standpoint that could itself be qualified asHeideggerean) by opposing him to Blanchot, who, in this instance, is more Heideggereanthan Heidegger himself: "Unlike the recent Heidegger, Blanchot does not seem to believethat the movement of a poetic consciousness could ever lead us to assert our ontologicalinsight in a positive way" [76]. The insightthat can never be formulated in a positive wayconcerns preciselythe concealment that is the correlativeof all unconcealing: "ForBlanchot,as for Heidegger, Being is disclosed in the act of its self-hidingand, as conscious subjects,weare necessarily caught up in this movement of dissolution and forgetting. A criticalact ofinterpretationalways enables us to see how poetic language always reproduces this negativemovement . . . ."[76].These passagesclearlyestablish the linkGasch6 forges byother means between de Manand Heidegger. But,significantly, heir place in de Man'swork is not what one would expectfromGasch6's division of it into two phases, the first,self-reflexivephase coinciding with theessays published in Blindnessand Insight(and presumablywith the essays published earlier,in Critique),the second represented by Allegoriesof Reading.The passages quoted above inwhich de Man borrows most explicitly from Heidegger to define literatureas concealing inthe process of revealing appear not in Allegoriesof Reading, but rather in an essay datingfrom 1955 and in another essay included in Blindness and Insight. Ifone accepts Gasch6'scontention that the essays in Blindnessand Insightconstitute a theory of the self-reflexivityofliterature, hen one would have to admit that, in de Man'swork, a concept of literatureas anabsolute other that- like Being- always conceals in its unconcealing, is contemporaneouswith a theory of literaryself-reflexivityand does not inaugurate a new phase in de Man'swork.But de Man's analyses of Heidegger not only undercut Gasch6's division of de Man'swork into two separate phases. They also clearly, in themselves, implyor constitute a theoryof literaryor poetic self-reflexivity, nasmuch as de Man defines the poetic as "apure inten-tion ... that becomes conscious of itselfin itsfailure" "LesEx6ghses" 16], that is, consciousof the concealment of Beingthat results from its effortto name Being. The self-reflexivityofpoetry, its (structural) consciousness"of its own statusor "failure"s, for de Man, the sourceof the "privilege" r of the "priority"f poetry. The critic can never add to this movement ofself-reflexivity,his critique or readingcan only repeat the self-criticalelement that is alreadyconstitutive of poetry. The theme of the priorityand privilegeof poetry is central to de Man's68



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reading of Blanchot as well as to his readingof Derrida. Itslogical extension is that there "isno need to deconstruct"[Blindness139] the authentically poetic text, that the act of readingor interpretationis never "somethingwe have added" [Allegories17]. Whatever the placeone would ultimately want to assign to Heidegger with respect to the problem of self-reflexivity, he possibilityof assimilatinghis concepts of Setzung and Ubersetzungon the onehand and de Man'sconception of literatureon the other is not in itselfevidence that the lat-ter entails a critique of self-reflexivity. Indeed, one could say that the "Heideggerean"moment in de Man'stheory is also the moment of self-reflexivity.The schema that divides de Man's work into an early, self-reflexiveperiod and a laterperiod consisting of a Heideggerean-style critiqueof self-reflexivity s clearly disruptedwhenone considers the role played by Heidegger in de Man's early work, but it is open tochallenge on other grounds as well. Certainlyde Man himself has always discreetly insistedon the coherence and continuity of his preoccupations, and if de Man is not the ultimateauthority in the interpretationof his own work, he is, nonetheless, an importantauthorityamong others. His highly sympathetic reading of Blanchot stresses the importance andinterest of the work of a critic who, while he did not remain "aloof" rom contemporaryphilosophical, literaryand criticaltrends, who even "tookpartin them"and was "influencedby them," nonetheless remained faithfulto a problematic that was distinctively his. For deMan, Blanchot is one of a group of writersof which one could say that "the true quality oftheir literaryvocation can be tested by the persistence with which they kept intact a moreessential partof themselves" [Blindness60], despite their being influenced to some extent bycontemporary trends. Ina similarvein, de Man is criticalof those who divide Lukacs'workinto two distinct periods, whether they consider the later period to be his "weak"one as istypically the case in the West, or whether they consider the earlier period to be tainted byidealism as is typicallythe case in the Soviet Union and EasternEurope:"Theweaknesses onthe one hand and the strengthon the other of Lukacs'work cannot be limited to an early orlate period"[52].De Man'ssympathy for a critic like Blanchot and his criticismof attempts to divide thework of a Lukics into distinctearlyand laterperiods are linked to a discreet insistence on theconsistency of hisown concerns, the persistence of hisown "'literary'ocation."But what arewe to make of Allegoriesof Reading?Does it constitute a breakwith his earlier,fundamentalproject?Certainlyde Man himself does not present it that way. Specifically, in the Preface,where he discusses the introduction of the term "deconstruction"into his own criticalvocabulary, he stresses that his use of it does not represent a significantdeparture from hisearlier concerns:

Mostof this book was written before "deconstruction" ecame a bone of contention,and the term is used here in a technical rather than a polemical sense - which doesnot thereforeimply that it becomes neutralor ideologically innocent.... But Isawno reason to delete it. No other word states so economically the impossibilitytoevaluate positively or negatively the inescapable valuation it implies.... I con-sciously came across "deconstruction"or the firsttime in the writingsof JacquesDerrida,which means that it is associatedwith a power of inventive rigorto which ilay no claim but which i certainly do not wish to erase. [x]

De Man here describes himself in the same way he describes Blanchot in "ImpersonalitynBlanchot."He does not remain "aloof" rom the contemporary philosophical and literarytrends associated with the term "deconstruction,"he may even to some extent be "influ-enced" by them. Butclearly in de Man's view the work collected in the Allegoriesof Readingdoes not represent a fundamental departure from previous work, in which, in a certainsense, the (his) concept and technique of "deconstruction"were already implicitly in play.

Any reader of Allegoriesof Readingwill note many themes that runfrom BlindnessandInsightand even from earlier essays through this recent book, many passages that seem toecho one another. Literature,however, is the one theme or term that seems to dominate theothers. No matter what analytical path de Man takes, it leads to this term. Heidegger'sontology, Husserl's phenomenology, Empson's formalism, Speech Act Theory, NewCriticism,as diverse as they are, are all treated by de Man in the same way he treats Marx-diacritics/ winter 1983 69



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"m"TIW,--7_ _Ia4w 7WI-" 40i.. .?LL -, i L )L -U ? M"aufgehoben"7,end itself,of itself,if not to itsown replacement, at least to its impli-cation in a chain it never will have, in truth, governed. It is for this reason, onceagain, that it [la diff6rance] is not theological.... Diff6rance, which is neither aword nor a concept, appeared to me to be strategically he most appropriate ermtothink, if not to master ... what is most irreducible in our "age"" poque'7. I startout, thus, strategically, rom the place and time where "we"are, although my pointof departure s not in the lastinstancejustifiableand though it isalwaysonly in termsof diff6rance and of its "history"hat we can pretend to know who and where "we"are, and what the limits of an "age"might be. ["Ladiff6rance"7, my translation]

InDerrida'swork, the fact that the "master-term"s implicated in a chain itdoes not govern isconsistently associated, as it is in the passage quoted above, with the "epochal"or"historical"character of deconstruction. Derrida cautions that the epochal, the contextual, and thehistoricalare not terms that have any priorityover a term such as diffcrance:any comprehen-sion of the "historical" inges on a comprehension of diffirance (orthe arche-trace).Nor, onthe other hand, is the "historical" ature of deconstruction the signthat Derrida isa historicistor a relativist,or that any term will do. Ifconsiderations relatedto "context"always limitandrelativize the privilege of certain terms, they also preclude others from being efficacious orstrategicallyappropriate.Butall of these terms remainirreduciblyhistorical or Derrida: heirprivilege is not absolute.Such affirmationsof the historicalnatureof deconstruction have important mplicationsfor the interpretationof the two operations it entails- reversal and reinscription. ThoughDerrida stresses the absolutely other character of diffcrance,what is stressed in the passageabove is the strategiccharacter of that absolute otherness. The absolutely other character ofdiff6rancedoes not preclude it from functioning "within"metaphysics, from being negated,retained and raised to a higher level. Put in terms of the relationshipbetween reversalandreinscription,one could say that the reinscriptionof writing is not itself an irreversiblepro-cess; the absolute other is always also in the position of a mediate other, that is, implicated ina (metaphysical)opposition and, as such, subject to reversal.Itis for this reason that our task,according to Derrida,is not only to think diffcrance or the arche-traceas "absoluteother,"butat the same time, as that which is given in metaphysics.4One can cite no similarqualificationin de Man's use of the term "literature."hough hemay affirmthat it constitutes its own undoing, the fact that it is literaturealone that has thiscapacity to undo itself indicates that, for de Man, literature or"literature")ccupies a com-manding position from which it cannot be moved. De Man claims a certain solidaritywiththe project of "deconstruction,"but his simultaneous privilegingof literaturerepresents aresistance to crucial aspects of deconstruction - the refusal to posit a masterterm, and thecorresponding emphasis on the reversibilityof the process of reinscription.

Gasche's interpretationof deconstruction reminds us that the absolute other is indeedin a sense alreadygiven in metaphysics. As he writes,"philosophy, alreadyagainst itswill andunknown to it, could never avoid linkingpresence and self-reflexivityo an irreducible non-presence which has a constitutive value" [DC 195]. But one could say that in his effort todraw a necessary distinction between deconstructivist literarycriticism and philosophicaldeconstruction, Gasche overemphasizes the break between reversal and reinscriptiontosuch a point that the implication of the "absolute other" in metaphysics is obscured. IfGasche is willing to accept "literature" s an "absoluteother"and if, even more importantly,he is reluctant to question why de Man, in contrast to Derrida,makes literature he absoluteother, it is because to an important extent that position is already implicit in the specialemphasis he places on the radicallydistinctive role of reinscriptionin the philosophical pro-cedure of deconstruction. The task, of course, is not to deny the distinctive character of

4"To think, at the same time, of diff6ranceas an economical detour that, in the element of the same,always aims to rediscoverpleasure or a presence differed(deferred)by calculation . . . and on the otherhand diff6ranceas a rapportwith an impossiblepresence, as expenditure without reserve,as irreparableloss of presence ... ." ["LaDifferance"20, my translation].diacritics/ winter 1983 71



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reinscription,but rather o understandat the same time why reinscriptionremainsreversible,why it produces not a single, master-term or "absoluteother,"but a series of strategicallyeffective terms.

2A certain conception of historicity is, I would argue, an irreducible element ofdeconstruction. In his two major essays on deconstruction, Gasche does not discussDerrida'sconception of the "historical" ature of deconstruction, butdespite Gasche's lack ofconcern, I would argue that a consideration of this aspect of Derrida'swork, and more

specifically of de Man's interpretationof it, is essential in understandingthe relationshipbetween them. Indeed, the question of historicity bears on all of the crucial points inGasche's analysisof de Man- the critiqueof self-reflexivity,he break between earlyand lateperiods of hiswork, and even the relationship o Heidegger. Furthermore, t iswith regard othe concept of historicity hat de Man expresslystates his criticismsand reservesconcerningDerrida'swork. Iwould arguethat inde Man'swork, the claim that Derrida'suse of historicalterms is inconsistentwith the fundamental insightsof deconstruction amounts to a resistanceto deconstruction itself. That resistance is both direct, inasmuch as he explicitlydevalorizesthose moments in Derrida'stexts where the question of historicityis raised, and indirect,insofaras de Man'sprivilegingof literature s indissociable from a devalorization and reduc-tion of historicity.De Man's devalorization and reduction of historicity sapparentfirstof all in the fact thathe consistently defines literature and literary language in opposition to a natural orphenomenal world. Passages defining literature n this way can be found in the earliest aswell as the most recent texts. In "The Rhetoricof Temporality,"de Man equates irony withfiction and literature,and argues that "far rom being a return o the world, the ironyto thesecond power or 'ironyof irony'that all true ironyat once has to engender asserts and main-tains its fictional character by statingthe continued impossibilityof reconciling the world offiction with the actual world . .. it serves to prevent the all too readily mystifiedreaderfromconfusing fact and fiction, and fromforgettingthe essential negativityof the fiction"[200]. Ina recent article, "Resistance o Theory,"de Man defines literatureand literary anguage inopposition to the phenomenal world: "Literatures fiction not because it somehow refuses toacknowledge 'reality,'but because it is not a prioricertainthat language functions accordingto principleswhich are those, or which are like those, of the phenomenal world"[11]. DeManfrequentlycharacterizes what he calls "resistance" o this view of literatureas the sign ofa naive historicismor of a naive belief in a mimetic view of language. But one could easily"resist"uch a description- or at any rateattemptto situate itas "metaphysical"-in the nameof deconstruction. In Of Grammatology, Derridaargues that, within the family of conceptsinherited from metaphysics, there is a "superveningopposition between physis and nomos,physis and techne, whose ultimate function is perhaps to derive historicity;and, paradox-ically, not to recognize the rightsof history,production, institutionsetc., except in the formof the arbitraryand in the substance of naturalism" Of Grammatology33]. I would like toargue that de Man's persistentdefinition of the literary n opposition to the phenomenal orempirical has just such an aim: to derive historicity,and, thereby, to protect the privilegeofliterature,a privilege entirely "metaphysical"n form.There are, of course, important moments in de Man's work where the question ofhistoryis treated in a more positive light. Indeed, in "Impassede la CritiqueFormaliste," eMan implicitlyqualifieshis own approach to literatureas tending towards a historicalpoetics[496]. There he argues that "aprofoundly historicalpoetics would be one which attemptstothink separation according to its actual temporal dimensions, insteadof superimposingon itcyclic or eternalist schemas of a spatialorder. The poetic consciousness, which issues fromthis separation,constitutesa certaintime as the noematic correlativeof itsaction"[497]. Thehistorian or literaryhistorian is referred to implicitly in this passage as the thinker whosuperimposes cyclic or eternalist schemas on a temporalitythat is constituted by poetry itselfand is radically resistant to such schemas, which themselves are not truly temporal, butrather spatial. Just as Hilderlin's poems are more faithful to Heidegger's insights thanHeidegger himself, so here, poetic consciousness is more trulyhistoricalthan the historicalconsciousness criticized in this passage. Thisaspect of de Man'stheory of literature scrucial,72



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and to criticize it from the standpoint of a theory of history that would claim to be theultimate ground or context in which all events and objects, including literature,would besituated is simplyto ignore the force of de Man'scritiqueof historyin this passage and otherslike it. A theory of historythat takes for granted itscategories (time and space), its language,and its own metaliterary,metaformal (and ultimately, metahistorical)status is not "post-deManian,"but "pre-de Manian."De Man discusses the relationshipbetween historyand literature n a similar vein in apassage in "LiteraryHistory and LiteraryModernity"[Blindness 165], where he sketches aprogramfor the radicaltransformationof literaryhistoryand of historyin general. This moreelaborate discussion of the relationshipbetween literatureand history raisesa crucial ques-tion not as readily apparent in his more concise presentationsof it. Inthis article, he suggeststhat it may be possible to write a (literary)historythat is not purely empirical and thus notnaive in its use and implicit conception of language, and hence of literature.Such a historywould no longer be dependent on the false self-evidence of categories of truth and falsehoodand would no longer (naively)claim to dominate literatureand languagefrom the outside. Ifhistory were to be redefined along these lines, de Man implies, it would be legitimate tospeak of the "historicity"f literature n general and of literarymodernity in particular.At thesame time, de Man clearly states that the practical basis of such a history would be thereading of literarytexts, and its epistemological basis, the "knowledge literatureconveysabout itself"[164, my emphasis]. The historicity de Man speaks of here thus remains ahistoricity of language and of the literary text, that is, one defined by the relativelyhomogeneous sphere of literary anguage and of itsself-reflexivity.The revelation of an inter-dependence of historyand literaturedoes not create a methodological aporia, or if it does,the contradictions stemming from such an interdependence can be resolved by "the muchmore humble task of reading and understanding a literarytext." History could deal withliteratureand language only if it were radicallytransformed,while literature and languageare held to be essentially and constitutively adequate to the task of "knowing" heir historic-ity. De Man'stheory of literature s an importantcontributionto the theory of historyinsofaras it shows literature o be in the position of askingquestions that historyhas heretofore beenunable or unwillingto ask about itself. What is open to question in that theory of literature,however, is de Man'sconclusion that history has nothing to say to literature hat literaturehas not already said to and about itself, or, to put it another way, that in the dialoguebetween historyand literature,literaturemust always, does always have the last word.The secondary, derivative statusde Man persistentlyassigns to any and all concepts ofhistoricity s the sign that his corresponding theory of literatureconstitutes an implicittheoryof self-reflexivityeven when the term "self-reflexivity"s absent. Of course it is necessary todistinguishde Man's work from the formalistand structuralist riticismwhose tendency toturn language into a discrete object with definable boundaries he has criticized. But in argu-ing that an authentic temporalityor historicitycan only be constituted by literature,de Manhimself closes off language and defends what he has elsewhere criticizedas an intrinsic nter-pretationof literature.Indeed, one must ask if the critique he makes of such intrinsicinter-pretationdoes not in some way apply to his own rhetoricalinterpretation:". . . the intrinsicinterpretationof literatureclaims to be anti-or a-historical,but often presupposes a notion ofhistoryof which the critic is not himself aware"[Blindness163]. De Man'stheory of languagedoes in fact presuppose a notion of history in which language- in the form ofmetaphor- engenders itself. Forde Man, metaphor is the originof language in the sense thatlanguage is itself essentially metaphorical or rhetorical. He consistently argues that the"history"hat narratesthe metaphorical origin of language is merely a figurationof a fun-damentally synchronic situation, but he first reduces the complexity of history in ordersubsequently to negate and transcend it in his model of language. It is only because historyhas an origin for de Man that it can always be assimilatedto or derived from the movementby which literary anguage constitutes and deconstitutes itself. De Man'stheory of historyisthus essential to his views on literature,no matter how negative or deluded the historicalmoment is for him.

To understandhow these two moments-the historical and the literary- mutuallycon-dition and imply each other and how his theory of their relationshipis opposed to Derrida's,it is necessary to consider two of de Man's essays, "The Rhetoric of Blindness" anddiacritics / winter 1983 73



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"Metaphor."These readings- the firstof which appears in Blindnessand Insight,the second,in Allegoriesof Reading- are of special interest because, at least at firstglance, they tendmost strikingly o confirm the view that inAllegoriesof Readinga highlysignificantshifttakesplace in de Man's theory of literature. By closely analyzing these essays, it is possible tounderstandthe nature of the differences separatingthe two works in which they appear, butalso the more profound continuity between them.In "The Rhetoric of Blindness,"the opposition between physis and nomos, betweennature and language, historyand literature,structuresde Man's interpretationof both Der-rida and Rousseau in a strikingway. De Man distinguishes between two levels in Derrida'swork, the one being the rhetorical,the other, a more direct or literal level. He argues thatDerrida ultimatelyshares his (de Man's)view concerning the privilegeof literature,becauseDerrida shares the view that history is a negative moment, a mere dramatization of theessentially rhetorical nature of language. Just as de Man considers Rousseau's historicallanguage to be a narrativedevice, so he considers that the same is true for Derrida. LikeRousseau'swork, Of Grammatology

also tells a story: the repression of written language by what is here called the"logocentric" allacy of favoring voice over writing is narrated as a consecutive,historicalprocess. Throughout, Derrida uses Heidegger'sand Nietzsche's fiction ofmetaphysicsas a period in Westernthought in order to dramatize, to give tensionand suspense to the argument,exactlyas Rousseaugave tensionand suspense to thestory of language and of society by making them pseudo-historical.Neither is Der-rida taken in by the theatricalityof his gestureor the fiction of his narrative: xactlyas Rousseau tells usobliquely, but consistently,that we are readinga fictionand nota history. Derrida'sNietzschean theory of language as "play"warns us not to takehim literally, especially when his statements seem to refer to concrete historicalsituations such as the present. [137, my emphasis]

Despite his claim to agree with Derrida'sposition, de Manfinds it necessary to differentiateamong the elements of Derrida'stext. We should not take Derrida literally,but especiallywhen his statements "seem to refer to concrete historical situations such as the present."Other statements, which would presumablyrefer o the rhetoricityof language, can be taken"more literally." ndeed, de Man consistently equates the historical with "thearbitrary" rinterprets t "inthe substance of naturalism," ven in the context of Derrida'swork. He thusignores Derrida'sown directions for interpretinghistoricallanguage as it is used in his texts:"For he proper understandingof the gesture that we are taking here, one must understandthe expressions 'epoch,' 'closure of an epoch,' 'historicalgenealogy' in a new way; and mustfirstremove them from all relativism" Of Grammatology 14].One could perhapsargue in the logic of Gasche's interpretation hat de Man'sdiscount-ing of Derrida's use of such terms as "epoch"is limited to "TheRhetoricof Blindness"andthus to that "early"period in his work where he equates deconstruction with the self-reflexivityof literature.This, however, is not the case. The same devaluation of historyand ofDerrida's and Heidegger's)use of "historical"anguage is evident in the Allegoriesof Reading:

The ultimate test or 'proof'of the fact that Romanticismputs the genetic patternofhistory in question would then be the impossibilityof writinga historyof Roman-ticism. The abundant bibliographythat existson the subject tends to confirm this,for a curious blindness seems to compel historiansand interpretersof Romanticismto circumvent the central insights that put their own practice, as historians,intoquestion.One way of progressingin this difficultquestion involves the examination oftextswhich, by their own structureand theirown statement, lay the foundation forthe genetic conception of history .... Even such recent examples as MichelFoucault'sor JacquesDerrida'sattemptsto see the conceptual crisisof languagethatfiguresso prominently in contemporaryphilosophy, as a closing off of an historical

74



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r r

Jii t i-C" .ti

iF~'...:

period, sometimes specificallydesignated as the "6poquede Rousseau," all withinthis pattern. ["Genesisand Genealogy,"Allegories82] 5Inthe Allegoriesof Readingas in "The Rhetoricof Blindness,"Derridaand Foucault are por-trayed as "circumventing" s "historians"he "central nsights" hey achieve as philosophers oflanguage (presumablyof literary anguage in de Man's sense). Here again de Man defendsthe privilegeof literatureby reducing the concept of historicity, by interpreting t as existingonly at the price of a "blindness" o the conceptual crisis of language, a crisis of whichliterature is constitutively"aware."The way in which de Man's theory of literature and his devalorization of historicitymutuallycondition each other, both in Blindnessand Insightand inAllegoriesof Reading, isalso apparent in his interpretationof Rousseau, which he explicitly opposes to Derrida'sinterpretation. It is here, in the "technicalities"of his reading, that de Man's theory ofliteratureoperates most forcefully and its underlying assumptions are exposed with par-ticular clarity.As Gasch6 has noted, de Man'stheory of literaryself-reflexivity s formulated with thegreatest possible directness in "The Rhetoricof Blindness." n it, de Man argues that any text"that mplicitlyor explicitlysignifiesits own rhetoricalmode" is"literarynthe full sense of theterm"[136]. Moreover, he argues that, according to this definition of the literary,Rousseau'stext is exemplary, inasmuch as "itaccounts at all moments for its own rhetoricalmode"[139].De Man's view that Rousseau's text contains a theory of or accounts for its own rhetoricalmode is supported by two "givens":1) the "entireorganizationof his discourse"and 2) "whatit says about representationand metaphor . . . ."[136]. Butone could argue that these two"givens" re at bottom one, since clearly, for de Man, the issue of the "entireorganization"ofRousseau's discourse is determined by "what it says about representation and metaphor."Though Rousseau at times states that denomination is the origin of language and at othertimes, metaphor, de Man argues that the second statement should be, indeed is, privilegedover the first, hat it conveys Rousseau's rue insightand authorizes us to regard he firststate-ment as deluded. De Man does not argue this point, he assertsit. Here, at the outset of hisanalysis, the relationship between de Man's reading of Rousseau and his theory of literarylanguage reinforce each other in a highly problematic way. Because of the contradictorynature of Rousseau's statements concerning the origin of language, we can only be sureRousseau is telling us that metaphor is indeed the originof language if we already hold that itis and if,as a result,we privilegethose passages in which Rousseaudeclares that metaphor is

SDe Man includes Heidegger's"TheOriginof the Work of Art" n his listof worksthat lay the founda-tion for the writingof genetic history. Heidegger, like Derrida,would be in the position of employing ahistorical language (and the term "epoch" s of course Heideggerean as well as Derridean)inconsistentwith his philosophical insightconcerning language. Thisaspect of de Man'sinterpretationof Heideggerconsiderably complicates the question of Heidegger's"usefulness"n understandingde Man's theory ofliterature.

diacritics/ winter 1983 75



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the origin of language over those passages in which he qualifies or even contradicts thisdeclaration.Rousseau'saffirmation hat language is "originally"iguralor metaphorical is his central

insight, according to de Man, but it is also a misleadingstatement, for it is phrased in a histor-ical code that is not ultimately appropriatewhere language is concerned: "Rousseaugavetension and suspense to the storyof language and society by makingthem pseudo- histori-cal"[137]. The critic must thus restoreto "thestoryof language" ts fundamentallystructuralsignificance. He can do this if he recognizes two things. First, hat according to Rousseau'stheory of metaphor, metaphor and language in general refer not to a presence but to theabsence of any object and hence of any meaning or intention. Thus in concluding hisreading of the sixteenth chapter of the Essaisur I'originedes langues de Man writes: "themusical sign can referto silence .... Painting refersto the absence of all light and color,and . .. language refers to the absence of meaning"[131]. Second, the reader must under-stand that an entity that exists "independently of any specific meaning or intent [as bothlanguage and passion do, according to de Man] can never be traced back to a cause or anorigin" [132]. Thus, according to de Man, Rousseau'sconception of metaphor of necessityimplies a critique of the notion that language is in essence referentialand of the correlativenotion that language has an origin. When readfromthe perspective of Rousseau'stheory ofmetaphor, de Man argues, passages in which a term such as "origin" ppears can be giventheir true, synchronic significance. The structural, a-historical character Rousseau's textascribes to language thus becomes clear.But while Rousseau'saffirmation n the Essai hat language is"originally"igural s capitalin de Man's interpretation, he statusof that affirmationremains unclear, both because it iscontradicted by other statements made by Rousseau and because the status of metaphor isitself a problem to be elucidated. These issues come to the fore in de Man'scritque of Der-rida's Of Grammatology. The focus of de Man's dispute with Derrida's interpretationofRousseau is the third chapter of the Essai,where Rousseau deals with the problem of theorigin of metaphor. At stake in the interpretation of this chapter is the significance ofRousseau's statement that "thefirstlanguage must have been figured."As we have seen, deMan reads this as a declaration of the non-referentialnature of language. According to Der-rida'sreadingof the chapter in question, however, Rousseau does not see metaphoras refer-ringto an absence; instead, Derridaargues, Rousseau'stheory of metaphor is "classical"nthat he considers that though the metaphor does not correspond to the object it names, itdoes originallycorrespond to the emotional stateof the speakerwho utters t. Derridaarguesthat for Rousseau, metaphor derives from representation, and that its figuralsense is thusderived from (the notion of) a primarysense [Of Grammatology389].De Man's objection to Derrida's interpretationof this passage is curious and highlysignificant. He disputes it not because he considers that Derrida has misread Rousseau, atleast in the usual sense, but because Rousseau himself was "wrong"at this point andbecause, de Man clearly implies, Derrida should have recognized as much and read thepassage accordingly. According to de Man, metaphor, which refers to an absence, couldonly have been engendered by passion, which also refers to an absence: "allpassion is tosome degree passion inutile, made gratuitous by the non-existence of an object or a cause"[134]; metaphor is not, then, engendered by fearor need, which, de Man holds, refer imme-diately to concrete things (quoting Rousseau-"the firstspeech was not caused by hungerorthirst,but by love, hatred, pityand anger"- de Man adds: "Fears on the side of hunger andthirst and could never, by itself, lead to the supplementaryfigurationof language, it is muchtoo practical o be called a passion" 135]).Thus he concludes: "thethirdchapterof the Essai,the section on metaphor, should have been centered on pity, or itsextension: love (or hate)"[135, my emphasis]. Moreover, de Man refers back to this rectificationof Rousseau lateron,in a footnote to his assertion that Rousseau's text "has no blind spots":"Thechoice of thewrong example to illustratemetaphor (fear instead of pity) is a mistake, not a blind spot"[139]. A passage using historicalterms to describe the fundamentally figuraland structuralnatureof language "misleads" r "dramatizes," ccording to de Man, but it can nonethelessbe correctly interpreted by the critic who knows what Rousseau purportedlyknows: thatlanguage is in essence metaphorical and that metaphor is in essence non-referential.Apassage declaringthat metaphor representsor refersto something else can only be correctly76



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interpreted by being substantially modified, so that the "correct"example, pity, is usedinstead of the "incorrect" xample, fear.Such recastingof the text is never easy foran interpreter o justify,and seems even morequestionable in the light of the criticisms de Man himself levels at the entire tradition ofRousseaucriticism: hat itconsistently negates "ambivalence" n Rousseau's ext, "blottingoutthe disturbingpartsof the work" in order to do away "atall costs with these ambivalences"[111]. My concern here is not to defend the purityor integrityof Rousseau'stext, but ratherto ask what de Man'sextremely active and deliberate intervention in the text is designed toaccomplish, what interpretative ystem it protects. Inthe broadestterms, Iwould saythat it isdesigned to defend two essential points: the first is the exteriorityof metaphor to what deMan, borrowing explicitly from Derrida, calls "logocentrism"or "Westernphilosophy";thesecond is the simplicityof the origin, which entails a reductive (and hence reducible) con-cept of history.In "The Rhetoricof Blindness,"de Man takes the exteriorityof metaphor to "logocen-trism" o be axiomatic. For him, a language that is fundamentally metaphorical is one thatdoes not refer to any illusory presence or plenitude, but rather o an absence-of meaning,of intention, or, what is the same thing, of an object [131]. De Manargues that any theory oflanguage whose firstpremise is that language is metaphorical automatically "escapes fromthe logocentric fallacy"which "favorsoral language or voice over written language (ecriture)in terms of presence ... the unmediated presence of the self to its own voice .... ."[114].De Man thus criticizes Derridafor not acknowledging that Rousseau"meanswhat he says"when he makes metaphor the "origin" f language. But de Man's criticismof Derridaon thispoint obscures an even more crucial point of contention between them, albeit one de Mandoes not acknowledge: the status of metaphor. De Man consistently argues as if Derridaessentially agrees with him on the question of the exteriorityof metaphor to "metaphysics."Infact, both in Derrida'sreadingof the thirdchapterof the Essaiand elsewhere in hiswork, itis clear that this is not the case.The assertion that any theory of language which holds that language originates inmetaphorand that metaphor is in essence a pure signifier"does not belong to the logocentric'period'"is flatly contradicted by "LaMythologie Blanche,"6which, with "LeRetraitde laM6taphore," onstitutesthe most detailed treatment of the problem of metaphor in Derrida'swork to date. This essay confirms the argument of the section of Of Grammatologyon theorigin of metaphor in Rousseau by showing the role of rhetoricas the more or less naiveinstrument of a philosophy which furnishes it with all of its fundamental concepts. "LaMythologie Blanche"also analyzes the conception of metaphor as a pure signifierthat putsinto question the existence of any priorsignified.Thisconception of metaphor, according toDerrida, is also a philosophbme and to treat it as if it were not is

to naively assume thatrhetoric comes before philosophy, when, in fact, all of its organizing concepts- literature,language, the signifier- are furnishedby philosophy.7Thusthe critiqueof logocentrismdoesnot constitute a fortioria defense of metaphor or of literature:under certain circumstancesand in certain contexts a critique of both may be its most urgent task.De Man's rewriting of the chapter on the origin of metaphor and language is thusdesigned to protect the status of metaphor both within Rousseau's text and within thebroader, philosophical/literarycontext. It is also designed to protect a reductive theory ofhistory that is the corollary of any theory of literature-including de Man's-definingliteratureas closed or as self-reflexive.That de Man'sconcept of metaphor and of literaturedepends on a reductivetheory of historyand a concept of the originis evident in the steps hetakes to defend the unity of the originof language as described in Rousseau'swork. Thoughde Man condemns the concept of the origin as "deluded,"his critique of that concept ishighly selective: in a Hegelian manner, a concept of the origin, though negated, is at the

6"LaMythologie Blanche,"Marges [Paris:Editionsde Minuit, 1972]; translatedas "WhiteMythology,"Marginsof Philosophy [Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1982].7Withrespect to the concept of a pure signifier,see "La tructure,Lesigne, et le jeu dans le discoursdessciences humaines,"L'Ecrituret la diff6rence [(Paris:Editionsdu Seuil, 1967):412]; "Structure, ign,andPlay in the Discourseof the Human Sciences,"Writingand Difference [(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1978):281].diacritics / winter 1983 77



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same time retained and raised to a "higher" evel in de Man's defense of literature.Thisstance is evident in the critique de Man addresses to Derrida. De Man argues that Derrida'sreadingof the thirdchapter of the EssaiprivilegesRousseau's"mistake" ver his fundamentalinsight:that it makes it seem that Rousseau takes need to be the originof language when heis actuallyarguing hat passion is. But this argumentoversimplifiesDerrida's nterpretation.Infact, Derridaargues that in the Essai,need and passion are both originsof language, and thatthe affirmation hat passion is the origin of language does not preclude need fromalso func-tioning as an origin of language, "anotherorigin"[319].De Man insiststhroughout "TheRhetoricof Blindness" hat Rousseau (except for a rare"mistake") onsistently posits a single origin for metaphor and ultimatelyfor language. Thatorigin, in de Man'sview, is a void or an absence, but it is nonetheless a single, unified point.Passion is the simple originof language. Nothingness is the single "referent" r "meaning" flanguage and of metaphor. Derrida'sanalysis of the double origin of language does not,however, state that Rousseau is blind to the actual "origin" f language in absence or in avoid. Rather t argues that the theory of language as originating n passion and the theory oflanguage as originating n need point to an originwhich is irreduciblydouble, and which, assuch, predetermines any opposition which could be made between presence and absence,between passion and need. This Derridacalls "thelaw of the supplement."Itis not a law dic-tating that figural language has no referent other than nothingness but ratherthat figurallanguage and language in general have their origin in a naturewhich is never identical toitself- not even in the form of an absence [Of Grammatology332,335].It is because Derrida does not share de Man's reductive concept of the origin and ofhistorythat he does not privilege Rousseau- or any other writer- in the way de Man does.ForDerrida,all discourse, that of Rousseau included, belongs to a metaphysicaltradition hatconstitutes the "historical"heritage of all language: "Rousseau is not the only one to becaught in the graphicof supplementarity.All sense and as a resultall discourse iscaught in it"[349]. To privilege Rousseauas de Man does is to negate what Derridacalls the historicityofRousseau's discourse- its place "within"a metaphysical tradition in which all discourse isimplicated. The relationshipof Rousseau's work to this tradition, Derridaargues, is so com-plex that the question of Rousseau's"exteriority"o it- de Man'squestion of whether or nothis text has any "blindspots"- has no sense other than that which the metaphysicaltraditionitselfgives it. The historicityof which Derridawrites here is of a peculiar type: it is the signthat all discourse, all language, is implicated in an "ensemble"that can no longer appro-priatelybe designated by the term "history."f it cannot, it is clearly because for Derridathishistoricityis itself negated when the "ensemble"in question is reduced to the status of ahistory, insofaras, within that same ensemble, history implies a simple linearstructureand asingle, undivided origin.8Once reduced to a history,the metaphysicaltradition becomes the object of a historicaldiscourse that claims to exist outside and independently of that tradition, but, as Derridaargues, this is never the case. History, like all discourse, is metaphysical. Derridajudges,then, that the metaphysical tradition cannot be reduced to a history,but this is so preciselybecause the historicityof all discourse is irreducible. Inthis sense, then, there are no privi-leged discourses according to Derrida. The reinscriptionof a given term, while transformingit into an "absoluteother,"never precludes that term'sfunctioning"within"metaphysics. Allterms, including "literature"and "history" nd "science")are equally "historical." hat is, thecriticalforce of any term derives froma given context, with the understanding hat no singlecontext, no matterhow general, is ever all-determiningwith respect to a term'smeaning andstrategicvalue.If one compares "The Rhetoric of Blindness"to the chapter entitled "Metaphor" nAllegories of Reading (where de Man deals anew with Rousseau's Essai sur I'originedeslangues and the Second Discourse), the differences are striking. De Man's entire strategyseems to have changed. He appears to be no longer at odds with Derridaconcerning thesignificance of Rousseau'schoice of the word "giant"o illustrate he metaphorical origin of

8"lIfhe word history'idnot entail n itself he motifof a finalrepressionf difference, ne couldsaythatonlydifferencesan be from heoutset d'entr&ede jeu]andthoroughlydepart n part]historical'"["LaDiff6rance"12, my translation].78



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T I S M T T T Y P V R ~ I T L R D O EJ I H SmHLatSLITFD Y R K AS

~Z~~.R~t~iC~SrltrVIDILLlanguage:"YetRousseau stresses fright,and Derrida is certainly rightin statingthat the act ofdenomination that follows-calling the man a giant, a process that Rousseau describes as afiguraluse of language- displaces the referentialmeaning froman outward, visible propertyto an 'inward'feeling"[150]. Correspondingly,de Man no longer considers it a "mistake" orRousseauto have chosen fear to illustrate he figuralorigin of language. Instead,this choice"complicates and enriches the pattern to a considerable degree" [150]. A seemingly evenmore significant change is evident in a passage like the following, where de Man indicatesthat the positing of metaphor as the origin of language does not automatically remove agiven discourse from the metaphysical tradition or make it "deconstructive":"Metaphoroverlooks the fictional, textual element in the nature of the entity it connotes. Itassumes aworld in which intra-and extra-textualevents, literal and figuralforms of language can bedistinguished, a world in which the literal and the figuralare propertiesthat can be isolatedand, consequently, exchanged and substituted for each other. This is an error ... ."[152].Despite these changes, however, the essential elements of de Man'sargument in "TheRhetoricof Blindness"are retained in "Metaphor."Derridais still implicitly"blind" ccordingto the logic of de Man'sargument, for though de Man revises his view that itwas a "mistake"for Rousseau to designate fear rather han passion as the originof (figural) anguage, de Manis as insistentas ever that, for Rousseau, language has a single origin, and that that origin ismetaphor. Derridais still implicitlywrong when he argues that the originalfigure,"giant,"sin fact referentialfor Rousseau (that is, that it refers to an inward emotion), not becauseRousseau made a mistake when he chose fear as his example, but because de Man nowincludes fear in the list of "non-referential"erms, along with passion and language: "Themetaphor'giant,'used to connote man, has indeed a proper meaning (fear),but this meaningis not really proper: it refers to a condition of permanent suspense between a literalworld . . and a figuralworld"[151]. Similarly,de Man re-interpretsRousseau'sconcept ofdenomination to show that it is also, in essence, a metaphorical process. These parallelrevi-sions lead de Man to a confirmation of the conclusions of "The Rhetoricof Blindness":"Thestatement of the Discourse that 'the first nouns could only have been proper nouns' istherefore a statement derived from the logicallypriorstatement'thatthe first anguage had tobe figural.' There is no contradiction if one understands that Rousseau conceives ofdenomination as a hidden, blinded figure" 153]. De Man's aim inAllegoriesof Readingis stillessentially the same as in "The Rhetoric of Blindness." He still seeks to resolve-and toreduce-the contradiction that results because Rousseau posits now metaphor and nowdenomination as the origin of language. He is explicitly more in agreement with Derridathan ever, but implicitly and polemically as opposed as ever-that is, he is still implicitlyrespondingto the argumentthat Rousseaumakes denomination the single originof languageand not to the argument Derridaactually makes: that the origin of language for Rousseau isdouble, and thus the historicityof language, complex and irreducible.Ifde Man stillargues, inAllegoriesof Reading,that metaphor is the originof language forRousseau, it is because the general argument he makes in "The Rhetoricof Blindness" s stillin force. Indeed, de Man distinguishes between two levels or uses of the term "metaphor."One is complicit with a metaphysics of presence, with a naive and "erroneous"certitudeconcerning the possibilityof distinguishing iguraland literal anguage. The other level or useof the term is clearly more fundamental: "Metaphor s errorbecause it believes or feigns tobelieve in its own referentialmeaning"[151]. This sentence clearly indicates the "dedouble-ment"of metaphor in "Metaphor" nd also the privilege de Man continues to attach to andiacritics / winter 1983 79



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"unblinded"metaphor, one that"feigns" lindness by feigningto believe in its own referentialmeaning. At this fundamental level, the privilege of metaphor as the (structural)origin oflanguage and the corresponding privilege of literature are still very much intact: "Alllanguage is language about denomination, that is, a conceptual, figural, metaphoricalmetalanguage" [152-53]. And not only is the privilege of literarylanguage left intact by"Metaphor"; ts essential self-reflexivityis still clearly discernible: "Ifall language is aboutlanguage, then the paradigmatic linguistic model is that of an entity that confronts itself"[153].In writing of "deconstruction"as that term is elaborated in Jean-FrangoisLyotard'sDiscours, Figure, Gasche isolates a third moment-which corresponds to the moment ofreinscriptionas he defines it in connection with Derrida'sOf Grammatology- in the processof deconstruction. With this third moment (or "negativity"), deconstructionthen seeks toaccount for the irruptionof the extra-linguistic nto both the reflexivediscourse and into itsinvariable system of differentialtraits. It is an operation that takes aim at elucidating thelinguisticand non-linguisticconditions of the possibilityof reflection" DC 189]. To open thenotion of the text or of language to its outside, Gasche cautions, does "not,however, meanthat the text is to be precipitouslyconnected to the realand empiricaloutside"[182]withoutthe mutualconditioning of such concepts as "text" nd "outside" r "theempirical" irstbeingexamined. The "outside"of a text (or of language) is also that which "it harborsat its core"[183].From Gasche's argument here, one could conclude, against de Man, that the literarytext and (literary) anguage never confront an "outside" hat would be totally alien to them,but that this is so precisely because they never can be said to confront themselves. The textand (literary) anguage are at once themselves and other, so radicallyother that they cannotalways be confidently identified as text or literary anguage. What de Man offers is a choicebetween regardingthe "extra-linguistic"s the text in masquerade [Blindness 165] or as aphenomenal world that can only be conceived of "inthe substance of naturalism." neithercase, the perimeter of literature is respected and defended, for the extra-linguistic s eitherassimilated or rejected, the radicalestrangement of literatureand languagefrom themselvesis forestalled. De Man'swork constitutes a radical theory of literature,one that rejects alltraditionalformsof totalization, whether formal, aesthetic, hermeneutic, or historical. Butinspite of de Man's resistance to all attempts to close off literatureand treat it as a discreteobject, his work persistentlyreassures us that literature,literary anguage, and the text arethere all along, deconstituting themselves in a process that only confirms their priorityandtheir privilege. According to the logic of such a theory of literature,all forms of historyoreven of historicityare derived from language. However much literaturemay undercut itselfin de Man'stheory, it remains closed off froma historicity hat can be reduced neitherto anintra-worldlynor a transcendental conception and that, as such, figuresthe irruptionof thenon-linguistic"within"anguage and literature hemselves.De Man'stheory of literature s then a theory of self-reflexivity,and as such, itbelongs toa long philosophical tradition. But the traditionallyphilosophical nature of de Man'stheoryof literature should not be allowed to obscure the efficacity of his critique of philosophy,even of philosophy in its radicallycritical, Heideggerean form. For de Man's reading ofHeidegger's exegeses of Hblderlin argues that it is Heidegger's literaryaestheticism- histheory of the ultimatevalue of the work of art as the privileged locus forthe unconcealmentof Being-that is the basis of his entire critical strategy and of his radical questioning ofmetaphysics. And yet, de Manclearly indicates, it is in his pretensionto exceed metaphysicsand in his literary aestheticism that Heidegger is most theological and, hence, mostphilosophical in a traditionalsense.Fromsuch a critical stance as the one implied in de Man's reading of Heidegger, onewould have to say that it is always too lateto tryto restoreto theirstrict,philosophical mean-ing those philosophical termsthat have been loosely appropriatedby literary ritics. Indeed,the idea that a "philosophically rained"reader could remain perfectlyfaithful o the propermeaning of a term such as deconstruction is clearly naive, because it ignores the conflict offorces within philosophy. Forhow would a philosophical reader be properlytrained?Whatinstitutions-or extra-institutionalgroups-would certify his competence? In fact, everyattempt to clarifythe proper meaning of philosophical terms is an interpretation that is to80



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say, it confronts, not an entitythat isgiven, even in its refusalof itself,buta field of conflictingforces in which it too is enmeshed. The natureof this conflict is such that there is no masterterm to resolve it- whether that supposed term is Being,or literature,or deconstruction. Butequally important,there is no way to simply determine the terrain philosophical or literarycritical-on which this conflict is played out, and this fact precludes the possibility of aresolutionof the conflict througha properlypoetic or properly philosophical definitionof theterms involved. Thus if deconstruction has a strategically mportantrole to play in the con-flictssurrounding ts"proper"meaning, it is because it is neithera philosophical nor a literaryterm, and because it thereby indicates that the conflict between literarycriticism andphilosophy is not just a border conflict for either, but one also at the core of both.

WORKSCITEDde Man, Paul.Allegoriesof Reading. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.. Blindness and Insight. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

. "Les Exegeses de H61derlin par Martin Heidegger." Critique 100-101(1955):800-819.*""Impasse de la critique formaliste." Critique 109(1956):483-500.. "Resistance to Theory." Yale French Studies 63(1982):3-20.. "The Rhetoric of Temporality." Interpretation: Theory and Practice. Ed. Charles S.

Singleton. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969, 173-209.Derrida,Jacques. "LaDiff6rance."Marges. Paris:Seuil, 1972, 1-29;"Diff6rance."MarginsofPhilosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1982.. La Dissemination. Paris: Seuil, 1971; Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson.Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1981.. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1974.. "LaMythologie blanche." Marges. Paris: Minuit, 1972, 247-324; "White Mythology."Marginsof Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1982.. L'Oreillede I'autre.Ed. Claude Levesque and ChristieV. McDonald. Montreal:VLBEditeur,1982.. "LaStructure, e signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines."L'Ecrituretla diff6rence. Paris:Seuil, 1967, 409-28; "Structure,Sign and Play in the Discourse ofthe Human Sciences." Writingand Difference. Trans.Alan Bass. Chicago: UniversityofChicago Press, 1978.. "Le Retrait de la metaphore." Poesie 7(1979):103-26; "The Retrait of Metaphor."Enclitic2.2(1978):5-34.Gasche, Rodolphe. "Deconstructionas Criticism."Glyph 6(1979):177-215.

"'Setzung' and 'Ubersetzung': Notes on Paul de Man." Diacritics 11.4(Winter1981):36-57._. "Du trait non adequat: La notion du rapportchez Heidegger."Les Finsde I'homme.Paris:Galilee, 1981,133-59.

* Thisessayand "Impasse e la CritiqueFormaliste" ave recentlybeen translatedand republished n anexpanded edition of Blindness and Insight.Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1983.

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philosophy before literature deconstuction, hisoricity, and the work of pal de man

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