The metaphor of the knotted
thread is not a mere metaphor in Derridas homage to the work
of Emmanuel Levinas. His own essay, At this very moment in
this work here I am, is itself structured as a thread of textual
knots. 2 In this paper, I will
ask three questions of this work in order to understand how Derridas
work works to theorize the loop, the circle that loses
its way, and why looping is, for Derrida, an ethical practice. First
of all, what is Derridas aim, in threading this work of knots,
or, in other words, what is the intended end of his work? How does
Derrida work to achieve this aim, or, in other words, how does he
tie his knots? Finally, to what extent is Derridas intended
and final end achieved in this work of knots, or, in other words,
why is it that Derridas work succeeds only inasmuch as he
fails to fulfill his intention of paying homage?
In exploring these questions,
I will reveal how, in effect, Derridas work functions as a
theorization, in practice, of the deconstructive way of loop-ular
working; namely, the attempt to elude the eternal return of the
same, or, in this work, the valiant attempt not to give to Levinas
a work which simply repeats that which Levinas has already given
to us in his own work. The re-tied thread functions along similar
lines to that of a loop: the doubling of a portion of string so
as to leave an aperture between the parts through which another
line can be passed thus allowing a loop-link functioning.
3
The thread of knots and the loop-link chain as models of
working may be contrasted, respectively, with
the pure, un-knotted thread or the logo-centric movement of the
circle whose end is also its starting point. Derrida wants to say
that, inasmuch as both the thread of knots and the loop-link chain
reconfigure themselves as they progress temporally, each provide
an access to difference. For Derrida, the temporal emergence of
difference within the work is, in effect, the trace of a more primordial
and forgotten phenomenological experience the experience
of pure difference that Levinas wants to say doesnt
enter into that common time of clocks that makes the rendezvous
possible. 4To open onto
the experience of pure difference is, for Derrida, to approach the
ethical. We will see that, in order to approach ethical, the work
will need to continually re-work the configuration of its boundaries,
and, consequently, its signification, as time progresses.
5
I.
We find an answer to
the question of the aim or intended end of Derridas
work both in the more general motivation of the collection for which
Derridas article was originally written, and, more specifically,
in the question that haunts Derridas essay. In its French
original, Derridas work comprises part of an edited collection
of essays, Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas, or, in other words,
texts written for Emmanuel Levinas, devoted to him by those
who knew and loved Levinas and his work.6
Moreover, throughout the work, Derrida continually reflects on the
daunting obligation to respond both gratefully and adequately to
the pervasive ethical imperative of Levinass oeuvre, namely,
to open the door of the ego to the Other. In fact, Derridas
entire essay constitutes a reflection on the phrase He will
have obligated (il aura obligé), a phrase taken
from one of Levinass own works in reference to the primordial
obligation of the self to respond to the Other.7
In Derridas work, the Other who will have obligated Derridas
response, the He to whom Derrida is responding is, in
fact, Emmanuel Levinas.
It appears, then, that
Derrida intends to celebrate, in a spirit of gratefulness, the work
of Levinas. In other words, Derridas work has a precise and
determined end, namely, to give thanks to Levinas for the ethical
reminder explicit in his work: to open ones door to the Other.
The difficulty of this task, however, engenders a certain way of
working: the loop-ular form of the thread of knots.
II.
In responding to the
question of how Derrida goes about giving his thanks to Levinas
in the work, we need to reflect, first of all, on the nature of
the particular difficulty Derrida faces, and secondly, how he attempts
to overcome this difficulty by choosing a particular method of threading
his work and of tying his knots.
In line with many of
Derridas other works, the difficulty emerges in the form of
a paradox which, in this case, is specific to his task of thanking
Levinas. Derrida wishes to gratefully celebrate two aspects of Levinass
work. He prizes Levinass reminder that the ethical work is
that of the Saying rather than the Said. By the Saying, Levinas
means that when one finds oneself face to face with another (the
primordial phenomenological experience), the encounter
is not captured in that which can be Said of it using the language
of ontology and of constative description.8
Rather, the encounter is experienced as a strange and traumatic
exposure of oneself to the unknown Other, a Saying or giving
of oneself to the Other, without the possibility of the Other
being simply returned to something able to be Said.9
On the front cover of a eulogy written by Derrida for Levinas on
the event of Levinass death, there appears a picture of a
white room whose door is opened outwards.10
Significantly, the picture is taken from inside the white room,
from a point where one can glimpse something through
the open door. Similarly, the ethical relation of the self to the
other is that of an opening of oneself (a Saying of oneself) to
the Other in a gesture that welcomes the unknown Others absolute
alterity. The ethical relation is not a relation of knowledge whereby
the Other can be reduced to something known and Said. The latter
kind of relation might have been represented, say, by a picture
of the other person standing inside the white room of myself, a
room which has no door at all and in which I would discover the
Other as identical with myself. In this last image, Levinas and
Derrida would say that this other is not the Other of which they
are speaking, because this other is nothing Other than me. The room
is white, because, for Levinas, Greek philosophy is a philosophy
of white light, where light illumines the visible, and where the
visible is thought in terms of Being to be grasped, comprehended,
and thematized as the object of knowledge.11
Or, to use another metaphor used in Greek philosophy in conjunction
with that of white light, knowledge of the Other (which, I repeat,
is not the ethical relation) might be represented by the economy
of the circle whose circle is also conceived as a spot-light, in
which I can be taught nothing more than what I can already see,
within this spot, within my gaze. 12Derrida
particularly enjoys the Levinasian reminder that the ethical work,
the Saying or giving of oneself to the Other, is something that
escapes from the circle of restitution of the rendezvous.
13 In other words, the meeting the primordial
experience in which the self encounters the other cannot
be returned (restituted) to the self, as if to a rightful owner,
for comprehension.
Moreover, Derrida appreciates
Levinass privileged mode of working: the continual interruption
of the finitude of his own work.14
At first, it appears that even Levinas, despite his intentions,
will not be able to avoid describing the elusive ethical relation
in terms of the Said, as an object of knowledge. As such, it appears
that Levinas himself cannot avoid failing in the ethical task. However,
Derrida points out that the very way in which Levinas writes disrupts
the inevitability of his own textual Said with a Saying via the
use of ambiguity and ambivalence. In other words, Levinass
description of the encounter (the Said) twists away from what it
earlier appeared to say such that the Said appears inadequate to
the strange experience of the Other. This irreducible inadequacy,
for Derrida, constitutes an openness (the Saying) or, put differently,
a gesture towards that which cannot be Said. Consequently, Derrida
thinks that, in Levinass work, the Saying is knotted
into the pure thread of the Said. Comprehension is no longer assured
because the text is both Said and Saying: the text appears neither
frank nor transparent but rather, suggestive. Thus, it is also Levinass
method of working that Derrida wants to gratefully celebrate, a
method whereby the text is not easily reduced to comprehension as
if to a rightful owner. 15
It is here that the paradox
emerges. If Derrida was to give thanks to Levinas by commemorating
his work and re-affirming its value, then he would no longer celebrate
the ethical structure that Levinas sets to work. Imagine that, instead
of writing his thread of knots, Derrida had simply said, Levinass
work comprises an account of the eternal obligation of the ethical
imperative, namely, be open to the Other. For this valuable account,
I return to Levinas my thanks. First of all, Derrida would
be assuming that he had understood Levinass account completely
and correctly, thereby betraying the idea that any text (Levinass
included) is inadequate to the phenomenal experience of the Other.
Moreover, simple celebration simply repeats, returning (restituting)
to Levinas that which is his, no longer being open to the Other
of Levinass own text. In other words, Derrida would be betraying
the Levinasian idea that every text must fail in some way inasmuch
as its Said betrays the Saying. Additionally, in returning thanks
to Levinas in exchange for the account of the imperative, Derrida
would have, in effect, remained within the economic circle of giving
and returning, thereby annulling any further obligation on his part.
The scores would have been leveled. However, such reciprocity would
betray the idea that the Levinasian imperative requires an eternal
obligation outside of the economic circle. Thus, if Derridas
homage to Levinas is to be ethical, he must somehow create a work
of thanks which celebrates the value of Levinass ethical imperative
without at the same time betraying it, in the aforementioned ways,
by this thanks. To return to the contrast made at the start of the
paper between the loop and the circle, simple celebration would
work according to the logic of the circle: an eternal return of
the Same whose starting point is also its end which, following Levinass
account, would not be ethical. Clearly, this is not what Derrida
wants to do.
Given this difficulty,
Derrida undertakes to write a faulty text: he repeats
his thanks in various ways which, on each repetition,
fail in some way. Using again my earlier metaphor, the circle that
loses its way is, for Derrida, an ethical practice. He shows, first,
that it is only if the giving of thanks is faulty, if there remains
ingratitude on his part, that the ethical Saying can be maintained.
Without ingratitude, if the giving of thanks were faultless,
it would simply celebrate the Said of Levinass text, affronting
Levinass idea that the ethical relation is beyond
knowledge by claiming, in fact, to know and like Levinass
work. Thus, Derrida works to give wrongly his thanks
to Levinas so as to avoid betraying the ethical structure of Levinass
work. In the paragraphs that follow, we will see that the faulty
work is structured as a thread, severed by its faults and re-tied
such that its line becomes a chain of knots.
If we consider the temporal
moment of this event obliging Derridas giving of thanks (that
is, if we ask the question when is it, in fact, that this
event will have occurred?), we can see why Derrida names
this event of obligation (the event in which He will have
obligated) a strange event: in fact, at the moment
of its being Said, the event of the encounter with the Other who
obligates me (that which Levinas would call the Saying) will have
already passed.16 This strange
event underwrites Derridas entire attempt to thank.
On one hand, that he will have obligated is the condition
for the possibility of giving at all, inasmuch as thanking is positioned
as a response: Derrida is obligated by the strange event. As we
will see, however, the inability to place this event in which he
will have obligated makes the giving always faulty inasmuch
as Derridas thanks appears continually misdirected.
Derridas failure
to give to Levinas his thanks (which emerge as knots in the pure
thread, and loop-linkings in a movement beyond the circle) takes
at least three forms: misdirection of thanks, ungrateful giving
of thanks, and the returning of thanks in the form of
return of property, neither of which can be said to properly constitute
a pure giving of thanks to Levinas. First, the work
misdirects thanks, it fails write straight, no
longer delivering thanks straight to Levinas.
17Misdirection occurs because the event that
obligates the response is no longer present at the moment in which
thanks is given. A question arises (with implications for the works
place within time): when, exactly, is this moment in which the obligation
will have been located? This strange future anterior
the will have cannot be easily reduced
to a clearly designated moment. In fact, this is why Derrida wants
to say that the inability to reduce the future anterior to a designated
event indicates a problem of language more generally. Where we commonly
conceive language to capture something (Being) in the word, we see
that the future anterior remains irreducible to this economy. That
the future anterior does not capture a designated event is expressed
by Derridas comments that it designates within
language that which remains most irreducible to the economy of
the dominant interpretation of language.18
In this sense, Derridas thanks are misdirected because the
moment of obligation in which he owes his thanks cannot be clearly
located.
A further and most interesting
misdirection occurs: if we are loyal to Levinass work, we
can no longer be sure whom this He is
who will have obligated. In this context, the He in
He will have obligated seems to refer clearly to Levinas,
the one to whom Derrida renders his thanks. However, within Derridas
context, that of Levinass work and the precise end of giving
thanks, grateful celebration of Levinass own work engenders
a strange effect: given what Levinass work says of the ethical
work (or, as Derrida calls it, the Work), the He, by
implication, no longer clearly refers to Levinas. Derrida needs
only to cite Levinas to produce this slippage, recalling that Levinas
tells us that the referent of the pronoun Heor
Il in Frenchremains obscured, the Other
of Being.19 However, although
concealed, the enigma is not a general neutrality. Capitalizing
his Il Levinas elevates this unknown to
the level of a proper name; a name naming something specific, by
which he means a non-neutral, unique, singular, anonymity. In standing
in for the name, the pronoun recalls this elusive anonymity (he,
she, it), and yet, as capitalized, it recalls a unique, specific
difference. In Levinass language, Il refers to
the specific and enigmatic Other who founds the ethical relation,
constituting the first act of obligation: to respond. So when Derrida
celebrates and copies Levinass work faithfully, we cannot
be sure that his gift of thanks, delivered to the Il
or He in the He will have obligated, is
actually Levinas. This is why Derrida writes that the event
he will have obligated will have precisely defied within
language this power of formalization. 20
The problem: the target cannot be formalized within language, and
thus, in directing the gift to an Il, always already
past, the gift is misdirected if intended for Levinas.
By way of reminder at
this point, Derrida wants to produce the faulty gift in order respond
ethically to what Levinas has said about ethics. If Derridas
work of thanks is to approach and welcome the Other (the ethical
relation), he must be very careful neither to repeat what Levinas
has already said of the ethical relation (for this would be to stay
within the circle of the Same), nor to render simple thanks to Levinas
(for this would be to remain within the reciprocal economy of gift-return).
Rather, in order that the thanks be ethical, Derrida must show both
how Levinass text fails, and how Derridas own text fails
to return thanks. By committing the above faults, Derrida hopes
to offer a work of thanks which remains ethical inasmuch as it moves
beyond the circle of simple thanking.
Derridas second
faulty thanks is the failure to give thanks at all.
In a sense, he says Thanks, but
which is more
like a polite kind of refusal. Ungratefully, Derrida finds
fault, pointing out that even Levinas cannot avoid his own Said
whose nature, moreover, must be considered unethical. When read
by Derrida, the fecund exposure of self to other in the Saying is
consistently presented by Levinas as analogous to the relation of
a father (as self), with his son (as Other), inasmuch as the relation
is one of proximity and difference. Ungraciously, Derrida
wonders, how can one mark as masculine the very thing said
to be anterior or even foreign to sexual difference?
21He draws out another Other of Levinass work, that of
she, elle inasmuch as the enigma who will
have obligated might well have been a woman. In doing so,
he quotes the discourse of Catherine Chalier, critical of the place
of woman and the feminine in Levinass
work who notices that the difficulty confronting him [Levinas]
of using the Greek site in order to make a thought which comes from
elsewhere be understood, is not perhaps foreign to a certain mutism
of the feminine. 22
If Derrida were to offer simple thanks, the Said of Levinass
own text would be reiterated again. Through careful criticism Derrida
hopes to open Levinass text to its own Other. In this sense,
Derridas gift, his work, is ungratefully critical of Levinass
work for the sake of Levinasian ethics.23
Curiously, the final
fault is that which Derrida hoped to avoid by writing the faulty
text: in returning thanks, he, in effect, returns property
to Levinas and no longer gives a gift of thanks. This
point is fairly complex. In committing fault, Derrida wants to avoid
returning to Levinas that which is already his because this would
constitute the return of the Same represented by the
circle whose line ends where it begins. Instead, Derrida hoped that,
in knotting the thread or, in creating a chain of loops to inscribe
the new into the work, he could work ethically, like
Levinas, and thereby avoid remaining within the circle of the Same.
However, the problem is that this very mode of writing is already
Levinas: when Levinas writes, he wants to disrupt his Said
by exposure to the Other in the Saying. Thus, in Derridas
writing of the faulty textthe text by which Derrida hoped
to sever himself from the Said of Levinass work, to avoid
returning propertyDerrida, despite his good intentions, fails
to be ethical by writing in full accord with that which Levinas
says of the ethical Work. For it is the fault which is ethical for
Levinas, the fault as the severing of the works coherency
by exposure to the Other. Derrida sees this problem as a trap.
Beyond any possible restitution, there would be need for my
gesture to operate without debt, in absolute ingratitude. The trap
is that I then pay homage, the only possible homage, to his work,
to what his work says of the Work. 24In
other words, at the very moment when we think that Derrida might,
finally, have succeeded in writing as Levinas thinks ethical writing
should write (which is to say, ensuring that each repetition of
thanks fails to conform to the normal model
of thanking), Derrida in fact fails again by copying Levinass
own method of faulting.
III.
We find ourselves approaching
the final question that I wanted to ask of Derridas thread
of knots. To what extent, then, does Derrida actually achieve his
end? Is Derridas work, in fact, a gift of thanks to Levinas?
The answer is both yes and no. Derrida is aware that, in spite of
his good intentions and conscientious work, his work cannot achieve
its determined end of giving thanks in any simple manner. The point
to be emphasized is, however, that the different modes of failure
are not equivalent. In other words, certain ways of failing
are better than others.
We find an explanation,
of sorts, in the phrase most recently quoted. It is worth repeating
again. Beyond any possible restitution, says Derrida,
there would be need for my gesture to operate without debt,
in absolute ingratitude. The trap is that I then pay homage,
the only possible homage, to his work, to what his work says
of the Work. 25 The
first thing to notice is that Derridas various failures in
giving thanks in fact constitute, together, the successful giving
of thanks. This is because absolute ingratitude prevents the possibility
of mere restitution within the economic circle of exchange. In so
doing, Derrida gives to Levinas the only kind of work that Levinas
thinks is ethical: the work with faults, the thread of knots. This
success, however, is a trap because, despite all his effort
not to do so, Derrida ends up simply repeating Levinass own
ethical method of working which, as simple restitution, is no longer
ethical, nor indeed a gift. Thus, the second thing to
note is that, although whatever method Derrida chooses will fail
to attain his end, the more complex manner of failing (his thread
of knots) is the only possible homage. In other words, although
the ethical work also fails to give thanks, it remains the best
of the unsuccessful alternatives. Speaking in metaphors again, the
thread of knots is better than the pure thread and the circle that
loses its way (the loop-link chain) is better than the circle.
First of all, the most
obvious manner of thanking, giving thanks by simply and obviously
praising Levinass work, assumes a fully determined context
and instantiates what Derrida calls a dominant interpretation.
26 Within a determined context,
the giving of thanks might easily be Said and clearly understood
as such, for example, I, Derrida, deliver thanks to He
Levinas for his work. However, the inevitability of fault
resides in acknowledging the indeterminacy of context
in a given temporal moment. 27On
Levinass account, the dominant interpretation is more faulty
because it forgets the very forgotten experience that underwrites
it (the face-to-face) by forcibly closing its context and by dogmatically
claiming utter success in the moment of thanking.
Moreover, although more
sensitive to the indeterminacy of context, it would be naïve
to think, with conviction, that consciously faulting in order to
give thanks, in a roundabout way, constitutes successful thanks,
for such a strategy copies, in practice, that which Levinas work
says of the work.
Finally, Derrida prefers
the admission that he cannot but fail, but that, in committing the
fault, the Said does not simply remain the same. The faulty text
complicates our understanding of the work, severing, momentarily,
the dominant interpretation, and remembering momentarily the forgotten
Other. The important point to draw from all this is that this admission
of failure does not engender resignation to failure but rather,
incentive to undertake the ethical Work. For Levinas, as
for Derrida, the forgotten groundnamely, the phenomenological
encounter with the other in the face-to-face, an encounter irreducible
to the Said which uses the language of ontology, Being, finitude,
closureis that which drives all ethical work, be it the work
of Derridas in giving thanks to Levinas, art as art-work and
a working, culture as a work progressing in time, and politics as
a work which more or less works but can never fully work for all
and their others.
IV.
In the space that remains,
I would like to draw out, more explicitly, the theoretical implications
of Derridas ethics of workingof knotting the thread
and of looping a chainfor the configuration of the boundaries
of the work in time. It has already emerged that such implications
are inseparable from ethical considerations because the ethical
work is driven to seek the forgotten primordial phenomenological
experience of the Others irreducible singularity. As Levinas
explains, this experience is lost in the temporal moment of comprehension,
knowledge, thematization and judgment. The strange Relation to the
Other that the ethical Work seeks doesnt enter into
that common time of clocks that makes the rendezvous possible. It
is derangement. 28The
ethical work (the thread of knots) seems, for Derrida, more capable
of leaving a trace of this forgotten experience within the work
itself. All this has already been explored.
As concerns the implication
of looping for the configuration of the works limits in time,
as opposed to the work where the gift of thanks is simply Said (Thanks),
we find some clues in that which Derrida says of the work in its
three senses. 29First, we
have work correlating with the French word ouvrage:
a construct or product of work such as a book, a painting, a gift
of thanks or even, a decision. One could say that ouvrage
names the final result (completed at a moment in time) of the activity
of a writer, artist, or politician, for example. We have, also,
work, as uvre: both, work as creation (création)in
similarity to ouvrageand work as activity
(travail). As activity, the work takes time. Finally, we
have the ethical Work (uvre, capitalized) of which
we have been speaking: the work of looping and of knotting. The
ethical Work is work in both senses: as activity and product. As
travail (the activity of working in time) the ethical Work
seeks to re-discover, as if one could, the always already
lost primordial phenomenological experience of the face-to-face
(an encounter which is not within our time, but, strangely, will
have been). The ethical Work as création (created
construct) takes form as a trace of the lost encounter.
Using Levinass vocabulary, we would say that uvre
is the trace of the Saying in the Said. Using Derridas vocabulary,
we would say that uvre is knotted into
the thread of the work. The emergence of the trace, then, is an
emergence of difference in time. We can see, then, that the implications
of the ethical Work (as uvre) involves a morphing of
the work as it progresses temporally inasmuch as it accepts within
itself the trace of the Other such that it no longer remains the
Same. 30Quoting Derrida,
at this point, will give us a feel of how he refers to the Work
in his work. The Work, such as it is at work, wrought,
in the work of Emmanuel Levinas
does not returnfrom the
originto the Same. Elsewhere he writes: That is
its dislocation: the work
re-marks in each atom of the Said,
a marking effraction of the Saying, a Saying no longer a present
infinitive, but already a past of the trace, a performance (of the)
wholly other.31
Morphing and dislocation,
then, are the key words that might be said to describe the effects,
in time, of the loop-ular ethical Work in the work. The configuration
of boundaries of the work, then, must themselves morph, as time
progresses, to accept, somehow, within itself the trace of the Other.
By playing the game of essence, that beyond [the beyond of
verbalization] leaves a chain of traces
yet without allowing
itself to be included, rather deforming the curvature of its
natural edges [bords]. 32In
other words, as each new Work (or knot, or link) is added, the works
structure morphs, the curvature of its edges or boundaries are deformed:
it no longer returns, simply, to the Same.
Moreover, though boundaries
will be modified in this way, morphing cannot be so disruptive as
to constitute something utterly different because then it would
no longer comprise part of the Work. Even the moment of revolution
must retain a line of continuity with its peoples particular
history in order to count as a change within history.
The chain of loop-links is, after all, one chain. We are reminded,
here, of a recurring idea present in Derridas earlier work:
the idea of iterability where iteration names the recognition that
every repetition is an alteration, where alteration is differing
without changing into something else. The Work could not
succeed (and I quote this earlier work) if its formulation
did not repeat a coded or iterable utterance, or in
other words, if the formula I pronounce in order to open a meeting,
launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as conforming
with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some
way as a citation. 33
In other words, if Derridas work of giving thanks is to constitute
some kind of successful giving of thanks, it must, nevertheless
conform to a certain model of thanking, whilst remaining (for the
sake of ethics) irreducible to this model. Again, difference requires
temporal progression for its emergence because a citation
is only a citation inasmuch as it cites an existing model, a model
that already exists in time. Although Derrida would say that every
usage of a sign, word, image or work etc. are themselves repetitions
and alterations to the extent that they conform to an iterable
model and are comprehended in new and future contexts, the limitations
of what we have heard him call the dominant interpretation
are the very boundaries that he hopes the Work will morph, in time.
34
In completing this paper,
I will return to the metaphor of the knotted thread referred to
at the outset. Quoting Derrida, The metaphor of the retied
thread (fil renoué)
belongs to a very singular
fabric, a relation (this time in the sense of a récit,
a narrative, a relation of the same which resumes [reprend]
the interruption of the Relation to the Other within its knots)
by which the philosophical logos reappropriates itself, resumes
into its web the history of all its ruptures.
35
The morphing occurs as the emergence, in time, of a trace of pure
differencea trace of the extra-temporal relationwithin
the work. The circle, whose starting point is also its end, cannot
include within itself this encounter. On the other hand, the thread
of knots or the chain of loops has the capacity, in Derridas
view, to contain within itself the trace, at least, of the Other,
by opening itself, via repetition as alteration (or by thanking
and failing), onto this strange encounter, this beyond of Being,
engendering a reconfiguration, in time, of the dimensions of the
work. No one can doubt that Derridas own work has continually
reconfigured itself in the attempt to give thanks to
Levinas.
Miriam Bankovsky is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at University
of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Her doctoral thesis puts
the work of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas into dialogue with
that of John Rawls on the subject of justice. She can be reached
at miriam.bankovsky@unsw.edu.au.