Althusser ve yazının Althusserci mecazları
Althusser and Althusserian text metaphors
Yazar: ENİS EMRE MEMİŞOĞLU
Danışman: PROF. DR. ALİ AKAY
Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi / Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü / Sosyoloji Ana Bilim Dalı / Genel Sosyoloji ve Metadoloji Bilim Dalı
Derece: Doktora, 2020
Konu: Sosyoloji = Sociology
Dizin: Althusser, Louis = Althusser, Louis ; Benzetme = Converge ; Dekalaj = Decalage ; Derrida, Jacques = Derrida, Jacques ; Heidegger, Martin = Heidegger, Martin ; Çağrılma = Interpellation

Özet:
Louis Althusser'in yazısının, mevzu edindiği yazıları yeniden okuma deneyimi olarak eleştirel bir yazı olduğu, Althusser'in yazınsal hayatının ilk dönemlerinden son dönemlerine kadar tespit edilebiliyorsa, bu tespit, yine aynı hayatın yazınsal bütününe Althusser'in kendi tabiriyle özeleştiri olarak yerleşir. Bu özeleştiri dâhilinde yaptığının "tezler vaz etmek" olduğunu yine bu teze (yani "tezler vaz etme"ye) dair tezlerle sunan Althusser, kendi tezinin, yani kendi yazısının limitlerini sorunsallaştıran bu özeleştirel tavrının hududunda, "tek müellifi" olmadığını söylediği yazısını eleştiriye açarken, yazısının mecazları, özellikle belirli bir mecaz ile, aşırıbelirlenim mecazı ile, Althusser'in yazısında mecazın sınırlarını yeniden konumlandırmayı, varsa bu sınırların konumlarının değiştiğini fark etmeyi beraberinde getirir.

Bu tezde yapılan Althusser okuması, Althusser'in yazısında "karşılaşılan" bir mecaz olarak aşırıbelirlenimin mecazlığında, Althusser'in bu mecazı kavram olarak kendilerinden devraldığını söylediği dilbilim ve psikanalizdeki kaynaklarının mecazın kendisine dair sunduğu konumu belirleyebilmek suretiyle, bu konumun Althusser'in yazısını nasıl aşırıbelirlenime tabi tuttuğuna işaret etmeyi dener. Böyle bir aşırıbelirlenim, sırf aşırıbelirlenim mecazının aşırıbelirlenim kavramının kendisinde mecaz kavramının belirleyici olduğunu gösterdiği için Althusser'in aşırıbelirlenim mecazının Althusser'de mecazın kendisine dair belirleyici olduğunu ispat etmek durumunda olmayabilirdi diye, metodolojik bir sapma ile, Althusser'in yazısının mecaza dair konumunun tespit edilmesi yoluna gidilip, Althusser'in mecaz konusuna dair konumu ile Althusser'in aşırıbelirlenim kavramının kaynaklarının vaz ettiği mecazilik hususuna dair konumun birbirine tekabül edip etmediğine bakmak gerekli oldu.

Althusser'in yazısının kaynaklarının mecaza dair konumundaki yeri belirleyen kavramların topolojik yani yerle ve konumla ilgili olduğu, mecazda yer değiştiren ama aynı zamanda da şekil değiştiren bir unsurun var olmasıyla beraber gösterildiği ölçüde, bu konumun Althusser'in kullandığı bir mecazın misalinde, décalage [dekalaj] mecazının misalinde bulunan yerdeğiştirici ve şekil değiştirici unsurun kendisine tekabül ettiği fark edildi. Böylelikle Althusser'in kaynaklarındaki mecazın tanımının Althusser'in bir mecazının kendisine tekabül ettiği ortaya çıktı. Her ne kadar dekalaj Althusser'in yazınsal külliyatında sıkça karşılaşılan bir mecaz olmasından dolayı herhangi olarak addedilecek bir mecaz olmasa da, böyle bir tekabüliyet mecazın sadece bir misalinden yola çıkılarak yerinde bir tekabüliyet olamayacağından, ya da tekabüliyet (tam da) tam yerine oturamayacağından, bu tezde Althusser'in dekalaj mecazını istimaline dair tüm eserine yayılmış olan misallerin okumasına girişmenin devamında, Althusser'in yazısının diğer mecazlarına da sapmak vesilesiyle, özellikle de Althusser'in sıkça kullandığı sapma mecazının yoluna saparak, Althusser'in mecaza dair konumunun, tıpkı Althusser'in kaynaklarının mecazda olduğunu gösterdiği yerdeğiştirme ve şekil değiştirme unsurlarının sunduğu gibi, yer değiştiren ve şekil değiştiren bir konum olduğu gösterildi. Yazının Althusserci mecazlarının konumunun Althusser'in yazısının mecazlarının konumuyla yer değiştirerek her ikisinin de şekil değiştirdiği tespit edildi.

Her tezin tespit ettiklerinin ancak icra ettikleriyle edimselleştiği tezini yine Althusser'in teze dair tezinden hareketle mevzu bahis etmiş olarak yazıya girişmiş olan bu tezin ilerleyen kısmındaki metodolojik sapmada, mecazın şekil değiştiren ve yer değiştiren unsurunun dilin yazıda tefsir ve tercüme olduğuna dair yine Althusser'in kaynaklarında beliren unsurla beraber konumlandığını, bu konumun (bu metodolojik sapmanın metodolojik olduğunu gösterir nitelikte sadece) tezin sonunda vaz edilen bir misali ile hatırlatılıp carileştirilmesine gidilerek, tezin ön-erisi olarak Althusser'in interpellation [çağrılma] mecazının tefsirine dair bir tercüme imkânına başvuruldu. Tezin ilk bölümünde aşırıbelirlenim kavramının mecaziliğini sorunsallaştırmak için adım atılan Althusser okumasına imkân veren Jacques Derrida'nın dile getirdiği bir cümleyi yeniden ve farklı bir şekilde sorup soramayacağımızı anlamak adına girişilen bir okuma vesilesiyle, Althusser'in interpellation mecazının bir tercümesi olarak Heidegger'in Ge-stell kavramına erişilmesi, yazının erimininin ancak tercüme ve tefsir vasıtasıyla verilebileceği ve yazının sadece tercüme ve tefsir olduğu okumada, mümkün oldu. Böyle bir okumanın Yazının Althusserci mecazlarının ancak Althusserci mecazın tercüme edildiği ve tefsir edildiği başka metinlere doğru yer değiştirip onlarla şekil değiştirdiği ölçüde sağlandığı tespit edilerek, bu tespitin de, Althusser'in ancak başka yazarlarla, Althusser'in yazısının ancak başka yazılarla, yazının Althusserci mecazlarının ancak başka yazarların mecazlarıyla okunabileceğine dair bir önerinin mevzu bahis edilmiş olmasıyla carileşebileceği, bu tezin kendi mevzusunu tehir, ve (— eğer varsa da — sınırlarını ve sınırlılıklarını muhafaza eden) kendi mevzisini tefrik etmeyi vaat etmeyi deneyen üslubuyla vaz edilmiştir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, dekalaj, çağrılma, dekonstrüksiyon

Abstract:
The writing of Louis Althusser articulates itself by the very condition of possibility of its critique. From the early phases until its late episodes, the position of being that pertains to philosophy, the position which affirms itself as taking side and position, arranges this writing in the mode of critique. The Althusserian text consists of critiques, which, as itself emphasizes, takes position by showing how philosophy itself consists of taking positions by positing thesis. In the process of taking positions by means of philosophy's critique, Althusser takes heed to make its own position as to positions clear. That is why Althusserian writing, which is also a writing process in the form of auto-critique, articulates its position by the very possibility that conditions its critique.

It is by the very means of a position concerning positions and by the very existence of a thesis concerning existence, which makes its theses exist, that this dissertation endeavors to articulate Althusserian writing. To that zeal, a metaphor, a seemingly encountered metaphor, supposedly an incidental one, décalage, corresponds insofar as this metaphor would re-articulate Althusser's position concerning metaphors. And this, inasmuch as Althusser's position concerning metaphors could be posited by means of Althusser's usage of metaphors.

Methodically, if one prefers to follow the way one preferred to follow, the path Althusser paved for would be suitable. The tracks of this path consist of encounters. Then again, methodically, only in order to encounter Althusser's usage of metaphors in the very position that Althusserian writing posits concerning metaphors, this dissertation throws itself in the locality of a critique, which, it seems in the first instance, exposes the deadlocks and traps of Althusserianism. If Althusser already exposes itself to auto-critique, this other locality, proposed by Jacques Derrida, overexposesthe position of this auto-critique itself in that it takesinto account (at least) a certain Althusserianism.

Taking into consideration what in the Althusserian text is proposed as a promising concept, namely surdétermination [overdetermination], the position of this concept as a metaphor in the writing of Althusser makes itself problematic in the sense that it becomes both a metaphor for a topological explanation of the structures of social formations, and a concept explaining metaphoricity itself. Ambivalent usage of overdetermination as a metaphor opensspace for the recontextualization of it by means of its sources that Althusser explained to be the heritors: psychoanalysis and linguistics. Overdetermination as the metaphor can be retraced back to linguistics through which the relation of metaphor to metonymy can be grounded in psychoanalysis in the form of contiguity and similarity, that too, in the form of displacement and condensation. These concepts, which transfer us to the Freudian text, are referred only in the intricate relations that are intertwined with other concepts, such as dislocation and disfiguration, which are essential to dreamwork. In the dreamwork, Freudian text re-elaborates dreams in the location of these concepts, inasmuch as these concepts open the layers of dreams in the very texture dreams are made of, namely text. Dislocation and disfiguration elaborate the work of dreams as a translation and interpretation inasmuch dreams are themselves translation and interpretation of the way metaphors are dislocated and disfigured in the unconscious. This dislocation itself is overdetermination. This dislocation [Ent-stellung] finds its example in Althusser as décalage. Décalage is (translated as) dislocation.

Althusser's usage of décalage as dislocation makes this metaphor relevant for the example of Althusser's concept of metaphor — but only in the condition that one takes metaphor with its de-figured and dislocated definition. Only in the overdetermination of what the concept of metaphoricity itself yields that the example of metaphor as décalage confirms the affirmative usage of it. For, it appears by means of the Althusserian writing that there is also a negative one. That is the consequence of what a sequential reading of Althusser can offer. In that respect, firstly a close reading of Althusser's readings is operated. Reading Capital rendered this operation suitable because of its modus operandi. This mode being possible by a reading gathered around the metaphors concerning readability, visibility, error and gaffe [insu]; Althusser made it convenable to read Althusser's readings by means of these metaphors, which find their example en décalage. With an ambivalent position regarding reading, décalage appeared as the epitome of both an affirmative and negative reading. So the position concerning décalage made its locus ambivalent. Positions of décalage themselves appeared dislocated. Dislocations of décalage made the usage of the metaphor of décalage an example for itself.

Althusser's thesis on the thesis itself, being an example of itself, exemplified itself in the position of metaphors: Example of metaphor, insofar as it exemplified also Althusser's usage of metaphors as the exemplification of what example operated in the Althusserian text, would be exemplified only with respect to an example of metaphor, should not it be also encountered on the different contexts and texts of Althusser's as this time as the exemplification of décalage through different metaphors. Such was the case for the metaphor (and the example) of deviation. After different applications of décalage which can be found especially in the theoretical scrutinizations and reconfigurations that Althusser made on political philosophers (such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Rousseau), and after determining the limits and delimitations of these reconfigurations as to the application of the metaphor of décalage, so to say, as to the décalage between Althusser's conceptual reading of these philosophers and the metaphorical usage of the décalage itself; following reading was directed towards the metaphor of deviation so as to locate in it a dislocation and disfiguration of décalage. Not the least to say that there was a substitution or a pure repetition, but there appeared a décalage between the décalage and deviation, so much so that, the ambivalence with respect to being affirmative and negative reconfigured itself in a new manner; this time in the form of a partitioning between what appertains to philosophy and not, what is philosophy and literature, what is located in and out the limits.

With the impossibility to make a clear-cut decision concerning the ambivalent positions of Althusserian text concerning all the examples of taking parts, Althusserian metaphors of writing, which made their locus shifting between limits, namely in the décalage of outside and inside, and writing and its limits, are relocated in the dislocated possibility of Althusserian writing. Althusser itself has been shown to deviate as to its own concept of deviation. This deviation formed also a possibility for a reconfiguration of Althusser that cannot be trapped in the sole conceptuality of philosophy. What Althusser's late writing of deviation and encounter proposed as a dislocation of different philosophers that are mostly thought to be incompatible or noncorresponding, then, is proposed also for Althusser itself — as being maybe more than a footnote to Plato, but less than a title in a dissertation.

More than a title to a thesis, less than a metaphor of a life, Althusser's name is shown to be relocated in the history of philosophy, insofar as the Althusserian writing becomes the site of a contradiction. In the final chapter of this dissertation, only in the space that a deferred thesis can posit, only in the location of a differentiated position that a dissertation can pose, the proposition of an introductory promise reintroduced itself as the postponed commitment of a writing in the form of speech-act. If the position of the thesis that Althusser described had exposed itself at the beginning of this dissertation as a speech-act, this position qua positioning on the position of itself, which relocated itself as the performativity of the position of the metaphor in the application of the metaphor itself via its examples, exemplified itself also in the Althusserian writing as the performativity of the text qua the postponement of its thesis in the application of metaphors. Yet this performance of the performativity of the text itself could be exemplified also by means of a dislocation and disfiguration that other philosophers' text can transfer and translate into Althusserian writing and vice versa.

For it be both a dislocation-disfiguration of an initial question that is posed in the methodical opening of this dissertation, and an exemplification of the promise of Althusser's text that can be proposed in the form of a reconfiguration in the concepts and metaphors of other philosophers, a paving for the way this proposition will follow, again and always a methodological way, is made possible by means of crosstranslations and transfigurations that re-intrigued Althusser's well known metaphor of interpellation into what the author of that initial question, Jacques Derrida, related our reading back to Heidegger's Destruktion, and via that, to Ge-stell. Ge-stell, as the technical positioning of the language, manifested its relation to translation and interpretation as a form of disfiguration and a locus of dislocation. And only with the possibility of translation and trans-location that Heidegger's and Althusser's texts operated that Ge-stell then refigured and relocated itself in the Althusserian interpellation — not (only), as one may propel, qua negative location of technical framing that will correspond to a supposedly enframing of a dominant ideology, but qua positive metaphor, as it were, being the positioning of contradictory positions via deconstruction of language itself — as "mütenakızların enkazı". Translation of texts (in the instance of Heidegger) as the interpretations of metaphors then rendered possible an exemplification of what the Althusserian deconstruction of text performed through the application of the Althusserian text metaphors to other philosophers' metaphors of writing. That said, by the example that this dissertation tried to give through the performativity of the texts in the example of Althusser's metaphors, it is hoped that other writings of other writers pose at least as much exemplarity as that of this dissertation for the translation of Althusser's writings to other writers' metaphors; and it is posed finally as a thesis — or if there is one, deferred and differed as the finality of the thesis — that: the performativity of the text itself exemplifies itself as the exemplification of the texts, etc.

Keywords: Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, décalage, interpellation, deconstruction