Derrida-Husserl-Freud: The Trace of Transference

The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1993) Vol. =I, Supplement

Derrida-Husserl-Freud: The Trace of Transference

Rudolf Bernet Husserl -Archives, Leu ven

Deconstruction is a mode of reading and writing which in its active form is a reply to Husserl’s complaints about the passivity of reading and writing.’ It involves a philosophical responsibility tha t is a response to the appeal of a text. In Derrida’s early writings it is the metaphysics of presence that is mainly at stake in such a deconstruction. This notion of presence is intimately linked with concepts such as origin, (self-) consciousness, intuition, and present time. Husserl and Freud have a common interest in the archeology of meaning and propose a (different) explanation of t he origin of consciousness. Moving between Husserl and Freud, Derrida leaps over the differences between Husserl and Freud and follows the trace of “diffbrance” in Husserl’s transcendental consciousness as well as in Freud’s unconscious. Consciousness and the unconscious appear less different when “diffbrance” is shown to articulate both Husserl’s account of temporality and re-presentation and Freud’s distinction between primary and secondary processes.

In his Seminar on Transference, Lacan suggests tha t psy- choanalytic transference means speaking to somebody while thinking of a third person who is the true addressee of what is said. According to his interpretation of Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades addresses Socrates in order to seduce Agathon.* In this paper I try to show tha t Derrida discusses Husserl with Freud in mind. Transference also means “passage,n and I shall t ry to show tha t “passage” is indeed a key term in Derrida’s reading of both Husserl and Freud. Husserl’s account of the expression of a meaning and Freud’s theory concerning the representation of the unconscious in the manifest content of the dream are examples of such a passage. Thwarting the topology of metaphysical opposition, passage is a figure of “diffbrance.” Eventually, this paper will deal with a third form of transference, i.e., the form of transference involved in metaphor. Metaphors transfer meaning and play with the metaphysical distinction between a proper and a n improper meaning. Freud’s use of the metaphor of writing is taken seriously by Derrida and becomes a n invitation to transfer the meaning of writing to archi-writing. Freud’s unconscious as

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well as Husserl’s re-presentational consciousness lend themselves to such an interpretation in terms of archi-writing.

The trace of transference in Derrida’s writings on Husserl and Freud can best be followed by using two almost contemporaneous texts: Speech and Phenomena3 and “Freud and the Scene of Writing.”4 We will also take into account “To Specu- late On ‘ F r e ~ d ” ’ ~ and the “Introduction” to Husserl’s On the Origin of Geometry.6 Le problbme de la genbse dans la philosophie de Husserl,’ however, falls outside of the scope of this paper. The investigation of the transference between Husserl and Freud does not allow for a proper discussion of eidetic and transcendental reduction, the genesis of the transcendental subject, the distinction between empirical and transcendental history and other similar issues extensively dealt with in this first text by Derrida on Husserl. It is also clear that in Le problbme de la gentse the third person involved in Derrida’s discussion of Husserl was someone other than Freud, i.e., HegeL8

The advantages of combining the discussion of Derrida’s reading of Husserl with a consideration of Derrida’s texts on Freud immediately appear when one compares Husserl’s notion of “expression“ with Freud’s account of the dream.

In Derrida’s interpretation of Husserl, the expressive sign is an external representative of an inner thought or meaning and of the subject’s “will to say.” The expression is therefore indeed a matter of “transference” or transportation of a content of thought into a word and also of an inner word or concept into the world. This movement presupposes a topology that is essentially determined by the metaphysical division and opposition between the purity of transcendental consciousness and the impurity of the empirical world. According to Derrida it is the task of phenomenological reduction to show how the word and the world depend on transcendental consciousness and its self-givenness. The transportation or “passage” involved in expression must therefore be conceived a s a one-directional movement from a realm of originary being toward a realm of derived or secondary being. This movement is governed by a logic of representation that is more properly a “logic of substitution.” According t o this logic, the expressive sign takes the place of an intentional meaning that exists prior to and inde- pendently of this sign. For Husserl, only the expressive sign is a true sign because unlike other signs (such as indicative signs) it truthfully represents its meaning: nothing but its meaning and its meaning in its ideal form of presence. The expressive sign is thus more than a faithful translation, it is the first manifestation of a thought in a world to which it does not originally belong.

This interpretation of Husserl’s essential distinction between expressive signs and indicative signs by Derrida in

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Speech and Phenomena is well known, and so is the critical response to which it has given rise. Derrida has been criticized for confusing Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology with Cartesian dualism or, more convincingly, for subsuming all essential (or transcendental) distinctions that occur in Husserl under the distinction between expressive and indicative signs. Those who criticize Derrida in the name. of a better understanding of Husserl should, however, not forget about the phenomenological epoch6 (of which, by the way, Derrida has a much deeper understanding than the eidetic and transcendental reduction). They should suspend their judgment until they have considered the rest of Derrida’s argument, which is much more subtle and difficult to understand. Derrida at first seems to perform a mere reversal of Husserl’s priorities, but i t soon appears that this is only a preparation for a further displacement of his investigation to the nature of the sign.

Reversing Husserl’s account of the expressive sign, Derrida wants to show that transcendental consciousness always needs signs in order to be present to itself. The self-presence of the subject, rather than being the origin, comes about in a detour and with delay. True signs are indicative rather than expressive signs because it belongs to the essence of a sign to remain different and distant from the signified. Since the signifier depends on other signifiers when referring to the signified, the logic of substitution is at a loss in both the relation between signifier and signified, and in the relation among different signifiers. This results in a displacement of the problem where original presence as such becomes a questionable notion: the presence of a “transcendental signified” as well as the presence of the signifier becomes questionable. Transcendental consciousness is neither fully present in itself nor in its representation by means of a sign and the sign is present by giving way to other signs, thus effacing itself. Derrida makes use of the notions of “trace,” “(archi-) writing,” and “diff6rance” when he tries to explain this flickering representation of a presence tha t is indefinitely deferred. He thereby invites u s to think presence as a form of promise that , while being born out of representation, is at the same time removed from and deferred by it.

A brief comparison with Derrida’s reading of Freud’s theory of the dream can help us to understand this better. This detour and this transference of the problem might be the most direct way into a discussion of Derrida’s contention tha t the voice of consciousness investigated by Husserl is inhabited by the alterity of original inscriptions.

It is well known t h a t for Freud the dream is a matter of both expression and language. The manifest content of the dream expresses a n unconscious “thought” which is invested by the energy of a n unconscious desire. Jus t as in Husserl,

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this expression accomplishes a transportation of a meaning from one location to another, it is a transference from one region of being into another. The psycho-analytical distinction between the unconscious thought of the dream and its preconscious content is no less metaphysical than the phenomenological distinction between transcendental consciousness and the empirical world. For Freud too, the unconscious meaning can appear only when being transported into a domain that is foreign to its true nature. The original meaning manifests itself elsewhere and with delay; the primary processes of the unconscious submit themselves to the rules of the secondary processes in order to allow for the manifestation of their (hidden) meaning. Here again, the expression seems to be governed by a logic of substitution or “translati~n.”~

It is not surprising then that Derrida uses the same strategy in his reading of Freud and of Husserl. He shows in particular tha t in Freud the unconscious thought or meaning depends as much on its expression in the manifest content of the dream as consciousness depends on the unconscious. This reversal leads to a critique of the logic of substitution and con- secutively to a displacement of the concepts of presence and representation. Not only is the unconscious thought never present in itself, it also is never fully present in its representation by means of the manifest content of the dream. The transference of a meaning from the unconscious to the preconscious both leaps over the borders of the two different psychic sys- tems and deepens the gap between them. Primary processes and secondary processes neither coincide nor act quite inde- pendently from each other. The manifest content of a dream is governed by secondary processes as well as by primary processes, and the distinction between unconscious representations of things and preconscious representations of words becomes undecidable.

At this point, I am, however, less interested in working out these similarities between Derrida’s reading of Husserl and of Freud, than in investigating what they can contribute to a better understanding of Derrida’s account of Husserl’s concept of consciousness. The most striking feature of our comparison is indeed that Husserl’s transcendental consciousness is put in parallel with Freud’s unconscious. This unexpected parallelism deserves to be explored further and my paper basically has no other goal than to indicate some directions for such an explora- tion.

Unlike Husserl’s transcendental consciousness, Freud’s unconscious is directly associated with the use of signs and writing. The unconscious thought represented by a dream owes much of its content to the regressive investment of mnemic- traces. These are the most primitive and unchanging elements in the unconscious. When referring to these traces, Freud quite

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naturally uses scriptural metaphors such as “inscription,” “transcription (Umschrift), ” and “writing.” Derrida takes these metaphors seriously and thereby also sheds light on Freud’s metaphysics of presence. For Derrida, the metaphor of writing is the most proper definition of the unconscious because the unconscious is metaphorical and scriptural in its very nature, i.e., i ts very being consists in being transported by means of signs tha t a re more properly to be called “traces.” Since the origin of the unconscious is located in traces, its very nature is to be originally reproductive and repetitive. Its presence and being is inseparable from processes of representation. These unconscious traces exist only in the manifold and every trace is caught and wrought with other traces in a web of condensa- tions and displacements. Derrida calls this web “archi-writing”: it is a writing that produces the origin while reproducing it and it is truly a writing in that unlike the voice it does not lend itself to a logic of representative substitution. The writing tha t constitutes the preconscious or manifest content of the dream is a non-phonetic writing that is a rewriting or a transcription of the archi-writing of the unconscious. Thus, the unconscious and the preconscious result from writing rather than being ju s t secondarily represented by i t . Writing i s sheer transference (Derrida says: “diffbrance”) in tha t it circulates between the unconscious and the preconscious without having any location of i ts own. Instead of inhabiting any definitely circumscribed (metaphysical) space, writing rather creates its own space in its movement of “spacing (espacement).”

However sketchy this evocation of Derrida’s discussion of Freud’s notion of the unconscious might be, it should not sound too unfamiliar to the reader of Speech and Phenomena. The main thesis of this text is precisely that the self-presence of Husserl’s transcendental consciousness is inhabited by or, rather, produced and deferred by traces at the same time. The best illustration of such a trace which produces a presence while manifesting its original loss and impossibility is the retention of a present now-point in consciousness. In Derrida’s understanding, retention is not a process tha t keeps a former original present present despite its fading into the past. It is rather the first givenness of a present now which can only appear with delay. A pure now, instead of being the “original source-point” of the present (as Husserl claims), is something impossible: it would lack all temporal qualification and dis- tinctness. Retention is therefore indeed a “trace” or an “original supplement” tha t produces with delay tha t to which it is said to be added. The trace is thus a form of original alterity tha t cannot be reduced because it is inseparably entangled with the self-givenness of the present.

All this becomes clearer and more relevant when one considers the self-givenness of the present that characterizes self-

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consciousness. In Modern Philosophy the self-consciousness of the subject was believed to be the most original form of presence. The presence of other subjects, of ideal meanings, of ideal and real objects, and of the empirical world was compared with and derived from the full and immediate presence of the subject to itself in a present moment. If, however, the present self-presence of the subject is accomplished (or rather deferred) by means of traces, then it involves a form of alterity tha t unlike the alterity of other subjects, objects of thought and sensuous experience, and the empirical world cannot be considered to be foreign and external to the subject. Derrida even suggests that this alterity inherent in the self-presence of the subject undermines the former distinction between inti- mate and exterior forms of otherness. Once there is an open- ing in the skin of the self-present subject, the separation between the inner and the outer becomes less obvious. Here again, one could draw a parallel with Freud’s presentation of the “psychic apparatus” in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

Thus, nothing is simply and immediately present in an instantaneous now-point; the present now-point is “the blink of an eye” as Derrida writes in Speech and Phenomena. The now- point becomes visible only with delay, when it is represented by a retentional trace. As a consequence, there is also no immediate and instantaneous self-awareness of the subject. The subject appears to itself in the form of what it has been and what it is not any longer. Derrida says that its life appears in the perspective of death. Retention then becomes a mark of death in the self-presence of the subject rather than a promise of eternal life. But, i t is still not quite clear what besides the analogy with Freud allows Derrida to associate this retentional trace in time-consciousness with writing. How does the wound opened in the self-presence of the subject by retention let writing enter into the intimacy of Husserl’s transcendental consciousness? This question cannot be given an answer un- less we pay attention to the manner in which Derrida dis- places the issue of self-consciousness by introducing the metaphor of the voice.

“The voice” is a Derridean metaphor: it has indeed a literal and a figurative meaning, but it owes much of its force to the fact tha t Speech and Phenomena constantly zigzags between the two. In the literal sense, the voice refers to speech and can thus be opposed to writing. In speech the speaker as well as what he/she wants to say is immediately present in what is said. The givenness of the sign is contemporaneous with the original production of the meaning; the sound is fused to- gether with its sense. The spoken word is an immaterial body entirely animated by the spirit of its meaning, and this spirit makes use of breath which is commonly associated with the source of life. The spoken word is therefore an expressive sign

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which unlike the indicative signs in writing does not involve the possible absence and death of the author, the search for a missing meaning, and the deciphering of material-spatial inscriptions. But i t is only when the speaker hears himherself speak that speech is apurely expressive sign. It is only for the speaker tha t there is a fusion between the meaning and the sign and not for the other persons listening to h isher speech. The voice is purely expressive only when it listens to itself at the very moment it speaks.

In its figurative meaning the “voice” thus becomes a metaphor for the form of pure self-consciousness that characterizes Husserl’s transcendental subject. The voice is thus, at the same time, an oral discourse that listens to its own speech as well as the transcendental condition that makes this possible. The voice becomes a metaphor for all forms of a pure self-affection. If, however, there exists no such pure self-affection, then instantaneous self-consciousness is not only affected by blindness (“the blink of a n eye”) but also by muteness (“the voice that keeps silence”). Derrida argues for the impossibility of a pure self-affection in the voice by emphasizing that soliloquy still depends on a transindividual linguistic code, that its ideal expressive signs cannot do without empirical tokens, and tha t Husserl’s examples taken from the moral sphere show that inner speech is in fact the interjection of the voice of an external authority ( the voice of the super-ego). Also, the speaker that uses the personal pronoun “I” in order to refer to himherself while speaking to himherself has already given himherself over to a form of alterity. The personal pronoun “I” can thus be compared with the retentional trace: they both signify to the subject the impossibility of an original and total self-possession. Therefore one can say that if the “voice” is the metaphor for an immediate and full self-possession of the subject, and if this self-possession proves to be impossible, then writing cannot any longer be excluded from this voice. The opposition between voice and writing fades away and the possi- bility of a pure voice and consequently also the distinction between “voice” in i ts literal and figurative sense becomes questionable.

What is then, more precisely, the meaning of this writing in self-consciousness or of this self-consciousness coming out of writing? What is the “writing” in the “voice”? Here again, one must disentangle the metaphors without trying to translate them entirely into literal language and thereby destroying them. The meaning of the metaphor of a “written voice” cannot be properly expressed in metaphysical language because. i t refers to something metaphysics is unable to think: archi-writing and “diff6rance.” If one would say tha t writing is jus t a metaphor for a self that is never immediately and fully present to itself, then one would assume tha t there exists a

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form of proper writing the sor t one finds in texts and one would thereby turn the text into a metaphysical entity or region to be studied in what Husserl called a “material ontol- ogy.” Derrida tries, quite to the contrary, to think of a form of writing that would not be the opposite of speech or “voice” but would rather inhabit it while, however, not letting itself be ap- propriated by it. It is a writing within the voice, but not a phonetic writing; i t is neither inside nor outside of consciousness because consciousness does not exist prior to writing and because writing effaces the borders of consciousness.

Having briefly explained how Freud’s unconscious comes out of an archi-writing that transgresses the separation between the unconscious and the preconscious by creating a space and a temporality of its own, it remains to be shown how a similar strategy is indeed at work in Derrida’s reading of Husserl. That brings me back to my contention tha t Speech and Phe- nomena attempts a new understanding of transcendental consciousness rather than its destruction. Along with traces and writing, the analysis of reproduction, repetition, and imagination plays a major role in this endeavor. According to Derrida, what these phenomena have in common is that they are governed by a logic of original supplementation tha t crosses out the metaphysical opposition between original presence and secondary representation, between perception and memory, between reality and fiction, between things and words.

Even those who agree with Heidegger’s contention t h a t Husserl has not made enough effort to think the being of consciousness must concede that he has at least made clear what this consciousness achieves, i.e., making present or presencing. According to Husserl the most original and best form of such a presencing is to be found in perception or intuition. Husserl calls this original form of presencing “presentation” (Gegenwartigung) and distinguishes it from “re-presentation” Nergegenwiirtigung). Remembering and empathy are forms of such a re-presentation, but also imagination and all forms of reproduction and repetition. As the term already suggests, “re- presentations” are founded on presentations, they are different manners of repeating or reproducing a former presentation. (This does not mean, however, that all founded acts are re-presentations and that presentations must be simple acts with an immediate and direct access to their object. Husserl’s “categorial intuition” would be an example of a founded act of presentation that achieves an original presence of something that cannot be directly perceived).

Derrida’s deconstruction of Husserl’s concept of consciousness proceeds, once again, by reversal and displacement. He reverses the hierarchical order that considers re-presentations to be modifications of presentations by showing tha t many (all?) forms of presentation depend on former acts of re-

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presentation. This can best be illustrated through Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of ideal objects. The presence of ideal objects depends on acts of imaginative variation, i.e., acts of imagination and repetition which are acts of re-presentation. Since for Husserl the presence of ideal objects is presence a t its best , Derrida draws the conclusion t h a t phenomenological presence always and in general depends on re-presentation. The self-presence of the transcendental subject should be no exception to this (deconstructive) principle.

Derrida’s displacement of the Husserlian distinction between presence and re-presentation is based on a modified account of re-presentation. For Derrida, re-presentation involves a process of indicative signification, i.e., the presence of signs that must be understood as traces belonging to the context of an archi-writing. Derrida therefore must show that the presence of ideal objects as well as the self-presence of the transcendental subject necessarily depend on a form of re- presentation that is characteristic of traces. As far as ideal objects are concerned, this presents no difficulty since Husserl had himself emphasized in On the Origin of Geometry and elsewhere the importance of writing for the constitution and preservation of ideal objects. Husserl’s description of this writing is similar to Derrida’s understanding of archi-writing since it is a writing that substitutes itself for the loss of an original meaning. Derrida also encounters no difficulties when he has to show that the self-presence of the subject depends on traces, since he understands retention to be such a trace. If retention is a trace, then it is also a re-presentation in the new, Derridean sense of the term.

I t goes without saying that Husserl himself would not have agreed with this identification of retention and re-presentation, since he never quite went so far as to consider retention to be a trace, i.e., the original supplement of a n impossible now-point. He was also unwilling to diminish the importance of the distinction between retention and memory, insisting on the fact that only the latter could properly be called a form of re-presentation. It is thus not enough to point to the fact that Husserl and Derrida have a different understanding of re-presentation in order to save Derrida from the criticisms to which his identification of retention with a form of (Derridean) re- presentation has given rise. The difference between Derrida’s and Husserl’s account of retention cannot (and should not) be done away with, for it relates to the question of whether it makes sense to consider retention to be form of trace. How- ever, Derrida’s account of the self-consciousness of the subject in terms of archi-writing does not solely rest on his theory of retention. The thesis of the impossibility of pure and simple self-presence of the subject is corroborated by Derrida’s description of several other forms of indirect presence which,

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without any doubt, are genuine re-presentations for Husserl as well.

For Derrida, the presence of ideal objects and the self-presence of the transcendental subject are both the result of processes of re-presentation. If transcendental consciousness is said to be a matter of presencing, and if presence depends on re-presentation, then it follows that Husserl’s consciousness, far from being originally present, comes out of re-presentation or, better, is a process of re-presentation. The intuition of presence of ideal objects as well as of the transcendental subject itself is conditioned by re-presentation. That is to say, in Husserl’s terminology, perception comes out of repetition, memory, and imagination. There is no pure perception or intuition and, as a consequence, the opposition between presentation and re-presentation, between perception on the one hand and repetition, memory, and imagination on the other, fades away. Derrida makes Husserl say what Freud has explicitly stated throughout his entire work, from the Projectlo up to the Note on the Mystic Writing-Pad. I1

For Freud, impressions lead to a perception only when they are invested with the energy of an unconscious desire. Percep- tion as the characteristic achievement of consciousness involves, thus, an original synthesis between consciousness and the unconscious, ra ther than being a n immediate intuitive presencing of a n object. As the metaphor of the Mystic Writ- ing-Pad suggests, perception results from the coincidence of different forms of traces. That is to say, the mechanisms active in perception do not essentially differ from the mechanisms of remembering and of the dream. For Freud, these experiences all imply a combination of or, rather, a compromise between primary and secondary processes, and hence they are situated in between the unconscious and consciousness. It is clear, for instance, t h a t the manifest content of the dream draws heavily on memories in the double form of unconscious mnemic-traces and pre-conscious residues from the day. On the other hand, conscious memories have much in common with dreams since they involve traces of repressed desires. Both memories and dreams have to cope also with the resis- tance due to repression and they are, therefore, in need of interpretation. These family resemblances between memory and dreams also apply to perceptions tha t depend on memorial traces and, consequently, always involve some repetition of former experiences. The present now that appears in a perception is always accompanied by the past. This original contamination of perception by memory is clearly shown from the fact t ha t what appears as a perception might actually be a repressed memory (in the experience of “d6ja-vu”), and tha t a memory might actually be a disguised form of perception (in the case of screen-memories).

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For Freud, memory is thus the common matrix of perceptions, phantasies, and dreams. At first sight, this Freudian memory seems to be a “re-presentation” in Husserl’s sense as well as Derrida’s. I t is the reproduction of a former experience and i t is also the result of a process of archi-writing that com- bines manifold memorial traces. On a second look, however, this Freudian memory is only a re-presentation in the Derridean sense, i.e., a reproduction of a perception tha t has never been fully present, since it results from the combination of traces. One wonders, however, with what right Derrida can claim that this Freudian account of perception and memory is also the hidden face of the phenomena of perception and memory as Husserl understands them? In my opinion, there a re a t least two arguments in favor of this interpretation. First, as has already been shown, the perception or intuition of ideal objects and of the subject by itself indeed involves re- presentation in the form of imagination and retention. Second, Husserl’s understanding of memory as a form of re-presenta- tive reproduction cannot properly account for forgetting and especially for a forgetting that takes place while one remem- bers. Even when showing how retentions lose their vividness, and how one memory can be confused with another one or can be completed (Ausmalung) by fantasies, Husserl still does not explain how and especially why we forget. When Freud says that memory is an overcoming of repression and when Derrida considers memory to be a figure of archi-writing, then, quite to the contrary, forgetting and effacing become essential mo- ments of remembering. Instead of taking forgetting to be an unfortunate accident of remembering, Freud and Derrida understand remembering on the very basis of forgetting, just as Heidegger does. Admittedly, this is not what Husserl said, but it is a convincing supplement and a good reason to take memory to be a re-presentation in the Derridean sense.

The shadow of Freud in Derrida’s reading of Husserl also becomes apparent in the way Speech and Phenomena emphasizes the issues of repetition and imagination. Derrida is not the only one to consider Freud’s theories on repetition as some of the most fundamental, but also the most sophisticated and puzzling issues in psychoanalysis. Repetition plays a central role in that extremely important process of psychic life Freud calls “facilitation (Bahnung).” Repetition protects psychic life by deferring threatening investments. At the same time, however, repetition appears in Beyond the Principle of Pleasure to be a demonic and uncontrolled force that threatens life and is therefore understood to be an expression of “thanatos.” Most importantly, repetition forms the basis for differentiation and symbolization as is best illustrated by the “Fort Da” game of Freud’s grandson. Repetition is also omnipresent in psycho- analytic treatment and especially in the transference between

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the patient and hidher analyst. One can understand Derrida’s fascination for such a concept with a meaning that is funda- mentally undecidable and undecidably fundamental. It is linked with both deferring and differing, with death and life, with the direct abreaction of an unpleasant tension and with the preservation of desire by means of a detour. It is one of the major figures in which the hidden work of “diffkrance” becomes manifest and it involves archi-writing.

Derrida sometimes calls this repetition differential “iterability.” He finds this iterability at work in Husserl’s account of expressions, of the givenness of ideal objects, and of the self-presence of the transcendental subject. It is a form of repetition that preserves identity and presence by altering and deferring them. Already, in his early text devoted to On the Origin of Geometry, Derrida had underscored Husserl’s insight that repetition and especially repetition in writing is responsible for both the preservation and the loss of an original meaning. Speech and Phenomena repeats this statement while adopting a Freudian terminology and identifying the loss of an original meaning with death. Derrida is thus led to make a distinction between two different forms of death. There is a form of death involved in difference, delay, and the indicative sign, but there is also a death due to the coincidence and fusion between meaning and its expression. The death Husserl fears- distance, difference, delay, dependence on indicative signs and writing-becomes in a Freudian perspective a condition of life. In this new perspective, the adequate expression of a meaning (the fusion between signifier and signified) is the death of language, the identical repetition of an ideal object is the death of historical transmission, and the coincidence of the transcenden- ta l subject with i ts own representation leads to blindness, muteness, and the death of subjective life. Language, historical intersubjective exchanges, and the transcendental subject have a symbolic life that is born out of a differential iterability that postpones all forms of absolute presence.

Jus t a s with Freud’s theory of repetition, his account of imagination has also left clearly recognizable traces in Derrida’s reading of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena. For Freud, imagination is linked with “fantasies” or as we now say: “phantasms” which are an essential ingredient of experiences such as memories, day- and night-dreams, sexual desire, and artistic creation.12 Phantasms can be both conscious and unconscious, and they are interwoven with each other in a web such that conscious phantasms are often originary supplements of unconscious phantasms. As Freud’s text “A Child is Being Beaten”13 shows, phantasms are mainly visual representations of both the object and the subject of desire. Phantasms mediate the relation between the unconscious and consciousness as well as between desire and reality by forming a screen or a scenery

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tha t allows for a passage while maintaining the separation between what stands before and behind the screen. Insofar as they attempt to protect the subject from a direct confrontation with the brute reality of drives and with a hostile and mean- ingless external reality, they have much in common with repetition. Like repetition, phantasms articulate the life of desire by deferring all forms of a n immediate and fully intuitive presence. They participate in both primary and secondary processes; they bind the drives but still do not subjugate them to the demands of a n external reality. They conduct desire through paths of detour and thereby allow for i ts survival. Anticipating the fixation of desire in real objects, phantasms preserve desire from a deadly exhaustion of unbound move- ments, but without submitting it yet to the obligation for it to compromise with the limits of reality.

This Freudian theory concerning the mediating function of imagination and its association with repetition plays a crucial role in Derrida’s reading of Husserl. Derrida is mainly interested in the function of imagination in Husserl’s account of the constitution of ideal objects and in Husserl’s description of a soliloquy tha t uses merely imagined words. Not surpris- ingly, he understands imagination to be the main form of a re- presentation in the Derridean sense. He thus does not want to play fiction off of reality; rather, he wants to show their en- tanglement by taking advantage of Husserl’s association of imagination with the “modification of neutrality.”

When Husserl says that the constitution of an ideal object is accomplished through “imaginary variation,” he explicitly acknowledges that there is an originary association between repetition (“variation”) and imagination. That ideal objects are grasped through imagination does not, however, mean for Husserl that they are fictional objects. Rather they are objects for which the difference between reality and fiction becomes irrelevant. Derrida is eager to subscribe to this metaphysical neutrality, even if in a movement that has become familiar to us he wants to show that the ideal object, being neither real nor fictional, is also both real and fictional. He attempts to demonstrate this undecidability or “diffbrance” in the relation between reality and fiction by paying attention to language, and in particular to the language of soliloquy. In order to show this undecidability, one can begin by pointing out the fact that Husserl’s description of soliloquy is an example of a theoretical fiction tha t is supposed to prove the reality of purely expressive signs. Second, one can underscore Husserl’s remark that in soliloquy we can make do with merely imagined signs. Third, one can try to show that even merely imagined ideal expressive signs still depend on empirical tokens to become present. The imagined ideal words of a soliloquy are thus neither real nor fictional, but are equally ideal and real.

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The philosophical stakes involved in this Derridean reading of Husserl’s concept of imagination are very similar t o those present in his discussion of repetition. It is therefore no sur- prise that Speech and Phenomena, in a Freudian spirit, usu- ally links the issues of imagination and repetition. They are both re-presentations in the Derridean sense and, therefore, what they have in common is that they undermine “essential distinctions” such as the one between expression and indica- tion, and also those between identity and alterity, ideality and reality, t ruth and fiction, life and death, and of course between philosophy and literature as well. They are also used by Derrida to demonstrate that there is no origin that would be simple and pure, autonomous and fully present, identical to itself and nevertheless the source of a historical develop- ment. Being re-presentations in the Derridean sense, imagination and repetition are “originary supplements” tha t produce the origin to which they are said to be added and that substitute themselves for the retreat of the origin.

Imagination creates a fictional world and it uses its libera- tion from the constraints of reality to tell the truth about the real world. It establishes a distance from reality without de- serting i t and, thus, creates a new space between reality and fiction. This intermediary space of imagination crosses the borders of the metaphysical space and thereby also sheds new light on the presuppositions of the Husserlian understanding of language and truth. Imagination inaugurates a conception of language and truth where the idea of a correspondence between word and thing, between language and reality loses its normative value. Following Freud and Heidegger, Derrida sees in imagination the common root of thought and poetry. This does not mean, however, that the difference between reality and fiction or between philosophy and literature would be totally erased, or suspended by a dialectical synthesis. One cannot do without these distinctions, but one must question and displace them. Language has always been the movement already of such a displacement or transference. It therefore requires the effort of a “double reading” that Derrida practices with brio and that most of his critics seem to ignore.

What does this insistence on differential iterability, on a delay of presence, on re-presentational traces, on linguistic transference, and on imaginative transgression, entail for a phenomenological concept of the consciousness of a subject? I shall briefly attend t o these consequences by referring t o three aspects of subjectivity where Derrida’s reading of Freud bears its most fruitful results: temporality, spatiality, and the double life of the subject.

Freud’s “Note on the Mystic Writing-Pad” insists on a discontinuity in the consciousness of time that is due to the peri- odical character of perception, i.e., t o the investment of

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impressions by the unconscious. Derrida emphasizes that this discontinuity allows us to understand the appearing of consciousness along with its possible effacement. Subject to repression (and periods of sleep), consciousness can forget itself and can forget the world. However, this effacement of consciousness cannot be a complete disappearing: it still manifests itself under the ambiguous form of traces. These traces are actually responsible for both the effacement and the appearing of consciousness. The conscious subject is, therefore, truly a phenomenon that can appear and disappear instead of being an enduring monadological substance. I t is also not any longer an absolute origin that makes things appear, since its own appearance and disappearance depends on a web of traces and archi-writing. Instead of being the source and origin of all meaning, i ts own meaning appears indirectly, dis- continuously, and with delay. Born out of the hidden labor of traces, the subject cannot be present otherwise than in the form of a Derridean re-presentation. Self-consciousness thus involves delay and alterity. The subject does not come out of itself, life is given to i t and is taken away from it. To be alive for the subject means to attempt to appropriate a life tha t can never be fully grasped. This appropriation from a distance of what has never been entirely present is the t rue meaning of re-presentation. This self-re-presentation of a subjective life that comes out of traces is also the response to an appeal and a gift, the author of which remains foreign and absent.

This Derridean subject with i ts flickering temporality and its postmature (instead of premature) life does not fit into any form of metaphysical space either. I t is no pure interior- ity because it is the appropriation of traces and the response to an appeal. I t also is no pure exteriority because it is given a life and a consciousness of its own. Born out of traces, the subject is caught in their space and as Derrida puts it i n their spacing (espacement). This spacing is a movement of a transference that, however, does not go from one spatial location to another. Using a Freudian terminology, one can say that this transference follows the path of earlier facilitations between traces. Unlike Husserl who considers consciousness to constitute a “region” of its own, Freud locates it in a no- man’s-land between the borders of the unconscious and external reality. Consciousness comes out of spacing and “spacing” is jus t another word for re-presentation in the Derridean sense. This is also to say tha t spacing cannot be separated from temporalization. Re-presentational consciousness is the experience of distancing and deferring. Consciousness is thus always otherwise and elsewhere. I t is a movement of re-presentation and transgression, and imagination (rather than perception) can, thus, be said to constitute its very essence.

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Appropriating a life born out of traces and re-presenting this life t o itself while remaining caught in the spacing of traces, the life of the subject turns into a double life. Freud provides us with several accounts of th i s double life. He shows, for example, t ha t the becoming conscious of unconscious representations does not suspend the action of the primary processes. Even conscious experiences and linguistic utterances remain subject to condensation and displacement as the analyses contained in Psychopathology of Everyday Life abundantly demonstrate. Other texts such as the “Note on the Mystic Writing-Pad” relate this double life to the distinction between memory and perception. The psychic apparatus must retain all past experiences and at the same time remain open to ever new experiences. I t supports the heavy load of all i ts past experiences and it, nevertheless, meets the world with a virginal face. In an unfinished manuscript on “Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence” Freud mentions a “rift” (Riss) in the subject “which never hea1s.”14 This rift or cut is due to the following: the ego recognizes something a s inextricably linked to itself (Freud gives the example of castration-fear) without the ego being in a position to appropriate it. When Freud here points to “the synthetic function of the ego” and its “extraordinary importance,” i t is quite clear that this unity of the ego is not something that precedes the splitting. I t is first through the experience of the dividedness of one’s own self tha t the synthetic unity of the ego becomes of an “extraordinary importance.” The dividedness of the subject is a wound tha t never heals. The ego does not invalidate dividedness, it only prevents a psychotic falling-apart of the subject.

Derrida’s reading of Husserl discovers a similar dividedness and double life in transcendental consciousness. One could mention Husserl’s distinction between a hyletic and an intentional life, bu t Derrida’s favorite example is of course the dividedness of the transcendental subject between experiences of presentation (Gegenwartigung) and re-presentation (Verge- genwtirtigung). On Derrida’s interpretation, neither one of the two can be simply reduced to the other. Even if re-presentation produces presentation, it is a differential iteration tha t remains oriented toward the idea and the ideal of presence. The life of re-presentation in the Derridean sense is thus not totally incompatible with Husserl’s conception of the teleology of transcendental life. Husserl and Derrida both understand life as a movement of differentiation tha t is governed by the anticipation of a n impossible goal. It does not come as a sur- prise, then, tha t Derrida has treated Husserl’s “Idea in the Kantian sense” with care and not without sympathy. Husserl’s account of the teleology of transcendental life is not only a profound insight into the finitude of the subject, it is also a new meditation on an origin that is effective by being deferred

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and by inviting the subject to submit to an endless task. The double life of the transcendental subject, thus, also comes from the fact that the subject is divided between the finitude of its existence on the one hand and its being addressed by the idea of the infinite on the other. This double life is a t the same time a survival that escapes a double form of death, namely the fusion with oneself and the fusion with the other.

In this paper I have tried to show that Derrida’s reading of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena is highly marked by his reading of Freud. The deconstruction of the essential distinctions between expressive and indicative signs, the critical account of a “voice” that hears itself speak, the demonstration of an unavoidable contamination of self-consciousness by re-presentation, the analysis of memory, repetition, and imagination, all bear evidence of this Freudian spirit. This investigation has also led to the surprising conclusion that Freud’s concept of the unconscious and Husserl’s concept of transcendental consciousness have much in common, especially their impossibility to be immediately and directly present. It makes, thus, little sense to say that Derrida criticizes Husserl’s consciousness in the name of Freud’s unconscious; there is room for a new Husserlian elaboration of Freud’s speculations on the nature of a divided self. Freud’s claim that the unconscious is the true origin of consciousness is no less problematic than Husserl’s notion of an original and simple now-point of consciousness where all processes of constitution would begin.

Derrida thus deconstructs both Husserl and Freud in order to show that their understanding of consciousness and of the unconscious is still open to interrogation. By interrogating Husserl’s analysis of the relation between presentation and re- presentation and questioning Freud’s metaphysical division between the locations of the unconscious and the preconscious, Derrida invites us not t o take the difference between consciousness and the unconscious for granted. He shows in particular that this difference is undermined by a “diffbrance” that is at work in both Husserl’s transcendental consciousness and in Freud’s unconscious. Husserl’s re-presentations and Freud’s unconscious desires must be understood in the language of traces and archi-writing. Freud himself never went quite as far as this and Husserl was more than reluctant to accept anything of this sort. It thus goes without saying that the transference established by Derrida between Husserl and Freud is still open for a further “perlaboration.” It remains to be shown how Freud can help us to understand the effacement of transcendental consciousness better and its need for protec- tion. On the other hand, it also remains t o be shown how Husserl can contribute to a better understanding of the re-presentational character of the unconscious and its inscription in the life of a “psyche.”

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Edmund Husserl, “The Origin of Geometry,” in The Crisis of Euro- pean Sciences and Tkanscendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 360ff.

Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 8, ed. Jacques- Main Miller, trans. John Forrester (New York: W. W. Norton, 19911, 210; L.e skminaire, livre VZZZ: Le transfert (1960-61), (Paris: Seuil, 1975).

Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena. And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwest- ern University Press, 1973).

Jacques Derrida, “Freud and the Scene of Writing,” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19781,196-231.

Jacques Derrida, “To Speculate On ‘Freud’,” in The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Chicago Uni- versity Press, 19871, 257-409.

Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Zntro- duction, trans. John P. Leavey (Stony Brook: Nicholas Hays, 1978).

Jacques Derrida, Le problhme de la genese duns la philosophie de Husserl (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990).

In this paper I shall also refrain from quoting Derrida or even indi- cating with any precision the texts and pages where the arguments I am examining are developed. Proceeding toward a systematic recon- struction of Derrida’s reading of Husserl and Freud, I think there is no need for such a tedious multiplication of footnotes. As a ftrther excuse, I might also point to the fact that I have already provided a closer reading of the same texts by Derrida elsewhere: Rudolf Bernet, “Is the Present ever Present? Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence” in Husserl and Contemporary Thought. Research in Phenomenology, vol XI1 (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1982), 85-11 2; Rudolf Bernet, “Presence and Absence of Meaning. Husserl and Derrida on the Crisis of (the) Present Time” in Phenomenology of Temporality: Time and Language (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 33-64; Rudolf Bernet, “On Derrida’s ‘Introduction’ to Husserl’s ‘Origin of Geom- etry’” in H. J . Silverman, ed., Derrida and Deconstruction. Continental Philosophy ZZ (New York-London: Routledge, 19891,139-153, 234-235; Rudolf Bernet, “Derrida et la voix de son maitre” in Revue philosophique de la France et de l’ktranger, 1990/2 (avril-juin) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), 147-166.

Cf. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), S.E. IV-V, esp. chap. VI and VII.

loSigmund Freud, “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895), S.E. I, 283-397.

Sigmund Freud, “Note on the Mystic Writing-Pad” (19251, S.E. XM, 225232.

l2 Cf., Rudolf Bernet, “Imagination et fantasme” in J. Florence et al., Psychanalyse. L’homme et ses destins (Louvain-Paris: Pecters, 1993),

l3 Sigmund Freud, “A Child is Being Beaten,” S.E. M I , 175-204. l4 Sigmund Freud, “Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence,”

191-206.

S.E. XXIII, 276.

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Derrida-Husserl-Freud: The Trace of Transference