A few weeks ago I did a couple of posts over at Arbitrary Marks. This is a shortened version of a longer, more cofusing response to ck’s post. I apologize for its lopsidedness, I am looking for a blog post here, not an essay. Please ask questions if you are confused. I’ll try to answer them.
One caveat: I don’t pretend to be an expert on anything I am writing here, but I do promise I have thought long and hard about it.
Derrida, in Of Grammatology writes:
Thus, with this epoch, reading and writing, the production or interpretation of signs, the text in general as fabric of signs, allow themselves to be confined within secondariness. They are preceded by a truth, or a meaning already constituted by and within the element of the logos. Even when the thing, the “referent,” is not immediately related to the logos of a creator God where it began by being the spoken/thought sense, the signified has at any rate an immediate relationship with the logos in general (finite or infinite), and a mediated one with the signifier, that is to say with the exteriority of writing. When it seems to go otherwise, it is because a metaphoric mediation has insinuated itself into the relationship and has simulated immediacy; the writing of truth in the soul, opposed by Phaedrus (278a) to bad writing (writing in the “literal” [propre] and ordinary sense, “sensible” writing, “in space”), the book of Nature and God’s writing, especially in the Middle Ages; all that functions as metaphor in these discourses confirms the privilege of the logos and founds the “literal” meaning then given to writing: a sign signifying a signifier an eternal verity, eternally thought and spoken in the proximity of a present logos. The paradox to which attention must be paid is this: natural and universal writing, intelligible and nontemporal writing, is thus named by metaphor. A writing that is sensible, finite, and so on, is designated as writing in the literal sense; it is thus thought on the side of culture, technique, and artifice; a human procedure, the ruse of being accidentally incarnated or of a finite creature. Of course, this metaphor remains enigmatic and refers to a “literal” meaning of writing as the first metaphor. This “literal” meaning is yet unthought by the adherents of this discourses. It is not, therefore, a matter of inverting the literal meaning and the figurative meaning but of determining the “literal” meaning of writing as metaphoricity itself.
There is quite a bit there and the reader would do well to read it again before you continue on (even if you read it twice before reading this sentence). You would also do well to read from 278a in the Phaedrus and recognize that the story of Thoth is a story in the story.
I do not understand everything in that little paragraph–at least not all of the implications. I have suspicions my tangled assumptions stem from my confusions–and its implications for violence narratives–in my earlier posts. Essentially, Derrida is trying to sketch the genealogy of writing in Western thought, starting with philosophy’s Father, Plato. The “discourses” he refers to is the Great Discourse, the Great Conversation of Western Philosophy. And, if we grant his conclusion, “It is not, therefore, a matter of inverting the literal meaning and the figurative meaning but of determining the “literal” meaning of writing as metaphoricity itself.” Then we are forced to talked of Being/being (i.e., ontological/Metaphysical studies) from the Heiddegarian posture Being under erasure, or Being, since the immediacy of the referent/signifier is ruptured; there is no simple arrow to the referent, no “one to one” correspondence between a vocable and the signified: it is an approximation, a best guest, not “certain.” (The best analogy I have found for Being is negative theology, i.e., in speaking of God’s goodness we do violence to his goodness. Instead it is “Supra-Good,” a Good which cannot be described.) Writing–under the Western philosophic tradition, thus, effaces itself.
The practical implication is the (best) rhetoric (i.e., narrative) rules (dominates?). If there is only approximation, then there cannot be a final discussion of Truth or Being as Western Philosophy has described according to its own understanding of language (i.e., description). Some have claimed, consequently, that analytic philosophy becomes an impossibility–as far as its postivistic goals are concerned–since the “deep,” the abstract, is either too distant (Heiddeger’s ontology of Being) or non-existent (the denial of both the traditional ontology of Being and Being: nihilism).
This leaves with two possible definitions of “violence:”
- 1. From The denial of the ontology of Being and the affirmation of traditional ontology (be it Platonic or Aristotelean):
A knowable discontinuity between the reality and the expression, treatment, articulation, etc.
2. From the affirmation of the ontology of Being and the denial of its more traditional form or the denial of both:
Two competing narratives describing the same problem or situation which, in turn, negates its Other and can never finally be resolved (i.e., knowledge of discontinuity is impossible).
And so we get to the heart of the matter: the confusion about violence. The student of philosophy, I hope, should clearly see that all of this discussion about violence is itself a Nietzschean discussion. The question of Will to Power is the heart of the postmodern dillemma, it is the source of violence. My confusion, if my limited reading of Nietzsche is correct, is the same as Nietzsche’s. I have always reckoned that on the one hand he critiques philosophy–particularly metaphysical philosophy–under the rubric of our first definition, but then demands “Truth” falls under the second. I suspect (and only suspect) that scholarship would bear this out. Regardless, the postmodern critique is the application of the will to power on itself: those who buy into the Nietchzean perspective have themselves be “dominated by another’s will to power” and it is this tension, rooted in the second definition, which is most immediate and demands attention.
Simply put, whether or not you agree with Nietzsche, there are fundamentally differing perspectives of what truth is in the West and this finally stems from some sort of metaphysic. The two possibilities that the history of philosophy has granted us could be described as ontologies of peace or violence (These are terms I first discovered in David Bentley Harts book, The Beauty of The Infinite and are apparently employed by folks in the Radical Orthodoxy camp).
So, when I write, “until philosophy can comfortably situate itself in the difficulties of the pluralisms which these narratives of violence draw strength from, it will not progress and has no business talking safely about metaphysics,” I am speaking of the “difficulties of pluralisms” as violence between competing narratives (“Competing narratives” is, in a certain sense, a tautology since narratives which differ, by that very difference, negate each other) whereas the philosophy’s comfort must be understood through the faux-peace of the Heracletian Turn, a tension which falls under definition number one.
An ontology of violence would basically argue that Being constantly effaces itself (which is why language as an expression of beings does so). one often hears that “fiction is the new truth” and the violence ontology is its most basic expression, as Heraclitus said “Changing, it rests.” If this is so, then Being and Truth are in constant flux (do we see Nietzsche here, I should think so) and Pluralism’s “strength” its validity is the (perceived?) legitimacy of the claim. Faux-peace, then, is the inversion of violence for peace, progession for nonprogression, change for status quo. Despite classical claims (and according to the above perspective), the mind does not crave rest but requires consistent pressure and force to know. It is fractured knowledge which can never be resolved because:
a.) (Classical Skepticism) True knowledge cannot be determined because we can never know what continuity between expression and truth is
or
b.) (Consequences of Nietzsche) True knowledge cannot be determined because there cannot be continuity between between expression and truth because there is NO SUCH THING as Truth qua firm foundation (i.e., God, Being, etc.)
So, if we take my comments of phobosphic humanity to be true, I would argue it stems from the commodification of ideas: we name something true because it “appeals to us.” Appeal, in itself, is not bad but coupled with phobosophism it can become a problem. In the case of Christianity, I think many of the ideas are ridiculous and offensive but for some bloody reason–despite their lack of appeal–I believe the bible to be true. But to make this claim “rationally” yet give other perspectives there fair due, I would have to appeal to something higher, some sort of metaphysic (via Reason) to moderate the perspectives (or so it seems) lest we fall back into the clashing rhetorics (contra Reason) of differing narratives. In short, the consequences of Nietzsche moves us away from rational discourses and proofs and prima face justifications towards rhetoric and political spin which assumes a latent or hidden ontology of violence (the Will to Power’s assumption). Pluralism’s strength disarms Reason. While this is not bad, it is dangerous.
I suppose my posture is mostly rhetorical at this point. I don’t really have a clear solution, just a concern that we think and operate, particularly academics, on a level of utility that does not do justice to our ideas. We don’t live them, we just trade and bludgeon with them. We shouldn’t forget that in a capitalistic systems money is power and, therefore, economic metaphors are shaped by this perspective. When I speak of “commodification”, I am speaking of more the bare bones “utility.” I want to bring all “commodification’s” connotations in to stark view.