Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Derrida - Ear of Other
Derrida - Ear of Other
20 Otobiogruphics
news repeat s an affirmation (yes, yes), since it affi rms the
return, the rebegi nning. and a certain kind of reproduction
that preserves whatever comes back. then its very logic must
give rise to a magisterial institu tion. Zarathustra is a master
(Lehrer ), and as such he dispenses a doct rine and intend s to
found new instit utions.
Instit uti ons of the "yes:' whi ch have need ofears . But howso?
He says. "Des eine bin Ich. dos andre sin d meine Schriften."
I am one thing. my wri ti ngs are anot her mailer. Before I di scuss
them one b)' one. let me touch upon the question of their bei ng
understood or not understood. I' ll do it as casually as decency per -
for t he for this question certa inly hasn't co me yet . The
li me for me hasn I come yet : some of my wr iti ngs will be born only
post hu mously. Some day institutions Ilns rilu rionenl will be needed
in. wh ich men live an d teach as I co nceive of livi ng and teach ing: It
might even happen thai a few chairs will then be set as ide leigene:
appropriated tal for the interpretation of Zomthusrm. But it would
contradict my character entirely if I expected ears and hands for my
. Ioday: that today one doesn't hear me and doesn't accept my
Ideas IS not only compre he ns ible . it even see ms right to me, I don't
want to be confounded with ol hers-this requ ires Iha t I do no r con.
fuse myself.
The ear. then. is also at stake in teaching and in its new
institutions, As you know . everyt hing gets wound up in Nietz-
sche's ear, in the motifs of his labyr inth. Without gelling in
any deeper here. I simply note the frequent reappearance of
this motif in the same chapter ("Wh y I Write Such Good
Hooks") of Ecce Homo,' and I right away step back, through
""" ;niRI' w,'rd,m posrhum Rclx:lTlm; Kaufmann translates thi s ph ra.<O! as
"Some <HI' burn posthumnusl y: '_ Tr.
'Onll example among ma ny: "All of us know, even know from exp.' ri.,nn' .
whnt II lunll-I';lrnd b east Ihe ass is Iwus etn Lengobr isl]. Widl then, I da r.,
assert that I have thu smallest ea rs. This is of no small interest 10 thu tiu l"
ladies jWl"illl";nl _il SUllms to me Ihal thuy may feel I understand thum
I am the onli(/ss pur " x(:l!IlencI' a nd th us a world -his tonc al mon stur_ 1am in
Gwe k and not unly in Gm,k. the A"l i.Ghrist ." '
Olobi ogruphies 21
another effect of the labyrinth, towa rd a text altogether at the
ot her end. entitled On the Ful ure of Our EducolionaJ Inslitu-
lions (1872).
I have, I am. and I demand a keen ear. I am (the) both . (the)
double, I sign double. my writings and I make two. I am the
(masc uli ne) dead the living (feminine) and I am desti ned 10
them. I come from the two of them. I address myself to them,
and so on. How does the knot of all these considerations tie
up with the tangled politics and policies in The Fulure . . _?
Today's teaching establishment perpetrates a crime against
life understood as the li ving feminine: disfigurati on disfigures
the matemal tongue. profanation profanes its body.
By nature . everyone nowad ays wr ites and speaks the Gennan
tongue as poorly and vulgarly as is possi ble in t he era of journalislic
German: tha t is why the nobly gifted youth should be taken by force
and placed und er a bell-jar IGlasglocke) of good taste and severe
linguistic di sci pline, If th is proves impossible. I would prefer a re-
turn to spoken latin because I am asha med of a language so dtsfi g-
ured and so profa ned. . . . Instead of that purel y practi cal method of
inst ruction by whi ch t he teacher mu st accus tom his pupils to severe
self-disc ipli ne in the langua ge, we find everywhere the ru diments of
a hi stcrlco-scho lastic method of teaching t he mot her-longue: that is
10 say. people treat it as if it were a dead language and as if one had
no obligati on to t he present or the future of this lan guage, ("Second
Lecture"
There is thus a law that creates obligations with regard to
language, and parti cul arl y with regard to t he language in
which the law is stated: the mother tongue. Thi s is the livin g
language (as oppo sed to Latin . a dead, paternal language. the
language of another law where a secondary rep ression has set
in-the law of death), There has to be a pact or alli ance with
the living language and language of the living femi nine against
death. against the dead. The repeated affi rmation- li ke t he
contract, hymen . and alliance-always belongs to language: it
comes down and comes back to the signature of the maternal.
nondcgenerat o. noble tongue. The detour through Ecce Homo
22 Otobiogra phies _
will have given us thi s to thi nk about: lli story or historical
science, which puts to dea th or treats the dead, which dea ls or
negotiates with the dea d, is 'the scie nce of the father. ft occu-
pies the place of the dead and the place of the father. To be
sure. the master, even the good master. is also a father, as is
the master who prefers Latin to bad German or to the mis-
treated mother. Yet the good master trains for the service of
the mother whose subject he is: he comma nds obedience by
obeying the law of the mother tongue and by respecti ng the
living integrity of its body.
The historical method has become so universal in our time. that even
the li ving body of language [der lebendi ge Leib der Spruchel is sacri-
ficed to its anatomical study. But this is precise ly where culture
(Bildung) begins-namely, in understand ing how to lreal the living
as living [des Lebendige ols Iebendi g], and II is here too that the
mission of the master of culture begins: in suppressing ' historical
interest' which tries to impose itself there where one must above all
else act (hondeln: to treat or handl e] correctly rather than know cor-
rectl y (richti gJ. Our mot her -tongue is a domain in which the pupil
must learn to act correct ly.
The law of the moth er. as language, is a "domain" IGebiel),
a living body not to be "sacrificed" or given up [prei sgeben]
dirt-cheap. The expression "sich preisgeben" can also mean to
give or abandon oneself for a nominal fee, even to prostitute
onese lf. The master must suppress the movement of this mis-
treatment infl icted on the body of the mother tongue, thi s
letting go at any pri ce. He must learn to treat the living femi-
nine correctly.
These cons iderations will guide my approach to this "youth-
ful work" (as they say) on the Future ofOur Educational Insu-
tutlons. In thi s place of a very dense cr isscrossing of questions.
we must approach selectively. moving between the issue of the
pedagogical institution. on the one hand . and, on the other.
those concerning life-death. the-dead-the-llvtng. the language
contract. the signat ure of credit. the biological. and the bio-
graphieal. The det our taken through Ecce Homo will serve. in
Olobiollrophies 23
hath a parad oxical and a prudent manner. as our protocol. I
shall not invo ke the notion of an "already," nor will I attempt
to illumi nate the "youthful" with a teleological insight in the
form of a "lesson:' Yet. without giving such a retro-perspec tive
the sense that it has acquired in the Aristot elia n-Hegelian tradi -
tion, we may be able to fall back on what Nietzsche himself
teaches about the line of "credit " extended to a signature. about
delaying the dat e of expiration. about the posthumous differ -
ance bet ween him and hi s work. et cetera. Thi s of course com-
plicates the protocols of read ing with respect to The , . .
I give notice at the onset that I shall not muh tply these
protocols in order to di ssimulate whatever embarrassment
might arise from this text. That is. I do not aim to "clear" its
"author" and neutralize or defuse either what might be trou-
blesome in it for democratic pedagogy or "leftist" politi cs, or
what served as "language" for the most sinister rallying cries
of National Socialism. On the contrary. the greatest indecency
is de rigueur in this place. One may even wonder why it is not
enough to say: "Nietzsche did not think that ," "he did not
want that ," or "he would have surely vomi ted this.?" that
. , say -vomtt" deli bera tel y. x retescbe co nstantly draws our attention 10 the
value of learning to vomit. formi ng In thi s way one's test e. distaste. and
disgust. knowing how 10 use one's mouth and palat e. movi ng one's tongue
and IiIlS. ha ving good teelh or bei nt! hllrd-tIMllhed, undt!rSlandinll how to
speak an d to eat (but not just anyt hi ng!). All of this we know. as well as the
1.11:1 that the wo rd " Ekd " (disgust , nau.... ..a. wlInli n", to vomit) comes bacl
again and aKll in to set the slage lor evaluation. These <I re so m<l ny questions of
styles. It sho uld now be possib le lor lin analysis of the word ",.:1(['1: ' as we ll as
01 e"('1")1hing thai it carriet down wit h it. to make way for a ha nd-ta-hand
combat between Nietzsche and Hegel wirhin that space so admi rably marked
out by Werner Hamach er [Plemrnu . Fkel and /fl'gel in Hegel's
Geis t dl's Chris len tums . In the lectures On the f ut ure of Our Educotionol
Institution s. it is disgust thaI conlrols everything-s-and fint 01 all, in democ-
r'II:Y, journalism. the Stale and its Un iven ity. For example , following only the
lexica l occu rrences 01 ":kel : "Onl y by mean s 01 such di sci llli nt! can the young
man acquire tha t ph)'s ical lOil lhing (Ekeil lor the elegance of style whi ch Is so
dllf1n"daled and valued by IhOM! who worl in ioumalism fact ories and who
scnbble novels: by il alone is he irre\'ocab ly elevated al a st roke above 8
whu le hosl " f absurd quest ions and scruples . such. for Instance. as whl,lh" r
,
24 O'obiosrophies
there is falsifi cat ion of the legacy and an interpretive mysttfi -
calion goi ng on here. One may wonder how and why what is
so nai vely called a falsificati on was poss ible (one ca n' t fal si fy
just a nyt hing). how and why th e "same" words and the
"same" stateme nts-if they ar e indeed the same-c-might sev-
era l ti mes he made 10 serve certa in meanings and certain con-
texts that are said to be di ffer ent. even incompatible. One may
wonder why the only tea ch ing instit uti on or the only begin-
nin g of a teaching institution tha t ever succeeded in laking as
its model th e teaching of Nie tzsc he on teac hi ng will have bee n
a Nazi one.
First protocol: Th ese lectures do not belong simply to the
"posthumous" state mentioned by Ecce Homo. Had they title
to the pos thumous . t hey might have been binding on their
author. However . Nietzsche expressly said t hat he would not
want to see the text they constitute publi sh ed. even afte r his
death. What is more. he interrupted t he course of thi s d is-
course along th e way. I am not sayi ng that he repudiat ed it
entirely or that he repudiat ed those passages. for inst ance, that
would be most scandalous to any contemporary anti-Nazi
democrat. Nevertheless, let' s remember that he "swore" not to
[Berthold ] Auerbach lind (Karl I Ouukow lire reall y poet s. for his disgust [Ekel]
lit both will be so grea t tha t he will be unabl e to read them any longer, an d
thus the problem will be so lved for him, Lei no on e imagin e that it Is an easy
m..uee 10 develop thi s feeli ng 10 the extent n_ ry in order to have this
physi cal loathing; but let no one hope to reach sound aestheti c judgments
along any other reed than the thorny one of language. and by this J do not
m....n philological resNrch , bUI self-discipli ne in one' s mother-to ngue" (-Soc-
ond l.el.1ure").
Wll houl wi sh ing to e xploit the German word -Sig.nolu r." one cou ld Ny that
Ntetasche's hi st ori ca l disgust is eroused liDt of. 1I by the signature of hi s ere--,
that by wh ich his era di stingui shes, si gnifies. c;haracterires. and identifies it-
'10 self: namely, the democrati c signature. To this sign at ure. Nletzscbe opposes
another one that is untimel y, yet to come lind eull enachrontsne. One could
reread the " First LI!CI ure" lrom this poi nt of view. ..... ith particular attentrcn to
this passage; " But thi s 1>1'101185 to the signature without value Inichtswilrdillen
Signu tur] 01our present culture. The fighb of gentus have been d"rno(;rali t.llu
so that people may be reli eved 01the labor by which one forms oneself, and of
the personal necesaity of cultu re IBildungsol'bt:i1. BHdunllSnotl."
Ol obioBruphies 25
publish these lect ures. On July 25, 1872, aher the Fift h Lee-
ture. he writes to Wagner that "in the beginning of the coming
winter, I intend to give my Basel audience the six th and sev-
enth lectures ' on the future of our educa tional instit utions .' I
wa nt at least to have done wilh it. even in the diminished and
infer ior for m with which I have treated th is theme up until
now. To t reat it in a superi or form, I would have to become
more ' mature' and try to edu cate myself." However , he will
not deliver these two last lect ures and will refu se to publish
them. On December 20 . he wr ites to Malvida von Meysenbug:
" By now you will have read these lectures and have been
start led by th e story's abru pt endi ng after suc h a long prelude
(he is referring to the narrative ficti on. the imaginary conver-
sation th at opens the first lecture], and to see how th e thi rst
for genuinely new thoughts and propositions ended up losing
itself in pu re negativit y and numerous digressions. Thi s read-
ing makes one thi rsty and, in the end. the re is nothing to
dri nk! Truthfully. what I set out to do in th e final lecture-a
series of noct urnal illumi nations filled wit h ext ravagances and
colors-was not suitable for my Basel audience, and it was a
good thing the words never lefl my mouth" (italics addedI,
And toward the end of t he following February. he writes:
"You must believe me . .. in a few years I will be able to do
bett er , and I will want to. In th e meanti me. these lectures have
for me the value of an exhorta tion: they ca ll me to a duty and
a task that are d isti nct ly incumbent upon me. . . . These lec-
tures are summary and, what is more, a bit improvised. . . . .
Fritsch was prepared. to publish them. but I swore not to pub--
lish any book th at doesn't leave me wit h a conscience as clear
as an angel 's ,"
Olher prot ocol: One mu st allow for the "gen re" whose code
is cons tant ly re- marked, for nar rative and fictional fonn and
the "indirect style," In short , one mus t allow for all the ways
intent imnizes or demarcates itself , demar cating the text by
leavi ng on it the mark of genre . These lect ures, given by an
academic 10 academics and students on t he subject of' studies
in t he university and seconda ry school. amount to a theatrica l
26 Otobiographies
infrac tio n of the laws of genre and aca demici sm. For lack of
t ime . I will not ana lyze these tra its in themselves. Howe ver ,
we should not ignore the invit ation extended to us in the
Preface to the lectures where we are asked to read slowly. Hke
anachro nistic readers who escape the law of their time by
taking ti me to read-all the time it takes, without say ing "for
lack of ti me" as I have just done. These arc the ter ms that wil l
enable one to read bet ween the lines . as he as ks us to do. but
also to read witho ut trying to preserve "ancient ru les" as one
usually does. This requires a medltotlc generis futuri, a practi -
cal meditatio n which goes so far as to give itself ti me for an
effective destructi on of the secondary school and univers it y.
"What mu st happen between the ti me when new legislators .
in the service of a totally new cu lt ure . will be born and the
present ti me? Perh aps the dest ructi on of the Gymnasiu m [the
German secondary school ]. perhaps even the destruction of
the university or. at t he very least. a transformati on of these
teaching estab lis hments whic h will be so total that their an-
cient ru les will seem in the eyes of the future to be the re-
mains of a cave-dwellers ' civi lizat ion." In the mea nti me,
Nietzsche advises us . as he will do in the case of Zurct hus trc.
to forget and des t roy the text, but to forget and destroy it
throu gh act ion .
Taki ng into account t he present scene , how shall I in turn
si ft through this text ? And what is to be ret ained of it?
In the first place . a phoen ix mot if. Once again, the destruc-
t ion of life is only an appearance; it is the destruct ion of the
ap peara nce of life. One buries or burns what is already dead
so that life, the living feminine. will be rebo rn and regenerated
from these as hes. The vita li st theme of degenerati on/regenera-
tion is active and ce nt ral throughout the argument. Thi s revi-
tali zati on . as wn have already see n, must first of all pass by
way of the tongue, that is, by wa y of the exercise of the tongue
or language, the Ireotmenl of its body, the mout h and the car.
passing between the natural, li ving mother lon gue and the
scienti fic, formal. dead pat ernal language. And since it is a
qu esti on of treat ment , this nec essarily involves ed ucatio n,
Otohiographies 27
tranung. d isci pli ne. The anni hi lation [Vemichtung] of the
gymnasium has to prepare the grounds for a renaissance [Neu-
geburtl. (The most recurr ent theme in the lect ures is that the
university. regardless of its op inion in the matter, is nothing
but the produ ct or further development of what has bee n pre-
formed or programmed at the secondary sc hool. l The act of
destruct ion destroys only that whic h. bei ng al ready dcgcner-
atod, offers itself selec tively to ann ihilat ion. The expression
"degenerat ion" desi gnates both the loss of vital, genetic , or
generous forces and the loss of kin d. either species or genre:
t he Entcrtung. Its frequent recu rrence characterizes cu lture,
notably uni ver sity cult ure once it has become state-controlled
and journali stic. This concept of degenerati on has-already.
you could say- t he st ructure that it "will" have in later anal-
yses, for exa mple in The Genealogy of Monds. Degenerati on
doe s not let life dwindle away th rough a regu lar and conti nual
decline and according to some homogeneou s process. Rather.
it is touched off by an inversion of val ues when a hostil e and
reacti ve principle act ua lly beco mes the act ive enemy of li fe.
The degenera te is not a lesser vitality; it is a life pr inciple
hostile to life.
The word "degenerati on" proliferates partic ularly in the
fifth and last lecture. where the condit ions for the regenerative
leap are defined . Democrati c and equalizing ed uca tion, would-
be academic freedom in the un iversit y, the maximal extens ion
of cult ure-all these mu st be replaced by const raint, disci-
plin e [Zucht], and a process of selection under the d irec tion of
a guide, a leader or Fuhrer. even a grosse Fuhrer. It is only on
this cond iti on that the German spirit may be saved from its
enemies-that s pirit which is so "virile" in its "seriousness"
lmcnnllch ernst], so grave, hard . and hardy; that spirit which
has bee n kept safe and sound since Luther, the "son of a
miner," led t he Reforma tio n. The German university must be
res tored as a cultural instituti on , and to that end one mu st
"renovate and resusci tate t he purest ethical forces . And thi s
must always be repeated to the st udent's cred it. li e was able to
learn on the fi eld of baili e [18131 what he could learn least of
28 Otobiogru phies
all in the sphere of 'academic freedom': that one needs a
grosse Fuhrer and tha t all formati on begins with
obedi ence." The whole misfortunc of today's students can be
explained by the fact that they have not found a Fuhrer. They
remain j uhrertcs. without a leader. "For I repeat it , my
friends ! All culture [Hildung] begins wit h the very opposite of
that which is now so highl y esteemed as 'academic freed om':
Bildung begins with obedience [Gehcrscmketrl. subordinat ion
IUnterordnung), di scipline IZuchtl and sub jection (Dienstbar-
keil) . Just as great leaders (die grossen Fuhrer] need followers,
so those who are led need t he leaders lsc bedurfen die zu
Fuhrenden der FOhrer)-a certain reciprocal predisposition
prevails in the order [Ordnu ng] of s pirits here-yes, a kind of
preestablished harmony, Th is eterna l order . , : '
This preestablished ord ina nce or ordering of all eternity is
precisely what the prevaili ng cult ure would attempt today to
destroy or invert .
Doubtless it would be naive and crude simply to extract the
word "Fuhrer" from thi s passage and to let it resonate all by
itself in its Hitleri an consonance. with the echo it rece ived
from the Nazi orchestration of the Nietzschea n reference, as if
this word had no other possible context. But it would be just
as peremptory to deny that something is going on here that
belongs to the same (t he same what? the riddle remains), and
which passes from t he Nietzschean Fuhrer. who is not merely
a schoolmaster and master of doct rine. to the Hitlerran Fuhrer,
who also wan ted to be taken for a spirit ual and intellect ual
master, a guide in scholastic doctrine and practice, a teacher
of regeneration. It wou ld be just as peremptory and politi call y
unaware as saying: Nietzsche never wanted that or thought
that , he would have vomited it up . or he didn' t intend it in
that manner, he didn't hear it with that ear. Even if thi s were
possibly true. one would be justified in findin g very littl e of
interest in such a hypothesis (one I am examining here from
the angle of a very restricted corpus and whose othe r comp ll-
cations I set aside). I say th is because, first of all, Nietzsche
died as al ways before his name and therefore it is not a ques-
Ol obi ogr ophi es 29
tion of knowing what he wou ld have thought , wanted. or
done. Moreover. we have every reason to believe that in any
case such things would have been quit e complicated- t he ex-
ample of Heidegger gives us a fair amount to think about in
this regard. Next, the effects or structure of a text are not
reducible to its "truth." to the inte nded meaning of its pre-
sumed aut hor. or even its supposedly unique and identifiable
signatory. And even if Nazism. far from being the regeneration
called for by these lect ures of 1872, were only a symptom of
the accelerated decomposition of European cult ure and soci-
ety as diagnosed, it still remai ns to be explai ned how reactive
degenerati on could expl oit the same language, the same
words. the same utt erances. the same rall ying cries as the ac-
tive forces to wh ich it stands opposed . Of course, neit her this
phenomenon nor this specular ruse eluded Nietzs che.
The question that poses itself for us might take this form:
Must there not be some powerful utt erance-produci ng ma-
chine that programs the movements of the two opposing
forces at once, and which couples, conjugates, or marries them
in a given set. as life (does) death? (Here. all the difficulty
comes down to the determination of such a set , which can be
neither simply lingui stic, nor simply ht stort co-pol tttcal , eco-
nomi c, ideological. psycho-phantasmat tc. and so on. That is,
no regional agency or tribunal has the power to arrest or set
the limits on the set, not even that court of "last resort" be-
longing to ph ilosophy or theory, which remai n subsets of this
set.] Neit her of the two ant agonisti c forces can break with this
powerful programmi ng machine: it is their des lination; they
draw their points of origin and their resources from it; in it.
they excha nge utt erances that are allowed to pass through the
machi ne and into each other, car ried along by family resem-
blances , however incompatibl e they may someti mes appear.
Obviously, thi s " machine" is no longer a machine in the clas -
sic philosophical sense, because there is "life" in it or "life"
takes part in it, and because it pla ys with the opposition Iifel
death. Nor would it be correct td say t hat this "program" is a
program in the teleological or mechanistic sense of the term.
30 Olobiagrophies
Tho "programming mach ine" that interests me here docs not
call onl y for decipherment but also for transformation-that
is. a practi cal rewriting according to a theory-practi ce rela-
tionship which , if poss ible. would no longer be part of the
program. It is not enough just to say thi s. Such a transforma-
live rewriting of the vast program-if it were possible-would
not be produced in books (I won't go back over what has so
often been said elsewhere about genera l writing) or through
readings , courses, or lectures on Niet zsche's writings. or those
of Hitl er and the Nazi ideologues of prewar times or tod ay.
Beyond all regional cons iderations (hi stori cal . poltico-
economic. ideological. et cetera). Europe and not only Europe.
this ce ntury and not only this century are at stake. And the
stakes include the " present" in which we are. up to a ce rtain
point, and in which we take a position or take sides.
One can imagine the following objection: Careful! Nie-
tzsche 's utterances are not the same as those of the Nazi ideo.
logues, and not only because the latter grossly caricaturize the
former to the point of apishness. If on e does more than extract
ce rtain short sequences . i.f one reconstitutes the entire syntax
of the system with t he subtle refinement of its articulations
and its paradoxical reversals, et cetera. then one will clearl y
see that what passes elsewhere for the "sa me" utt er ance says
exact ly the opposit e and corresponds instead to the inverse. to
the reactive inversion of the very thing it mimes . Yet it would
st ill be necessary to account for the possibility of thi s mimetic
inversion and pervers ion. If one refuses the distinctio n be-
tween unconscious and deli berate programs as an abso lute
crit erion. if one no longer cons iders on ly intent-whether con-
scious or not -when readi ng a text , then the law that makes
the perverti ng simpli fication possible must lie in the struct ure
of the text "remaining" (by which we will no longer under-
stand the persisting substance of books, as in the expression
scripta manen!). Even if the int ention of one of t he signatories
or shareholders in the huge "Nietzsche Corporation" had
nothing to do wit h it. it ca nnot be enti rely fortuitous that the
disco urse bearing hi s name in society, in accordan ce wit h
CJtobiographies 31
ci \ jJ laws and editorial norms, has served as a legit imating
reference for tdoologues. There is nothing absolutely cont tn-
Kent about the fact that the only poli tical regimen to have
effecl h'ely brandished hi s name as a major and official banner
was Nazi.
I do not say this in order to suggest that this kind of "Nie-
tzs chea n" politics is the only one conce ivable for all eternity.
nor tha t it corresponds to the best reading of the legacy. nor
eve n that those wh o have not picked up this reference have
produced a bette r reading of it. No. The future of the Nietz-
sche text is not closed. But if. within the still-opcn contours of
an era. the only poli tics calli ng it self-procl ai ming itself-
Nietzschea n will have been a Nazi one. then thi s is necessaril y
signficent and musl be qu estioned in all of its consequences.
I am also not suggesti ng that we ought 10 rerea d " Nietzsche"
and his great poli tics on the basis of wh at we know or think
we know Nazism to be. I do not believe thai we as yet know
how to think wh at Nazis m is. The task remains before us. and
the politica l reading of t he Nietzschca n body or corpus is part
of it. I would say the same is Irue for the Heid egger ian. Marx-
ian. or Freudian corpus. and for so many others as well .
In a word. has the "great" Nietzschean politics mi sfired or is
it, rather. still 10 co me in the wake of a seismic convulsion of
whi ch National Soci ali sm or fascism will turn out to have
been mere episodes?
I have kepi a passage from Ecce Homo in reserve. It gives us
10 unde rstand that we shaJl read t he name of Niet zsche only
when a great politics will have effectively entered int o pla y. In
the interim. so long as that name sti ll has not been read, any
question as to whether or not a given political sequence has a
Ntctzschcan character would remain pointless. The name sti ll
has its whole fut ure before it. Here is the passage:
I know my fate [Jell kenna meln Los]. One day Illy name will be
associated with the memor y of scmet hlug mon strou s [Ungcheures j-,
il cri sis wit hout equa l 0 11 ea rth. t he mos t profou nd coll ision of cnn -
science [Cewlssens -Knlliston ]. a dec tstcn IEntschi edungl thai was
32 Otoblollraphies
conjured up ogainsl everyt hi ng t hat had been believed. demanded.
hall owed so far. I am no man . I am dynamile.- Yet for all that. there
is nothing in me of a founder of a religion-religions are affairs of the
rabble; I find it necessary 10 wash my hands afte r I have come inl o
contact wit h re ligious peo pl e.c-t want no " believers": I t hink I am
100 mali ci ous to belie ve in myself: I never spea k to masses-c. l have a
terr ible Iear that one da y I will be pronounced holy: you wil l guess
why I publish thi s book hefore; it shall prevent peopl e from doing
mi schief wi th me.
I do nol want to be a hol y man: sooner even a buffoc n.e-Perhaps I
am a buffoon.- Yet in spite of that-or rat her not in s pite of it. be-
ca use so far nobody has bee n more mendacious t han holy men- the
truth speaks out of me. ..
The concept of politics will have merged entirely with a war of
spirits: all power struct ures of the old society will have been ex-
ploded--all of t hem are based on lies: there will be wars the like of
wh ich have never yet bee n see n on ea rth . It is only beginning with
me thai t he earth knows great poli lics [grosse Polifikl . ''' Why I Am a
Destiny")
We are not, I believe. bound to deci de. An int erp reti ve dect-
slon does not have to draw a li ne between two intents Dr two
polit ical contents. Our in ter pret ati ons will not be readi ngs of a
hermen eutic or exegetic sort, but rath er poli tical Int erventions
in t he poli tical rewriting of the text and its destinati on. This is
the way it has always been-and always in a singular man-
nerc-for example. ever since wh at is called the end of phi-
losophy. and begi nning wit h the textual Indicator named "He-
gel." Thi s is no accident. It is an effect of the dest tnat tonal
structu re of all so-called post-Hegelian texts. There ca n always
be a Hegelianism of the left and a Hegelianism o! t he right . a
Heideggerianism of the left and a Heideggerianism of the right .
a Nietzsc heanism of the right and a Nietzschean ism of the left.
and even. let us not overlook it. a Marxism of the right and a
Marxism of the left. The one can always be the other. the
double of the other.
Is there anythi ng "in" the Niet zschcan cor pus that could
help us comprehend the double int erpret ati on and the so-
Oroblo1{raphies 33
called perve rsion of the text? The Fifth lecture tells us that
there must be something un hei mJich-unca nny-about the
enforced repressi on (UnterdruckungJ of the least degenerate
needs . Why " unheimlich"? This is another form of the same
question.
The ear is uncan ny. Uncanny is what it is; double is what it
call become; large or small is what it can make Drlet happen (as
in lalsser-Iai re. since the car is the most tendered and most open
organ. the one that. as Freud reminds us. the infan t ca nnot
close]: large or small as well the manner in whi ch one may offer
or lend an ear. It is to her-this ea r- that I myself will feign to ad-
dress myself now in conclusion by speaking sti ll more words in
your ear. as promised . about your and my "aca demic freedom."
When the lectur es appear to reco mmend lingui st ic di scipline
as a counter to the kind of "aca demic freed om" that leaves
st udents and teachers free to the ir own thou ght s Dr programs. it
is not in order to set cons traint ever agai nst freed om. Behi nd
"academic freedom" one ca n discern the sil houette of a CDn-
straint which is all the more feroci ous and implacable because
it conceals and disgui ses itself in the form of lai sser-faire.
Through the said "academic freedom," it is t he State that con-
trols everyt hing. The State: here we have t he main defendant
indi cted in thi s tri al. And Hegel. who is the thinker of the State.
is also une of the principal proper names given to thi s guilty
party. In fact . the au tonomy of the uni versity. as well as of its
student and professo r inhabitants. is a ruse of the Slate. "t he
most perfect et hical organis m" (this is Nietzsche quoti ng He-
gel). The State wants to aUract docil e and unquestlonl ng Iunc-
no neries to itself. It does SD by means of strict controls and
rigorous constra ints which these functionar ies believe they ap-
ply to themselves in an act of total auto-nomy. The lectures ca n
thus be read as a mod er n criti que of the cult ural mach inery of
State and of the educat ional sys tem that was. even in yester-
day's industr ial society, a fundamental par t of the State appara-
tus. If today such an apparatus is un its way to being in part
replaced by the media and in par t associated wit h them. this
on ly makes Nietzs che's crit ique of journalism- which he never
34 Otobiographies
d issociates from the educ ationa l a pparatus-all the mor e strik-
ing. No doubt he implement s hi s crit ique from a poi nt of view
from that would make any Marxist analysis of thi s machine ry,
incl uding the organizing concept of " ideology:' ap pear as yet
anot her symptom of degeneration or a new form of subjection
to the Hegelian State. But one would have to loo k at thi ngs
more clo se ly: at the se vernI Marxist concepts of State, at
Nietzsche's opposition to soci a lis m and democracy (in The
Twilight of the Idol s. he wri tes that "sci ence is pa rt of democ-
racy" ), at the oppositi on sci enc e/ideology, and so on. And one
would have to look mor e closely at both sides. Elsewhere we
shall pur sue the development of thi s critique of the Sta te ill the
fragment s of th e Nochloss a nd in Zcmthustrc. where, in the
chapter "On t he New Idol, " one read s:
State? What is that? Well, then, open your ears to me. For now I shall
speak to you about the death of peoples.
State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it tells
lies too: and this lie crawls out of its mouth: " I, the State, am the
people." Thai is a lie! ...
Confusion of tongues of good and evil: this sign I give you as the
sign of the state. Verily, this sign signifies the will to death! Verily, it
beckons 10 the preachers of death. . . .
"On earth there is nothing greater than I: the ordering finger of God
am I" - thus roars the monster. And it is only the long-eared lasses]
and shortsighted who sink to their knees! . . .
State I call it where all drink poison, the good and the wicked;
state. where all lose themselves, the good and the wicked: state,
where the slow suicide of all is called "life: '
Not on ly is th e State ma rked by the sign a nd t he pa ternal
figure of t he dead , it al so wants to pass itsel f off for the
mother-that is, for life, the people, the womb of t hi ngs t hem-
selves. Elsewhere in Zomt hustm ("On Great Events"), it is a
hypocr itical hound, which, li ke the Church, cl aims that its
voice comes ou t of th e "belly of real ity."
The hypocrit ical hound whispers in your car throu gh hi s
ed ucationa l sys te ms , which are actuall y acousti c or ocroa-
malic devices . Your ea rs grow larger and you tur n into long-
Ulobiographies 35
cared ass es whe n, instead of listening with small , finel y tu ned
cars and obeying the best masler and the best of leaders . you
think you arc free and au tonomous with respect to the State.
You ope n wide th e portal s [pa vilions ] of your cars to admit
the Stale, not knowing that it has al ready come under the
control of reactive and degenerate for ces . Havi ng become a ll
cars for this phonograph dog, you t ransform yo ur self into a
high-fidel ity recei ver, a nd the car-your car which is al so the
ear of th e other- begi ns to occu py in your body th e dtspr opor-
tlonatc pl ace of the " invert ed cripple."
Is t his our situa tion? Is it a questi on of the same car, a
borrowed ea r. the one that yo u arc lending me or that I lend
myself in speaking? Or rather, do we hear, do we understand
each other a lrea dy wit h anot her ear?
The ear does nol a nswer:
Who is list en ing to whom right here? Who was listening to
Nietzsche when. in the Fifth Lecture, he lent his voice to the
ph ilosopher of hi s fiction in or der to describe, for example ,
this situation?
Permit me, however, to measure this autonomy [Sefbststdndl gkelt]
of yours by the standard of this culture IHi/dung], and to consider
your university solely as a cultural establishment. If a foreigner de-
sires to know somethi ng of our university system. he first of all asks
emphatically: "How is the student connected with [hangt zusummen]
the uni versity?" We answer: "By the ear, as a listener." The foreigner
is astonished : "Only by the ear?" he repeats. "Only by the ear," we
again reply. The student listens. When he speaks, when he sees,
when he walks, when he is in good compan y. when he takes up some
branch of art: in short. when he Hves, he is autonomous, Le., not
depende nt upon the educational institution. Very often the student
writes as he listens; and it is only at these moment s that he hangs by
the umbilical cord of the university [on der Nobelschn ur der
Uni\'ersiftil hangtl.
Dream t his umbilicus : it ha s you by the car. It is an ear,
however, that dictates to you wha t yo u are writ ing at this
mo me nt when yo u write in t he mode of what is called " tak-
ing not es." In fact th e mot he r-the bad or false mother whom
36 Otobiogrophies
the teacher , as functionary of the State. can onl y simulate-
dictates to you the very thing that passes through your ear
and travels the length of the cord all the way down to your
stenography. This writing links you, like a leash in the.form
of an umbili cal cord. to the pat ernal belly of the State. Your
pen is its pen . you hold its teleprinter like one of those Hie
ballpoint s attached by a littl e chain in the post office-and
all its movements are induced by the body of the father figur-
ing as alma mater. How an umbilical cord can create a link to
this cold monster that is a dead father or the State-this is
what is uncanny.
You must pay heed to the fact that the omphalos that Nietz-
sche compels you to envision resembles both an ear and a
mouth. It has the invaginat ed folds and the involuted or ificial-
ity of both. Its center preserves itself at the bottom of an invisi-
ble. restless cavity that is sensitive to all waves which, whether
or not they come from the outside, whet her they are emitted or
received, arc always transmitt ed by thi s trajectory of obscure
circumvolutions.
The person emitti ng the discourse you are in the process of
lelcprinting in thi s situation docs not himself produce it; he
barel y emits it. He reads it. Just as you arc ears that transcribe,
the master is a mouth that reads, so that what you transcribe
is, in sum, what he deciphers of a text that precedes him, and
from which he is suspended by a similar umbilical cord. Here
is what happens. I read : " It is only at these moments that he
hangs by the umbilical cord of the uni versit y. He himself may
choose what he will listen to; he is not bound to believe what
he hears; he may close his ears if he does not care to hear .
This is the acroamat ic method of teaching." Abstraction itself:
the car can close itself off and contact can be suspended be-
cause the omphalos of a disjointed body lies it to a dissociated
segment of the fat her. As for the professor, who is he? What
does he do? Look, listen:
As for the professor , he spea ks to thes e listening stude nts. Whatever
else he may think or do is cu t off from the st udents' perce ption by
an immense gap. The prof essor often reads when he is speaki ng. As
Otobiographies 37
a rule he prefers to have as many listeners as possible: in the worst
of cases he makes do with jus t a few, and rarely with just one. One
speaking mouth, with many ears, and half as many writin g hands-
the re you have, to all appearances, the external academi c appa ratus
[dusserhc he akademische Appoml ]: there you have the University
culture machin e IBildungsmoschine] in action. The proprietor of the
one mouth is severed from and independent of the owners of the
many ears: and this double autonomy is enthus iastically called
"academic freedom." What is more. by increasi ng this freedom a
litt le, the one ca n speak more or less what he likes and the other
may hear more or less what he wants to-e-except that , beh ind both
of them, at a carefully ca lculated di stance, stands the State, weari ng
the intent expressio n of an overseer. to remind the professors and
st udents from lime to lime that il is the aim, the goal. the be-all and
end-all [Zweck , Ziel und Inbegriff] of thi s curious speaking and
hearing procedure.
End of quotati on . I have just read and you have just heard a
fragment of a di scourse lent or cited by Nietzsche, placed in
the mouth of an ironi c philosopher ("t he philosopher laughed.
not altogether good-nat uredly." before holding forth as has
just been related). This philosopher is old. He has left the
uni vers ity, hard ened and disa ppointed. He is not speaki ng at
noon but after noon-at midnight. And he has just protested
against the unexpected arrival of a flock, a horde, a swarm
[Schwarm] of studen ts. What do you have agains t students?
they ask him. At first he does not answer; then he says:
"So, my friend, even at midnight . even on top of a lonel y mountain, 1-
we shall not be alone: an d you yourself are bri ngi ng a pack of mis-
chief-making students alo ng with you , alt hough you well know that I
am only too glad to put di stance between me and hoc genus omne. I
don' t quite understand you, my distant friend ... in this place where,
in a memorable hour, I once came upon you as you sat in majestic
solitude, and where we wou ld earnestl y deliberate wit h each other
like knight s of a new order . Let those who ca n un derstand us listen to
us: but why should you bri ng with you a thr ong of peopl e who don' t
understa nd us ! I no longer recognize you, my distant friend!"
We did not think it proper to interrupt him du ring his di shea rt-
ened lamen t: and when in melanchol y he became silent. we did not
38 Ofobiogrophies
dare to tell him how greatly thi s di strustfu l repudi ati on of student s
vexed us.
Omphalos
The tempt ati on is strong for all of us to recognize ourselves
on the program of this staged scene or in the pieces of t his
musical score. I would give a better demonstration of this if
the academic li me of a lecture did not forbid me to do so. Yes.
to recogni ze oursel ves, all of us. in these premi ses and within
the walls of an ins titution whose collapse is heralded by the
old midnight philosopher. ("Const ructed upon clay founda-
tions of Ihe cu rrent Cymnc sten-cul t ure. on a cr umbling
groundwork. you r edifice would prove to he askew and un-
steady if a whirlwi nd were to swirl up." )
Yet. eve n if we were all to give in 10 the temp tat ion of
recogn izing our selves . and even if we could pursue the dem-
onstration as far as possible. it wou ld sti ll be. a century later.
all of us men-not all of us women-whom we recognize.
For such is the profound complicity that links together the
protagonists of this scene and such is the contract that con-
trols eve rything, even their conflicts: woman, if I have read
correctl y, never appears at an y point along the umbilical
cord. eit her to study or to teach . Sh e is the great "c ripple: '
perhaps. No woman or trace of woman. And I do not make
thi s remark in order to ben efit fmm that supplement of
seduction which today enters into all courtshi ps or court -
rooms. This vulgar proced ure is part of what I propose to call
"gynegogy.'
No woman or trace of woman, if I have read correct ly-save
the mother. that' s understood. But thi s is part of the system.
The mot her is the faceless figure of a jlgurcnt. an ext ra. She
gives rise to all the figures by los ing herself in the background
of the scene li ke an anonymous persona. Everyt hing comes
back to her. begin ning wit h life: everythi ng addre sses and des-
tines itself to her. She survives on the condition of remaining
at bottom.
ROUNDTABLE ON
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Tra nslated h)' p ~ . Kamuf
Rodolphe Gasche: The Int ernal Border
Yesterd ay, listening to "Otoblographies," we heard you,
Jacques Derrida, proceed with a revalorization and a reeval ua-
tion of biography [a ph ilosopher's; in this case, Nietzsche 's) in
relation to a written corpus. This procedure 011" your part
might at first appear paradoxical. not to say disappointing.
That is, if one were to listen to it with the wrong ear, then one
could easil y reinterpret your gesture as sketching out a return
to certai n acade mic pos itions-to psychobtography. for ex-
ample-all the more so since, inevitably, you make use of the
same language. Is it the same, however? As we will no doubt
return to this questi on tomorrow during our discussion of
transla tion, I will set it aside for the moment in order to in-
quire instead int o how YDur approach In the problem of auto-
biography differs from traditional ones.
In the first place, autobiography, as you see it , is not to be in
any way confused with the so-called lire of the author, with
the cor pus of empirical acci dents making up the life of an
empirically real person. Rath er. the biographical, insofar as it
is aut obiographical. cuts across both of the fields in question:
the body of the work and the body of the real subject. The
biographical is thus that int ernal border of work and life, a
border on whi ch texts are engendered. The status of the text-
if it has one-is such that it deri ves from neither the one nor
the other. from nei ther the inside nor the outside.
You say that Ecce Homo is an autobiographical text because
in it the signatory recounts his life. You situate the lift-off point
for this account of self to self in the case of Ecce Homo (and
here I can' t help thi nking of the fantasy of auto-engendering
in "The Case of Philippe," which Serge Leclaire analyzes in
42 Rou ndt ab le on A utobiography
Psychc nclyser 119681} in that leaf inserted bet ween the pref-
ace and the text " properly speaking" whi ch is neith er the
wor k nor the life of the aut hor. As you put it, it is "between a
titl e or a preface on the one hand, and the book to come on the
other . bet ween the tit le Ecce Homo and Ecce Homo itself: "
Heterogeneous to both the work and the life, thi s place of the
"programming machine" engenders the text of which it is a
part to the extent that it is a part larger than the whole,
My questi ons-which are actually a jumble of quest ions-
will focus. then . on thi s localization of an interior borderline
which, in principl e. has to cut across the whole work, I will
focus. that is. on that slice or part of the text whi ch. as you say
elsewhere. is not a part of the whole. is not a part at all. *
First question: What is the relati on of the het erogeneous
space of the text' s engendering. perce ptible in this leaf in-
serted between the titl e and Ecce Homo "properly spea king,"
to the "totality" of the text? Does this leaf have a pri vileged
status preci sel y because it is empirically manifest? Does the
empirical index of its being manif estl y situated between the
text " properly speaking" and the title give rise to some sort of
privil ege (to subvert . to engender. et cetera)? Or is the fact that
it is situated and can thus be located and apprehended by the
senses perhaps hut one of the manifestations (that is. one of
the possible translations) of the text's engendering which is at
"work" throughout the totality of the text . an engendering
which. in principle, necessarily escapes conversion into the
empi rical? In other words, what is the relation between the
engendering place of the text and the empirical manifestations
of this place in the text? What is the relati on bet ween the
text' s engendering border and the emp irical given of the text?
Can thi s relation sti ll be thought of in terms of opposit ions
such as empirical/non-empirical? Does not your notion of text
excl ude. rather. any relation to the empirical? But in that case,
what privileges the status of the Inserted leaf?
' n' "sl pas du tout , une trc nche : n 'est pa s du lou l une Irnncne. St' l' hdllW,
PI'. 104 -05, fnr t his use of "Irullche."- Tr.
Roundtabl e on Autobiography 43
Second questi on : You say that the heterogeneous space of
the double programm ing in Ecce Homo. inasmuch as it is a
space of eterna l return and of the auto-affi rmation of life. is
one of auto-engendering and autobiography, In that space.
Nietzsche in effect proposes to tell himself his life, The fol-
lowing question then arises: Do the heterogeneous spaces of a
text's engendering necessa rily have the structure of autobiog-
raphy? Have they necessarily a relation to auto-biography? Or
rather. would not auto-biography be but one of the possibl e
names for this border of works and lives. but one of the figures
(in the Heidoggerian sense) that can be assumed by the ques-
tion about what it is that cuts across these bodies {of the work,
of the man) at their most intimate level? In short. then. my'
question comes down to int egratin g the status of autobiogra-
phy as such.
Final questi on: What is the difference between autobiogra-
phy as the name of the internal border of text. on the one
hand. and the rol e played by autobiography in academic di s-
course on the other? To as k the same question in different
terms: Do not both the affecti ve cecil and the affinnation of a
concrete life set forth by such a redl uncover but the effect of
the aporias or contradictions of a text's programming ma-
chine? Are they anything more than thi s effect? Do the reflect-
able aporias of an enterprise of auto-constitution and auto-
biograp hy erect thi s machine at the border of the text they
engender? Is the text anyt hing other than the infinit e unfold-
ing of thi s machine? What limit s the play of thi s machine?
What det ermines that this play. which in principl e is unlim-
ited. takes the form of a finite life? Is it the empirical nature of
a concrete life that limits thi s play. or are there rather con-
straints int ernal to the play that limit it?
Jacques Der rida: Reply
. In order not to keep the floor too long and restrict the lime
for ot her questions, I will not try to give some answer based
on princi ple to the very necessary and essential questions you
44 Roun dtable on Autobiography
have as ked- because I have no such answers. Rather. I wHl try
to specify why I cannot answer these questi ons and why their
formu lation is problematic for me. Wit hout going back over
the necessary and thoroughly convinci ng trajector y by which
you led us to this formulation. I will skip right away to the
first question . whic h concerns the relation bet ween t he text
that you call "empirical" or "given" on the one hand. and . on
the ot her. all of that whic h I tried to probJemali ze yesterday
around the value of the border. The problem is thi s: If one
pursues carefully the ques tions that have been opened up
here. then the very value of empiricalness. the very contours
of an empi rica l text or any empirical entity, can perhaps no
longer be determined. I can no longer say what an empirical
text is, or the empi rica l given of a text. What I can do is refer
to a certain number of convent ions-precisely those conven-
tions that sustain tradi tiona l or academic discourse, or even
less traditional and less acade mic ones. When we employ
suc h discourses, we think we know what a given text is--a
text that we recei ve in t he editorial form of an authenticated
corpus, and so on. We also have a cert ain number of "empiri-
cal facts" about Nietzsche's life. Although the re may be any
number of debates on th is subject. any number of disagree-
ments about the content of these givens, the presuppos ition is,
nevertheless, that one knows what one means by Nietzsche's
"empirical " life. That is. one assumes that one knows what is
at the organizing cent er of the debate. If one problemat izes
things as I tried to do yesterday, however. the opposition be-
tween. for example. the empirical and the non-empirical {but
there are ot her names for this opposition} is precisely what
becomes problematic. I then no longer know what this expe ri-
ence is that grounds the value of t he empirical. This is the
case whether one is speaking of Nietzsche's life or his
corpus-his body. if you will --or the cor pus called Nietz-
sche's works. As I tried to indicate yesterday. wherever the
paradoxical problem of the border is posed. then the line that
could separ ate an author's life from his work. for example. or
whi ch. within this life, could separate an essentialness or
Roundtable on Autobiography 45
transcendentality from an empirica l fact, or, yet again. within
his wor k. an emp irical fact from something that is not empiri-
cal-this very line itse lf becomes unclear. Its mark becomes
divided; its uni ty. its identity becomes dislocated. When-this
identit y is di slocated. then the problem of the aulas, of the
autobiographical, has to be totall y redistri buted.
Fina lly, if one gets around to wondering. as you did in your
last question, abo ut the status of the autobiograp hica l. t hen one
has to ask whet her one will under stand the au tobiographical in
terms of this internal border and all the rest, or instead rely on
the stan dard concepts prevai ling throughout tradition. Once
again, one is faced with a division of the au tos, of the autoblo-
graphical, but this doe sn' t mean that one has to dissolve the
value of the autobiographica l recit. Rather. one must restruc-
ture it ot herwise on t he basis of a project that is also btographt-
cal or thanatographical. And what name shall this red istribu-
tion be given in the "Nt etzschean corpus" in general. in
"Nietzsche' s thought " in general, in "Nietzsche's signature,"
and so forth? II would all come down to sett ing Nietzsche's
autobiography. or Niet zsche's au tobiographical thought. on the
back. so to speak. of some t hought of the eterna l return. That is.
the autobiography is signed by something that arises out of the
thought of the eternal return in Nietzsche.
Although 1 cannot undertake her e an interpretation of the
thought of the eternal return in Nietzsc he. I will at least men-
tion that the eternal ret urn is selective. Rather than a repeti-
tion of the same. the return must be selective wit hin a differ-
ential relation of forces . That whic h returns is the constant
affirmation. the "yes, yes" on whi ch I insi sted yesterday. That
which signs here is in the form of a return. which is to say it
has the form of something that cannot be simple. It is a selec-
tive return without negat ivity. or which reduces negat ivity
through affirmation, through alliance or marriage [hymen],
that is, thro ugh an affirmation that is also binding on the other
or that enters into a pact wit h itself as other. The difficult y
and thus the risk with the gesture I' m sket ching out here is
that it will, once again. relate the autobiographical signature
46 Roundlable on AUlobiosraphy _
(which one always expects to be idiomatic, singular. subject to
chance. and so fort h) to something as essential as the eternal
ret urn. Th is might lead one to think that once again something
empirical, individ ual. et cetera. is going to be related to an
essen tia l thought -that of the eterna l return. However. I be-
lieve this risk can be avoided if , preci sely , one thinks in ter ms
of wh at Nietzsche has perhaps made availa ble to thought and
whi ch he calls the eternal return. The point is that the eternal
ret urn is not a new metaph ysics of ti me or of the totality of
bei ng, et cetera, on wh ose ground Nietzsc he's autobiograp hi-
cal signature would come to stand like an empirical fact on a
great ont ological structure. (Here. one would have to take up
again the Heid eggeri an int er pretati ons of the eternal ret urn
and perhap s problemati ze them.] The eternal return always
involves differences of forces that perhaps cannot be thought
in terms of being. of the pair essence-existence. or any of the
great metaphys ical structures to wh ich Heidegger woul d like
to relate them. As soon as it crosses with the motif of t he
eterna l return. then the indi vid ual signature. or , if you like,
the signature of a proper name. is no longer simply an empiri-
cal fact grounded in something other than itsel. Given the
many difficult ies in translating what I am trying to get hold of,
I would say that here per haps may be found not the answer
but the enigma to which Niet zsche refers when he speaks of
hi s identi ty. hi s genealogy, and so on.
Christie V. McDonald: From One Genre to the Oth er
What I have to say concerns the question of genre, specifi-
cally the one that is traditionall y or commonly called autobiog-
raphy and is itself. in principle, the subject of our discussion
today. If one may say t hat genres demonst rate in a particular
way what const it utes the society or institution to wh ich they
belong, then it follo ws that a given society chooses and codifies
those acts that correspond to its dominant ideology. You ul-
ready alluded to thi s problem when you said that an institution
is more tolerant of ce rtain explicit ly ideol ogical expressions
Roundloble on A utobiography 47
(even those having a revo lutionary aim) than it is of a conce p-
tion of writing such as the one practi ced . for example. in your
dcconstruct lve texts. Perhaps it is possible to approach thi s
question through the implici t slippage in your tit le "Otobiogre-
ph tes ." that is. the passage from aut obi ograph y to crobiogra-
ph y, revers ing the chronological order from yesterday to thi s
afternoon.
Let me explain this by means of a certain number of detours.
It seems to me that the synchronic constdera t ton of genre tends
10 make apparent the particu lar elements structuring so-called
literary form. That is. characteristics and techniques of a genre
ca n be described by those functi ons that point to the generic
sys tem. But the question then arises : How is one to place a
specific text wit hin a diachron ic series. wh ich presu pposes
both vari abl e and invariable factors fa tradition. an order, and
conventions that degenerat e before regenerating themselves in
some ot her way)? Here I am thinking Jess of the externa l history
of wh at has been called autobiography (whether one takes it
back 10 Rousseau, Saint Augu stine. or ot her writers) than of the
critical act that , in its interpretive relation to the text , imposes a
meaning on it. In thi s latter context, could one say that the
principle of a tradi tional genre is fundamentally that of an
order which, even though it does not remai n fixed . makes pos-
sible the produ ction of mean ing and gives rise to hermeneuti c
discour se as meaningful d iscourse?
As for the so-called modem genres , it has been observed (by
T. Todaro..' in Les Genres du discou rs 11978)) that one can
detect two divergent ten dencies in a wr iter li ke Hlanchot .
First , the paradoxical notion of the singular book as itself the
ulti mat e genre, wh ere eac h work does not simply derive from
a genre but also interrogates, through its very parti cul arity. the
very slat us of lit erature. The second ten dency is a movement
to replace past genres (such as the story, di alogue, or diaryl
with others that tran sgress or surpass them. It see ms to me
t hat thi s movement cl osel y par allels your own (in "Living On:
Borderli nes ," for exa mple). Now. t he genre we are discu s-
sing-autobiography-marks the confus ion between the no-
Jacques Derride: Reply
I should not have to reply right away to such fully elabo-
rated and serious questions-and by improvising no less. Our
agreement for thi s exchange is that 1should try to improvise a
response even when I am not sure that I can do so adequately.
Well , I am sure that in a few sentences I will not be able to
meet the demands of a questi on whose elaborations and pre-
suppositions are of such a vast scope. Nevertheless. I'll take
my chances wit h an answer.
First of all . as concerns that obviously deli berate transforma-
tion of auto int o oto. which has been reversed in a chiasmatic
fashion today: Notice that the institution has calculated this
reversal so precisely that today we find ourselves in the Great
Pavilion, whereas yesterday we were somewhere else.' The
play that accompanies this transformation would be of no in-
terest if it were not itself carried along by a necessit y which I
tried. to a certain degree, to make apparent yesterday. If today
I am trying to reformulate it, it is because thi s necessity re-
quires that we pass by way of the ear- the ear involved in any
autobiograp hieal discourse that is sti ll at the stage of hearing
oneself speak. (That is: 1 am telling myself my story, as Nie-
tzsche said, here is the story that I am telling myself: and that
means I hear myself speak.] I speak myself to myself in a
certain manner , and my ear is thu s immediately plugged into
"Genre also means "gender.v-c-Tr.
' As in the pavllion of the ear . the visible part of the aural apparatus.c-Tr.
avoid, so as to make him/her appear in thi s wit hdrawing and
in thi s red rawing," You have underl ined not only the ano-
nymit y of the written I lie ecrtt] but also the inappropriateness
of the I write Ii' ecrisl as the "normal sit uation," My question:
In the reading or readings that remaln to be done of Nietzsche
by thi s deci phering ear. and wit hout lelling oneself get caught
in the trap of what you have called gynegogy, does the " I"
have a gender [genre]? "
- - - - - Roundtable on Autobjogruphy 49
48 Roundtoble on Autobiography
tion of the author and that of the person, the confusion that
Rodolphe Casc he has just evoked and which Nietzsche see ms
to refuse in Ecce Homo. In this, Nietzsche wit h you, and you
together wit h Nietzsche, pose the probl em of the text-of its
beginning and its origin- in terms of a relation between the
one who signs (t he author) and the one who reads or, as you
put it yesterday, who hears.
My question has two part s. First of all, can it be that here-
between two texts (Ecce Homo and On the Fut ure of Our Edu-
ca tional Inst itutions) and two terms (autobiography and otobt -
ography), and despite the anac hronisti c order-one encounters
one of those passages from the critical, based on tran sportable
univoca lity and formalizable polysemi a. to the deconstructive?
In other words, is it here that we find a passage to that whieh
overflows in the directi on of di sseminat ion and seems to con-
cern problems of politieal and institutional order in the univer-
sity? If so, is it possible to link the deco nstructi ve to any par-
ticular ideological cont ent (of teaching in the institution)?
Whether the power struggle be politi cal, religious, economic, or
technical, how is one to formul ate it in writing when. at a
certain level , writi ng is itself an int erpretati on of power? What
does one do with the transmi ssion of this power which is the
very decipherment of the text?
Second, as I decided to open wit h the question of the auto-
biographieal genr e, that place of a contract signed by the au-
thor, I would li ke to relate the two parts of my question to the
pronoun "I," which is not onl y the addresser but the addres-
see, the one for whom one always writes, and only in his/her
absence. At the beginning of Speech ond Phenomena , you
placed this passage from Edmund Husser! in exergue: "When
we read the word ' I' wit hout knowing who wrote it. it is per-
haps not meaningless, but it is at least estranged from its nor-
mal mean ing." You then followed. it seems to me. a program
explicitly laid out in a later text (Pas), where you say that "in
order to accede to another text, another's text. one must as-
sume, in a certain very determined manner. the fault , the
weakness , not avoiding what the other will have managed to
s o Roundlable on Autobiosraphy
m}' dis course and my writing. But the necessit y of passing
onto and by way of the car is not just thi s. Nor is it just the
necessit y of the labyrinth motif wh ich , in Nietzs che. plays an
altogether deci si ve role with the figures of Ariadne and Dtonv-
sus. To be more preci se. it is, in the context that int erested me
yesterday, the difference in the ear. First of all, the difference
in the ear is, dear ly, the difference in the size of cars. Ther e
ar c smaller or larger cars, The larger t he car , the more it is bent
toward the pav ilion. if you will, and the more undifferen tiated
it is, the more finesse it lacks in its allention to differe nce.
Nietzsc he prides himself on having small ears (by implica-
tion, keen cars), A keen car is an ear with keen hear ing, an ear
that perceives di ffer ences. those differences to whi ch he was
very attentive. And precisel y to percei ve differences is to pass
on the di stin ct ion bet ween appare ntly similar t hings. Think of
all that was sa id yesterday about polit ical di scou rses and
about ste reotypes that seem 10 resemble each other. Here, pre-
cisely, is where the keen ear must be able to di stingui sh the
active from the reacti ve. the affirmative from the negati ve,
even though ap parently they are the same thing: to decide
with a keen ear in order to percei ve differences and in order 10
sed uce (as wh en Niet zsche says in passing, "I have sma ll ears
and thi s is of no small int erest to women"). The ear is not onl y
an auditory organ; it is also a visible organ of the body.
The most important thing about the ear's difference, wh ich I
have yet to remark. is that the signature becomes effecti ve-
performed an d performi ng-not at the moment it apparent ly
takes place, bu t on ly later. when ears will have managed 10
recei ve the message. In some way the signature will take place
on the addressee's side , t hai is, on the side of him or her
whose car will be keen enough to hear my name, for example,
or to understand my signature, thai with whi ch I sign. Accord-
ing 10 the logic that I tr ied to reconstitute yesterday. Nict z-
sche's signature does not take place when he writes. li e says
dearly that it will take place posthumously. pursuant 10 the
infinit e li ne of credit he has opened for himself , when the
ot her comes to s ign with him, to join with him in all iance and.
80 Roundtable on A utobiography
and the message by her reception . Instead, let us say that she
already wr ites when I write. What in the old terminology is
called the addressee is here already in the process of writing
in my place, and thi s implies all the possibil ities of combina-
tion that such a "lending each other a hand " might have in a
sit uation like that .
Eugene Vance: The Ear of the Heart
In "Freud's Legacy" and here in "Otobtogrephies," you have
analyzed two thinkers who are singular in that they are, in
thei r proper names, entirel y, personall y engaged in their texts,
with all the risks you say that involves. I myself thi nk that we
have an undeni able int erest in analyzing as well certai n auto-
biographi cal projects from a far more distant past. In particu-
lar, I am thinking of autobiographi es whose signatories refer
explicitl y to a tran scendent and infinite being, and who thus
enlist thi s infinit e being in thei r own accounts of themselves.
Thus, I would like to say a few words about Sai nt Augustine's
Confessions. I want to tal k about a problemati c of the knowl-
edge of truth in relation to the desire of the writi ng subject for
a return to an origin without aherit y.
First. a wor d about Saint Augusti ne's trinitarian theology.
There is first the originating Father who gives hi mself to the
created wor ld, or who bestows creation in the person of his
Son. By hi s acts and words among men , this Son inspi red a
biographical text- the Gospels-whose profound truth be-
longs not onl y to the Son but also to the Father who is the
aut hor and signatory of the world. Man's cognition of this
Father begins wit h a (re)cogniti on of the Son, but it is only
through the Holy Spirit that man arrives at an immaterial
knowl edge of GDd. It is t hrough t his same "ear of the heart,"
the Hol y Spirit. t hat man accedes to the kernel of hidden truth
beneath the shell of the evangelical text.
On an epistemo logical level, the knowledge of trut h is pro-
duced in the soul in several disti nct stages. First, we experi-
ence an Illu mtnatton. a flash of light which inun dates us. This
____________ Roundtable on Autobiography 81
flash, however, is not at all lasti ng; it is al ready hidden at the
very moment it present s itself to the mind . Yet it leaves traces
(vestigia) or impressions (irnpressiones ) in our memori es
which constit ute a kind of preli nguisti c and purely ment al
writing. Thi s writin g is not produced by God himself, how-
ever, but by and in the mind of the subject visited by the
illumination. There is thus a difference bet ween t he flash of
light and the impressions produced in the memDry, but it 's a
mino r difference. As part of the soul. memory is of a spiritual
rathe r than a material nat ure. and therefore t he text produced
there is adequate to the illumi nati on it represents. However.
we retain these traces in our memory for only a brief moment,
during which we assign verbal signifiers to them, whether or
not these signifiers are voca lized. Here. then, is a second dif-
ference: The signons is outside the sfgnctum. and signifies it
only by convention rather than by nature . But signs uttered by
the voice are themselves also ephemeral, SD that in order to fix
them in ti me and in space, man invented writ ten signs, lett ers.
These written signs are maximall y different from the original
truth they are summoned to represent.
This, then. is a diagram of epistemic differentiation on sev-
eral levels wh ich serves as the matrix for Saint Augustine's
autobiographical project. That account begins with Saint Au-
gusti ne' s earliest childhood. At this stage, logos is given to the
baby not as an Instantaneous flash but as mother's milk. It is the
pure gift of life, a life that as yet has neither insi de nor outside.
Alienation begins very slowly for the baby; smiles proferred
during sleep are the index of a nascent independent will. Then
the child devotes himself to the acqutsttton of human language,
duri ng which time he moves from the mastery of natural signs
to that of conventional signs. This is Sai nt Augustine's first fall
into the abyss, into t he "region of difference" (regia dissimilil u-
di nis). Saint Augusti ne's formal ed ucation begins wit h an ini-
tiati on into the gmmmoucc . the science bot h of written signs
and of the grammatical laws that are t he found ation of lan-
guage. But the Latin language and the corpus whic h were the
object of the gmmmc tlcc were surely altoget her other for him.
82 Roundtabl e on Autobiography
since we may be quite sure that this boy from the North African
plains spoke a pat oi s and not the cla ssi ca l Lat in he studied.
Next, he learned Gree k. a totally alien language whose appren-
ti ceship was od ious to him. Who dispensed this instructi on ? It
was a grammarian whose pedagog}' , like a hor se-trainer's. re-
lied on the whip. The whip is the institutional legacy of the si n
of Adam-the fat her of us all-and its justi ce is di spensed ac-
cording to the ancie nt Law of a Fat her wh o is very angry at the
sons of Ada m. Thus. for Augustine the liber al arts are a form of
sla very , a spir itual labor to whi ch man was conde mned foll ow-
ing his sin and his exile from paradi se. From grommatica. the
child moves on to rhe toric. t he most vain of all the sci ences of
di scourse (or11!Ssermoci nules]. Learning rhe toric had the effect
of alienating Augusti ne from the Gospels, whose di scourse
see med to him unwort hy of Cicero' s, Sp iritual exile from origi -
nal truth was now accomplished, rather, nearly acomplisbed.
si nce hi s mot her was a Christian and was prayin g conti nually
for hi s conversion.
This estrange ment from the ultimate meaning of everything.
this exile in the externa l she ll of language. prepares, however.
the concl usion of Augustine's autobiography, That autobiogra-
phy does not take the di scursive form of a closed cecil; rath er.
it takes that of a return to the Fath er in t he form of an exegesis
of the biblica l text. Thus, having been reborn to life through
Christ and illuminated by the Hol y Sp irit . Augustine joyfully
d oses hi s Confess ions with a long explication of the first
verses of Genesis wh ich tell the story of God's creation of the
univer se. His aba ndo nment of the narrative of hi s per sonal
origins in favor of an exeges is of the creation story is a "liter-
ary" strategy that imposes preci se limits on the autobiographi-
cal enterpri se, even on the inst itution of lit era ture itself.
I hope that one may recogni ze in my improv ised remarks
certain themes that Jacques Derrida has evoked in "Otobiogra-
phles." In both cases, it is a questi on of cred it. of credibili ty.
Saint Augustine says that one must read his autobiograph ical
text charitab ly, wit h cred it- the reader must give hi m cred it
As for Augustine himself , his interlocutor is God, Thus God
____________ Roundtable on A utobiography 83
gives himself cred it by allowing Augustine to compose hi s
text, wh ich God knows already beca use God knows every-
thing. Here is an attempt to inculcate, to establish a meta-
physic in an otherwise differ ent-and deficient--discourse of
selfhood.
I would like to concl ude by suggesti ng that it is probably
just as diffi cult for someone to construcl an autobiographi cal
text that opens full y onto the met aphysical as it is for us to
deconslruct an aut obiographical text in wh ich the metaphysi -
cal is repressed. One of modernity's di stortions, perhaps, is to
tend to make us di sregard any effort toward a pos iti ve con-
structi on no malter how mu ch luci dity it displ ays. One should
take these remarks as a plea for hi story, though not at all as a
defense of the game of the talent ed precursor, On the contrary ,
my remarks lire an invitati on to read those texts which const f-
tut e anot her side of modernity and whi ch give i1--or deprive
it of-another meaning.
Jacques Derrid a : Reply
I don't know what aut horizes me more than someone else to
take the floor again here. I listened with great interest to thi s
rich and fascinating analys is. One is struck by a certain number
of start ling ana logies. How far does the analogy work? What
will prove to be its si gni ficance? What will establish the criteria
for making distinctio ns ? It' s rather difficult to say. Although
answers might come quickly, they ar e surely naive. Thus, for
example, on e could say: In the case of Augustine. it is finally
God who is presumed to sign within the same struct ure; but
God and the eternal return are not the same thing. That's a litt le
facil e. I admit. an d one can't stop there. One must try to go
furt her. beca use it may be that God and the eternal retu rn-
when bot h are thought without faci leness-are not as op posed
as they mi ght appear to be. But I would not want to force thi s
argument too far. Ther e is another questi on , however , concern-
ing the possi ble generality of an autobiograp hi cal structu re. II
may be that the same program and basically the same scene
84 Roundtable on A utobiography _
recurs regularl y. Within thi s scene or this relational system, the
terms might cha nge. The Judeo-Christi an name might be re-
placed by anot her name. whi ch would, however. have the same
functi on. Each mome nt or each instance may be variable in its
content, but the law of t he relation between the variabl es would
remain the same. Each time one had an autobiographical scene
to stage. one would come upon the same structure again. so that
Saint Augus tine, Nietzsche. and a few others-Rousseau. per-
haps, or Montaigne-ccould onl y come along and fill in a trell is
or a grid which is already in place and which in some way
would not in itself be histori cal.
Eugene Vance
Can mode rni ty escape that determinism?
Jacques Derrida: Reply
No. no. As for me. I' m no fan of modernity. I have no simple
belief in the irreduci ble specificity of "modernity." I even
wonder if I have ever used that word . In any case. I am very
mistrustf ul whenever people identi fy histor ical breaks or
when they say. "This begins there." I have never done that.
and I beli eve I have even set down here and there reservations
with regard to thi s type of periodi zati on and distribution.
That' s why I am very interested in work of thi s type. even
though my training. my lack of knowledge places many limit s
on me. I'm convinced that one could expand this kind of
research. It' s not a question of precursors-the notion of a
precursor here would efface all the originali ty of the thing-
but of recurrences wh ich would not efface the si ngularity or
t he idiom of each text. Whatever one might say abou t t he
resemblance between the Nietzschea n autobiography and the
Augustinian autobiography, it 's reall y anot her language in
every sense of the word. However, nothing of the signature's
idiom is lost when one points to the recurrence, t he regular ity
wit h which the scene returns. This is preci sely the paradox of
Roundtable an A utob iography 85
the proper name or the signature: It's always the same th ing,
but each time it 's different: each time it ' s a different history to
which one must pay close att ention. In thi s way one may see
that, in spite of everythi ng. finall y-and this is where I be-
gan- Nietzsche attempted somet hin g which. in relation to the
Christian un folding of thi s scene. was. precisely. of a "decon-
structive" type.
Now. you asked a questi on about deconst ruction which 1
am trying to reconst itu te and you will tell me if I do so
inaccu rately. You wondered whether. instead of deco nstruct-
ing. it woul d not be interesti ng to attem pt. well . a more posi-
tive gesture. per haps an autobiographically deco nstructive
writing . . .
Eugene Vance
No. I would say that it see ms to me just as interesting to
study constructions that don't work as it is to practice decon-
structions that don' t work either. that is. which don 't entirely
succeed.
Jacques Derrida : Reply
Yes. I agree. But here you are referring to a diagram of decon-
struction whi ch would be that of a technical operati on used to
dismantle systems. Personall y. I don't subscribe to this model
of deconstructi on, What was said earlier. part icularly by
Claude Levesque. demonstrates that what has been called the
deconstructive gesture (in a moment I will try to say a litt le
more about Ihis) is accompanied, or can be accompanied (in
any case, I would hope to acco mpany it) , by an affirmation. It is
not negati ve, it is not destructive. Thi s is why the word "decon-
struction" has always bothered me. Yesterday. during a sess ion
at McGil l Universit y. someone asked me a question about the
word "deconstruction." I said that when I made use of thi s
word (rarely. very rarely in the beglnnlng-conce or twice-so
you can see t hat t he paradox of the message transfor med by the
____________ Ruundtab le rm Autobiogra phy 87
in order to see hO\'\1 it is cons tituted or deconstuuted. This is
cla ssic. What was not so cl assic. however. was what this force,
this Abbcu . was applied to: the whole of cl assi ca l ontology. the
whole hi st or y of West ern philosophy. The word got hi gh-
lighted in the co ntext of the period . which was more or less
dominat ed by struc tu ralis m, The wat chword being "structure.
struct ure. structure:' when someo ne says destructure. destruc-
turing, or deconstruction . well . then it acqui res a pert inence
which personall y I didn't pay too much alle nlion to. To be sure,
I wasn' t al together inattentive to thi s word either. but also I was
not-how shall I sayj-c-involved: J ha d not organized th ings to
such an ex te nt around th is word . When others got invol ved in
it. I tri ed to determi ne thi s co ncept in my own manner. that is .
according to what I thought was the right manner, which I d id
by insisting on th e fact th at it was not a questi on of a negative
operation. I don' t lee l that I' m in a pos itio n to choose bet ween
an operation tha t we'll call negative or nihilist. an operati on
that would set about furi ousl y disman tli ng systems . and the
other ope ration. ll ove very much everyth ing that I deconstruct
in my own manne r: t he texts I wa nt to read from the decon-
structive point of view are tex ts I love. wit h that impulse of
iden ti fication wh ich is indispensabl e for reading. Th ey are
texts whose futu re, 1 think. will not be ex ha usted for a long
time. For example. J thi nk Plat o is to be read. and rea d con-
stant ly. Plat o' s signa ture is not yel flnlshed-c-that ' s the desti ny
of signatures-nor is Niet zsch e' s, nor is Sai nt Augustine' s (like
you. I'm altogether convinced of that ]. nor are the signatures of
sti ll many ot he rs. Thus. if my relation to these texts is charac-
teri zed by loving jealousy and nol at all by nihilisti c fury (one
can't read a nything in the latter condl uc n]. then I don't feel I' m
in a position to choose accordi ng to the terms in which you
have presented the cho ice.
Pi er re Ja cques : Question from th e Floor
You have tal ked about the anterior addressee, which is to
say the dead. as we ll as about the futur e addressee. But what
happens to the ful fi ll me nt and the genre of the signa ture whe n
addressees is fully in play here). I had the impression that it
was a word among many others. a secondary word in the text
which would fade or which in an y case would assume a non-
dominant p lace in a system. For me. it was a word in a chain
with man y other words-su ch as trace or differance*- as well
as with a whole elaboratio n which is not limited only to a
lexicon. if you will. It so happens-and thi s is worth ana lyz-
ing-that this word which I had written only onc e or twice (I
don 't even remember where exactly ) all of a sudden jumped out
of the text and was seized by others who have since det ermined
its Iate in t he manner you well know. Faced with thi s. I myself
then had to just ify myself. to explain. to try to get some lever-
age. But precisely because of the technical and-how shall I put
it?-negative connotati ons that it could have in certa in co n-
texts, the word by itself bothered me. 1do think it is also neces-
sary to di smant le systems. to analyze structu res in order to see
what's going on , both when things work and when they don't,
why structures don't manage to close themselves off, and so
forth. But for me "deconstruction" wa s not at all the first or the
last word. and cert ainly not a password or slogan for everything
that was to follow.
S."" above. p. xil.
Jacques Derrtda: Reply
Yes. When I made use of th is word. I had the sense of
translati ng two wo rds from Heidegger at a poi nt where 1
needed them in the context. These two words are Dest ruk uon.
which Hetdegger uses. explai ning t hat Deslruklion is not a
destruction but preci sely a destructuring that di sman tles the
st ruct ural layers in the system. and so on. Th e 01her wo rd is
Abbnu . which has a simila r meani ng: to take apart an edifi ce
Claude Levesque
Doesn' t the word come from Heidegger?
86 Roundtable on Autob iography
88 Roundl able on Autobiograph.1'
t he addresser is the addressee? What happens when Niet zsche
writes. finally. to himself?
Jacq ues Derrida: Reply
What happens? But when you say he wr ites himself. you
seem to assume that he already has his identity, that he is
already himself .
Pierre Jacques
No, I don 't ass ume it. That' s what I' m asking.
Jacqu es Derrida: Reply
No, he is not yet hi mself when he is in the sit uat ion. pre-
cisely, of di stan ce from t he ot her, the ot her's di stance. When
he wr ites hi mself to himself , he wri tes him self to the oth er
who is infini tely far away and who is supposed to send his
signature back to him. He has no relation to himself that is not
forced to defer itself by passing through the other in the form,
preci sely. of the eternal return. I love what I am living and I
desire what is coming. I recognize it gratefully and I desire it
to return eternally. I desire whatever comes my way to come
to me, and to come back to me etern all y. When he writes
himself to himself. he has no immediate presence of hi mself
to hi mse lf. There is the necessit y of thi s det our through the
other in the for m of the eternal return of that wh ich is af-
firmed, of the wedd ing and the weddi ng ring, of the alliance.
The moti f of the all iance or wedding ring, of the hymen or
marriage. returns often in Nietzsche, and this "yes. yes" has to
be thought beginning wit h t he eterna l ret urn . I want it to re-
turn by making the rou nd which is the cycle of the sun or the
annual cycl e, of the annulus , of the year which annuls itself
by coming back around on it self. Thi s is why so much lmpor-
tance is given to the anniversa ry and to the midday sun's
return up on itself. From this poi nt of view. t here is no diffe r-
____ _ _ _ _ ___ _ Roundtable on A ut obiography 89
ence. or no possibl e di stincti on if you will. bet wee n the letter
I write to someone else and the leit er I send to myself . The
struct ure is the sa me. Within this common structure, there
would, of course, be a difference. If I writ e myself a lett er ,
address it to myself at my address. go put it in the mailbox.
then wait for it to come back to me-and plenty of accidents
can occur in the mea ntime-that's not exa ct ly the same t hing
as when I send a lett er to someone else in the every day sense
of the term. But this is a subdillerence. The fundamental
structure of the dispat ch is the same.
ROUNDTABLE ON
TRANSLATION
Cla ude Levesque: Introduction
Ther e are obvious links between autobiogra phy. the subject
of yesterday's discussion. and tra nslation. our question for to-
day. Autobiograph y-the autobiographica l genre-has some-
thing to do with genea logy and with the proper name. This
work. on the proper name. on all that is invested in it. repre-
sents an atte mpt to inscr ibe the uniqu e in the sys tem of lan-
guage. and the narrative account in the concept. The point is
that translation cannot hel p meeting on it s way the problem of
the proper na me and the question of idiomatic language
wit hin the body of writing. When Derrida tells us what he
understands and intends by the proper name. he almost al-
ways appeals to the motif of translation and most particul arly
to that wh ich res ists any transposition from one language to
anot her. In "Freud's Legacy," he writ es: "Any signified wh ose
signifier ca nnot var y nor let itself be translat ed into another
signifier without a loss of meaning points to a proper-name
effect." In fact. there are two si multaneo us demands governing
the proper name wh ich one must not be too quick to separate
from each other: on the one han d. a requirement of untran slat -
ability and unreadablll ty, as if the proper name were nothing
but pu re refer ence. lying outside of signi fication an d language:
on the ot her hand. a requiremenl of translatability and read.
ability, as if the proper name were ass imilable to the common
noun. to any word that is ca ught up in a linguisti c and genea-
logical network wh ere meaning al ready contaminates non-
meaning and wher e the proper name is absor bed and expro-
priat ed by the commo n noun.
On the political level. thi s undeci dable double postulat ion
of the particular and the universal is tra nslated in the form of
a cont radic tory opposit ion between. for example. nationalism
and uni versalism. Derrida writes in "Living On: Borderlines":
"Whal thi s insti t ution (the unlverslt y] cannot bear is for any-
ail e 10 tamper wit h language, meani ng both t he national lan-
. 3
94 Roundloble on Transtn tion _
guage a nd , paradoxica lly, an ideal of translatabili ty that neu-
trali zes thi s national language. Nationalism and unf verscusm.
What thi s instit ution ca nnot bea r is a tra nsformation that
leaves intact neither of these two co mplementary pol es."
But now let us ask ourselves what has been happening here
since yest erd ay in thi s double sessi on whi ch redupl icat es aca-
demic di scourse (scientific as we ll as philosophi cal ) with a
whole dimension wh ich that discourse can only reject because
it und?rmines the ideal of total tra nslatability, the very basis
of the Idea of a universit y. If it is true that the philosopher and
the scho lar share a n ideal of universality wh ich abstracts the
pr oper name. the biographical. as well as the corruptio ns of
nati onalism and of di al ect. then it may begin to appear that
around the tabl e he re today there are neither scholars nor
philosophers nor academics. It may appear that an undermin-
ing operatio n is in process which is perhaps no more than the
parod y of the scholar, the philosopher , and the academi c,
Patrick Mahony: Transformations and Patrici dal
Deconstructi on
. Heari ng th? word "translati on: ' one thinks immedi ately of
Its etymological and semantic connections wit h met aphor ,
transfer . transference, and tra ns port. And, of course, the apho-
rism "t mdull ore, tmditore" may come to mind simultane-
ous ly, In t his regard , an d since my approach is of a psycho-
ana lyti c nature, J ca nnot resi st beginning with a somewhat
humorous aside which un ites the noti ons of trea son and trans-
por t. Give n that the di agnosi s of schizophrenia is much more
frequent in America than it is in Europe, if ever someone were
to be d iagnosed here as schizophrenic, then the cheapest cur e
would he quit e simply for h im 10 hook passage on il tran sat-
lant ic ship. It' s a case of transl ati on cur ing tra nslat lon. But
now, let' s be serio us .
In an ussuy which attempted to give a global cl assification of
"Tran slator, trai tor."_ Tr .
Houndlable on Tra nslation 95
tra nslat ion' s linguist ic as pec ts , (Romani Iakobson di sti n-
guished th ree kinds of transl ati on'-
1 int ralingua l translation, or par aphrase;
2 int erlingual translation, or translation in the most com-
mon sense;
3 intersemi ot ic transl ation, in which, for exa mple, verbal
signs are reencoded in nonverbal sign syst ems.
The cons erva tism of Iakobson's approach contras ts with the
audacity of your own procedure, which one of your commen-
tat ors. Sarah Kol man. has summarized as follows: "Dernda' s
or igina lity is to put an end to a pr ocess of translati on and
decision by a formal , syntactic pr acti ce of undecidabilit y"
(Ecart s, p. 182).
The first questio n I will as k refers to the use of the specific
term " translation" inst ead of ..transformation:' which would
describe your procedure in a much more adequate fashion. I
am referring to three of your writings: "Freud and the Scene of
Writing" (1967); your inte rview in Positions (1972); as well as
your introduction, "Me-e-Psychoanal ysis," to Nicolas Abre-
ham's "The Shell a nd the Kernel " (1979). In the first text , you
show that certa in of Freud 's uses of th e term " translation" are
really transformations a nd/or met aphorical uses. Then, in
" Me-Psychoa nalysis: ' you comment on Abr aham' s theori es
as follows: "'Translati on' pr eserves a symbolic and anasemic
relation to transl ati on, to what one calls ' translation. ' " In fact.
in Positions, you propose the term "transforma tio n" as a far
more adequate notion. Thus you say: " In the li mits to which it
is poss ible or at least appears possible, translati on practices
the diff erence bet ween signified and s ignifier. But if thi s dif-
ference is never pu re, no more so is translation, and for th e
notion of tra nslation we wo uld have to substi tute a noti on of
transformation: a regulated transfor mation of one lan guage by
another, of aile text by anot her,"
It see ms to me, mor eover, that !mnsfor mat ion is more in
harmony with your ne ologism trcnche-jert." the key con cept of
S'oe Der rt da's rema rks. pp. 104 -05, below, for all explanation of this 000 10'
Ris rn.- Tr.
96 Roundtable on Tr anslation
your essay "Ou tout" ' ''Of the Who le") whi ch justly contests
the limits of psychoana lytic transference. Let us recall that
early on Freud conceived the latter as a set of "false connec-
tions" and cons idered every isolat ed act and each of the
anal ysand' s associations as a compromise (Standard EdWoll.
12:103j. Since. moreover. all of the pati ent' s ut terances are
more or less closely tied to the trcnche-j en or the false con-
nection. could we not conceive psychoanalysis as a semioti c
of approxi mations. or. better still . a semiotic of decent ered
transfor mat ions? Indeed . in Fats . you show, on the one hand,
that these transformations are operating accordi ng to a radi cal
and interminable devi ation (here one thinks of the poss ible
cleavage of the crypt in the id and the ego) and. on the other.
that a writt en case is but an asy mptotic place of "conver-
gences " for all the possible translations and bet rayals . an in-
terminable approximation of the idiom.
In order to think about these decenter ed transformations
somewhat differentl y, one could take as a guide and by way of
a speci fic exa mple the following cons idera tion: Throughout
our lives, we acquire a series of names, beginni ng with the
nicknames and names of endearment from childhood all the
way to the formal titl es and other names of adult hood . One of
the characteristics of cl inical di scourse in the analytic context,
which sets it apart from all ot her forma l or inti mate di s-
courses , is that one almost never add resses the pati ent by any
of these names which are so egocentrically bound up with
hi m. By setti ng off the di scharge of forgott en material to fill
the void, t hi s narc issistic dep rivation also induces the pati ent
to let himself go toward multiple transpositions and trans fer-
mations of hi s names, whose man y vicissitudes ca n he ap-
proached only by furt her research.
On a strict ly termino logical pl ane, I have done a thorough
inventory of the word "trans lation"-Ubfl l'Sclzung_ in all of
Freud's texts. While he considers repression to be a rift or
fault in the trans lation, on severa l occas ions in his writi ngs he
implici tly conceives all of the foll owing to be translations:
hyster ical, phobic, and obsessional symptoms, drea ms, recol-
Roundtable on Translation 97
lect lons. parapraxes , the choice of t he means of suicide. the
choice of feti sh . the analyst's int erp retations. and the transpo-
sitions of unconscious materi al to consci ous ness . However.
while on occasion Freud specifically uses the word "transla-
tion" as a synony m for "transformati on ," this latter term
seems to be used only with refer ence to the process of libidi -
nal development. as one may eas ily disce rn from titl es such as
"On Tran sformati ons of Inst inct as Exemplified in Anal Erot-
ism" or "The Trans formations of Pubert y" (Part 3 of Three
Essays on lhe Theory of Sexua lity). But it is in the context of
your very provocative and sti mulati ng reflect ions on sexualit y
that I would like to interrogate the noti on of transformat ion
and the meaning you give it, .
1. In your introduction to Abraham's "The Shell and the
Kernel : ' vou writ e: "In 1968 the anasemic interpretation cer-
tainl y bore primarily on Freudian and post-Freudia n probl em-
atics : met apsychology, Freud's ' pansexuali sm' wh ich was the
'anase mic (pansexua lis m) of the Kern el: that ' nucleic sex'
wh ich was supposed to have ' no relat ion with the difference
bet wee n sexes' and abo ut wh ich Freud is supposed to have
said. ' again anasemt calty. that it is in essence virile' (that it
seems to me is one of the mosl enigmatic and provocative
passages in the essay) ."
2. In Spurs: Nietzsc he 's Styl es. you have written: "There is
no essence of the woman because woman se parates and sepa-
rates from herself."
3. In the same essay in Eccrts. Sarah Kofman note s: "The
voice of truth is always that of the law, of God, of the fath er.
The metaphys ical logos has an essential virility. Writing, that
form of disruption of presence, is, like the woman, always put
down and reduced to the lowest rung. Like t he femini ne geni-
talia, it is troubling, petrifyi ng-i t has a Med usa effect " (pp.
125- 26). And again: "Perh aps. as well , it is in read ing Der-
rlda that one best un derstands certain psychoanal yt ic mot ifs.
Der rldean writi ng relent lessl y repeats the murder of the father.
The many decaptt at tons of the logos in all its forms have to
have an effect on the unconscio us scene of each reader. More
98 Roundtable on Transla tion
than Freud , Derr ida makes one know what a father means,
that one is never through ' kill ing' the father. and that to speak
of the logos as a father is not a simple metaphor" [p. 202).
The passages I have just quoted call up two additional
remarks:
1. , would like you to comment further on sexual dilferen-
tiati on.
2. There are t hose who openly ad mit to you thei r inability
to imit ate your style. It seems to me that the imp lications of
thi s are far-reaching. What ever the filiation of your writing
may be. with its inimit able trait of the murder of the paternal
logos. it is nonetheless the case that, on another level. it bears
the imprint of the father's attributes.
Such a situation leads us to the consideration that wr iting is
a constantly transformed and transforming activity.
Jacques Derrida: Reply
I am going to begin by taking two examples. Finnegans
Wake is for us today t he major corpus. the great challenge to
l
translation, although certai nly not the only one. However, a
Babelian motif runs from one end of Finnegans Wake to the
other. Although this molif takes many different forms. which I
can' t go int o now, at a certain moment, referring to the event
of the Tower of Babel. at the moment when Yahweh interrupts
the construction of the tower and condemns humanity to the
rj multiplicity of languages-which is to say. to the necessary
and impossible task of translati on- Joyce writes (and here I
isolate these t hree word s only for the conven ience of our dis-
cuss ion, even though it would be necessary to reconst it ute t he
whole page, all the pages): "And he war." That's what one
reads at a certain moment on one page of Ftnn egnns Woke in
all episode concerning Babel. In what language is this wr illen?
Obviously, despite the multip licity of languages, cultural ref-
"Unfort unatel y, the begtnmng 01 Jacques Dcrrtda's reply 10 Palrick Mahony
was nol recorded .
_____________ Round'a ble on Translation 99
erences. and condensations, English is indi sputa bly domi-
nant language in Fln negcn s wok e-c-el l of these refractions and
sli ppages are produced in English or thro ugh Engli.sh..in the
bod}' of that language. French would translate the English as:
il-guerre [he wars]. he declares war. And that' s ind eed what
happens: God declares war on the tribe of the Shems. who
want to make a name for t hemselves by raisi ng the tower and
impos ing the ir tongue on the universe. But obviously the Ger-
man word war Influences the English word. so we also have:
He was. he was the one who said, for example. "l am that I
am," which is the de finition of Yahweh. And then one also
hears the car, whi ch is very present in the rest of the text. One
hears a thousand thin gs through other tongues . _\
I don' t want to explore all the poss ibilities that are con-
densed in these questions. but I wonder what happens at the
moment one tries to translate these words. Even if by some
miracle one could translate all of the virtual impulses at work
in this utt erance. one thing remains that could never be trans-
_ lated: the fact that there are t wo tongues here, or at least more
-r than one. By translating everything into French, at best one
would translate all of t he virt ual or actual content, but one
could no! transl!Llc the eve nt which consis ts in grafting several
to;l8ues onto a-single body.
I will take another examp le: (Jorge Luis) Borges' "Pierre
Menard." This text gives the account of a Frenchma n who has
conce tved the mad project of wr iting. for the first time, Don
Quixole. That's all t here is to it : He want.s to not versi.on.
not a repetition or a parod y, but Don Quixote Itself. Th ISproject
ce r nes out of a mad , absol utel y raving jealousy. Borges' text is
written in Spanish. but it is marked by the French
Pierre Menard is a Frenchman. t he story takes place III Ntmes.
and there are all sorts of resonances that led Borges to write thi s
text in a Spanish tongue which is very subtly marked by a
certain Fronchnoss. Once, in a seminar on translati on, , had a
discussion with a Hispanist student who said about t his text:
"In the end the French translation is perh aps more faithful and
thus bette r than the original." Well, yes and no, because what is
lost in t he French translation is this superimposed Pronchness
IOU Roundtable on Transl ation
or the Frenchncss that inserts a slight di vision wit h in the Spa n-
ish , all of which Borges wa nted to mark in the or igina l. Transla-