SUPERNAUT: AN ASSAY INTO THE TEMPORALITIES OF PERFORMANCE AND

REPRESENTATION

R. Scott Bakker

Centre for the Smdy of Theory and Criticisrn

Submitted in partial fulfilment

of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Faculty of Graduate Studies

The University of Western Ontario

London, Ontario

September, 1997

@ R. Scott Bakker 1997

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ABSTRACT

Why does Kant's 'storyline' of time and space entail consequences which differ so

radically fiom a Heidegger, or a Demda? 1s it possible to comprehend the 'how' of

Copemican revolutions? Through a meditation on Bakhtin and the 'sheer difficulty' of

temporality, and a subsequent 'analysis' of the difference between performance and

representation in Foucault, Supernaut attempts to imovate an inventory of temporal

terms which rnight then be used to index the contrasting consequences of varying

'revolutionary' strands of thought. It is through recourse to the pragmatic impractibility of

tirne that the notion of a theoretical 'camp patois,' a 'final vocabulary' in a radically

attenuated sense, becomes feasible. In order to demonstrate both the comparative utility

and the 'problem solving' power of this new discourse, Deleuze is rewritten in

'supemautical terms,' and his vulnerability to the Demdean critique of any positive

account of some 'radical outside' is reassessed.

Keywords: philosophy of time, performance, representation, metaphysics, Foucault,

Demda, deconstruction, Bakhtin, Deleuze, Heidegger.

ACKNO WLEDGEMENTS

Of the very many people to whom I am indebted, 1 would like to acknowledge my thesis

supervisor, Calin Mihailescu, in whose depth of knowledge 1 nearly drowned, but wherein

1 ultimately learned to swim. I would also like to acknowledge the guidance and assistance

of Tilottarna Rajan, Marty Kreiswirth, Clive Thomson, and Penelope Lister, who saved me

f?om rny own administrative incompetence countless times. I would also like to

acknowledge the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, whose

generous doctoral support allowed me to quit my night job, and thus gave me the freedom

to complete this final requirement of my M. A.

Certificate of Examination

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

Sections

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Vita

1 am my moments in tirne, the dnp of the writer dock, the inundation- 1 am the heart.

"Not Lctting His ff eart Be Cimied Off," Awakening Osiris: The Egyptian Book ofthe Dead.

In his preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure R e a ~ o ~ , Kant touches

upon the very point which provides the focus for the present study:

"We should then be proceeding precisely on the Lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis. Fading of satisfactory progress in expIaining the movements of the heaveniy bodies on the supposition that they ail revolved around the spectator, he tned whether or not he might have better success if he made the spectator to revolve and the stars to remriin at ra t . A similar experiment can be bied in metaphysics, as regards the intuition of objecîs" (22).

What is this point, this 'trying point' of metaphysics where two fundamental stories of

philosophy and science have been rewritten? It would be a mistake to reduce this point to

the simple divide between the Aristotelian and the Copernican, or the Metaphysical and

the Critical. At issue here is thepassibility 111 general of such a divide, although, as we

will see, we must take care with words such as 'possibility.' Kant proposes an

'expenment,' a trial run wherein the elements of a srnall s t q - the distribution of the

mobile heavens and the stationary onlooker - are redistributed, such that the heavens

become stationary and the onlooker mobile. A revolution of revolution. How is it possible

that these stories can be rethought at dl? And why is it that such rethinking rewrites so

much so profoundly?

Two theories marked by a revolution, a point of trial. Typically we move across

this point without taking notice, slipping between economies, exchanging Our currency

without once scrutinking the money-changers. And how could we, when this currency is

the very medium of Our considerations? How can we see the outside of this transaction

when for a moment we are this transaction, when the money-changers trade the coin of

the Empire for the coin of the Temple secreted in the very movement of Our thought?

The answer does not Lie in some 'pragmatic Christ,' who will overturn the scales

and tables of this point, arguing the incommensurability of currencies. Fixing the rate of

exchange does not make the money-changers go away - even if this rate is impossibly

hi&. Rather we must bribe them, purchase this point with a dflferer~t currency, a new

'vocabulary,' remernbering always that bribery is a singularly risky enterprise. This is the

point of txying and of trial, of theoretical expediency and of theoretical difficulty, where

the sly fingers and wary eyes of our adversary are also our own. This is a question as to

the how of Copernican revolutions in philosophy, rather than their what.

What does it mean to ask this how? It is certainly insufficient to simply ask

'how' Kant managed to redistribute the stationary and the mobile. The answer to this

question is well known. Rather than abiding by the 'pre-Copernican' view wherein objects

are considered in themselves, Kant turned to Our faculties of representation, arguing the a

priori deterrnination of objects fhrotrgh the pure forms of intuition, space and time. For

Kant, space and time are no longer conceptuai 'whats' so much as transcendental hows,

the very medium through which experience is constituted. Abmptly the spectator finds

himself astride the very boume of the analytic and the synthetic, not simply observing the

stick bend beneath the surface of the water, but constituting that refractive surface, always

o b s e ~ n g d e r the tact, imprisoned in the viscosity of a derived, phenomenai experience,

perpetually unable to Nni and breathe the vacuous air of the noumenal. By answenng this

particular 'how,' we simply enter a post-Copernican world, we find ourselves grappling

with the consequences of the Kantian redistribution without pausing to ask exactly how it

is this shift in 'storyline' legislates these consequences. Why does the redistribution of

space and time have such drastic effect? What 'logic7 seems to demand the parsing of the

noumenal and the phenomenal once representation becomes 'performative'?

Questions such as these, we shall see, place us at a peculiar remove from certain

'revolutions' by retuniing us to what time and again seems to lie at their 'heart': the

category of temporality - time and space. In effect, we need to ask the theoretical how of

temporality. Rather than asking whether Kant 'got it right,' whether this is indeed 'how'

time is in the hope that, by miving at a 'true' determination of time, we might preempt

the Kantian storyline before any cornmitment to its consequentiai logic, we must ask how

it is that this determination determines. The former question, in fact, is not a question of

how at dl, but rather echoes Augustine's question to God: "What, then, is time?' Our

question of how, on the other hand, is far different: it is the how of this 'determination as

what,' the how of this 'consequential logic,' and perhaps most importantly the how of this

'preemption' that we must ask.

Our question, then, while rerni4ning withi' the interminable exchange of theoretical

currencies, must somehow, impossibly, remain outside that exchange. To this extent,

Supernaut participates in a long tradition of impossible theoretical tasks. And yet, how

much do we 'know' of this 'impossibility.' What if this impossibility was so radical that it

could only be possible, so radical that even the story of this impossibility was itself

impossible? If such was the case, perhaps a revolutionary economy could be isolated, one

wherein each and every move was indeed impossible, but for some enigrnatic reason some

less so than others. In such an economy, we might say, movernent would be paramount

and lingering fatal, since the possibility would always lie in the fact of those steps taken,

and the impossibility in the crowding of those co~zditiom which encompass those steps.

Given this, one might conceive what follows - the attempt to purchase some

understanding of the revolutionary point with the coin of a new vocabulary, one developed

through an analysis of how and what and their temporalities - as more of a trying than a

verdict, more of an enactment than a theory, even though, as we shall see, verdict and

theory abound.

Rather than a tale of intrigue and interstice, then, Supen~airt is a telhg. One

cannot loiter on the steps which cross from Empire to Temple without being seized by

pnest or soldier or both. Perhaps we are closest to the mysteiy of God leaning on the

wood of the church door, but who has time to tell?

In a series of remarkable fragments later cobbled iogether and published in English

translation as "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," M. M. Bakhtin retains

Kant's assertion that space and time are the "indispensable forms of any cognition" ( n e

Dialogic Imaginution, 851, but dispenses with Kant's monovalent, transcendental

distribution of these forms. For Bakhtin, there is a sense in which the Kantian 'spectator'

remains too stationary. His response is to imbue temporality with an unprecedented

mobility, to hold it accountable, at least initially, to its myriad manifestations in literature.

In effect, he transforms issues of space and time into a way of reudit~g, a how, which he

hopes will enable h in to arrive at a 'historical poetics,' a means of generically organizing

and defining certain processes and forms in the development of the novel. At the hart of

certain narrative configurations, Bakhtin wants to argue, lie what he calls 'chronotopes,'

specific deployments of space and tirne which legislate the general structure of the novel.

In the shifi from the Kantian distribution of temporality to Bakhtin's, we do

witness a 'revolution' with its attendant consequences, the rnost radical of which would

seem to be the pluralization of times. Despite the fact that "Forms of Time" constitutes a

series of notes, apparently written in a single, revelatory rush,' the essay clearly

demonstrates sornething of the peculiar power of temporality as a kind of method. But if it

demonstrates the theoretical efficacy of temporality as a how, it also shows something of

the sheer difficulty endemic to such a project. Bakhtin runs into several, rather severe

problems, not the least of which seems to be his inability to remain at the level of the

temporal how. His chronotopicai analyses have a habit of 'slipping,' and rewriting

thernselves across progressively 'deeper' levels: fiom the textual chronotopes which

determine narrative stmctures, to a 'historical' level which determines ontological

t This was suggested to me at the Eighth International Conference on Milchail Bakhtin in Calgary, Canada, June 20-25, 1997, by Brian Poole, who has done some work with the original manuscripts.

structures, and thence to a 'metaphysical' level wherein the fundamental what of time's

truth is manifested. At each point, he seems driven to index his chronotopes according to a

more fiindamental chronotopicd level, until at 1st we arrive at the final index, the final

'what' of time. What begins as an experirnent which heuristically instmmentalizes tirne,

becomes an exercise in traditional metaphysics.

Since his stated aim is to provide for a 'historical poetics,' Bakhtin begins with the

ancient Greek Romance. Space and time in these proto-novels, he suggests, are

mechanical abstractions which provide indices of obstruction - distances of time (captivity)

and space (foreign lands) exist only to be overcome. A skewed logic of 'random

contingency,' rather than a contiguous senes of consequences, provides the 'controlling

force' of these stories. 'Timing' is literaliy everything: these works abound in ' suddenlys'

and 'at-that-moments.' Furthemore, the characters of such works remain unchanged by

the 'hammer of events' - time provides only the asymmetncal expanse required for action

to unfold, and none of the entropic, irrevocable characteristics which we habitually impute

to the time of history. The various 'alien' locales, likewise provide only a rudimentary,

abstracted spatial difference which insulates the reader fiom the 'rule-generating force7 of

familiar, heavily histoncized surroundings.

Bakhtin argues that the deployment of temporality in the ancient Greek Romance,

or 'adventure time,' is "the most obstrac~ of dl novelistic chronotopes." As he writes:

in such a chronotopc the world and the individual are finished items, absolutely immobile. In it there is no potential for evolution, for growth, for change. As a result of the action described in the novel, nothing in its worId is destroyçd, rmade, changeci or created ancw. What we get is rnere affirmation of the identity between what had been at the beginning and what is at the end. Adventure-time leaves no trace. ( 1 10)

The world of adventure time is one wherein history has stalled, where the passage of time

is without consequence. Bakhtin's suggestion here is that adventure-time is 'primitive' in a

privative, rather than an or ig inq sense. And yet, the obvious question, given the genitive

default associated with a term such as 'abstraction,' is: 'what is adventure time abstracted

from'? A possible answer to this question is coincident to the moment in Bakhtin's text

when his initial undertaking - the elaboration of a histoncal poetics - drifts into the

decidedly non-poetic. One rnight Say tnat this drift is aimost demanded by his topic: the

chronotope of ancient biography. In ancient biographies, Bakhtin argues, lives were ' r a d

backwards,' such that all the struggles of an individuai's youth, rather than contributhg to

something emergent, simply adumbrate a fully realized manirity. The same could be said

for the relation of history to ancient biography: rather than possessing any ''detehning

influence," historical events merely provision one's life with its "means of disclosure"

(141). Time simply allots the decompression necessary to unravel a life which is already

determined: "Frorn the very first strokes (the first manifestations of character) the firm

contours of the whole are already predetermined, and everything that cornes later

distributes itself within these already existing contours.. ." ( 142). The importance of

fortzora is revealing in this sense: not only is an individual's talent conceptually inseparable

fkom his 'luck,' but it is also inseparable from the auguries of the state. This blumng of

ability with fortune has the curious effect of installing agency within determination. One

performs one's life as though it was already perforrned, as though the retrodictory

necessity of one's past ('it couldn't have happened any other way') enclosed the future as

well. Life is thus public rmdparaiaciic. Those temporal characteristics which are

hypotactic, wwhich speak of a hidden, iriiernal source - consequence, development,

emergence - are elided when the future is merely an obscured inversion of the past.

But are we still speaking of textual diegesis here, of a time which govems stories

and their worlds? Whereas Bakhtin pnmarily had recourse to the formal elements of

temporality in his considerations of adventure-time (distance' variegation, duration,

contiguity, succession, transitivity, etc.), and the ways in which they might be used to

schematize ancient literary forms, here, quite abruptly, he prefaces his account with a

lengthy consideration of what might be termed the historicd chronotope of subjectivity.

Bakhtin argues that in antiquity "man was completely or] the surface, in the most Iiteral

sense of the word" (133). The interiority now associated with subjectivity was, he

suggests, completely lacking among the ancient Greeks: those lives related in the earliest

biographies, insofar as the 'intemal' and the 'extemal' are both "laid out" dong the sarne

axis, were exclusivel y public lives.

And yet adventure-time is not abstracted from this historically embedded

chronotope, since it would seem that historical deployments of temporality are likewise

'textual' to the extent that they too have a histoty. Before "man's image was distorted by

his increasing participation in the mute and the invisible spheres of existence," his surfaces

were suspended in the "collective" of "his own native folk" (1 35). The genesis of

subjectivity, Bakhtin suggests, constitutes a fa11 fiom what is called the chronotope of the

"public square":

Once having lost the popular chronotope of the public square, his self£onsciousness could not €id an equally real, unified and whole chronotope; it therefore broke d o m and lost its inte-, it becarne abs tract and idealis tic.. . The human image became md ti-layereù, multi-faceted A core and a shell, ;in inner and a outer, separateci withùi it. (135-6)

In the genesis of 'man' as interionty, or perhaps even as 'fold' in the Foucauldian sense,

history witnesses another abstraction - the fall resides in the very invention of the fallen.

Again the 'abstract' is negatively indexed against the chronotopically 'real.' The obvious

difference between this evaluative gesture and the one previous is that the 'abstracted'

chronotope at issue here is histoncally rather than textually embedded. And yet, if the

chronotope of the 'interiorized man' is already instantiated within what most of us zre

want to cd1 the 'real,' the historical world, thenfrom whar can it in tum be abstracted? A

chronotope that is 'more r d ' than real?

Since the 'pre-interiorized man' of ancient biography is both more and less abstract

- more in his immunity to 'the hamrner of events' which we cal1 history, and yet less in his

lack of interionty - we must hesitate before identifjmg him with any onginary chronotope.

Ifthe chronotope of 'abstraction from' can be situated within the historical in any way, we

must go fbrther back than ancient biography to the time offoklore- In "Foms of Time,"

the literary chronotope of Greek romance and the historical chronotope of pre-interior

man of are themselves held in relation to a third metaphysical category of chronotope:

what Bakhtin altemately refers to as the 'fullness of time,' or 'folkloric time.'

No other chronotope in "Forms of Time" receives a more thorough explication.

Remembering that Bakhtin saw folkloric time as a chronotope which was once concretely

lived, we might summarize its features as follows: 1) Folklonc time is collective to the

extent that it can be measureddifferentiated only through collective events. Since the

intenor time of the individual has yet to be isolated, it is oniy through communal events

that time can be measured. 2) Folkionc time is intimately comected to labour. As Bakhtin

writes: "This sense of time works itself out in the collective battle of labor against nature"

(207). 3) Folklonc tirne is the time of growrh. This chronotope, for Bdchtin, is so invested

in generativity that even death is subordinated to quantitative and qualitative binh and

renewal. 4) Since al1 productive forces are necessarily aimed towards manifesting the not

yet, folkloric time isfiture orienlrd, or as Bakhtin puts it: "maximdly tensed toward the

future" (207). 5) Folklonc time is cottcrete to the extent that it has yet to be abstracted

apart from the world into its formai elements. In this sense we might say that it lies entirely

on the surface, if by 'surface' we mean something which cannot be opposed to 'depth,'

since, in a sense, this binary is unthinkable within this chronotope. 6) The folklonc

emphasis on unity follows from this: time has yet to be parsed into the categories of the

naturai, the historical, the quotidian, etc. Moreover, even the boundaries of the past,

present, and future no longer obtain, since such a differentiation "presurnes an rssetttiaI

individuality as a point of departure" (207). 7) The holistic aspect of folklonc tirne

likewise follows from its concreteness. The lack of a static background, or 'world' as

setting, suggests a 'whole-cloth' temporality without intemal differentiations. Bakhtin

wrïtes: "AU objects are thus attracted into life's orbit; they become living participants in

the events of life" (209). 8) The cyclic characteristic of folklonc time, however, since it

iirnits "time's fonvard impulse," is a "negative feature" (208-9). "For this reason," Bakhtin

suggests, "even growth does not achieve an authentic 'becoming'" (209). and it is in this

sense that we rnight Say that folkloric time in its historical manifestation is only a near

approximation of its rnetaphysical tmth.

Part of the difficulty in defining the role of folkloric time lies in the way it seems to

encompass the morass of chronotopical levels at work in the essay. On the one hmd at

the level of literature, one h d s "a dark, dim forgotten kinship" (200) with the literary

foms of the folkloric, which Bakhtin considers to be the "inexhaustible source of realism

for all written literature" (1 5 1). Thus we could say that the chronotope ensconced in the

text is itselfgenotypicaily referenced by the proto-chronotope of folklore. Works are

evaluated by their adequacy to the folklonc. In his account of Rabelais, for instance,

Bakhtin sees "a restoration" of a "hidden and specific chronotope" which had been effaced

by the intenorized and eschatological chronotopes of Christianity (205). As he writes:

A new chronotope tvris needed that would permit one to link real life (history) to the real earth. It was necessas, to oppose to eschntotogy a creative and a generative tirne, a tirne measured by creûtive acts, by growth and not by destruction. The fundarnentals of t h s 'creating' tirne were present in the images and motifs of folklore. (206)

The brilliance of Rabelais, according to Bakhtin, lies in his ability to reach through the

distortions of his own age and tap "the spnngs of pre-class folklore" (205). The 'story'

here is quite c h : the folklonc has become a conduit to an authentic, metaphysical

temporality, one which afîords Rabelais a revisionary literary chronotope to oppose to the

disfigured histoncal chronotopes of Chrktianity.

At the historical level, on the other hand, the folkloric chronotope comprises Our

actual prehistoiy, which is simply to Say that at a certain point in Our pre-class past, the

folklonc chronotope was lived and breathed by our ancestors. Here the folWoric provides

the concrete "matrix" against which various hist orical mutations, such as ' subjective

interiority, ' might be charted. Bakhtin speaks of the "degeneration" suffered by folklonc

motifs (specifically those which he had drawn from Rabelais), the way in which they are

"isolated, impoverished, trivialized" once the individual is severed "fiorn the producing Iife

of the whole and from the collective struggle wit h nature" (2 1 5).

It is with this 'real life' devaiuation of chronotopes that we broach the

metaphysicd level; the level of time's what-in-truth. Foiklonc time provides the evaluatory

index. By the ' fùilness of tirne' Bakhtin refers to the direct inverse of abstracted time, the

manner in which "iftaken outside the relationship to past and future, the present loses its

integrity, breaks down into isolated phenornena and objects, making of them a mere

abstract conglomeration" (146). The folkloric chronotope is not merely historical, and

thus defùnct, but s~mives as the authentic, originary temporality of humanity.

With this correlation of chronotopical levels through folkloric time, it becomes

clear that what had ostensibly began as a 'how' has become a hierarchical senes of

'whats.' Bakhtin does not simply use time as a means to structurally distinguish various

epochs of the novel; literature, rather, has become the meum to distinguish the distorted

articulations of fundamental temporality. Certainly, Bakhtin is 'using' temporality

throughout the essay, and quite effectively, but we must take care with such facile

imputations of how. The problem is that he is 'using' it as a wlml rather than a how, as

something which is organized and expressed through Iiterature and history, rather than as

something which organizes. This 'movement' or tendency towards the what, which will

occupy us in detail as the study progresses, can be termed 'drclirsiorr': the lapse of a 'way'

into something which 5s.' Likewise, as far as the novel is concerned, we can note a

contrary tendency towards the how, what might be called 'occlusion,' to the extent that

the novel as 'what' is eclipsed in the act of dechding (making-what) temporality. In

effect, "Foms of Time" comprises a kind of broad, and yet ultimately one-sided

hermeneutic, with temporality initially being used occlusively to declude the history of the

novel, and with the novel being occluded more and more as a way to chart time.

Of course, this progressive declusion, or 'whating' of time, is only problematic

fiom the standpoint of the present study, which hopes to interrogate the possibilities of a

radical 'howing' of temporaiity. Further, perhaps more trenchant, problems arise when we

consider the deployment of this folklonc-what within a daerent level of Bakhtin's own

how, in tems of the temporal investments of his own theoretical practice. Bakhtin spins

for us a theoretical narrative wherein although historical forces gradually sully the

temporal innocence of pre-class humanity, the novel becomes the mode in which the

fragments of this innocence are gradually reassembled. From a number of standpoints, this

is clearly contradictory. Both the chronotopes of 'historical inversion' - the tendency to

lionize the past, to gild those ages which are not our own - and of eschatology - the

tendency to see in history and its future a convergence with some tmth - are singled out by

Bakhtin for transgressions against the folklonc. In historical inversion, both the past and to

a lesser extent the present "are enriched at the expense of the future," the privileged

modality of folkloric time (1 47). Moreover, Bakhtin argues that this idealization of the

past is itself a slippery slope, one which contnbutes to "a greater readiness to build a

superstructure for reality (the present) dong a vertical axis of upper and lower than to

move foxward dong the horizontal axis of time" (148). If it is not some historically

removed past which subordinates the present and hollows out the future, it is some other,

'vertically' removed meta-present. In tems of implication, both the heavens and Iost

heroic ages have the same structure: the folkloric ernphasis upon the future is forgotten.

Contrary to what one might expect, Bakhtin insists that eschatology likewise stnps the

future of its valence. Since eschatology postulates sornepreretrodicled end of history, the

present and the intervening future become inconsequential, an abstract distance already

navigated by the premonition of its final determination. In each of these three instances,

the 'fullness' of a present whose privileged mode is futurity is evisceratea by its relation to

some foundational meta-presence. Whether the present is the dross of some rnighty past,

or the transient echo of some higher-order reality, or the unpredicated fragment of an

impending apocalypse, the same violence is worked on authentic (folkloric) time.

And yet, is not Bakhtin's own 'theory story' quite obviously one of loss and

convergence, fa11 and redemption? To reiterate: the fallen time of preclass humanity

remains the tnith of time through al1 of its present, histoncal distortions, a tmth which is

glimpsed, and at points reaiized in literature. Fa11 and redemption in the terms of tirne's

history - in short, the how of the folklonc chronotope stands in direct contradiction to its

what. Not only would the chronotope itself seem to be chronotopic, but Bakhtin's

metaphysical chronotope would seem to require the very fdlen chronotopes it indexes.

One rnight say that a fourth series of chronotope troubles Bakhtin at this point - a

constitutively occluded one - what might be called the defotrlt chronotope, the chronotope

of his own theoretical telling.

But does not Bakhtin acknowledge this recursivity in his conclusion, the appended

text of 1973? One of the peculiarities of the "Forms of Time" essay is found in the tirne of

its composition. Even though the bulk of the work was written in 1937-38, the

"Concluding Remarks" were not written until 1 973. The temptation here is to read this

retrospective text as we might read Heidegger's Or1 Time and Beitlg, as the sober

reappraisal of a more mature thinker, as a correction, in effect, of an earlier lack of

methodologicai self-consciousness. Mer-dl, some 36 years would presumably provide

much in the way of hindsight. The question is: to what extent has Bakhtin coped with

t hese dificulties?

Bakhtin's acknowledgment of the recursive potential of the chronotope is part of a

further definition of the chronotope in general, a definition which apparently dispenses

with folklonc time and thus the evaluative index which causes him so much difficulty in

the 1937 text. In a manner which vaguely recalls Ric~eur,~ he underscores the

representational significance of chronotopes, the manner in which they provide the

' In his impressive Time andNarrative, Ricoeur sees narrative as providing a constitutive, aporetic temporality with its 'nonspeculative' resolution. in a sense Ricoeur reverses the respective roles of narrative and time. Even though Ricoeur notes a certain 'reciprocity' of thcir interrelation, it is narrative wtiich prirnariiy organizes and deploys temporolity, and not the opposite. For a concise consideration of his trdy immense projece, see Time and Narrative, vol. 1,52-8 7.

generative principles of narrative. This renders the chronotope coextensive to language in

general: language becomes, as he says, "fundarnentally chronotopicy' (25 1). So

fundamental, in faa, that even the possibility of abstract thought becomes dependent upon

the chronotope: "every entry into the sphere of meanings," Bakhtin suggests, 'Ys

accomplished only through the gates of the chronotope" (258). By this totaiized account,

'chronotope' must be chronotopical simply because it provides the condition of its own

abstract expression. No matter what the chronotopical what, it relies upon a chronotopical

how. Given this circuiarity, the difficulties of the 1937 text become quite inevitable: it

becomes difficult to imagine how any given chronotopical ground could be 'absolute' once

this ground necesmi& implies some chronotopical default.

By recognizing what might be called the default chronotope, one might assume

that Bakhtin is forced to set aside folklonc time, and with it, any evaluative what of

temporaiity which might then be used to index other chrono tope^.^ But this is obviously

not the case. Indeed, Bakhtin does abandon the folkioric chronotope, but the fundamental

what remaim. Perhaps sensing the way in which the slippages between the literary and the

histoncai chronotopes threatened to tum his original project of a 'historical poetics' into

an episode ofpure poetics, a 'poststnicturaly subsumption of the histoncai world by

textuai chronotopes, Bakhtin takes steps to fix what might be called the 'sy~ztm' of the

chronotopes of history and the chronotopes of text. As he puts it: "there is a sharp and

categorical boundary line between the actual world as source of representation and the

world represented in the work" (253). The historical world, the "completely real-life

time-space7' (253), comesfirst for Bakhtin, despite the diaicgical transactions which will

inevitably occur across this chronotopical boundary of the creating world and the created

text. Ifrepresentation congeals around varying chronotopical centers, it does so only by

refemng back to some prerepresentational point, one which Bakhtin fails to pinpoint

Perhaps this is why Morson and Emerson, in their study of the chronotope essq in their Mikhail Bakhtin: Tlie Creation ofa Prosaics, omit al1 reference to folklonc time, despite its pivota1 role throughout the entirety of the 1937 portion of " F o m of Time," and the fact that Bakhtin's consideration of it occupies a NI îhird of the entire essay.

specifically in his concluding remarks, but that we can readily associate with the dialogical

in general, or perhaps even with the larval 'once-occurrent being' of Toward a

Philosophy of the Act and the proto-dialogicai 'answerability' it evinces.

Do not many of the specifics of folklonc time outlined above conform to the

dialogical, to the activity of language? 1s not Bakhtinian dialogism collective, concrete,

holistic and emergent; or in other words, a participant in the central categones of folkioric

time? Rather than suggesting that the "Concluding Remarks" of 1973 demonstrate a more

mature, rnethodologicai self-consciousness, one which repairs the errors and excesses of

the earlier text by eliding the indexical role of the folkloric chronotope, perhaps we should

acknowiedge a profound fidelity, a rewriting of the folklonc in Iirigiristic lems, such that

the founding chronotope no longer lies at some murky, narrative distance, but instead

bears upon given chronotopes at every tum! Where folkloric time had stood at a

determinate remove from language, a what independent of and prior to the how of its

expression, to language, the chronotope of chronotopes in the "Concluding Remarks" has

become, in a problematic fashion, Iatiguage ztse,f- It can be argued that for the later

Bakhtin the absolute chronotope and the default chronotope have become one mid the

m e .

But if we impute this conflation to Bakhtin, does it allow hirn to escape the

difficulties of the 1937 text? Or does it transport him into further, less forgiving

difficulties? Since the chronotope is not lirnited to narrative, temporality, as we have said,

lies at the bais of ail language for Bakhtin. And yet, when it cornes to the question of the

deployment of chronotopes, a deployment which is itself necessarily chronotopical, we are

told that "the generai charactenstic of these interactions is that they are diaiogical (in the

most general sense)" (252). Surprisingly enough, then, the chronotopes which lie at the

heart of the possibility of language, are themselves 'govemed' in a linguistic fashion. The

4 At the Eighth International Conference on Mikhail Bakhtin, Caigq, Canada, June 20-25, 1997, I was informeci by Brian Poole that the original archive material furtbcr supports this reading. Apparently, when asked to provide additional materials to his original body of notes for the purposes of publication, Bakhtin actudly raïded material which predates the chronotope essay.

time ofiempordity, of the default chronotope, is nothlng other than the time of language.

Once again, we are threatened by a debilitating circularity: language would seem to have

found a berth in the heart of its very own heart. Of course, the suggestion that two hems

are at issue would diffuse this circularity. One could argue that just because the

chronotope lies at the heart of language's what, the represented, does not make it

contradictory that something 'linguistic' lies at the heart of the chronotope's how. Lf it

remains a troubling figure, it certainly is no more so than the inexplicable divide between

language's pragmatic and semantic dimensions.

The 'less forgiving difficulty,' if it is to be found anywhere, lies in Bakhtin's efforts

to fix what we have called the 'syntax' of world and text. Despite the faa that language

provides not only the ground for the theoretical expression of time, but also the

paradigrnatic case for its fundamental structure, temporality must precede language for

Bakhtin, othenvise, as was suggested above, history and ontology find themselves

intoIerably dislocated by the very poetics which they attempt to contain. According to

Bakhtin it is "methodologically impermissible" to confuse "the represenfed world with the

world outside the text" (253). And yet Bakhtin fails to argue this syntax. As a result. he

defers by syntactic caveat what needs to be confi-onted and subdued: the possibility that

representation is unremittingly violent. If the 'represented' constitutes in each case a

movement away fiom the histonca1 world, as he suggests, Bakhtin is caught in what by

now is a classical problem. How can he detach the how of the historical world from the

how of language without rendering that world as yet another langage boume what,

another 'theory story'? Once we acknowledge that chronotopes do not abide by the

distinctions between narrative and theory, that language is, through and through,

chronotopical, how can we definitively distinguish between those chronotopes of the

historical world fiom those of stones? Under what theoretical exemption could Bakhtin

claim to operate?

Bakhtin's syntactic caveat in the 1973 text, in the very act of drawing the

circularity of a chronotopically deployed language and a linguistically deployed

chronotope into a straight-line of derivation, also places his own theoretical practice, his

own discursive how, into jeopardy. By insisting on the precedence of the representing

world over the represented world, without explaining how this 'representing' can be

anything other than represented in discourse in general, including his own, Bakhtin is

placed in the uncornfortable position of proposing a methodological restriction that

renders the very distinction upon which it relies impossible. By asserting that world must

precede text, and by decluding language as the very aperture through which tirne and

space become meaningful, it becomes an impracticible task to then dissociate world f?om

text, world fiorn 'world.' Something profound happens when Bakhtin draws the folklonc

what into the dialogical how, and thus positions language as the dispersive axis of time

and space. In some way, language as how scoops up the world in its embrace, and

dislocates every what through its performative apparatus.

To suggest that these problems are 'failings' on Bakhtin's part is perhaps too

strong. In a sense, one might Say that those qualities which lead him into these difficulties

are also the very qualities which make him so valuable and unique as a thinker: intellectual

restlessness and a surfeit of creativity. One also needs to take into account the provisional

nature of "Forms of Time": what 1 have said thus far amounts to a surnmary reading of a

surnmary, and posthumously edited, account. More importantly, however, there is the

possibility that these 'difficulties' actually have very litrie to do with Bakhtin. What if,

rather, the dilemma lies in temporality itself?

The problem is that Bakhtin, in the process of atternpting to elaborate a temporal

'method,' is also asking Augustine's question fiom The Cmfessiora - "What, then, is

time?" - without considering the famous statement which follows: "1 know well enough

what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if 1 am asked what it is and try to explain, 1

am baffledm (1 1.14). This deceivingly imocuous passage encapsulates, in many ways a

profound observation about tirne: time is one of those difficult categones which we

somehow 'know without knowing. ' Augustine is not simply saying that temporality is

conceptuaily difficult, he is stating, quite explicitly, the w q in which it is difficult. We

rnight say the problem is one of 'whats.' Augustine knows whut time is, only so long as he

is not called on to explui~t exactly what this 'what' is. The 'what' of time, he seems to be

saying, Lies outside the pale of representation.

In various guises, particularly in the trappings of language, this disjunction

between 'whats' figures large among the obsessive themes of contemporary thought. One

could argue, for instance, that it provides Heidegger with his guiding problematic,

although for the Heidegger of Being und T h e the issue would be not so much the manner

in which the prediscursive what somehow resirls the 'what' of explanation, but how this

latter, metaphysicd 'what' of time levels the former and condemns the tradition to read a

derivative determination, 'presence,' as primordial. And yet, rather than couching these

whats in a theoretical 'narrative' of the primordial and the derivative and thereby stating a

fact of this trar~sfution between 'whats,' Augustine, already on the path towards which the

later Heidegger would turn, seems to be asking, indirectly at least, after thepossibzii~ of

this translation. 1s it possible to transpose this prediscursive understanding, this ability to

'reckon with time,' into a cornprehensive discursive understanding, a propositional what

of tirne? What translational violence - and here the recursive turbufence of this Iine of

questioning becomes evident - if any, is worked by this (alter 'what'?

For our own part, we might question Augustine's question: is it even possible to

ask after a what of time? As we shalI see, terms such as 3s' and even 'what' are faden with

temporal predetemiinations. Both the relation of 'isness' to presence and the contrat of

'whatness' to 'howness' demonstrate, in a preliminary fashion, why it is that we can say,

with Denida, that the question of time is one to which we always tum to too late.' The

problem of the early Bakhtin, the default chronotope, would seem to be endernic to

tempordity in general. Time has 'always already' been presupposed. Bakhtin

acknowledges as much by poising meaning itself at the 'gates of t he chronotope,' and yet,

stubbornly, he still asks what. Since temporality apparently can be interrogated only in

terms which are aiready temporally conditioned, any gesture towards an ontology of time,

5 "Ousia and Gramme," The Margins ofPhilosophy, 42.

fundamental or othenvise, if it does not in fact wrestle contradiction and circularity, at

least remains profoundly exposed to funher defaults. Even though Bakhtin overcomes the

problematic hierarchy of times by abandoning the folkloric for the dialogical, the dialogical

is not itself immune to the same exposure, the same default. In the same way that the

enigmatic, and yet putative difference between what and how gesture to some 'silent

discourse' of temporality, dialogism, as a declusion of the occlusionary chronotope of

chronotopes is replete with temporal determinations. Shifting absolute temporality from

something we are 'with, ' a time of the tale such as folklonc tirne, to sornething which

articulates itself 'through' us, a time of the telling such as dialogica! tirne, does nothing to

remedy this difficulty. Admission does not equai solution.

And yet, one might be uiclined to ask whether this notion of 'exposure,' which

supposedly makes time a theoretically treacherous category, also implies a kind of

diaiogism? In other words, is not the suggested difficulty of tirne itself dialogicai? In

Towarda Philosophy ofrhe Act, Bakhtin is concerned with what he terms, 'the eventness

of Being,' and the way in which theoretical discourse levels this eventness. The problem of

time, as we have drafled it, would seern to be that every what of time manifests an

ernphatic vulnerability to its own how, a how which is itself susceptible to declusion in

terms of different, perhaps even contradictory whats of time. Temporality, perhaps even

more so than other 'fundamental categones' of philosophy, is continually awash in itself.

The peculiar power of dialogism is that, as a fundamental what of tirne, it seerns to

account for its own problernatic evet>ttzess, the very occluded, concrete activity which

exposes it.

But is 'exposure' the only mode of temporal dificulty? One might ask, for

instance, what has happened to presipposition in this account of tirne's treachery. We

moved fiom 'presupposition' to 'exposure' rather effonlessly, but is there not a sense in

which two profoundly different orientations are involved in either term? Are declusions of

temporality so much 'exposed' to their own eventness, to an occluded happening which

renders them 'answerable' to sornefr~rther declusion of time, or do they rather presuppose

some more enigrnatic, nindamental what, one which preexists and is disfigured by them?

Folkloric time, of course, belongs to the 'storyline' of presupposition, and one might

suggest that presupposition comprises an inadequate way to understand the difficulty of

tirne for the same reasons that folkloric time constitutes an inadequate approach to

ternporality. But the pertinent point is that, for the same reasons that the 'beforeness' of

presupposition gestures to the radical turbulence of temporality - one must beg time in

order to even suggest the way in which time begs itself - so too does the 'aflerness' of

exposure. Exposure is ifselfewposed. And among these exposures, one finds this question

of presupposition, the e r m e of exposure. It is in this sense that we rnight Say that whats

of temporality are utteriy exposed, exposed, that is, even to the lack of exposure.

Moreover, the 'aftemess' of exposure, which constmes the dificulty of temporality as

interminable apdogy, the regression of default temporality afier default temporality as

each is decluded within the occlusive embrace of another, would seem to repeat the very

problem which Bakhtin attempts to suppress with his syntactic caveat: the sense in which

the 'original,' in this case the 'pure eventness' of temporality, becomes thoroughly

negative, imrnured and erased by the machinations of representation. If 'exposure,' then, is

itself dialogical, then the diaiogical insures its own impossibility. We are answerable to our

how, but in answenng, we erase the question entirely.

This is merely an ellipticd way to suggest that dialogism, as a superordinate what

of tirne, rnust itself be presupposed, or in other words, non-dialogical - an impossible time

without exposures. This is far frorn a 'facile' criticism of dialogical time, one which simply

accuses dialogism of being 'monological,' as though dialogical time constituted the one

infinite Nail of Heaven arnidst constellations of dialogical flux. Rather, what it foregrounds

is the marner in which the circles whkh cramp or the regressions which flay temporality,

are themselves bound/unravelled by hnher circles/regressions - that time is not sirnply

'out ofjoint,' bur that 'outness ofjointness' is itself temporal; to Say not only that

' temporality is temporal, ' as Heidegger d ~ e s , ~ but that " temporality is temporal' is

The Concept of Tirne, 2 IE.

temporal,' and that thus we can/cannot say anything about time without having our heart

explode a d o r Our skin peeled away. 1s not temporality that Grand Occlusion from which

each of these words is deposited, like motherless spider eggs across nonexistent siik? A

bizarre metaphor ... Cenainly! Why not? 1s there not a sense in which mlythi~tg goes when

we attempt to speak 'discursively' of temporality? Time as man, as universe, as now, as

then, as unspeakable, as transcendental ovipositor - is anyone able to argue consistently

othewise?

There are many ways in which knots of impossibility can be drawn-fiordread-into

Bakhtin's project, dl sternrning-from/attributable-to the sheer difficulty of time. If we

follow the threads of speculation far enough, everything is strangled, and this includes

'following' itself. The difficulty either runs very deep, or very fa. Temporality, as we shall

see, isfun&menturn corzcussirn, and to such a radical extent that rlot even fltir rnay be

securely said of it. It is as though temporality demands an apophatics which is so

complete, that only nothing and only everything may be said of it. Later, 1 will want to

step back somewhat fiom the 'narrative drama' of this formulation, but for now, let us say

that this is the point where the ring of trading coins deafens.

Earlier 1 had mentioned the need to retum to temporality as a how in order to

approach the trying point glossed over by Kant in his introduction to the first Cri~ique.

Indeed, Bakhtin does attempt such a 'howing' of temporality, even if he is driven to arrive

at some final disposition of time, first in the f o m of a what disassociated from the how of

his own consideration, and then finally in the form of a what which is postured within this

very how. In the first case he stmcturally repeats the metaphysical errors which Kant

sought to redress - the determination of some 'grand what' from the perspective of a

specular how which remains 'stationary' simply because it remains unthernatized - and in

the second he simply repeats Kant's original exercise - the grand what is rewritten into the

very movement of its own how, except that for Bakhtin this 'how' is linguistically rather

than subjectively aligned. As a result, the 'representing world' is as thoroughly cloistered

as the noumenal. Just as a 'Copernican revolution' lies between the Kantian and the

Bakhtinian distribution of temporality, there is a sense in which, despite the categoncal

similarities between the folkloric and the dialogical, a 'rninor revolution' lies between the

texts of 1937 and 1973. A revolution inscnbed across the inscrutable difficulty of

temporality.

The fact that the folklonc and the dialogical can remain so similar across this

revolutionary divide throws the issue of what and how and their distribution within

theory-narratives into stark relief Something fundamental and unacknowledged has

shifted between the folkloric and the dialogical, and little is gained in the way of

understanding by suggesting, in a prelirninary fashion, that Bakhtin simply 'occludes' what

had earlier been decluded as folkloric tirne; that he 'unwhats it,' in a sense, in order to

draw it into the bosom of language. Several questions confront us: 1) Why is language

thus 'unbndled, ' such that world becomes 'world'? 2) What 'logic' arbitrates the

divergence of these revolutionary lines? 3) Moreover, is it possible to chart the

consequential logic of this operation, to understand why, in limited terms, the recuperation

of a given what as a h m is able to deploy the firm contours across which an entirely

original theoretical position can be extended? 4) 1s the 'chronotope' conceptually

adequate to these interrogations? And, 5) if these readings, and the vocabulaq they give

rise to, can be synoptically extended to different positions, to mry rnimber of the disparate

theoretical camps which populate the contemporary landscape, does not the prospect of a

theoretical 'camp pulois' become feasible - a gerrymandered discourse of expediency,

which, not uniike those 'languages' that evolved among the polyglot m i e s of the Middle

Ages could Sap the walls of incornmensurabiIity?

Although he failed to confront the serious problems which threaten the conceptual

coherence of the chronotope, Bakhtin certainly demonstrates the power of temporal

readings, not merely in generic and historical questions of literature, but also in a more

unrestricted sense. Ifthere is anything in "Forms of Tirne" which compels, it is the

tantalking sense that temporality as a way to read, that metaphysics as rne~hod. provides

an immense theoretical reservoir. Of course, having acknowledged both the problern and

the promise, the question is one of where to begin.

What makes Foucault's n e Order of 7hing.s so interesting at this juncture, both in

terms of our questions and of our reading of Bakhtin, is that he addresses the first question

of language and arrives at the synopsis suggested by the last, without any consideration of

those that intervene. Refemng to the "possible permutations" afforded by Foucault's

andysis of 'man' in Q, nte Order of nings, Dreyfus and Rabinow see him as providing

"us astonishing synoptic insight into the tortured turnings of two hundred years of

complex and tangled thought" (Michel Foircmlr, 43). Indeed, 'man' would seem to allow

Foucault to convincingly index the broad strokes of theorists as diverse as Freud,

Heidegger, and Russell. But rather than dispute the power of Foucault's 'synopsis,' 1 hope

to reduce and interrogate it - to gain insight into his synoptic insight one might say. This

work of reduction, however, is not intended to eclipse 'man,' to somehow interpolate its

'ground' with the more primitive and therefore the more fundamental, but rather to

introduce 'him' to the theoretical possibilities demonstrated by Bakhtin - to those

questions of revolution and consequential logic which intervene.

As is well known, the most decisive element marking the shift in epistemes for

Foucault is to be found in a given epoch's attitudes towards language. Thus in the

Classical episteme, the period ninning fi-om the midpoint of the seventeenth century to the

end of the eighteenth, Foucault argues that language was conceived primarily in

representatio~tuf terms, as a window upon apre-urdered world - the trick being to clear

the window of al1 the clutter of false representations. Throughout The Order of nizngs, he

invokes the figure of the 'table' as an emblem of those knowledges made possible by the

Classical episteme. Here 'table,' not udike the figure of 'man' in the modem episteme,

arises as the result of a specific posture towards language, a language, as he writes:

that names, patterns, combines, and connects and discomects thuigs as it m&es them visible in the transpuenq of words. in this role, language transfomis the sequence of perceptions into a table, and cuts up the continuum of beings in a pattern of charrtcters. Where there is discourse, representations are laid out and jwtiiposed; and diings are grouped togethcr and articulated. The profound vocation of Classical language has always been to create a table-'a picture': whether it be in the form of na tml discourse, the accumulation of tmth, descriptions of thuigs, a body of exact knowledge, or an encyclopedic dictionaiy. It exists, therefore, oniy in order to be transparent ... (3 1 1)

The represented, that is, the 'world,' is something whose order preexists language, and it

is against this preordained world that language is to press its 'transparency. ' Of course, as

early and as famously as Locke7 this diaphaneity was never simply assumed, and to this

extent 'transparency' should be read as language's univocal possibility, as a primary

orientation towards a 'world of infinite representation' rather than an apparent fact of

language at the time. Although language 'creates,' 'groups,' 'articulates,' the table, it is

profoundly passive - statimary - to the extent that this table is laid out across the axis of

the infinite, that it traverses the possibility of an exact and complete knowledge of a world

coextensive with God. Significantly for Foucault, this Ieaves 'man' as we now understand

him tm~hematized in a crucial sense, as a yet unthought 'fold' in the sciences of the West.

Representation, then, becomes the ground of the "profound upheaval" which

marks the nascency of the modem episteme and the arriva1 of man. The modem episteme

arises through what on one level might be descnbed as a certain, but by no rneans

unarnbiguous, 'withdrawal' of representation. The contiguity of the table is inflected,

broken up:

European culture is invcnting for itsclf a dcpth in which what matters is no longer idcntitiçs, distinctive charactcrs, permanent tables with ail their possible paths and routes, but grcat hidden forces developed on the basis of their primitive and inaccessible

-- - - - - - -

See his Essay Conceming Human Understanding, Book III: "Of Words."

nucleus, origin, causality, and history. ( î l e Order 0f7Aing.s~ 25 1)

The organitllig principles of life, labour, and language, retreat "outside representation,

beyond its imrnediate visibility, in a son of behind-the-scenes world even deeper and more

dense than representation itself' (239). And yet this movement away tiom 'representation'

into the 'hidden' and the foundational tends to be somewhat confùsing for the reader of

The Order of Things. Do not these obscure originary forces, the relations "in which

visibility no longer plays a role" (2 18). still find themselves 'represented' in language?

Foucault acknowledges this "problem left in suspense7' (36 1) only in the finai

chapter of the work, noting "'the manner in which empiricities can be given to

representation but in a form that is not present to consciousness" (362-3). Representation

is clefted, Foucault argues, between the conscious ai~d the unconscious, between the

positive and the findamentai. Accordingly, we cm only assume that this earlier rhetoric

regarding modemity's shift into that which stands in excess of representation should rather

be read as a shift in the 'what' of representation, as an epistemological migration to a

different represented. In this sense one might Say that the order of the visible has been

exceeded by what perfoms it. 'Function' now relates "totalities of elements without the

slightest visible identity" (265). Abruptly, and this example spans al1 three epistemes, the

great whale who spits up Jonah possesses a greater adjacency to man and mammals rather

than to the fish of the sea or to the Leviathan of the Bible.

And yet is this clefting of representation itself adequate? 1s there not some

fundamental difference between the withdrawal of nineteenth century philology from

representation and the shift towards origin and process in labour and Life? Certainly, with

the innovation of comparative linguistics, language does withdraw from representation,

fiom surrogationaiism, and into the processes of history. Foucault speaks of language's

new "enigmatic density," of its "becoming-object." But in what manner, we might ask, is

language's retreat from representation 'enigmatic,' such that we must Say it differs

profoundly from the correspondhg retreat witnessed by economics and biology? Of

course the answer to such a question devolves around the fact that language is at once

something represented and that which represents. We have already encountered, above,

the tension between the spatidity of the Classical table and its oxymoronic 'passive

constitution' by the "thin temporal series unfolding in men's rninds" (303), by the seriality

of language. In effect, the table is constituted by a language ordained to perjorm its own

absence. The difference, then, between language's retreat and the complementary retreat

of labour and life, lies in this self-relation. The 'processes' of labour and life comprise a

withdrawal fiom one modality of the represented (the visible) to another (the

perfonnative), whereas the "enigmatic density" of language is not merely a withdrawal

from an already laid out positivity, from an Other, but rather a redistribution of itself

within itself Foucault's "profound upheaval" begins when representatiort becomes

It is within the skein of these attenuations of representation that one can

impose/isolate a certain economy of temporal figures, and thus take an initial step towards

our earlier questions. The signature of time is perhaps written rnost forcefully in

representation's evasion of the table, of its shifl into fünction and fundamental process. In

a mdimentary sense, we rnight hazard a distinction between 'temporalities,' between the

time of the table and the tirne of man; the one engaged in stationary, 'spatial' relations, the

other invested in energeia, developrnent. This distinction is one which Foucault himself

continually refers to:

Here, as ekewhere, the mangements into chronoIogica1 scries hrid to be broken up, and their eicments rcdistributed, thcn ri new histoly was constituted, one that does not merely esprcss the mode of succession of beings and îheir comection in tirne, but the modality of the+ formation. Empiricil--and this is equaIly true of natural individuals and of the narnes by which they c m be nameci--is henceforth traverscd by History, through the whole density of its being. The order of time is beginning. (293)

The traversal of the positive by its 'modality of formation' signals not only the erosion of

the table into stratigraphies, but the death of simple chronology as well. ' History, ' rather

than denoting the simple extension of the world's horizon across a homogeneous plane of

the past, speaks of the hypotactic knotting of that plane, of the syntactic 'depths' which

articulate and make possible the present. The Classical and the modem episteme, one

could suggest, are each possessed of a different fundamental theory-story which, bearing a

certain 'rule generating force,' circumscnbes the possible permutations of any given field

of knowledge. Thus, at the blurred, troubled boume of these two great epistemes, one

might paradoxically say that 'the order of time beçins,' at the sarne moment when "time

itself, with its chronological divisions and its quasi-spatial calendar, is doubtless nothing

but an illusion of knowledge" (279). When the 'man' of modemity first begins to age, the

time of the table enters decrepitude, passes.

This preliminary distinction of Copernican 'stones,' however, which does little

more than temporally inflect the episteme, is in keeping with Foucault's treatment of

temporal issues in general: the episteme, the 'positive unconscious of knowledge, ' remains

superordinate to tirne. As is particularly evident in his engagement of Heidegger,' time, for

Foucault, is everywhere read as a rnnriijs~n~iotz of the episteme. To a certain extent this

renders Foucault's own reading of temporality irrelevant to our present concems.

Although metaphoncally useful as a rneans of throwing each other into epistemic relief,

both the bland temporal parataxis of the visible/chronological and the invisible

reticulations of historical process are inadequate to the task of rewriting the necessary

transgression of representation which signals the collapse of the Classical into the modem

episteme, simply because this transgression Iogically precedes them. Those fundamental

aories of space and time which Foucault excavates within 7he Order of Thirgs are

confined to effect, are shadowed by an unconscious which displaces them always already.

Accordingly we must tum to this unconscious, this self-evisceration of language

which Foucault rnisleadingly describes as a withdrawal of representation. In particular, we

-- -

g Foucault's oblique discussion of Heidegger is found primarily in the section entitled "The Return and the Retreat of the Ongin," in The Order of Things. 328-35.

must ask precisely what it is which 'shifis' through this epochal cusp. We have aiready

touched upon the difference between the corresponding retreats of representation in

economics and biology as opposed to philology, describing the first as a retreat fiom one

what to another, and the second as a retreat of language into itself. A gap remains. The

topos of 'representation' and its tacit equivalence with 'the visible,' allows Foucault to

blur the boundaries of either side of this divide enough to give a sense of solidarity to his

analyses. This is not to say that Foucault regards these withdrawals as identical, but

neither does he dwell on their dissimilarity, let alone provide any insight as to how they

might differ. Indeed, since the difference between these retreats is ultimately extreme - in

terms of economics and biology there is, quite simply, no 'retreat,' but rather a

revolutionary exchange of stories - this inability is forced upon him by his own analyses.

'Representation' itself becomes a site of ' intemal torsion. ' Could we not Say that this

folding together of representation through the intermediary of the visible ailows Foucault

to substitute a linguistic figure for something perhaps better performed ternporally.

The extremity (although by no means the enigma) of this difference between

retreats is rnitigated once temporality becomes Our index. We have dready noted the

'withdrawal' into process of economics, biology, and of language diachronically

conceived; but what of language's withdrawal from its own transparency? Why is it that

language, once clouded by the stubbomess of objects, ceases to represent in the Classical

sense, and begins to perform? The question which confronts us, then, is as rarely asked as

it is imposing. How does perjrma~tce dgrr frorn representatio~z?~

A preliminary and somewhat heavy-handed difference, 1 would suggest, is found in

- - --

9 This may be interpreted, of corne, as a variant of the Heideggerean interrogative of the ontological difference, and to this extent a common, although by no means less imposing, question.

the distribution of what might be termed 'detennituzfivity,' the sense in which temporal

asymmetry is so oflen hypotactic, engaged in subordinations to a 'source,' 'cause,'

'power,' 'ongin,' etc.. In this defached sense, determinativity is sornething which is easily

read back (almost triviaily so, given the array of synonyms he has recourse to) into

Foucault's account of the coagulation of 'man' from the Classicai table. At the close of the

eighteenth century, for instance, Foucault sees an inaugural transposition of

detenninativities:

what is indicated, on the horizon of al1 actual representations, as the foundation of their unity, is found to be those never objectifiable objects, those never entirely representable representations, those simultruieously evident and invisibIe visibilities, those redities that are removed fiom reaiih to the degree to which they are the foundation of what is given to us and reaches us: the force of labour, the encrgy of life, the power of speech. (244)

Here, the imbrication of 'foundation' with 'force,' 'energy,' and 'power,' amounts to a

resituating of determinativity into the immediate or remote anterior of visibility . 'Reality'

in either episteme might be descnbed as a certain postunng of determinativities. The

'given' of Classical Discourse no longer unfolds across the axis of the infinite, as ordained

by some d-determinative omniscience, but rather appears as the shining, but ultimately

derivative, cap of an iceberg, buoyed by plural, submarine determinativities; by the deeps

of 'history,' and the processes of 'function. '

But this simple fiagmenting of God is a mere harbinger. "The infinite senes of

consequences" (243) which culrninate in 'man,' requires more than a multiple,

schizophrenic deity/deterrninativity, or one that retreats fiom the deadening of Kis

extremities. The necessary "displacement of being in relation to representation" (245) only

occurs when the uct of represet~fafion is ifselfitzvested wzth deterrnitialivity, or in other

words, when representation becomes perfmative. In Kant, this is found in transcendental

subjectivity, but Foucault's stnicturaiist affinities lead him to adopt language as a

paradigmatic case: paradigmatic, because the "demo tion of language" from a

"spontaneous grid for the knowledge of things" (304) to its modem status as mere object,

is not only where "'the whole curiosity of our thought now resides" (3061, but it also

constihites a "culmination," a limit expenence of the event of man. With the slow seepage

of determinativity into the spoken and wrîtten word, the preexistent world underwritten by

an infinite and eternal God flickers and lapses into a world performed by a finite and

&mient Ianguage. What is lost in the wildemess of how. 'World' becomes enmeshed in

the fickie drama of the word.

Of course, the lacuna between the how of performance and what of representation

is ody superkially glossed by determinativity. And yet, by yoking a vast array of

metaphors into a single term, it does seem to allow for a clearer restatement of Foucault's

'synoptic account.' The "dispersion of language" to which Foucault refers, for instance, its

post-eighteenth century tendencies towards formalisms, hermeneutics, and literatures,

might now be read as an 'inevitable' result of this determinative feud between

representation and performativity. In "the positivist's dream of a language keeping stridly

to the level of what is known: a table-language" (296) one finds the desire to rewrite

signification as Discourse, as a language which deflects determinativity onto a world

which antedates it. The elaboration of symbolic logic, or as Foucault says, "a symbolism"

which would "be transparent to thought in the very movement that permits it to know"

(297), becomes another attempt to circumvent the glut of determinativity in language by

fashioning it into a pure instrument of formai systems, as an entirelypredetemined

determinativity. With 'interpretation,' language is seen as a depository of the past, as

possessed of "an ineluctable memory which does not even know itself as a memory"

(297), and as such, exegesis seeks to unfold these sedimentations, to unravel the unseen

labyrinth of the word into the surface of its concrete determinations. Hemeneutics in

particular, with its 'circular distribution' of determinativity. could be reconceived as the

attempt to rehabilitate the performztive/representationai relation, to transfigure feud into

fiision. Ody with literature, which is "folded back upon the enigrna of its own origin," and

which "leads language back eorn grarnmar to the naked power of speech" (300), is this

new, perfiormative posture of the word indulged and proliferated.

When one transposes this dispenive feud fiom language to experîence,

consciousness, and history, one has arrived at the "strange internai torsion" that is 'man.'

Always 'already,' continudly 'thrown,' man finds himself performed by the

determinativities of life, labour, and language, even though, as the locus through which

these determinativities are represented, he also finds himself the performer of the very

processes which perfiorm him. He is 'doubled' by this duai, chiasmic adjacency, both

"bound to the back of a tige? (322) and standing "in the place belonging to the king"

(3 12). Because of this 'doubleness,' man becomes a faa among other empiricd facts, and

yet the ground of dl factuality; is ovenvhelmed, and driven by his unconscious, and yet

cogito, the source of al1 clarity; is tossed in a history whose ongin always eludes him, even

though this origin is something which he never ceases to exist.

As the figure, the 'general stmcture' we might say, of modernity, man has been the

limit of our thought, a grid for the tangled canopy of permutations that prevents us from

envisaging any outside, any ' de r ' of man. Moreover, this figure, and here Foucault

echoes Bakhtin, is a 'distortion,' is possessed of an ineliminable tension which compels

modem thought to repeat itself in an endless, thoroughly futile attempt to exorcise these

tensions from within. From the vantage of the episteme, then, and we must remernber that

an episteme is never 'present,' but rather grounds the possibilities for whatever may be

'present,' the various strategies of modernity become inevitable exertions across a

preinscribed field. The 'limit of philosophy' becomes synonymous with the cliché, 'there is

nothing new, nothing that is not cliché.'

Thus, when Foucault asserts the archaeological indissociability of positivism and

eschatology (Comte and Marx), he is refemng to the manner in whkh both of these

'analyses of knowledge' constitute echoes, are played out across the same general

structure of man. Since Kant, knowledge no longer transacts across the line which l ads

from the finite to the infinite, but rather the infrnite has been irreducibly occluded, the line

warped by the mediation of transcendental subjectivity. The representation of the world

has become the performance of a transcendental manifold of categories. We can see the

prying apart of phenomena and noumena, the empirical and the transcendental, as a

necessary consequence of this redistribution of determinativity. Working across this

'torsion' of inter-grounding determinations, a positivistic physiology of knowledge will

attempt to reduce the transcendental to the empirical through a mapping of sensory

function and its detem-hativities, as though the noumena could be more thoroughly

discemed once the performative leveling (disfigunng) of the transcendental instance of

engagement is charted. An eschatological history of knowledge, on the other hand, dEers

in that this 'reduction' is historically deferred, such that our contemporary age is drawn

taut, emploaed, by a grand determinativity installed in some imminent future, by a

hist O ricai denouement.

Both of these attempts, Foucault suggests, suffer from what he calls "precritical

naiveté" (320). an obsolescent Classical belief in the possibility of a complete knowledge.

Whether one naturaiistically reduces the performativity of man, or discursively encloses it

in the telos of its fùture resolution, the result is the sarne: the bent line is hamrnered with

the hope of drawing it plumb to the infinite. The phenomenological "analysis of actual

experience," as "a discoune whose tension would keep separate the empirical and

transcendental, while being directed at both" (320), can now be seen as an inevitable

compensatory response. The arnbiguous to and fro of a "meticulous and descriptive

language," applied tn a source restricted to the purity of its own determinativity, such that

the performed and the represented, the telling and the told, might be unfolded in rigourous

communion, Foucault argues, "is doing no more.. . than fulfilling with greater care the

hasty demands laid down when the attempt was made to make the empiricd. in man, stand

for the transcendentai" (321) - to make the what adequate to the how.

Why does Foucault see phenomenology as exercising 'greater care'? We might say

that Husserl's purificatory ntuals and, more importantly, the painstaking attention to

phenomena as they occzir, undenvrite an attempt to translate, in each of its moments, the

pure act of thought into structures of consciousness - to represent the act of

representation. Thought, Foucault reminds us, "at the level of its existence, in its very

dawning, is itselfan action - a perilous act" (328). The obsessive transcription of the

moments of how into a what, comprises yet another attempt, this t h e through a scrutiny

of the pure instants of performance rather than the mechanisms of perception, to

redistribute detenninativity dong the axis of the infinite, across a world of facts; to

rninimize the p e d by laying the performer out among the already performed. The ground

of grounding is charted, the 'fold' is measured and strialy creased.

Does this cataloguing of concrete 'achiality,' in al1 of its minutiae, into a

comprehensive 'facfuality,' acnially demonstrate 'man' at his most acute, as a

philosophicai science? #y would the fidelity to the punty of performance - the

transcription of the determinativity of the living now - constitute its most thorough

reduction to representation, the redistnbution of determinativity to a world which is

already (though not the empirical world)? Through an unblinking documentation of its

happening as it happens, phenomenology, despite its brooding concem with the act, is

driven by a profound representational bias. If we agree with Foucault,

then, there is a sense in which 'phenomenological care' is directly related to its act leveling

sensitivity to the divide between performance and representation. In order to tether a

world wracked and exiled by its own activity, this how must be murdered into a what.

The 'redistribution of determinativity' charted by Foucault cm be easily read into

the Bakhtin of 1937 and of 1973. The folkloric, we might Say, displays a precritical naiveté

which is rehabilitated by the shifi to the dialogical as the occluszo~z (unwhating) of a

decluded (whated) fundamental tirne. The temporal absolute. as we have said, becomes

the default by penetrating the very movement of discourse. What Bakhtin fails to

recognize is the very thing of which Foucault is most aware: the trenchant dlflcuity

engendered by this redistribution. When representation is no longer transparent and

stationary, but darkens and retreats in consciousness of its own operations, the resultant

theoretical figure, what Foucault dramatically terms 'man,' either displaces itself or dwells

in contradiction. As we have seen, the world, as the 'great what,' is determined by the

very how (language, consciousness) that Ï t detemines in tum.

What Foucault fails to ask, on the other hand, is the very question which Bakhtin is

equipped to answer: Why does this war between what and how happen? Foucault's

episteme is quite elegantly read as a generalization and histoncal instantiation of the same

fundamental shifi in theoretical storyline evinced by Kant's Copemican revolution. Earlier

1 had suggested that these shifis were perhaps best characterized in temporal tems, as a

profound rewriting of time and space. My consideration of Bakhtin was rneant to

demonstrate both the possibilities of such an approach and its attendant difikulties. And

indeed, the introduction of 'determinativity' to Foucault's synoptic rereading of the past

two hundred years of philosophical stmggle constitutes a first cmde step in this direction.

We were able to synopticdly resolve Foucault's 'man,' the torsion or fold of the

seK-grounding ground, into certain general lines of force, a play of contradictory

determinativities, each of which find their locus in the regions just antenor to the

empincities of life, labour, and language. Likewise, we are now able to 'explain' why, in a

primitive way, it becomes so difficult for Bakhtin to fix the syntôx of world and word, of

what and how, in his "Concluding Remarks" - once determinativity is thus redistributed,

the great what seems eroded beyond al1 repair, is sucked into the capricious and yet tidal

fluidity of a how without shore. Once 'representing* becomes performative, the

'epistemological dilemma' takes inevitable root, and the 'represented' becomes the echo

of a thunderous, and yet ùtaudible world. But even though determinativity, by anchoring a

senes of metaphors, allows a certain clarity to enter into both Foucault's synoptic account

and the dficulty of Bakhtin's syntactic caveat, the situation is decidedly more

complicated than the contradiction of self-enclosed fùndamentali ties, or the white noise of

an interminable crosstalk of forces. There remain many subtleties the surface of which

determinativity, 'detached ongin,' cm only blunder against.

IfBakhtin, by insisting on absolute formulations of temporality, fails to

acknowledge the turbulence across which the laminarity of his analyses are inscnbed, and

if Foucault, by rendenng the episteme superordinate to temporality, misses the power of

resolution such analyses could provide his synoptic account, does the answer lie in a

straightforward combination of the two, a rereading of 7lie Ordrr of fiings through the

rnethodological lens suggested by "Foms of Time"? The problern with such a tack lies in

the fact that both theorists overlook what we have called the 'trying point*: neither thinker

adequately addresses the hiatus between revolutions, and the sheer difficulty such a hiatus

poses.

Both the measure and the 'mobility' of this difficulty can be found in the following

question: What comes firstfirst or 'first'? Like many philosophical questions, this is one

of priority, a question of whether whut we Say comes before or afler the how of our saying

it. And like most questions, there are many ways to ask it. We could ask, for instance:

what comes first, world or 'world7; the what-of-the-world or the how-of-the-worlding?

The answers are as equally numerous. With Kant we could argue that the

what-of-the-world does indeed come first, but is absolutely occluded by the transcendental

operations of the how-of-the-worlding. With Hegel we might suggest that they both come

first, in the sense that the former is fused into the latter's eschatological movement. For

Nietzsche, on the other hand, it is this latter which comes first, and in such a manner that

the imperative tyranny of the former is revealed. And with the Foucault of ? l e Order of

niings, we could argue that this question is itself the problem, the problem of the

self-grounding ground which modemity calls 'man.' As fundamental distributions of

synt actic priority, we will cal1 t hese ' answers' 'general theos>-narratives, ' t O the extent

that each, in its own way, tells a brief, fundamental tale of 'first, then.'

It is an odd fact of theoretical discourse, even at the most local levels, that it so

often relies upon quasi-narrative constructions of space and tirne. Once we become aware

of these 'constmctions,' theory is estranged from itself in a sense, and joints once braced

by the forgetful glue of tradition are profoundly loosened. One could drafl an entire

hventory of temporally inflect ed terms, organized primarily, but not exclusively, according

to extremes of inherence and exherence - cornportment, discovery, construction, drawn,

invested, vulnerability, production, reduction, primitive, derivative, etc. - each of which

comply to the deployment of certain theoretico-narrative configuration^.^^ Heidegger's

reading of the relations between wlgar and ekstatic temporality in section 8 1 of Being and

Time provides a splendid example of the way in which certain theory-narratives c m be

rek t t en according to a number of different '~tor~lines. ' '~ Ekstatic temporality, for

Heidegger, dwells wiihin the levelings of wlgar time. Thus, his subsequent analyses of

these relations are stmctured as derivations, derivations which both reinforce and are

reinf'orced by a whole series of 'theoretico-narrative' interrelations: temporality as the

unifjmg ground of the existentid analytic, the ontological grounding of the ontic, the

displacement of the rnetaphysics of presence, etc. But this theory-narrative becomes

something far different if we characterize Heidegger's formulation of ekstatic temporality - the outside which stands within - not as an ontological fact of Dasein, but rather as a way

of reading temporality. If this were the case, vulgar time would become the point of

departure, and instead of derivations we would have analysis, the breaking d o m of vulgar

time into the terms of ekstatic temporality. The result would be similar to the original

theory-narrative: again the terms of ekstatic temporaiity would be logicaily primitive, but

gone would be the sense of leveling, of stratigraphies accumulated through miIlennia of

philosophical oversight - that sense of excavu~iotz which is so important to the tone of

Being and Time. If we were to regard this analysis as a lilerary exercise, however, the

relation of the ekstatic to the vulgar would become one ofproliferation rather than

irIfiIb=a~iort.~~ Abruptly vulgar time would become something thrown into sharper relief - - - -

'O It is not my purpose here to introduce any systematic wchronopro~emics' to philosophical discourse, nor is it my purpose to establish any formd typotogy of thcory-narratives, although either exercise would prove interesting.

" Being and Time, 472-80.

through the contextualizing expedient of a proliferate, ekstatic temporality. Or if, on the

other hand, we were to regard ekstatic temporality as a contradictory, quoretic figure, the

derivations of section 8 1 might be read, pace Ricoeur, as a 'narrative resolution' of an

authentic, aporetic t h e . And if we were to read these original derivations backwards, into

aporia, then we rnight daim to have decomtmcted vulgar time. Vulgar time would no

longer shelter in the resting-place attributed it by traditional metaphysics, but would be

displaced without being replaced by another 'what ' (such as ekstatic temporality),

displaced by a how which opens the diegetic ground for a possible deconstructive

rewriting of Being and Time, one wherein dispersion and the deflection of surfaces might

substitute for unity and the articulated depths of structure.

What do these aitemate 'narratives' tel1 us?" They certainiy speak of a 'temporal

figurativity' at work within theoretical discourse - one which patterns theoretical

relationships as ewr>rs. But moreover, their contrasts suggest a strange 'between,' one

which, we might hazard, straddles the trying point of theoretical revolution. What does it

mean for something to be theoretically 'internal' to something else? Or for something to

be reveaied, rather than constructed, or reenacted? And if the difficulty posed by this

'between' proves to be insurmountable, how can we know for certairi whether the fold

Lies at the epistemic heart of the philosophical tradition, or whether ekstatic temporality is

not simply the how of a deconstruction of wlgar time rewritten as an integrative what?

It is this uncertainty which underscores the inadequacy of the Bakhtinian

chronotope for the task at hand. I have opted for 'theory-narrative' simply because such a

term indicates not only the 'event character' of theoretical discourse, but also because it

I2 The question of the textuaiontological status of plot provides a good andogy for the nmative continuum represented by the extrernes of the infi~trute and the prol~yerate: is 'plot' the structurai hart of a text, or is it a posr hoc interprctation, a thin sumrnary? 1s it an infiltrate, something which inheres in the tex& or is it a proli ferate, a determincd excess of the text? Or can it be either, depending on the requirements of a given theory-narrative?

l3 is there not dso the suggestion that Heidegger's investigation of tirne, not unlike Brikhtin7s, is already firndmentalIy conditioned by a pnor temporality?

gestures to the sense in which such restatements are themselves invested-idexposed-to the

very difnculty which legitimates them. The chronotope legislates, cornes before theoretical

constructions, but the narrative status of theory-narratives to their 'target discourse' is

much more difficult to arbitrate. As the intiltrative what of a what, they comprise the very

heart of a certain theory, the pared d o m truth of their hosts; but as the proliferative what

of a how they constitute something entirely different, apost hoc overwriting of the

original, or a stranger yet, a theoretical double which mimes and mocks.

And yet, once we acknowledge the possible 'how character' of general

theory-narratives such as those posed as answen to our question above, does not

'translational violence' become a serious issue? For the moment, we must sidestep this

question, but suffice it to say that this issue is itself entangled in various

theoretico-narrative considerations. The hope is that the reIative seventy of any

'interpretative loss' can be mitigated by a kind of synoptic gain: the consideration of

diverse theoretical positions in terms of theory-narratives opens an alternative critical

space, one wherein the possibility of a 'quasi-systematic' correlation of certain theoretical

solitudes might be realked. As a point of contrast, we might consider the Rortian

theory-narrative, wherein different vocabularies simply play off one another in an

interminable senes of redescnptions, circumventions and recontextualizations. Since there

can be no 'final vocabulary' which might serve to reference our redescnptions, our various

language-games simply evolve new plural 'tmths,' rather than representationally converge

with any one tnrrh. In 'intertheoretico-narrative' terms, the most we can do is make other

positions 'look bad.' Ironically enough, this 'final vocabulary' is my qz~arry, even if only in

a regulative sense. If an interrogation of theory-narratives can even cnidely reducdrewrite

various philosophical camps in terms of a discourse which is 'superordinate' in a radically

attenuated sense, at the very least we will have a new arena for dialogue, a point at which

these camps cease to simply 'out-fundamentdize' each other by assuming different

founding myths of ternporality, and dlow for cornparisons which hearken to that forbidden

term: 'precision.' And if systematicity in this regard remains 'quasi,' this is due to the

nature of our point-of-departure - the inability to answer a certain question. What comes

fmt:first or 'first'? The told or the telling?

Inability? The problem is that when this question becomes one of 'firsts' rather

than of grounds or worlds, it is no longer simply a question of prionty as such, but a

question of 'priority' itself. which is to Say, in a perhaps precipitous marner, a question of

temporality and of language. Firsf and 'first' refer to the divide of 'what' and ' ~ o w ' in

prionty. The general relation offlrstriess (and its attendant retinue of narratively inflected

tems - ongin, genesis, denvation, pnmordiality, and the like) to temporality should be

clear, as should that between 'first' and language. And yet the association of temporality

with the whness offirst, one might argue, is problematized across several levels, not the

least of which being the essential link between time and how. Likewise, the association of

language to the howness of 'first' is complicated by the fact that language. as object, also

would seem to be a 'what.' Here we touch upon a profound problem: the reflex by which

how becomes what - the mysterious default wherein performance itself becomes t hing, an

object among objects. This 'movement' of how to what we have already called

'decltrsion.' And although the inverse, the construal of a given what as a certain how,

what has been referred to as 'occhsion,' is the road less traveled by, this contrary

movement will figure large in what follows. In effect, this question of the pnority of firsts

is also the question of the inscrutable relationship between what and how. And this, to say

the least, makes for a turbulent question; so turbulent, as we have suggested, that it is

pragmatically unanswerable.

In this sense, one could argue that Foucault's problematic figure is not problematic

enough. Consider Bakhtin's syntactic caveat, through which, as we have already seen, he

attempts to assertorically pnvilege the temporalities of representing over the temporalities

of the represented. For Bakhtin, we rnight say,fitst, or world-time, comes before 'first,' or

text time. Now this is no doubt confusing sirnply because we have above associatedfirst

with 'what,' and ' first ' with ' how, ' when Bakhtin quite explicitly privileges representing,

which is obviously tied to the how, over the represented, which, respectively, seems

affiIiated with the what. Here we wander into the maw of occlusion and declusion, and the

recursive complexities of their descent, and to this extent, it could be suggested that 'how'

and 'what,' due to the readiness with which they seem to lapse into one another, are

hadequate to the task at hand, which is namely to develop a vocabulary sensitive enough

to chart these murky theoretico-narrative contours. We must refine them with distinctions.

What Bakhtin wants, in kt, is to privilege what might be temed an 'occlusive w h , ' to

situate the pnmary site of determinativity within a world and history which is pnor to

'meaning,' the 'declusive what.' The problem with this, as we have seen, is that language

becomes the solitary site for the determination of the represented. Once language is

decluded, once it 'becomes object' as Foucault argues, not only does it tyrannize

declusion in general, like a jealous mother it suffocates its children by becoming their

entire world. What cornes before language, becomes unspeakable. Language, in effea,

becomes man: the figure which includes its own ground. For Foucault then, and contrary

to Bakhth, 'first' comesfirst. Bakhtinian bids for an 'occlusive what' become the

symptorn of precritical naiveté, an attempt to forget Kant's revolutionary redistribution.

Foucault's problem of course is one which has been leveled against the post-stmcturdists

many times, and one which is, rnoreover, intensified by the format of Our question. How

cm language corne before temporaiity?

We will return to this problem further in the study, but for now the pertinent point

is that Foucault answers Bakhtin's syntactic caveat with one of his own, one which he

deploys synoptically as the figure of man. Foucault overlooks the money-changers, the

trying-point, because he has in fact minted a new currency of temporality, which is to say

that he operates within the confines of an attenuated Copernican revolution. In other

words, he m v e r s the question.

7

And yet this question is in fm continually answered, by poststnicturalist no less

than traditionai writers - even this very attempt to delimit the question cor~stitutes on

'mrnuer.' Part of the difficulty stems frorn the power of theory-narratives as a way to rad,

as a way to discover/construct distributions of priority, such as those we touched upon in

Our consideration of theory-narratives above. In ot her words, to the extent that philosophy

is apparently everywhere exposed to a rewriting of theory-narratives which either evince

or simulate, there is a crucial sense in which this unanswerable question is also

urninanswerable. Some kind of syntax, whether it be one of clear cut priority, communion,

or aporetic disjunction, cm always be asserted in the relation between what and how in

theoretical discourse. And although this exposure to a reading of theory-narratives can be

quite legitimately ignored, in putative fact one's own theoreticai moment, one's own

occlusive how, can always more or less be called to account, can be 'decluded' in

theoretico-narrative tems as a syntactic answer. The radical dimensions of this question's

difficulty only become evident once we reaiize that even our 'answers' fail prey to it, that

we cannot assert those relations which a given theory-narrative rnight possess with a given

phiiosophical camp - whether it comprises the fundamental truth of that position, a viral

reenactment, or a summary reading - without posingbeing-exposed-to an

'intertheory-narrative' which likewise deploys its own syntactic assumptions.

Foucault, for instance, indexes the philosophicai enterprise of modernity by

referencing its major movernents according to a singular figure, that of man. The entire

tradition, as we have seen, becomes an expression of the modem episteme. As Foucault

I t is within this vast but narrow space, opened up by the repetition of the positive within the fundamental, thiit the whole of this analytic of finitude-so closely hked to the future of modem thought-411 be deployed; it is thcre that we shall see in succession the transcendental repeat the empirical, the cogitri repeat the unthought, the retum of the origin repeat its retrcrit (3 15-6)

We can throw this theory-narrative into relief with the following question: What if this

figure, rather than constituting a preinscnbed space across which subsequent

theory-narratives could only reinscribe themselves, rather than being something

theoretico-~?~~~utively inherenî to these positions, demonstrated the peculiar power of

temporality as a way to read? What if the fold was a how rather than a what? If this were

the case, the philosoplùcd tradition would become something which isfundamentuI&

exjmsed to a reading of the fold rather than its repetition, such that 'mm,' rather than

stmcturally reducing al1 this 'tortured and tangled thought' to its origin, becomes a

revisionary, heuristic figure." In this sense, Foucault, in his mastefil recapitulations of the

various theory-narratives of the past two centuries, has merely rewritten them according

to his own 'answer,' an answer which, given the sheer difficulty syntactic formulations

find themselves exposed to, we might Say was doomed to succeed. Temporality as what

and how, practicaily speaking, can be read into nearly anything. Why, for instance, mufi a

'precriticdy naive' theory-narrative such as phenomenology participate in the figure of the

modem episteme? Because phenomenology, decluded within our own occlusive practice,

possesses both a how and a what. Once one regards the redistribution of determinativity

into the how as the self-evident, exclusive truth of their syntactic relationship, Husserl's

attempt to isolate a purely transparent, nondeterminative how in transcendental

subjectivity begins to look untenable, particularly when this point of nondeterminativity is

explicitly poised within the numbing difficulty of temporality. What is forgotten, however,

is that this redistribution does tm~hing to make that difficulty go away. It simply transports

us away from the trying point, resituates us within a new theory-narrative with its own

concems and its own distractions. The suggestion is that Foucault never succeeded in

escaping man simply because with it he had invented a nearly irresistible way to read.

In order to avoid 'theoretical distraction,' if such a thing is possible, our own

questioning must open itself to the very how of its own c~sking, whatever this designation

might be - thought, present, discourse, unconscious, history, ideology, and so on. Thus it

" One couid even suggesf prematurely at this point, that perhaps deconstruction provides an attenuated example of such an exercise, a specimen of the fold conceived in a performative sense, a narrative posturing o f space and t h e which cm be r a d into almost an>.thing.

becomes absolutely crucial, from the outset, to attempt to clariQ the theory-narrative

within which this question is situated. The temptatioti here would be to render the

whathow relation as something which is itself irreducibly prior, its syntactic lines

flickering randomly through an aporetic cloud, dnving and encompassing its own

token-refiexive moment, and thus distributing the world across its vertiginous rim. Rather

than making a engine of aporia, however, 1 prefer to construe this question dong

pragmatic lines. In other words, I draw my answer fiom the fact of this question's

answering quite simply, it seems it~sfimotiti~ably d~@uIt.

The dechded field of this difficulty can be called the 'aiperknot,' to the degree

that it forces us to become 'nrpert~~~tzcd,' to navigate the recursive folds which threaten

every theoretical moment, including this me. We could Say, dramatically, that the loose

threads of the superknot do not just declusively flattened across the page like waxed

ieaves, but also occlusively pierce it at nght angles, unraveling the very moment - the

eventness - of its encounter, but it is perhaps better if we consider it in mundarze terms, as

a moment which is worked through only with the utmost difficulty - a point where one's

head begins to hurt - a 'whatevemess?' of tirne, rather than a what.15 The practitioner of

the superknot, we will c d , with tongue half in cheek, the 'a~peri~mit,' since the recursive

difficulty of the superknot is such that it is, in a sense, the supernaut. It should be added,

however, that the aforementioned 'temptation' to construe the superknot aporetically is

itself entirely legitimate: it answers the unanswerable no more or no less than my own.

Where the emphasis in the temptation is on a particular ontological 'what' (even if it is

occlusively inflected), my own emphasis falls upon the pragmatic 'how.' But despite this

shared legitimacy, 1 would argue that a practical determination of the superknot as a field

of difficulty retains the distinct advantage of being able to ildude the aporetic superknot

a s one among many possible determinations. Once again, it is this strange 'narrative

declusion' of the superknot as an iriabifity to definitively declrrdr which provides the

l5 Or, perhaps more honestly, if less discretely, a 'what-the-fuclness?' of tirne.

basis/occasion for a reading of t heo ry-narratives.

The contrasting emphases on how and what, which are clipped, embodied, and

unraveled by the superknot, allow one to make a distinction between two kinds of

theoretical discourse: one which accentuates the 'what,' or the corztheoreticai, and one

which underscores the 'how,' thepertheoretical. Theory of the first sort tends to occlude

its own activity and concentrate on the wifhness of its object, whereas theory of the

second sort tends to acknowledge its own 'how,' the potential displacements worked by

its own performance, by the fhro1ghness of its object. Of course this distinction is nested

within all of the difficulties of our question: the pertheoretical cm be read as the simple

recursive folding of the contheoretical, a discourse which periodicaily pauses to take itself

as its object, to declude and thus 'be with' itself. Likewise, the contheoretical can always

be pertheoretically reinflected, such that the 'what' is no longer simply 'with' an occluded

discourse, but rather arises 'through' a discursive 'how' which cm in turn be readily

decluded. Nevertheless despite this and the furt her conundrums which could be provoked

by a more thorough anaiysis, 1 would argue that this distinction retains a local

vaiidity/utility, and will be particularly usefiil when we turn to consider Deleuze and

Demda.

One thing in particular needs to be stressed at this juncture: the turbulence of the

question is such that any draft of 'what' and 'how' syntaxes, particularly at the

'micrological level' (as opposed to the level of 'general' theory-narratives), are

constitutively 'fragile. ' Given the pragmatic instability of the occlusive-declusive axis, one

should not expect 'robust argumentation.' This is a result, perhaps, of a theoretical choice

on my own part - narnely, to approach the syntax of what and how arza('yticuIiy fiom a

temporal standpoint. What does this mean? Primarily, that the question of firsts is

analytically reducible to a certain inventory of temporal terms, that the syntax of what and

how admits a kind of 'explication' in the language of time. Temporality provides the index

which allows for the restatement of theory-narratives in a common, more articulated

idiom. Since this 'explication' constitut es a more sustained repet ition of the question,

rather than its resolution, it can only compound the fiagility of any potential reading (and

'reading,' here, should be understood both in its infiltrative and its proliferative senses, as

bothleither a disintement of the essential and/or a viral replication of the actual). At issue

is the notion of temporality as a how, rather than a what, as an occlusive field which

provides a point for the negotiation of fiagmentary logics, 'sub-consistencies,' which in

turn enable the unpacking/simulation of certain theoretical solitudes. In a sense, these

sub-consistencies are empowered by their very fragility: the lack of constraints, particularly

the suspension of the pnnciple of non-contradiction, imparts a translational fluidity to their

deployrnent. Rather than determining how well these sub-consistencies stand, one finds

their criteria in how well they run, the perfonnative facility with which they virally

inhabitlreplace any given theoretical position. Fragility traverses syntax in its entirety. This

explains the ease with which other syntaxes are read into various theory-narratives. And it

is perhaps fiagility which more than anything translates the wonder of philosophy - for

what is awe if not the beauty of frailty before the unanswerable?

We have already considered the 'Augustinian difficulty,' the sense in which time

constitutes a kind of knowledge outside the possibility of discourse. A rnillenium and a

half have done nothing to mitigate this difficulty, or the Parnienidean antipathy of those

who would rather circumvent, or circurnscnbe the quandarïes of temporality. It is m r my

purpose, nor, more importmtly, is zt witht~z my ability, to clarrfy the general calegory of

'T'me.' Each of the fiagmentary 'whats' which constitute this general theory-narrative of

the superknot are by themselves incomplete, and together 'contradictory' (and we must

rernember that even contradiction, as Nietzsche has indirectly shown,

possesseslis-vulnerablbto theoretico-narrative determinationi6). As theoretical constructs,

l6 The Will to Power, 282-3. As Nietzsche States: "Our subjective compulsion to believe in logic oniy reveals that, long before logic itself entered our consciousness, we did nothing but introduce

they provide the threads of a strange species of consistency, discursively detached from

one another amidst the incomprehensible steeps of the Augustinian difficulty. As a

representationd 'what' of time, each of these revelations/fabrications arefragmet~~av,

which is to say that we should, for reasons of theoreticd expediency, resist drawing them

together through some kind of thematization of aporia, as an t outside-standing-within' of

an ekstasis, or as an 'onginary reproduction' of a diHerance. We must cultivate this

incoherence at the level of what simply because the superknot finds a rare coherence as

performance, as a synoptic miming of the temporal 'metaphoncs' of theory. In the end, it

is the elegance of this mime which should be the sole arbiter of this reading of the

superknot through various theory-narratives. It would be a banal exercise to demonstrate

the absurdities of this approach - it is not the props that must be contested, but the show.

Rather than a new theory of time, 1 am more properly proposing a temporal 'rheory-acr'.

What is time? Bewildering, fiaught with apories, mistrations and insights.

Temporaiity bafjles. But it also penetrates/reconstructsS As a 'how,' temporality is a

powefil critical instrument, a way to quasi-systematically read the hitherto illegible. And

as is so oflen the case with mimes, the perforrnative retelling is the more articulate, more

troubling story.

As we have seen with Bakhtin, this notion of considering time as how is not a

novel one by any means. Bergson, of course, was deeply critical of what he considered

the 'spatialization' of time by the sciences at the expense of concretely lived 'd~ration,"~ a

critique which has been profoundly rewritten by Deleuze to include Nietzsche's etemd

retum." And Heidegger, over a decade before "The Forms of Time," insisted on the

~emporalization of time - in a sense, his entire critique of 'comrnon time,' time as a series

- - -

its postuiates into events: noiv we discover then in events - we can no longer do othenvise - and imagine that this compulsion parantees something comected with ' tnith. "'

l7 This is the central diesis of Time and Free Wïll, and fmds myriûd expressions throughout Bergson's subscquent works.

lg W r e n c e and Repetition.

of now-points, cm be read as a polemic against the Aristotelian 'whating' of temporaiity.

As he writes in The Concept of Time:

We wish to repeat temporally the question of what time is. Time is the 'how. ' If we inquire into what time is, then one may not cling prematureIy to an answer (time is such and such), for this always means a 'what.' (22)

To the extent that man has only had recourse to time as what, time under the dominion of

'Prasem7' time itself is 'lost' to him. To render temporality a possession, Heidegger

argues, something that one can either gain or lose, rather than something which one is, is

to forfeit an ontologically authentic relation to death, self, and history. The impact of this

interpretation on contemporary thought has been vast, to say the least. Agamben, for

instance, takes Heidegger at his word in his own considerations of the loss of history and

the 'destruction of experience.'Ig (It is a measure of the power of theory-narratives that

fundarnentals such as 'history,' 'experience,' and 'meaning' find themselves in peril.

Theory-narratives 'kill,' which is one more reason for us to take them very seriously). And

of course Derrida's polemic against the 'metaphysics of presence' cornes to mind. Not

ody, then, is the notion of time as how an old notion, but one could hazard that it lies at

the root of a great nurnber of contemporary philosophical concems.

If the need to occlude temporality is both familiar and pivotal to the tradition, the

concept of a pluralized time and the correlative sense in which time has a history also have

a certain measure of interdisciplinary currency. With Bakhtin in mind, John Bender and

David Wellbery coin the term 'chronotypes' to refer to the vanous temporalities which

provide "the aprzori of the modem world" (Chmtypes , 1). For them, as for Bakhtin at

a certain level at least, time is a cultural 'product' involving a whole senes of

interdisciplinary concems, from questions of social organization and domination (a

I9 See "Time and History: Critique of the instant and the Continuum," in Infincy and Hisrory: 7ke Destruction offiperience, 89- 106.

' politics of time'),m to considerations of chronotypical evolution and expression, as well as

methodological questions. This plural, interdisciplinary approach to time is one which I. T.

Fraser has theorized in hierarchical terms, conceiving temporaIity as a senes of

interconnected, and yet progressively complicated times which correspond, happily

enough, to the fields of physics, biology, psychology, and social science." From the

standpoint of theory-narratives, the problem suffered by these approaches is identical to

the problem faced by Bakhtin: both possessfare-exposed-to their own version of folkloric

time, both are freighted by an absolute default within which these 'multiple' temporalities

are decluded. Whether theoretico-narratively formulated as the 'cultural constructedness'

of time, or as the 'empirical diversity' of time, as proliferate or infiltrate, these plural times

are conditioned by a 'pnor' temporality which remains singular even if occluded. The

trying point remains untned.

And yet others have indeed 'arrived' at plural conceptions ûf temporality through

some kind of acknowledgrnent of its sheer difficulty. David Wood's claim, for instance,

that time is ' polyhorizonal,' and "that man is a tissue of times" (The Decomtrz~crion of

T h e , 334), is framed against an adrnitted reluctance to interrogate any "pnnciple of unity"

which might enclose the various 'hermeneutic models' he proposes for cosmic, dialectical,

p henomenologicai, existent id, and ' linguistic' tirne. The trying point is noted, but t hen

passed over. Paul Ricouer, on the other hand, in his magisterial Time and Narralive,

actually incorporates the difficulty of time into his central thesis: that narrative provides

the non-speculative resolution for the aporetics of temporality - narrative makes time

'human.' Even though Ricouer, like ~ o o d , " is profoundly aware of the circularities which

prey upon any 'philosophy of time,' these dificulties remain decluded, dornesticated as

Peter Osbourne followvs tlus trend in The Politics oJTime, where he hopes to open cultural theory to a renewed scrutiny on the basis of their 'deeper' temporal investrnents.

21 See J.T. Fraser, Time: the Farnilzar Srranger.

ZZ See The Deconstmction of Time, 264.

whats, such that they can be isolated and distnbuted within a theory-narrative of an

aporetic pre-narrative time and the narrative 'resolution' of this apona. Ricouer depends

upon a certain 'referential stability' which precludes his appreciation of the radical

homess of this difficulty, and thus ultimately repeats Bakhtin's 'error' of the absolute

default. (Derrida provides an interesting point of contrast here, since he in fact does 'how'

this difficulty in the occlusive pructice of deconstruction, although, as we shall see. this

aporetic how is just as exposed to theoretico-narrative declusion, to an equally occlusive

practice of 'reconstmction'). It is worth remarking, however, that the notion of

' theory-narratives' cmld itselfpossibly beghdmit Ricouer ' s reading of narrative in

generd. 1s not the theory-narrative merely a 'resolution' of an inscrutable time? It could

be, iffirst came before ' first ' in such a way that firstness or 'tirne,' as in Bakhtin, was

somehow transfigured by representation. But remember that this assumption of 'violence'

(or 'healing' in Ricouer's case), this disjunction of whats worked by the distribution of

deterrninativity into 'first,' is afso theoretico-narrative. The question is irrzunanswerable: a

theory-narrative could just as 'easily' be the absolute ntrrh of tirne, the answer (just as for

Ricouer aporetic time is 'genuine'), as it could be a competing construction." This is the

crucial meaning of the 'bothleither, and/or' of theory-narratives: as we have said, the

superknot is su difficult that it is, in fact, quite simple, which is to Say, temporality is its

theoretico-narrative 'resol ution. ' There is no inscrutable, aporetic 'before, ' unless, of

course, one opts for a different theoretico-narrative tack. And this is why the question

about the bearing of Ricouer's conception of narrative and time on theory-narratives

'reinforces' even as it undermines theory-narratives in general: it demonstrates a

distraction quite different to the one pursued by Supemuur, a distraction which should

rnake us ask how.

Despite the supposed dificulty of 'aporiq' it somehow continues to lend itself to notions of 'authenticity.' As Ricouer States in "Narrateci Tirne," ''1 agree uith Heidegger that the ordinary representation of time as a linear senes of 'nows' hides the true constitution of time" (On Narrative, 166).

As we can see, this exchange of foreclosure and peeling open c m be somewhat

bewildering but it does demonstrate the turbtrletrce of the superknot, a turbulence which

needs to be occluded, made how, in much the same way that Bergson and Heidegger have

argued for the occlusion, the 'temporalization' of temporality. Part of the reason for the

theoretico-narrativization of the superknot as the pragmatic difficulty of syntax, as a

practical znabiliry to arbitrate what and how, rat her than as npeirm, lies in the resistance

it provides to the tendency, exhibited by Ricouer, to theoretically 'domesticate' the

superknot in declusion. It would be a mistake to regard the 'pluralization' legislated by the

superknot as a kind of 'anything goes' founded on some undecideability, simply because,

once again, it is d~flcuify rather than undecideability which is at issue, a difficulty which

refuses the ability both to 'decide' and to rlo~ decide whether a given theory-narrative is

the 'one and oniy,' or simply one among many possibilities, or both. And again, it must be

remembered that such 'domestications' are oniy problernatic to the extent that the

supemautical lines they give rise to prevent us from finding any purchase on the trying

point.

And yet, if the superknot is so difficult, is there not a sense in which Wood's

reluctance is more 'honest'? Why not simply note the dificulty, and then pass on to speak

of those things which are not so difficult? We might ascnbe the sarne reluctance to Rorty,

for instance, when he argues that the 'mystification of language,' the fürnbling for radical

'conditions of possibility,' or in other words, those attempts to forge aiternate

theory-narratives against the superknot, make it difficult to daim the "advantages gained

from appropnating Darwin, Nietzsche, and Dewey'' (Essqs oir Heidegger, 4). The

implication seems to be that a certain reluctance is a requirement of a healthy pragmatism,

one which fails to see the 'utility' of interrogating fundamentals. But is this empirical

'stopping shon,' which Wood considers in terms of his own reluctance," any different

" Wood States: "There is no denying the desire for some further account of what if any p~cip le of unity of these various modcls might be. One might reply that it is the desirc for a ground, or a foundation, an arche, and that such a desire rested on the mistslken belief in the possibility of such

than the one which Rorty sees as pragmatically imprisoning the analytic tradition in

Philosophy mid the Mirror of Nature? The question Rorty needs to examine is whether or

not the 'metaphysical excesses' of a Hegel or a Derrida are not rather a form of

philosophicai honesty, a wilhgness to begin at the trying point (even if the

money-changers are ignored) - to study their coins rather than simply spend them. Despite

the deflationary, 'comrnonsensical' ring of pragmatism, the theoretico-narrative

investment/exposure of pragrnatism is eveiy bit as 'drastic' as any Hegelianism. As is my

own: the difficulty of the superknot speaks/will-speak whether or not we assign it to

putative silence - the tnck is lettinglmaking it speak usefuli).

Ifthose writers who commit themselves to what MichaeI Sandbothe has termed,

'negative pluralizations' of tirne," such as Ricouer, miss the radical profùndity of the

turbulence which inhabits/is/exposes temporality, few also succeed in thinking t ime as the

how which Bergson and Heidegger believed to be so crucial for the 'emancipation' of

Western thought. Temporality, rather, is thought of as yet another what, albeit one which

invests itself in the representation of howness. Thinking temporality as how, and thinking

ojtemporaiity as a how are quite distinct. The later Heidegger demonstrates a powerfiil

sense of this in 0 1 1 Time and Beirg, where, d e r designating Ereigriis, 'Appropriation,' as

the 'it' which 'gives' both time and Being, he acknowledges that the very propositional

form of his lecture participates in the very declusive metaphysics he hopes to circumvent.

The intended focus of this lecture, his version of Bakhtin's "Concluding Remarks" one

might say, is undeniablypertheoreti~aI~ concerned with "the attempt to think Being" (2)

- - - pp - - - -

a fvst point. It is just this impossibility that the deconstruction of prcsence ... demonstrates. But it might seem that the result of accepting ths diagnosis wouid be equally unpalatable. What more is it ihan a barren empiricism thût sirnply notes the vxiety of modes of temporaliution and says, "How interesting!" (The Deconstruction of Time, 332).

25 See "The Temporalization of Time in Modem Philosophy," http://\n%?v.uni-rnagdeburg.de/ -iphi/ms/rns-he.html, January 17, 1997. Discussing the 'curent vogue for tirne' across a whole range of fields, Sandbothe hopes that, by identibing the three central thmts of the contcmporary philosophy of time, it might be possible to relate the various disciplinary strands.

rather than with Being itself. In a manner simiiar to Bakhtin's retneval of folkloric time

into an occluded dialogical time, Heidegger reassesses and occludes ekstatic temporality in

t ems of a 'fourth dimension,' and arrives at Erezgrtis. In our own hackneyed tems,

Heidegger wants nothing less than to declude occlusion, not as occlusion decluded, but as

occlusion - a task which many would insist is impossible (and righrly so,

based-uponhbject-to the reading of a certain, dominant theory-narrative). As Heidegger

States, one must "foliow the movement of showingy7 rather than "listen to a senes of

propositions" (2)' or in other words, align ourselves with a certain how of the exposition,

instead of arranging an interdependent constellation of whats. One must read thrmgh,

rather than with. It is this sense of rnovement which is at stake in what 1 have cailed the

temporal 'theory-act,' the supemauticai erimment a certain occlusion - Supern t as

superknot.

What does it mean to pertheoretical/y occlude temporality? How might one go

about this? There is a sense in which Reinhart Koselleck, in Futures Pmfr Oir the

Semantics of Historicul Tirne, provides an analogue for what will be attempted here.26 By

utilizing the tension between 'experience' and 'expectation,' Koselleck hopes to find a

temporal index, free from the 'vortex of historicization,' which he can use to decipher

Neu=eit: the historical genesis of 'modernity' as the past's inability to accommodate the

possibilities of the future - the eclipsing of experience by expectation. In a similar manner,

through a kind of anulysis of what and how, I hope to provide an inventory of temporal

terrns which will allow us to index varying theory-narratives with as much 'translational

fidelity' as possible. Kosselleck's need for some 'meta-historical' point of departure is

irrelevant here; Our ovemding requirement, rather, is one of theoretical expediericy - when

one bribes the money-changers, paper money is just as effective as coins minted in infinity.

What is required is a constellation of indexical whats whose interdependencies are

determined by the particular supemautical lines they participate within. We must disrnantle

26 I refer here to the essay: "'Space of Expenence' and 'Horizon of Espcctation': Two Historical Categories," 267-88.

how and what, enurnerate the wreckage of the superknot, so that we can perfomatively

salvage thwry-narrative after theory-narrative, as the dregs of a philosophical camp's

truth, andor as simulacra, clumsy golems that are easily mistaken for the man.

If, as this brief survey has shown, there is little that is original in the notion of

howing and pluralizing tirne, even in tems of a 'negative conception' of temporality, we

cm perhaps mark Our point of departwe by eschewing 'domesticated' attenuations of how

and plurality. What is meant by domestication? Above ail, a kind of theoretical secunty,

the lack of nsk associated with the reluctance to contemplate in any sustained way the

turbulent evenmess of time, the way in which theoretical discourse is radicaily borne by

Supernuru, the Ihis now of one's own how. Accordingly, we must Iangziage our way into

temporality, &the and tumble like astronauts in free-fall, with only Our own momentum

and mass to brace our flailing thoughts.

Who keeps dive the concept of mom? "Blow 'em Off," Monster Magnct

That temporality has been clefted in the philosophical tradition is an old fact.

Indeed, the particular utilization of 'how' and 'what' throughout the present study merely

follows an ancient, if at times shrouded, course. 'Synchrony' and 'diachrony' constitute

perhaps the most familiar fom of this classic opposition, the one most directly related to

temporality, to 'chronos/aion,' but has not this cleft, through the 'guise' of a whole series

of oppositions, insinuated itself into the very 'heart' of the tradition? What is the nature of

the enigrnatic hinge which grinds and at times seizes within the long list of

power/knowledge, event/structure, narrativdtheory, Dionysus/Apollo,

literature/philosop hy, fodcontent, adthing, p rocedure/meaning, subject/object,

method/tnith, etc.? Much of the efficacy of theory-narratives, and the corresponding

susceptibility of philosophical camps, 1 would suggest, resides in the ubiquity of these

oppositions.

So what is the difference marked by this clefi? Or, to retum to a question we had

only touched upon earlier with deteminativity, what is the difference between the

temporalities of how and what? But what a question! Even if we set aside what is at stake

in this question, the drastic repercussions that any comincing footing within the superknot

would have for theory in general (consider our list of oppositions), have I not already

argued that this terrain is unchartable? Can we answer this question without Iikewise

answenng the question of firsts? Probably not, but then 1 have never claimed the ability to

not answer this question. We m u t answer, simply because Our attempts to una-rwer are

both/either metaphysically dependent-on and/or pragmatically exposed-to some

theory-narrative. The tnck is to answer the question in such a way that the how of

Copeniican revolutions becomes accessible to us. To do this, 1 would suggest, we must

pitch ourselves into ignorance, against the very point where, as Nietzsche would tell us,

names end.27 And where narnes are lacking, one m u a irreverently riame.

Consider the following 'temporal self-referential' sentence:

The word "heure" is no w in the futme of this sentence, although by no w it is in the past.

What distinguishes this sentence is that it is trot self-referential in an ordinary sense. In

addition to referring to ifself; as in classic formulations such as "This sentence is fdse," it

refers to the itzsta~it of its own performance, the time of its telling. The apparent paradox

is found in the dlfference between the two readings that may be given this sentence, since

it seems that this sentence can be absurd or tme depending on the temporal 'perspective'

f?om which it is read. To the extent that the predication of the sentence must be completed

in order for its reference to the future occurrence of the word 'future' to be meaningful,

the sentence makes no sense. Reference is dependent on predication, and here the second

'' To quote Nietzsche: "We set up a word at the point at whidi our ignorance begins" (The Will to Power, 267).

'friture' provides both predication and referent simuhneously. And yet there is also a

sense in which this sentence is tme; at the instant 'now' the word 'future' was indeed in

thefuture. In effect, it can be read in terms of two dserent temporal standpoints: one in

which the 'now' in the sentence is tzow, the time of telling, and the other in which the

'now' is considered as past, as a 'was now,' the time of telling as fold. The distinctive

characteristic of the first reading, which we might c d 'perchronic,' is that the future

remains occluded: through our intial reading of the sentence, we have no idea what "the

word 'future"' might be now "in" until the arriva1 of the second word "future," in which

case it is no longer in the future but in the past. In the second reading, however, which we

might c d the 'conchronic,' this future is decluded insofar as the sentence's "now" is

retrodicteci with, framed against its completion.

Without pressing the curiosities of this sentence any further, I would like to pose

'perchrony' and 'conchrony' as contrasting teitdetzcies of tempordity, tendencies which,

once isolated with respect to the varying characteristics associated with them, provide the

supernauticd basis for those varying threads of consistency which dlow theory-narratives

to unfolcUreference entire fields of thought - the inscrutable scales across which

revolutionary fugues are performed. But we need to remember that, given the superknot,

any 'analytic reduction' of the general fields of theoretical possibility represented by

perchrony and conchrony must remain contingent and prelirninary. As though bound in a

book with a thousand spines, each term in the following inventory is in some measure both

illegible and yet only legible with respect to the others. The temptation here is to assign

'sheer difficulty' to ternporalify, rather than ascnbing it to one's own ' sheer incapacity, '

one's inability to hamrner these fiagments into anything resembling a cohesive whole. If

the foliowing considerations sound like so much more metaphysical rurnour and innuendo,

they are, due to ail the deficiencies of philosophical abiiity and linear exposition - but they

are also ruminations on a profound inundation of thought by time. When one thmsts his

hand in a river, does he touch the water's heart, or does he merely pock and extend the

surface? 1 can no longer tell, and this makes me a metaphysician.

Perchrony, the 'through-moment.' tetzds towards the occlusive how, to the telling

or the enacting rather than to the completed. It is crucial that perchrony first be

understood occiusivefy, wwhich is to Say, not as a what, simply because 'what' involves the

'againstness' which is central to conchrony. Declusion is the very assertion of this

againstness, and it is in this sense that perchrony, as occlusive how, can be said to be

'groundless,' to be pure figure without any decluded tirnit. Consider one's own visual

field, the way in which the field itself is not figured against some further ground, even

though every foveal moment within the field is grounded, decluded. The same might be

said of the now, this now as it occurs, which, not unlike the 'through reading' of the

self-reflexive sentence above, is itself occluded, fdls backwards Iike Klee's 'Angelus

~ovus . ' " In this sense perchrony is radically encompassing, ernbodying, whkh is to Say, if

we were to identify it 'subjectively,' it would be something which we are, rather than

something which we are 'in.' But as we shall see, at least within the confines of this

analytic, 'subjectivity' is a subordinate term.

Conchrony, on the other hand, the 'with-moment,' terth towards the declusive

what, to the told and the completed. As the time of representation, one must resist the

temptation to simply equate conchrony with 'after-the-factness, ' or with ' spatiality, ' even

though these affiliations run deep. The wit h-moment seems characterized pnmarily by

uguir~sn~ess, whether this againstness be logical (Ahot-A), spatial (figure/ground), or

temporal (earlierllater). In the same way that perchrony inclines toward an impossible

'through' without substrate, conchrony implies a 'with' held in szqoe~~siott, and possessing

only one tem. 'Withness' gestures to the indifference of the what to 'wib~ess,' rather than

to witness itself, the same indifference which the Classical table holds for Foucault's

'man,' the indifference of the complete. Once again, if we were to identify conchrony

'subjectiveiy,' we might be tempted to attribute the withness of declusion to some

occluded 'us,' and say that 'we are with things,' but this is to simply bracket conchrony

- - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - -

2g 1 refer, of course, to Benjamin's famous readhg of this painting in his ''Theses on the Philosophy of History," 257.

within another conchronic moment; and although at times such 'interference' is admittedly

unavoidable, we must recail the necessity of identifjnng those fragments which will allow

us to spin the most articulate narratives possible.

From these crude outlines, we need to deepedextend our analytic of perchrony

and conchrony through the consideration of further distinctions, al1 the while referencing

both their efficacy and their fragility across various theoretical examples. We must also

note those key points where the 'interference' just rnentioned threatens the coherence of

certain elements of the analytic. Hard questions certainly need to be asked of a theoretical

endeavour which prernises its own success upon the inevitability of its failure, but for now

we must peer for those supemautical lines which do resolve themselves.

'Withness,' as described above, imediately signals the way in which Our terrns

have already begun to interfere with each other. 1s not 'againstness' also a kind of

withness, the withness of a figure, Say, to a ground? What is the diflerence between these

two 'withs'? In this sense we may distinguish between what might be termed a 'mediaf

withness, which is to say a 'perchronic withness,' whose utter occlusion is suggested by

the 'suspension' mentioned above, and a 'luferal' withness which refers to the 'withness

across' the plane of conchronic extensity. Thus the determinativity assigned to the world

in Classical discourse might be termed a 'medial detemimtivity,' the indifference-to-how

of a self-sufficient world, whereas the 'causality' conchronically imputed across this world

might be attributed to a 'luteral detenninativity.' Iust as lateral determinativity might

possess a certain media1 determinativity, as in the 'objective' unfolding of history, medial

determinativity can itself be 'lateralized,' as in certain conchronic ways of considering

perception, as . say, a decluded 'subject' who perceives objective wavelengths of light as

'colour. ' Likewise, we may speak of a laferal or medial corzchrony, a conchrony which is

the world, as in a 'mind independent reality,' or a 'naive realism,' and a conchrony which

represenis the 'world, ' as in a 'conceptuaiity. ' Once again we see the corresponding

emphasis is placed on the rnovement fiom what to how. In a lateral conchrony, a kind of

conchrony-as-what, the how is utterly effaced, either through total occlusion (as in the

case of naive reaiism) or through an empiricism which systematicdly compensates for the

determinative displacements of the how - the how is occluded, in a sense, through its

meticulous declusion. In a medial conchrony, on the other hand, there is a certain

emphasis upon the how, such that 'representation' signifies a certain kind of activity, one

whose determinativity can either be violent and proMerate, as in the case of the general

figure of the fold, or restorative and infiltrate, as in the case of Ricouer's understanding of

narrative, or the typical understanding of 'reason' - in both of these cases how is

envisioned as a m e m to some fundamental what. A lateral perchrony, on the other hand,

we cm associate with what we will later cal1 'differential process,' a type of 'flattening

out' of certain elements of perchrony (for instance, the emphasis on relationdity) across a

lateral conchronic extensity. We need to be careful, however, to distinguish laterai

perchrony, which is given what might be cdled a 'hard' distribution within a world, Eom

decludedperchrony, as the simple theoretical representation of perchrony. The faa that,

as far as I can tell, the notion of a 'medial perchrony' is sirnply redundant, perhaps

underscores the jack of symmetry which obtains between conchrony and perchrony, a lack

which makes it difficult to classi@ them as yet another 'binary opposition.' In each of

these cases we can recognize ' lateral' and 'medial' to be attenuations of conchrony and

perchrony, such that medid conchrony is, in a sense, a type of perchronic conchrony,

whereas laterai conchrony is a type of conchronic conchrony. The same might be said of

perchrony, with exception that lateral perchrony would constitute a kind of faterd

conchronic perchrony, and decluded perchrony would constitute a certain medial

conchronic perchrony, wherein perchrony is decluded by conchrony-as-how.

Aside fiom these pnmarily 'static' relations, what about our terms and the sense of

'movernent' so constitutive of temporality? While considering the enigmatic nature of the

now, Aristotle suggests that it be understood as the concave and convex sides of a curved

lins rather than the beginning and end of a continuum." This metaphor is particularly apt

for considerations of perchrony. Rather than rationalizing temporality as an 'arrow,' what

might be caiied perchronic aqmmetry conceptuaiizes time as movement without

substrate, without any against or ground, although this is paradoxical - as sheer

directionality without extension, fiom occlusion into occlusion. The linear conception of

temporal contiguity and succession wociated with the 'arrow of time,' on the other hand,

the conservation of the modalities of t h e in withness to movement, provides an example

of conchrotzic asymmetry. This is the 'series of now points' which Heidegger attributes to

Our Aristotelian hentage, the common conception of time, the time of earlier and later, and

of 'history' as the accumulative narrative unfoiding of events, which conceives the now as

something present, something which we are both with and in, rather than something which

we are. It is also significant that this is pnmarily the time of diachrony, since this means

that the opposition of synchrony and diachrony unfold themselves within only a si&e

pole of our own operative opposition: conchrony.

Conchronic asyrnmetry tends to be either paratactic or hpotactic - which is to say

that movement happens either in relations of simple adumbration, or in relations of

subordination - or either h e a r or dvfererttid, which is to say that asymmetry can be

embodied in either a contiguous line of singular ternis or a relational field. We might now

conceive the 'withdrawal of representation' from life and labour misleadingly described by

Foucault, as the differential hypotactic complication of conchronic asymmetry, such that

biology and economy now articulate themselves from the histoncal deeps. Time congeals,

insinuates itself within ontology instead of simply accompanying it, and becomesprocess

rather than a mere numenc witness to causality. There are numerous, very curious,

theoretico-narrative aspects to process, not the least of which lies in its displacement of

something which might be called the 'pssibili~-horizon. ' M e n asyrnmetry is

hypotactically instantiated as process across a given distributionai scope, Say the relation

between subject and object, or the relation between audience and players, one typically

witnesses what rnight be termed 'ded@ererrti~~ion, ' an emp hatic retreat fiom the

declusivity of any given entities, t heir distinct ive whatness, to the relatiottuIity of those

entities within their asymmetrical articulation. For instance, when one considers the

process of interlocutions, as Habermas does, the emphasis falls on the irrefexive

movement of interaction, and the possibility-horizon correspondingly retreats 6om the

individual speakers, their instrumental wants and needs, and is redistributed beyond them

as the possibilities of a 'non-subjective' communicative rationality." But such

redistribution of horizons is not necessarily the case. In one of the rare attempts to

interrogate the findarnentals of the act which underwrite linguistic performances,

Rudolphe Gasche, for instance, asserts that "what Austin's revolution reintroduces into

the philosophy of language was nothing more and nothing less than the classical problems

of the reflexivity of language" ("'Setning and Ubersetzung,'" 39)." For Gasche, what the

necessary self-reflexivity of speech acts assumes is that utterances, prior to refemng to a

'world,' must refer to themselves as so refemng. This amounts to no more than simply

inserting a species of hesitation within the simultaneity of nondifferentiation, something

which becomes possible by the simple, and arbitrury, reassertion of traditional

possibility-horizons. This is merely a theoretico-narrative 'effect' conchronic symrnetry,

which, in the absence of any asymmetrical considerationq tends to posture whats within

blank possibility-horizons.32 One might say with Benveniste, for instance, that an utterance

must 'refer' both to the conditions of its performance and to the conditions of its

enunciation - an utterance must reflect itself as such before acting referentiaily." In other

words, and this seems straightfonvard enough, in order to pefiorm, an utterance must be

'O For a consideration of what Habermas ternis 'communicative actioq' see his The Ineory of Communicative Action, vol. 1: Reason and Rationnlization in Society, particularly the chapter entitied: "Intermediate Reflection: Social Action, Purposive Activity, and Communication," 273-337.

" Diocritics 1 1 4 (Winter 198 I), 36-57.

32 This is the way in which we tSpicaIly view 'objccts,' as indifferent not only to any medial through, but as also i n m a n t to any lateral wviihness ('contest'), and thus, immune to ûny lateral integration within the hypotmes of a 'past,' potentidly capable of participating in any number of occluded futures.

33 Problems in General Linguistics. 23 6.

recopked as an utterance. Considered in dedifferentiated asymmetrical terms, however,

the utterance is never 'recognized' as such, but rather cognizes, drives the event of

'recognition' as its perfomative consequence, and one could argue that Benveniste's

attempt to delimit the conditions of performatives stems nom his failure to 'recognize' the

encompassing nature of irreflexive process. The crucial point illustrated by these

supemautical lines is not that there is no fact of the matter, and that both simply depend

upon difTering 'modes of consideration' - as 1 have said, 1 find the superknot so recursively

difficult that not even this pluralist theory-narrative of theory-narratives is satisfactory: it

sirnply closes down too many lines, particularly those which unfashionably admit fact and

truth. The crucial point, rather, is the way in which such readings laterdly 'pass for the

thing,' when from the standpoint of Supermut they simply yoke the consequential logic of

unacknowledged supemautical lines. 1s it really the 'nature' of language which lends

'sense' to these contrasting models, or a certain covert postunng of temporality, and the

inferential pathways which they legislate?

If this provides and example of corichrottic dedifferentiation, we might Say that

Heidegger's descriptions of Being-in-the-world make use of a similar line perchronically:

no longer are we confronted with the possibility-horizons of disjoint subjects and objects,

but with the horizons of Dasein. Since Dasein is, in a sense, the tempordization of

temporality, the very movement of tirne, existence becomes eiiacmtent: when the emphasis

falls on hammering, the differentiated possibility-horizons of man and hammer are

forgotten. Moreover, the fact that Dasein's 'ownrnost possibility' is death underscores the

'groundlessness' of perchrony, its Iack of ex te no rit^.^ As is the case with conchrony,

perchronic dedifferentiation is subject to many theoretico-narrative attenuations, which

primarily depend on the scope of their initial distribution. If one takes this subconsistency

Y in this sense one might consider Being and T h e to be a study in perchrony, albeit one which fails to acknowledge itseifas such, and not just anothcr transcendental exercise. Given this vocabulary, the prospect of a quasi-systematic correlation between the early Heidegger and pragmatism becornes a distinct possibility.

(perchronic dedifferentiation) to the perchronic now of consciousness, for instance, then

one might, iike Descombes, see the phenomenological moment as a kind of Hegelian

a b ~ o l u t e , ~ ~ or, if to the perchronic work of interpretation, something like Gadarner's

'fision of horizons.'" Indeed, retuming to Bakhtin, one of the cardinal attributes of

foikioric tirne is the sense of collective holism - temporaiity as a whole-cloth unfolding of

communal elements without temporal modal divisions and without insiddoutside,

sewother, or even figurdground. Dasein as world. Perhaps due to its 'againstlessness.'

perchrony in particular seems linked to dedifferentiation - this is why we could describe

process as a kind of lateral perchrony. Not oniy is the emphasis on relationality cemented

by asymmetry, it is enforced to a certain extent by groundlessness, by the absence of any

medid withness. Having mentioned Dasein, we might also note a kind of 'perchroriic

symmeby' common to perchrony (whether dedifferentiated or not): the condensation of

paradigrnatic (synchronie, and therefore conchronic) elements 'within' perchronic

asymmetry - the occluded manifold through which throughness is perfomed. If we

understand Kant's Copemican revolution as a perchronic redistribution, one which

occludes tempordity, the categories would constitute a kind of perchronic symrnetry. The

ontological structure of Dasein might also fdl under this designation, as would Gadarner's

'rules of play.'"

Earlier we had mentioned the difficulty of associating the more enigmatic

withdrawal of representation from Ianguage with the corresponding withdrawals of life

3s Modern French Phdosophy, 6 7.

* Consider Gadmer's discussion of -play' in Tmlh and Method. 10 1 - 10, where he, by stressing the 'in-betweenness' of play, the prirnacy o f play oorcr consciousness, the ontological nature of play, and the sense of play as the 'occurrence of movement,' a movement which, stdchgIy enough, Zucks substrate, is simply enurnerating various aspects of perchrony. Moreover, he has extended the scope of this perchronic dedifferentiation beyond that of some 'self.' And yet, rather than interrogathg how it is these determinations delemine, he sirnply adopts the inferentid force of this supernautical line, and utilizes it to 'argue' his vision of hermeneutics.

37 Tmth ond Method, 107.

and labour. Now we might venture to Say that this association dernonstrates a profound

'misunderstanding' ofperchrony on Foucault's part. In fact, since iife and labour actuaily

arise on the basis of a withdrawal from the visible, the only decisive 'withdrawal of

representation' considered by Foucault deais with language's withdrawd into ifself; rather

than from one ground to an invisible other. As we have said, occlusive perchrony is a

goundiess figure, which can only find some 'against' by being conchronically

incorporated within some broader distribution. One way, then, to redescribe the transition

fiom the table of Classical discourse, wherein everythhg is given in conchronic syrnmehy,

to the contorted field of man, is in terms of an increasing displacement of

possibility-horizons, the knitting of the visible away from the parataxis of God into the

differential hypotaxes of historicd process. With the declusion of representation as the

ubiquitous how of declusion in general, however, the world becomes 'world,' and the

ground collapses into figure. In a sense, then, we might say that it was the discovery of

perchrony, the declusion of the medial 'ground' of declusion, which led to the circular

morass of 'man.' Lateral conchrony, wherein the medial with is occluded, becomes medial

conchrony. In Classical representation, the deferral of determinativity to the infinity of a

world or a God meant that conchrony was in a sense zrnmediaie, an occlzded cotrchrory.

The 'withness' of Classicai representation was, in effect, a suspended relation, since the

possible determinativity of language/culture/subject remained occluded. Even though the

putative differentiation of 'knower' and 'known' had for long been a characteristic of

representation, a more radical determinative differentiation could not arise until the

throughness of representation became an issue, as it did with Kant. The implication here,

and the irony is devastating, is that the complete declusion of the conchronic which

signaled the birth of 'man' was, in a sense, made possible by perchronic revelations of

Heidegger's Being and Tirne - one of the most Herculean attempts to circumvent the

'subject,' one rnight suggest, amounts to the most Sisyphean of man's iterations.

Conchrony finds its full, and most consequential declusion with the declusion of

perchrony. Only when the metaphysics of presence is 'discovered,' does it find its most

thorough and intractable manifestation.

The reason this might be considered a 'misunderstanding' on Foucault's part lies in

the enigrnatic nature of the fold. 1s not the fold itselfa roughly perchronic figure, an open,

groundless field through which the tradition of the past two centuries has been driven to

'repeat repetition'? As the 'unconscious of howledge,' it is certairtiy occluded. The issue

at stake here once again deals with the various ways in which conchrony and perchrony

attenuate one another. In the perchrony of the fold, for instance, how and what maintain a

kind of adversarial relationship, since every attempt by the how to declude the what of its

ground is confounded by its own medial activity - the how always arrives before its origin,

although in strict conchronic terms, this origin should 'anive' as something which is

already there. The emphasis falls upon a certain irrefexivity of perchronic asymmetry. But

consider Heidegger's elucidation of perchrony in terms of the 'ekstatic' involution of the

various modaiities of tirne. Here we are witness to a rejlxfvity of perchronic asymmetry,

wherein the moment is not simply 'with' its past and future, but also profoundly is this

past and future. Within this reflexivity, how and what are no longer antagonistic, nor

simply pressed into imrnediacy by some disciplined, phenornenological crease, but rather

they infiltrate and inhabit one another in the dedifferentiation of perchronic asymrnetry. To

be sure, Heidegger does acknowledge the feud of how and what, but this lies in the

forgetfulness of perchrony, the leveling or occlusion worked by the ancient Greek

defection to conchrony. And it is here that the problematics of the fold assert thernselves,

and that it could be said Heidegger repeats the fold in its most trenchant incarnation. By

indicting conchrony, and by situating perchrony in a relation of histoncal and ontological

priority (much as Bakhtin does with the folklonc), Heidegger writes the first chapter of an

'inevitable' narrative. AIthough how and what admit a certain reflexivity within perchrony,

conchrony shatters this peace, and the war of language against itself begins in earnest. But

note that this 'war,' the folding of the fold, depends upon the se(f-evident nature of an

imefrexive perchronic asymmetry. wherein the whats of an occluded activity are

necessarily deflected by that acti~ity.~' The problem, of course, is one of not only arguing

the neces@ of this higher-order, irreflexive perchrony against the theoretico-narrative

reflexivity evinced by the figure of Dasein, but of arguing this reflexive perchrony's

decidedly infiltrative (primordial) - one might even say hypotactically reflexive - relation

to conchrony, the relation which legislates the irreflexivity of the fold. As we have said,

the superknot drastically complicates such syntactic caveats, and in this sense, Foucault

misunderstands perchrony to the extent that al1 supernautical lines are 'misunderstandings'

- it's just that some lines are a little less incomprehensible than others.

The diserence between the perchronic figures of the fold and Dasein once again

foregrounds the sense of distributio»al scopr; the way in which both the through and the

with moments are always si~uated. to the extent that one rnight consider, for instance, a

chain of signifiers, the subject within a social, economic, histoncal, or psychic fields, an

individual existence, or the entire cosmos in terms of these moments.3g Perchrony and

conchrony always havdadmit a 'topography,' the distributional specifics of which can be

quite cornplex, parlicirlarly once we consider the interference of these two modes, and the

way in which such interference operates frornkhrough the 'recursive' theoretical moment -

that is to Say, rhrS moment itself We have already noted the manner in which

dedifferentiation tends to displace possibility-horizons. What this implies with regards to

38 But that occluded activity m u t frrst be dcdudcd before the fact of this dcflection becornes plain, which delivers us, in an elegant fashion, to a sore point of postsûucturalism, where they are vulnerable to Habermas' charge of 'performative contradiction.' 1s not the declusion of deflection itself deflected? Martin Jay, howevcr, is quite nght when ùisists that this critique faIls short, lhat "it makes no sense ... to charge someone wvith perfomative contradiction when such a crime is the original sin of al1 language" ("The Debate Ovcr Performative Contradiction,'' 272). And yet, as we shall see, this '01-iginal sin' requires close theoretico-narrative scmtiny.

39 Should we give in to the temptation to suggest that the suasive force of many such readings are derived kom the inadvertent incorporation of those supernautical lines inclincd towards performativity, and then imputed to the 'nature of the thing.' Dosein, in pIrticular, cornes to muid here: how many revolutionary redistributions have been attributed to the 'matter itself,' des pite the fact that these redistributions repeat thernselves across the scopes of ahost any 'matter.' Perhaps it is the repetition of given disrributions across voriotis scopes which more than anything else bespedis the po wer of supernauticd lines.

distributional scope is that the lack of differentiation within perchronic or conchronic

process will tend to reestablish itself across whatever 'against ' with which it is decluded.

With Heidegger, therefore, we would expect that the more thoroughiy Cure dispenses

with the differentiation of subject and object, the more powefilly would differentiation

reconstitute itself within a conchronic reappraisal. This is why the early Heidegger's

'breakthrough' seems so conservative fkom the outside - why Dareins are like so many

bubbles, enclosed in the filrny surface tension of authenticity, waiting for the blessed break.

One rnight even hazard that 'death,' in Beirig curd T h e , although profoundly inflected

fiom a perchronic standpoint, is in actuaiity conchroriicaf& conceived, to the extent that a

hyperbolically 'pure' perchrony (Le., a God) could admit no 'limit,' simply because 'Iimit'

constitutes a paradigrnatic example of conchrony. (And for this reason, we might attribute

a certain 'perchronic honesty' to Bakhtin's refusa1 to allow death a place in folklonc tirne).

Sartre, who restrkts the Hegelian declusion of how and what as a ternpordy fnistrated

unity to the scope of the 'personal,' presses the incompleteness of perchrony to an

extreme by distnbuting it within the conception of 'value,' wherein "Death reunites us

with ourselves" (Being and Nothirgness, 169), and thus travels a similar supemautical

line, the difference being that conchronic interference is now 'dialectically' inflected. Limit

has become consummation: not oniy has againstness arisen in the figure of a limit, but a

profound 'anti-medial' determinativity has been distnbuted across it. Death has become

origin.

Sartre's focal reinscription of a primarily alocal Hegelian distribution provides

another interesting demonstration of this aspect of distributional scope: the way in which

conchronically or perchronically infiected supemautical lines exen themselves in similar

ways across vastly different fields, irnbuing a 'cultural solipsism,' for instance, with ail the

theoretico-narrative elegance of a solipsism of the now, and allowing such overdetermined

figures as the 'subject,' as coagulations of specific supemautical lines, to be read into

nearly anything. The withness of 'intentionality,' far instance, refers al1 declusions to the

medial occlusion of the how, which in turn may be referred to an irrefexive asyrnmetry, in

which case the 'world' will tend to be a proliferated surface, endlessly adumbrated but

never penetrated, or to a reflxive asymmetry, in which case the world w i U tend to

constitute hexmeneutic stratigraphies, interreticulated ' levels' tightly referenced by the

how of their disclosure. The question of whether this asymmetry will be reflexive or

irreflexive is quite ofien determined by the against of this original scope, whether this

withness is distnbuted against the mediai dynamisms of an unconscious, the laterai

coercions of a social power structure, or the quiet of biblical study. In either case, the

world is never simply 'given' as a howless (synchronic) expanse of possibility-horizonal

enclaves of processes and objects, as a 'reality' ripe for epistemological plunder. One

rnight refer here to restricted and unresiricred distributional scopes, which correspond

once again, to perchrony, conchrony and their attenuations. Restriction refers to the

degree to which what is mediaily bound to a given distribution of how. In a radical&

restricted scope of reading, for instance, we rnight not simply be content to bind the

reading of the read to the simple asymmetrical linearity of the written, but to every medial

saccade of the eyes, every flicker from end of page and back, charted in strict, irrefexjve

order, such that 'reading' only constituted meaningfûl fragments culled from a visual

scribble. In each case the valence of each succeeding instant, if it does not utterly

obliterate the instant before, releçates it to a thin and exacting history. One might imagine

a world as slender and disjoint as our attention, a proliferate thread strung taut along the

mobile backbone of the how. But of course this depends upon the degrees of

asymmetrical cotitimiîy or disconti~izrity which we attribute to the how, or to the what for

that matter. We could conceive a restricted, irreflexive how grappled and broken by the

force of disjoint what-events, a Pmfrock with never the time; or a perchrony whose

Vreflexivity is so complete that the modal continuity of past and future becornes

unspeakable, and each instant primordial and apocalyptic, utterly emergent and perfectly

sterile.

Since it is the theoretico-narrative placement of these fragments which determine

supemautical lines, distribution itself is a key notion in this anaiytic. in Husserl's

perchronic consideration of temporality, for instance, not only is the theoretical scope

limited to the 'this now' of consciousness, determinativity is pnmarily invested in the now,

which Husserl traces back to the 'absolute flux, ' the pure happening of transcendental

subjectivity. As pure source, the now provides the constitutive 'still point' from which an

'occluded conchrony,' a consideration of whatness without the performative interference

of the how, is possible. By pursuing the perchronic how to its most originary point,

Husserl believes, the phenomenal wraiths of the determinative how vanish, and the old

determinativity of the originary what reasserts itself as à,ma~hesis, not because any

charting of the constitutive deflections worked by the perchronic would allow us to

undertake a compensatory hermeneutics of what, but because at its most primitive point

the activity of the perchronic how is so complete that it becomes a pure passiviiy. (In this

way, we might see in Heidegger's attempted hermeneutic pilgrimage to the asking of the

question of the meaning of Being a simple narrative retelling of Husserl's purificatory

ntuals, the attempt to arrive at a moment of complete determinative ambivalence where

the truth of Being will tell itself). This is why Foucault believes that phenomenology

epitomizes pre-critical naiveté: pre-cnticai because it hopes to retum to the 'table,' and

naive because such a forgetfulness of 'man' is impossible. M e r Kant, any attempt to

divest the perchronic how of its determinativity, to transfigure it into a Archimedean point

by unfolding its throughness as a with, is epistemically unthinkable. It is significant that

both of the standard criticisms of phenomenology, the question of the efficacy of the

epoche, and question of the continuity between intuition and its linguistic articulation, deal

with determinativity and its distribution. Even the Demdean critique of Husserl's

Copenùcan revolution involves a redistribution of determinativity, one which inaugurates

a revolution in its own right?' Husserl, in his analysis of the modal structure of perchronic

temporality, is forced to distinguish between retention and recollection, between the

through conservation of the past and the with conservation of the past - the no longer as

" 1 refer here to Speech and Phenomena, particulariy to the critique of Husserlian tempornlity in the chapter "Signs and the Blink of an Eye," 60-9.

how and the no longer as what. The problem with this former, retentional past is that it is

occludedand yet constit~~tive of the now - it represents a 'conscious noncontent?"

Abruptly the focus of determinativity has shifted fiom the now as the perchronic locus of

constitution, to an earlier, more radical perchrony which operates through the concavity of

the now without ever passing under its light. Since this radical perchrony represents an

undecludable occlusivity, we can redistnbute determinativity but we cannot likewise

redistribute the existentid valence, the 'presence' exhausted by the now-point. Within this

theory-namitive, the 'world' is bound by a derivative conchrony which is nevertheless

primordial - it becomes an 'onginary repetition.'

With this rather reductive reading of the Demdem redistribution we can

foreground two important issues dealing with distribution. The first involves those

straightforward theory-narratives wherein the occluded through of subjectivity has been

conchronically distributed across or within the possibility-horizons of institutional power

structures, the unconscious, economico-historical forces, symbolico-cultural complexes,

al1 those conchronic and perchronic asymmetries which 'displace' the determinative

position of the 'Enlightenrnent subject' either by dedifferentiating him, or by rendering him

'horizonal.' The second issue involves occlusion. The HusserIian 'IIOW' as we said was

perchronic, which would entai1 that it also be occlusionary, through, and yet the Demdean

critique of Husserl is also occlusionary - in other words it suggests an occlusion which

d~ffers fiom the through-occlusion of Husserl, an irrideciirdable, medial occlusion which

radically expropnates the detenninativity of the impressional now. With the possible

- - - - - -

'' In The Phenomenology oflnrernai Timeconscioirsness, Husserl stntes: "it is already clear that the retentionai 'content' is, in a primordial sense, no content at al1 [my italics]" (53). Thus, at the nsk of oversimpli~g, we fmd ounelves with a 'conscious noncontent,' somelhing which is ironic given Husserl's famous quote dealing with the Unconscious f h e r in the work: "It is certaidy absurd to spcak of a content of which ive are 'unconscious,' one of which we are ody conscious of later" (162). Does this mean that the 'discoveries' of phenomenology ;ire actually the 'constructions' of phenomenology? Which is more absurci, a 'conscious noncontent' or an 'unconscious content'?

exception of the ~nconscious,"~ dl of the supernautical lines just mentioned do not deal

with such radical considerations of medid occlusion (which are no more or no less

metaphysical, merely difTerent), and yet they do involve a 'laterd concave-occlrrsio~~aIify'

which daers in End from Husserl's through-occlusion, a 'frorn-occlusion,' which, since it

arises laterally within a primarily conchronic asymmetncal consideration of the 'before' of

the subject - economy, cuiîure, history - articulates it in systematic ways (i-e., as the

'ideological reproduction of the conditions of production') rather than asystematically

(Le., as the play of d'rance , or psychoanalytic repetition). Since any 'description,' even

those of 'fùndamentd' perchronic structures, arnounts to a declusion, the charge of

'abstraction' is easily made: one need only redistribute the priorities of the

theoretico-narrative field, discuss the determinativities of labour and life to demonstrate

the denvative, ideoiogical status of a Dasein for instance. In the default diegetics of

theory, beginnings and conclusions are as readily and as often rewritten as those of

Hollywood screenplays.

When Husserl dismisses, quite famousiy, the ~otion of an 'Unconscious content,'"

it is these types of concave-occlusionality which he is trying ro shield himself against, as he

must, since it suggests the very dilemrna which Foucault explores in the figure of the fold:

even though we are the ground of our ongiq it escapes us sirnply because it perfoms

through us in an epistemologically inaccessible way. A philosophy founded upon the

transparency of 'consciousness-of must at al1 costs exclude the possibility of an

'unconsciousness-of? But Husserl is not alone; both Heidegger, and Bergson, as pioneers

of an explicitly temporal perchrony, aiso participate in the theoretico-narrative urge to

shelter this perchrony by securing its primordiality, an urge which has perhaps found its

" When Freud States in "The Dissection of the Pqchicd Persondity" thrt "there is nothing in the id that corresponds to the idea of tirne" (106), we c m assume that he is rcferring the traditionai conchronic asymmetrical notion of time, and thrit he fail s to consider the possibility of an adifferentiai, medial ternporality. Denida argues this in "Freud and the Scene of Writing," 125.

" The Phenomenology of Intemol Time-Consciotrsness, 162-3.

most disastrous consequence in Bergson's arguments against relativity theoryu We have

already noted, very briefly, the way in which 'death' in the early Heidegger

amounts-to/admits a reassertion of conchrony as a radically minimal 'ground,' and to this

extent 'occlusion' is no different, even when conceived in drastic perchronic terms, as

"unthinkable. impossible, unutterable."" The temptation, as always, is to resolve or

absolve one's declusions of al1 'onto-theological' overtones of 'ground,' perhaps by

indenturing it to the perceived perchrony of a wild Iiterature, or by abandoning the hope of

escape altogether, by pertheoretically enading and then cont heoretically noting those

declusionary dislocations wherein something wholly 'otherwise' winks, or perhaps by

insisting on a tactical silence, as Bergson 'says' of fieedom." And yet, as fascinating as

these labyrinthe escape routes are, they al1 pose conchrony as a kind of Alcatraz - and

even though this f d y of supemautical lines has had an immeasurable impact on the

thought of this century, particularly the thought which chokes under the rnuule of

'postmodernism,' this syntactic caveat is as severely limiting as anything from the

'logocentnc tradition' and must be set aside if we are to move on to new distractions."

a v e n the superknot, this bewildering interference of conchrony upon our

tendencies and terms is to be expected. Any 'contheoretical' consideration of temporaiity,

one could argue, opens the door to further, explicitly conchronic moves. Consider the

virtuallactuai and possible/reai oppositions as proposed by Bergson and elaborated by

Deleuze. For Bergson the problem with the possible is found in the reai's strange

I refer here io Bergson's unfortunate Duration and Simtiltaneity: with Refirence to Einsrein 's Theory.

'5 Demda says this of the possibility of a 'positive inlinity' in "Violence and Metaphysics," 1 14.

" As Bergson States in Timo and Free Will: "any positive defuiition of Çeedorn will h u r e the victory of deterrninism" (220).

47 The same, 1 suspect, might be said of other idluential 'traps,' such as instrumental reason.

deficiency in relation to it." Something of this problem can be glimpsed in a consideraiion

of the recent shift in narratology away fiom structural to semantic concems. One

advantage of narrative semantics, many would argue, lies in the way its use of

'possible-worlds' allows it to preserve the crucial element of occlusion in a given

narrative's action structure." Rather than studying narrative f?om the standpoint of 'plot,'

which is, in a rnanner of speaking, to read a narrative against the accomplishment of its

own completion, possible-world semantics reads from withiq as it were, fiom a point at

which the structuring possibilities of the fùture are occluded. The problem however is that

this occlusion is expressed merely through a phrality of declusions, of 'possible

outcornes,' out of which only one is realized. Bergson's cornplaint is that redization in this

sense can be understood as a as a kind of impoverishmeni. Reality consists of an

elimination of possibilities - the surplus of existence is considered in terms of loss. Now

this poses few difficulties as far as narrative is concerned, to the extent that those stories

under scrutiny are already written. The problem anses when the world and conscious Ise,

which are presumably not prewritten, are understood in these terms. Rather than

conceiving existence according to a radical, 'cotivex occlusion' of the £hure, a perchronic

'to-occlusion' where emergency and difference prevail, the happening of existence is

conceived as a process of elimination - or, according to Deleuze's terms, as a movement

of resemblance and limitati~n.'~ 'Possibility,' then, as an effort to overcome the convex

opacity of the future through a massing of declusion at the frontier of an decluded present,

quite plainly belongs to the withness of conchrony, a fact implicit in possibility's

conjunction with 'horizon' in the present analytic. The relation of the virtual to the actual,

however, is drastically diEerent. For Deleuze, the virtual is îhe real, but not in the sense of

- -- --

'' The Creative Mind: An Introduction ro Meraphysics, 99.

" Ruth Ronen provides a clear contrast of these narratological standpoints in "Pxadigm Shift in Plot Models: An Outline of the History of Narratology." Poetics Today. 1 1,4 (Winter 1 'BO), 8 17-42.

Di//ence und Repetitiort, 2 1 1 - 12.

the real in its relation to possibility. The virtual rather, is the occiirded real, the world as

vital duration, which in the process of actualization is entirely transfigured, such that the

relation of the virtual and the actual can only be described in terms of differercce and

reptition. (We will consider Deleuze at length further in this study, but for now, we might

reveaYsirnulate this supemautical line in terms of an docalized, unres~icted, irreflexive

corollary to Demda's restricted concave perchrony). Although an important difference

obtains between Bergson's conception of possibility and 'blank possibility,' Bergson and

Deleuze, by problematizing possibility, remind us of the recursive turbulence of the

superknot, with the way in which this very constellation of tems is thoroughly freighted

by ilself. A fourfh species of occlusion distinguishes itself: a token-reflexive

'~his-occlusiod (Supernaut), which pertheoretically refers to one's own theoretical

moment.

What Supenmt demonstrates is that the tendency to conchrony which so

powerfully interferes wit h Our analytic is cornplicated/complemented/canceled b y a

contrary tendency to perchrony. Consider means-ends 'rationality,' for instance: 'why' can

be understood perchronically as a kind of asymmetncai, reflexive throughing into

convexity, as when one acts without thematizing one's goal, or conchronically as an

irreflexive movement which is differentially detennined by a d ' r r e d , convex withness - a

redistribution of determinativity to a cowex declusion, an 'end,' as in certain negative

characterizations of 'desire.' The reason 'why' so handily demonstrates the syntheses to

which our tendencies are given can be seen in the ease with which this latter 'conchronic

why' can be perchronically reinfiected, such that local 'teleologies,' which already rely on

what we have described as the 'lateral perchrony' of process, become kinds of medial

throughing. Indeed, Sartre dots this explicitly with his 'monstrous' Hegelian attenuation

of Dasein." As we have indirectly seen, 'why' can be distnbuted across a vanety of

scopes; even across profoundly alocal 'eschatologies' such as that found in Hegel, who,

- -

'' At least this is how Demdsi descnbes it in "The Ends of Man": "A monstrous translation in many respects, but so much the more sigruficant" ( 1 15).

adopting Fichte's difficulties with Kant's dualism of fom and content, we might Say

envisions perchrony in the movement of Spirit through the definitively conchronic

fiamework legislated by the Absolute. With Hegel, medial differentiation and the contrary

determinative emphases of how and what are decluded, are in a sense dedserentiated

thrmgh declusion, a declusion which 'figures' them againsz nonBeing (in the same way

any figurelground opposition can itself be 'figured' against some further ground). Through

this declusion, contradiction becomes resoiu~iotz, a resolution which is distributed such

that ail differentiations of how and what now stand in differential relation to the

determinative end of history. Hist ory becomes the movement of concrete, i t t f i ~a t i ve

process, a rnovement of reduction rather than production. And dialectics become a sort of

' perchronic logic. '

So what is the significance of this interference, aside from the fact that it provides

the basis for several historically compelling supemautical lines? Why is perhaps postured

in entirely perchronic terms in Heidegger's modal infiltrative mode1 (ekstatic temporality),

where how and what reflexively instantiate one another. This provides an example of a

type of 'perchronic conchrony' which we must distinguish from occluded or lateral

conchrony as the simple elision of the howness of conchrony - a perchronic what as

opposed to perchronyas-what. Heidegger, if we remember, counterposed this

'through-withness' (the ready-to-hand) to simple wit hness (present-at-hand) in tems of a

leveling of differential asymmetry (the totality of equipmental contexts) and a

corresponding exertion of blank possibility-horizons (the making-present of the

'ha~nrner').'~ But does not this suggest the possibility of a perchronic, or in other words,

nonviolent 'withness'? What prevents Classical representation, which, as an alocal, lateral

conchrony, we might Say operates in complete ignorance of its operation, from likewise

participating in this perchronic withness? For Heidegger, at least from this perspective, the

violence of withness lies not so much in the redistribution of determinativity worked by the

" See Being and Tirne, 102- 107.

fold, as in the indifference/completeness of the what (the 'forgetfùlness of the concept'), in

the proliferation of possibility-horizons associated with conchrony, which results in the

resolution of differentiated whats - objects - from a more originary relationality. But does

this not contradict Our earlier reading, wherein Heidegger was a key figure in cementing

the irreflexïvity of conchrony as how? Yes and m. Here we touch upon a fine point in the

reading of theory-narratives. The violence, we have just said, lies in the shifi corn a

through-withness to a pure withness, or in other words, between d~flerent uttemations of

whrrr. Whereas the violence of our earlier reading was found in the how, which we

described as the redistribution of determinativity. The fine point reveals itself once we

consider the ease with which how and what lapse into one another: does not Heidegger's

violence between whats amount to the same thing as our redistribution of determinativity?

Are we not simply doing 'sornething wrong' when we practice the metaphysics of

presence, a doing which results in medially and laterally differentiated whats? Remember

that for Foucault there was nothing wrong with Classical representaîion to the extent that

man did not yet ex&, whereas for Heidegger, simply because of the primordial nature of

reflexive perc hrony, a la t eral conc hrony mean t a forgotten primordiaiity . In t his sense we

might Say that Foucault's understanding of this lateral conchrony is perhaps more

'profound' than Heidegger's, to the extent that it acknowledges the groundless nature of

perchrony, even if this perchrony is utterly occluded as it is in Classical discourse. For

Foucault, as for Bakhtin, the fa11 resides in the iiivention of the fallen. LVhere Heidegger

conchronically sees the lateral conchrony of Classical representation occumng

acrosdagainst the prior ground of fundamentai ontology and the reflexive perchrony it

yields, this 'ground' and the redistnbution of determinativity it legislates, occurs

afterwards for Foucault, in a perchronic figure which has decluded perchrony and arrived

at man. Considered medially, then, as an occluded how without basis for cornparison, as a

'thr~~ighdecIuszonaIity' wit hout Heidegger's conchronic 'ground, ' the laterd conchrony

of the Classicai episteme, the transparency of language against the determinativity of the

world, is 'mrthe~~tic.' And yet, in The Order of Thi~gs Foucault's emphasis is unifody

coniheoreticui, wwhich is the reason why the fold perchronically instantiates itself across

the conchronic asymmetricd fabric of history. This is also why, given the irreflexivity

assigned to history in the fom of 'irrevocability,' we might hazard that the fold, as a

groundless perchronic figure, remains irreflexive, and as such synoptically patterns modem

thought as the repetition of involuted displacements. We cannot go back to the Classical

syntax simply because Foucault is writing a history of knowledge, with the consequent

theoretico-narrative demands of irreflexivity. When considering Classical discourse,

however, Foucault, ever the good historical 'hemenmt,' brackets al1 consequences of

Kant's perchronic discovery. And yet, in a mundane, local and restricted sense, Classical

representation's 'forgetfùlness' of its own how is the very condition of deciusiori in

general: Supernaut, for instance, was just tzow occluded, and thus one rnight ask Foucault

why it is this traffic of declusion and forgetfùlness must perforce be played out across the

irrevocable extensity of history, rather than reflexively play through Sirpentaiir, or through

local theoretical moments in generaL5' At issue here is the locaIization of lateral

conchrony's scope to theory. 1s not 'Classicai representation' something whose 'history'

can be written as heartbeats as much as centuries? And something which also, rnoreover,

writes? Moreover, as we have seen with our brief consideration of Hegel and the 'why'

above, there is a sense in which the interattenuating relations between perchrony and

Why not, unless perchrony, and the deflectional determinotivity attributed to it, rernains conserveci in the (occluded) conchronic symmetq of argumentation in general'? Musr the declusion of perchrony as determinative remah suspended wvithin the occluded symmetry h o u & which we argue? Perhaps no more or no Iess than any other element of habitus, reason, linguistic cornpetence, neural network flect, or the like. Thus wve have, torturously enough, the occlusion of the declusion of occlusion within Supernuut (and now we also have the declusion of this second order occlusionf. So ive might wish to ask ounelves: which d e s precedence, the declusive perchrony which makes what 'what,' or the occlusive wvhich makes what whar'? We might want to say that the 'real thing' takes precedence, since, afk-ail, it was the declusion of occlusion which allowvd us to 'discover' the disfiguring determjnativity of the occluded how, but we must 'recognize' the 'possibility' that the 'real thing,' Supernuut, is 'now' a 'product' of this 'discovery,' to the extent that it now occupies some kind of concavescciusiondity. Perhnps only a speciw of psychoana1yt.i~ transference cm undo this damage, if that is, the interference of our t e m has not already rendered this consideration senselcss. Perchronies heûped upon conchronies and vice versa: Cm wve blme Augustine for coing out to Gd?

conchrony can take on so many forms that it becomes difficult to conceive how we might

absolutely bracket an original, nonviolent relationality of the what within the confines of a

single supemautical line. Could we not, just as convincingly, 'argue,' as Gadamer has done

in a sense," that 'scientific practice' is perchronic, and thus remove withness of the what

from the violence of the 'silent world' of representation and retum it to the through

movement of life? Have we indeed historically surpassed Classical representation? Or is it

just a matter of a particular supemautical line at a particular time, of theory-narratives

whose engulhent of the world is so total that our distraction becomes complete?

That the fold constitutes an elegant, powerful theory-narrative is not in question.

But despite this, both the sense in which Foucault's descriptions pertheoretically constitute

prescriptions, and, more important ly, its revolutionary how, rernain inaccessible to us

without the fiagile inventory of the superknot. The significance of the 'fine point' above

lies in the way the various emphases upon how and what (asymmetrical/symrnetrical

medial/lateral, irreflexive/reflexive, etc.) in Silpernazir stack themselves within perchrony

and conchrony, just as they seem both to necessitate and to contradict one another. It is

just as difficult trot to consider conchrony as a how (representation as an act), as it is m t

to consider perchrony as a what (performance as a thing) - this is the reason why it is so

difficult to distinguish between revelation and fabrication, original and simulacrum.

Pragrnatically, we are always exposed to the question 'how does 'conchrony' work?' or

semantically, to the question 'what do you mean by ' perchrony'?'

Thepower of a temporal theory-act, 1 would argue, is found in synoptic revisions

such as those carried out in thumbnail fashion above. Either implicitly or explicitly,

theoretical outlooks, reread in the tems of this theory-narrative, can be s h o w to

propound certain presuppositions/exposures of temporality, to themselves be operating

dong 'lines of force' which c m be mapped with the filings of time. Temporality as

superknot provides the 'supernaut' with a metaphysical rag and bone shop, provisions him

" 1 refer here to the opening essays of his Philosophical Hermeneutics.

with supernautical lines, which although fragmentary and brittle, allow him to barter with

the money-changers, and to chart Copemican revolutions in a volatile and yet common

currency. A kind of quasi-systematicity &ses, a turbulent economy certainly, but one

which renders the prospect of a theoretical camp patois feasible. And yet throughout this,

the sheer difficulty, expressed primarily above in terms of a colision/collusion of perchrony

and conchrony, but also evident in the narrative investments~vulnerabilities of my own

exposition, not only obscures whar had been disclosed, but rattles the very instant of our

theoretical endeavour - Szipen~mit. As a 'trying,' an experiment in the theoretical

possibilities of a temporal vocabulary, we encountered trinl

Not surpnsingly, something of the conduct of this t d surfaces in Foucault:

if we look a little more cIosely, we perceive that Classical thought related the possibility of spatializing things in a table to that property possessed by pure representative succession to recall itseIf on the basis of itself, to fold back upon itself, and to constitute a sirndtaneity on the basis of a continuous tirne: tirne becrime the foundation of space. in modem thought, what is revealed at the foundation of the hstory of things and of the historicity proper to man is the distance creaîing a vacuum tvithin the Sme, it is the hiatus that disperses and regroups it at the two ends of itself. It is this profound spatiality that makes it possible for modern thought to still conceive of time--to h o w it as succession, to promise it to itself as fulfillment, ongin, or return. (340)

Here we find Classicai representation decluded as an activity that effaces itself to fashion

the table, and it is this sense that Foucault speaks, precipitously if precisely, of the

temporal foundation of space. The modem contradicts this, he suggests, since the

temporality of history is itself founded upon a 'profound spatiality,' but a spatiality which

we can now r a d in tems of its relation to a groundless, asyrnrnetricd perchrony. How

could this strange reduction of whatness to temporality and howness to space, 'work7 if

not for the dificulty of the superknot? And if the exposure to this difficulty is both

extended to Foucault's own practice and restricted to specific moments of his exposition,

is there not a sense in which the iiecessity of Foucault's own theoretico-narrative line

withdraws from The Order of Things, and leaves beached, as it were, a battery of

fiagments amenable to a battery of profoundly other supemautical lines? Cunously

enough, what Foucault has done here is to erlact the enigmatic commerce of conchrony

and perchrony across the tumult of changing epistemes - he has worked the negotiation of

fiagments into the fundamental fabric of history. Our interest lies in the fabric of theory.

Our question has become the occasion for a senes of descriptive notions, an entire

conceptual apparatus in fact. But what exactly is at stake? The claim is that our question,

the 'occlusive space' which we have called the superknot, allows for the partial, yet drastic

preemption of the philosophical edifice. Given that the vast majonty of philosophy labours

within the great, canonical 'whats' of the tradition, this preemption allows us to do

something which is rarely done: tum to the very notion of a 'Copemican revolution' and

ark how. According to what general syntactic postures are ' revolutionary ' t heories

possible? How do these postures differ, and could t hese di fferences be systematically

correlated? By calling attention to a profound senes of

vulnerabilities-to/presuppositions-of issues of syntax and temporality, the superknot

problematizes, [oosens, some rather important theoretical pins. If time is constitutively

'out of joint,' then so too is philosophy. Drawn from their arthritic sockets, theoretical

positions have become wlnerable to prosthesis, the theory-narrative which measures the

full extent of their limbs, and from this prosthesis, to simulaliotz, the virtual substitution of

their core movements.

A measure of the inter-theoretical significance of this shift in emphasis c m be

gained through a consideration of an 'ideal encounter' between theory-narratives and

another theoretical position. If a prosthetic field c m be constructed/uncovered, and if

moreover, a convincing subs~iturior~ of a given variety of the theory's core movements can

be made in terms olher thml ils own, in an altemate, explicitly syntactic idiom, there is a

sense in which the original position would be placed in a series of binds. If it insists that

this idiom is other to it, it is lefi with the imposing task of demonstrating how this is so in

an idiom invulnerable to yet a fùrther 'simulation.' If it adrnits that this idiom is indeed

intemal to it, then there is a sense in which it must admit to its own lack of versatility.

Ockam's razor is with the enemy here: why maintain two vocabularies when one wili

suffice? If it admits to the difficulty of the pre-emption/simulation dilemma, States that the

theory-narrative maintains a problematic relation to it, then it has already taken its first

supemautical steps. If, on the other hand, it defiantly maintains that theory-narratives are

just plain wro~g , then it would seern to be drawn into a series of problems. First, it needs

either to defend itselffiom the accusation that it claims to have answered the riddle of

time and syntax, or to demonstrate that such an answer is in fact possible. Moreover, it

would have to somehow account for the 'viral successes' of the theory-narrative,

particularly if it hopes to defend itself fiom the possibility that its own critiques will be

simulated. In a hypothetical encounter with deconstmction, for instance, the question of

the already uncertain significance of a deconstruction of a supemautical reading could be

fbrther undermined by a viral repetition of this deconstmction, one which could argue that

this deconstructive reading simply provided a fùrther demomtratio~l of the supemauticd.

This is, of course, an account of an ideal inter-theoretical encounter, one which provides,

by default, some of the lirnits within which theory-narratives potentially operate. In actual

practice, it remains sloppy, incomplete. And in this sense, Superrtmr is something of a 'dry

mn.' In its ideal exercise, 1 admit to the unnewing sense that Hegel is both frowning and

smiling somewhere nearby, aithough 1 am not sure why. Perhaps simulation has replaced

synthesis within an equaily pretentious and irrefutable Framework. Irrefutability is never a

good thing. Pretentiousness less so. Not unlike Hegel, and I admit to a certain degree of

discodort with this analogy, 1 draw the answer to my fundamental question from the

activity of its atwwering - inability. But rather than finding in the f o m of this activity some

superordinate logic, some higher-order unity which makes of contradiction a machinery

which leads one to the unconditioned, 1 find license to chart brittle threads of

half-consistency through theory in general, to initiate a new game where although every

move is impossible, some are Iess so than others. Once the impossibility is granted, only

the pathways remain. 1 will have more to Say about sorne of the possible problems of

theory-narratives in concluding.

We began this study by foregrounding the 'trying point' which lies between

revolutions, and by suggesting that in some way the commerce of this point

involvedadrnitted issues of temporality. Through a consideration of Bakhtin, an attempt

was made to demonstrate both the efficacy of temporality as a way to read and something

of ternporality's sheer difficulty. In particular, the problem of what we called Bakhtin's

'syntactic caveat, ' was noted, and the difficulties associated with conflating the absolute

chronotope, the fundamental what that had initidly been folklonc time, with the dialogicd

default chronotope which by his own totalized account m u t encompass his own

discursive how. This was the problem of sheltering what from the vicissitudes of how, of

p r e s e ~ n g the representing world fiom the representations of story - in other words, the

very problematic interrogated by Foucault as the 'fold,' the man of modernity. Accepting

the cogency of Foucault's own synoptic account, an attempt was made to do two things:

1) refine his theoretical condensations through recourse to the difference

between performance and representation (the distribution of determinativity), and thus

fùrther explore the promise of Bakhtin's instrurnentalization of time; and 2) to

problernatize his generd h e w o r k by recailing the treachery of temporality, the

self-exposure which makes it impossible to arbitrate between Foucault's own

contheoretical exposition of the fold as the fundamental stmcture of modem thought's

history, and a pertheoretical 'practice of the fold' which rnerely demonstrates the power of

a certain what/how syntax as a way to read. Ultimately, it was suggested that Foucault

operates according to his own syntactic caveat, one which despite its conternporary

currency, is etched across the same difficulty as Bakhtin's. The question of firsts was

introduced as a way of posing this difficulty, and both its unanswerability and its

urninanswerability were considered. This in tum led to the elaboration of the superknot

and theory-narratives respectively. And then finally an attempt was made to fùrther

'refine' both this problem and this promise through a 'performative analytic' of how and

what, and their manifold attenuations.

The central premises of this study, then, are as follows: 1) The mundane, and yet

insuperable difficulty of syntax: the superknot. 2) The general vulnerability of philosophy

to this ditficulty in general: exposure. 3) The 'reducibility' of the superknot to an

asystematic inventory of temporal terms. 4) The susceptibility of theories in particular to

syntactic declusion, as per 2 and 3. 5) The susceptibility of theories in particular to

syntactic restatement, as per 2, 3, and 4. 6) The susceptibility of theories in particular to

'quasi-systematizatioc' as per 5 and 6 - what we have called the 'synoptic gain.' And

lady, 7) The exposure of the present study as per 2. With reference to this final premise,

we should note that the goal of a 'supemauticalism' is to so determine the superknot as to

allow for the resolution of the maximum number of supernautical lines.

As one might have gathered fiom the excursus above, the relation of the present

study to Deleuze and Demda can be charactenzed as 'preemptive,' if by that we mean a

contest of fundamentah wherein one position is decluded within and read according to the

criteria of another. Perhaps this is inevitable. Deleuze's own relation to the tradition of

representation is, der-all, much the sarne. Too ofien in philosophy the intertheoretical

relation is simply assumed nom the outset: the enunciative position assumes a measured

deployment within a static and stable 'target field' which is itself situated within an unitary

if negotiable 'general field.' In relation to the general field, this deployment typically

purports to occupy a site syntactically prior to that of the target field, such that its target is

displaced in relation to its own deployment, becorning either 'denvative' or simply

'mistaken.' For instance, if I were to abide by this default, I would simply recapitulate a

specific portion of Deleuze, his account of pure difference Say, then examine the sites of

affiliation within the general field, such as the positionings of pure difference with regard

to the 'way things are,' and finally argue both their inadequacy and their necessary

supplementation/replacement: assert something like the attenuation of pure difference by

the Same. The problem with taking intertheoretical postures of this kind to a

'poststructuralist' philosophy, however, is that, poststructuralism, as a target field, c d s

this very 'intertheory-narrative' into radical question. In a 'narrativization' of Demdean

intertheory for instance? the enunciative position is problematized in such a way that the

target field is always already displaced in relation to itself, thus perpetually deflecting any

possible fixed relation to the general field. In Deleuze, on the other hand, particularly in his

collaboration with Guattari, the enunciative boundaries are likewise blurred, but in such a

way that the syntax between target and general fields becomes proliferative rather than

'deflective': intertheory no longer becomes a matter of infiiltration, of redistributive coups

and palace revolts, or of showing the impossibility of an absolute relation to the general

field, but of escaping the general field, of chasing out 'lines of flight,' of concept crealion.

By resorting to traditional narratives of encounter, the argument runs, one simply reasserts

the very general field which writers such as Deleuze and Demda try to attenuate.

This would seem to pose insuperable dificulties for aiy project critical of

poststructuralism: isn't the implication that one can only criticize Derrida as a Demdean,

or Deleuze as a ~eleuzean?~' Once again, we need to recall the difficulty of our original

question: the dilernrna of theoreticai isolation is itself an answering of the unanswerable.

The issue of appropriation is striated by al1 the cornplexities and absurdities of whatniow

syntax. Since the concems of intertheory are thoroughly per~heorerical, there is a

subsequent tendency to glut them with 'detenninativity,' which is to Say, by the possibility

of violence. And yet, as we mentioned above, this default assumption - 'pertheory deflects

the possibility of contheory' - is by no means straightforward.

The problem perhaps can be best illustrated by returning to what we have called

'' Or conversely, is there a sense in whkh these projects are purely critical, in the sense that they contain wi thin themselves al1 pertinent sel f-cri ticisms?

'scope. ' By turning to the conditions of one's own theoretical encounter with another

position, by tuniing to our how in other words, the temptation is to say that critically,

'violence becomes dl-encompassing,' that we cannot help but write Our own

theory-narrative through and thus over that of the target discourse. One can conceive a

whole new picture of philosophy arising as a result, one which many might find beguiling:

instead of infiltrative reworkings within the systematic constraints of a general field, we

have a proliferative game of 'philosophical cat and infinitely elusive mouse' between

vaying planes of intrasystematicity and the penodic lines of eruption from those planes

into new planes. And yet, we need to pause and ask exactly what we mean by 'all-

encompassing.' Where would we sketch the boundaries of Our planes if we restricted the

scope of this violence to include Our own pertheoretical ruminations? The problem posed

by a restricted, emphatically localized pertheoretical scope is that the lines of emption

might proliferate endlessly, that Our every attempt to situate some 'what' would be swept

away by an irnmediate exposure to 'how.' Our every word would become a cataclysm,

wrenched out of existence by its own performative cataract; and 'world' would become a

necWace pearled by big bangs wherein existence would flash but never shine. The point

being overstated here is that this issue is exceedingly sensitive to a reading of the

superknot, and as a result, requires that we 'hedge our bets,' and not simply accept a

certain imrnunity on the part of poststructuralist positions simply on the basis of a facile

consideration of pertheory and intertheory. In a sense, that fact that adopting a critical

position towards poststructuralism is such a potentially problematic issue provides a

wondemil demonstration of theory-narratives and the utility of a

supemauticalism. Interpretative violence is founded. in this case, upon a prernonition of

the superknot, upon the exposed 'joints' which are the broad syntactical postures of

poststnicturalism.~

'6 Although I take 'deconstruction' to be sornewhat emblematic of 'post-structuralism,' 1 am actually using this terni in a somewhat loose sense. Poststmcturdism here refers to the family of lines nssociated with the fold; those theory-narratives which, in more conventional terms, regard themselves as having displaced the 'subject' and 'representation' either through a formal meditation upon language iwlf, or through the study of 'psycho-socio-historico-discursive' practiccs.

It might be useful at this point to draw a distinction between a wisdom and a

cleverness in intertheoretical issues. To encounter Deleuze or Demda contheoretically, as

a passive field which allows for shifts in its relation to a generai field, is to approach them

in a manner wherein violence is a subsidiary issue. One reads rhrozrgh md our of their

theory-narrative, which is simply to Say that it remains occluded. In a sense, one might say

that this is the 'wise' reading simply because it acknowledges that theoretical

self-declusion, once begun, potentially never ends. A pertheoretical rereading would

declude this theory narrative, would make a what of this how and thus make of violence a

central issue, whiie at the sarne time occlusively reading throligh its own syntactic

postures, exposing itselt in a sense, both to itself (another pertheoretical rereading) and to

the very contheoretical assumptions it seeks to remedy. We might cail this the 'clever'

reading, since it seizes upon something both irnmediate and important, without realizing

the problems of either the broader or the narrower scope. The supemaut must furnbIe

about for those lines, and there are very many of them, which, at points wise and at points

clever, allow an intertheoretical encounter to mil, to perform.

For my own part, I will opt for a rather strange intertheoretical Iine: a 'real'

Derrida and a viral 'Deleuze.' The reason for this latter is found in the need to

demonstrate, at least in a preliminary way, the capacity of supernauticalism to replicute

philosophical positions. Rather than tackle Deleuze directly, 1 hope to encountcr him in

parallel, to fashion a theoretical doppelganger, as it were, a simzilacrum of Deleuze of

which we rnight ultirnately ask: "1s this not the 'real' Deleuze?'To Say that this is a

difficult task is an understatement. DiJference artd Repetifzo~t and n e Logic of Sense, the

two texts which 1 will concentrate on, are amongst the most difficult books ever smuggled

into North Amenca, not only because of the conceptual challenges they pose - they force

one to dispense with the habituai bulk of the tradition - but because of their sheer

cornplexiiy. It's almost as though Deleuze sets out to reinvent the world in al1 the detail of

the original. The question is one of whether we can deal with the works' central thesis,

which hopes to achieve nothing less than the "complete reversa1 of the world of

representation" (Dzfference and Repetztion, 30 1)' without some consideration of this

complexity. What I hope to suggest, in drafiing the 'Deleuzean theory-narrative,' is that

this wealth of analyticd detail arises from Deleuze's discovery of a novel and peculiar

series of supemautical lines which are susceptible to restatement in theoretico-narrative

terms. A central criterion of this reading, therefore, should be found in the ability of the

virai 'Deleuze' to mime at least some of these cornplexities.

In contrast, 1 have opted for a ' r d ' Derrida to demonstrate the odd power

accorded to supemauticalism through its capacity to discover/invent theory-narratives. 1

hope to draw a number of observations which would not have been possible otherwise.

The 'myopia' of a deconstructive theory-narrative. for instance, is not a f&ilure to

acknowledge this double exposure wherein it is equally vulnerable to the turbulence of

how and what, but to reinscribe, or intemaiize, this syntactic impossibility within a final

narrative of ho^,' as though by pressing ' ~ o w ' to higher orders of unintelligibility we

might forget the radical profùndity of our befùddled "what?" It is exceedingly important to

realize that we are not dealing with impossible, transporting oppositions in Our question,

such that Our supernatitical passage could be described as 'text,' as a riegoliatior~ of

qoria which, despite its own apophatic tenor, trails a positive wake: to aporeticdly

determine syntax is to absolutely determine syntax. and in such a way as to exclude the

resolution of dl supemautical lines of consistency other than the deconstmctive. The

problern is that although the deconstructive theory-narrative cornes to tems with its own

intemal exposures, it fails to corne to terms with its external exposures - the sense in

which Demda quite clearly participates in a metaphysics, which is simply to Say that he

operates according to a revolutionary theory-narrative of his own. This inclusion of

exposure is how deconstruction can masquerade as 'pure practice,' as the loosing of the

pertheoretical hounds aiready kemeled within the contheoretical text.

Our virai Deleuze and borrowed Demda meet on the terrain deployed by this

exclusion of exposure: what might be called the argument of the Atrsweg, of the possibility

of any positive detemination of the 'radical outside,' or of any egress fiom the fold. It is

here where the positive program of a supernauticalism can be demonstrated in earnest : the

ability to quasi-systematicaily compare and contrast two extraordinarily difficult positions,

and to perhaps 'resolve' a particularly trenchant problem which is common to many

contemporary philosophicai debates. We will begin with 'Deleuze.'

The aforementioned complexity rnight be said to be the result of 'Deleuze's'

unapologetic contheoreticai stance. 'Deleuze' preempts the tradition, not merely to

elaborate a cnticai posture towards it, something which would allow him to undertake a

'destruction of ontology' or the like, but rather to rewrite and reposition it. Initially, it is

the outside rather than the inside of the tradition that interests him; an emphasis which

allows 'Deleuze' to retum to this inside under the auspices of its new 'foundation.' His

inter-theoretical approach, therefore, is sirnilar to the typicai intertheory-nurative alluded

to above, with the exception that his target field is nothing ot her than the generalfield

itself He displaces and repositions the tradition by reinscribing it within a new general

field: a philosophy wherein Identity is founded upon Difference rather than the opposite.

In other words, 'Deleuze' is afler the 'Great What' which will allow him to initiate a new

philosophical 'how,' to substitute a 'logic of sense' for the 'logic of representation.'"

The problems of the tradition are emphasized in different ways between D~fference

and Repetitioti and ïïte Logic of Sense. In the former, the problem lies primarily in the

" Deleuze's praise of Gabriel Tarde is suggestive here. h a note, Deleuze clairns thût "AI1 of Tarde's philosophy may be presented in this light: as a didectic of difference and repetition which founds the possibility of a microsociology upon a whole cosmology" (Dlgerertce and Repetition, 3 14). DeIeuze's 'bravery,' if it can be called that, stems from his insistence, at ieast at this point in his career, upon cosmologies of difference. It is in this light îhat the profundity of the rclationship between The Logic of Sense and Stoic philosophy cannot be overestimated. Moreover, is there not a sense in which the Zarathustran wisdorn of the Etemnl R e m remriins likewise cosmological in the old sense?

distortions worked upon pure difference by representation" - once difference is yoked to

the requirements of representation it finds its primary expressions in negativity and

conceptual difference - whereas in the latter, 'Deleuze' &es the problem as the

detemination of the transcendental tield, or the 'distnbution of ~in~ularities."~ By

determining the transcendentai field either as 'God-man' or as Man-god,' 'Delewe'

argues, pre-Kantian rnetaphysics and transcendental philosophy fa11 into the temptation to

determine the condition by the conditioned, or in other words, to determine that which

determines by that which is deterrnined. 'Deleuze' does not grant Classical discourse the

immunity to the fold that Foucault does. Thus in the case of the former, the field of

existence becomes the expression of God, whereas in the latter case, the field of

knowledge becomes the expression of m a d o In both cases the 'singularity' (Godman) is

given a tuced distnbution (sedentary), maintains a relation of resemblance to what it

conditions (individuated), and leads to an either/or alternative with regards to Being and

nonBeing: imprisoned singularities legislate the determination of nonBehg as

undifferentiated abyss.

In broad syntactical terms, we might say that the tradition privileges an

occlusive-how (a 'how' productive of 'what' from beyond that 'what'), a kind of

'' Deleuze's analysis of representation is found primarily in the chnpter entitled 'The image of Thought," 129-67.

59 As he writes in The Logic o w n s e : '-Only when the world, tearning with monymous and nomûdic, impersonal and pre-individual singdaritics, opcns up, do wve iread at Iast on the field of the transcendental" ( 1 03).

" Both God and man are restrictive @ind what to how), but their M e r supemautical determinations Vary. One might be Uiclined to say that 'Gd-how' is perfêctly alocal (al1 places) and purely reflesive (al1 times), which is to say that he consititutes a kind of 'token hotv,' a way to declude the world's how without actually redistributing determinativity away f?om the world, a way to occupy the suspended term of Iaterd conchrony's withness while allowing it to remain in suspension. The pertinent theoretico-narrative consequcnce of this is that it implies a kind of 'rninimalist' fold: one which maintains determinativity in aiocdity (Great What), and yet restricts it to itself, such that radical alterity remains thinkable only in negritive terms. The Iocalization of 'man-how,' on the other hand, entails more extreme conscquences for restriction, and leads us to the familiar dilemma of the fold proper.

'perchronic principle,' and provides it with both a determinate form and a narrative locus,

that is to say, distributes it in a marner analogous to the distributions within the what. And

since this perchronic principle is the condition of what, that which lies outside it can in no

way whatsoever participate in quiddity. A flood of consequences follow from this

syntactical answer: everything that qualifies as a what, as a being, or as an object of

knowledge, does so only with reference to this singular perchronic principle, such that

Satan becomes a minion of God, or God a minion of Man. In addition, the multiplicity of

what is exhausted by a difference under the hegemony of the concept: the Many are simply

divisions within the One. Thus true multiplicity and pure difference, as that which are

irreducible to the Same, find themselves twisted into characters arnenable to the genre of

the One - variety and negati~ity.~'

Within this broad narrative, local syntaxes are manifested in numerous ways. Cause

is linked to effect, which is to Say that the perchrony of how is flattened into what - becomes conchronic asymmetrical process - such that history unravels in a lateral line

which is actuaily bent into a circle by the restrictive CO-presence of a reflexive God or

mankind: al1 spaces and al1 times are witnessed and unfolded by a holy presence or an

ordinary promise. In tum, language is swaddled by this fixity, governed by the

determinativity of a World-what which precedes and evaluates it, by the

concave-occlusionality of a God or Reason-how which gives it form, and by the

through-to-withness of a Subject-how who wields it as weapon and in~trurnent.~' Ail of

this underscores the ubiquity of the 'how' and its 'declusion as ...' - declusion as

causeleffect, as language, as history, as physiology, as biological and social forces - al1

distnbuted and organized within an unitary, alocal Great What, the entirety of which is

organized through a singular perchronic pnnciple which is in tum decluded as 'God' or as

'Man' and, perhaps more importantly, the promise of man - the open plane of possibility

which allows the finite to carry out the work of the infinite. Ground shelters in the .

S a 7ne Logic o/Sense, 105-8.

" See The Logic o/Sense, 12- 1 7.

grounded, Being curls within the w m t h of itself, and the outside is left to the infinite

cold.

The Nietzschean question we might ask, however, is whether this ' outside' is

indeed pure emptiness and absolute cold, or if it rather bums and throngs in the darkness.

What happens if we murder God? Or better yet, invert Him? What happens if we liberate

these static perchronic principles from any resemblance to what they declude, and

redistribute them as legron throughout the very abyss which they had once negatively

determined? Al1 the rules would change - the Same would now stumble through the

tumultuous game of Difference. Stnpped of individuation and fixity, the perchronic

principle would find itself splintered throughout the sub-what depths, as pre-individual and

impersonal singularities that would be entirely other than the whats of their expression.

And yet, despite this othemess these perchronic 'subprinciples' are not exterior to being

in the way of the undifferentiated abysq but rather maintain a 'whatness' peculiar to them,

a paradoxical ' predeclusionary whatness. ' The conchronic relations of negativity - wherein

one could only affirm through negation, through an against - collapse, allowing these

concave-occlusive subprinciples to interact not according to the logical protocols of static

'withness' but according to the giddy. nomadic terms of a determinativity without

substrate. In fact. withness must be elided altogether, and we must conceive of these

singularities as radical& multiple, without conchronic opposition or relation to some

'One.' Rather than cobbling together to fashion a Great What, worlds are irreflexively

'actualized' fiom the Iines of these subprinciples as perchronic whats, as throzrgh-worlds

(individuais) bereft of the declusionary withness that allows for generality or synthetic

predicates. Only when divergent lines converge, when subpnnciples collide as

actualization and couder-actudization, is a 'subject' constituted, and is the space of

withness necessary for declusion and language opened." And yet, because the

resemblance which characterizes the traditional syntax has become a 'cut, ' these

subpnnciples now arise and spill their whats perpendicularly instead of along lines of direct

determination: effects are severed from causes. Everywhere, the laterai line of history is

parsed by a medial line: the singular perchronic principle no longer presides from afar over

the subdued how of a processuai syntax, but rather intempts in its interruption. The

differential, irreflexive asymrnetry which laterally and hypotactically orders events within

some relational whoie, becomes profoundly paratactic, adifferential, and reflexive - Loyola

mutters Black Sabbath lyrics in his sleep, the howls of Bannockburn murmur in an Eli

Lilly board meeting. The "Flying Circus" is simultanemsIy an aerial German death

machine of World War 1, md a British comedy team of the 1970's.

Indeed, we must now Say that there are hvo ternporalities, each pertaining to either

arm of these right angles: a tirne of perchronic subprinciples and their movement dong the

blind lines of causality, and a second time of effects, wherein the line of the former is

refraaed according to a problematic secondary syntax, one which inverts the paradoxicai,

pre-actual syntax of the subp~ciple into another which is equally as paradoxical? It is

almost as though in crossing the fiontier of the difference of difference syntax itself is

strained to its extremities, and driven into this radicd resolution of times. A time of

'Chronos,' of concave perchronies whose throughness embodies the predeclusivity of a

radical corporeality, and a time of 'Aion,' of a radical conchrony whose withness is

utterly suspended, and whose indifference has become totalized, to the extent that we

rnight say that it constitutes w h ~ e s s itself. If we Say, in either case, that both times are

'pure,' we mean that the syntactic relation between them is so disjunctive that each is

primarily distinguished by the absence of the other.

This a very cornplex and delicate point in 'Deleuze,' where we must take care to

distinguish between the various attenuations of perchrony and conchrony, particularly

since, as supemautical lines go, this one continually skins the dificulty of the superknot

(this is why we might ascribe moments of elegance to 'Deleuze,' rather than concede

elegance to his theory-narrative as a whole). If one is theoretico-narratively inclined to

" See nie Logic ofsense, 6 1-5, and pxticu1;irly the 'chapter' entitlcd "Twenty-Third Series of Aion," 162- 168.

associate matenality, substance, corporeality with a pure whatness, one which is entirely

complete and indifferent to any how, then we rnust distinguish the 'whatness itself at issue

in Aion. In this former case, whatness remains open to the hypotaxis of lateral

deteminativity, to incorporation within conchronic asymmetry. The pure whatness of

Aion, in faa, is a representational whatness, a medial conchrony, which has been

profoundly Iateralized. Rather than approach conchrony as a how decluded in man or

occluded in God, 'Deleuze' poses this medial conchrony as a kind of 'realm,' as a what

which laterally preinscribes al1 the possibilities which had been medially expressed by this

how. Wlth the 'now,' the how vanishes in an expanse which can only be described as

infinitive, as a past-future without a present. We now have a conchrony which is neither

lateral nor medial, which is to say, that we have a conchrony berefi of the media1

determinativity of lateral conchrony (the determinativity of a world which contains its own

lateral deterrninativities), and of the determinativity of medial conchrony, the

determinativity of a 'man.' Not only, then, is this radical conchrony reflexive and

adifferential, but one rnight also Say that it is limidess to the extent that, as amedial, it is an

trr~declrded declusion.

This is why we must Say that there is no 'declusion of effects' in radical conchrony:

in actuaiization, perchronic subprinciples neither medially 'declude' nor laterally determine

effects fiom predeclusivity (corporeality) the way in which a god might manifest its

inscrutable will in a history. 'Eventness' here is directly opposed to the eventness of

Bakhtin, who by insisting on the syntactic prirnordiality offlrsf over 'first,' reinforces the

very relation of 'resemblance' - the enfolding of the ground within the grounded - which is

characteristic of the logic of representation. For 'Deleuze,'first does indeed corne first,

but in such a way that it maintains a relation of extreme dvfere~rce to 'first.' In a sense, we

must attnbute to 'Deleuze' a 'Jrst' - since it both pure how and fundamental what. This

refraction of subprinciples neither reduces them to process, nor doles them out within a

fixed distribution, but rather unleashes them as a secon&ry concave-occlusionality

through the perpendicular line of radical conchrony, where, removed from the hard Lines

of cause, they now scribble across the reflexive surface of effects. Where the traditional

Great What of the distnbuted perchronic pnnciple was corporeality itself. unitary and

intrasystematic, the altemate Great What of radical conchrony constitutes an abstracf

expanse, wherein event-declusions, although themselves possessing a degree of

intrasystematicity, interact asystematically, indexed by the random graEti of a

determinativity poised within secondary concave-occlusionality.

With these two temporalities, the tirne of perchronic subpnnciples and the time of

radical conchrony, the tradtional roles of hoiv as spirit and what as sirbsta~ice have been

exchanged now it is the how that constitutes the corporeal, and it is the what which

subsists in the incorporeal. In terms of the syntav of perchrony and conchrony, what

'Deleuze' is suggesting is radical: twin solitudes of a cosmologically alocal perchrony and

a like conchrony which interrelate orily through the localized repefifiori of the one within

the other, a repetition evinced in the former by a multiple localizations of perchronic

subprinciples as a radically medid whatness (singularities), that is to Say, a whatness

utterly dissociated fiom conchrony, and in the latter by the localization of a secondary

howness within the radical conchrony of the infinitive (aleatory points).

As pure conchrony, this abstract Great M a t provides language with its very

possibility. Now language, rather than being suspended wirhiti a vanety of what-how

syntaxes as above, so that it either refers. enunciates, or organizes according to the

dictates of world, subject, or reason, Ends itselfpierced by syntax. There is no longer a

pregiven 'space' of language, as though language somehow fell between a preexistent

scaffold of thoughts and things, consciousness and world. Language does not sturnble

upon syntax, startled to find itself conscripted by pnor demands of transparency,

affectivity, and rigour; in a sense it has become syntax. The how-what relation of language

must now be conceived as a kind of syntactic surface, with how on one side and what on

the other, a surface which twists and tears according to acausal vicissitudes of the

occluded, refiacted-how. Distributed within radical conchrony, defiected From the

corporeal determination of its perchronic subprinciple, this secondary,

concave-occlusionality can only bear language away from its occluded, corporeal origuis,

and express its syntaxes across a perpendicular surface which, due to the cut, has become

evetything. And due to this discontinuity between pre-actual and actual, the transparent

withness of representation has become opaque, has become a fheater which c m only mime

depth across the flat plane of the infinitive. Without the perpendicularity of radical

conchrony, language would collapse hto the bodily chaos of the straight line, and join the

perchronic howl of the physicd. Without the refiacted how of a secondary occlusionality,

language, suddenly painted across every syntactical contortion at once, could only

autistically repeat the narne of God. Since this name is diabolical, the outcornes of both of

these deprivations differ in emphasis ~ n l y . ~ '

And yet, now that the point of enunciation can no longer claim to contain itself

within itself (a cogito), nor even to constitute the stationary conduit of the perchronic

principle (a unity of apperception), what follows for us, those who live with, through and

by language? Removed from the enclosure of the fold, and redistributed as the intersection

of blind lines, what has become of those who once were 'Man' in this theory-narrative?

Rather than what or how, we must ask, 'who'? From both theory-nanative

standpoints, that of God and legion, the game of 'chicken' in the 'paradox of omniscience'

provides us with an apt figure for such a recon~truction.~~ The problern of the paradox of

omniscience is that in a game of 'chicken' man would always only ever defat God, not by

virtue of some epic courage, but by virtue of reason. Since the God of the first

theory-narrative is both rational and omniscient, the man could be cenain of two things:

that God would not be suicidal, and that God would know beforehand whether or not the

man would swerve. Thus al1 the man need do is to resohe not to swerve in order to force

God to swerve. Then, not only could the man claim to have forced God's hand, but he

could also claim to have 'won' the game. And yet, what would he have won? 1s there not

See n e Logic of Sense, "Seventeenth Series of Logical Genesis," 1 1 8-26.

" 1 use this in lieu of Deleuze's 'divine game.' See m r e n c e and Repetition, 282-4, and The Logic of &me, "Tenth Series of the Ideal Game," 58-65.

a sense in which the game for God has already occurred before it occurs? When the man

realizes that God 'hows,' he is realizing? in effect, that he too has alreody played this

game. The man wins because he is a repetition not to nothing, but to another instance, to a

God which has already iived Hzs own life, and is thus 'helpless.' By happening al! over

again, the man cm thus decide to have happened in a certain way. In effect, he is not

a60ut to win the game of chicken, but has in fact already-won/will-have-won dong an

infinitive plane. His problem, therefore, becomes one of the preseni and of wiming. What

does it mean 'to win' when the instant of 'winning' always flickers out before and d e r it

happens? Thus, expressed within the framework of a certain theory-narrative, one could

suggest that paradox of omniscience refers not to some mystenous 'force of man,' to the

intercession of some non-knowledge which allows him to defeat God, but rather to an

incipient Nhilism, an etemal retum of the same as the same. Ultirnately, the suggestion is

that paradox of omniscience is a consepence of the grounding of the ground in the

grounded worked by traditional syntax. By placing God upon the same terrain as man, by

introducing a perchronic principle that c m declude its own declusion within an absolule

perchronic principle, in effect, al1 we have is the i[iusion of a 'game' - an ancient syntax

naively distnbuted within the props of 'chicken.' The paradox is not that man 'wins,' but

that he always wins and thus never wins, or that he wins on the basis of having won.

But what happens when we play against legion? The inversion is in fact complete.

The absurd moment of playing against God is no longer the 'climatic' one, but at root

eves, one, every moment - each with its own diabolical 'god.' What becomes impossible is

not topZay, the moment of respite. It is not enough to Say that man is encompassed by that

which he cannot declude, and that because of this the outcorne of the game is at al1 times

occluded. We must be wary of pertheoretical confisions here. What does it mean to say

that 'at every moment the outcome of the game is occluded'? Certainly, as soon as we

begin to talk about 'every moment' the notion of 'outcome,' of some remit, becomes

problematic. And yet, ' playing chicken at every moment' does not refer to some epochal

game where the opponents start From an infinite distance apart, and thus spend lifetimes

hurtling towards an ever diminishing 'outcome.' The problem here is precisely one of the

infinitive, the fact that language drciirdrs events across a narrative expanse, as

already-have-happenedlwiI1-have-happened. We thus tdk about 'outcornes' which are

instantanmus to play as though they occur in a singular narrative succession. In short, we

'declude,' make a what, or a third person 'with' out of that which embodies Our very how.

In the game against legion, then, we must say not that the 'outcome is occluded,' but that

the game itse[fis occluded. Moreover, it would be a mistake, given this, to identify

ourselves with either opponent: le*> odyplnys against ilself: If 'man' is anything, he is

part of the outcorne. In a sense, what is 'won' or 'lost' is not the game, but man himself

And yet, if man shelters in the resul t, how could he be said to play? 1s there not a sense in

which a game with players whose play is dependent upon their unrecognizability as players

is no longer recognizable as a garne at all, let alone 'chicken'? But this is not the case.

Where in the previous version the game was played through a single course across the

entirety of the past-future, such that chance was wringed fiom it by the retum of the

Same, in the present version, each game finds itself played only fivice, in such a marner

that the outcome of the unique, infïnitely ris@ first is a peculiar second, the 'nverve'

wherein the garne is replayed in its refracted entirety - only Difference returns. The game,

as such, is ahuays losî in the first instance, as though in the panicked onmsh of darkness

and glittenng headlights 'man' is randomly thrown from the collision of driverless cars,

interminabiy forced to 'chicken' and relive the game as other to its depth of wreckage and

death. It is only in this second, decluded instance that the game can ever be 'won.' The

mad fact of his throwness, the impossible instant which others the game so utterly that its

decluded repetition becornes the first time, is the very thing which rnust be won. In other

words, 'who' must be won, even though this 'who,' mad in the depths, madder still across

the surface, might flash through a thousand infinitive ontologies: self, ideology, history,

physiology, society, unconscious.. . Who, borne of the invertical boundary where the

collision/collusion of straight lines sheds the perpendicular, always happens: 'he' always

happens, and it falls to us to be adequate to his amval - and perhaps, in a measureless

wisdom, at times to even be him, whether he be injured, or even dead."

What are we to make of this 'straw Deleuze'? 1s it simply a theoretical 'gimmick'

of some son? M e r dl, in a sense it seerns rather apparent that 1 am in faa simply

attempting to 'out-fùndamentalize' Deleuze, and that the spunous c l a h that this reading

is 'viral,' a simulacrum of 'Deleuze,' arnounts to no more than a gratuitous defection fiom

common sense - one which shelters Supernaut fiom the standard charge of 'metaphysics,'

while simultaneously making the business of theory umecessarily difficult. But whar is the

line which separates 'Deleuze' fiom Deleuze? And if this line is exceedingly difficult, is

there not a sense in which difficulty becomes necessary? And if this difficulty denies dl

refuge from metaphysics, why continue our furtive anempts to hide? Perhaps it is trivial to

posture Deleice as 'Deleuze,' but only according to a certain theoretico-narrative

standpoint, a 'default-diegetics,' which, despite our attempts to deny or circumvent it,

maintains a predatory distance. Some weighty consequences follow from this innocuous

decision between infiltrative and proliferative intertheory-narratives; we would do well to

heed them.

Postured, then, as a proliferative theory-narrative of 'Deleuze,' as a synoptic

'redescription' in excess of Deleuze, we rnight surnrnarize this supemautical line in the

following way. 'Deleuze' cont heoretically elaborates a rnitzimalt'y restncted syntax (which

is to say one of near complete how/what disjunction), where a concave-occlusional

perchrony (Chronos), which is irreflexively asymmetncal, is fragmented in radically

multiple determinativities (singularities), embodies medial whatness (corporeal), and has

uniimited scope ((non)being, or the being of the problematic); and where a radical

conchrony - an uniimited conchrony which is neither medial nor laterd (the infinitive Aion)

- mediates declusions (effects, events) according to the adifferential determinativity

(quasi-causality) of a locaiized secondary perchrony (aieatory point) which is aiso

concave-occlusional. How confiscates the density of the what, and what trades in the

ghostliness of the how. 'Deleuze' has tumed the world inside out.

Strangeiy enough, in order to adequately constmct/uncover a virai 'Deleuze,' we

need to include a noteworthy absence. This absence is even more pronounced in

Dijfence c d R e ~ i t i m , where Deleuze, in a subtle and exquisitely detailed

consideration of various ternp~rdities~~ - one which includes, even if only in a cursory

fashion, the two times simulated above (which are drawn primady corn n e Logic of

Serise) - fails to consider the very 'temporality' which paces his every theoretical move:

thepertheoretical now. But is this actually the case? Certainiy there is a sense in which

Deleuze, by laying out the terms of the very ungrounding ground which operates through

us all, is also, in a very generd way, decluding the conditions of his own practice. And yet

this is merely an implication of a certain contheoretical enterprise, one which attempts to

rewrite the very ground, or perhaps we should Say, the shifting sand, beneath our feet. In

his later collaborations with Felix Guatari, Deleuze will indeed attempt to anive at a

practice which is consistent to the 'who' entailed in these difficult and revolutionary

works, but at this particular point in his project Deleuze's central concem lies with the

problematic what of it ail. Given this concem, could there also be a sense in which

Deleuze must nippress the pertheoret ical? In other words, is there a way in which the

pertheoretical renders his project impossible?"

The paradigrn for this type of argument is found in Demda's "Violence and

Metaphysics," an argument which has been extremely influentid, if the received opinion is

correct in its assertion that this essay was instrumental in precipitating Levinas' shift fiom

the contheoretical, phenomenological tenor of T o ~ d i ~ m>d bifi,iity to the pertheoretical

- - -

68 I refer here to his 'three qntheses' of time in Dgerence and Repetiîion, 70- 129.

69 Deleuze acho\vledges that "the surface is the trmcendental field itself' (The Logic of Sense. 125) but he fails to relate this, once again, to his own practice.

emphases on time and language in Othenvise than Being.'' Abbreviated, Demda's

argument mns as follows: since Levinas does not abide by the traditional distinction

between thought and language, the need to think radical exteriority becomes the need to

p u k radical exteriority. And yet, if language is not simply dominated by the 'spatial

praxis' of an insiddoutside but rather is this metaphorics, which is to say that language

inchdes its own terminus and origin, then radical exteriority c m only be the negatiotz of

the insiddoutside rather than a 'positive infinity.' "The other," Demda argues, "becomes

unthinkable, impossible, unutterable" in terms of a positive infinity (Writitig mld

D~flerence, 1 14) - in other words, ~iegative, and therefore indistinguishable from death.

This dlows Demda to suggest a resituating of radical aiterity into the very movement of

history, power, and war - the very totality which he suggests Levinas fails to recognize as

an infinite totality. This problem finds a more systematic formulation in the later essay,

"The Ends of Man," where Demda contends that "It is precisely the force and the

efficiency of the system that regularly change transgressions into 'false exits" (Margrm of

Philosophy, 135). He continues to suggest that given this necessary enclosure, we are lefi

with only two 'strategies,' or Ldeconstnictive motifs,' one of which involves using the

possibilities of the system otherwise in a attempt to 'exit,' and another which involves

discontinuity and imption, an attempt to forge alternate possibilities without forgetting

the way in which "the simple practice of language ceaselessly reinstates the new terrain on

the oldest ground" (1 35).

Given the loose, 'formal' sirnilanty between Levinas and Deleuze, namely the

positive determination of what the tradition had regarded to be the undifferentiated

negative of Being, perhaps it was inevitable that this problem of the 'Ausweg,' of the 'way

out,' would find its way into Deleuze cnticism. Todd May, for instance, a 'sympathetic'

'O This asswnption is widely accepted. Robcn Bcmnsconi, in his '5cepticism in the Face of Philosophy," remarks that "a case cm be made on internai grounds that Dcmda's essay played ûn

important part in leading to this rcformulation [the retrcat from ontology and experience]. It is not simply that the questions of thcmatization, of ontologicd language, and of experience were foremost among Demda's questions to Levinas. The very language in which Levinas addresses these questions recalls Demda unmistakabIy" (Re-reading Levinas, 153-4).

cntic of Deleuze, explicitly adopts this Derridean argument in "The System and its

Fractures: Gilles DeIeuze on Othemess," where he writes:

In Deleuze's case, there seerns to be a contradiction inherent in the set of cl- he pub fonvard. On the one han& he locates othemess within the systerns he analyzes. On the other, he claims that othemess is somehow an escape, thrit it is something wholly novel or radically irreducible to the %stem it subverts. The power of such terms as "hecceity," "event," "singularity," and "flight" is precisely the cvocation of the irrecupcrable, of the Other with a capitai "0." But if otherness is interna1 to the ?stem, then there can lx no Othzmess, at least none that we cm say anything about. And if Otherness is what Deleuze is really after, then Derrida's critique of Foucault [in "The Ends of Mm'l applies to Deleuze's thought as well: any participation in the system, even to cal1 for liberation fiom it, reinforces thrit which it is meant to subvert. 8-9 [my itdicsj

Ultimately, May concludes that we can only salvage Deleuze by abandoning the terms at

issue, and that, if we must lose much of Deleuze as a result, there remains just as much

which is usenil. Deleuze would certainly disagree: what we have called the 'cut' is

absolutely central to his critique of the tradition, and without this critique both Difference

mid Repetition and The Logic of Seme disappear. What are we to make of the Ausweg

problem? Would it be enough to argue that the impossibility of the Ausweg is sirnply

another 'illusion' of the logic of representation, a fact which is readily attested to by the

very necessity with which it determines the outside as negarive? The difficulty with this

response is plaidy intertheoretical. If we adopted this course, we would sirnply be

engaging in the preernptive game of 'out-fundamentalinng' which occurs al1 too often in

pbilosophy: "My legion created your god." "Oh yeah, well my God ..." Demda would

accuse Deleuze of stalling in the 'metaphysics of presence' and Deleuze would accuse

Demda of sirnply whetting the 'logic of representation. '

No, this is insufficient. Certainly, from the standpoint of our viral 'Deleuze,' the

possibility of an Aiisweg reading is evident: if language is constitutively bound in its

expression to the deflcted perpendicularity of radical conchrony, how can it declude the

perchronic subprinciples, the purely positive determination of the abyss, which bears it

without likewise being deflected? In other words, if the affirmative rewriting of the

corporeal depths which is central to 'Deleuze's' escape fkom the logic of representation

must itseifbe inscnbed across the profound superficiality of the infinitive, how cm we do

anything other than 'mime' those depths? If we corne constitutively gter, how can we lay

hold of the beforeness which legislates this aftemess? In a sense, the question of the

Ausweg is entirely valid: once we shift our emphasis to the pertheoretical, there would

seem to be no escape. Our every attempt becomes inevitably entangled in deflections

within refractions; the outside is reinscribed within, interminably displacing our

contheoretical aspirations. 'Deleuze's' problem would seem to be identicai to what we had

earlier called Bakhtin's syntactic caveat. And yet, despite the suasive elegance of this

argument, a problem lies in the problem this question expresses. What if this problem is

other to the one assumed by Derrida and May? 1s it a tmly 'simpfy' a problern of "any

participation in the system"?

How, for instance, would Demda or May answer Our question: what cornes first,

Prst or 'first'? Of course, they would Say, the pertheoretical 'first' comesfirst ... How

quickly the pragmatic murk of the superknot encroaches here! But it has not yet amved.

As was suggested earlier, deconstruction has not been blind to this problem which is,

af'er-all, simply a higher order expression of the first. The problem of 'perfomative

contradiction,' wherein deconstniction deconstmcts representation 'in a necessanly

representational mode' is itself a constitutive cornpoileut of deconstructior,." This difficult

juncture of the pertheoretical and the contheoretical is, to be sure 'undecideable' in the

Demdean theory-narrative, but undecideable in a special sense of aporia, which becomes,

in a sense by default, the ergine from which 'tea' proliferates as a series of displacements.

" As Paul De Mm has notonously phrased it: "deconstruction states the fallacy of reference in a necessarily rcferential mode. There is no escape fiom this, for the test also establishes that deconstruction is not somethlig bat we cm dccide to do or not to do at 4 1 . It is cocxtensive with any use of language, and this use is compulsive or, as Nietzsche formulûtcs it, imperalive- Morcover, the reversai Çom dcnial to assertion implicit in deconstructive discourse never reaches the symmetrical counterparî of whst it denies" (Allegories of Reading, 125).

Thus, in Memoires: for Paul de Mun, after reading the de Manian 'undecidability ' of the

performative and the constative, we find Demda stating that:

There remains to be thought an 0 t h undecidability, one no longer bound to the order of calcularion behveen two poles of opposition, but to the incdculable order of a wholly other: the coming or the call of the other. It m u t be unpredictable, aleritory beyond any calculation. There is no inside-the-undecidable, certainly, but an other memory calls us, recalls us to think an 'act' of 'parole' (speech), or a 'speech act' which resists the opposition pedormative/constative, provohg at the same thne the aporia and movement fonvard (la mnrche), the relation of one to the other, that is to say, history or the test. But ive Lrnow, and we recdled it yaterday, that this sinpulu memory does nor lead us back to any anterior@. There never existed (there will never have existed) any oIder or more original 'third t e n d thnt ive wodd have to recall, toward which we would be crilled to recall under the aporctic disjunction. (Memoires, 1 3 7)

De Man's binary undecidability is set in relation to, and thereby set into movement by,

something 'wholly other, ' something which prrcedes, we might Say, any anteriority.

Further in this same passage, Demda will refer to this 'third term' as "memory without

anterionty, memory of a past which has never been present, a memory without origin, a

memory of the future, it is without an accepted or acceptable relation to what we

cornmonly cal1 'memory' " (138). Here the structural reflexivity which threatens de Manian

undecidability is being held in abeyance by what is readily identifiable as trace and

differance. Resituated in relation to this 'third term,' aiid irnbued with "a movement which

cannot be reduced to metaphysics" (137), the opposition between how and what cornes to

fundarnentally differ From mn-of-the-mil1 binaries - no longer the simple contamination of

a figure by its constitutive outside, but a continual, asyrnmetrical engulfing of this relation

within the concussions of other engulfings, a type of meta-regression of the oppositionally

aporetic into itself. This, in Demdean terms, is what de Man means by the 'allegories of

unreadability,' the sense in which the "deconstructive schema7' lapses "into the very thing

it deconstr~cts'~ (138). The structurality of how and what is ultimately comprornised by a

more profound, and far more enigmatic, 'stmcture' of movement and irrelation; one that is

structured such that it effaces it own stmcturality.

Since this dispersive proliferation cm only occur within a perchronic moment. a

'language,' albeit a language no longer deployed according to transcendental

determinations, but in a new adifferentia. sense (quasi-transcendence, diHerance), the only

measure we have of the absolute outside is to be inferred negatively. The question that is

never arked, however, the question which marks thefull assertion of the superknot, is

how it is that this 'undecideability' can be determined al ail, let alone as aporetically

dispersive - in other words, as a specific kild of concave-occlusionality with a disti~zct

consequential logic. Could this moment not be read, perhaps more provocatively. as a

linguistic correlate to Heideggerean ekstasis, as a through-occlusional perchrony, and

therefore a reflexive moment of perchronic dedifferentiation rather than an irreflexive,

concave-occlusional moment of perchronic displacement? (It should corne as no great

surprise that the frontier between henneneutics and deconstmction traverses the

superknot: the shock cornes when we realize the 'what' of this fi-ontier as a how. The

language did not yet exist that could allow Demda and Gadamer to 'debate'). Consider

the fascinating interrelation of theory-narratives at work here: According to the

distributive scope of the Demdean line, the medial restriction of what to an irreflexive

how (which retains a phenomenological locality, even if phenomenology as such is no

longer possible), the what finds itself continually displaced. even though this what

exhausts 'everything,' such that across the more alocal scope of philosophy at large we are

presented with the figure of an irreflexive 'fold,' a fold of interminable regression rather

than of treacherous circularity. (In the way of a syntax of the telling and the told, Demda

offers a kind of tolding). How different, really, is this From Heidegger's reflexive

perchrony, which he 'ekstatically' decludes as an 'outside which stands within.' or fiorn

Hegel's radically alocal perchrony, where the irreflexivity of history is differentially

subtended by a profound, and yet deferred reflexivity? In supemauticai terms, the

difference would seem to depend on the arbitrary distribution of a handful of

theoretico-narrative terms: namely, the distribution of a restrictive, concave-occlusional

irreflexivity across a relatively local scope. We might ask for instance, why it is that this

figure is not absolrrtely restricted, such that the what is swept away aitogether? And what

about contheoretical scope: could we tum this theory-narrative into a h i s w and chart the

ways in which the tradition has deployed itself across the preinscribed space of this figure - or perhaps even into a comology, a and of ' chao~mos '?~ Questions such as these are

innumerable, and if anything they should demonstrate not only something of the how of

Copernican revolutions, but the 'loosening of theoretical joints' which results from a study

of the superknot.

In terms of our virai 'Deleuze,' it is the reslriction of what to this enigmatic how

which is the most problematic aspect of the Demdean theory-narrative, since it is this

which ultimately opposes 'Being' (and it matters little if this Being is a radically displaced)

to a rregutive[y determined outside. Demda, he would argue, has simply redistnbuted the

perchronic pnnciple to the cirnrmfrerrce of Being, concocted a diabolical, local god, an

occluded homunculus which hunches on the shoulders of the phenomenological and

Linguistic moments. And since Derrida asserts that "in fact there is only one aporia, only

one potential aporetic that infinitely distnbutes itself' ("Force of Law," 22), the possibility

of a 'complete reversal of the world of representation' is annulled fi-om the outset - in the

absence of any positive determination, 'd%fermceY takes on the default determination of

the One, rather than the many mtsides of 'Deleuze,' and works the same fundamental

expropriation of the what interminably, and thus bends Being into circles, or perhaps we

should Say 'spirals,' as inexorably as any 'god' or any 'man.'

'Deleuze,' we might say, differs from Derrida in pnmarily two interrelated

respects: he cor~theoreiically offers a rndically multiple cosmology of difference, and he

impliczl& accepts the u~ninanswerabi1ity of the superknot. In the first instance, which

involves distributional scope, restriction, and lateral conchrony, we can clearly see the

sense in which the difference between these supemauts can be regarded as trivial. From a

This is Deleuze's tem. See Diflerence and Repetition, 123-4, and 299.

theoretical standpoint, there is Iittle difference, in tenns of contheoretical exposure,

between a cosmology and a microcosmology of difference. And yet, in terms of

consequential logics, the difference between these revolutionary idections is quite

extreme. As we have seen, Derrida pertheoretically incorporates this exposure and thus

renders it interna1 to deconstniction. Thus, admittedly inconsistent as a 'theory,'

deconstruction finds its force as theor~tical practice - goes 'perchronic,' one might say - and becomes a 'theory-act' which dernonstrates the similar 'inconsistencies' of theory in

general. 'Deleuze, ' for his part, does not balk at, or elide the extremity of this

contheoretical enterprise in anyway. In order to rewrite the tradition, he labours across the

same descriprive plane of the tradition: he represents the entire, exquisite trajectory of an

inescapable violence of representation. 1s there not a szipen~azificaf honesty here? An

admission that we must answer the unanswerable? 1s 'Deleuze' more honest than Derri&?

Even if we were to grant May his Derridean argument, is there anything, pragmatically

unexposed to the superhot, that we can appeal to which would allow us to arbitrate

between this contheoretical contradiction ~vithilr which 'Deleuze' operates, and the

pertheoretically decluded contradiction by which Demda operates? Would it be an honest

question to ask who is more 'honest.'

Of course. Perhaps this is the only honest question in philosophy. But to the

extent that 'Deleuze' occludes and drfers the contradiction, and that Derrida decludes and

yokes the contradiction, we might conclude that neither supernaut is entirely honest - which is to say that neither acknowledges thefrn@fify of their work. To a certain extent,

however, given that 'Deleuze,' in his profound readings of the 'problematic' in D~fference

m ~ d Repeti~ion, acknowledges the sense in which the problem must remain occlusive.73

one could argue that he does make gestures in this direction, and is perhaps the more

honest for this reason. But he refuses in these works to make the pertheoretical shifi such

an admission of fiailty entails: 'yes, this is weak - so be it.' And yet, he alludes so many

times to the point at which theory collapses beneath the exigent fiurry of the life, that we

n These anaiyses are extendeci throughout Chapter IV, "Ideas and the Synthcsis of Difference."

might ask whether such a shifi is necessary, or if he resists such a shifi precisely because it

threatens to gobble up the very thoughtnife opposition so paramount to any ethicd

imperative. But such attributions are unsatisfactory. Besides, if this was the case, then it

would simply demonstrate not that he had a healthy respect for the Azisveg dilemma, but a

kind of fear. Such fear is unnecessary: as 1 have tried to demonstrate, 'first' does not

necessarily comefirst. And the problem of the Ausweg is not necessarily a conchronically

determined 'thing,' an A i c u ~ ~ within which we are abruptly awakened by history to

'hiaory': it cm aiso be an overpowenng way to read, a metaphysics arnong other

perchronic metap hysics.

Perhaps what is required for honesty is the pertheoretical sawy of a Demda and

the contheoretical wisdom of a Deleuze - a muddling about in the field, however its

pastures might be postured - concessions away, overlapping, within multiple fence-lines,

indistinguishable - waiting upon the instant when turbulence becomes lamitzar. And yet, in

philosophy, dimpled golf-bails do not always fly the furthest. Turbulence need not provide

the basis of laminarity. AI2 Copemican revolutions await, not simply those loosely grouped

under the unforninate moniker 'poststructuralisrn. '

What is the status of the Airsweg7 In a broad sense, given its exposure to the

superknot, it would seem to depend upon a given theory-narrative. The fact that

post-structuralists tend to be of a proliferative, pertheoretical bent would go far to explain

its seeming 'self-evidence.' Once language is decluded in general, 'become object' as it

were, some find it irresistible to both invest it with an absolute determinativity, and

redistribute themselves within it as language's decluded. Speculation about the 'outside'

of this syntactically impacted figure becomes inevitable. Given the exhaustiorz of what

within it, the determination of this outside as an aleatory concave-occlusionality becomes

an 'inevitability' as well. The problem of the Alisiveg arises as soon as we distribute the

in1empestifonto the back of our own practice. And strangely enough, this distribution is

necessary, but OF>& when we accede to its necessity.

What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there any further thing 1 could assume in the matter? Yes, as before 1 had prospectively assumed that Bartieby would depart, so now I might reirospeciively assume thnt departed he was. in the Iegitimate c-g out of this assumption, 1 might enter my offrce in a great hurry, and pretending not see Bartleby at dl, wiik straight against him as if he were air. Such a proceeding would in a singular degree have the appearance of a h o m e - h t . It was hardly possible that B d e b y could withstand such an application of the doctrine of assumpiions. But upon second thoughts the success of the plan seemed rather dubious.

"Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street," Herman Melville.

There is an old saying: "Although 1 have no solutions, 1 admire the problem." But

what happens when the problem brcomes the solution? As we have seen, to the extent that

Derrida and 'Deleuze' could oniy, due to their own distractions, preempt one another

according to the consequentid logic of their respective revolutions, this reading of

theory-narratives has in fact provided a 'cornrnon idiom' which, although it fails to

'decide' between the- at the very least allows for an innovative cornparison. If there is a

'cntical' aspect to fhis reading of supemautical lines, it is to be found in those attempts of

a certain farnily of theoiy-namtives to impose elements of their consequential logic across

another. In a sense, May's Demdean attempt to welcome Deleuze into the fold amounts

to a kind of theoretico-narrative 'irnperiaiism,' an assertion of the daims of one

impossibility at the expense of another. Of course, this znfenheoretico-narrative posturing

is likewise exposed, is burdened and Iiberated by the fiagility of any other supemautical

line: but then so is Supernaut as a whole. But without this posture, the how of revolutions

would recede, and we would remain within the distractions of the very theory-narratives

we had hoped to index. If anything, it is the goal of establishing a synoptics, a theoretical

camp patois, which marks the advantages of this particular Iine.

Ifwe accept the pertinence of May's argument from the standpoint of the fold, we

must likewise acknowledge the narrow and frai1 basis fiom which it issues. In a sense, the

problem of the Aumeg is a kind of theory-narrative mn amok, inaugurated by the

narrative elegance of the Kantian redistribution, and perpetuated by the apparent ease with

which it could be read into philosophy in general. Once we understand the fold as an

isolated way to read an inscmtable femporaIity, and acknowledge the profound exposure

of philosophy to a perchronic instrumentalization of the superknot, the Azi~wrg becomes

clear. Cenain doors do lead out of the labyrinrh. M e r all, if we are perchronically

'trapped' within, it is ody due to the conchrotric distribution of the labyrinthine exterior

within itself This is not to Say, as is oflen said, that poststmcturalism 'performatively

contradicts' itself by ' stating the impossibility of representation in a necessarily

representational mode,' but to suggest that this is one cardinal moment where the sheer

difficulty of the superknot announces itself, only to be silenced by an answer. And again

this difficulty makes it hard to understand how we might historically hierarchize Classical

and modem discourse, why occluded conchrony cannot be a momentary thing,

disconnected fiom theoretico-narrative distributions which result fiom the declusion

perchrony. Perhaps, when we becorne accustomed to this entirely new field of the ways in

which we assirne, we will be inclined to Say that 'poststructuralism' has at last been

convincingly ' surpassed, ' rat her than simply set aside as an annoying lirnit.

In a sense our consideration of Deleuze and Derrida clearly demonstrates the

shocking abse~zce of any radical break between what is loosely referred to as

'post-structurdism' and the tradition of philosophy. Copernican revolutions have always

abounded, the theory-narratives of our predecessors drastically or moderately revised, but

it has become unclear how one should go about arbitrating such shifts. 1s there a sense in

which this study demonstrates a certain trividity of revolutions? Could we not, by simply

recombining the terms of this analytic, innovate a whole senes of fundamentally

revolutionary theory-narratives - storylines where how and what are pressed into unheard

of syntaxes? Perhaps a demonstration of a new theory-narrative is in order, one

engineered according to Our inventory of terms, and then elaborated in traditional terms - a theoretico-narrative h m . Such an exercise would provide a powerful demonstration of

what we have called 'supemautical lines,' those discursive strings of consequence which

brace the inferential extent of philosophical camps. There is a certain plausibility to the

suggestion that Super~rat~r is just such a theory-narrative, but that would problematically

render it a theory which constitutes its own pnmary instance. Shortly, we will consider the

troubling implications of such a theoretical figure, but for now, we might at least note the

possibility of such a demonstration.

Another 'solution' posed by our problem perhaps lies in the

overcorning/circumvention of a cenain 'binary' form of thought. "Chronos," as Levinas

says, "thinking he swallows a god, swallows but a stone" (Total@ and I@nity, 5 8), but

the suggestion here has been that Chronos devours botweither gods a d o r stones. Once

one admits the inundation of theory by the perplexities of the superknot, the hinge

between perchronic and conchronic manifestations of and within theory becornes

extraordinarily difficult to arbitrate. As we have seen with Foucault, the contheoretical

fold has a pertheoretical dorrblr, one which poses the fold as an irresistible way to read

rather than an extensive, historically instantiated 'unconscious of knowiedge.' We have

also, moreover, witnessed the way in which these tendencies to what and how are

i~ts~m~tzated/assertable at the most local levels of theoretical discourse. The language of

theory is saturatedaid-bare by temporality, and thus canies the mark of the superknot.

Here, as elsewhere, innumerable questions anse which must be pursued elsewhere, but we

might say in passing that this is also why we were able to suggest the 'inevitability of

metaphysics,' the sense in which metaphysics can no longer be regarded as the what of a

certain how of philosophy, but rather as a how which could potentially be articulated

through any what of philosophy. And to the extent that this renders any pejorative sense

of metaphysics vacuous, we might c lah to have overcome 'metaphysics' through Our

problem.

In the grea: narrative of philosophical innovation, these ways of situating

Supernaut steep it with a fiightful significance. Trafficking in the how of Copernican

revolutions, circumventing a certain incommensurability of discourses7

quasi-systematically indexing philosophy in general, overcorning both the foid and

'metaphysics,' how are we to evaluate and envision this approach to philosophy? What,

then, is Supennut? If there is no end to the possible narrative responses, perhaps some

travel fûrther than othen. Rather than beginning from a 'closure,' from a declusion of

temporality as a certain, utterly exposed and yet forgotten what, we begin from an openuig

which is also a closure, from a point where every other genesis is sacnlege, but where,

mystenously enough, some beginnings are less blasphemous than others - lines of minimal

culpability, pilgrim trails for those beyond redemption, but dong which damnation can be

forgotten for a space of time. But is this not a kind of apophatics, a thought which

substitutes temporality for God? Of course Christ turned out the money-changers, because

he done could occupy the point of t d between Empire and Temple - there could only be

one Son, onefind name. And despite my pragmatic intertheoretico-narrative

protestations, one wherein theory-narratives simply upe their target discourses rather than

displace them in relation to the general field,74 is there not a sense in which Sirperttm~t

rather pierces Theory to the pith as its final name? And even if we acknowledge that the

superknot itself prevents even as it endorses this reading of S~~peniaut, what then is the

status of afiu~damentzrm co~zcrcsnim, of using absolute uncertainty bent to the recursive

extremes of Strpenxmt, as the ground/occasion for a theory-narrative of theory-narratives?

1s there not a sense in which this uncertainty has merely provided a moment of absolute

certaitrty, an admission of ignorance so complete that it yields the very Archimedean point

it renders impossible? Have 1 rnerely sketched for you yet one more big circle, within a

belly broad enough that you need never see its vicious teeth? - -

74 And thus also occupy a position of self-deprecatory imrnunity.

We must remember the mad sense in which this theory-narrative of

theory-narratives puts evevfhitrg in motion, including, and particularly, itself My interest

has lain in the quasi-systematic mapping of these theory-narratives From a position which

is as theoretically involuted as possible - which is to Say, fiom a position which attempts to

inscribe its own theoretical violence within itself, to make its own participation within the

field which it delimits a performance of the field which it delimits. In short, aperfct

theoretica~figure: a theory which contains itself As a supemautical line, Szipenra11t is a

uroboros, a theory which coincides with its own ongin. (1s Hegel's shadow so long?). But

Supernaut is also a theoretical position more radical thml itself: With Bakhtin and

Foucault Our study began as a search for the proper knife for the proper ground, and when

we found it in the performative analytic of the superknot, we discovered that it was al1

knives, knives ail the way down. And it is in this sense that Szlpenlmt is aiso its own

refitation, its own impossibility: an answer which isolates answerings according to their

constihitive/exposure-to impossibility - their inability to stand, even as they efEonlessly

run.

Even if one agrees, then, that theory-narratives are a wondefilly versatile tool, it

must be recdled that this versatility is matched by a certain vac~~iy: a theoretical figure

which contains itself as demonstration and refutation, and which is something that can be

read into almost anything, should be regarded with a certain suspicion. The empty can

rattles the most, and this is especially tme in philosophy. Thus, even if there is a sense in

which thefuct of these supemautical lines camot be detsird - a sense, and only a ' sense,'

in which, without these supernautical lines, there could be no literature, no philosophy - 1

remain unsure as to the degree of intertheoretico-narrative 'seriousness' with which

Supernaut should be approached. At very least we might leam something about theory in

the process, whether or not it is ultimately dispatched with as untenable, or too volatile.

This has always been one of the things which has astounded me in philosophy, that these

Copemican revolutions c m be read without regard for how it is that they are so beautihl,

that we might follow the lines and see, and yet continually mutter 'no.' And, moreover, as

I have hopefully shown in the encounter of our straw 'Deleuze' with Demi&, there

remains with theory-narratives the promise of some kind of sqnoptic gain, an ability to at

least partially circumnavigate vocabularies, and to index them in a common idiom, to

compare them quasi-systematically - the ability to read notoriously difficult writen such as

Demda and Deleuze as halves. Time is a very pithy fool.

There is also the possibility of another troubling perception of theory-narratives:

the sense in which they seem to make philosophy into a gam. This is understandable: the

upshot seems to be that philosophy is simply a jumble of supernautical stones, 'myths' not

unlike those of Plato's last resort. From this vantage, 'playing supernaut' could be easily

conceived as a kind of politically disengaged, recreational activity. And yet, perhaps we

need to understand 'myth' in sense far different from its contemporary declusion, in its

occluded sense, wherein it becomes the driving power behind persecution and wars, mercy

and fellowship. T O construe theory-narratives as a way to 'play philosophy' is to

misconstrue their founding insight: the superknot, the inability to foreclose and not to

foreclose on this occlusive/declusive divide. Perhaps a philosophy of theory-narratives is

unique in its attempt to 'wink out' in its application, to occlusively be a position which is

other to it. Perhaps this attempt is impossible. Regardless, the claim is that a

theory-narrative standpoint is not incommensurable with univocal belief each

theory-narrative is ihe only theory-izarraliw, not by caveat. as in Bakhtin's case, but due

to the peculiarity of the superknot. This is the very lesson which 'Deleuze' brings to

poststructuralism: we can narcissistically play pertheoretical games from s u ~ s e to sunset,

but the sleep inevitably cornes. The serious, the contheoretical, the exposure we can not

shake, even if we restrict its scope to those occluded tirnes between closing and opening

our eyes, remains. It is in this way, we miçht suggest, that occluded within a Demda,

there lies a 'DeIeuze. '

Is it possible, without being 'mad,' to ivholeheartedly believe in many religions at

once? Perhaps 1 am something of an 'unorthodox realist' in a strangely divided heart - at

once wholly supemautical and wholly empirical. I'm simply astounded by the news when it

flickers on each morning - both by the technology which conjures it, and by the suffering

which it bean. Both by the how and by the what. A1I theory-narrarives are nor e p a l . And

it is for this reason that the leveling exposure to the superknot is îmgic. But if

theory-narratives can help either through the declusion of the occluded demons which

hound us, or through the provision of new Copemican revolutions without their own

jihads or Dachaus, perhaps it is not an unmitigated tragedy. Perhaps what is rleeded is a

theory which winks out, rather than stubbornly subsists when lumiy crumbles into

exigency. And if, in the luxury that is philosophy, there is a perogative for the destruction

of the empty spaces it is simply this: those spaces are destroying us. By the sarne token

that we cannot say that the occluded resembles the decluded, we cannot Say otherwise;

thus it is not simply a matter of becoming 'adequate' to what happens, but to also becorne

what happens.

Thus, jostled by the throngs crowding the steps between Empire and Temple,

Supertnu~ wheels to confiont the unscrupulous money-changers, never guessing that he

would see Chronos, a headless Medusan with snakes entwined into the line and torso of

Dali faces; never guessing that thzs is the mornerit he would be tumed to Stone.

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