GLOBAL CONVERSATIONSAN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
IN CONTEMPORAR PHILOSOPH AND CULTURE

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VOLUME IV, NUMBER 01 / 2021

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Introduction
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume IV, Number 01 (2021): 07-08

Editorial
Introduction
The current thematic issue cover topics of interest in literary criticism, philosophy, andtranscultural studies. Three articles focus directly on the theme of Calamit and Immunit ,whereas an article and a translation with commentary draw attention to the contemporary
relevance of two thinkers from the Indian subcontinent.
The opening two articles identify Jacques Derrida s sense of autoimmunit in reading
two contemporary novels. Yasemin Karaa a brings to the fore the interrelations ofautoimmunity with hostility and hospitality in Ismail Kadare s novel The Fall of The Stone City.
The novel, which narrates the events of two successive political contexts in Albania theGerman occupation during the World War Two and the post-war communist regime has
proven a prolific resource for Karaa a to put to work the conceptual instrumentarium of
deconstruction in revisiting the relations, actions, and fate of its main characters.
For her part, Catherine MacMillan focuses on the political sense of autoimmunity,
which she reads throughout Jos Saramago s novel Seeing. The novel, which depicts a politicalcrisis after democratic elections, has offered an opportunity for MacMillan to explore potential
benefits and risks from actions of governments addressing such crisis. Employing the concept
of autoimmunity, she keenly shows its convergence with Saramago s reflective narrative insupport of the need for democracy as a permanent political critique.
The third article also makes use of Derrida s deconstructive philosophy for purposes ofliterary critique, this time in conjunction with Alice s Jardine s feminist notion of gynesis andin a reading of Nathaniel Ha thorne s Novel The Scarlet Letter. Here the concepts of immunity
and autoimmunity are deployed along with those of woman-in-effect, trace, patriarchy,
discourse, and phallogocentrism, amongst others, in a joint deconstructive feminist perspective
aiming to identify the sense of life-affirmation throughout Ha thorne s narrative and thus trace
what Derrida has called the becoming literary of the literal .
In her article, Priyambada Sarkar offers a comparative discussion of aspects of thethought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore. She focuses in particular on
Wittgenstein s claim that ethics and aesthetics are one and endeavors to identify it in Tagore s
work. In an exposition full of insights, which goes over an admirable amount of the works ofand the research on these two thinkers, Sakar shows that for both of them words fall short ofconveying the sense of value, but that the clarification of this peculiar running against theboundaries of language is conductive to the harmony of philosophical and poetic thinking.
The issue ends up with a selection of the songs of Lalon Fakir, the Bengali poetphilosopher from the 19th century, translated and with commentary by Sayed Muddashir
Hossain. Lalon s songs are unique and remarkable in many ways, as has been also his life story.
Today s reader will be able to find in them that, among other things, questions about religion,

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Introduction

gender, and social equality, which are major concerns of our time, were raised so keenly andlong ago by this brilliant at once poetic and philosophic mind. Hossain s commentar isvery informative, proving truly useful in grasping the sense of Lalon s unique metaphorics.
We hope you enjoy these pieces and find in them something to benefit from. Thank you
for your time!
Rossen Roussev

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GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume IV, Number 01 (2021): 09-24

Calamity and Immunity

HOSTILITY, HOSPITALITY, AND AUTOIMMUNITY
IN KADARE THE FALL OF THE STONE CITY
Ya emin Ka aa a
Abstract
The a e e lo e I mail Kada e no el The Fall of The Stone City from thee ec i e of De ida conceof hospitality and autoimmunity. According toDerrida, the concepts of unconditional hospitality and autoimmunity overlap intheir absolute openness to the Other, which potentially constitutes both a risk andan opportunity in the context of deconstructing and destabilizing the binary
opposition between friendship and enmity. The aim of the paper is to show therelevance of this point in a discussion of key events in the novel. More specifically,
the invasion of Albania by German troops and the disastrous regime of Stalinist
comm ni a i an ill be anal ed h o gh De ida conce of ho i ali andautoimmunity. In addition, the encounter of the German commander with his oldcollege friend, Albanian Big Dr Gurameto, during the invasion of Albania is seen
as suggestive of the breakdown of the clear distinction between friendship andenmity. The arrival of the German commander, who is Big D G ame o oldfriend but an enemy in the eye of the public, will be examined also in view of
De ida conce of arrivant, as well as of his concept of hospitality. In this sense,
this paper will discuss the destabilizing of the binary opposition between friendshipand enmity, and its engagement with hospitality and autoimmunity.
Keywords: Derrida, hospitality, autoimmunity, deconstructing, friendship, enmity

Ismail Kadare, the best-known Albanian author internationally and a laureate of a number ofprestigious literary awards, wrote much of his work under the Communist dictatorship of Enver
Hoxha. Like many other Albanian writers who experienced control, repressions, and often
imprisonment under the communist regime, Kadare suffered threats and had to compromise inorder to see his work published. However, he can still be considered a writer of subversive
works in the cultural context of socialist Albania. He has produced a variety of literary texts
that explore his countr s historical situation and culture, and his novels render him a unique

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chronicler of Albanian history. Kadare, is known as both a guardian of the Albanian identityand a universal writer in a tradition of stor telling that goes back to Homer. 1
Albania was ruled by a Stalinist regime which lasted five years beyond the death of
Enver Hoxha in 1985. After consecutive breaks with Yugoslavia, Moscow, and China, by 1978,
the country was sealed off from Europe and the West, as much as from world communism. 2
During World War II it was invaded by both Italians and Germans, and after the fall ofcommunism it had its vested interest in the Kosovo War. During the communist regime, manyof Kadare s works were censored, but they were published in various forms and formats, andwere both published and translated inside and outside Albania. In his early years, under the
Hoxha regime, Kadare reali ed that a dictatorship may be made of harder material than the
dictator himself and as he matured he thought that the writer and the dictator share something
in their control over the worlds of imagination and realit . 3 Based on his experiences during
the dictatorship years, Kadare offers a large body of novels, essays, and stories that present a
perspective on related political and historical events in the Albanian history to the readershipin Europe and the world.
The Fall of The Stone City4 can be seen as a great portrayal of the social and politicalsituation in Albania during the time of dictatorship, capturing the themes of resistance andtotalitarianism, as well as the dark political threats that the people faced during that period. The
events in the novel take place in the year 1943 in Kadare s birthplace, the ancient stone city of
Gjirokastër, which had been occupied by the Italian army since 1939. In the course of the war,
the German Army invaded the city from occupied Greece to replace the Italian occupation witha new one. The novel thus depicts how the war disrupted people s lives and how the struggled
against the political regimes of the various occupying forces, adding up to the Ottoman Empire,
Italian fascism, German Nazism, and Stalinist communism.
At this point, the Albanian resistance started with fire on German motorcyclists andtanks. The main action of the story began with the meeting of two old college friends the Nazi
commander Colonel Fritz von Schwabe and Big Dr Gurameto, a popular surgeon in the city.
Gurameto invited von Schwabe for dinner at his home with other guests, including Little Dr
Gurameto, a friend and colleague of Big Dr Gurameto s. The townspeople, who hear the musicfrom the doctor s gramophone and the clinking of glasses and dishes from his house during thenight, presumed that Big Dr Gurameto betrayed his country, and even celebrated and toasted
the German invasion. However, Big Dr Gurameto persuaded his old friend to release the local
hostages, including a Jewish pharmacist captured by the Germans, to which von Schwabe
eventually conceded supposedly for the sake of their old friendship. Consequently, after the
hostages were freed, Big Dr Gurameto became almost a heroic figure for the Albanian people
for having secured better fortunes for the city. Still, the dinner remained a mystery for thetownsfolk until its secret was revealed at a later time when Stalinist functionaries arrested andtortured the two surgeons to speak out the truth about that evening.
1Peter Morgan, Ismail Kadare The Writer and the Dictatorship 1957-1990 (UK: Legenda, 2010), p. xv.
Ibid., p. 1.
3
Ibid., pp.115-116.
4
Ismail Kadare, The Fall of The Stone City (Great Britain: Canongate Books, 2008).
2

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When the Stalinist regime took over the country, the two foremost investigators in
Albania at the time, Shaqo Me ini and Arian Ciu, examined the full list of the surgeons patients
because the two doctors were charged with planning to commit political murders of communist
leaders. In the process of the investigation, Big Dr Gurameto learned that the man who was
supposed to be his old friend attending the dinner back then was a German Colonel called Klaus
Hempf, who only presented himself as Fritz von Schwabe. The two Nazi colonels met bychance in a field hospital in May 1943. The mortally wounded von Schwabe asked as daying
wish his fellow officer, who was to be transferred to Albania, to find and bid farewell to his
old Albanian college friend. Hempf promised to carry out his wish, as von Schwabe died in hisarms on May 11, 1943. Four months later, on September 16, 1943, the Nazi tanks invaded
Albania and the name of the city, Gjirokastër, reminded Hempf of his promise. When reaching
to Big Dr Gurameto, Hempf passed himself off as Colonel Fritz von Schwabe, even as the latter
had already died on the front a few months before. Subsequently, Big Dr Gurameto supposedthat he was greatly altered by time and his wounds. Thus, in due course, the deathbed encounter
between von Schwabe and Hempf in a military hospital was followed by the mysterious dinner
and, ears later, b the Stalinist political investigation, after extracts from Hempf s diar madethese events known.
The novel vividl depicts this period of Albania s histor and the victims of the German
invasion. It also presents us with a picture of the totalitarian communist regime that followed,
which was supposed to liberate the Albanian people from the fascist occupying forces but
instead brought about another disastrous rule. In this framework, The Fall of The Stone City alsooffers a perspective for discussion of binary oppositions such as hospitality and hostility,
friendship and enmity, as these are the primary concepts explored in the novel. Kadare tells hisstory from a perspective that challenges well-established notions by juxtaposing them with theiropposites in the course of the events he narrates. It will be primarily these binary oppositions
that will be anal ed here through Derrida s concepts of hospitalit and autoimmunit .
In this respect, the challenged borders between these binary oppositions prompt an
examination of the notion of foreigner/stranger, who can appear as enemy or friend within
Derrida s concept of hospitalit . In Of Hospitality,5 Derrida analyses the sense of hospitality(xenia), which derives from the Latin hospes, meaning host, guest, or stranger . Since b its
etymology it carries its contradiction within itself, hospitality can be understood as the receptionof a stranger (Xenos) in a most general sense which accommodates two opposing meanings.
Derrida points out that this is indicated in the translation of Xenos in French with twocontradictory meanings: as étranger (stranger or foreigner) or as hôte (host).6 Thus, for him,
this coexistence of meanings reveals the apparently paradoxical relation between hospitality
and hostility, in which both of these concepts haunt each other ambivalently
the foreigner
7
welcomed as a guest or as enemy. Hospitality, hostility, hostpitality.
In this framework, Derrida carries his study further and puts forward two kinds of
hospitality, namely, unconditional and conditional hospitality. For Derrida, the ideal hospitality
is unconditional hospitality where the Other is welcomed with no expectation to adapt to the5

Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, translated by Anne Dufourmantelle (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
Ibid., p. 41.
7
Ibid., p. 45.
6

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traditions, conditions or rules of the host. That is, in unconditional hospitality, the Other is
accepted with absolute openness. This indeed implies a risk that the guest might turn out to be
an enemy/parasite. And yet, the uninvited guest/stranger might be as well a friendly guest. This
ambiguit in the sense of hospitalit can be related to Derrida s concept of autoimmunity, which
is described as that strange behavior where a living being, in quasi-suicidal fashion, itself
works to destro its own protection, to immuni e itself against its own immunit . 8 In otherwords, autoimmunity can be seen as a potentially destructive threat to its own immunity while
it tries to protect its own community or sovereignty. Since it is the instance of the body attacking
its own immune system, autoimmunity can be considered an internal occupation which also
allows the intrusion of the Other.9 Derrida further explains autoimmunity in Rogues as follows:
For what I call the autoimmune consists not only in harming or ruining oneself, indeed in destroying
one s own protections, and in doing so oneself, committing suicide or threatening to do so, but, more
seriously still, and through this, in threatening the I (moi) or the self (soi), the ego or the autos,
ipseity itself, compromising the immunity of the autos itself: it consists not only in compromisingoneself (s auto-entamer) but in compromising the self, the autos and thus ipseity. It consists not
only in committing suicide but in compromising sui- or self-referentiality, the self or sui- of suicide
itself. Autoimmunity is more or less suicidal, but, more seriously still, it threatens always to rob
suicide itself of its meaning and supposed integrity.10

Thus, autoimmunity can be understood in terms of a self-attacking move, which allows for thedestruction of one s self, such that the relation is neither one of exteriorit nor one of simple
opposition or contradiction. 11
On this basis, Derrida s hospitalit and hostilit will be used as umbrella concepts
throughout the discussion of the theme of friendship and enmity. The paper aims to explore theinterwoven relation of hospitalit and hostilit in the novel b examining the two old friends
promises and threats to each other in the context of friendship and enmity under the German
occupation of Albania. As it is related to the theme of hospitality, the concept of the arrivant
will be analyzed here as well; and additionally, the communist regime will be discussed as a
destructive threat from the perspective of autoimmunity.
Besides hospitality, hostility and friendship are also underlined in The Kanun of LekëDukagjini, the traditional Albanian legal code mentioned in the novel. As Rama an Balc
explains, The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini had continued to survive as a national law which had
never lost its effectiveness among Albanians, since the 11th century. The works on this subject,evaluate this code as a part of the oral folk tradition, and especially draw attention to its cultural
aspect. 12 In addition, in his Essays on World Literature: Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare(2018), Kadare emphasizes the importance of the guest as having almost deified status for the8

Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 100.
9Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 123.
10
Ibid., p. 45.
11
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 114.
12
Rama an Balc , The Ottoman Practices of The Kanun of Dukajini: The Method of Cibal, T ki a Mecm a ,Vol. 26, No. 1 (2016), p. 33.

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Albanian people according to The Kanun.13 Indeed, hospitality is to such an extent at the coreof The Kanun that penalties have to be applied if someone breaks its rules. Since it plays suchan important role in the Albanian culture, hospitality cannot be simply ignored.14
As mentioned above, for Derrida, ideally hospitality is unconditional, which essentiallymeans welcoming the Other without asking questions about his or her name, identity, state ororigin; as opposed to conditional hospitality, which requires the guest to adapt to the rules andthe norms of the host. More broadly put, whereas in conditional hospitality the host has control
over the guest in terms of control over national borders,15 in its ver essence Derrida s claim
suggests that hospitality should be unconditional and should involve openness to the stranger
whoever or whatever she or he ma be. As Derrida puts it, a visitor can be a foreigner, animmigrant, an uninvited guest, or an unexpected visitor, whether or not the new arrival is thecitizen of another country, a human, animal or divine creature, a living or dead thing, male orfemale. 16 Thus, it can be said that unconditional hospitality does not limit the visitor the
Other or force the visitor to adjust to the host s space, for hospitalit should be neither
assimilation, acculturation, nor simpl the occupation of m space b the Other. 17 Instead, as
he claims that unconditional hospitality should be ideally the case, for Derrida the host should
open his or her space without any request to do so:
I have to and that s an unconditional injunction I have to welcome the Other whoever he or she
is unconditionally, without asking for a document, a name, a context or a passport. That is the very
first opening of my relation to the Other; to open my space, my home my house, my language, myculture, my nation, my state and myself.18

Hence, Derrida, in his comments on unconditional hospitality, emphasizes the ambiguous
relation between the host and the Other, and especiall the moment that welcoming the Other
whoever he or she is unconditionall implies a risk. As Derrida points out, this risk functions
such that I have to accept if I offer unconditional hospitality that the Other may ruin my own
space or impose his or her own culture or his or her own language. 19 It is therefore uncertain
whether the visitor is a friend who brings peace or is an enemy who will harm the host. Instead,
Derrida argues, The one inviting becomes almost the hostage of the one invited, of the guest,
the hostage of the one he receives, the one who keeps him at home. 20
According to Derrida, an aporia stands at the centre of the concept of hospitality interms of the opposition of The law (of hospitality), in its universal singularity, to a pluralitythat isa number of laws that distribute their histor and their anthropological geograph13

Ismail Kadare, Essays on World Literature: Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare (New York: Restless Books, 2018),
p. 78.
14
Ibid., p. 75.
15Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 135.
16
Ibid., p. 77.
17
Geoffre Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Politics and Friendship: A Discussion with
Jacques Derrida, 1997, http://www.dariaroithmayr.com/pdfs/assignments/Politics%20and%20Friendship.pdf
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 9.

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differentl . 21 He elaborates further that in this sense The law is above the laws. It is thus
illegal, transgressive, outside the law. 22 Thus, one can say that both concepts (of law and laws)
depend on each other, that this is a two-way dependence as the unconditional law of hospitality
needs the laws, it requires them in order to become effective, concrete, determined. 23 In thissense, the conditional hospitality corrupts the unconditional hospitality, and vice versa. As
Derrida puts it, We will alwa s be threatened b this dilemma between, on the one hand,
unconditional hospitality that dispenses with law, duty, or even politics, and, on the other,
hospitality circumscribed by law and duty. One of them can always corrupt the other, and thiscapacity for perversion remains irreducible. It must remain so. 24
The slipper ground of this concept is supported b Derrida s concept of autoimmunit .
In his article Hostipitality, he argues that this dilemma results in hospitality auto-immunizing
itself:Hospitality is a self-contradictory concept and experience which can only self-destruct put
otherwise, produce itself as impossible, only be possible on the condition of its impossibility orprotect itself from itself, auto-immunize itself in some way, which is to say, deconstruct itself
precisely in being put into practice.25

In this sense, Derrida takes the biological term autoimmunit in order to deconstructhospitalit as the self-destructive tendency of the political and philosophical theories that areapparently intertwined with the concept of the Other. The key moment here is that if
unconditional hospitality involves openness to stranger, then, it implies a risk. Autoimmunity,
on Derrida s view, emulates this risk highlighting the vulnerabilit and powerlessness of theimmune system, which works to destroy its own protection. What here makes the juxtaposition
between unconditional hospitality and autoimmunity possible is that, although they are different
concepts, they share common features such as risk and promise.26 The both conve a double
bind of threat and chance, not alternatively or by turns promise and/or threat but threat in thepromise itself. 27
Thus, for Derrida, autoimmunity 28 is a direct attack against itself its own immune
system for itself. It is self-destructive and a quasi-suicidal drive attacking one s own
21

Ibid., p. 79.
Ibid., p. 79.
23
Ibid., p. 79.
24
Ibid., p. 135.
25
Jacques Derrida, Hostipitalit , Angelaki 5, no.3 (2000), pp. 4-5.
26
Andrea Tim r, Derrida and the Immune S stem, p. 5.
27
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 82.
28
Derrida appropriates this medical term standing for the biological condition in which living system immunize
itself against its own immunity. His use of the term dates back to the 1990s, particularly in Spectres of Marx
(1994), Politics of Friendship (1997), and Faith and Knowledge. He admits that it is a central concept in his
philosophy, especially following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, most notably in an interview with
Giovanna Borradori (2003), and, later on in Rogues (2005). However, Derrida s formulation shows contrasts withactual implications of the biological concept. As Andrea Tim r points out, Derrida s concept is closer to the bod s
reaction to infection b the AIDS virus, which stands in an uneasy, almost spectral relationship with autoimmune
diseases. For whereas in autoimmune diseases the immune s stem destro s the bod s own organs, during HIV
22

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immune s stem, which was to protect oneself and one s own identit . 29 Furthermore, Derrida
explains that autoimmunity also allows for the intrusion of the Other through the destruction of
the immune system. 30 As this is a situation in which, as a result of internal corruption, theimmune system destroys itself, the suggestion here is that this sense of autoimmunity also
destabilizes the binary opposition between friend and enemy. Respectively, the relation offriend and enemy between Colonel Fritz von Schwabe and Dr Gurameto here will be discussed
in terms of this sense of autoimmunity as well. And overall, along Derrida s sense of
unconditional hospitality, so specified as autoimmunity, The Fall of The Stone City can be readas destabilizing this binary opposition by making it possible for the Other to be understood asboth a threat and an opportunity.
The story begins in the stone city of Gjirokastër in 1943 in the middle of World War
II. In September 1943, Albania was occupied by Nazi forces and German soldiers advanced on
the ancient gates of the city. The two popular surgeons, Big Dr Gurameto and Little Dr
Gurameto, having the same surname without a family connection, are presented as having asignificant role in the unfolding events. The important difference between the two doctors isthat Big Dr Gurameto studied in Germany whereas Little Dr Gurameto studied in Italy, which
was to play a part in their respective professional esteem in the course of the events. The Italianinvasion, or, as some people called it
Albania s unification with Ital , changed theequilibrium between the two doctors and elevated one at the expense of the other. 31 The
relation between the two doctors is another important factor to analyze in the novel from theperspective of autoimmunity. In the novel, Little Dr Gurameto is presented as the projection of
Big Dr Gurameto s unconscious, a projection which the people around him for some
inexplicable reason had accepted. 32 From this point of view, the projection of Big Dr
Gurameto s unconscious can be seen as an autoimmune s stem.
In 1943, Italy lost her big brother, Germany, and the German Army was coming as afriend with the aim of liberating the countr from the hated Italian occupation and restoring
Albania s violated independence, as written in the leaflets that were dropped from German
aircrafts over Gjirokastër. 33 The leaflets, which were prepared in two languages, German andAlbanian, caused different opinions among the cit s inhabitants: it was possible for German
to be seen as a friend or an enemy. It is important to note here that for Derrida the arrival orvisitation of the other can also be an invasion. As he puts it, if I accept the coming of the other,
the arriving (arrivance) of the other who could come at any moment without asking my opinion
infection, the immune system destroy itself, and becomes entangled in a process that inevitably leads to its total
destruction. Thus, Derrida s definition of autoimmunit echoes, in fact, the medical definitions of AIDS, but unlike
AIDS, autoimmunity becomes a political concept in Derrida s thinking . (See Andrea Tim r, Derrida and the
Immune S stem, Et al: Critical Theory Online, 2015, http://etal.hu/en/archive/terrorism-and-aesthetics2015/derrida-and-the-immune-system ).
29
Michael Lewis, Of (Auto) Immune Life: Derrida, Esposito, Agamben, in Medicine and Society, New
Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, ed. Darian Meacham (New York: Springer, 2015), p. 216.
30
Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 123.
31
Ismail Kadare, The Fall of The Stone City, p. 4.
32
Ibid., p. 164
33
Ibid., p. 6.

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and who could come with the best or worst of intentions: a visitation could be an invasion by
the worst. 34 In the same vein, in Aporias (1993), Derrida presents us with his notion ofarrivant:
The new arrivant, this word can, indeed, mean the neutrality of that which arrives, but also the
singularity who arrives, of he or she who comes, coming to be where s/he was not expected, where
one was awaiting him or her without waiting for him or her, without expecting it, without knowing
what or whom to expect, what or whom I am waiting for and such is hospitality itself, hospitality
toward the event.35

In this sense, the arrival of Colonel Fritz von Schwabe, a commanding officer of the German
Army, can be considered as that of an uninvited guest or as a new arrivant. Although, as
accompanied by German tanks and troops, he appears a destructive stranger and an inevitable
force against Albania, as a new arrivant he is not et an invader or an occupier, nor acoloni er, 36 even if he also becomes one. He actually claimed that he came to Albania in order
to find his old college friend and he expected to be welcomed by the Albanian hospitality as
laid down in The Kanun. When von Schwabe and Big Dr Gurameto met, the doctor failed torecognize his college friend. He thought that he could not recognize him because of the passingof time, his military uniform, or the two scars on his face, but an emotional reunion still took
place:
Like the Nibelungenlied, eh? Or the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini? Do you remember what you told
me in the Widow Martha s Tavern? About Albanian honour, hospitalit ? ...
I ve dreamed of this meeting for so long, and so when the gave me orders to take this tankdivision and occupy Albania, my first thought was of you. I would not invade Albania but save it,
unite it with the eternal Reich and of course, before anything else, I would find you my brother. And
I set off happily to the country where honour rules, as ou used to sa . 37

Von Schwabe proceeded to show his disappointment from the Albanian hospitalit : Dr
Gurameto, the fired on me in our cit I was fired on. I was betra ed It was m fault for
believing you. Nostalgia had turned me soft and without thinking I had put my men in mortal
danger Gurameto, ou traitor, where s our Albanian honour now? 38 Fritz von Schwabe
makes it clear that he already expected his old friend s warm welcome and unconditional
hospitalit as presented in the old da s, I sent ou word. I dropped thousands of leaflets fromthe air. I told ou I was coming as a guest. I asked the master of the house, Will ou receive
guests? Where is our honour, Dr Gurameto? Have ou nothing to sa ? 39 As the novel has
it, von Schwabe critici es the host s tradition even though he himself is an arrivant or a guest.
Although he does not question Gurameto s Albanian identit directl , he calls into question his
Albanian tradition of hospitalit . We can note here that on Derrida s view the arrival ofotherness surprises the host, enough to call into question, to the point of annihilating or
34

Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida, Hostipitalit , Angelaki 5, no.3 (2000), p. 17.
Jacques Derrida, Aporias (Stanford: Stanford University, 1993), p. 33.
36
Ibid., p. 34.
37
Ismail Kadare, The Fall of The Stone City, p. 31.
38
Ibid., p. 32.
39
Ibid., p. 32.
35

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rendering indeterminate, all the distinctive signs of a prior identity, beginning with the very
border that delineated a legitimate home and assured lineage, names and language, nations,families and genealogies. 40 In this sense, von Schwabe can be considered an arrivant, who
surprises Big Dr Gurameto and has enough authority to question his hospitality, Albanianhonor, and loyalty to The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini. Thereupon, Big Dr Gurameto defended
himself, saying:
I did not fire on ou, Frit .
Reall ? It was worse than that. Your countr fired on me.
I answer for m own house, not the state.
It comes to the same.
It does not come to the same. I am not Albania, just as ou are not German , Frit . We re somethingelse. 41

After this conversation, Big Dr Gurameto invites von Schwabe for dinner. It is not known tothe cit s population what this occasion was reall about
Some still called it the dinner ofshame but others referred to it as the resurrection dinner . 42 Some people thought that
Gurameto s plan was to cock a snook at the Germans, while others believed he followed the
Albanian custom and welcomed them, opening his house to everyone, friend or foe.43 However,
Big Dr Gurameto s intention was different: he was planning to convince Frit von Schwabe torelease the Albanian hostages taken by the occupiers. On that evening, Big Dr Gurameto, whilelooking out for his guest towards the gate of his yard, felt sorrow that he had never known
before. In this case, appl ing Derrida s sense of unconditional hospitalit appears to beseemingly impossible, as this requires that one accept the guest without any anticipation or
expectation, while relinquishing control over one s own space. Derrida s remarks on the aporiaof hospitality are fitting here:
For there to be hospitality there must be a door. But if there is a door, there is no longer hospitality.
There is no hospitable house. There is no house without doors and windows. But as soon as there
are a door and windows, it means that someone has the key to them and consequently controls theconditions of hospitality. There must be a threshold. But if there is a threshold, there is no longer
hospitality.44

In this sense, it can be said that the threshold of the house is already a representation of the limit
for unconditional hospitality. Hence, the concept of unconditional hospitality, or pure
hospitality, seems impossible. Although Big Dr Gurameto, as the master of the house, showed
his hospitalit to the colonel and the German servicemen, the colonel s confession effectivel
turned the master of the house into stone; hence, Big Dr Gurameto s hospitalit turned into
conditional hospitality upon asking the colonel to release the hostages:

40

Jacques Derrida, Aporias, p. 34.
Ibid., p. 32.
42
Ibid., p. 27.
43
Ibid., pp. 21-22.
44
Jacques Derrida, Hostipitalit , p. 14.
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And so, as I told ou, when the order came to occup
I mean to unite Albania, my first thought
was that I would visit my brother. I would find him wherever he was. And look, I have come. But
ou You fired on me, Gurameto. Treacherousl , behind m back.
It wasn t me.
I know. But ou know better than I do that your Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini demands blood. German
blood was split. Blood is never counted as lost Eight hostages will wash awa that blood. While
we are dining here, m men are rounding them up. 45

Here, the dilemma at the heart of the hospitality, which Derrida sets out in Of Hospitality
emerges again: How can we distinguish between a guest and a parasite? In principle, thedifference is straightforward, but for that you need a law; hospitality, reception, the welcome
offered, have to be submitted to a basic and limiting jurisdiction. 46 Although Big Dr Gurameto
granted Fritz von Schwabe access to his house as if he were a valued guest, von Schwabe turned
out to be a parasite and broke the code of honor at the heart of hospitality. As Derrida states,
Not all new arrivals are received as guests if the don t have the benefit of the right tohospitality or the right of asylum, etc. Without this right, a new arrival can only be introduced
in m home , in the host s at home , as a parasite, a guest who is wrong, illegitimate,clandestine, liable to expulsion or arrest. 47 Therefore, apparently, it can be said that the guest
turns out to be a destructive enemy a parasite or a threat, who ruins the host s nation or
space and abuses the host s hospitalit . Undeniabl , this implies the risk of pure hospitality,
for, as Derrida sa s, [ ] That is the risk of pure hospitalit and pure gift, because a gift might
be terrible, too. 48 In the novel, Frit von Schwabe violates Gurameto s hospitalit , which
potentially shows the colonel as a destructive enemy. Apparently, the collapse of the ethicalboundaries of being a guest and a friend displays the ambivalent nature of the friendshipbetween two men. At this point, this leads us to another of Derrida s works, The Politics ofFriendship, in which Derrida discusses the paradoxical closeness between friendship andenmity in the lens of integration between politics and friendship. Big Dr Gurameto asked thecolonel to free the hostages; however, the colonel insisted on not releasing them until he learned
the name of the people who fired on him: Gurameto, m brother, I do not want to spill Albanian
blood. I came as a guest, with promises and gifts, but you fired on me. Give me those damned
names, give them to me and the hostages are ours, instantl . 49
Here, other relevant questions arise: What does it take to understand a private friend or
a guest as a public enemy? Alternatively, what does it take to distinguish friends from the public
or the private enemy?
Derrida takes these questions and reinterprets the communal and individual enemy,
which are also discussed by Carl Schmitt. Schmitt, argues that the meaning of friend can be
only determined within the distinction between friend and enemy. 50 For Schmitt, in politics, theenem is alwa s the public enem ; however, Derrida s reading of Schmitt deconstructs thisapproach. As Derrida puts it, The enem in the political sense need not be hated personally,
45

Ismail Kadare, The Fall of The Stone City, p. 35.
Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 59.
47
Ibid., p. 59.
48
Jacques Derrida, Hospitalit , Justice and Responsibilit , p. 71.
49
Ismail Kadare, The Fall of The Stone City, p. 39.
50
Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, trans. G. Collins, ( London, UK: Verso, 2005), p. 373.
46

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and in the private sphere onl does it make sense to love one s enem , that is, one s
adversar . 51 Derrida suggests here that one can destro one s enem in the public sphere while
continuing to love him/her in private:
The friend (amicus) can be an enemy (hostis). I can be hostile towards my friend, I can be hostile
towards him publicly and, conversely, I can, in privacy, love my enemy. From this, everything would
follow, in orderly, regular fashion, from the distinction between public and private. Another way ofsaying that at ever point when this border is threatened, fragile, porous, contestable
Schmittian discourse collapses.52

theIn this sense, for Derrida, friend and enem are not mutuall exclusive opposites. 53 Although
Derrida focuses on the concept of friendship, he believes that enemy precedes the friend andthat war is a condition of friendship. 54 In this sense, the love of the political enemy at a personallevel can be seen as the most notable aspect of Kadare s novel. Although Fritz von Schwabe
was a public enemy, he released Albanian hostages for the sake of his friendship with
Gurameto, giving the order to free the hostages, including also a Jewish pharmacist, following
a long discussion with Big Dr Gurameto:
Dr Gurameto, ou ve broken our word. There is a Jew here.
A Jew? So what?
So what? You know I can t release Jews.
Jews, Albanians, it s all the same.
It s not the same, Gurameto, not at all.
Albanians do not betra their guests. You know that, Frit . This Jew is a guest in our cit . We can thand over a guest.
Because the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini forbids it?
I told ou this long ago in the tavern. It s been our law for a thousand ears. 55

Based on the dialogue above, although the two men have different political views, von Schwabe
and Big Dr Gurameto appear to embody the paradoxically close relationship between friendshipand enmity. In this relation, it is very indicative that the friendship argument applies also to theJewish hostage, even though the colonel s hostilit towards Jews is quite obvious. This isbecause, despite being a political and public enemy, Fritz ultimately turns out to be a friend at
a personal level: The doctor and the colonel muttered to each other in private for a long timeand again the situation changed. Nobody explained why. Colonel Fritz von Schwabe, bearer of
the Iron Cross, took a deep breath and ordered the hostages to be freed. Not just some, but allof them. 56
Meanwhile, at the dinner, Big Dr Gurameto s daughter passed round the drinks to thecolonel, then to her father, her mother, the others present, and finally to her fiancé. Aftereveryone emptied their glasses, they collapsed on the sofa and the carpet and fell into a deep51

Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, p. 88.
Ibid., p. 88
53
Antonio Calcagno, Badiou and Derrida: Politics, Events and their Time. (London: Continuum, 2007), p. 46
54Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, pp. 132-172.
55
Ismail Kadare, The Fall of The Stone City, pp. 45-46.
56
Ibid., p. 47.
52

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sleep. The next morning, she woke up and found herself lying fully clothed on the bed in her
parents room. In the living room, she saw them stretched out where the had fallen, arms
outspread and mouths gaping, her father, fiancé and mother, in whose lap an officer had laid
his head; and then the colonel, his face still masked, and the others, frozen, white, like
sculptures. 57 She thought that her father had already planned to poison his guests alongsidewith his own family; Big Dr Gurameto suspected his daughter of the same. 58 But nobody could
solve the mystery of the situation, i.e. nobody knew who had put the poison into the drinks.
Here, the German colonel and soldiers who were supposed to dominate the doctor s spacebecame victimi ed in the house. The guests became oppressed subjects in the host s place andthe host turned out to be the oppressor. Thus, there seems to be a reversal of the relation between
host and guest into a relation of victimized guest and host oppressor. At this point, the supposed
poisoner was trying to protect her family and home by serving the drinks to the colonel andsoldiers, and took the risk of serving the same drinks to the whole family. This can be discussed
in terms of autoimmunity. The supposed poisoner directly attacked herself/himself and her/his
whole famil , making the gesture of autoimmunit , which is both self-protecting and selfdestroying, at once remedy and poison. 59 According to Derrida, Autoimmunit is alwa s
more or less suicidal, but more seriously still, it threatens always to rob suicide itself from its
meaning and supposed integrit as it consists not onl in committing suicide but incompromising sui- or self-referentiality, the self or sui- of suicide 60 In this way, theautoimmune entity apparently threatens the whole family in order to protect them against theGerman oppressors. As has been discussed above, despite the threat of the Nazi occupation, itis the supposed poisoner himself/herself who arguably constitutes the greatest threat to thefamily.
It has been suggested that the concepts of hospitality and autoimmunity are similar inthat both contain openness to the outside, which implies risk. As Michael Naas says:
If autoimmunity describes the way in which an organism, an individual, a family, or a nation,
compromises its own forces of self-affirmation so as to become open and vulnerable to its outside,then autoimmunity is always a kind of hospitality the welcoming of an event that might wellchange the very identity of the self, of the autos, the welcoming of an event that may thus bringgood or ill, that may invite a remedy or a poison, a friend or a foe. To be open to the event, to offer
hospitality, it is essential not to know in advance what is what or who is who.61

Immunity can be bound up with the conditional hospitality where people are able to protect
their sovereignt and defend themselves from the intrusion of the Other. Thus, autoimmunit
is not an absolute ill or evil. It enables an exposure to the other, to what and to who comes
which means that it must remain incalculable. Without autoimmunity, with absolute immunity,
nothing would ever happen or arrive; we would no longer wait, await, or expect, no longer
expect one another, or expect any event. 62
57

Ibid., p. 48.
Ibid., p. 119.
59
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 124.
60
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 44.
61
Michael Naas, Derrida from Now On, p. 32.
62
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 152.
58

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In addition, in the context of autoimmune logic, the communist Albanian groups can beseen as the other threat to life in Albania. As the course of events unfolds in the novel, thecommunists claim that the nationalists and royalists are preparing to do a deal with theGermans.63 However, communists calls for war provoked onl chaos and anxiet throughout
the cit . The knock on the doors and brake into houses: Territorials as the local communists
were called, helped the patrols to carry out arrests of prominent nationalists. 64 The conspiracy
to demolish the entire city, cabals and other horrors lead people to go against their own allies.
In this context, Derrida argues, In all wars, all civil wars, all partisan wars or wars forliberation, the inevitable escalation leads one to go after one s rival partners no less than one s
so-called principal adversar . 65 Thus, while the communist groups are supposed to protect
their own country, they themselves constitute also a threat to the Albanians. This finds an
explanation within Derrida s sense of autoimmunit . He argues that the autoimmunit turns on
itself, and must then come to resemble [its] enemies, to corrupt itself and threaten itself inorder to protect itself against their threats. 66
In 1953, the two surgeons were arrested on suspicion of murder and charged with being
terrorist doctors: The Soviets themselves had broadcast the news, calling it murder in a whitecoat . 67 The accusation was in the political murder of communist leaders; supposedl , Under
the direction of a Jewish organi ation known as the Joint , a group of doctors was preparing
the greatest crime in the history of mankind: the elimination by murder of all the communist
leaders throughout the world, starting with Joseph Stalin. 68 The foremost investigators ofAlbania s Communist regime, Shaqo Me ini and Arian Ciu, interrogated the two doctors forthe murder of patients during surgical procedures, and tortured them in the Cave of Sanisha
until they died. The interrogation was to make them confess the whole truth about the dinneron the night of the reunion Big Dr Gurameto with his old college friend who turned out to becommander of German troops invading Albania. 69 The investigators were not convinced by Big
Dr Gurameto s answers: Isn t it a bit like of one of those old fairy tales we learned at school?
Quite apart from the dinner with music and champagne, the release of the hostages and thesalvation of the city, doesn t it look a bit like a game? Wh not stop this charade and tell us
what was reall behind it? 70 The did not believe Gurameto s answers because Colonel Fritz
von Schwabe had allegedly died in a field hospital in Ukraine long before that dinner. 71
Furthermore, the investigators maintained that Big Dr Gurameto was part of the aforementioned
Jewish organization because he asked von Schwabe to release a Jewish pharmacist that night.
Thus, they considered it an evidence against him and claimed that Big Dr Gurameto wascollaborating with the Nazis to establish Jewish rule throughout the world, and to murder the63

Ismail Kadare, The Fall of The Stone City, p. 55.
Ibid., p. 68.
65
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 112.
66
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 40.
67
Ismail Kadare, The Fall of The Stone City, p. 102.
68
Ibid., p. 103.
69
Ibid., p. 113.
70
Ibid., p. 113.
71
Ibid., p. 116.
64

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world communist leaders, starting with Stalin. 72 In this sense, we can also note that the new
regime of communism appears to attack its own integral protection at the level of the state by
destroying its own immune system. That is, the Stalinist regime corrupts the city of Gjirokastër
and Albania, pushing the city as a whole through a peculiar autoimmune destruction. As
Michael Lewis sa s, the greatest threat of terror comes from within, in that destruction of theimmune s stem which allows the relativel strict border between one s self and the outside tocollapse, not because of an external enem s attack but as a result of internal corruption. 73
Although the new regime was supposed to be associated with reconstruction, it seemed thatit came to resemble an enem . Stalinists anger, aimed at Gjirokast r because of the conspiracplot, threatened the whole city. The Stalinist functionaries who interrogated and tortured thesurgeons constituted the threat to the life in the city. In this sense, the autoimmune entity canbe seen as turning on itself and starting to resemble enemy of Albania. Since autoimmunity
implies opposites such as threat and chance, protection and destruction, the Stalinist regime, as
Other, can be seen at first as promise, but then as provoking an attack against the city. For
Derrida, autoimmunity is essentially a relationship between self and other; however, it also
deconstructs the binary opposition between self and non-self. Since autoimmunity is a selfdestructive system, which implies an eroding of our defense mechanism to protect ourselves, it
directly attacks itself such that the relation of self and other is no longer one of exteriority. Thus,
according to the logic of this system, the self turns into a non-self or Other who sees itself as athreat to itself. In the same way, the communist regime can be interpreted also as self and Otheror exterior force, whereas Little Dr Gurameto, who is an opposition of Big Dr Gurameto, canbe seen as a non-self figure who was created as the self s defense mechanism.
At the end of the novel, in September 1993, shortly after the fall of communism inAlbania, both doctors graves were exhumed.74 It was discovered that one of the shackled menthat were exhumed was not Little Dr Gurameto but someone else who was never identified. 75
Since the little doctor had left so few traces behind himself, people began to doubt whether heever existed76 and man believed that Little Dr Gurameto had been merel an exteriori ationor projection of Big Dr Gurameto s unconscious. 77 This particular situation can be considereda model of autoimmunit on the level of the ps che. As Derrida sa s, To put it a bit
sententiously in the interest of time, without autoimmunity there would be neither
psychoanalysis, nor what psychoanalysis calls the unconscious . 78 In this sense, Big Dr
Gurameto arguably created a persona in his subconscious in an attempt to protect himself. Thatis, he may have created this persona as a projection of his own negative sides in an attempt toprotect his own status and his own life, very much as the living ego maintains its own
autoimmunity in itself. This is the sense in which Little Dr Gurameto might be considered a
non-self figure indicative of the self protective apparatus. As Derrida explains in Specters ofMarx, the living ego is auto-immune. To protect its life, to constitute itself as unique living
72

Ibid., p. 121.
Michael Lewis, Of (Auto) Immune Life: Derrida, Esposito, Agamben, p. 219.
74
Ibid., p. 164.
75
Ibid., p. 164.
76
Ibid., p. 164.
77
Ibid., pp. 164-165.
78
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 55.
73

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ego
it musttake the immune defenses apparentl meant for the non-ego, the enemy, theopposite, the adversary and direct them at once for itself and against itself. 79 It is in this sensethat Big Dr Gurameto s creation of the little doctor can be seen as a kind of immune defense
on the level of the psyche. Whereas the destruction of the immune system, which allows theintrusion of the Other, allows us also to say that the notion of autoimmunity can be used fordeconstruction of the relationship between self and non-self, between self and other.80
In conclusion, The Fall of The Stone City is a remarkable novel which can be analyzed
from the perspective of Derrida s concepts of hospitalit , autoimmunit , friendship, and thearrivant, while destabilizing the binary oppositions between hostility and hospitality, friendshipand enmity. As has been noted, according to Derrida, the concepts of unconditional hospitality
and autoimmunity overlap in their core meanings because they are both open to the Other,which constitutes both a threat and opportunity. In this sense, as Derrida points out, the term
autoimmunity is fundamentally different from other terms beginning with auto : While all theother autos words, without exception, express the power, independence, and stability of an
enduring self, autoimmunity evokes the powerlessness, vulnerability, dependence, andinstability of every self or autos. 81 Thus, the paper draws attention to the risk of autoimmunity
as a self-destructive term by investigating its sense through the political events and the level ofthe psyche. Overall, the aim of the paper has been to draw attention to the overlapping senses
of unconditional hospitality and autoimmunity as openness to the Other, which can beunderstood as both a threat and a promise.
In the novel, the binary opposition of friendship and enmity with regard to the two men
is discussed within the framework of deconstruction of the friend-enemy dichotomy, whichbecomes possible in terms of Derrida s concept of autoimmunit . Here, the ke moment in thesense of autoimmunity is that, while an autoimmune entity aims to protect itself, in reality it
constitutes a self-destructive threat to itself. Colonel Fritz von Schwabe as an arrivant was
shown as expecting to be welcomed with the traditional Albanian hospitality. And yet, thehospitality offered by Big Dr Gurameto turned into conditional hospitality. We can conjecture
here that either Big Dr Gurameto or his daughter used their immune defenses to destroy theenemy by attempting to poison the German Colonel and the other soldiers. At the same time,
the poisoning can also be understood as an autoimmune process, as Gurameto s family was
exposed to the poison as well. Furthermore, a transposition of the concept of autoimmunity at
the level of ps che can shed light on Little Dr Gurameto s presence as a reflection of Big Dr
Gurameto s subconscious. The rivalry between Big Dr Gurameto and Little Dr Gurameto,
especially as represented at the level of psyche, could be discussed as competition between twoof them. So far, Big Dr Gurameto was the victor on every occasion while his colleague wascalled the loser. Big Dr Gurameto s projection of his own failure on the imaginary little Dr
79

Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, translated by Peggy Kamouf (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 177.
For other related discussions see Catherine MacMillan, Looking for the Rogue: Democratic Autoimmunit in
Jos Saramago s Seeing, Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy andCulture, Vol. 4 (2021), pp. 27ff; as well as, Rossen Roussev, Feminism, Deconstruction, and Literar Criticism:
A Deconstructive Feminist Reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne s Novel The Scarlet Letter with the Help of Alice
Jardine and Jacques Derrida, Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy andCulture, Vol. 4 (2021), pp. 68-69, 81.
81Michael Naas, Derrida from Now On, p. 125.
80

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Gurameto can be understood as an attempt to protect the integrity of the ego. In this way, heapparently utilized immune defenses to constitute himself as a unique and significant figure in
public. Big Dr Gurameto s immune defense suggests the concept of autoimmunit that helps
explain how we inevitably turn against ourselves, against the very principles that constituteand sustain ourselves and our identities. 82
In addition, in the novel, the communist regime brought a high level of oppression in
the city, including tragic results, as well as the psychological trauma of Big Dr Gurameto. Afterthe communist regime took over the city, Big Dr Gurameto was arrested and kept in the Caveof Sanisha which was the most terrif ing dungeon of the cit s prison. The investigators
tortured him and the marks of torture were clearly visible on his face; Big Dr Gurameto s
psychological state became deeply imbalanced. Like an immune system, which functions in an
uncontrollable way, the communist groups moved against the people in the city causing terror,
which in reality came from a group that was supposed to protect them. In this way, in
autoimmune fashion, the communists came to resemble their enemies.
Most generall , the work of Albania s best-known writer, Ismail Kadare, depicts his
countr s histor , culture, and traditions while keeping a close look to the concepts of
hospitality, hostility, and friendship. Here, these concepts are analyzed in the perspective of theconcept of autoimmunity to support the main argument of this paper regarding his novel The
Fall of The Stone City. However, the exploration of these concepts from Derridian perspective
may arguably serve as an investigative model for approaching other contemporary novels,
which deal with the experiences of hostility, hospitality, and autoimmunity within still otherpolitical, social, and cultural contexts.

82

Ibid., p. 33.

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L

gf

CATHERINE MACMILLAN
he R g e: De c a c A
J

Sa a ag

See g

GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume IV, Number 01 (2021): 25-42

LOOKING FOR THE ROGUE: DEMOCRATIC AUTOIMMUNITY IN
JOS SARAMAGO S SEEING
Catherine MacMillan
Abstract
Th a e ee J
Sa a age See g , h ch de c aa ed
country in crisis following a mass casting of blank votes, from the perspective ofDe da c cef (de c a c) a
. F De da, de c acainherently aporetic concept, leaving democratic regimes potentially open to
renewal and reevaluation but also to self-destruction. Democratic governments
may, for instance, react to a (perceived) threat against democracy with measures
ha he e edee de c ac , a
De da e a e f A ge a 1992
or the post-9/11 USA. The paper argues that a similar mechanism is underway in
See g , he e he g e nment restricts democracy, including declaring a state ofsiege and even carrying out a terrorist attack in the capital, in an attempt to protect
a democratic system which they perceive as being threatened by rogues in the formof the so-ca ed b a e .

As Derrida suggests, the relationship between literature and democracy is an intimate, evensymbiotic one, so that: There can be no literature without democracy and no democracy
without literature. 1 In this sense, literary works cannot be created and published without
democratic openness and freedom of expression. Moreover, literature, with its ncondi ionalrigh o call e er hing o acco n 2 plays a vital role in the discussion and questioning inherent
in and nece ar o democrac , in he mo open (and do b le i elf o come) en e ofdemocrac . 3
From this perspective, the novels of José Saramago can be understood as actively
par icipa ing in he democra ic proce in ha he are in erventions into society presenting
and debating ethico-poli ical q e ion and problem , effec i el rendering hem a form of1

Jacques Derrida, Passions: An Oblique Offering: On the Name. Trans. David Wood (Stanford: Stanford UP,
1995), p. 28.
2
Zla an Filipo ic, For a F re o Come: Derrida Democrac and he Righ o Li era re, Journal of East/WestThought, Vol. 3, no 1, p. 13
3Jacques Derrida, Acts of Literature (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 32.

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See gpoli ical ac ion. 4 Saramago himself sees his writing as inseparable from his politicalinvolvement as a citizen:
As citizens, we all ha e an obliga ion o in er ene and become in ol ed, i he ci i en ho changehing . I can imagine m elf o ide an kind of ocial or poli ical in ol emen . Ye , I m a ri er,b I li e in hi orld and m ri ing doe n e i on a eparate level.5

This political involvement is perhaps most obvious in his later, more allegorical novels
such as Seeing (Ensaio sobre a Lucidez)6 or Blindness (Ensaio sobre a Cegueira)7; indeed bothof he e e a in no el form e plore he na re of he poli ical. 8 In this context Seeing, asequel to Blindness, questions and calls into account democracy itself.
Blindness, which depicts a country in the throes of an epidemic of white blindness,
focuses on the maintenance of human relationships in the context of the breakdown of the stateand he moo h ocial f nc ion of ci ili , decenc , la and order. 9 Seeing is set in the sameunspecified country, which may or may not be Portugal, 10 four years after the end of theepidemic of white blindness and the restoration of democracy. Like Blindness, Seeing also deals
i h ha , in he no el, i freq en l ermed a an epidemic ; no , hi ime, an epidemic ofwhite blindness but rather one of white paper, in the form of the mass casting of blank ballots.
Seeing opens on an election day in the capital, when, it later turns out, 70% of the voterscast blank votes. The election is repeated eight days later, in accordance with national law;however, this time the proportion of blank votes, at 83%, is even higher. The government, inwhat is supposedly an attempt to rescue the democratic system, accordingly declares a state ofsiege in the capital, reminiscent of the state of emergency in Blindness. Thus, the government
effec i el aboli he he pop la ion democra ic righ and freedom , and a emp o rackdo n he p rpor ed ringleader behind he plag e of he blank o e . On hi ba i , a e ploredfurther below, this paper attempts to read Seeing in erm of Derrida concep of a oimm ni ,interpreting the novel as the story of a democratic government which, in the name of preserving
democracy, actually ends up destroying the very democracy it seeks to protect.
As Rancière points out, even as they seek to impose democracy on other countries
democra ic go ernmen
nrelen ingl complain ha democrac i ngo ernable, ha hedemocratic government is threatened by a mortal danger which is the excess of democratic

4

Carlo Sal ani and Kri of K.P. Vanho e, In rod c ion: Pro ehe Philo opher or Reading Saramago a a
Lo er of Wi dom, in Carlo Sal ani and Kri of K.P. Vanho e (eds.), Sa a ag
Phh ca He age(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 6.
5S ephanie Merri . Jo Saramago In er ie : S ill a S ree Figh ing Man, The Guardian, 30 April 2006,
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/apr/30/fiction.features1
6
Li erall , An E a on L cidi .
7
Li erall , An E a on Blindne .
8
Jim Jo e, A Br al Blo again he Democra ic Normali : Unlearning he Epi emolog of he Poli ical,
Social Identities, Vol 20, no.6 (2017), pp. 718-729.
9
Duncan McColl Chesney, Re-Reading Saramago on Community
Blindness, Critique: Studies inContemporary Fiction, vol. 62 no. 2 (2021), p. 221.
10
José Saramago, Seeing, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (London: Vintage, 2007), p. 81.

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Sa a agSee glife. 11 According to Rancière, there are two possible readings of this situation; the democracyin question may be a false one characterized by corruption, duplicity, and lies. Alternatively,
i h reference o Derrida concep of a oimm ni , he no e ha i ma in ead point to af ndamen al difference inheren in he concep of democrac i elf, a difference ha pre en
democrac from being achie ed a a form of go ernmen . 12
A reading of the (un)democratic situation in Seeing from the first perspective describedabo e o ld cer ainl eem o be ap , par ic larl gi en Saramago
ie ha People live
i h he ill ion ha e ha e a democra ic
em, b i onl he o ard form of one. Inreali
e li e in a pl ocrac , a go ernmen of he rich. 13 Indeed, in her analysis of Seeing
Bernadino a e ha Saramago in erpre a ion of democrac i no a ma er of do b ing
democracy, but rather an utter disbelief in those that take power and use it to keep the machine
working, i.e. to maintain a status quo ha perpe a e po er in he hand of oligarchie . 14
However, without discounting such an interpretation, there is little evidence in the noveli elf, de pi e he elec ora e ma rejec ion of he status quo, that the democracy in questionis especially corrupt before the phenomenon of the blank ballots. It is argued here, then, that
Seeing can also be understood from the second perspective described by Rancière above, thatof democracy as characterized by incommensurable differences and therefore unachievableas democrac al a carriei hin i elf he eed of i o n de r c ion. 15 The Prime
Minister in Seeing uses the same metaphor when he argues that the blank voting could propel
the country towards:
he l ima e di a er he po ibl defini i e collap e of a poli ical
em hich carried i hin
i in ii al n cle , in he o ing proce i elf, he eed of i o n de r c ion or, a no ledisquieting hypothesis, a transition to something entirely new and unknown, so different that wewould probably have no place in it.16

In this light, Seeing can arguably be read as a satirical meditation on the potentiallyquasi-suicidal nature of democracy itself. As Jose, for instance, notes, for Saramago
totalitarianism is already lurking in the heart of representative democracy insofar as everincreasing invocations of state power in the name of the people are its preferred solutions tocrises. 17 On this basis, this paper attempts to explore Seeing hro gh a di c ion of Derrida
concept of autoimmunity, which he describes as that strange behavior where a living being, inquasi-suicidal fashion, itself works to destroy its own protection, to immunize itself against

11

Jacq e Ranci re, Sho ld Democrac Come? E hic and Poli ic in Derrida, in Pheng Cheah and S anne
Guerlac (eds.), Derrida and the Time of the Political (Durham, Duke University Press, 2009), p. 275.
12
Ibid, p. 275.
13
Stephanie Merri , Jo Saramago In er ie .
14
Ligia Bernardino, The Thre hold of Democrac in Jo Saramago See g . G ag a N e , Vol. 23 No. 45(2018), p. 331.
15
Ale Thom on, Whao Become of Democrac o Come ?, Postmodern Culture, vol. 15 no. 3, 2005.
http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.505/15.3thomson.html
16
José Saramago, Seeing, pp. 162-167.
17
Jim Jo e, A Br al Blo , p. 727.

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its own immunity. 18 Al ho gh Derrida concep of a oimm ni i broad in cope indeed
he extends it to life in general 19 he uses autoimmunity largely to refer to deconstruction in
the political realm. 20
In this framework, primarily in Rogues (Voyous) which was published just a year before
21
Seeing, Derrida emphasizes the autoimmune nature of democracy,22 which derives from thefundamental semantic undecidability inherent in the term democracy itself. As discussed further
in the following section, autoimmunity here refers to a threat to democracy, a quasi-suicidal
drive, which comes from within democracy itself.23 24 Interestingly, in a 2004 article, Saramago
also suggests that democracy is in the process of committing a kind of autoimmune suicide:
Western democracy has entered a phase of retrograde transformation that it cannot halt andwill foreseeably bring about its negation. No one need take responsibility for killing it: it iscommitting suicide. 25
Autoimmunity, then, refers to an enemy which is not external: it is not a virus orbac eria ; i i , ra her, an in ernal enem . 26 27 28 In the case of democratic autoimmunity,
18

Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 100.
19
Ibid, p. 187; on the relation of Derrida
ie of immunity and autoimmunity to life-affirmation see Rossen
Rousse , Femini m, Decon r c ion, and Li erar Cri ici m: A Decon r c i e Femini Reading of Na haniel
Ha horne No el The Scarle Le er i h he Help of Alice Jardine and Jacq e Derrida, Global Conversations:
An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, Vol. 4 (2021), more particularly, pp. 68-69,
81.
20
Dimi ri Vado laki , Autoimmunities: Derrida, Democracy and Political Theology, Research in
Phenomenology, Vol. 48, No.1 (2018), p. 30; for an applica ion of Derrida concep of a oimm ni o poli ical
events in literature see Ya emin Karaa a , Ho ili , Ho pi ali , and A oimm ni in Kadare The Fall of The
Stone City, Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, Vol. 4(2021), pp. 11ff, 20ff.
21
In this regard, these works can be understood at least in part as a response to 9/11 and the ensuing events,
incl ding he USA c r ailing of ci il liber ie and he o-called ar on error , hich a arg abl al o an
impor an infl ence on Saramago Seeing.
22
Importantly, democracy for Derrida generally refers not only to a particular form of government but to a wholepolitical culture including equality, rights, freedom of speech, protection of minorities from majority oppression.
(Alex Thom on, Whao Become of Democrac o Come ?, p. 5).
23Alex Thom on, Whao Become of Democrac o Come ?, p. 3.
24
Importantly, however, as will be discussed in the following section, autoimmunity can be an opportunity as well
as a threat.
25
Jo Saramago, The Lea Bad S em i in Need of Change: Rein en ing Democrac , Le Monde
Diplomatique, 17 August 2004, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/070.html
26
Dimitris Vado laki , A oimm ni ie , p. 29.
27
While autoimmunity is a medical term, Derrida justifies his use of the term in the political context byunderscoring that immunity was originally a political/juridical term which was borrowed into the medical
ocab lar . A Derrida poin o , he ord imm ni deri e from he La in munus, referring to the common
community. Thus, to be immune (immunis), i herefore o be freed or e emp ed from he charge , he er ice,
he a e , he obliga ion of a comm ni ; i i ill ed in a imilar en e oday in the context of parliamentary
or diploma ic imm ni . [Jacq e Derrida, Fai h and Kno ledge: The T o So rce of Religion a he Limi
of Rea on Alone, in Jacq e Derrida and Gianni Va imo (ed .), Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1998), p. 72].
28
While autoimmune disease in medicine refers to a situation where the immune system attacks the body, however,a oimm ni for Derrida al o in ol e he imm ne
em a acking i elf. Derrida a oimm ni , can hen

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Derrida, ri ing in he era of he USA o-called ar on error ,29 represents this figure ofinternal enmity as the rogue or voyou. 30 However, for Derrida it is never entirely clear whothese enemies of democracy are, as the worst enemies of democratic freedom can, by apla ible rhe orical im lacr m pre en hem el e a a nch democra , 31 while, as is
discussed further below, every democratic state is (potentially) a rogue state, so there are (no)more rogue states. In this context, then, this article undertakes a (perhaps impossible) search
for the internal enemies of democracy, the rogue(s) or voyou(s), in Seeing.
Derrida and Democratic Autoimmunity
For Derrida, democracy, ever since its ancient Athenian origins, has been a concept that isinadequate to itself, a word hollowed out in its center by a vertiginous semantic abyss. 32 This
semantic indeterminacy enables the term democracy to be appropriated by many different typesof government, as is perhaps underscored by the wide variety of regimes that today callhem el e democra ic. While hi openne or ho pi ali
hich i characteristic of
democracy can potentially prove an opportunity for self-perfection, it also risks leaving
democracy vulnerable to those who wish to put it to an end.33 Indeed Derrida argues that no
enemy of democracy today, at least outside the Islamic world,34 can refuse to call himself ademocrat,35 so that even Le Pen and his followers now present themselves as respectable andirreproachable democrats. 36 Thus, the great question of modern parliamentary andrepresentative democracy, perhaps of all democracy, is that the alternative to democracy canalways be represented as a democratic alternation. 37 38
In hi en e, he fig re of he in ernal enem i cr cial in nder anding democrac
autoimmune tendencies. This enemy does not necessarily have o be a real enem ; ra her i ia fig re ho i incommen rable i h ip ei
and hich regulates the discourses about
39
power, violence and force.
Indeed rogues (voyous) themselves are internal enemies
represented as rebels, agitators and insurgents. However, labelling someone (or a state) as arogue is never neutral, but always a performative judgment, an accusation, or an interpellation.

imply both a quasi-suicidal self-destruction and a lack of protection from the Other which, like unconditional
hospitality, may potentially prove to be a risk or an opportunity.
29
During this period, the US frequently referred to states which it perceived as promoting terrorism or as enemiesof democrac a rog e a e , a erm hich a ran la ed in o French aa.
30
Dimitris Vado laki , A oimm ni ie , p. 29.
31
Jacques Derrida. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas
(Stanford. Stanford University Press, 2005).
32
Jacques Derrida. Rogues, p. 7.
33
Samir Haddad, Derrida and Democrac a Ri k, Contretemps: An Online Journal of Philosophy 4 (2004), p.
33.
34
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 2.
35
Alex Thom on, Whao Become of Democrac o Come,?, p. 5.
36Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 30.
37
Emphasis in the original.
38
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, pp. 30-31.
39
Dimitris Vado laki , A oimm ni ie , pp. 33-34.

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To judge someone to be voyou is to place them outside the law and to ally yourself with thelaw. 40 41
Derrida concep of a oimm ni can h be nder ood a par of he a emp ocounter the forgetting of stasis which lies at the heart of democracy. 42 43 As has beensuggested, then, the semantic abyss or stasis inherent in the concept of democracy potentiallyharbors the seeds of its own autoimmune destruction. In other words, democracy contains
internal tensions or challenges to its ipseity, including, and perhaps most notably, those between
democracy and sovereignty, and between freedom and equality.
Regarding the demos, a key tension is that between inclusivity and exclusivity; any
attempt to define the demos on the grounds of demographic or geographic conditions is
ultimately exclusionary, so that one electoral law is always at the same time more and lessdemocratic than another. 44 Related to this, democracy contains a tension between freedom,defined as unconditional, indivisible, heterogenous to calculation and to measure, andequality; thus Derrida points to a primary suspension of freedom within the very concept of
democracy. 45 Ari o leol ion o hi q andara ha each equal participant should
govern in turn; this is translated, in modern terms, into the democratic election.46 47 However,
the election clearly implies a compromise, as liberty is limited in a cyclical fashion in order tosafeguard equality, so that the two goals of equality and freedom are never completely fulfilled,
at least not simultaneously:
liberty and equality are only reconcilable in a roundabout and alternative manner, in alternance; theabsolute freedom of a finite being (it is of this finitude that we speak here) is equally divisible[partageable] only in the space-time of a taking-in-turns.48

In these turns, freedom risks not only being suspended but even destroyed so that, forinstance, fascist and totalitarian governments can (and have been) elected; moreover, as is
discussed further below, the democratic process can be suspended by the government itself inthe name of protecting democracy.49
A related autoimmune aporetic embrace 50 is that between democracy andsovereignty, the relationship between which is mutually inseperable and incompatible as both
appear unconditional. 51 For Derrida, a pure sovereignty is indivisible or it is not at all ; it40

Jacques Derrida, Rogues, pp. 64-65.
Alex Thom on, Whao Become of Democrac o Come ?, p. 5.
42
Dimitris Vado laki , A oimm ni ie , pp. 34-35.
43
Dimitris Vadoulakis emphasizes that this stasis, or civil strife, is etymologically inherent in the term democracy
i elf. He ba e hi on Laroin igh ha he kratos in democracy signifies not only rule but also struggle.
44
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, pp. 35-37
45
Pheng Cheah, The Un imel Secre of Democrac , in Pheng Cheah and S anne G erlac (ed .), Derrida andthe Time of the Political (Durham, Duke University Press, 2009), p. 78.
46
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 46.
47
Samir Haddad, Derrida and Democrac a Ri k, p. 33.
48
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, pp. 46-47.
49
Pheng Cheah, The Un imel Secre of Democrac , p. 78.
50
Ibid., p. 88.
51
Ibid., p. 87.
41

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can be understood in terms of Schmittian political theology in that it associates force, power
and violence with the right of the strongest, and then justifies force in the name of the healthand the protection of the polity. 52 Democracy, then, needs sovereignty in order to ruleeffectively; however, in the process it also closes off and essentializes the demos:
In its very institution, and in the instant proper to it, the act of sovereignty must and can, by force,put an end in a single, indivisible stroke to the endless discussion. This act is an event, as silent as it
is instantaneous, without any thickness of time, even if it seems to come by way of a shared language
and even a performative language that it just as soon exceeds.53

In this sense, sovereignty betrays the universality of democracy, so that as soon as there
is sovereignty, there is abuse of power and a rogue state ; 54 in other words, every state,democratic or otherwise, is potentially a rogue state. Moreover, as soon as sovereignty begins
to justify itself, as it must do in a democracy, it is no longer pure and itself undergoes an
autoimmune de(con)struction: the autoimmunity with which sovereignty at once sovereignly
affects and cruelly infects itself. 55
However, the autoimmune openness of democracy, while potentially destructive, canalso provide an opportunity for criticism and renewal. As Derrida notes, autoimmunity is not
an absolute ill or evil. It enables an exposure to the other, to what and who comes. 56 This
openness is linked to the fact that democracy is the only system, the only constitutional
paradigm, in which, in principle, one has or assumes the right to criticize everything publicly,
including the idea of democracy, its concept, its history and its name. 57 From this perspective,
democrac a oimm ni h con ain a chance or promi e, opening democrac p o change
and rein crip ion, in he form of he democrac -to-come .
Indeed, for Derrida, there is a promise, a historical inheritance, inscribed in the concept
of democracy itself: equality, freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. However,this promise of an authentic democracy is never embodied in what we call democracy, 58 andindeed will never exist as a past, present or future regime 59 as it will always be characterized
by an autoimmune indeterminacy:
it will always remain aporetic in its structure (force without force, incalculable singularity andcalculable equality, commensurability and incommensurability, heteronomy and autonomy,
indivisible sovereignty and divisible or shared sovereignty, an empty name, a despairing
messianicity or a messianicity in despair, and so on).60
52

Dimitris Vado laki , A oimm ni ie , p. 35.
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 10.
54
Ibid., p. 145.
55
Ibid., p. 109.
56
Ibid., p. 152.
57
Ibid., p. 87.
58
Geoffre Benning on and Jacq e Derrida, Poli ic and Friend hip: A Di c ion i hJacq e Derrida, 1997.
http://www.dariaroithmayr.com/pdfs/assignments/Politics%20and%20Friendship.pdf
59Michael Naa , One Na ion . . . Indi i ible : Jacq e Derrida on he A oimm ni of Democrac and he
So ereign of God, Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 36 (2006), p. 40.
60
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p.86.
53

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Derrida concep of he democrac o come i no , hen, a Kan ian reg la i e idea;
rather, it can be likened to the khora of the political. 61 Th , impor an l , he o come of
democracy to come does not simply refer to a future democracy correcting or improving theactual conditions of the so-called democracies. In ead, he o come here refer o a promi e,
duty or injunction that is to come immediately. 62 Moreover, the democracy to come is notnecessarily a regime; democracy is not confined to the political in the classical sense, or to
citizenship or the nation state. It can, instead, refer to any experience characterized by openness
to and respect for the Other, equality and justice.63
This (relatively) optimistic view of democratic autoimmunity in the form of thedemocracy to come is arguably prevalent in Politics of Friendship. Ho e er, Derrida
emphasis appears to switch to the pervertibility of democratic autoimmunity in Rogues,64 65 sothat we can not only criticize, we can restrict democracy in the name of democracy. 66 In otherwords, in Rogues Derrida argues that threats to democracy can come from democratic
governments themselves, who may put democracy at risk through curtailing democratic rights
and freedoms, particularly in situations where democracy is already under attack. 67 A key
question, therefore, for Derrida is whether a democracy must leave free and in a position to
exercise power those who risk mounting an assault on democratic freedoms. 68
In this context, Derrida cites the example of the 1992 Algerian election which wascancelled by the government due to fears that a popular radical Islamist party, the Islamic
Salvation Front (FSI), would abolish democracy if it came to power. In the face of this threat
the government decided in a sovereign fashion to suspend, at least provisionally, democracy
for its own good, so as to take care of it, so as to immunize it against a much worse and very
likely assault. 69 In this sense, the suspension of the election is autoimmune, a suicide in orderto prevent a murder. 70 Thus, as Johnson notes:
Algerian democrac effec i elecre ed i o n a o-antibodies, in the forms of both antidemocratic (Algerian) martial law and anti-democratic (Islamist) revolutionary violence, eachasserting some right to the claims of democratic legitimacy.71

Ano her impor an e ample i ha of he US go ernmen re pon e o he 9/11 errori
attacks. In his interview with Borradori, which took place shortly after the attacks, Derrida
61

Ibid., p. 82.
Geoffrey Bennington and Jacq e Derrida, Poli ic and Friend hip.
63
Ibid.
64
Leigh M. John on, Terror, Tor re and Democra ic A oimm ni , Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 38
No. 1 (2012), p. 112.
65
Alex Thom on, Whao Become of Democrac o Come? , p. 1.
66
Margueri e La Ca e, Terrori m and Tra ma: Nego ia ing Derridean A oimm ni , Philosophy and Social
Criticism, Vol. 37, No. 5 (2011), p. 610.
67
Samir Haddad, Derrida and Democrac a Ri k, p. 29.
68
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p.34.
69
Ibid., p. 33.
70
Alex Thom on, Whao Become of Democrac o Come? , p. 1
71
Leigh John on. Terror, Tor re and Democra ic A oimm ni , p. 113.
62

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discusses these events in terms of autoimmunity.72 What we have here is that governments suchas that of the US fight against what they see as forces that are attacking what they value a
relatively stable, orderly, and open society underscored by democracy, freedom, and the rule oflaw. However, arguably, in attacking these terrorist forces, they are themselves destroying thevery values that they were seeking to uphold through attacks on privacy, human rights andpersonal freedom. In this sense, then, Derrida notes that, in the context of its supposed war
with so-called rogue states the US, together with its allies, itself behaved like a rogue state.73
Going Rogue? The Autoimmunity of Democracy in Seeing
As mentioned above, Seeing opens in a polling booth on a stormy day when very few people
have, as yet, left their homes to vote. In an uncanny (un)foreshadowing of the mass casting ofblank votes, the supposed abstention is considered a threat to the democratic system; however,commentators note that the capital city seems to set a good example for the rest of the country:
just when the spectre of an abstention on a scale unparalleled in the history of our democracy had
seemed to be posing a great threat to the stability not just of the regime but, even more seriously, ofheem i elf A for he hree par ie in ol ed in he elec ion, he par ie on he right, in the
middle and on he lef , hei ed congra la ora emen in hich he affirmed hademocracy had every reason to celebrate.74

Despite the eventual turnout, however, the election day ends with a shock when it isrevealed that seventy percent of the votes cast were blank. The blank vote is not a literaryin en ion on Saramago par ; in hi adop ed co n r of Spain, for in ance, he are formall
counted and accepted. It is important to emphasize here that a blank vote is not an abstention,
so that what is at stake is neither a nulling nor a voiding, and certainly not not-voting. 75 Thisdifference is pointed out by Saramago himself in an interview:
Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you re sayingthat you understand your responsibility, you have a political conscience and you came to vote, but
you don t agree with any of the existing parties and this is the only way you have of saying so.76

As Vanhoutte notes, critics have often compared the blank voters in Seeing o Mel ille
charac er Bar leb he Scri ener ho an er e er q e ion i h I o ld prefer no o . In
72

Derrida di ec ha hi a oimm ne re pon e occ r in o hree o erlapping momen . The fir momen ihen he USA i a acked b errori
ho ere a lea par l home gro n i hin i o n border . The econd
moment is one of traumatic repression of the events, which allows the trauma itself to be regenerated, sparking
fear of a future, and even worse, traumatic terrorist attack. The third moment is that responding to terrorism byattacking so-called rog e a e , ch a Iraq and Afghani an, in turn provides legitimation for further terrorist
attacks. (Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, pp. 85-172); (La Ca e, Terrori m and Tra ma.
pp. 606-608).
73
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 112.
74
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 15.
75
Kristof K.P. Vanho e, B e B e Bartleby and Hello Seeing, or On he Silence and he Ac ali a ion o Do
No , in Carlo Sal ani and Kri of K.P. Vanho e (ed .), Sa a ag Phh ca He age (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018), pp. 241.
76
Stephanie Merrit, Jo Saramago In er ie .

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hi non-action and non-ref al Bar leb ha become, for man poli ical philosophers, asymbol of the power of passive resistance.77 i ek, for in ance, a e ha Jo Saramago
novel Seeing can effectively be perceived as a mental experiment in Bartlebian politics. 78
However, Vanhoutte points out that the blank votes in Seeing cannot easily be read a la Bartleby
as a non act that intends to counter a frail but possibly oppressive political regime 79 because,
as has already been suggested, the blank voters are actively taking part in the democratic process
so that he ac ion nder aken b he pop la ion of he former capi al
con i of po i i e
80action.
Indeed, then, the blank votes can be understood as a refusal to refuse toparticipate. 81
Thus, rather than a rejection of democracy itself, the phenomenon of the blank ballots
in Seeing can be better read, as Saramago himself indicates, as a protest against the available
candidates and parties, those of the left, the middle, and the right. In this sense, the blank o er
deci ion can perhap be nder ood in erm of democrac inheren openne a a
em hawelcomes in itself, in its very concept, that expression of autoimmunity called the right to selfcritique and perfectibility. 82
However, the government in Seeing, the party on the right, portrays and perhaps
perceives the blank votes as a threat to the democratic system. In consequence, it decides toimpose a state of emergency on the country in order to counter what the Prime Minister
describes as a brutal blow against the democratic normality. 83 Later, the defense minister
denounces the blank voters as terrorists; what we are facing is terrorism pure andunadulterated; it may wear different faces and expressions but it is, essentially, the samething. 84 The supposed enemy, then is an internal one, the most terrifying kind, as Derrida
points out: The or , mo effec i e errori m i he one ha in all or recall an in erior
threat at home and recalls that the enemy is also always lodged on the inside of the system it
violates and terrorizes. 85
Nevertheless, it is not so much the fact that blank ballots have been cast that bothers thegovernment this is, in fact, legal in the unnamed country but it is rather the sheer quantityof the blank votes that supposedly poses a threat to the democratic system:
the sole crime of these people was to cast blank ballots, it would be of little importance if only theusual ones had done it, but there were plenty, there were too much, almost all of them, what does itmatter that it is your inalienable right if you are told that such a right has to be used in homeopathic
doses, drop by drop, you cannot walk around with a full bowl overflowing with blank ballots.86

77

Kristof K.P. Vanho e, B e B e Ba eb , p. 236.
Sla oj i ek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 180.
79
Kristof K.P. Vanho e, B e B e Ba eb , p. 234.
80
Ibid., p. 241.
81
Kri of K.P. Vanho e, Onl he co n r of he blind ill ha e a king. On i ek non-lucid reading ofSaramago E a on L cidi [Seeing], I e aa Ja fe S d e , Vol. 7, No. 4 (2013), p. 7.
82
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 187.
83
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 27.
84
Ibid., p. 32.
85
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 188.
86
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 56.
78

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The government decides to call a second election; in the meantime, it begins an attempt
to gather intelligence on the motives behind the blank ballots by monitoring the polling stations
and recording he o er con er a ion in he hope of racking do n a p rpor ed ringleader.
However, as Zivin emphasizes, due to an unhappy mixture of human and technological error,
the more the police record and analyze the conversations of voters, hoping to identify a guilty
party responsible for the voting conspiracy, the more their efforts prove futile. 87
In this context, in an echo of Guantánamo Bay, 88 500 people are arrested at random
to be interrogated further, submitted to lie detectors and possibly torture. Although there are no
actual torture scenes in the novel, the narrator suggests the hypothetical possibility of the useof torture by the government; 89 Were this innocent man to be interrogated tomorrow, we
tremble at the mere thought of what could happen to him... 90 Far from being an anathema to
democratic states, however, Johnson argues that torture, together with terrorism, is an inherent
componen of democrac , a borne o b democraca oimm ne endenc o ec re i elf
even at the cost of using anti-democratic methods such as torture.91
In the second election, an even larger 83% of the votes turn out to be blank. In thiscontext, the President describes the blank votes as a modern-day black death (or rather, theprime corrects him, a blank death ) threatening the stability of the democratic system, notsimply, not merely, of one country, this country, but of the entire planet. 92 In the aftermath ofthe disastrous election results, the government lifts the nation-wide state of emergency but
declares an even harsher state of siege in the capital alone, where the blank voting has occurred.
Thus, it is the capital city which is, effectively, declared rogue or voyou, an enemy of thedemocratic system. Indeed, as Derrida points out, there is an intimate connection between thevoyou, originally a Parisian term, and the capital; the voyou milieu is first of all themunicipality, the polis, the city, indeed the capital city. And when one speaks of voyous, thepolice are never very far away. 93
However, during the discussions preceding the imposition of a state of siege on thecapital, the Minister of the Interior perceptively notes an important semantic difficulty:
We all kno ha iege mean blockade or encirclemen , i n ha righ Therefore declaring a stateof iege i an amo n o a ing ha he co n r capi al i be ieged, blockaded or encircled b an
enemy, when the truth is that the enemy, if I may call it that, is not outside but inside.94

Thus, of course, the use of the term siege in this situation is more appropriate than theinterior minister lets on; it is the government itself, rather than the inhabitants of the capital,
which turns out to be the chief enemy of democracy, the main voyou. However, from the
87

Erin Zi in Seeing and Sa ing: To ard an E hic of Tr h in Jo Saramago "En aio obre a L cide , SubStanceVol. 41, No. 1(2012), p. 112.
88
Maria Ari odemo , Democracy or Your Life! Knowledge, Ignorance and the Politics of Atheism inSaramago Blindness and See g, La , Ce a d he H a e , Vol. 9 No. 1 (2011), p. 175.
89
Erin Zi in, Seeing and Sa ing, p. 112.
90
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 23.
91
Leigh John on, Terror, Tor re and Democra ic A oimm ni , p. 107.
92
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 51.
93
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 66.
94
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 52.

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go ernmen per pective the rogues are clearly the blank voters. In an attempt to persuade thesupposed rogues, the degenerates, delinquents and subversives who had cast the blank votesof the error of their ways, the state of siege is proper no merel for ho , including acurfew, the closure of theatres and cinemas, constant army patrols, a prohibition on gatheringsof more than five people, and an absolute ban on anyone entering or leaving the city. 95
Realizing that, as its offices are in the capital, the government itself will be among the besieged,
it decides to relocate out of the city, along with the army and the police. The Prime Minister
portrays the plan as a painful remedy for a fatal disease;96 a Saramago narra or poino , from he go ernmen per pec i e he e oda ,a fligh from he ir ha had a acked he majori of he capi al inhabi an , and gi en ha heworst is always waiting just behind the door, might well end up infecting all the remaining
inhabitants and even, who knows, the whole country.97

The or here i remini cen of Derrida concep of he or o come , a ir al or
future trauma not only resulting from a past event but compounded by the undeniable fear orapprehension of a threat that is worse and still to come. 98 For Derrida, such a virtual traumander cored he USA a oimm ne (o er) reac ion o he e en of 9/11, and a deepened
further by the realization that the threat was no longer an external and easily identifiable one.99
The ame i arg abl r e of he go ernmen o erreac ion o he ppo ed hrea po ed b heblank ballots in Seeing, framed not only as a menace to democracy in the country but
worldwide, the tip of the iceberg of a gigantic, global destabilization plot. 100
A he Prime Mini er declare he iege, he j ifie he go ernmen mea re a
responding to the (supposed) threat to national security posed by the action taken by organizedb er i e gro p ho had repea edl ob r c ed he people righ o o e. 101 Here, then, thegovernment asserts its sovereignty, which Derrida defines as the indivisible and absolute
power to give, to make, but also to suspend the law; it is the exceptional right to place oneself
above right, the right to non-right. 102 Indeed, the Minister of Defense, for instance, views
democra ic righ no a inalienable b a ome hing hich m be de er ed and herefore
suspendable: Righ are no ab rac ion people ei her de er e righ or he don , and he epeople don , anything else is just so much empty talk. 103
Although the government asserts its sovereignty ostensibly in the name of democracy,
in doing so it constrains the democratic freedom of the demos. Moreover, the immunity, theabsolute nature of sovereignty is also destroyed the moment the government seeks to justify
itself, which it must do, at least in a democratic system:
95

José Saramago, Seeing, pp. 50-51.
Ibid., p. 66.
97
Ibid., p.67.
98
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, pp. 104-105.
99
Ibid., p. 106.
100
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 32.
101
Ibid., p. 57.
102
Jacques Derrida . The Beast and the Sovereign (Vol. 1). (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2011), p. 16.
103
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 53.
96

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To confer sense or meaning on sovereignty, to justify it, to find a reason for it, is already tocompromise its deciding exceptionality
o compromi e i imm ni
B ince hi happen all
he ime, p re o ereign doe no e ii i al a in he proce of a oimm ni ing i elf, ofbetraying itself by betraying the democracy that nonetheless can never do without it.104

In Seeing, oo, he go ernmeno ereign
rn o o be far from indi i ible andabsolute, despite the siege conditions it imposes on the capital. This is indicated by the fact thatit has to justify its imposition of the state of exception not only to the nation but also to thein erna ional comm ni , hich i doe in he name of pro ec ing democrac . Faced i h hecon in ed peacef l coe i ence of he ci
inhabi an , ho e er, he go ernmen eek o oir p nre in he capi al,
ing agen pro oca e r o crea e the kind of unstablesituations which might justify, in the eyes of the so-called in erna ional comm ni
he mo e105from a state of siege to a state of war.
The state of siege imposed by the government is, then, increasingly brutal, trampling on
he democra ic righ and freedom of he capi al inhabi an n il, a Bernardino no e , heseem almost to be reduced to bare life in Agamben erm .106 Thus what looked like ademocratic regime rapidly becomes a dictatorship so that democracy becomes a farce, a mereword through which the Government imposes a state of siege. 107
In this sense, as a suspension of democracy carried out in the name of protecting
democracy, the situation in Seeing can perhaps be compared with Derrida e ample of he
Algerian go ernmen po ponemen of democratic elections in order to save a democracy
threatened by the sworn enemies of democracy, 108 or he USA infringemen of democra ic
rights and freedoms following the 9/11 attacks.109 However, as has been discussed above, it iser nlikel ha he blank o er in Saramago no el e er reall
i hed o o er hro hedemocratic system, a system in which, as has been discussed above, they actively participated.
Moreover, no evidence is nco ered, de pi e he go ernmen be effor , ha he blank ballo
phenomenon was a co-ordinated action headed by some terrorist group.
The go ernmen (o er)reac ion in Seeing goes beyond its imposition of the state ofsiege and its use of propaganda when it actually carries out a terrorist attack in the capital. Thisac of errori m, he plan ing of a bomb in he former capi al ci
main o ergro nd me rostation which ends up killing more than 30 people, is undertaken in an attempt to foment unrest
among the populace against a supposed terrorist group behind the blank voters. 110 As wasarguably the case of the USA in the wake of 9/11, the government in Seeing employs terrorism
in he er ice of securing the very democratic principles that ostensibly prohibit thosepractices. 111 As Johnson argues, the relationship between democracy and terror is an intimate
104

Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 101.
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 61.
106
Ligia Bernardino, The Thre hold of Democrac , p. 321.
107
Ibid., p.321.
108
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 35.
109
Ibid., p. 40.
110
José Saramago, Seeing, pp. 112-116.
111
Leigh John on. Terror, Tor re and Democra ic A oimm ni , p. 107.
105

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See gone, as can be borne out by a glance at the history of modern democracy, one of the founding
momen of hich a Robe pierre Reign of Terror.112
As Derrida puts forward, then, murderous attacks from the outside of democracy andsuicidal attacks from within it are quite often indistinguishable. 113 In Seeing, public opinion
regarding who actually carried out the terrorist attack is mixed. A minority of newspapers andsome of the city dwellers do suspect that the government is behind the attack, including theleader of the city council who resigns as a result. However, the majority of newspapers blame
the attack on some terrorist group with some link to the insurrection by the blankers. 114
What is striking, despite the state of siege and the terrorist attack, is that the government
does not succeed in stirring up violence among the inhabitants of the capital. While there is ademonstration following the bombing, it is a peaceful one, resembling a display of mourning
more than a protest march. The demonstration does, however, provoke many who voted for theparty on the right to seek to leave the city. When they attempt to do so, the government
persuades them that it is their patriotic duty to return to the city in the name of defending
democracy; the Prime Minister instructs the Interior Minister to,tell them that all those who voted for the parties who built the current political system, including,inevitably, the party in the middle, our direct competitor, constitute the first line of defense of all
democratic institutions.115

Even when the would-be refugees return to the city, the expected conflict between themand heir largel blanker neighbors does not break out; instead there is solidarity, as the latter
help the returnees to carry their belongings home, including the tea er ice
he il er pla er116
he pain ing and grandpa.
Indeed, despite the suspension of the law and the absenceof governing authorities in the capital, life in the city continues to function much as before, withpeople paying their rent, food still available in the supermarkets, and even the refuse continuing
to be collected.117
Bernardino, for instance, attributes the extraordinary show of solidarity among thecapi al inhabi an o heir e perience fo r ear earlier d ring he plag e of hi e blindness
depicted in Blindness, which has taught them to look for new ways of living together insociety.118 In Blindness, despite the failure of the state and the return to a quasi-Hobbe ian a eof na re in he ci , he mall e mo le gro p led by the oph halmologi
wife, the only
character to maintain her sight during the epidemic, develops a sense of solidarity andbelonging. This is, however, based not on a shared identity but, as McColl Chesney explains,112

Ibid., p. 116.
Ibid., p. 111.
114
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 117.
115
Ibid., p. 138.
116
Ibid., p. 132.
117
Kristof K.P. Vanho e, B e B e Bartleby, p. 240.
118
Ligia Bernardino, The Thre hold of Democrac , p. 331.
113

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on fundamental, ethical values such as generosity and altruism, dignity and self-respect,
trust and responsibility, respect for others and for the dead. 119 120
The peaceful cohabitation and solidarity among the inhabitants of the capital in Seeing
does not, however, provoke an of ening in he go ernmen
approach. Indeed, in i
desperation to uncover a rogue organization behind the blank ballots, the government fixates
upon the figure of the oph halmologi
wife who, as noted above, was a key character in
Blindness. In that novel, mysteriously immune to the white blindness, she commits a murder inthe chaotic context of the epidemic, killing the ringleader of a gang who raped and exploited
the other inhabitants of the quarantine hospital before leading her group to safety. In Seeing,
four years after the end of the plague of white blindness, a member of the group she helped
ultimately betrays her by writing an anonymous letter to the government suggesting that she
may be the ringleader behind the blank ballots. This accusation is based on a mysterious andillogical connection between the enigma of her immunity to the blindness epidemic and themystery of the blank ballots.121
De pi e hi e remel flim e idence he go ernmen , in i de pera ion o nco er
a supposed plo behind he blank o e , ei e on he acc a ion, imagining he doc or
ife
to be the leader, the chief rogue, of what Derrida calls a voyoucracy, a kind of state within thestate:
a corrupt and corrupting power of the Street, an illegal and outlaw power that brings together into avoyoucratic regime, and thus into an organized and more or less clandestine form, into a virtuala e, all ho e ho repre en a principle of di order of plo ing and con pirac , of premedi a ed
offensiveness or offenses against public order.122

The government consequently sends a police team, a superintendent accompanied by aninspector and a sergeant, into the city to interrogate the woman and her acquaintances. In thiscontext, the oph halmologi
wife herself ironically points out to the police superintendent
just how ridiculous these assertations are:
And I am o blame for ha happened And ho did I ge he capi al majori of he pop la ion
to cast blank ballots, putting flyers under their doors, by midnight prayers and witchcraft, by
spreading a chemical product in the water supply network, by promising each person the first prizein the lottery, or by spending what my husband earns in his office to buy votes.123

Al ho gh he doc or

ife ha effec i el become a kind of public enemy number

one, 124 it gradually becomes clear to the superintendent that no proof whatsoever linking her
to a terrorist organization behind the blank ballots is forthcoming; neither is there any evidence
that such an organization exists. Following a conversation with the Minister of the Interior, who
119

D ncan McColl Che ne , Re-Reading Saramago on Community
Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 62 No.2 (2021), pp. 213.
120
Ibid., p. 213.
121
José Saramago, Seeing, pp. 171-172.
122
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 66.
123
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 237.
124
Ibid., p. 298.

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See gorders him to create evidence against her, the superintendent has a crisis of faith.125 When the
Minister of the Interior informs him that the newspapers will soon publish an exposé of theconspiracy, the superintendent responds by giving a newspaper his own version of the facts,
which is later published before the government confiscates all copies of the report and shuts
down the newspaper.
The novel ends with the shooting of the superintendent, followed by tha of he doc orwife, a heroic savior figure in Blindness,126 127 and her dog Constant, the dog of tears, who
unleashed a terrifying howl as his mistress is shot.128 Thus, the novel ends on a particularly
depressing note as, as Rollason points out, with the disappearance of the last lucid woman,
totalitarianism may yet install itself in the hearts and minds of a whole dehumanizedpopulation. 129
The howling of Constant, the only character to be named in the entire novel, is also
impor an here. A Sal ani and Vanho e arg e, dog pla a ke role in Saramago fic ion,
often acting as an almost supernatural guide to the human characters. This is particularly trueof Con an ho, a he onl eeing charac er apar from he doc or
ife in Blindness, literally
130
acts as a guide dog to the blind characters. In addition dogs often play a vital part inSaramago ocial cri iq e; heir ho ling, in par ic lar, deno e a pacific revolt which can belikened to that of the blank voters.131 The ho , along i h Con an ho l, are o erheard,
significantly, by two blind men; the novel ends with the following exchange between them:
Did you hear something, Three shots, replied another blind man. But there was a dog howlingoo, I
opped no , ha m ha e been he hird ho , Good, I ha e o hear dog ho l. 132
133

Th , Con an dea h, and he ce a ion of hi ho l, can perhap be nder ood a hesilencing of pacific political protest, as represented by the blank voters in the novel, as thedefeat of lucidity by blindness. However, the death of the howling dog connects to the epigraphof the novel, Le ho l, aid he dog, which Saramago explains as follows: We are thedog , and iime ha e ar ho ling. 134

125

Jim Jo e, A Br al Blo , p.724.
Chri opher Rolla on, Ho To ali ariani m Begin a Home: Saramago and Or ell, in Mark Sabine andAdriana Alves de Paula Martins (eds.), Dialogue with Saramago: Essays in comparative literature (Manchester:
University of Manchester, 2006), p. 16., http://yatrarollason.info/files/SaramagoandOrwell.pdf
127
Jim Jo e, A Br al Blo , p. 726.
128
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 307.
129
Christopher Rolla on, Ho To ali ariani m Begin a Home, p. 16.
130
Carlo Sal ani and Kri of K.P. Vanho e, Saramago Dog : For an Incl i e H mani m, in Carlo Sal ani
and Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte (eds.), Sa a ag
Phh ca He age (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p.
196.
131
Ibid., p. 197.
132
José Saramago, Seeing, p. 307.
133
The meaning of he blind man ha red of ho ling dog i , ho e er, ambig o , a Jo e no e : i i nclear
whether the blind man is someone who hates dogs, or, alternatively, if he is simply relieved to see the suffering ofa fellow creature come o an end. ( A Br al Blo , p. 728).
134
Carlo Salzani and Kristof K.P. Vanho e, Saramago Dog , p 197.
126

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Conclusion
In contrast to Blindness, Seeing ends on an apparently pessimistic, even depressing, note.135 In
its response to a perceived threat to democracy, the government attacks the very rights andfreedom a ocia ed i h ha democrac , re or ing o arch-a hori arian mean incl ding heimposition of a state of siege, censorship, espionage, arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention,
bombs planted by government agents. 136 In other words, in its pursuit of the supposed rogue
behind he blank ballo , he a e, in i cr hing of he pop la ion democra ic righ andfreedoms, effectively itself become a rog e a e. Thi c lmina e in he killing of he doc orwife, the superintendent, and the dog Constant, three characters who arguably represent
poli ical l cidi .
De pi e he go ernmen a hori arian rn and he le han op imi ic end of thenovel, however, the message of Seeing is perhaps not entirely a hopeless one, as several
commentators including, for example, Jose, 137 Vanhoutte, 138 or Bernardino, 139 have pointed
out. Although the novel ends with the death of the three l cid charac er , man o her l cid
men and women, characters who have seen the light 140 remain alive. These are, of course, theblank o er and, more broadl , he ordinar inhabi an of he capi al ci .
Far from either simply being indifferent to or rejecting democracy outright, the blankvoters demonstrate a desire to question, and presumably to improve, the democratic system. In
hi en e, he o er ac ion can perhap be nder ood in he con e of he opportunity
provided by democratic autoimmunity in the form of the democracy to come. Rather than someideal future regime, Derrida describes the democracy to come as a militant and interminable
political critique which protests against every political abuse, every rhetoric that would
present as a present or existing democracy, as a de facto democracy. 141 In this sense, then,even a state that appears to be drawing rapidly away from democracy may in fact be exposing
itself even more to the possibility of what remains to come. 142
This is reflected in the extraordinary solidarity shown by the population of the capital
who, regardless of how they voted in the elections, live together in peaceful cooperation despite
he go ernmen a emp to stir up unrest among them. In this sense, these city dwellers
perhaps come closer to fulfilling the promise of democracy, which for Derrida can refer to any
kind of experience in which there is equality, justice, equity, respect for the singularity of the
Other at work. 143 than any so-called democratic regime. While the ending of Seeing, like thedemocracy to come, is left open,144 a glimmer of hope, a promise, remains amidst the ruins ofa rog e a e. Thi hope, reflec ed in he ci d eller earch for a more truly democratic wayof life, is also passed on to the reader as an exhortation to take up the howl of the dead dog
135

Jim Jo e, A Br al Blo , p. 726.
Christopher Rolla on, Ho To ali ariani m Begin a Home, p. 15.
137
Jim Jo e, A Br al Blo , p. 726.
138
Kristof K.P. Vanho e, B e B e Bartleby, p. 240.
139
Ligia Bernardino, The Thre hold of Democrac , p. 331.
140
Jim Jo e, A Br al Blo , p. 728.
141
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 86.
142
Alex Thom on, Whao Become of Democrac o Come ?, p. 7.
143
Geoffre Benning on and Jacq e Derrida, Poli ic and Friend hip.
144
Jim Jo e, A Br al Blo , p. 728.
136

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Constant, to question and challenge the democratic regimes we live in, to respond to theinjunction of the democracy to come. In Saramago
ord ,I no a q e ion of replacing one go ernmen i h ano her, or o her . I a q e ion of p ing
democracy, authentic democracy, at the heart of the discussion, of refounding the concept based on
people real need , and of earching for a way to avoid a collapse which buries the yearning forliberty and dignity, makes the human being more vulnerable and leads him to the precipice.145

145

Jo Saramago, Ref ndar la Democracia. En re i a, Sin Permiso, 2 February 2005,
https://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/refundar-la-democracia-entrevista

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Feminism, Deconstruction, and Literary Criticism: A Deconstructive Feminist Reading of Nathaniel
Ha thorne s No el The Scarlet Letter ith the Help of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume IV, Number 01 (2021): 43-84

FEMINISM, DECONSTRUCTION, AND LITERARY CRITICISM:
A DECONSTRUCTIVE FEMINIST READING OF NATHANIELHAWTHORNE S NOVEL THE SCARLET LETTER WITH THE HELPOF ALICE JARDINE AND JACQUES DERRIDA
R

e I. Re
It is to the credit of human nature, that,except where its selfishness is brought into
play, it loves more readily than it hates.
Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process,will even be transformed to love...
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Abstract
The text explores interrelations between feminism and deconstruction for purposesof literary critique. The main theoretical sources are Alice Jardine and Jacques
Derrida, hose ie s of g nesis and deconstruction , respecti el , are taken ascomplementary. The views in question are discussed first in order to assemble ajoint critical perspective that brings forward their relevant conceptual intersections.
Jardine s concept of g nesis is seen as a more specific form of deconstruction
carried from a feminist standpoint, hereas arious Derrida s concepts arebrought to bear on the notion of deconstruction in a wider sense. Subsequently,
issuing from the critical perspective thus outlined, we offer a reading of Nathaniel
Ha thorne s no el The Scarlet Letter, in which the main characters, their actions,and specific relations in which they enter are revisited in key terms of the
vocabularies of these thinkers. More specifically, concepts like life-affirmation,
woman-in-effect, trace, patriarchy, discourse, and phallogocentrism, among others,
are transposed in a shifting horizon which carries their discussion from the realmof critical philosophical reflection into that of literary text.
Key terms: gynesis, gynema, structure, sign, différance, (auto)immunity, patriarchy,
writing, sexual difference, (phal)logocentrism

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Feminism, Deconstruction, and Literary Criticism: A Deconstructive Feminist Reading of Nathaniel
Ha thorne s No el The Scarlet Letter ith the Help of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida

A classic target of feminist literar critics, Nathaniel Ha thorne s no el The Scarlet Letter: A
Romance has been also a subject to deconstructive reading. 1 In this paper, I shall aim to
combine these t o approaches at once dra ing mainl on Alice Jardine s feminist ie ofgynesis and Jacques Derrida s deconstructi e philosoph . Ideall , this ould be a gender
mindful reading, keeping in mind especially that the notion of gender has a special importancein both feminist and deconstructionist perspectives, while being not only a sensitive but also an
open-ended issue toda . Thus, much of the feminist tradition places emphasis on the genderof the author (whether writer or critic) it approaches, whereas the tradition of structuralist andpost-structuralist thought sees gender as inherent to culture as a hole. For much of their earlyears, though, both of these traditions most typically issued from the preconception that thegenders are essentially two, something that in our age is no longer the norm. Thus, to more fully
sustain our gender mindful reading here, we will need to stipulate in advance that using terms
like feminist , patriarch , oman , man , feminine , or masculine , among others, need
not interfere with the demands of any gender inclusive or gender specific perspective, as theissues raised from feminist and deconstructionist standpoints could be readily identified as atthe very least complementary to any gender perspective. For instance, to uphold itself, any
gender specific perspective today needs to critique the traditional patriarchal culture in its
fundamentals and entirety at least as much as a feminist perspective does. Acknowledging thisneed while paying homage to Simone de Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex marks theradical inception of feminist thought in the 20th century,2 Jardine rites that it is up to us tocontinue moving along the collective pathways she opened for use, in a way that not onlychange gender and sex arrangements for the better, but change the world for the better,
profoundl , deepl , idel , and long term. Radicall . 3
With such thoughts in mind, e no approach Ha thorne s famous no el in t o main
steps. First, we assemble a deconstructive feminist critical perspective out of common andcomplementary aspects of the thought of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida. And second,dra ing on that perspecti e, e offer a reading of the ke de elopments in the no el s plot.

A Deconstructive Feminist Perspective
The deconstructive feminist perspective which I would like to outline here will have one
essential feature, which can be described as openness to the inexhaustibility of its own field.
This feature is hat I think characteri es Jardine s notion of gynesis, as much as Derrida s
deconstructionist philosophy, even as they articulate it in different ways. This openness isindeed as necessary as it is inevitable in the workings of discourse, as it is coded into the1Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical Background andCritical History plus Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives with Introductions and Bibliographies,
edited by Ross C. Murfin (Boston: Macmillan/Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1991).
2
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, translated by Constance Borde and Sheila M. Chevallier (New York:
Random House, 2010); cf. Le deuxième sexe, 1, Les faits et les mythes; 2, L'expérience vécue (Paris: Éditions
Gallimard, 1949).
3
Alice A. Jardine, What Feminism?, French Politics, Culture & Society, Vol. 28, No. 2, SPECIAL ISSUE:
Simone de Beauvoir: ENGAGEMENTS, CONTEXTS, RECONSIDERATIONS (Summer 2010), p. 72.

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Ha thorne s No el The Scarlet Letter ith the Help of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida

character of signification, from where it passes to all critique, interpretation, and culture.
Likewise, this perspective will also have another feature, closely related to its openness andindeed one that can be sustained only in the realm of its openness, namely, affirmation, which
will motivate its critical operation as an assertion of life. While affirmation is not a necessary
outcome of neither gynesis nor deconstruction, it can be a motive by choice, which we herecertainly make, as opposed to the nostalgic realization of the limits of discourse.
Ja di e Vie f G e i
As I see it, Jardine s notion of gynesis is an attempt to revisit and adopt elements of structuralist
and post-structuralist critique of the Western intellectual tradition and culture for purposes ofliterary and cultural critiques in feminist perspective. This move is as natural and falls into thesame (self-)reflective register as the application of universalistic expertise to solving particular
problems, or as the search for points of intersection between what I have elsewhere called
global and local. 4 But it is not just a move from universal to particular, global to local, or
vice versa, as in one important sense none of these takes in any way precedence over the others.
There is simply nothing like a move from cause to effect such as, for instance, from calamity
to immunity, the thematic that motives us here in the realm of discourse and signification tojustify its workings precedentially as this has been done for the realm of natural phenomena.
At the very best, the causal determinism is of limited use for purposes of a critique, comparedto the vast potential of the realm of signification overall.
Jardine appears well aware of this prospect and her goal is not simply to invent a unique
technique or conceptual apparatus to be applied in the feminist criticism of literature or
particular products of culture. As she puts it, I focus on ritten te ts, but am more concerned
about the process of (reading and writing) woman than about examining the representation ofomen in literature. 5 What Jardine seems to be looking for is to make feminist critiqueintegrative to a lasting socio-cultural change by making it an indelible part of the discourse
which is productive of culture as a whole. This, however, she does not seek to promote byadding her integrative gesture to the well-established pillars of the existent culture, and this forgood reasons. The normative and justificatory pillars of the patriarchal culture have alreadyproduced a systemic effect of domination that assigns secondary social roles for women. Hence,
she wants to start anew in a move that is at once discursive and emancipatory, critical andcreative, indeed along her suggested contribution to critical theory the practice of gynesis.
Jardine s epon mous book starts ith questions that come from her concern ith
women as speaking and writing subjects, their relationship to language, and how sexual
difference operates linguistically in a literar te t, hich she also thinks need to be addressedby feminists who ... are or will eventually be in dialogue with what is now commonly called
modernit ... .6 It is to be noted here that in recent decades the term modernit has been
4

Rossen Rousse , Global Con ersation on the Spot: What Lao-tse, Heidegger, and Rorty Have in Common,"Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, Vol. 1 (2018), pp. 1138. http://philogc.org/vol-1/
5
Alice Jardine, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1985), p. 19.
6Ibid., pp. 13-14.

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Ha thorne s No el The Scarlet Letter ith the Help of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida

loosely used to designate key developments and characteristics of the Western culture since the17th centur , hile being opposed to postmodernit , hich has been also loosel used todesignate a period whose beginning has been variedly placed in mid 19th century, mid 20th
century, or in the 1980s.7 Jardine, in particular, has started her interrogation with the culture ofmodernity under the influence of the French post-structuralists of the 1960s and 1970s, mostnotably Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Hélène Cixous.8 Her response to
the challenges modernity posed to feminist thought was ever since thoroughly informed bypost-structuralist critique of modernity and of the structuralist thought of thinkers, such as
Jacques Lacan and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
What she accepts from the leading French thinkers of this period on the character ofmodernit is that the conceptual apparatuses inherited from nineteen-centur Europe ha e
obliterated ho
our a s of understanding in the West ha e been and continue to becomplicitous ith our a s of oppressing. For, the ha e instead conditioned the icious
circles of intellectual imperialism and of liberal ideolog and humanism, all along reified andnaturali ed categories and concepts like e perience and the natural ; or, in another mode, theEthical, the Right, the Good, or the True. 9 Thus, beyond the conceptual mask of modernity,
undone by the post-structuralist thinkers, a new world has appeared: a world that is now
necessaril
denaturali ed and unheimlich, finding itself in a series of crises oflegitimation after its fundamental pillars Man, the Subject, Truth, Histor , Meaning havebeen radically called into question. 10 The ensuing attempts at reinterpretation andreconceptuali ation of hat thus eluded the discourse of modernit
the master narrati es
o n nonkno ledge resulted in a peculiar conceptuali ation and understanding of oman :This other-than-themsel es is almost al a s a space of some kind (o er hich the narrative
has lost control), and this space has been coded as feminine, as woman. 11
Thus, for Jardine, as for the tradition of structuralist and post-structuralist thought,
oman attains a peculiar cultural significance that of alterity of the narratives of modernity,
which have been historically inaugurated by the Cartesian subject, and which have failed to7

For most authoritative discussions on the opposition modernity-postmodernity, see Jean-François Lyotard, The
Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi(Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1984), especially pp. xxiii-xxvff, 27-37ff, 46ff, 59ff, 79ff; cf. La
condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979), pp. 7-9ff, 49-63ff, 75ff, 97ff.
Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, translated by Frederick Lawrence(Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1996), especially pp. 3ff, 83ff; cf. Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne: Zwölf
Vorlesungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), SS. 11ff, 104ff; Anthon Giddens, Modernism andPost-Modernism, New German Critique, No. 22, Special Issue on Modernism (Winter, 1981), pp. 15-18; Anthony
Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), especially pp. 1-10, 45-53;
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge,
MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991), especially pp. 10ff, 327ff; Agnes Heller, A Theory of Modernity (Malden,
MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), especially pp. 1-18; Okwui Enwezor, Nancy Condee, Terry Smith(eds.), Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, (Durham, London: Duke
University Press, 2009).
8
Alice Jardine, What Feminism?, p. 68.
9
Alice Jardine, Gynesis, pp. 23-24.
10
Ibid., pp. 24-25.
11
Ibid., p. 25.

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Ha thorne s No el The Scarlet Letter ith the Help of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida

convey that alterity. It is in this relation that Jardine sees a necessity for a new form of thinking
and discoursing, which is fitting to e plore the alterit of modernit , or the space codedfeminine . She ill call it gynesis:
To designate that process, I have suggested a new name, what I hope to be a believable neologism:
gynesis the putting into discourse of oman as that process beyond the Cartesian Subject, theDialectics of Representation, or Man s Truth. The object produced b this process is neither a person
nor a thing, but a horizon, that towards which the process is tending: a gynema. This gynema is areading effect, a woman-in-effect, never stable, without identity. Its appearance in a written text isperhaps noticed only by the woman (feminist) reader either at the point where it becomesinsistentl feminine or here omen (as defined metaph sicall , historicall ) seem magically toreappear ithin the discourse. The feminist reader s e e comes to a halt at this tear in the fabric,
producing a state of uncertainty and sometimes of distrust especially when the faltering narrativein which it is embedded has been articulated by a man from within a nonetheless still-existentdiscipline. When it appears in omen theorists discourse, it ould seem to be less troubling. The
still existent slippages in signification among feminine/woman/women and what we are callinggynesis and gynema are dismissed as unimportant because it is a oman speaking.12

This e cerpt from Jardine s earlier publication con e s hat I see as the operational gist of hernotion of gynesis and is likewise suggestive of its interpretative potential. Gynesis is the putting
into discourse ofoman , here oman has the cultural significance indicated in the
structuralist and post-structuralist thought but is also indicative of a radical revision ofsubjectivity. Another important trait of gynesis is that it is a process , hich in this a goesbeyond the metaphysical anticipations of modernity, for instance, in that it is not anything likea program that can be accomplished and thus finished once and for all. It is more specifically aprocess be ond the Cartesian Subject, the Dialectics of Representation, or Man s Truth , hichare now very much unmasked as the pillars of the original project of modernity. That process
also creates neither a person nor a thing, but a hori on hich is called gynema described as areading effect, a woman-in-effect, ne er stable, ithout identit . The gynema of gynesis is thus
nothing like a t pical metaph sical product of modernit . Instead, it is perhaps noticed onl
b the oman (feminist) reader , though not exclusively, and seems to be an experience of what
is insistentl feminine or of oman as magicall reappearing ithin discourse . It can bemarked b a sense of uncertaint or distrust , most commonl e oked b a discourse authoredb a man , but these ould be less troubling hen detected in omen s orks, because it isa oman speaking .
The suggestion that Jardine makes here is that a woman reader or critic appears to be ina better position than a male one would be to join in gynesis to explore the signification of thefeminine the intrinsic otherness of the discourse of modernit . Yet, ith this project she
does not aim at painting conte ts or te ts, representing modernit or feminism, or defining
omen or oman ; rather she aims at foregrounding a ne kind of interpretant hich has
surfaced from the interactions among all of these a oman-effectin the hope that it could
13
open ne spaces for omen to rite in. Thus, Jardine clearly anticipates that bringing
12

Alice Jardine, G nesis, Diacritics, Vol. 12, No. 2, Cherchez la Femme Feminist Critique/Feminine Text
(Summer, 1982), p. 58.
13
Alice Jardine, Gynesis, p. 28.

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Ha thorne s No el The Scarlet Letter ith the Help of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida

together in gynesis the post-structuralist conjectures on the cultural significance of omanand the American feminist tradition of literary criticism, which emphasized the gender inliterary representation, will bring a special benefit for the latter. Consequently, drawing on
feminist critics like Annette Kolodny and Elaine Showalter, 14 Jardine goes on to describe what
she calls the fundamental feminist gesture of literar criticism as an anal sis (and critique) offictional representations of omen (characters) in men s and omen s riting. 15 Whereas
along these lines the gestures of post-structuralism and American feminism seem to be at first
divergently positioned, this only motivates Jardine to seek ways to bridge them. In fact, herthought never ceases to oscillate between them. In the process, she raises more questions thanshe offers definitive solutions, but her discussion of the issues at stake unveils how they
reappear within the perspectives of these two intellectual movements, thus availing insights inboth directions while keeping the prospects for their mutual enhancement open-ended.
Acknowledging the tension between the two perspectives, Jardine looks for points incommon and indicates three their intersections, which are of particular relevance for literary
criticism, and hich she identifies along modernit s notions of self , representation , andtruth . First, the post-structuralist thought, which does away with subject, self, and author, isin an outright tension with the feminist emphasis on the gender of representation. The mannerin which Jardine tackles this intersect is exemplary for her approach of making a double gesturein the directions of both perspectives. On one side, she points out that the feminist s distrust of
this comple be onding of se ual identit is largel based on common sense
precisely
the one ( sense common to all , that is, humanism ) that a true feminist critique endea ors todispel.16 On another, she makes the assertion that hen ou problemati e Man (as being at
the foundations of Western notions of the self)... ou are bound to find oman no matter
who is speaking and that most definitel concerns feminist criticism. 17
Second, drawing partly on Kristeva, Jardine points to the postmodernist notion ofrepresentation as a process in a comple mo e from the phantasies of the unconscious
through the fantasies of consciousness, a process hich as attached to no self, no stable
psychological entit , no content undoes the border between theory and fiction.18 This process
has found e pression in acceptabl femini ed domains such as art, literature, and religion(though not in theology), but its radical rethinking and liberation demand re-exploration of the
Greek notion of physis
making it speak differentl , in ne spaces, ithin entirel ne
19
structural configurations.
Again, troubling as this process of representation and selfexploration might seem to be for a feminist critique, Jardine emphasi es that it has e er thing
to do ith oman and thus ith omen, 20 a message that can be fittingly received by thepostmodernist thinkers as well.
14

Annette Kolodn , Some Notes on Defining a Feminist Literar Criticism , Critical Inquiry, Vol. 2, No. 1(Autumn, 1975), pp. 75-92; Elaine Sho alter, To ards a Feminist Poetics, in: Mar Jacobus (ed.), Women
Writing and Writing about Women (New York, London: Routledge, 1979), pp. 22-41.
15
Alice Jardine, Gynesis, pp. 52, 57.
16
Ibid., p. 58.
17
Ibid., p. 58.
18
Ibid., p. 59.
19
Ibid., p. 59.
20
Ibid., p. 59.

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Ha thorne s No el The Scarlet Letter ith the Help of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida

Third, drawing again on Kristeva, Jardine addresses the notion of truth in terms of the
opposition bet een fiction and realit . One immediate concern that she raises in this regard
is the safeguarding of omen s fictional heritage from the proliferation of fictional products
in our technological orld, a safeguarding hich must go along ith la ing bare the logical,
ideological, and historical links bet een that heritage and patriarchal culture. 21 Anotherconcern she points to is the difference that a feminist theor could make, pro ided that to treat
both ... theory and fiction ... as fictions is to make a gesture assumed by contemporary thought
and is also to conform to the feminist impulse. 22 In all events, the relevance of thepostmodernist sense of truth to feminist critics amounts to a question they cannot forgoIsall of this another male fiction, or is it a larger process that can begin to free women and men
from Man's Truth? 23This question is Jardine s t pical open-ended but is again pregnant with suggestions inboth directions, as is also her project of gynesis as a whole. Apparently, on her view, gynesis
encompasses the work of both French postmodernist thought (with its exploration of the cultural
signification of woman) and American feminist literary criticism (with its fundamental feminist
gesture) despite their noted di ergence. The both enture on a search for that hich has beenleft out , de-emphasized, hidden, or denied articulation within Western systems ofknowledge, but gynesis in France has proceeded a a from a concern ith identit to aconcern with difference, from wholeness to that which is incomplete, from representation tomodes of presentation, meta-discourse to fiction, production to operation, and from Universal
Truth to a search for new forms of legitimation through para-scientific (when not mathematical)
models. 24 It would appear, though, that for Jardine each of the two perspectives by itself alone
will not be as efficient in gynesis as both of them together. For,... a radical reconceptualization of the speaking subject and language is, in particular, essential to
the rethinking of feminism as concept and practice in the late twentieth century. At the same time,the e plorations ofoman,
ith reference to both, in contemporary French thought, are notenough to do so because of the ways in which reality and its fictions have been deemphasized. The(American) feminist in dialogue with (French) contemporary theory may be in a special position toapproach this problem by remediating and rethinking the feminist insistence on personal experience
as practice with the movement of these theoretical fictions as experience and practice thus
working, potentially, toward a new disposition of the ethical grounded in symbolic process.25

We shall seek for such a ne disposition of the ethical grounded in s mbolic process in ourreading of Ha thorne The Scarlet Letter, but we will also need to draw attention to several
other elements of Jardine s ie of gynesis to complete our idea of it. Such elements may notnecessarily make the usage of gynesis for purposes of text reading any easier, as they point also
beyond any good intentions to difficulties that might seem unsurmountable obstructions.
And yet, even as Jardine has warned us that she is not offering definitive solutions, guided by

21

Ibid., p. 60.
Ibid., p. 60.
23Ibid., p. 61.
24
Ibid., p. 36.
25
Ibid., p. 47.
22

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Ha thorne s No el The Scarlet Letter ith the Help of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida

the belief that insights can only be more useful for the purpose than any conceptual
irreconcilability, we could readily face them and see what we can get out of them.
One such element that poses difficulties for feminist critics is that, whereas it is inspired
and guided b the signification of oman and the representation of omen, gynesis may notnecessaril be about omen, hereas feminism is necessaril about women a group ofhuman beings in histor
hose identit is defined b that histor s representation of26
se ualit .
Jardine is certainl a are that H l ne Ci ous ie of écriture féminine( omen s riting ) is essentiall an attempt to differentiate and thus in ent a specificall
woman s discourse as distinct from the traditional man s discourse hich misrepresents
women.27 Jardine also admits that ithin traditional categories of thought, omen can (ha e)e ist(ed) onl as opposed to men, that ithin a postmodernist perspecti e omen, especiallyfeminists, ho continue to think ithin those categories are, henceforth, seen as being men,and that this constitutes a problem for feminist critics as it e plicitl negates their o n status
as readersgenderi ing the te ts effecti el problemati ed the gender to the point ofmaking it unavailable as both subject and object of text criticism. 28
This by itself already consigns both postmodernist and feminist thought to crises oflegitimation,29 as modernit s grand narrati es 30 can no longer work for either of them in thissense. What is more important, though, is that, no matter what form the resolution of such crises
might take, the concerns for feminist criticism remain intact, for regardless of the acuteness ofthe postmodernist critical interventions into the narratives of modernity, for Jardine, they do
not seem to get be ond g nesis as it transpires ithin a male econom . 31 Likewise, evenhen the demise of Truth, i ., Man s Truth, is proclaimed, something that a feminist ill
most certainl
elcome, other ke concerns ill still remain; namel , the er conceptuals stems that ha e inaugurated it, as ell as the presence of these s stems into feminist
thinking in the form of s stems of defining the self, perception, judgment, and, therefore,
moralit . 32
For Jardine, the way out of the conceptual conundrums in the wake of the crises oflegitimation can only be gynesis. The demise of the Subject, of the Dialectic, and of Truth has
left modernity with a void that it is vaguely aware must be spoken differently and strangely: asoman, through g nesis. 33 Following Kristeva, who designates the intrinsic relation between
truth (vérité) and the Lacanian real (réel) adopted in postmodernist thought with the neologism
vréel,34 Jardine describes the latter as a kind of she-truth noting that it is also suggesti e of26

Alice Jardine, Introduction to Julia Kriste a's Women's Time , Signs, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Autumn, 1981), p. 8.
H l ne Ci ous, The Laugh of the Medusa, translated b Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4(Summer, 1976), pp. 875-893.
28
Alice Jardine, Gynesis, p. 63.
29
Ibid., pp. 65ff.
30
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, pp. xxiii-xxvff, 27-37ff, 46ff, 59ff, 79ff; cf. La condition
postmoderne, pp. 7-9ff, 49-63ff, 75ff, 97ff.
31
Alice Jardine, Gynesis, p. 144.
32
Ibid., p. 153.
33
Ibid., p. 154.
34
Julia Kristeva, The True-Real, in Toril Moi (ed.), The Kristeva Reader, translated by Sean Hand (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 216-217; cf. Le réel, in Julia Kristeva and jean-Michel Ribette (eds.),
Folle Vérité Vérité et vraisemblance du texte psychotique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1979), p. 11.
27

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the French elle (she) and thus of the truth-as-woman in gynesis.35 The Real is a ke concept
in the psychoanalysis of Lacan, where it is understood as what remains be ond the Imaginar
and the S mbolic , and has been also associated ith Kant s thing-in-itself.36 Lacan links it toa specific kno ledge hich he characteri es as prohibited (interdit),
impossible,
censured, and forbidden, but hich becomes accessible if ou rite inter-dit
appropriatel , for it is said bet een the ords, bet een the lines. 37 Lacan also links thetruth of that kno ledge to oman and ackno ledges that, although he does not kno ho
to approach it, something true can still be said about hat cannot be demonstrated. 38 Seizing
upon these conclusions, Jardine asserts that the true, after Lacan, can only be inter-dit, locatedbet een ords, bet een lines, that it is intrinsicall interlinked ith the Real and femininejouissance, and that the are thus all im-previsible ; that is, unseen and unforeseeable...surging out of the unconscious, as terrifying as any God, no matter what name the latter
carries. 39
We need to keep in mind here that, as she explores the interlinkage in question, Jardine
always does so with a view to feminist critique and the possibility that the conceptual apparatus
of modernity with its front-runner the speaking subject, dismantled as it is in postmodernist
thought, be put to new uses at least provisionally. Lacan is also the psychoanalytic theorist who
has offered a landmark discussion of jouissance and its links to the subject with its epistemic
aspirations that has been most influential on the post-structuralist tradition. Opposing
jouissance to the philosophical concept of being , at one point he declares that thought isjouissance and that there is jouissance of being, 40 and at another that the I is not a being,
but rather something attributed to that hich speaks. 41 More categorically, though, heannounces that,
The world, the world of being, full of knowledge, is but a dream, a dream of the body insofar as it
speaks, for there s no such thing as a kno ing subject. There are subjects ho gi e themsel escorrelates in object a, correlates of enjoying speech qua jouissance of speech.42

In trading the subject for jouissance, Lacan has also dwelled on feminine jouissance. For him,
it is a jouissance hich is supplementar , be ond the phallus, 43 of the Other, and soradicall Other that oman has more of a relationship to God than an thing that could ha e
35

Alice Jardine, Gynesis, p. 154. See also Alice Jardine, Opaque Te ts and Transparent Conte ts: the Political
Difference of Julia Kriste a, in Nanc Miller(ed.), The Poetics of Gender (New York: Columbia University Press,
1986), pp. 96-115.
36
Adrian Johnston, Jacques Lacan, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/lacan/>.
37
Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, Encore 1972-1973, translated by Bruce Fink (NewYork, London: W. W. Norton & Company), p. 119; cf. Le séminaire, livre XX, Encore 1972-1973 (Paris: Éditions
du Seuil, 1975), p. 108.
38
Ibid., pp. 119-120; cf. p. 108.
39
Alice Jardine, Gynesis, p. 167.
40
Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, Encore 1972-1973, p. 70; cf. p. 66.
41
Ibid., p. 120; p. 109.
42
Ibid., pp. 126-127; p. 114.
43
Ibid., pp. 73-74; cf. pp. 68-69.

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been said in speculation in antiquit .... 44 Also, oman is said not to kno it, not to breathe a
ord about it, hich leads Lacan to conjecture a primar presence for the phallic jouissance, 45
as well as to liken the feminine jouissance to the essential testimon of the m stics, ho
sa that the e perience it, but kno nothing about it. 46 The unknowability and mysticism of
feminine jouissance is due to the status of the phallus as signifier that has no signified but
is based, in the case of man, on phallic jouissance. 47 Feminine jouissance thus appears to be
be ond the phallus , or a sort of surplus, an e tra (en plus), 48 which will always makeoman appear in phallic presentation as not-whole (pas-tout). 49
With such considerations in mind, Lacan makes two important assertions that are ofparticular rele ance for feminist, as ell as for an other, critical perspecti e: 1) that if theunconscious has taught us anything, it is first of all that somewhere in the Other it knows (çasait), and 2) that it kno s because it is based precisel on those signifiers ith hich thesubject constitutes himself. 50 That is, there is a certain kind of knowledge that is beyond thephallic signifier, is associated ith the unconscious and oman , is go erned b femininejouissance, and is based on and availed by that signifier which inaugurated the traditional
subject. From here the notion of oman subject ; that is, a subject go erned b femininejouissance, is just a step away. H l ne Ci ous famous notion of l'écriture féminine presupposes
this subject and also exacts it:
When I saoman, I m speaking of oman in her ine itable struggle against con entional man;and of a universal woman subject who must bring women to their senses and to their meaning inhistory.51

Ci ous clearl gi es more than just theoretical import to the uni ersal oman subject hichshe also sees as a carrier or impetus of change. This subject of change has also a clear object ofchange the phallocentric tradition with its entire history of writing and reason:
Nearly the entire history of writing is confounded with the history of reason, of which it is at oncethe effect, the support, and one of the privileged alibis. It has been one with the phallocentric
tradition. It is indeed that same self-admiring, self-stimulating, self-congratulatory phallocentrism. 52

Jardine sees Ci ous
ork as a step farther in the postmodernist tradition that
ad ances the cultural significance of oman and l' criture f minine , largel because Ci ous
has suggested that e en if feminine riting does not require the signature of a oman, omen
nonetheless, toda (after ps choanal sis and Derrida), do ha e a pri ileged access to it to the44

Ibid., pp. 82-83; cf. p. 77.
Ibid., p. 60; cf. p. 56.
46
Ibid., p. 76; cf. pp. 70-71.
47bid., p. 81; cf. p. 75.
48
Ibid., p. 77; cf. p. 71.
49
Ibid., pp. 7, 60; cf. pp. 13, 56.
50
Ibid., pp. 87-88; cf. p. 81.
51
H l ne Ci ous, The Laugh of Medousa, translated by Keith Cohen & Paula Cohen, Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4(Summer, 1976), pp. 875-876.
52
Ibid., p. 879.
45

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point that omen ... seem to be, almost intrinsically, proto-postmodernists. 53 The notion ofoman subject ha ing a pri ileged access to the feminine riting adds up a good deal of
impetus to the potential of Jardine s project of gynesis for feminist critique and literary
criticism, even as she has acknowledged the differences in focus and emphasis, to which thatthe postmodernist thought has awakened the French and American texts. Jardine actually
believes that a continued dialogue between the French and American feminist writers can only
help disco er new configurations of oman and modernit , as ell as decide the future ofg nesis and its rele ance for omen. 54
In this regard, and from the view point of feminist literary critique, Jardine notes thatthe riting strategies intrinsic to modernit ,hich she identified in her discussion of theFrench postmodernists, are also at ork in the contemporar male American no el but are
imbedded in a process that is qualitati el different
an external process, manipulating
language and exploding the semantic spaces of the referent, rather than an internal one,
imploding the signifier itself. 55 Indeed, Jardine claims that, grounded in an ideolog of
unconditional freedom and originalit of the author-self, the contemporary male American
riter has remained so ereign, ne er putting the authorit of his o n discourse into questionin an radical a . 56 Thus, his te t has remained arguabl deaf to the maternal, rather thane ploding paternal identit , concepts, and narrative to get at their feminine core, through ... aradical rearrangement of gender. 57 Ne ertheless, on Jardine s ie , this te t has made an
entrance into gynesis at the le el of representation, though in its o n a , in hich gynesis
appears again as the primar problem for an narrati e or subject-in-narrati e but
ithout necessaril problemati ing either one. 58
We take it from here that, whereas it may have been limited, this entrance could by itself
become a point of departure for a deconstructive feminist critique which uncovers the aspectsof gynesis alongside the patriarchal ones as coded within a literary text. We can also assume
that such an approach can be applied to earlier modern texts as well, as they have been exposed
to an even lesser critique of the writing strategies of modernity than the contemporary ones. We
hope this approach ill be further facilitated if e thro light on Derrida s sense of
deconstruction, to which we turn next.
De ida Phi
h f Decci
Like Jardine s notion of g nesis, Derrida s ie of deconstruction does not emulate a specificmove between binary oppositions, even though he acknowledges their inevitability indiscourse. His gesture of bringing Claude Lévi-Strauss ethnological research to bear on thedeconstruction of the structure of discourse is not a move from particular to universal, fromlocal to global, or the other way around. These binary oppositions grow increasingly flexible
as they are deployed through the abstractions of discourse and culture away from the53

Alice Jardine, Gynesis, p. 262.
Ibid., p. 264.
55
Ibid., p. 234.
56
Ibid., pp. 234-235.
57
Ibid., p. 236.
58
Ibid., p. 236.
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visualities of nature to the point of their significatory self-disbandment, self-annihilation or,otherwise, deconstruction. This process is certainly more subtle and sophisticated than the
discourse can convey, especially as the latter inevitably faces in it its own self-disarmament andstructural incapacity to proceed beyond itself. It is nonetheless a process in which, as Derrida
has shown, discourse becomes increasingl a are of its o n finite capacit as a field hiche cludes totali ation. 59
The sense of deconstruction 60 which Derrida conveys comprises a number ofde elopments in hat he calls the histor of meaning and is tied ith the concept ofstructure that is central to the ork of such figures as the anthropologist Claude L i-Strauss,the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, among others. As ist picall understood, structure is hat introduces order, organi ation, and systematicity indiscourse to make it intelligible, for, as Saussure, the foremost originator of structuralism, puts
it, in language there are onl differences ithout positi e terms. 61
Structure, Sign, and PlayIn the opening of his most widel read essa Structure, Sign, and Pla in the Discourse of the
Human Sciences, Derrida speaks of an e ent hich constitutes a rupture in the conceptof structure, and hich he links to the er sense of the structuralit of structure. Morespecificall , he points out that although it has al a s been at ork, [structure also] has al a s
been neutralized or reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or of referring it to apoint of presence, a fi ed origin. 62 For Derrida, the center of the structure plays the specialrole of ensuring its stability, organization, coherence, and thus intelligibility, but mostimportantly of limiting hat e might call the play of the structure. 63 The center of thestructure closes off the pla
hich it opens up and makes possible, but itself remains
insusceptible to permutation or transformation and thus, despite its special function, escapes
structuralit , hich is h it as thought of, parado icall , within the structure and outside
it. 64 In other words,
The center is at the center of the totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (isnot part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center. The conceptof centered structure although it represents coherence itself, the condition of the episteme as
philosophy or science is contradictorily coherent.65

59

Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978),p.289; cf. L'écriture et la différence (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967), p. 423.
60
It is to be noted that, e en as he used the term deconstruction and its deri ati es e tensi el , Derrida was not
happ
ith the label deconstructionist for his philosoph , hich came to be applied to it rather by popularconsent.
61
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, incollaboration with Albert Riedlinger, translated, with an introduction and notes by Wade Baskin (New York: The
Philosophical Library, Inc. 1959), p. 120; cf. Cours de linguistique générale, publié par Charles Bally et Albert
Sechehaye, avec la collaboration de Albert Riedlinger (Paris: Payot, 1971), pp. 194-195.
62
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, p.278; cf. L'écriture et la différence, p. 409.
63
Ibid., p.278; cf. p. 409.
64
Ibid., p.279; cf. pp. 409-410.
65
Ibid., p.279; cf. p. 410.

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Derrida points out further that throughout the intellectual tradition of the West that center has
been taking different forms or names, different metaphors and meton mies
such aseidos, arche, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject), aletheia,transcendentalit , consciousness, God, man, and so forth
but it has al a s aimed at thedetermination of Being as presence in all senses of this ord. 66 Thus, it became historically
clear that the center could not be thought in the form of a present-being, ... that it was not a
fixed locus but a function, a sort of nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions
came into pla to the point that e er thing became discourse, or a s stem in hich thecentral signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside as stem of differences, thus e tending the domain and the pla of signification infinitel . 67
Whereas, for Derrida, there is no particular event or doctrine that marks the beginningof the rupture of the concept of structure, he has singled out the discourses of Nietzsche, Freud,and Heidegger, in hich its ork has found its most radical formulation. 68 Yet, for him,such discourses are ine itabl in ol ed in a unique circle hich is indicati e of the relation
bet een the histor of metaph sics and the destruction of the histor of metaph sics, andultimately of the impossibility of deconstructing metaphysics without using its concepts:
There is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to shake metaphysics. We
have no language no syntax and no lexicon which is foreign to this history; we can pronounce
not a single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into the form, the logic, andthe implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest.69

One example that Derrida gives in this regard is the concept of sign, a key concept ofstructuralist thought, which as metaphysical concept has to be rejected, but hich at thesame time cannot be dispensed with in such a rejection.70 The concept of the sign cannot securea transcendence of, or a radical distance from, the metaphysical oppositions it enables (such as
the one bet een sensible and intelligible, as L i-Strauss had hoped); for we cannot annul its
er o n metaph sical self-identit (of an opposition bet een signifier and signified)
without annulling also its functional capacity
e cannot annul its metaph sical complicit
without also giving up the critique we are directing against this complicit . 71
In this relation, Derrida speaks of a classical a of annulling or erasing thedifference bet een the signifier and the signified,hich in ol es submitting the sign tothought, as opposed to his o n, hich contests the s stem of operation of the former one,and most of all
the opposition bet een sensible and intelligible. 72 More particularly,
Derrida points to hat he calls the paradox ... that the metaphysical reduction of the signneeded the opposition it was reducing, suggesting in a circular fashion that the opposition
66

Ibid., pp.279-280; cf. pp. 410-411.
Ibid., p. 280 (emphasis added); cf. p. 411.
68
Ibid., p. 280; cf. pp. 411-412.
69
Ibid., pp. 280-281; cf. pp. 411-412.
70
Ibid., p. 281; cf. p. 412.
71
Ibid., p. 281; cf. pp. 412-413.
72
Ibid., p. 281; cf. p. 413.
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is s stematic ith the reduction,hich in his ie applies to all the concepts and all thesentences of metaph sics, in particular to the discourse on structure , and e plains themultiplicity of destructive discourses and the disagreement between those who elaborate
them. 73 This means that no s stem is possible ithout differences and oppositions, hichare necessar for the reduction , e planation, or elaboration ithin its perspective, andultimately for the deconstruction of that system itself and its structural elements. That is,regardless of its primary purpose, every usage of metaphysical concepts, including those madeithin the destructi e discourses of the likes of Niet sche, Freud, and Heidegger, brings
along ith it the hole of metaph sics. 74 This also means that the metaphysical deconstructionof metaphysics (indeed its only possible deconstruction) needs to make usage of metaphysicaloppositions, as much as to face the impossibility of accepting them, as in the case of LéviStrauss ethnological research, here his fundamental opposition bet een nature and culture
collapsed in the explanation of the universal normativity of incest prohibition. 75
For Derrida, this indicates that language bears ithin itself the necessit of its o ncritique, hich he suggests could be done in t o manners: one questioning s stematicall
and rigorousl the histor of these concepts, but in a a different from that of the classic
historian of philosoph , and insteadin a step outside philosoph ; and another,
instrumental one, which, while questioning their truth- alue, conser es their methodologicalutility.76 He sees Lévi-Strauss notion of bricolage as an example of the latter manner in thesense in which the bricoleur utilizes various tools that come handy, regardless of the purposes
for which they may have been made originally. 77 What Derrida emphasizes here is that thevalue of bricolage is not just intellectual but also m thopoetical, hich for him emulates
the stated abandonment of all reference to a center, to a subject, to a privileged reference, toan origin, or to an absolute archia. 78 Thus, the important recognition that Derrida makes, alongwith Lévi-Strauss, is that the study of the myths is itself mythomorphic, itself a kind of m th
the m th of m tholog , ans ering the arbitrar demand for a total m thological pattern,
as much as the philosophical or epistemological requirement of a center. 79
Employing discourse for totalization, then, is in an important sense useless andimpossible, but for Derrida this is not just because of the empirical impossibility for a finite
subject to master the infinite field of its totali ing endea or; most fundamentall , it is because
the nature of the field that is, language and a finite language e cludes totali ation. 80 It israther that field s nature of nontotali ation that needs determination and here Derrida reaches
out to the concept of play:
This field is in effect that of play, that is to say, a field of infinite substitutions only because it isfinite, that is to say, because instead of being an inexhaustible field, as in the classical hypothesis,
73

Ibid., p. 281; cf. p. 413.
Ibid., p. 281; cf. p. 413.
75
Ibid., p. 283; cf. pp. 415-416.
76
Ibid., p. 284; cf. pp. 416-417.
77
Ibid., p. 285; cf. p. 418.
78
Ibid., pp. 285-286; cf. pp. 418-419.
79
Ibid., pp. 286-289; cf. pp. 420-423.
80
Ibid., p. 289; cf. p. 423.
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instead of being too large, there is something missing from it: a center which arrests and grounds
the play of substitutions. One could say ... that this movement of play, permitted by the lack or
absence of a center or origin, is the movement of supplementarity. One cannot determine the centerand exhaust totalization because the sign which replaces the center, which supplements it, taking thecenter s place in its absence this sign is added, occurs as a surplus, as a supplement.81

This passage condenses a great deal of Derrida s ie on the nature of discourse anddeconstruction. It suggests that both discourse and deconstruction are products of the work or
mo ement of hat he calls play. The field of language is the field of play a field of infinite
substitutions . It is a field of infinite substitutions onl because it is finite . It is both a fieldof infinite substitutions and finite because there is something missing from it: a center . It isthus both finite and infinite but that paradox would hold sway as paradox (in its proper senseof contradiction) only in an empirical (or otherwise logical) perspective; in the play of a centerless discourse it would stand as the normal state of affairs. In the absence of a center , themo ement of pla is the mo ement of supplementarit , because the sign replaces thecenterithout being a center and thus adds up to the pla , becomes a surplus or a
supplement . And et, that this supplement is onl a floating one, ser ing onl a icarious
function to make up for a lack on the part of the signified, 82 already suggests that all
significatory discoursewith all its presumably centering but fundamentally arbitrary
structurality is duly owed a deconstruction. In other words, discourse already carries within
itself its own deconstruction, which only needs to be read out, provided that one knows how toread it.
In this relation, Derrida speaks of certain tensions of the concept of play with those ofhistory and presence, which he identifies in Lévi-Strauss as ell. First, on Derrida s ie , thetension between the concepts of play and history denies the latter its classic oppositionist
stance to, and instead points to its complicit
ith, the metaph sics of presence:With or without etymology, and despite the classic antagonism which opposes these significations
throughout all of classical thought, it could be shown that the concept of epist m has always called
forth that of historia, if history is always the unity of a becoming, as the tradition of truth or thedevelopment of science or knowledge oriented toward the appropriation of truth in presence andself-presence, toward knowledge in consciousness-of-self.83

In other words, historia is always already epist m , if, in the tradition of truth , histor is theunit of a becoming as appercei ed along truth in presence and self-presence by a subject;that is, as kno ledge in consciousness-of-self . For Derrida, then, grasping the internal
originalit of a structure
including that of the structure of structures, language
would
require a neutrali ation of time and histor , a sort of suspension of all its past conditions,which ould see that structure s emergence as, in L i-Strauss
ords, born in one fell
84
s oop. Now, for Lévi-Strauss, born in one fell s oop does not mean created out of
nothing , as certain process and transformations are assumed to be at ork there, but on
81

Ibid., p. 289; cf. p. 423.
Ibid., p. 289; cf. p. 423.
83
Ibid., p. 291; cf. p. 425.
84
Ibid., p. 291; cf. pp. 425-426.
82

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Derrida s ie
he sa the suspension of all factualit as necessar for recapturing thespecificit of a structure. 85
On the other tension , the one bet een play and presence, Derrida points that whereas
presence is a signification inscribed in a s stem of differences, pla is the disruption ofpresence and is thus a pla of absence and presence, hich, thought radicall , ... must beconcei ed of before the alternati e of presence and absence. 86 In this sense, for Derrida,
Being must be conceived as presence or absence on the basis of the possibility of play and not
the other a around, a stance hich appears to condition t o approaches to the impossible
presence :Turned towards the lost or impossible presence of the absent origin, this structuralist thematic ofbroken immediacy is therefore the saddened, negative, nostalgic, guilty, Rousseauistic side of thethinking of play whose other side would be the Nietzschean affirmation, that is the joyous
affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world ofsigns without fault, without truth, and without origin which is offered to an active interpretation.
This affirmation then determines the noncenter otherwise than as loss of the center. And it plays
without security. For there is a sure play: that which is limited to the substitution of given andexisting, present, pieces. In absolute chance, affirmation also surrenders itself to genetic
indetermination, to the seminal adventure of the trace.87

Thus, both the negati e, nostalgic Rousseauistic side and the jo ous, affirmati e Niet scheanside of thinking the play are t o interpretati e approaches, t o interpretations ofinterpretation, of structure, of sign, of pla , hich hile absolutel irreconcilable find theira s into the common field of the human sciences.88 These two ways of responding to theapparent lack or loss of the center , to the noncenter of the structuralit of structure, appear
to posit two key aspects of the deconstructive critique, two demands which are as exacting as
they are inevitable, and as non-binding as they are indeterminate: 1) the demand for a recurrent
substitution of significations in a system of differences, a system of presence; and 2) the demand
for the affirmation of play, of the adventure of life; that is, for life affirmation. Still, Derrida
does not think e ha e a question of choosing here; rather our first task is to tr to concei eof the common ground, and the différance of this irreducible difference, a task hich opens
up a glimpse at the question of facing the as et unnamable, the question hose treatment
portends promises, risks, and delusions that can only provisionally announce themselves in a
metaphorics of childbearing, nonspecies, and monstrosit . 89
The Play of Différance
Derrida s ie of différance adds up to the sense of his deconstructive approach by exploring
interrelations of structurality with key concepts of the metaphysical tradition, including
difference, being, becoming, causation, subject, time, space, trace, consciousness, andunconscious, among others. While fairly complex and demanding a close reading to get into its
85

Ibid., pp. 291-292; cf. p. 426.
Ibid., p. 292; cf. p. 426.
87
Ibid., p. 292; cf. pp. 426-427.
88
Ibid., pp. 292-293; cf. p. 427.
89
Ibid., p. 293; cf. pp. 427-428.
86

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sense, we will limit its discussion here to only some of its aspects that indicate the openness of
deconstruction to literary texts.
Initiall described as neographism, différance obtains through the imposition of theletter a in place of the letter e in the French ord différence. 90 As a mere graphic
difference, the a of différance can be read or ritten, but it ould remain inaudible in the
spoken French language:
The a of différance, thus, is not heard; it remains silent, secret and discreet as a tomb: oikesis. And
thereby let us anticipate the delineation of a site, the familial residence and tomb of the proper inwhich is produced, by différance, the economy of death. This stone provided that one knows how
to decipher its inscription is not far from announcing the death of the tyrant.91

Drawing on the links of the Greek word oikos (house) ith tomb (oikesis) and econom(from oikonomia or household management ), Derrida here associates the tomb of the proper
ith the death of the t rant . This econom of death , hich is an effect of différance, involves
the p ramidal silence of the letter a in the graphic difference 92 and points to the need ofdeciphering its inscription . Further on, dra ing on Saussure's discussion of structuralit oflanguage, Derrida speaks of différance as pla of differences,hich is the possibilit of93
conceptuality, of a conceptual process and system in general, as much as it is the condition
for the possibilit and functioning of e er sign. 94 Yet, this seemingly transcendental
characterization will be duly stripped of its transcendentality, as différance will be seen not onlyas
hat makes possible the presentation of the being-present, but also as hat is ne er
presented as such,ne er offered to the present, nor to an one. 95 Thus différance will
reappear as evading the language of presence very much as its letter a evades being detected inspeech. We can conjecture here that as the silent a of différance can only be deciphered in its
inscription, so too différance itself
in its non-presence, lack of being, transcendental
inaccessibility remains open to discussion, viz. interpretation, as much as anything belonging
to the margins of the te t. And et, as différance is neither a ord nor a concept, and is thus
hat is most irreducible of our era (and indeed ithout is ), 96 its discussion, which is to
unfold inevitably in the language of presence, can only be paradoxical or non-literal.
Within the terms of this language, Derrida has traced two aspects of différance along
the two senses of the French verb différer (and its Latin predecessor differre) rendered in
English respecti el
ith defer and differ
as temporization and spacing: the former
impl ing an economical calculation, a detour, a dela , a rela , a reser e, a representation ; thelatterdissimilar otherness or ... allergic and polemical otherness, an inter al, a distance. 97

90 Jacques Derrida,

Diff rance, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1986), p. 3; cf. Marges de la Philosophie (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1972), p. 4.
91
Ibid., pp. 3-4; cf. p. 4.
92
Ibid., p. 4; cf. p. 4.
93
Ibid., p. 11; cf. p. 11.
94
Ibid., p. 5; cf. p. 5.
95
Ibid., pp. 5-6; cf. p. 6.
96
Ibid., pp. 6-7.
97
Ibid., p. 8; cf. p. 8.

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These two aspects of différance point to the fundamental categories of the metaphysicaltradition time and space , hich in Derrida s discussion thus appear in perspecti e. A ke
pointer here is that the a of différance is understood as immediatel deri ing from the present
participle (différant), thereby bringing us close to the very action of the verb différer, before it
has even produced an effect constituted as something different or as différence (with an e). 98
In this sense, différance reappears as the overall dynamics that underlays or makes possible
thinking in terms of language as differences; that is, it makes possible thinking, categorial
thinking, metaphysical thinking, as well as writing, altogether.
The elusive character of différance has compelled Derrida to appeal in its discussion to
Freud s concept of trace (Spur) and to Heidegger s usage of the same term, both of hich aresuggestive of a non-literal rendering of what otherwise appears unpresentable. Thus, Derrida
has associated the mo ement of signification to ards the scene of presence ; that is, theconstitution of the present of the language of presence via differences and intervals, or
temporization and spacing
ith archi-writing, archi-trace, or différance. 99 He uncovers
différance as spacing within Freud s concepts of trace (Spur), of breaching (Bahnung), and of
the forces of breaching, b pointing that the are inseparable from the concept of difference,as there is no breach ithout difference and no difference ithout trace. 100 Then, he identifies
différance as temporization b pointing that all the differences in the production of
unconscious traces and in the processes of inscription (Niederschrift) can be interpreted as
putting into reser e, because Freud regards the mo ement of a trace ... as an effort of life toprotect itself by deferring the dangerous investment, by constituting a reserve (Vorrat). 101
Likewise, Derrida links his notion of différance with the defining concepts of themetaphysical tradition via Heidegger s usage of trace as ell. Heidegger s stance that the
obli ion of Being belongs to the self- eiling essence of Being, as e en the earl trace (diefruhe Spur) of the ontological difference bet een Being and beings is obliterated hen
presencing appears as something present, for Derrida, points to différance as other thanabsence and presence, as hat traces, and is thus the erasure of the earl trace ofdifference, as much as its tracing in the te t of metaph sics. 102 For Derrida, such a tracing
is possible ia an in ersion of metaph sical concepts in hich the present becomes the signof the sign, the trace of the trace, and because, like Heidegger, he thinks that, e en if lost, theearl trace of difference can still be sheltered, retained, seen, dela ed, precisel in a te t,hich is a form of presence. 103
Not surprisingl then, for Derrida, such a tracing leads here Heidegger found thefirst indication of the ontological difference in Ana imander s usage of to khreon, which ist picall translated as necessit but drawing on its etymology Heidegger translates as

98

Ibid., p. 8; cf. pp. 8-9.
Ibid., p. 13; cf. pp. 13-14.
100
Ibid., p. 18; cf. p. 19.
101
Ibid., p. 18; cf. p. 19.
102
Ibid., pp. 23-24; cf. pp. 24-25.
103
Ibid., pp. 23-24; cf. pp. 24-25.
99

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usage (Brauch).104 Heidegger s choice of usage issues from his attempt to think the obli ionof Being, the ontological difference, in the preconceptual terms of the early Greek thinkers.105
Thus, rather than keeping to its restricti e sense of compelling necessit , of hat must be ,he sees to khreon in its principall unbound sense of handing o er of presence hichpresencing delivers to what is present, and which thus keeps in hand, i.e. preserves inpresencing, hat is present as such. 106 If usage deli ers hat is present to its presencing andis in this sense the distribution of presencing into disorder, then it conjoins the dis- 107
indeed the dis- of any difference and distinction, of the ontological difference, of the difference
between usage and necessity, of différance. Heidegger then links usage ith trace riting,
What properl remains to be thought in the ord usage has presumably left a trace (Spur) in. This trace quickly vanishes in the destiny of Being which unfolds in world history as Western
metaphysics.108

Whereas this statement can be read as telling us that usage and necessit blend in to khreon
in a not immediately discernable difference, it is also suggestive thatas Heidegger
demonstrates presencing in preconceptual terms is traceable, as it lea es a trace , precisel
in usage , in to khreon, as the non-causal rising of the ontological difference, as an effect ofdifférance.
Such a tracing, though, cannot be literal. For, as Derrida has acknowledged along with
Heidegger, clearing the difference (Lichtung des Unterschiedes) ... cannot mean that thedifference appears as difference. 109 In this sense, there can be no proper essence ofdifférance, nor a Being nor truth of the pla of riting such as it engages différance, nor aunique word or a master-name that can properl name it on the language of presence. 110
Instead, what we are left with for différance is to keep in mind that,
This unnameable is the play which makes possible nominal effects, the relatively unitary and atomic
structures that are called names, the chains of substitutions of names in which, for example, thenominal effect différance is itself enmeshed, carried off, reinscribed, just as a false entry or a false
exit is still part of the game, a function of the system.111

The unnameable différance, the pla that conditions the nominal effects , is itself a nominal
effect hich is to be traced in riting. It is enmeshed in chains of substitutions of names in
104

Martin Heidegger, The Ana imander Fragment, in Early Greek Thinking, translated by David Farrell Krelland Frank Capuzzi (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), pp. 50-51; cf. Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main:
Klostermann, 1957), SS. 365-366.
105
For insightful discussions of Heidegger s rendering of to khreon see W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz, The
Presocratics in the Thought of Martin Heidegger (New York, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2017), pp. 84ff; aswell as Michael Eldred, Social Ontology of Whoness: Rethinking Core Phenomena of Political Philosophy (Berlin,
Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2019), 8.1.1.6.
106
Martin Heidegger, The Ana imander Fragment, p. 52; cf. Holzwege, S. 366.
107
Ibid., pp. 53-54; cf. SS. 368-369.
108
Ibid., p. 54; cf. S. 369.
109
Ibid., p. 51; cf. S. 365 (translation mine here).
110
Jacques Derrida, Diff rance , pp. 25-27; cf. Marges de la Philosophie, pp. 27-28.
111
Ibid., p. 27; cf. p. 29.

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hose structures it can reappear onl as a false entr or a false e it . And et, it is still carriedoff, reinscribed, still part of the game, a function of the s stem , still lea ing its trace inwriting. While its eventual tracing cannot be smooth, or ever fixed, it has certainly become aventure in the history of metaphysics and its writing, where through the clearing of nominal
effects différance has reappeared as the margin of its own text, leaving us with two alreadyfamiliar options. What is certain, though, is that Derrida s preference is clear here:
There will be no unique name, even if it were the name of Being. And we must think this without
nostalgia, that is, outside of the myth of a purely maternal or paternal language, a lost native countryof thought. On the contrary, we must affirm this, in the sense in which Nietzsche puts affirmation
into play, in a certain laughter and a certain step of the dance.112

Niet sche s affirmati e philosoph is here offered as the alternati e to the nostalgic
metaph sical thinking that anticipates the unique ord on the language of presence. This does
not mean that Derrida suggests that the nostalgic thinking is to be fully abandoned, for in acertain sense this is never possible, either. This however does signal that the putative
traceability of différance can be availed by way of a reinvention of its nominal effects inlanguage. Such a reinvented language will not be necessarily literal but it will be in an important
relation with the literality of the language of presence; that is, in différance with that language.
The Unconscious and the Becoming Literary of the Literal
It is in this sense, then, that Derrida draws attention to a necessary becoming literary of theliteral, hich he sees as indicated in Freud s in estigations on the unconscious and its interpla
with its repressive consciousness. The becoming literary of the literal is not an immediate
consequence of Freud s insights, e en if he himself has used them as means of literary critique,but one that Derrida elicits ia a ju taposition of Freud s concepts ith the fundamental
concepts of the metaph sical tradition. Of ke importance here is Freud s concept of repression.
Derrida sees the Freudian repression as different from the historical repression andsuppression of riting, hich inaugurates philosoph as episteme and the truth as the unitof logos and phone, in that it is neither forgetting nor e clusion but rather a harboring of
an interior representation. 113 Ho e er, he also sees the Freudian concepts tooithoute ception as belonging to the theor of metaph sics, that is, to the s stem of logocentric
repression,hich is the repression of forgetting and e clusion of the bod of ritten
trace as a didactic and technical metaphor, or other ise the repression of riting that
represses that hich threatens presence and the mastering of absence. 114 Thus, Freud will go
on a search for an interior representation hich due to the character of its subject-matter
could not be possibly rendered literally within the terms of the language of presence.
Freud, therefore, will not assert its presence by straightening out its absence. Instead, heill use metaphors, such as trace , m stic riting pad , life , and death , to in oke thefundamental involvement of consciousness with the unconscious, only to assert through this112

Ibid., pp. 26-27; cf. p. 28.
Jacques Derrida, Freud and the Scene of Writing, in Writing and Difference, pp. 196-197; cf. Freud et lasc ne de l' criture, L'écriture et la différence, pp. 293-294.
114
Ibid., p. 197; cf. pp. 293-294.
113

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metaphorics the enigmaticity of that involvement. For Derrida, this is an assertion that suggests
the enigma of riting itself and is like ise a mo ement unkno n to the classic philosoph ...,
some here bet een the implicit and e plicit. 115 Indeed, the classic philosoph stri es for
lucidity keeping away from enigmaticity, whereas within the Freudian terms the enigma ofwriting is asserted, thus keeping writing open to interpretation as an endeavor of mediation
between implicit and explicit, between unconscious and conscious.
Here, a translation in the usual sense will not be possible because there is no code
available for its materilization, no signifier for signified. What we have is only the resistanceto the repression, hich is the a of life; that is, the resistance of life to death that places
death at the origin of life, for life can defend itself against death only through an economy
of death, through deferment, repetition, reser e, through repetition, trace, différance(deferral). 116 It is thus by such a life-protective resistance (or deferral) that in the lack of atranslation code the unconscious can find its way to consciousness not as a transcription
duplicating an unconscious riting, but as originar and irreducible. 117 This however comeswith a fundamental implication for writing in all its forms:
Since consciousness for Freud is a surface exposed to the external world, it is here that instead ofreading through the metaphor in the usual sense, we must, on the contrary, understand the possibilityof a writing advanced as conscious and as acting in the world (the visible exterior of the graphism,of the literal, of the literal becoming literary, etc.) in terms of the labor of the writing which
circulated like psychical energy between the unconscious and the conscious.118

Consciousness is not a substance on its o n, hich is radically differentiated from its otherit is a surface e posed to the e ternal orld , and therefore to the unconscious. Thus, rather
than reading through the metaphor in the usual sense
the sense of presence and of
consciousness o n self-sufficiency in self-presence it is that ine itable labor of the ritingthat oscillates in undecodable manner like ps chical energ bet een the unconscious and theconscious , to hich our understanding of riting must remain open. For, the trace is theerasure of selfhood, of one s o n presence, 119 that is, of consciousness, and of consciousness
self-sufficiency in self-presence.
When it comes to the field of the literal becoming literary, Derrida makes a rather
straightfor ard statement that despite several attempts ... a psychoanalysis of literature
respectful of the originality of the literary signifier has not et begun, thus suggesting that
addressing the labor of riting as a circulation bet een the unconscious and the conscious
aiming to trace that originalit is still anting. For,
Until now, only the analysis of the literary signifieds, that is, nonliterary signified meanings, hasbeen undertaken. But such questions refer to the entire history of literary forms themselves, and to115

Ibid., p. 199; cf. p. 296..
Ibid., pp. 202-203; cf. pp. 300-302.
117
Ibid., p. 212; cf. p. 314.
118
Ibid., p. 212; cf. pp. 314-315.
119
Ibid., p. 230; cf. p. 340.
116

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the history of everything within them which was destined precisely to authorize this disdain of thesignifier.120

What Derrida seems to suggests here is that the anal sis of the literar signifieds takes placeithin the field of nonliterar signified meanings ; that is, within the peculiar type ofcirculation of the signifier which belongs to the metaphysics of presence. This circulation isitself marked b the repressi e disdain of the signifier , hich materiali es in riting. For its
part, the disdain of the signifier stems precisel from, has been authori ed b , the historof e er thing ithin the literar the forms , hich has been ( destined to be) repressed b that
disdain. Here, it is important to note that this repressive procedure is inevitable and directconsequence of the radical differentiation of the signifier from the signified within the conceptof the sign.
Here, we also need to keep in mind that the circulation of the signifier within the terms
of presence is marked b the literalit of presence itself; hereas the literar is a de iationfrom that literality a yet another delay, detour, différance of what must be present in theinevitability of writing. It is thus the character of this detour that needs to be explored inliterature, and through literature. For, the literary presence is not just like any presence
inaugurated by the signifier a delayed presence, or a veiled absence; it is also an availed
absence, an indicated absence, which is itself indicative, and indeed indicative of how thesignifier reappears within the socio-political metaphorics of Freud as disdainful, repressive,
exploitive, sublimatory. Still, one will have to know how to read such indications, which arerealistically only pointers demanding a shuttled journey between presence and absence,
between conscious and unconscious, a journey more suggestive than pinpointing, more literary
than literal.
Style and Woman
As Derrida has linked deconstruction to affirmation, has also linked it to the question of st leand the socio-cultural sense of oman. 121 Dra ing er much on Niet sche s posthumousl
published notes, as well as on thinkers like Freud and Heidegger, he traces pointers ofsignificance relevant to both feminist and deconstructive critique that bring to the fore theaffirmati e sense of oman. Derrida admits that Niet sche s discussion of omen is mostl
anti-feminist but focuses on those of his comments that are apparentl feminist. 122 This is notithout Derrida s o n interpretation but the affirmati e sense ofoman is detected in
opposition to the alues of the metaph sical tradition, such as essence, identit , and truth
values which Nietzsche himself has already rejected in his own way, which Derrida aims todeconstruct, and against hich nooman is seen as one name for that untruth of truth. 123
This sense of oman is further ju taposed with the metaphysical thinking which inits apparently distorting operation is incapable of grasping it. Instead,oman ne er
succumbs to that operation but always evades it and points to its deconstruction:
120

Ibid., p. 230; cf. p. 340.
Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Niet sche s St les/Éperons: les styles de Nietzsche, French-English edition (Chicago,
London: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 36-37.
122
Ibid., pp. 56-57.
123
Ibid., pp. 50-51.
121

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Ha thorne s No el The Scarlet Letter ith the Help of Alice Jardine and Jacques Derrida... the dogmatic and credulous philosopher who believes in the truth that is woman, who believes intruth just as he believes in woman, this philosopher has understood nothing. He has understoodnothing of truth, nor anything of woman. Because, indeed, if woman is truth, she at least knows that
there is no truth, that truth has no places here and that no one has a place for truth. And she is awoman precisely because she herself does not believe in truth itself, because she does not believe inwhat she is, in what she is believed to be, in what she thus is not.124

Here Derrida is quite clear the lack of place for truth for no one cannot satisf the searchesof the dogmatic and credulous philosopher , e en as he belie es in the truth that is oman ,for he kno s nothing of truth, nor an thing of oman . It is instead oman ho kno s that
there is no truth and thus does not belie e in hat she is, in hat she is belie ed to be, in hat
she thus is not . Thus, Derrida concludes,
Woman (truth) will not be pinned down. In truth woman, truth will not be pinned down.
That which will not be pinned down by truth is, in truth feminine. 125

It is to be noted here that this statement concerns the socio-cultural signification of omanpreviously discussed, which evades the conceptual instrumentarium of the metaphysicaltradition, and is not to be hastil mistaken for a oman s femininity, for female sexuality, orfor an other essentiali ing fetishes that could moti ate someone sharing in the operation ofthat tradition.126 That is, hat inaugurates the metaph sical tradition, the truth , has no po er
o er oman and ill not pin her do n . And e en if oman is truth what is sought after,
what is fetishized she herself does not belie e in truth itself ; she is be ond the truth, evenas she instates that truth. Thus, she is actuall pla ing ith the truth and her relationship totruth is markedl artistic
her philosoph is an artist s philosoph
hile her po er is127affirmati e.
Consequently, Derrida associatesoman
ithriting and thus ine itabl
ith
st le, conjecturing in particular that if st le ere a man (much as the penis, according to
Freud is the normal protot pe of fetishes ), then riting ould be a oman. 128 Thus, thequestions of art, style and truth are ine itabl bound ith the question of the oman, andyet Derrida acknowledges that it is impossible to answer the latter; that is, to search and capture
the dimensions of oman in terms of metaph sical presence, as much as it is impossible toresist looking for her. 129
Thus, Derrida focuses on the relation of oman to the metaph sical tradition, dra ing
particularl on Niet sche s sense of becoming oman, hich, in Derrida s ie , Heidegger
has ignored, focusing instead primarily on Niet sche s oppositional relation to that tradition. 130
Derrida links Niet sche s sense of becoming oman ith Plato s sense of idea, and moreparticularl he sees the becoming female as a process of the idea (Fortschritt der idee)
124

Ibid., pp. 52-53.
Ibid., pp. 54-55.
126
Ibid., pp. 54-55.
127
Ibid., pp. 66-69.
128
Ibid., pp. 56-57.
129
Ibid., pp. 70-71.
130Ibid., pp. 84-85ff.
125

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here idea is understood as a form of truth s self-presentation. 131 Thus, truth andoman, hich pre iousl ha e not al a s been bound together, no together both form ahistor , indeed the histor of the epoch in hich the becoming-female of the idea is thepresence or presentation of truth. 132 We need to keep in mind here that, in Derrida s ie , thispeculiar inauguration of histor has placed a distance bet een the philosopher and thetruth, such that the former begins aspiring for the later hich in turn becomes transcendent,
inaccessible, seducti e, such that he can no onl follo in its trace. 133
We are alread familiar ith the clue of the trace and its in ol ement ith riting ,and how along the latter Derrida also links it to oman and her producti e bondage ith
the idea and the truth . No , another suggesti e additi e to this net ork of relations that hemakes again following Nietzsche is the relation of oman to the Christian religion.
Niet sche associates becoming female ith becoming Christian, hich Derrida reads as
she castrates (herself) because Niet sche regards Christianit as castratism (Kastrismus). 134
As Christianit has used castration to kill the passions, Derrida no sees Niet sche s
discussion of castratism as pointing to a subjection of the truth of oman-idea to ablation,e cision, e tirpation. 135 Further on, as, for Niet sche, an attack on the roots of passion means
an attack on the roots of life, for Derrida, the Church is hostile thus
to oman also ho is herself life. 136 But Nietzsche is the philosopher of life and for him
passions stand for life, hereas the orst of them come into pla e actl in those ho ha etried to most drastically kill them. For him, the true spiritualization is spiritualization ofpassions, not one that proceeds from excision/castration; Derrida quotes him:
The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it represents a great triumph over Christianity.
Another triumph is our spiritualization of hostility. It consists in profound appreciation of the valueof having enemies...137

Niet sche s affirmation of life, as dra ing on spirituali ed passions, is thus the affirmation ofoman , e en as this affirmation finds no consistenc in the heterogeneit of his te t andstyle. It is thus arguable that at a certain point his anti-feminism is simply confronted anddeposed b his feminism, and for Derrida this means that oman is recogni ed and affirmed
as an affirmative power, a disimulatress, an artist, a dion siac, ho affirm herself, in and ofherself, in man, rather than the other a around. 138 Accounting for Niet sche s heterogenous
approach, Derrida writes,

131

Ibid., pp. 86-87.
Ibid., pp. 86-87.
133
Ibid., pp. 86-89.
134
Ibid., pp. 88-91.
135
Ibid., pp. 90-93.
136
Ibid., pp. 92-93.
137
Ibid., pp. 92-93. Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, or, How to philosophize with the hammer,
translated by Richard Polt (Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1997), p. 26; cf. Götzen-Dämmerung,oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert, im Niet sche s Werke, (Leipzig: Druck und Verlag von C.G.
Naumann,1899), Band VIII, S. 86.
138
Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Niet sche s St les/ perons: les st les de Niet sche, pp. 96-97.
132

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Nietzsche might well be a little lost in the web of his text, lost much as a spider who finds he isunequal to the eb he has spun. Much as a spider indeed, se eral spiders e en. Niet sche s spider.
....
He was, he dreaded this castrated woman.
He was, he dreaded this castrating woman.
He was, he loved this affirming woman.139

But Nietzsche is not disturbed by such a predicament, for he does not believe in the truth, neither
his o n, nor of his o n te t, nor of st le in itself, nor of his o n st le, e en as he speaks ofm truths or of his being capable of man kinds of st le. 140
Ultimatel , Derrida links Niet sche s discussions of oman , the se es, lo e, anderoticism, to hat he calls the process of propriation, hich he traces also in Heidegger. 141
As Derrida sees it, marked b the e change of gi e and take, possess and possessed,
propriation determines the sexes as much as sexuality, but it advances also a point of
undecidabilit , as in the structural relation that it is man and oman change places or
e change masks ad infinitum. 142 Derrida also thinks that propriation ... is more po erfulthan the eil of truth or the meaning of being, but he arns against the nai ete of simpl
ignoring the question of being, or of thinking that the question of proper-ty is thus available
to direct e amination. 143 He further sees Heidegger s conjecture of propriet ith the questionof being or ith the metaph sical tradition (as in the case of Niet sche s thought) as aquestionable gesture, hich points to proper-t s ab ssal structure. 144 This abyss is actually
the truth s bottomless ab ss as non-truth, eiling and dissimulation, hich obtains hen thequestion of production, doing, machination, the question of the event ... is uprooted fromontolog to lea e us ith proper-t as proper to nothing and no one. 145 Derrida associates
this abyss of non-truth ith the st le s form and the no- here of oman of Niet sche s, as
ell as ith the undecidabilit of the gi e/take structure in the characteri ation of the se es
and sexuality.146 His point appears to be that, if Heidegger s reading of Niet sche as belonging
to the metaph sical tradition is deconstructed along ith that structure, then Niet sche s
thought opens up a ne field of e ploration, an enormous field of dimensions immeasurable
except perhaps by the steps of a do e. 147 This field is that of the st le s form and the nohere of oman and can be measured onl perhaps b the steps of a do e , hich is indeed
the trace the resistance of life to death, to poison/pharmakon which would be the price andalue of that field s gift as indefinitel suspended.
The field of oman thus lies open to st le lea ing traces in riting. Such traces ill
be open to interpretations er much as Niet sche s seemingl isolated and conte tuall
indeterminate note I ha e forgotten m umbrella. But, as Derrida has noted, such hermeneutic
139

Ibid., pp. 100-101.
Ibid., pp. 103-105.
141
Ibid., pp. 108-109.
142
Ibid., pp. 110-111.
143
Ibid., pp. 110-113.
144
Ibid., pp. 114-117.
145
Ibid., pp. 118-119.
146
Ibid., pp. 120-121.
147
Ibid., pp. 122-123.
140

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e ercises ma not necessaril produce results of anorth and ma just signal that there is
no totalit to Niet sche s te t , not e en a fragmentar or aphoristic, and equall
that
unprotected as one ma thus be against the eather, one ma as ell be e posed to thethunder and lightning of an enormous clap of laughter. 148 This exposure to the uncharted
territor of time/ eather/ oman /différance/ unconscious in the wake of such forgetting
leaves us facing our lack of knowledge of it. It thus points to the need of deconstruction of its
essentialist interpretations, as ell as of turning in our searches to nonessentialist traces ofreading, riting, unconscious, oman , différance. Hence, as searching for the meaning offorgetting points to bringing the question of forgetting back to the question of being, ith
all ensuing associations in hand, e need to assert that the forgetting of a being (an umbrella)
is not commensurable ith the forgetting of Being, for the latter cannot be grasped
factologically.149 Thus, our search will not amount to the putative essence of forgetting, though
it will bring us deeper into the meaning of Being. As Heidegger puts it,
Forgetting ... not only attacks the essence of Being (das Wiesendes Seins) inasmuch as it isapparently distinct from it, it belongs to the nature of Being (Sie gehört zur Sache des Seins) andreigns as the Destiny of its essence (als Geschick seines Wesens).150

In this sense, outside the factolog of beings, Being is er much onl a trace of beings,
turning their putati e essences, as ell as its o n forgetting , into traces as ell. And et, thetraces of Being and its forgetting are not commensurable with the traces of beings. Outside
factolog , traces are outside commensurabilit ; the are traces .
Immunity and Autoimmunity
As e began thinking the trace
ithin the terms of resistance of life to death, topoison/pharmakon, we embarked on the theme of calamity and immunity, which we now findsuspended along a good many of the oppositions deconstructed by Derrida between life anddeath, gi e and take, possessing and possessed, conscious and unconscious, st le and oman ,as they join in the orkings of riting. In Derrida s ork, immunity has been linked withcalamity in various ways and has been explored extensively for purposes of literary criticism,
especially as autoimmunity.151 Here we will focus specifically on its relation with some of theke terms of Derrida s thought that e alread discussed in a search for pointers to theaffirmative dimension of the deconstructive critique in literature.
As early as his Specters of Marx, Derrida links the terms of life , death , ego , thesame , other , and diff rance ith those of immunity and autoimmunity:
148

Ibid., pp. 134-135.
Ibid., pp. 140-143.
150
Ibid., pp. 142-143; cf. Martin Heidegger, On the Question of Being, Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill(Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 314; Zur Seinsfrage (Frankfurt am Main:
Vittorio Klostermann, 1967), S. 35.
151
See, for instance, Yasemin Karaa a , Hostilit , Hospitalit , and Autoimmunit in Kadare s The Fall of The
Stone City, Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, Vol. 4(2021), especially pp., 11-15, 20ff, http://philogc.org/vol-4/; as ell as, Catherine MacMillan, Looking for theRogue: Democratic Autoimmunit in Jos Saramago s Seeing, Global Conversations: An International Journalin Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, Vol. 4 (2021), especially pp. 27ff, http://philogc.org/vol-4/.
149

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The living ego is auto-immune.... To protect its life, to constitute itself as unique living ego, to relate,as the same, to itself, it is necessarily led to welcome the other within (so many figures of death:différance of the technical apparatus, iterability...), it must therefore take the immune defenses
apparently meant for the non-ego, the enemy, the opposite, the adversary and direct them at once
for itself and against itself.152

Derrida suggests that the li ing being is autoimmune because it goes against its o n defenses
meant for the non-ego, the enem , the opposite, the ad ersar as ell. It manages to sustain
itself, to protect its life, to constitute itself as unique li ing ego, to relate, as the same, to itselfbelcoming the other ithin itself, e en as the other is so man figures of death . Here theoperation of autoimmunity appears to join forces with the intervention of the other, the calamityof the other, against the ego s immunit ; that is, ith the forces of death against life, but it isultimately what the ego needs to maintain its immunity, to protect itself from the forces ofdeath, as well as from its own (auto)immunity. This basically means that a sustainable living
being needs to direct its defenses at once for itself and against itself ; that is, to be at once
immune and autoimmune. Thus, immunity and autoimmunity go together in the sustenance oflife and need to be maintained through and through. The li ing ego maintains them b pla ing
them against each other, by playing life against death in life; that is, by welcoming death in life,
by welcoming différance.
Other terms that later on add up to the sense of immunity and autoimmunity in Derrida s
ork include reason , unconscious , conscious , representation , and pharmakon . In his
ie , not onl is reason not entirel on its o n in its orkings, but e also need to besuspicious of rationali ations precisel in the name of reason, for e can no longer just lea easide the logic of the unconscious a ailed to us b
hat can be seen as a ps choanal tic
153
re olution.
Quite to the contrar , it as the inter ention of, among other things, thispoisoned medicine, this pharmakon of an inflexible and cruel autoimmunity that is sometimes
called the death dri e , that has made it possible for us to reali e that the li ing being is not
reducible to its conscious and representati e form. 154 Thus, the li ing being , ith all its
rationalit and conscious representations, has been sho n to be intert ined ith its other ,including with what is most detrimental to it and threatens its own life, such as the poison ofpharmakon or the cruelty of autoimmunity, which thus will need to be accounted for in all of
its workings.
The Perspective of Deconstruction
Derrida s ork has fundamentall re isited the Western philosophical and cultural traditionand has left its mark on both philosophy and literary criticism. His deconstructive critique hasbrought to the fore the fundamental interrelatedness of concepts like structure, sign, play,
152

Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, translated by Peggy Kamuf (New York; London: Routledge, 2006), p. 177;
cf. Spectres de Marx (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1993), p. 224.
153
Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 157; cf. Voyous: Deux essais sur la raison (Paris: Éditions
Galilée, 2003), p. 215.
154
Ibid., p. 157; cf. p. 215.

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différance, being, nothing, metaphysics, presence, language, literature, literary, literal, style,woman, authenticity, property, life, death, ego, instincts, trace, the same, the other, reason,
unconscious, conscious, representation, and pharmakon, among others. It has thus helped dispel
undue preconceptions in, as well as open new horizons for, understanding the culturalachievements of our era which has not always been able to come to terms with its own past in
the best of ways. While adding up to those who throughout the tradition were able to expose
the futility of its most ambitious metaphysical aspirations, Derrida stands for an approach thatis alternati e to the nostalgic attitude of those ho pledged all their hopes on the conscious
rationality of the human knowing subjectivity. Drawing most of all on thinkers like Nietzsche,Freud, Heidegger, and Levinas, he saw in the wake of the metaphysics the deconstructionof the workings of the self-identical subject-consciousness as an affirmation that upholds theways of life against the background of its threats. It would be thus the life-asserting effect of
deconstruction that will induce most interest in its deployment in revisiting our culturalachie ements and their truth . This effect, hich among other things is meant to assert writing
through différance, life through death, style through woman, or immunity through calamity, isalso meant to dispel the elements of metaphysical presence which it inevitably deploys, thus
lea ing onl its trace amidst the traces it ould point to. This is also the effect that inaugurates
the becoming literary of the literal, for which literature would be the resource.
In Summary
In our critical perspective here, the feminist perspective of Alice Jardine and thedeconstructionist one of Jacques Derrida are seen as both intersecting and complementary. The
main points of intersection and complementariness that interest us here are detectable in theju taposition of Jardine s terms gynesis and gynema ith Derrida s deconstruction and trace
respecti el . G nesis as putting into the discourse of oman and deconstruction as
dismantling the phallogocentric discourse of the tradition overlap in that they are bothunderstood as a movement into the open socio-cultural territor designated as oman. The
complement each other in that gynesis is meant specifically as literary critique mindful of
feminist perspectives, whereas deconstruction is a fundamentally philosophical rethinking of
the tradition of writing as a whole. On the other hand, the supporting terms gynema as productof gynesis and trace as the product of deconstruction intersect in that they are non-fixed effects
of reading and writing, while they complement each other in that they carry critical literary andphilosophical insights respectively. As availing non-fixed effects of reading and writing, bothgynesis and deconstruction respond to the need of critical reflection over the becoming literaryof the literal, a field which opens up from dismantling the phallogocentric structures of
discourse, and for which literature is a vast resource for exploratory insights.
A pivotal point in our critical perspective is affirmation in the life-asserting sense of
Niet sche, hich Derrida opposes to the nostalgic Rousseauistic sense of lost presence. It
would be thus those exploratory insights which mark the affirmation of life (as opposed to those
invoking a nostalgia over the dismantled discourse) that would be in focus here. They would
be the pointers to the (auto)immunity of life, which as contradictorily presentable within theterms of discourse affirms itself, affirms life, even as it attacks itself, attacks life. As
discursively presented in literature (but also in the specific media of other forms of art), life

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in its continuous struggle against death even as it may appear as bogged in contradictions,absurdities, feelings, or errors of untruth of an kind (be the tragic, comic, or an thing in
between), still always and inevitably affirms itself by its own means. It would be thus thesemeans that would be in focus in our critical perspective here, which remains open to them as
the lea e their traces in hat is made present in discourse as a product of riting.

Reading Ha he The Sca le Le e

Our intended deconstructi e feminist reading of Ha thorne s famous no el ill not aim toexhaustively present and still less to define all elements and aspects of this literary text thatbear relevance to other possible feminist or deconstructionist perspectives. Such an ambitious
task would in fact go against the precepts of our critical perspective and would reinstate whatthat perspective was meant to do away with by exposing it the phallogocentric structures of
discourse. Instead, we shall endeavor to bring out the traces hich a deconstructi e reading
aims to point at, hile sta ing mindful for its feminist import or g nema . For, both g nesis
and deconstruction make the same gesture here they seek to search through and bring to light
aspects of the socio-cultural significance of oman . In this a , theould also contributeto the e ploration of the becoming literar of the literal the field which legitimately opens
up for exploration upon the deconstruction of the phallogocentric structures of discourse andhich e approach here through Ha thorne s literar ork.
The traces or gynema, which we aim at, will prove to be chains of infinite substitutions,
without fixed identities. For, regardless of the exigencies demanded by the phallogocentric
structures of discourse, which relies on such fixities, it would be the joint work of gynesis anddeconstruction that plays out its effects in the literary text in a way that is in its very source
unstructured. The literary text, in its very creation as a cultural product and as art, is always
already a subject to the play of differences designated as différance. When applied in reading
affirmatively, that is, in deconstruction, the sense of différance deconstructs that text, making
at the same time a life-asserting gesture. When joining in deconstruction, gynesis detects theaffirmati e feminist aspect of oman . What more particularl makes g nesis different fromdeconstruction is its mindfulness of the power structures that bear relevance to the status ofoman from a feminist perspecti e. In other ords, hereas both deconstruction and g nesis
join in dismantling the phallogocentric discourse of the tradition, and by the same token in
exploring the socio-cultural space oman , g nesis pla s its peculiar role of keeping in sight,of never missing from its sight, the feminist aspect of that dismantling, an aspect which a
deconstruction, so to speak, per se, may as well forgo for other aspects of interest. In this sense,
gynesis becomes a necessary element of any critical reading of a text that is meant to be at once
deconstructive and feminist.
Characters and Setting
The novel The Scarlet Letter carries with itself numerous significatory pointers that can playout elements of our critical perspecti e. Central of these pointers are the no el s main charactersof men and women, whom Hawthorne present as closely involved in the communal life the

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1640s Boston. In this largely Puritan community, the characters appear in various relations bothpublic and private, including with power structures, religious values, cultural precepts, social
statuses, other races, nature, as well as of spirituality, piety, service, love, friendship, andparenting, amongst others. They are also presented as acting in several scenes that determine
the plot of the no el and are connected b Ha thorne s e plicati e narrati e.
The main scenes of actions include: the public ignominy of the main female character
Hester Pr nne, Hester s inter ie in the go ernor s house, minister Arthur Dimmesdale s igil,
the meeting of Hester and Dimmesdale in the forest, Dimmesdale s public confession and death.
Some other scenes of significance include encounters and conversations between Hester andher daughter Pearl, Hester and her former husband Roger Chillingworth, Dimmesdale andChillingworth, Dimmesdale and his elder colleague Reverend Mr. John Wilson, Dimmesdale
and Pearl, Dimmesdale and theitch-lad Mistress Ann Hibbins, Hester and MistressHibbins, Pearl and Mistress Hibbins.
A characteristic dimension of the novel is the time horizon of its events. Besides theseven years of the plot we have time pointers for at least one year before its opening event, as
ell as for the ears of Hester s life and in part the li es the remaining characters after its
closing event. Likewise, Hawthorne makes a number of references to the time before and after
these events, up to the time of about two hundred year to the actual writing of the novel. These
include mentions of historical personages and events, as well as of changes in the overall ethosof the colony, which contextualize the plot chronologically as well as culturally.
Ha thorne s narrative connecting all the scenes of the plot in a unity is alsocharacterized by a claim to objectivity, which he backs up with a reference to a script
authori ed and authenticated b Mr. Sur e or Jonathan Pue:
The original papers, together with the scarlet letter itself, a most curious relic, are still in mypossession, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great interest of thenarrative, may desire a sight of them.155

We can note here that it was perhaps due to this claim to objectivity that his attitude towards
his main characters show variations, rendering with equal rigor and depth their positive, as wellas their negative traits. This is most obvious with regard to Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth,and Pearl.
Thus, Hester Pr nne, the main female character of the no el, is described as anote orth personage, a oluntar nurse, an angel, but also as an intruder and a
nuisance, 156 with "passion...imprisoned in the same tomb-like heart. 157 She is the woman
whom the colony deems to have committed the sin of having a child out of wedlock, a proof ofwhich is her baby girl Pearl, in conjunction with the absence of her long-awaited husband. As
a punishment, she is ordered to ear a scarlet letter A fastened conspicuousl on her clothing
and is placed on the to n s scaffold for a time of public ignomin . Asked to make kno n thename of the father of her child, she ans ers categoricall Ne er! It is too deepl branded. 158
155

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, p. 44.
Ibid., p. 43.
157
Ibid., p. 144.
158
Ibid., p. 68.
156

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Afterwards, her life, although difficult and full of hardships, is an example of genuine penanceand e en a remo al of the scarlet letter A is considered.
Arthur Dimmesdale, the main male character, is described as a oung clerg man
ha ing all the learning of the age, melanchol e es, a ast po er of self-restrain, thespeech of an angel, 159 but at the same time all that iolence of passion. 160 Having won thehearts of the town with his inspiring speeches, he visibly suffers from an unclear disease of theheart. He is the unkno n father of Pearl and Hester s accomplice in hat Ha thorne calls theirmutual crime. 161 After publicly confessing his sin, he dies at the end of the final scene of theplot.
Roger Chillng orth is described as a man of skill,
ith such a rank in the learned
162
orld, an eminent Doctor in Ph sic,a ise and just man, but also a fiend, 163 an
enem , a de il,
ith cruel purpose, and malignit . 164 He is Hester s long-awaited
husband who finally arrived but keeping it in secret upon witnessing her public ignominy. As
the physician, friend, and enemy of Dimmesdale, he displays an eclectic array of both admirable
and despicable traits, which has become a reason for this character to be associated with theJohann Wolfgang on Goethe s famous protagonist Faust. 165
Pearl, as an incarnate e idence of her mother s sin, is described in polar terms as ell.
She is a lo el child ith a brilliant beaut and a look so intelligent, but sometimes somalicious and accompanied b a ild flo of spirits, a demon offspring, or an elfchild. 166 In her portrayal, Hawthorne never seems to drop an initial concern, apparently wellembedded in his mind, that she, as a sin-born infant, could easil go astra of the right morals.
Conveying some community fears of her predisposition towards witchcraft, he makes
Dimmesdale remark on her characteristic passion that in Pearl s oung beaut , as in therinkled itch, it has a preternatural effect. 167
In this regard, another female character that gains relevance in our reading is MistressHibbins. Ha thorne straightfor ardl associates her ith the occupation of itchcraft , ofwhose prosecution, he admits, some of his direct ancestors were guilty. Although this character
seems to be of marginal importance in the no el s plot, it acquires a particular significance ina critical reading in terms of gynesis, as in the patriarchal culture witchcraft especially whenassociated with woman (as has been predominantly the case) has been a subject of an utmost
denunciation. When Hester encounters Mistress Hibbins after the scene in go ernor s house,
and when Dimmesdale encounters her after his meeting ith Hester in the forest, the itchlad appealed them to join the merr compan of the Black Man. 168 She appears also in the159

Ibid., p. 66.
Ibid., p. 130.
161
Ibid., p. 153.
162
Ibid., p. 103.
163
Ibid., p. 140.
164
Ibid., pp. 152-153.
165
Da id Le eren , Mrs. Ha thorne s Headache: Reading The Scarlet Letter, in Nathaniel Hawthorne, The
Scarlet Letter, pp. 270-1.
166
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, pp. 81-88, 94ff.
167
Ibid., pp. 64, 165.
168
Ibid., pp. 150, 172.
160

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night of the minister Dimmesdale s igil, as ell as in the final scene of the no el s plot, here
she makes the same appeal to Pearl, too. 169 All the time, the bitter-tempered lad sho s a
considerable insight, or at least suspicion regarding the relationship between Hester and Arthur,as well as regarding their inner states. Besides generally portraying Mistress Hibbins in negative
terms, Hawthorne appears to suggest that source of her insights is linked to her secretoccupations. Dost thou think, she asks Hester, I ha e been to the forest so man times, andhave yet no skill to judge who else has been there? 170 In this relation, it is also remarkable that
Pearl proves capable of such insights and suspicions as well she can suppose that Hester wears
the scarlet letter A for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand o er his heart! 171
Patriarchy, Puritanism, and Phallogocentrism
The relationships of these characters cannot be fully understood without a reference to therigorous morality of the Puritan religion, which reigns within the community of seventeen
centur s Boston. Feminist critique has alread linked the Christian religion ith patriarchthat sends by the token of the scarlet letter a double message about sin and seduction,hich Hester passes on to Pearl, thus producing the effect of gendered ps chose ual
identit be ond her indi idualit to make ofoman a s mbol of frailt and sinful
172
passion .
In other words, this religion, as well as its ethics, represents by its symbolic forms
a culture dominated by man, a culture which at the same time advances a certain gender
aluation (indeed a gendered aluation) that confers upon oman a more or less fi ed
identit , distinct moral character, and respecti e social role of lo er alue to the effect ofconstituting her as a threat to the moral foundations of that culture.
In our reading, it is important to emphasize that in the Puritan community depicted by
Hawthorne, the main female character, Hester Prynne, is present to wear the symbol of the sin,
the scarlet letter A standing formall for adulteress. At the same time, her naturally
presumed male accomplice in hat that communit , and apparentl Ha thorne himself,
deems to be a crime remains unkno n. In fact, Hester s refusal to point out his name opens
the possibility this to be every man in the community; very indicatively, though, while not in
the know, that male dominated community refuses to accept such a sinner in itself, insteadreferring to him as its outcast the Black Man in the forest. Thus, the signification of evil inthat community appears as oman onl . Ironicall , et significantl still, the person speaking
from the name of patriarch s discourse on the da of her public ignomin , Arthur Dimmesdale,is actuall this real accomplice and the letter A could equall properl be placed on him, as
well as stand for his name. In his public appeal to her to utter the name, in fact his own,
Dimmesdale regardless of his inner struggles, motives, and expectations in the end assertsthat this name remain unuttered: She ill not speak. 173 This assertion is de facto a formal
confirmation of the status quo of power relations and guild distribution in the public discourse.
169

Ibid., p. 187.
Ibid., p. 186.
171
Ibid., p. 143.
172
Shari Benstock, The Scarlet Letter (a)doree, or the Female Bod Embroidered, in Nathaniel Hawthorne, The
Scarlet Letter, pp. 299ff.
173
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, p. 68.
170

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In our critical perspective we also emphasize that, even as Hester Prynne accepts to keep
the secret and to wear the scarlet letter A as s mbol of the sin imposed on her b the
patriarchy, she refuses to accept the sin as her, of the woman, identity. If sin at all, the sin has
been committed by two a woman and a man and cannot have one identity only. She only
accepts the suffering and the formal sanction of the redemption for a guilt that if guilt at all
is not entirel her o n: And ould that I might endure his agon , as ell as mine. 174 The
scarlet letter A, the token of the sin, is just a signification forcibly attached to her, the woman.
Ne ertheless, e en as patriarch s religion presupposes, the real redemption escapes all
kinds of formality, and the sinner cannot remain hidden behind the mask of a symbolism heauthorizes himself. In terms of gynesis, we can assume that this symbolism has been createdalong with the crime itself in the attempts to conceal that crime from the public eye from theposition of power, by ascribing it to the one who does not have that power, the woman. It should
be clear, though, that just because of that, this same symbolism is equally a failure on its own
it already presupposes and thus indicates the crime it aims to conceal.
Arthur Dimmesdale embodies the suffering for the sin hidden behind the public
discourse. Another parado of patriarch s discourse is that it not onl ascribes the guilt forthe sin to woman, it also misrepresents the actual consequences of this concealing for man
himself. In the scene of Dimmesdale s public confession, itnessing his suffering hile
performing his mission to ser ice the formal inauguration of man s po er and s mbolism( the ne Go ernor as to recei e his office ) 175 his mission to foretell a high and glorious
destin for the ne l gathered people of the Lord
the public discourse demonstrates its
inabilit to adequatel judge ithin its o n terms: This earthl faintness as, in their ie ,onl another phase in minister s celestial strength. 176
In our critical perspective, such a misjudgment is indicative for that the public discourse
is begging for deconstruction. For, Arthur Dimmesdale, hile ser ing man s orld(presumably his own, if it is really his own), actually demonstrates that this seemingly celestial
manifestation goodness is in reality a cover-up for evil (in a dual sense, as the sin in a Puritan
sense and as his own suffering in a life-affirmative deconstructive perspective). Thus, hedemonstrates what in the terms of discourse could reappear only paradoxically thathappiness is actuall unhappiness, that the discourse is failing him, as it does not add up to
his well-being, but onl conceals his o n desolation. He demonstrates that the men s orldthat oppresses woman at the same time oppresses man, since power, like gender, can be verymuch a fiction, a socio-cultural invention, a construct, no matter who has it or who is who.
When e sa he demonstrates here e mean that e take the character of Dimmesdale
as a symbol of the patriarchal culture and revisit it in a life-assertive deconstructive perspective,
in which its symbolism reappears as powerless or inadequate. Thus, as a reinvented symbol in
our critical perspective, Dimmesdale, regardless of the extent in which he as a character realizes
that, conveys the message indeed the trace , the g nemathat the public discourse isdeconstructed. In this sense, he has lost his identit as man in men s orld, as Hester has
lost her identit as oman in that same orld. The possibility that remains for their identities
174

Ibid., p. 68.
Ibid., p. 175.
176
Ibid., pp. 191-193.
175

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is that of infinite substitutions, hat Derrida attributed to the character of play inaugurating
writing.177
Another character sho ing a lack of identit
ith herself is Pearl. Ha thorne has
demonstrated his and communit s confusions ith regard to her on a number of occasions.
While she has been directly associated with the scarlet letter itself, 178 much of the uncertainties
about her spring from a certain lack of consistency in her appearance and development in life
from the standpoint of the public eye, to which Hawthorne himself attests:
Ho strange, indeed! Man had marked this oman s sin b a scarlet letter, hich had such potent
and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself.
God, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child,
whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the race anddescent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven!179

That this statement is marked b Ha thorne s o n patriarchal and religious bias is not soimportant for us here as that it is meant to be authentic . For, in our deconstructi e perspecti e
we are most of all interested to expose the failure of the arbitrary structures of the patriarchal
discourse to recapture what inevitably evades it the unfixed identity of gender. It appears herethat in a logocentric gesture through God s s mbol of the sin is justified the man s symbolof the same sin. That is, that the s mbol of God s, Pearl, has the same denotation as the s mbol
of man s, the scarlet letter A. And this denotation is, according to Ha thorne, the oman ssin , (indeed as marked and punished b man ). Ho e er, the criticism as gynesis discerns
in this attempt to link oman s sin ith oman s identit through a kind of logic, which thenfalls apart along the strangeness of life, just another phallogocentric failure of discourse. It is
the kind of logic that ventures to impose to Hester and to the reader thoughts like these:
She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no fight, therefore, that its result would be forgood.180
It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generallyaccompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments,
whether Pearl was a human child. 181

In our critical perspective, this logic spectacularly fails to capture the trajectory of Pearl s life,
as it disintegrates into a genuine confusion. The latter ensues from the decentering structures of
discourse, which become traceable in a deconstructive perspective, traceable precisely due toHa thorne s clam to authenticit .
The confusion in question brought a commonly-felt an iet for Pearl s future, hichprompted a meeting-interview of the nobles of the town with Hester and her child set at theGo ernor s house. The spirit of the age related the rong direction in the de elopment of
177

Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 289; cf. p. 423.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, pp. 57, 81, 90.
179
Ibid., p. 81.
180
Ibid., p. 81.
181
Ibid., p. 83.
178

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female infant ith the predominantlomen s field of itchcraft , hich in the perspecti eof gynesis can be seen as opposed to science, at the time a much-honored field of endeavorlargel reser ed for men. Among the no el s characters, Mistress Hibbins and Roger
Chillingworth are fitting representatives of these two fields respectively. On the occasion of themeeting, Chilling orth, ho had sought to e tend his scientific searches o er Dimmesdale s
disease of the heart, Hester s secret, and Indian medicine, among others, could only qualify
Pearl A strange child!, 182 which in our critical perspective is indicative of a yet another failureof the phallogocentric discourse to get its hold on the identit of oman . On the other hand,the above-mentioned remark of Dimmesdale and intention of Mistress Hibbins regarding thechild sho a tendenc in the communit s thinking that Pearl s gro ing up ith Hester could
lead to her future commitment to itchcraft . Ha thorne s narrati e is unambiguous aboutthat:
The spell of life went forth from her ever creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand
objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The unlikeliest materials, a stick, abunch of rags, a flower, were the puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward
change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. 183

Along ith the status of her mother, Pearl s spirits, thoughts, speech, pla s, creati it , objectsof interests all contributed to the public concern that led to the meeting in the Go ernor s house.
We already pointed that she was be capable of some unusual insights or suspicions similar to
those of Mistress Hibbins as well. And now that her worrying image in the public eye was also
sanctioned b the scholar s discourse as strange , it had to take the inter ention of Dimmesdalein his decentered, indeed dual, symbolic capacity to leave her within the custody of her
desperate mother.
We will need to bring Dimmesdale s inter ention ithin the terms of our perspecti e,
as it marks a landmark victory of the life-asserting thinking over the logic of the patriarchal
discourse which proved impotent on the occasion and throughout the novel, including in its
most phallogocentric ersion e emplified b Chilling orth. In our reading, Dimmesdale sinter ention amounts to a gesture on his part to preser e the spell of life that ent forth fromher e er creati e spirit , hich also pro es significant. For, ith all the projective skepticism
and uncertaint of the public e e regarding the future of the child, at the end of Ha thorne s
narrati e e are told that Pearl as not onl ali e, but married, and happ . 184 She did not
become a witch, and thus did not find her identity in terms of the phallogocentric patriarchal
discourse. Instead, she defied that discourse and sur i ed to be finall a blessed soul inhea en .
For her part, Mistress Hibbins found her death and got an identity in this same discourse
as itch-lad . For, her opposition radical as it was to the predominant male culturalsymbolism did not prove life-asserting; her intelligence remarkable as it was could not finda viable way outside the terms of the patriarchy. Instead, it can be argued that witchcraft is an
opposition to the patriarchal culture within the terms; that is, with the symbolic means, of that
182

Ibid., p. 100.
Ibid., p. 85.
184
Ibid., p. 200.
183

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culture itself. For, it run against the mainstream patriarchal discourse only the discourse of theBlack Man just another man who thought his terms were better. As a representative of thisalternative patriarchy, Mistress Hibbins marked with her death the deconstruction of its
discourse.
Similarly, Roger Chillingworth died at the end of the novel, since along with thedeconstruction of the patriarchal discourse pronounced b the Dimmesdale s death his
logocentric conquest became impossible and had to come to terms with its inevitable limits.
Indeed, he had to come to terms with all that was left to motivate and move his own life andexistence, hich Dimmesdale s utmost deconstructi e gesture epitomized by his final service,discourse, welcome of woman, and impending death placed under a grave threat:
Madman, hold! What is our purpose? hispered he. 'Wa e back that oman! Cast off this child!
All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save you! Would you
bring infam on our sacred profession? 185

Chillingworth, though, could save neither Dimmesdale nor himself, for he was not only
depleted from but also misguided and consumed by his logocentrism, which led him astrayfrom life in the direction of death along revenge. He could no longer play his patriarchal
precepts of fame , honor , and sacred profession against the interpolation of lifeoman
and child . He could no onl
itness in desperation the formless face of his o nphallogocentric impotence:
Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which thelife seemed to have departed.
Thou hast escaped me! he repeated more than once. Thou hast escaped me! 186

It is remarkable that Ha thorne regards Dimmesdale s death as a ork of the de il
performed by Chillingworth. In this sense, like Mistress Hibbins, Chillingworth too is given a
determinate identit in the patriarchal discourse. Termed de il or unhumani ed mortal , hecould find no more life nor happiness but only death along his quest for revenge:
This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic
exercise of revenge; and when, by its completest triumph and consummation, that evil principle wasleft with no further material to support it, - hen, in short, there as no more de il s ork on earth
for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his Masterwould find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly.187

The criticism as g nesis unco ers here Ha thorne s patriarchal bias that does not allo him tosee the death of the patriarchal discourse. For, he seeks the reason for Dimmesdale s death insome of the oppositional terms of the patriarchal discourse the devil. Within our perspective
this means that he links the death of the religious patriarchal discourse to the non-religious
science and philosophy, which Chillingworth does indeed represent. However, Chillingworth
185

Ibid., p. 193.
Ibid., p. 196.
187
Ibid., p. 198.
186

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represents more particularly the logocentric discourse and he dies with the death of thepatriarchal discourse as well, which points to an intrinsic connection between patriarchy andlogocentrism as well. Thus, another opposition within the patriarchal culture has been
deconstructed the one between its religious and logocentric discourses; for they both comportto the signification of man ; that is, to phallogocentrism, thus excluding, reducing, repressing
the signification of oman .
Ha thorne s bias is also ob ious in the characters ith lack of identit and has beenpracticall pro ed b his claim to authenticit . Within our perspecti e, the authenticit of thenarrati e accounts for the author s bias, e en as the author ma not be a are of this bias at all,hile at the same time upholding the denouement of the no el as an authentic proof for themain point of our critique. This proof is not logical and is thus a proof onl in quotation
marks. For, as deconstruction and gynesis impel us to think, it cannot be conveyed by the meansof the phallogocentric discourse of modernity, which was shown anticipating its dismantling.
It could be rather conveyed with the help of and in the extent availed by what post-modernist
and (post-)feminist critiques ha e not et deconstructed: in-between-the-lines, the margin,
the trace, the gynema.
Gynesis and Deconstruction as Life-affirmation of the Characters with Lack of Identity
As Jardine suggests, hat is in-between-the-lines is a ailed b practicing criticism as g nesis
and announces itself as a reading effect which disturbs the phallogocentrism of patriarchy. At
the same time, we expect this reading effect to have the character of what Derrida has called ane ent , hich ould lea e its trace on behalf of the deconstructi e criticism. For, pointing to
the lack of identit of a character does not b itself amount to an affirmation of this lack ofidentit . In our critical perspecti e, this e ent , g nema, or trace is the life-asserting
denouement of the novel for the characters with lack of identity.
Not only Pearl, but also Hester was able to survive under the burden of the scarlet letterA
a symbol imposed on her by the patriarchal culture. Holding off herself up and againstthat s mbol meaning adulteress, she ga e the letter A ne connotations such as able, orangel . Within our critical perspecti e, e can see the scarlet letter A as meaning also
ali e, assertion, and affirmation, because Hester sho s her capacit to affirm and assert
herself throughout her life, on behalf of her life, on behalf of life by substituting therepressing patriarchal signification without limit. We can also see it as meaning Arthur, notonly as its literal sense, and not only as a symbol of the deconstructed patriarchal discourse
epitomized by the dead Dimmesdale, but also as a symbol of substituted meanings that uphold
Arthur s life he may be dead as patriarchal discourse, but the alive Hester, the woman, is his
viable alternative, his being alive. Indeed, she was the one who brought him back to life, evenas he thought he as irre ocabl doomed, 188 b buo ing him up ith her o n energ togive him meaning and will to live:
Thou art crushed under this se en ears eight of miser , replied Hester, fer entl resol ed tobuo him up ith her o n energ . But thou shalt lea e it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy
steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer
188

Ibid., p. 158.

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to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened! Meddle no more with it!
Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future isyet full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange
this false life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the teacher andapostle of the red men. Or, - as is more thy nature, - be a scholar and a sage among the wisest andthe most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do any thing, save to lie down anddie! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as
thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in thetorments that have so gnawed into thy life!- that have made thee feeble to will and to do!- that will
lea e thee po erless e en to repent! Up, and a a ! 189

Fueled ith the oman s ital po er, Arthur is back to life thanks to his angel :Do I feel jo again? ... Methought the germ of it as dead in me! 0 Hester, thou art m betterangel! I seem to have flung myself sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened down upon these
forest-leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that hathbeen merciful! This is alread the better life! Wh did e not find it sooner? 190

Thus, paradoxical as it may seem at first, in our critical perspective Dimmesdale survives, too.
For, his presumed identity too is a subject to substitutions. He is dead as a symbol of thepatriarchal culture, but with his death the deconstruction of the public discourse he outlived
this discourse and is ali e as a s mbol of the life-affirming deconstructive discourse. Heres mbol is in quotation marks, since in the deconstructed discourse the structures ofsymbolism are actually set apart, dismantled, de-logocentered, and thus without symbolic
identit in the modern sense of the term. As a s mbol, he no signifies as a trace, g nema or
oman-in-effect.
In our critical perspecti e, the most compelling sur i al is Hester s. We deem it so,
because with all her hardships and doubts about the meaning of life, she quietly but relentlessly
affirms life, in all her doings, in all her circumstances. Reading through Ha thorne s biases
and insights which left us wondering, indeed authentically so, whether he was a feminist or
sexist, both, or none, before we realized that he has no fixed identity, either we find that her
natural philosophical searches did not deter her from getting the better of life. Her aspirations
for meaning and the meaning of oman , did not lea e her at the logocentric dead end of
discourse, never broke her will to live, no matter how her thought swung:Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind, with reference to the whole race of
womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her
own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as
settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her
sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system ofsociety is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its longhereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can beallowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being
obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall haveundergone a still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest
189
190

Ibid., pp. 156-157.
Ibid., p. 159.

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life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any exerciseof thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost,they vanish.191

While Ha thorne s biases here are to be atched for, dra ing on his claim to authenticit , efind useful insights that could help uphold the sense of oman in our perspecti e. Hester sthought went over the meaning of life and the status of her gender but did not leave her stuck
into a powerless desperation, as the one Chillingworth displayed at the deconstructive discourseof Dimmesdale. The need of change, which Hawthorne surmises and nails into his terms, issomething that she li es. He has a sense of the ethereal essence, herein she has her truest
life , as ell as that it
ill be found to ha e e aporated , but this sense could become
affirmative only in terms of a deconstruction and gynesis, as in his own discourse it can still beseen as charged ith patriarchal bias. A change of the perspecti es thus impels itself. That aoman ne er o ercomes these problems b an e ercise of thought , in our critical perspecti e
can only mean that the socio-cultural sense of oman e ades an iable phallogocentric
reduction; like ise, that problems are not to be sol ed, or onl in one a , for us can onl
mean that e ill not seek for their solutions in a logocentric operation; and finall , that if herheart chance to come uppermost, theanish , for us can onl mean that g nesis anddeconstruction of discourse become necessary when discourse impedes life.
In our reading, Hester s sur i al emulates the thinking that resists phallogocentrism.
She survives despite the latter s tumultuous inter ention in her life, despite all the threats it
unleashed for her and her child, despite her acute sense of lack of meaning of her life. No
calamities were able to break her immunity. Calamity only strengthened her immunity to a liveasserting autoimmunity. The same applies for Pearl as well, unlike Mistress Hibbins and Roger
Chillingworth, who were victims of their own autoimmunity, of the defense mechanisms that
kept them alive until they did only to put them to death. Dimmesdale is a special case due tohis dual discursive signification. On one hand, as a symbol of the patriarchal discourse, he diesfrom the intervention of life into that discourse due to a lack of immunity, viz., power to resist
death; one other hand, as joining in the deconstruction of the same discourse he upholds life
achieving in his renewed motivation for life, as well as in the alive and happy Pearl, a lifeaffirming autoimmunity.
Thus, by upholding herself (indeed her own self) against the interventions of thephallogocentric culture to the point of a life-affirmative autoimmunity, Hester reappears if
the words would allow it in our literary tracing literall asoman-in-effect. For the
becoming literary of the literal is tracing, tracing the literal in the literary, tracing it as a trace,hich in g nesis is oman-in-effect ; that is, a literar , and indeed a literal literar . But ho
she did it? What is her secret? Does she have one?
She accepted her fate under the burden of the scarlet letter A, and she just orked.
Not letting faulted thinking sink her life, she was able to come out on top of it continually as adoer. That is, she, the woman, was able to constantly substitute her imposed identity, to uphold

191

Ibid., p. 134.

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herself, and to survive by her doings.192 In this regard, Ha thorne s authentic insights could
not help ackno ledging that she became a destined prophetess. 193 And this is why she
returned the woman returned, as she was destined to return, as prophetess. It was the gestureof her life that brought her back, hich is also her prophetic gesture. Wise, helpful, gi ing
ad ice in all matters, especiall those of the heart, 194 she appears again in the community. Her
prophec is that of her firm belief, ... at some brighter period, hen the orld should havegro n ripe for it, in Hea en s o n time, a ne truth ould be re ealed, in order to establish
the hole relation bet een man and oman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. 195
Hawthorne himself, in his quest for authenticity, could not help forming a very suggestive idea
for the mission of the woman, and although his patriarchal bias did not let him see Hester as apossible performer of this mission, she is the one who inspires him to proclaim,
The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, andbeautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing
how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end! 196

Indeed, oman ill be at the heart of the future re elation
she ill bring happinessthrough lo e emulated b the truest test of a life successful to such an end . It is remarkable,
though, that frequentl as Ha thorne speaks about lo e throughout the novel, his essential
sense of it sacred . Whereas he appears to associate lo e bet een people ith passion
claiming that hatred and lo e are t o passions that seem essentiall the same. 197 Thus,
he sees the encounter of Hester and Arthur in the forest as their sad and passionate talk, 198
claiming that her passionate lo e has brought the man to ruin. 199 Indeed, although they bothdecided on leaving the colony together, we did not witness any confession of feelings toward
each other there apart from some hints done b Hester. Ha thorne thus did not see Hester s
return as related to her lo e for Arthur, but rather as related to sacred lo e:
Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned,
therefore, and resumed, of her will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have
imposed it, resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale.200

Actually Hawthorne advances a straight Puritan notion of love, in which sexuality is only ameans for reproduction of the human kind and thus its pleasure should not be made an end in
192

There is a very characteristic notion for the predestination in the Protestant ethics, identified by Max Weber.
Unlike in Catholicism, the duty of the protestant citizen is to serve God on their work place; that is, in the real life,
rather than in church or monastery. See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated
by Talcott Parsons (New York & London: Routledge Classics, 2001); cf. Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist
des Kapitalismus (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2016).
193
Ibid., p. 201.
194
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, p. 43,
195
Ibid., p. 201.
196
Ibid., p. 201.
197
Ibid., pp. 185, 199.
198
Ibid., p. 185.
199
Ibid., p. 153.
200
Ibid., p. 200.

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itself. 201 The straightforward implication of this notion of sexuality is that, while masculine
jouissance can be accepted as necessary for the good purpose, feminine jouissance is inprinciple not acceptable, except if it just happened. Thus, if feelings of love between woman
and man appear in their reproductive relations, for Hawthorne, they would fall into the realmof sinful passion. 202
In the perspecti e of g nesis and deconstruction, ho e er, Hester s return merges intoa different reading, not least because of the no el s (often neglected) subtitle
A Romance,
which attests to Ha thorne s authenticit despite his often logocentrically derailed
valuative confusions. She, the woman, returned where Dimmesdale, the man, with whom she
had committed the sin of love, had died. She returned because this lo e defined her life, as
impending in her life, and kept it going affirmatively to its very end. Her love was the trues mbol of her life the true denotation of the scarlet letter A in the deconstructeddiscourse of the patriarchy. She still wears the scarlet letter but now it conveys many otherconnotations in the public discourse, hich the oman-in-effect makes ne er stable anddull deconstructs. Thus, she sur i es in the truest test of life .
The symbol of the phallogocentric discourse may be still on her, but its putative meaning
in that discourse has been affirmatively deconstructed. She does not manifest herself in this
discourse; she manifests herself in-effect , in her doings (including in her demonstrated
sexuality by which she affirmed herself in a se ual difference). That she ears the letter A
onl sho s that it is al a s around her, like the lines of the deconstructed phallogocentric
discourse. And et, theoman-in-effect is in bet een-the-lines ; her d elling is in
bet een-the-lines.
Now she returned to her man who is in the lines as deconstructed discourse. Actually,in her struggle with the oppressive patriarchal culture, the woman, in her opposition to man,as coming closer and closer in reaching to her man, indeed even as she distanced herself
from him. Dimmesdale is her man, Chillingworth is her former husband.
In the end, she found her place ne t to her man. She found him in death. It as nearthat old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had noright to mingle. Yet one tombstone ser ed for both. 203 That man and oman had no rightto mingle , Ha thorne s authentic narrati e had to put ine itabl in suspension in an as if ;for they do need to mingle in love to affirm life. Indeed, her man was waiting for her in death,but it was by the injunction of life; it was life that made their reunion inevitable, to affirm lovein death, life in death, love in life, and life in love. He was waiting for her amidst thedeconstructed discourse of the patriarchy, in the gynema which occasions a different reunionof the lines and bet een-the-lines , a closer reunion, a reunion of life in lo e that lets thembe what they are, as each of them, and as both:
All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate
as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport there appeared
the semblance of an engra ed escutcheon. It bore a de ice, a herald s ording of which might serve
201

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, pp. 105, 233-235; cf. Die protestantische Ethik
und der Geist des Kapitalismus, SS. 145-147.
202
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, p. 201.
203
Ibid., p. 201.

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for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by
one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:
ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES. 204

We reach to the margin of our reading, where its gynema must leave its trace. The tombstone,
in its presence, is rather a symbol of the death of the patriarchal discourse, where it joins in
Ha thorne s biased authenticit and nostalgic grief, and a s mbol (onl in quotation marks)of the alive and life-asserting oman-in-effect in the eternit of time.

204

Ibid., p. 201.

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e (T6.421): Ea Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore

GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume IV, Number 01 (2021): 85-100

Wittgenstein, Tagore, and Lalon

E HIC AND AE HE IC A E NE ( 6.421):
EARLY WITTGENSTEIN AND RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Priyambada Sarkar
Abstract
In this paper, I would like to offer a non-resolute interpretation of the remark
E hic a d Ae he ic a e he a e (T6.421) h gh he lens of the ideas of
Wi ge eifa i e e Rabi d a a h Tag e. The paper will be divided intoh ee ai ec i . I he fi
ec i , I i a a e T ac aa ag a h 6.421
from the perspective of early Wittgenstein, in the second section, I will focus on
Tag e ae he ic , a d i he fi a ec i , I i aihha Wi ge ei
ie
f E hic a d Ae he ic bei g e a d he a e hi g ha i ce ain the philosophy of Tagore.

The fragmentary, dense, and cryptic paragraphs of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus have posed serious problems to the interpreter right from its publication.
The discussion of ethics and aesthetics being one and the same is confined to a mere bracketed
portion of one paragraph.1 Regarding this, Paul Engelmann, Wittgenstein s closest confidante,commented rightly: I guess that the statement of the Tractatus Ethics and Aesthetics are one
is one of the most frequently misunderstood propositions of the book. 2
In this paper, I would like to offer a non-resolute interpretation3 of this remark throughthe lens of the ideas of Wittgenstein s favorite poet Rabindranath Tagore. At this point it is1

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974 (1921)). Hereafter it will be referred as Tractatus and the reference to paragraphnumber will be preceded by T (T6.421).
2Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir, translated by L. Furtüller (Oxford: BasilBlackwell, 1967), p. 143.
3
According to resolute interpreters, Wittgenstein did not want to convey ineffable metaphysical truths via thenonsensical utterances of the Tractatus. My interpretation of the Tractatus in this endeavor is not resolute as I feel
resolute interpreters have not given due importance to what the author himself had suggested in his letters to
Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Von Ficker. Wittgenstein candidly expressed himself by saying that the main thrustof the book is to distinguish between what can be said and what cannot. (Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The
Duty of Genius [New York: The Free Press, 1990], p. 164). Again, at the same time, he passionately believed that

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PRIYAMBADA SARKAR
e (T6.421): Ea Wi ge ei a d Rabi d a a h Tag eworth mentioning that there was a Tagore mania 4 in Germany during the 1920 s, and thatreportedly during the meetings of the Vienna Circle Wittgenstein preferred reading Tagore s
poems to discussing Tractatus with the logical positivists. Along with his student Smythies,
Wittgenstein even translated a portion of Tagore s favorite mystical play The King of the Dark
Chamber. Rudolf Haller offers a list of poets and writers from Germany and elsewhere who
may have contributed to his understanding, which include Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Matthius
Claudius, Edward Moricke, as well as Russian writers (especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy)
and the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. 5
The paper attempting to interpret the remark from the perspective of the ideas of Tagore
will be divided into three main sections. In the first section, I will analyze Tractatus paragraph6.421from the perspective of early Wittgenstein; in the second section, I will focus on Tagore saesthetics; and in the final section, I will aim to show that Wittgenstein s statement of Ethics
and Aesthetics being one has its counterpart in the philosophy of Tagore as well.

I
Aesthetics in the Tractatus:
Seemingly, ethics and aesthetics are two mutually exclusive discourses on the normative plane.
Usually ethics deals with actions being evaluated as good or bad, whereas aesthetics deals with
contemplation of an object as being beautiful or pleasant. Aesthetic awareness is rarely forced
upon us, whereas we cannot avoid ethical considerations even if we want to. So why did
Wittgenstein think that they are the same?
There is one reference where Wittgenstein provides us with a clue of how to interpret
this sameness. In A Lecture on Ethics delivered in 1929, he says:
Now I am going to use the term Ethics in a slightly wider sense, in a sense in fact which includes
what I believe to be the most essential part of what is generally called Aesthetics.6

Here he is explicit that the two subjects are not identical, as the definition of ethics will include
only a part of aesthetics that might be the most essential part , but still it is not the whole ofit. Hence, he is not obliterating the basic distinction between the two subjects but pointing tosome fundamental points of their affinities and interdependencies. But again why would
Wittgenstein affirm that they are one? What are the connections between them? From his
various remarks one can infer that the connections lie: i) in their being values, hence being
inexpressible, ii) in their being related to viewing sub specie aeterni ; iii) in their being thewhat we cannot talk about is most important. (Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a
Memoir, p. 97).
4
Martin Kampchen, Rabi d a h Tag e a d Ge a (Calcutta: Max Mueller Bhavan,1991), p. 12.
5
Rudolf Haller, Wittgenstein: Poetry and Literature, in Wolfgang Huemer and Marc-Oliver Schuster (Eds.),
Writing the Austrian Traditions: Relations between Philosophy and Literature (Edmonton, Alberta: Wirth Institutefor Austrian and Central European Studies, 2003), pp. 41-42 (italics mine).
6
Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Lecture on Ethics, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 74 (1), 1965, p. 4.

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right view of the world ; iv) in their being linked to happiness and finally; v) in their being themiracle , the wonder that the world exists .
i) Ethics and Aesthetics being values, hence being inexpressible
First of all, ethics and aesthetics are the same in the sense that both these discourses are
inexpressible in sensible language as far as the criteria of expressibility in the Tractatus isconcerned. According to the theory of language and meaning of the Tractatus, a proposition issensible and expressible in words if and only if it pictures a particular state of affair of theworld. As abstract and normative disciplines, the content of these two discourses go beyond thescope of pictorial representations. They lie outside the boundaries of scientific language; hence
they are inexpressible in sensible language and they should be passed over in silence.
ii) Ethics and Aesthetics being ela edie ingb ecie ae e ni
There is another thing that is common to ethics and aesthetics. Wittgenstein says, The work of
art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis and the good life is the world seen sub specie
aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics. 7 Viewing sub specie aeterni thus
provides the link between these two disciplines. Now what is this Viewing sub specie
aeterni? . In Culture and Value, we find Wittgenstein elucidating:... it seems to me that there is a way of capturing the world sub specie aeterni . it is as though[thought] flies above the world and leaves it as it is observing it from above, in flight. 8

Explaining viewing sub specie aeterni in terms of viewing from above in flight might remind
us that Wittgenstein was an aeronautical engineer at the beginning of his career. It provides us
also with an insight that such viewing leaves everything in the world as it is . It cannot bringabout any change in the facts or events of the world. And when you see from above, everything
seems to be on the same level. Looking at the world from the flight, from above, also suggests
a sense of detachment. Such viewing with detachment comes as a necessary step for
Wittgenstein to lead an ethical life, a happy life. 9 I ll come back to this point later.
Wittgenstein elucidates that when one views an object from eternity, that object becomes
the whole world. Wittgenstein clarifies, The thing seen sub- specie aeternitatis is the thing
seen together with the whole logical space. 10 Logical space, for early Wittgenstein refers to
the world of possibilities; hence, when he asserts that the object is seen not in the logical space
but with the whole logical space, he means that one sees the object not as a possibility in theworld. As The possibility of its occurring in states of affairs is the form of an object, 11 thisobject viewed from eternity becomes different from the objects and facts, the totality of which

7

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914 1916, edited by G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe, translated by
G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), p. 83.
8Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, edited by G.H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman, translated by Peter
Winch (The University of Chicago Press, 1984; Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), p. 5.
9Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-16, p. 81.
10
Ibid., p. 83.
11
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 2.041.

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e (T6.421): Ea Wi ge ei a d Rabi d a a h Tag econstitutes the world. Now what exactly did he mean by together with the whole logicalspace ? He explains it with the example of a stove:
As a thing among things, each thing is equally insignificant: as a world, each one equally significant.
If I have been contemplating the stove, and then am told: but now all you know is the stove, myresult does indeed seem trivial. For this represents the matter as if I had studied the stove as one
among the many things in the world. But if I was contemplating the stove, it was my world, andeverything else colorless by contrast with it.12

Here he is explicit that the particular object, (here the stove) if conceived as an object
among other objects (that is, that a stove is different from a hot plate, used as an instrument forcooking etc.) is insignificant as it is only a fact among other facts. It is a trivial fact, which is
not valuable. It becomes valuable when it is viewed from a different perspective, from theperspective of eternity. Not only that, it also gives rise to the mystical feeling of the world asa limited whole. 13 Now, what exactly is this viewing from eternity? This viewing from eternity
is not viewing from inside; rather, it is viewing from outside: The usual way of looking atthings sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis fromoutside. 14 Viewing from eternity is thus,
a transformation in the way of seeing, therefore there corresponds a transformation of the object
seen, a transformation described in terms of addition of sense. This addition seems to come aboutbecause the observer, so to speak, absorbs himself in the object, in such a way that the object, though
it be ordinary and habitual, ceases to be an insignificant thing among things and becomes his world. 15

Moreover, logical space in Tractatus indicates the domain of possibilities, those which
are actual, constitute the world. The world is also equivalent to reality, which consists of both
positive and negative states of affairs, that is, it comprises the whole logical space. Hence, if
the object viewed sub specie aeterni is viewed together with the whole logical space then theimplication is that it constitutes the whole world.
Interestingly, for Wittgenstein, viewing in this manner also leads one to view the world
ethically. Wittgenstein explicitly connects ethics with the meaning of life when he attempts todefine ethics by a number of synonymous expressions. In A lecture on Ethics he writes, Ethics
is the enquiry into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living. 16 Furthermore, forhim, the good life is happy life and harmony is the criterion of happy life, which is also the only
right life. 17 The question that pops up here is How can we secure such good/happy life?
Wittgenstein gives a clue : How can man be happy at all, since he cannot ward off the misery12

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-16, p. 83.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.45.
14
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-16, p. 83.
15
Gabriele Tomasi,. Wittgenstein, the Artistic Way of Seeing, and the Sense of the World, Kulturen: StreitAnalyse-Dialog - Cultures: Conflict-Analysis-Dialogue, edited by Georg Gasser, Christian Kanzian, Edmund
Runggaldier (Kirchberg am Wechsel: ALWS, 2006), p. 353;
http://wittgensteinrepository.org/ojs/index.php/agora-alws/issue/view/18
16
Ludwig Wittgenstein, A lecture on Ethics, p. 4.
17
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-16, p. 78.
13

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e (T6.421): Ea Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagoreof this world? Through the life of knowledge .The life of knowledge is the life that is happyin spite of the misery of the world. The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce theamenities of the world. 18 It is through the attitude of detachment/renunciation, that one canchange one s unhappy world to a happy one. How does one acquire this quality? For
Wittgenstein, one can practice the act of renunciation only when one adopts a particularperspective. And this perspective consists in viewing the world sub specie aeterni, that is,viewing the world as a limited whole from eternity. We have noted earlier that viewing fromabove or eternity suggests a sense of detachment. It is through this sense that viewing sub
specie aeterni connects ethics and aesthetics together.
Moreover, Wittgenstein points out that viewing sub-specie-aeterni is actuallycontemplating:
The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole. The
feeling that the world is a limited whole is the mystical feeling.19

It is only through contemplation that the object (in the example, the stove) becomes the wholeworld for me . This happens in the case of aesthetics ( the work of art is the object seen sub
specie aeternitatis ) and also in ethics (in good life, the world is viewed aesthetically Good
life is the world seen sub specie aeterni ). 20 Thus the distinction between art and good life,
between aesthetics and ethics merges here. Both become one. This is common in traditional
accounts of aesthetic contemplation where it is typically one in which the whole ofconsciousness is inhabited by the object contemplated. 21
Wittgenstein elucidates this point ( the work of art is the object seen sub specie
aeternitatis ) clearly in Culture and Value by referring to the distinction between someone
performing some unremarkable activity in ordinary life, and seeing these same mundane things
done on stage in theatre. In this example, Wittgenstein is not imagining a sequence of a play
but merely the framing of such activity by the conventions of theatre. He says, we should beobserving something more wonderful than anything a playwright could arrange to be acted or
spoken on the stage: life itself. But we do see this every day without its making the slightest
impression on us! True enough, but we do not see it from that point of view. 22 ( A work ofart, he goes on to say, forces us to see in the right perspective but in the absence of art, theobject is just a fragment of nature like any other. 23iii) E hic and Ae he ic a

iding he igh ie

f he

ld

18

Ibid., p. 81.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by C. K. Ogden (London and New York:
Routledge, 2014), 6.45.
20
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-16, p. 83.
21
Nieli Russell, Wittgenstein: From Mysticism to Ordinary Language A study of Viennese Positivism and theThought of Ludwig Wittgenstein (New York: State University of New York Press. 1987), p.71.
22
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 4.
23
Ibid., p. 4 (italics mine).
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Now, what is this right perspective or right viewing ? Wittgenstein is not very explicit. He
queries in an entry in Notebooks1914-16: Is the essence of the artistic way of looking at things
that it looks at the world with a happy eye? 24 What does the phrase happy eye connote here?
Does only artistic way of looking at things can bring about relevant changes in one s attitude
to the world? We find a clue again in the Notebooks where he says: The world is given me, i.e.
my will enters into the world completely from outside as into something that is already there. 25
So it is my will which penetrating into the world makes it my world, be it good or evil by an
exercise of a good or evil willing. Viewing the world sub specie aeterni is thus connected withthe exercise of good will. Wittgenstein makes connection between this viewing and good life
explicit when he says: Good life is the world viewed sub specie aeterni. 26
Thus, one s viewing the world from eternity and one s exercise of will provides one withhappy eyes and makes the world his happy world. Aesthetic perception thus is a shift awayfrom the everyday relationship with what is perceived, so that the object is seen and known ina way which is at once more vivid and more detached than in the everyday relationship. We areto think of the ethical as also sharing this attitude.27 This, for early Wittgenstein, was the rightperspective ; he describes the ideal toward which he aims to lead his readers at the end of theTractatus:
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as
senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw
away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees
the world rightly.28

For early Wittgenstein, only the artist can present an individual object in such a way that it
appears to us as a work of art. We already quoted him saying that A work of art forces us tosee in the right perspective but in the absence of art, the object is just a fragment of nature likeany other. 29 Wittgenstein claims that a work of art compels us to see things in the rightperspective. Art can turn an object that is a mere piece of nature into an object that is worth
contemplating. It seems that by using the word rightly as an adverb to seeing the world ,Wittgenstein did not mean logical or propositional rightness or correctness. Rather, he probably
intended to talk about ethical/aesthetical perspective of seeing the world as a limited whole.
Here the word rightly is used in an aesthetic sense, as when someone says that a musical noteis on its right place when it is in harmony with previous notes. It is in this sense that seeing theworld rightly as a harmonious whole is also seeing it with a happy eye .

iv) Ethics and Aesthetics as being linked to happiness24

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-16, p. 86.
Ibid., p. 74.
26
Ibid., p. 83.
27
Diane Collinson, Ethics and Aesthetics are One, British Journal of Aesthetics Vol. 25(3) (1985), pp. 266 72.
28
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.54.
29
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 4 (italics mine).
25

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An important question troubles us at this point: Why art should always be confined to happy
eye ? What about the artistic expression of the ugly, the terrible, and the tragic ? Wittgensteinsomehow seems to anticipate this question and in the entries of the Notebooks 1914-16 he says:
For there is certainly something in the conception that the end of art is the beautiful. And thebeautiful is what makes us happy.30

Here Wittgenstein is connecting the idea of art with that of beauty. The question that arises hereis How is art connected with the beautiful? The beautiful in art cannot be in what is depicted orpresented, for ugly and painful things are often the subject matter of art: it seems that
Wittgenstein here is using the word beautiful in the sense that it incorporates both good andevil, beautiful and ugly. This becomes obvious when we see that according to Wittgenstein, If
seen with detachment an ordinary scene looks at the same time unheimlich and wunderbar,(that is, uncanny and wonderful).31
It is quite possible that Wittgenstein s thought here seems to have a continuity with theidea of beauty as something beyond mere material possession and as something that transcends
loss or worldly interests. Wittgenstein s notion of beauty seems to come from the notion ofharmony. Work of art constructs a perspective from which many different and even conflicting
elements can be brought into some unified and harmonious whole. 32 This harmonious view ofthe world and life comes from viewing the world as a limited whole, as understood in theTractatus. It contributes to a good ethical life, thus to the merging of ethical and aesthetical
viewpoints once again.
But for early Wittgenstein, this cannot be expressed in sensible terms to anyone. As heputs it to Waismann:
If I needed a theory in order to explain to another the essence of the ethical (and also of aesthetical),the ethical would have no value at all.33

This means that any attempt to theorize ethics or aesthetics, for Wittgenstein, will be to run up
against the boundaries of language . And yet, one can live an ethical life simply by having an
ethical/aesthetical attitude towards the world. In Wittgenstein s own life, most indicative in thisregard were the years in the 1920s, which he spent as a teacher in lower Austria. Those werealso years of an aesthetical commitment which inspired him to design a modernistic house in
Vienna for his sister.
v) E hic and Ae he ic being c nnec ed i h hende ha held e i

30

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-16, p. 86.
Gabriele Tomasi, Wittgenstein on Life, Art, and the Right Perspective, in Josef Rothhaupt und Wilhelm
Vossenkuhl (Eds.), Ked We e: Wi ge ei
K i ge -B ch als Initialtext (Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter,2013), p. 363.
32
Carolyn Wilde, Ethics and Aesthetics Are One, in Peter B. Lewis (Ed.), Wittgenstein, Aesthetics andPhilosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 174.
33
Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1979),
p. 116-117.
31

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Finally comes the proposition the miracle is that the world exists , which serves as
paradigmatic example of both ethics and aesthetics. It shows the underlying connection between
ethics and aesthetics, whereas the peculiarity of the experience it conveys (I wonder that theworld exists!) is that it falls into the domain of the mystical, the ineffable. It is the mysticalexperience of the world as a whole where the subject feels as merging oneself with that world.
For Wittgenstein, this is an experience par excellence and mystical, which cannot be put intowords.
The discussion of the above five points reveals that the connecting link between ethicaland aesthetical discourses is viewing the world sub specie aeterni. This is a viewing of theworld taken from outside, which is thus connected with the sense of the world. Thus the senseof the world as relevant to ethics also lies outside the whole sphere of what happens and is thecase. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot
lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. 34 Thus both ethics and aesthetics
are transcendental and work as conditions of the world .35
Such a view of the world differs from what can be seen from any factual or scientificviewpoint, for the facts themselves are within the world. It is also for the same reason that suchviewing from eternity can never be expressed in terms of scientific language. In this way,factual representation functions as a cage and ethics, and aesthetics can be taken as attempts to
run against the boundaries of the cage. But in their attempts to transcend these boundaries, theyshow themselves and make themselves understood. What this shows is that factual or
propositional representation is limited. There are points of view, which are not factual
representations, which are not fragmentary or partial, but which can offer an overview of theworld as a whole. It is interesting to note here that Wittgenstein connects this kind of viewingof the world with viewing with a happy eye claiming that the beautiful is what makes
happy .36 The experience of value arises from such wholeness, from the perceived harmony
between the individual and the world. 37 This experience of unity is what being happy means. 38
Viewing from the viewpoint of eternity is not a perceiving of the object in terms of causality or
an orientation toward a certain end. What Wittgenstein achieves with this differentiation is toshow the difference between the question of human value and the scientific questions. 39
We will show that Tagore also takes such a stance on the way an object is viewed from thepoint of view of aesthetics. For him, a rose is beautiful when one feels the unity of a rose
coinciding with the unity of the universe, a feeling which takes us beyond temporality. This isa unity that tunes up the inner unity of oneself along with the unity of the universe.

II

34

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.41.
Ibid., 6.421.
36
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914-16, p. 86.
37
Julian Friedland, Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Ethical Value, Ethic@ - An International Journal for
Moral Philosophy, Florianópolis, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2006), p. 101.
38
Ibid., p. 92.
39
B. R Tilghman, Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics: The View from Eternity (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 44.
35

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Rabindranath Tagore and Aesthetics
Tagore s aesthetics and philosophy are intertwined with each other as the touch of aesthetic
inspiration pervades not only his poems and songs but also his worldview and his approach tothe fundamental issues of life and thought. It is thus fair to say that aesthetics is the dough withwhich his metaphysics and other writings are baked and cooked. 40 Still, it is very difficult tohave a logical, succinct, and structured account of his aesthetics and philosophy. He himself
has acknowledged that such a goal is bound to elude us:
I am that poet
who is a dream-like being moving about stealthily,
and who is unable to make myself understood.41

This is further complicated by the fact that his approach to art, literature, and paintings in his
later years underwent a fundamental change from that of earlier ones, provoking an enigmatic
confusion over his tenets on aesthetics among his interpreters. Thus, before identifying his
points in common with Wittgenstein, I will briefly discuss Tagore s early and later aesthetics.
Aesthetics in Tag e Early Works
For Tagore, the uniqueness of the human being in this world consists in the fact that they canbe an artist. Because of their aesthetic faculty and expression, a human is distinguished fromother things and beings in the universe. Almost all of Tagore s deliberations on the relationshipbetween the human being and the world reflect his aesthetic discernment. This becomes evident
when he conveys:
When we experience anything aesthetically, we do not experience only that object. A good poem
confers dignity on land, sea and sky, on the whole of the existence.42

For him, all works of creation such as music, dance, painting, and literature reveal rhythmic
forms and that is what is common between human and God. This is what binds God and human
together in creating this universe as a work of Art . Tagore s approach to Art seems to be
unique because he believes that the world of reality belongs to Art. In order to grasp what hemeans by reality, truth, and the truth of Art, one will have to analyze how Tagore views thehuman being in relation to nature.
According to Tagore, a human has three aspects of being. First is their physical being,
who tills the soil, gathers food, does everything for their material being, and roams aroundunquestioningly in the domain of facts. Second is their intellectual being, who wants to find out
reason and law behind the facts. Apart from these aspects, there is yet another one, a personal
human: This personal man is found in the region where we are free from all necessity above
the needs, both of the body and mind above the expedient and useful. It is the highest in man
40

V. S. Naravane, Tagorene Aesthetics Concepts of Harmony and Personality, in Rabi d a h Tag e i
Perspective: A Bunch of Essays (Calcutta: Vi va Bh rati, 1989), p. 2.
41
Narasingha P. Sil, Rabindranath Tagore s Aesthetics Revisited, in Rabindra Miscellany, 2015, p. 36, available
at: https://www.parabaas.com/rabindranath/articles/Rabindra%20Miscellany.pdf (accessed on 7 April 2020).
42
Abu Sayeed Ayyub, Poetry and Truth (Kolkata: Dey s Publishing, 1973), p. 119.

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this personal man. 43 In this world of the personal human being, Art takes place. Tagore
elucidates that where there is beauty in flowers, sweetness in fruits, where there is compassion
for other living beings, where there is a feeling of surrendering oneself to the Great (bh),
we feel ourselves as being in an eternal personal relation with the universe. We call it real , asin reality truth is personal.
Tagore treated the ultimate truth as the Truth of relationship, the Truth of harmony in
the Universe, the fundamental principle of creation. 44 By means of creativity, this personalityof the human being transcends the abstraction of the factual domain and triumphs over thelimitations of logical reasoning. The reality of the world thus does not belong to the physicalhuman or the intellectual human with logical reasoning. Rather, the world becomes real in thedomain of the personal where one feels one s infinity, where one is divine. One can beconscious of personality in its narrower sense, which begins with the feeling of separatenessfrom the world. Tagore elucidates this with the delight of a miser who in their aspirations tomake more money strikes upon the unity or oneness of the world. A rich person distinguishes
themselves as a wealthy being from the rest of the world; but the unity of a rose, of a piece ofart, a poem is consistent with the unity of the world. The latter are the messengers of the One,the Infinite, and the Eternal. Art for its part expresses the delight of this unity of the finite andthe infinite in the human being.
The artist creates their reality, which is more important than the factual reality ofscientists. About this creation of reality, Tagore is of the opinion that one can modulate thenature-human-divine interrelationships through one s creative faculty and can make truth one s
own. Truth can be real, only when it is personal. This truth is beautiful. Beauty for Tagore isborn of man s desire to fraterni e with the outer world of life and nature. 45 Such a conceptionof beauty is different from the ordinary conception of beauty; it is based on the philosophy of
discipline and restraint. Tagore argues, When man has the power to see things detached fromself-interest and insistent claims of the lust of the senses, then he sees that what is unpleasant
to us is not necessarily unbeautiful, but has its beauty in truth. 46 Tagore says, The day when
I first reali ed this truth, I remembered Keats s words, truth is beauty, beauty truth. 47 Now,
Tagore assimilated this beauty truth with goodness Which is really good is both useful andbeautiful. 48 For Tagore, Beauty cannot be the aim of art and literature unless it is good. In

43Rabindranath Tagore, Personality: Lectures Delivered in America (New York: Macmillan, 1917), p. 12.
Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man Being the Hibbert Lectures for 1930 (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1931), p. 100.
45
Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Writings on Literature and Language: Rabindranath Tagore, edited by Sisir
Kum r Das and Sukanta Chaudhuri (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 51.
46
Rabindranath Tagore, Sense of Beauty, Angel of Surplus: Some Essays and Addresses on Aesthetics, editedby Sisir Kum r Ghose (Calcutta: Vi va Bh rati, 1978), p. 53.
47
Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Writings on Literature and Language, p. 37.
48
Ibid., p. 37.
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goodness also we discover that wealth, that surplus49 which is commensurate with the wholeworld. 50
Moreover, for Tagore, when we are intensely aware of the equation of truth, beauty, andgoodness, we are aware of ourselves and the harmony of our souls with the outside universe. It
gives us joy as aesthetic experience ( a da). To elucidate this, one can take the example of arose. One feels happy (pure aesthetic joy) when one sees a rose; one sees the beauty of harmony
in its color, smell, and contour, that is, in the form of a flower. The final meaning of delightwhich one finds in a rose can never be in the roundness of its petals, just as the final meaningof joy of music cannot be in a phonograph record. 51 In Tagore s opinion, the essence of thecreative person is their capacity to feel and also to make others feel joy as aesthetic experience( a da). On the one hand, we have the artist who expresses their inner bh a (sentiment) in
the art object. On the other, the creative process finds fulfillment only when ah da a rasika (asensitive spectator who can connect with the performance with emotion) appreciates it, feels
the inner rasa (emotion of aesthetic pleasure that develops from bh a) within, and experiences
a da. In this sense, Tagore believes that human feelings are the most important emotional
forces, which transmute things into our living structures. The human being looks at the world
and absorbs it with emotions of love, hatred, wonder, fear, pleasure, pain, and so on. In Tagore s
own words,
Our emotions are the gastric juices which transform this world of appearance into the more intimate
world of sentiments. On the other hand this outer world has its own juices, having their various
qualities which excite our emotional activities. This is called in our Sanskrit rhetoric rasa whichsignifies outer juices having their response in the inner juices of our emotions.52

Hence, the things that arouse our emotions arouse our feelings for our own selves. Then, we
feel the longing to express ourselves for the sake of expression. Art originates from suchlonging and belongs to the domain of surplus . 53
49

The notion of surplus is the central notion in the philosophy of Tagore. He elucidates it in the following way:
Like animals, human beings also have hunger, thirst, and bodily cravings, but what makes man different fromanimals is that apart from these bodily cravings, human beings crave for completely different things. Animals arenecessarily bounded by their needs and necessities, they cannot go beyond them. Animals possess knowledge butthat knowledge is employed for useful purposes, such as how to build nests, how to jump on prey, how to avoid
danger, and so on. But human beings also have knowledge, which they often employ to fulfill their needs in life,
but they can go far beyond and declare that I am acquiring knowledge just for the sake of knowledge and not foranything else. Here they differ fundamentally from animals.
Animals possess certain altruistic tendencies such as parenting and taking interest in herd and hive.
Humans also know that they have to be good because their goodness is necessary for their race, yet they go far
beyond that. They can afford to say that goodness is for the sake of goodness. Animals also have emotions, which
they use for self-preservation. (Priyambada Sarkar, Language, Limits and beyond: Early Wittgenstein and
Rabindranath Tagore (Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 38-39). Man has a fund of excess emotional energythat does not get satisfied with simple preservation. It seeks an outlet in creation of art, literature, music and dance.
For man s civili ation is built upon their surplus. (Tagore, Personality: Lectures Delivered in America, p. 11).
50
Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Writings on Literature and Language, p. 172.
51
Amiya Chakravarty, A Tagore Reader (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 88.
52
Rabindranath Tagore, Personality: Lectures Delivered in America, pp. 14-15.
53
Ibid., p. 20.

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Aesthetics in Tag e Later Works
Quite in contrast with his aesthetics in his early works, the later poems and paintings of Tagore
often seem to betray the sense of conflict, discord, and dissonance at the heart of existence. In
a letter from March 1930,54 Tagore explained candidly that in earlier years his inspiration for
creation, constituting the centre of his life and the world, came from the outside world. But laterin life, when
he entered this passionate desire to paint and to draw.
The movement was55
no more inwards from outside but outwards from inside One gets an inkling of such changes
much earlier in the poems of Ba, 56 where the poet celebrates humanist ethos and also
salutes youthful love, beauty, and restlessness. Next, we detect Pa a ,57 which expresses thepoet s concern with the multiple mundane trials and tribulations, and the weal and woes ofhuman life, that is a part of universal life. 58 During the last 15 years of his life, he came into
contact with younger modern poets of Bengal, who were pioneering a modernist movement that
unhesitatingly depicted the weight of sin and sorrow, sexuality, evil, and the complexity ofintellectual experiences. He often critiqued this modernism by identifying the modern with thecrude and the trivial. Yet, one does not fail to notice the distinctive features of modernism in
his own writings of this period. He writes about the trivial in Naba a (1940);59 and poems
composed in these years (from Punasca [Postscript, 1932] 60 to e e h [Last Writings,
1941]61) seem to reveal his encounter with the real world:
I m familiar with the road to the real world.
No fancy reality could be found there.
There the terrific and the terrible walk hand in hand.62

In e e h , we find expressions of his own personal tussle, uncertainties, and lack ofknowledge of being and self. At the end of the day, he confessed that he has no answer for thequestions that bothered him throughout his life, and of which he thought he had answers in his
early life. Much agony in his personal life, and much hurts and pain out of the chaos and crisisin the outside world had made him reali e that Truth is hard . Truth is not only hard but also
terrible , which seems to be in dissonance with the aesthetics of harmony in his early works.
Sisir Kum r Ghosh, a noted Tagore critic writes, Full of dramatic discords, through alternate
rhythms of intensity and exhaustion, the poems unfold a history of a conflict, long and carefully
concealed at the heart of Rabindrean imagination. 63 This is evident also in his paintings drawn
during the last phase of his life. It is no wonder that critics describe his gnawed battered twisted
54

Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali, Vol. 12 (Calcutta: Vi va Bh rati, 1961), pp. 93-94.
Ibid., p. 94.
56
Rabindranath Tagore, Ba(in Bengali) (Calcutta: Indian Publishing House, 1916).
57
Rabindranath Tagore, The Fugitive (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921).
58
Sil, Rabindranath Tagore s Aesthetics Revisited, p. 42.
59
Rabindranath Tagore, Nabajatak (Bengali book of poems) (Kolkata: Vi va Bh rati Granthalay, 1940).
60
Rabindranath Tagore, Punasca (Kolkata: Vi va Bh rati Granthalay, 1932).
61
Rabindranath Tagore, Sesh Lekha (Bengali book of poems) (Kolkata: Vi va Bh rati Granthalay, 1941).
62
Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems of Rabindranath Tagore, edited by William Radice (Delhi: Penguin,1990), p. 68.
63
Sisir Kumar Ghose, The Later Poems of Tagore (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Ltd., 1989), p. viii.
55

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and phantasmagorical images born out of deletions as expressions of his suppressed
unconscious. 64 Dyson and Adhikari traced the peculiarities of Tagore s (around 2,500)
paintings to his deficiency of color vision. However, the last writings and paintings thus force
us to look at our sage poet ( i a i) in a different manner. Here, one notices that this Tagore
does not console us like the poet but places us in a land of uncertainty. 65
However, I think that if one looks closely at his poems, novels, dramas, and paintings
during the 1930s, one would not fail to notice that although his creative works look at theordinary, at the crude, harsh reality, still he is not oblivious to the glory of the beautiful. It istrue that his last days are full of symptoms of resentments and perturbations. But that is not
final. He never deviates from his central aesthetics and philosophy as he writes only a few
months before his death:I have seen the light of the eternal
Behind the illusion of calamity.
Truth s joyous form is imaged in this dust.66

This is indicative that he was able to see the light of the eternal and the harmony of truth andjoy as aesthetic experience even in his very last months. Not only that, he was even hopeful that
the Supreme Human Being will appear in this world. In this phase, one can notice his innertensions between his central aesthetic philosophy and the new ideas of modernism. Sometimes
new ideas occupy for him the central place; but as he is firmly rooted in a harmonious pictureof the whole, it never goes fully out of sight. Because of this, he can visualize the ee (aspontaneous purposeless self-manifestation) of divine dance, where his individual self merges
in the flow of the life of truth, where he sees the peace of the ever-constant and joyous formof truth . His uncertainty regarding the contingency and crudeness of the mundane iscontradicted by his image of merging himself into the festival of the infinite, the eternal.67 He
thus realizes that truth can be cruel but it can be also loved, and it can make free those who love
it. There is the beautiful even in the terrible, throughout history and the world. In his later work,
Tagore has described the terrible and the beautiful walking hand in hand. It is true that Tagore
portrays his feelings of distress at the sight of the harshness and crudeness of reality in somepoems of his later years; but he claims at the same time an absolute certainty in the bright
eternity behind the mist of danger . He does not intend to offer a radically new ontology , ashe still finds strength from his inner light:
He carries to his treasure-houseHis final reward.
He who could put up with your deceit receives from you the rightTo everlasting peace.68

64

Sovon Som, Tag e Pai i g : Ve ifica i i Li e (New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2011), p. 25.
Pabitra Sarkar, Foreword, in Sovon Som, Tag e Pai i g : Ve ifi ca i i Li e, p. 3.
66
Amiya Chakravarty, A Tagore Reader (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 72.
67
Rabindranath Tagore, Prantik (Kolkata: Vi va Bh rati Granthalay, 1937), pp. 23-24.
68
Amiya Chakravarty, A Tagore Reader, pp. 373-374.
65

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III
Tagore and Wittgenstein: Convergence of Ideas on Aesthetics
Based on the elucidation of ideas on aesthetics of the two thinkers discussed above, one canportray the obvious divergences in the approaches of the poet and the philosopher. The poetwill be reluctant to view aesthetics as nonsensical, as aesthetics helps him to approach the realin his life; whereas the philosopher will be happy to delineate it as an attempt to express the
inexpressible. Yet, in spite of their natural divergences, there are few important points of
convergence where their views concur, not least because Wittgenstein s remark Ethics andAesthetics being one has its counterpart in the philosophy of Tagore.
For Tagore, beauty exceeds what is necessary. That is why we recognize it as wealth. He
believed that beauty cannot be the aim of art and literature unless it is good. Goodness has madebeauty more than something to be seen with the eye. 69 As Tagore says:
Whatever is beneficent is in deepest union with the whole world, in secret harmony with the mindof all humanity. When we see this beautiful accord of the true and the beneficent, the beauty of truth
no longer eludes our perception. Compassion is beautiful; so are forgiveness and love. The imageof beauty is the fullest manifestation of the good and the image of the good the consummate self ofbeauty.70

This harmony of the Good and the Beautiful, ethics and aesthetics, cannot be represented byfactual scientific language. For, they are the inexpressible. Tagore says it in his lecturesdelivered in America in 1917,
Facts are like wine cups that carry it [the truth], they are hidden by it, it [the Truth that Good is
beautiful] overflows them. It is infinite in its suggestions; it is extravagant in its words. It is personal,
therefore beyond science.71

According to Tagore, science is concerned with facts which are stateable in scientific language,
whereas this merging of the good and the beautiful is beyond scientific language. Wittgensteinuses similar analogy in his lecture on ethics, delivered in 1929, where he says,
Our words will only express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water, even if I wereto pour out a gallon over it.72

Thus, both Tagore and Wittgenstein agree that words in our everyday language are incapableof expressing the higher truth; that is, that higher truth cannot be put into words.
There is also another important point of convergence. For both of them, viewing frometernity is what connects ethics and aesthetics. In line with Wittgenstein, Tagore says When
we look at a rose and find it beautiful, it becomes the whole world. Its unity of form, color,
69

Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Writings on Literature and Language: Rabindranath Tagore, p. 173.
Ibid., p. 172 (italics mine).
71
Rabindranath Tagore, Personality: Lectures Delivered in America, p. 34.
72
Ludwig Wittgenstein, A lecture on Ethics, p. 6.
70

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texture, and smell coincides with the unity of the universe, and thus it takes us beyond
temporality. This unity aligns itself with the inner unity of oneself along with the unity of theuniverse. 73
Beauty for Tagore is a fundamental concept akin to that of being, surplus, and harmony,and this concept is most important in his idea of aesthetics. For Tagore, the poet is not a devoteeof truth for the sake of truth, or of goodness for the sake of goodness. Rather, he is a devotee oftruth and goodness as they are in themselves beautiful. And because of their beauty, the poet
got attracted to them. Tagore elucidates this with the example of a blade of grass. A lay person
who is indifferent to nature gets no pleasure from the blade of grass. It is a trifle matter to them.
He is not interested. But a botanist finds pleasure even from a blade of grass as they know theimportance of grass in the domain of plants. Similarly, an aesthetician knows how to view ablade of grass even from the point of view of spirituality, can feel themselves and the world inthat particular blade of grass and finds ecstasies in it. 74
From Tagore s account, it follows that from the point of view of the scientist the truthof a blade of grass is important, but only as representative of a class. But to the aesthetician, ablade of grass is important not because it belongs to a class having such and such properties,
not because it has some utility, but because it becomes the whole world. It comes to the fore
and everything else goes to the background. When we look at a blade of grass aesthetically, thecover of its everydayness , that is, its being in particular spatio-temporal framework, getsremoved. The aesthetician discovers a deep harmony in the beautiful object and feels happy
from the core of their heart.75 This harmony transcends all discords, all conflicts. For Tagore,
truth, beauty, and harmony are interchangeable terms. The artist through creative synthesis
extends themselves over the whole world and feels the union with the world in them. Tagore
elucidates: I exist and everything else exists. There is this union of the two in my existence. 76
This harmony, this being with the whole world, transcend the boundaries of ordinary discourseand somehow make themselves understood by means of the suggestiveness of language inpoems, music, and other art forms.
Tagore elucidates the typically mystical experience of the union of oneself with theworld, which he had in his early years. Regarding this experience, he says in his Hibbertlectures:
When I was 18, a sudden spring breeze of religious experience for the first time came to my life andpassed away leaving in my memory a direct message of my spiritual reality. One day while I stoodwatching at early dawn the sun sending out its ray from behind the trees, I suddenly felt as if someancient mist had in a moment lifted from my sight, and the morning light on the face of the world
revealed an inner radiance of joy. The invisible screen of the common place was removed from allthings and all men and their ultimate significance was intensified in my mind.77

73

Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali, Vol. 14 (Kolkata: Paschimbanga Sarkar, 1986), p. 388.
Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali, Vol. 12, p. 6.
75
Sachindranath Ganguly, Rabindra Darshan ( ntiniketan: Vi va Bh rati, 1968), p. 86.
76
Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali, Vol. 12, p. 352.
77
Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man (London: Allen and Unwin, 1953), pp. 93-94.
74

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One notices similar insight in a poem where he speaks of the wonderful experience of the wholeworld embracing his heart: I don t know how my heart unfolded and embraced the wholeworld today. 78 Tagore believes that poets reveal the benign to the world in its ineffably
beauteous form. The truly benign serves our need and it is beautiful: that is, it has anunaccountable attraction that surpasses its use. 79 Only the true artist can comprehend thesecret of the visible world and the joy of revealing it. 80
Thus, for both Wittgenstein and Tagore, words are incapable of expressing values thatincorporate truth, beauty, and goodness. But this gives rise to the typical Tractarian paradoxicalsituation: If words are incapable of expressing values such as truth, beauty, and goodness, thenwhat purpose does this discourse on ethical and aesthetical values serve? Although from thepoint of view of the Tractatus, it might appear nonsensical, yet one can get over thisparadoxicality by referring to the Tractatrian notion of logical clarification of thoughts . 81
Hence, this discourse has a point: it points to a harmonized, value-laden, poetic universe of apoet and a philosopher. It thus clarifies human attempts to run against the boundaries oflanguage, which, though fruitless, still deserve our deep respect and admiration.

78

Rabindranath Tagore, Prabh t Utsav, Prabh t Sang t, in Rabi d a Racha a i, Vol. 1. (Kolkata:Paschimbnga Sarkar, 1980), p. 71 (trans. mine).
79
Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Writings on Literature and Language: Rabindranath Tagore, p. 172.
80
Rabindranath Tagore, On Art and Aesthetics: A Selection of Lectures, Essays & Letters, edited by Prithwish
Neogy (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1961), p. 108.
81
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.112.

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The Songs of Lalon Fakir
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume IV, Number 01 (2021): 101-110

Translation and Commentary
THE SONGS OF LALON FAKIR
Lalon Fakir
Selection, translation from Bengali, and commentarybySayed Muddashir Hossain

Oh, m cas e is being r ined! Oh, m cas e is being r ined, 1
Say people, but I find it really strange!
I see rather that people are not interested in the right path!
When I tell them to follow it, they say many excuses!
Whe
ca e
hi
d ha aCa e?!
A d af e c i ghid ha Ca e
ha e a e ?
And think about this,What will be your caste when you will leave this life?
B ah i , Cha da a, Lea he W e , Sh e Ma e s,
They all clean themselves with the same water,
But you still say they look uncouth and untasteful just because of the caste?
B The Dea h ie c eae!
If in secret someone eats food given by a whore,
What harm does it do to the religion?
Laaha ac aCa e i ?
This illusion is never resolved!
***1

http://www.lalongeeti.com/jatgelo/. O he e e e a i e b ica i
f La Fa ii c de: Collection
Of Lalon s Works, edited by Dr. Abul Ahsan Chowdhury (Dhaka: Pathak Shamabesh, 2014) (in Bengali), cf.
লালনসম ড র আবুল আহসান ধুরী (পাঠক সমা বশ); Lalon Fakir and His Songs, edited by Onnodashankor Roy (Dhaka:Kobi, 2017) (in Bengali), cf. লালন ফককর ও তাাঁর গান অ দাশ র রা (ককব কাশনী); Lalon s Songs and Texts, edited by Sudhin
Dash (Dhaka: Merit Fair Publications, 2017) (in Bengali), cf. লালনগীকত ও রকলকপ সুধীন দাশ মকরট ফ ার কাশনGLOBAL CONVERSATIONS

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The Songs of Lalon Fakir

All people ask Lalon what is his caste?2
In return Lalon asks how does caste looks like?
I have never seen it in my life!
If you do circumcision, you become Muslim!
But for women what is the law?!
If you wear at your naked chest the holy thread then you are a male Brahmin,
But how should I recognize a female Brahmin?!
Hindu people use Mala (a rosary) and Muslims use Tasbih (also rosary)
And they are the same thing!
Yet you say that just the name makes them different!
When you first come to this world or when you leave this world,
Where is your sign of your case?
In this whole world everyone talks about caste!
They tell story about it,
But Lalon says, I have drowned my caste in the river!
***In the cage, an unknown bird comes and goes!3
I do not know how it happens,
But if I could have known I would have caught the bird and kept it in the cage!
There are eight chambers and nine doors to this cage,
And each of them separated by slits.
And upon this cage or room there are more buildings,
And on the top floor there is a beautiful dance floor!
Just because I am lucky, the bird stays in the cage,
Otherwise, it would have left and flown to the forest!
But you must remember the cage is made out of raw bamboos and really weak!
And Lalon cries and says,S
he cage i be d
ed a d e ed!
***

Very near to my House there is an unknown city,4
And there lives a neighbor.
But I have never seen that neighbor!
There is endless water in the village,
And it has no beginning nor end!
2

http://www.lalongeeti.com/shoblokekoy/
http://www.lalongeeti.com/khacharvitor/
4
http://www.lalongeeti.com/barirkache/
3

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My mind desires to see the neighbor,
But how can I go to that village?
I do not know how I should describe this neighbor!
This neighbor does not have any head, shoulders or hands!
This neighbor floats sometimes in vacuum,
And sometimes in the house!
If this neighbor would touch me,
All of my agonizing pain would go away!
Lalon and this neighbor live in the same place,
But alas! At the same time millions of miles away!
***

When can I be together with the person of my mind!?5I look forward towards this like a thirsty bird,
But all I see is a dark moon!
I want to be the footman of this person,
But my bad luck!
That does not happen!
Just like thunder hides in the clouds,
I am a blind who cannot find the true face of that person!
But when I can remember that face in my mind,
I fear no shame!
Lalon Fakir ponder and says,
The ones who love only they know!
***

If you worship humanity, then you will become a golden person,6Without humans you will lose all of your riches.
The story of a human is like a vine that adorns a big tree
You should know about it and only then you can understand your true self.
Even if you are a poor vagabond, yet you cultivate humanity,
You will get the blessing of life.
Without humans you will be lost in nothingness.
Lalon says that if you worship humanity, you can get the ultimate redemption.
***

5
6

http://www.lalongeeti.com/milonhobe/
http://www.lalongeeti.com/manushvojle/

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Everyone says Human, Human! 7
But which race does this Human has?
Everyone tries to take Human to their race and convince them,But I have tried to look into the origin of those races and found only Humans there!
A very mindless game they are playing,
Making groups and groups,
I do not know how to divide this Human,
Apparently, everyone can do it very easily!
But what I see is this,When they chant the farewell, they chant for the dead people,
They become all equal.
I have looked into three different people to understand the reason of this division,
But I have seen that they all are the same one thing!
I find this business very troublesome and confusing!
***Those who find Humanity to be true,8Do they care about other views?
Holy Mounds of Soil or Holy Wooden Pictures,
Or God or Goddess, who can tell the future!
That person does not care about all these,
Because they have found the real thing!
They will not be fooled by any sweet talk,Because they know the true thing!
Those who have weak knowledge,
Or the weakness of the heart to accept Humanity,
They are easy to be fooled!
Thah La
a de ad,
And does not get stable in one position.
***

7
8

http://www.lalongeeti.com/manushmanush/
http://www.lalongeeti.com/manushtotto/

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Lalon Fakir – The Poet-Philosopher

To truly admire and grasp the cultural importance of the works of Lalon Fakir we have tounderstand the socio-cultural context of his time. He was born circa 17th October 1774 in
Jashore, today's Bangladesh. At that time the whole Indian subcontinent was together under
British rule and the Hindu caste system was maintained.
There were main four castes Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras, as well as
those called Dalits, who did not belong to any caste. The castes were determined by the Hindu
mythology according to which the people were created from a certain a f he g d B ah abody. The Brahmins were created from the head, thus being the most intelligent of all people,
who have to take care of the work related to priesthood and communication with gods. The
Kshatriyas were created from the arm, and thus they have to do the heavy lifting and muscle
work, which qualified them to be the rulers and the warriors. Brahmins and Kshatriyas wereconsidered higher castes.
Vaishyas were created from the thigh. Here, we need to note that traditionally anything
related to leg was not considered good on the Indian subcontinent. For instance, one should not
kick a book or make feet high in the presence of a respectable person. With this in mind,
Vaishyas were the second worst caste in this system; they were farmers, traders etc. For theirpart, Shudras were created from the feet and were considered the worst of all castes. They were
the poorest of all as well. It is also notable that the caste hierarchy is indicative of the socioeconomic hierarchy of the traditional Indian society, which was thus sanctioned with the helpof religion.
In practice, caste division was largely exclusive. A Brahmin would not pass under ashadow cast by a Shudra and sometimes Vaishya, for the view is that this makes the Brahmin
unclean and then they will need to take a bath again. Likewise, cross caste marriage was
unthinkable. The Dalits got the worst of the deal. They were not even considered proper human.
The caste people would not eat anything offered by them or sometimes would not even talk to
he . The Da ie e ba ica
e e h did he dib in the society, such as anythingthat has to do with cleaning. Also, since Hindus believe in the cycle of rebirth, they used it tojustify the perceived social injustice of the caste structure. They would just maintain that in
another life they have done something really bad, angering the gods, and that is why now they
are reborn under such bad conditions in this life.
Lalon was born in a Hindu family. It is uncertain in which caste he was born, but theway in which his life unfolded clearly left its mark upon him. It is said that his family was
making a pilgrimage towards the temple of Jagannath, when Lalon was infected with Smallpox.
At that time smallpox was considered very deadly and someone infected with this disease would
have been directly abandoned. Thus, Lalon was also abandoned by the River Kaliganga, andwas possibly floated on the river with a Vela, a boat-like structure made out of Banana trees.
Then, a Muslim family found him and took care of him. The father of that family was most
likely called Malam Shah and his wife was Matijan. According to the legend, they found Laonin a Vela that had stopped by their village Cheuriya. They offered him the love of a family

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member, as if he were their own son. Later on, he founded a musical group inspired by Siraj
Sain. It is also said that Lalon lost sight of one eye due to the small pox.
It appears that growing up with two families has given Lalon a certain sense of rebirth,which has uniquely reflected in his poetic philosophical thought. Here is an extract of one ofthese songs:
Hindu people use Mala (a rosary) and Muslims use Tasbih (also rosary)9And they are the same thing!
Yet you say that just the name makes them different!

We can clarify here that Malas are rosaries, which Religious Hindus count on when reciting
holy chants. Muslims also recite their holy chants while counting on bids, but they call it Tasbih.
Here Lalon is pointing to the fact that both Hindu and Muslims perform very much the same
ritual but they call it by different name. He was often asked what his religion was, but he refused
to answer that because he did not think he had a concept of religion. He was born in a Hindu
family which later on abandoned him. Then, he was taken care of by a Muslim family by thetime he became an adult. As a result, he appears to have lost his sense of religion, which madehi a
he icaWha e igi dha e hec ehid a d heea e i ! Thi i a a he iebe deee i . Whe a bab i bihid,they do not have any mark of religion. Only later on one would take most typically thee igi
f e fa i . Li e i e, hee die , one is dead as other people are dead. Theseare essentially arguments by which Lalon dispels the difference between religions.
The theme of death will always be an important focus in his philosophy. He uses deatha a i d f G a d Le e e , h d ag de ee he a e e e . A d he a i a hesimple,B ah i , Cha da a, Lea he W e , Sh e Ma e ,They all clean themselves with the same water,
But you still say they look uncouth and untasteful just because of the caste?
B The Dea h ie c eae!

Lalon was primarily a song writer and a Baul. Bauls are people who are basically hermits, butrather than professing religion they cultivate spirituality or philosophy through their songs.
Lalon never wrote his philosophy in a formal way. The songs we have from him have been
handed down orally by his followers, and only sometimes written down.
As Lalon left his new family with his singing group, he travelled from village to village
begging for food, offering to sing songs in return. During that time people started to call him
Fa i , hich ea begga . Pe e a ed
ici g hi a d he a ed a ac i g fe .
Lalon would take everyone in his band regardless of their caste and without discrimination.
There were also female members in his group, which at one point created a controversy. It issaid that a prostitute took safe refuge in his group, which became a reason for the inhabitantsof a village to refuse them entry to it and by some accounts to violently attack them. Thisparticular incident has been addressed in one of his songs:
9

All block quotations in this commentary are taken from the above translations.

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If in secret someone eats food given by a whore,
What harm does it do to the religion?
Lalon asks wha ac a
Ca e i ?
This illusion is never resolved!

The fact that Lalon was born in Hindu family and tradition but later on grew up in a Muslim
family has most certainly played a part in his attitude towards the caste system and religious
differences. Muslims were out of the castes, but for Lalon this in no way made them any worse
than Hindu. And apparently nothing in his experience in the two traditions convinced him thatthe existent caste class division is to be supported. This has left a clear and significant footprintin his philosophy. Here is what he says about caste division:
All people ask Lalon what is his caste?
In return Lalon asks how does caste looks like?
I have never seen it in my life!
If you do circumcision, you become Muslim!
But for women what is the law?!

Circumcision is a common practice among Muslims, which produces a permanent sign of theirreligious identity. Here, in raising the issue regarding female Muslims, Lalon also shows his
concern for the other sex. At that time, women were not treated as equal in both Hindu andMuslim societies. For instance, in the Hindu society, if the husband of a woman dies, she mustalso die, going to the firepit along with him. Another example is that Brahmin males wear aholy thread called Paita indicating their social status, but this rule did not apply to Brahmin
women. That is why Lalon asks how one can know whether a Brahmin woman belongs to that
caste.
At the time, while preaching this essentially secular philosophy, Lalon and his followers
faced numerous difficulties and were banned from many places. At last, they received thepatronage of the Tagore family (from which descends the famous Bengali Poet Rabindranath
Tagore), who were Jamindar (Landowners and regional rulers). Thus, Lalon and his followers
ade a e a e e e e i Che i a, K h ia, da Ba g ade h, he e he i ed i e
in a school practicing the philosophy which they wrote and sang in songs.
Lalon was also a metaphorical spiritual thinker, whose songs were at times hard tounderstand. For instance, he sings,
In the cage, an unknown bird comes and goes!
I do not know how it happens,
But if I could have known I would have caught the bird and kept it in the cage!
There are eight chambers and nine doors to this cage,
And each of them separated by slits.
And upon this cage or room there are more buildings,
And on the top floor there is a beautiful dance floor!
Just because I am lucky, the bird stays in the cage,
Otherwise, it would have left and flown to the forest!
But you must remember the cage is made out of raw bamboos and really weak!
And Lalon cries and says,S
he cage i be d
ed a d e ed!

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LALON FAKIR
The Songs of Lalon FakirLa
i e e e be ie e ha he e he bi d a dehe hea a he i
he ce ai ty
of life. The heart beats and goes out, just as our life is uncertain and can end at any moment.
Thus, we should be really content that our life stays within us at all, hoping that it reaches thebeautiful dance floor which is an allusion to the highest form of humanity one can achieve. The
way to achieve that is to go above and beyond the cage, which is base and traps the life. One
has to transcend its levels and go beyond to find the best of oneself.
Lalon was also aware of the challenges standing on eai g e own
self. He says,
Very near to my House there is an unknown city,
And there lives a neighbor.
But I have never seen that neighbor!
There is endless water in the village,
And it has no beginning nor end!

In this song, the neighb ca be a cia ed i h ee e f. Laha ha he d e
not have any idea about his own true self, that he is desperate to know it, and that he cannot
attain this valuable knowledge. Apparently, he believes that his true self lives very close tohimself, and yet he also feels that they live far apart from each other. He further on says that heis agonizing in pain and that he is certain that if he can know his true self, then all of his pain
will go away. Alas, he realizes that he cannot do it; that is, cannot know his true self, and finds
this really hard to bear.
Perhaps the key to this his stance can be found in the turning events of his life. Whenhe was separated from his own family and placed on a boat floating the river, he was practicallysent to the unknown. This was a common practice at the time for people with incurable diseases.
Rivers were considered a way towards the gods and it was hoped that the gods would cure such
unfortunate people and bring them a new life. The kind of rebirth Lalon experienced
subsequently in his newly adopted family may have left him feeling the core of his identity
shaken, thus prompting him, like many other mystics, to search for his own
e ide i .
This peculiar urge to search for his own self can be detected also in his songs as well.
For instance,
When can I be together with the person of my mind!?
I look forward towards this like a thirsty bird,
But all I see is a dark moon!
I want to be the footman of this person,
But my bad luck!
That does not happen!
Just like thunder hides in the clouds,
I am a blind who cannot find the true face of that person!
But when I can remember that face in my mind,
I fear no shame!
Lalon Fakir ponder and says,
The ones who love only they know!

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LALON FAKIR
The Songs of Lalon Fakir

This song has been interpreted as a love song, and it seems very much so. But one can find init the search for his true self that lives inside his mind. He knows how it looks like but cannot
really reach it, this leaving him desperate again.
In his later years, Lalon lived in Akhra (settlement of Bauls), during which time
Rabi d a a h Tag e elder brother, Jyotirindranath Tagore, visited and interviewed him.
Lalon was asked questions about his life, his past, and his philosophy. One of these questionsa, Dabhe e igi a d af e ife? Lalon answered, I a a eahuman being! For me this life is everything! I am not very intelligent and I cannot think abouth e big hi g i e af e ife a d G d! Iahi abha I ha e he e
! 10
Lalon died on 17th October 1890 aged 118 years. His tomb is still there in the middle ofthe settlement he established himself. To this day his legacy goes on. His songs have been
passed down orally through his followers. He has influenced a number of Bengali thinkers. He
lived a very simple life, seeking for the truth, and calling for a society united under one corevalue of h a i . He a i a ee agaihe ca ee a d affdivisioning in the human society. He wanted to unite people and encourage them to seek theirtrue selves. His songs are sometimes hard to understand but one can find there some clear
messages which one can embrace and move forward. He was living in a difficult time but hemanaged to challenge the socially exclusive status quo of his time by singing songs of equality.
Keeping in mind that this man never received any formal education, his songs are a proof that
one can search for and obtain core insights about the value of humanity by questioning ande dea i gee y own self. Below is a sketch of him made by Jyotirindranath
Tagore during the time of the above-mentioned interview.11

10

Sunil Gangapadhyay, The Person of My Mind (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2008) (in Bengali); cf. ম নর মানুষ সুনীলগ াপাধ া আন পাবকলশাস.
11

Source/Photographer, Indian National Museum (বাাংলা: ভারতী জাতী জা ঘর).

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The Songs of Lalon Fakir

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Notes on Contributors

Ya emin Ka aa a is a PhD candidate in the English Literature Department at YeditepeU, I a b . I 2009,
a a
Y
U
E
T ac
Department. During 2010-2017, she worked for several colleges as an English Teacher. In
2020, she received her MA Degree from the English Language and Literature Department at
Yeditepe University. Her research interests include: social and political philosophy, genderstudies, mythology and literary theory. Email:yasemin.kececi@std.yeditepe.edu.tr
Catherine MacMillan is an Associate Professor at the Department of English Language andLiterature in Yeditepe University (Istanbul). She obtained her PhD (in European Studies) fromMarmara University in 2008. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, including European
S
(
a c
T
a
EU, B
a
)a
a
(with a special interest in politics and literature). She published a monograph in 2014,
Discourse, Identity and the Question of Turkish Accession to the EU: Through the Looking
Ga , a
a
b , C
a P
c
T
EU AccProcess, in 2018. She is also the author of various book chapters and articles.
Dr. Rossen Roussev A c a P
C
a P
a S.C
a S.
M
U
V
Ta
.H a baVPa
Ka a
British Technical University, Almaty, Kazakhstan, Assistant Professor at Kyungpook National
University, Daegu, S. Korea, and at St. John s University in New York. He also taught at the
University of Aktobe, the City University of New York, and Mercy College in New York. He
obtained his doctorate in philosophy from The New School for Social Research in New York(2005). His publications and interests are in phenomenology, philosophy of language, criticaltheory, and philosophy of culture. Email: r.roussev@ts.uni-vt.bg
Priyambada Sarkar is currently a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calcutta,
K a a, I a. S
ba
P D
K
C
,U
L
.S
a
published 4 books: 1) Language, Limits and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2021); 2)
Wittgenstein and Solipsism (Progressive Publishers, 2009); 3) The later Philosophy of LudwigW( B a ) ( 2009); 4) A I
c
F
T
S
a
Reference (in Bengali) (2007). She edited 6 books on epistemology, ethics, and postmodernism. She published 34 research papers in various national and international journals,
as well as 8 book chapters in different edited volumes.
Sayed Muddashir Hossain is a Bangladeshi blogger with a keen interest in literature andphilosophy. He obtained his Bachelor degree from the North South University in Dakha andcurrently works on his Master s at the University of Saarland in Germany.

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