schaffer_no_need_to_get_Searly



media type="custom" key="23953464" the green is either

//Botkin,// V., American scholar of Russian descent, //894;// king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have quickened their phylogenetic end, //247;// bottekin-maker//, // 71; //bot//, plop, and //botelïy//, big-bellied (Russ.); botkin or bodkin, a Danish stiletto.

"As might be expected, I choose to cite at length." (LI, 79-80)


 * "But are the conditions [//les réquisits//] of a context ever absolutely determinable? This is, fundamentally, the most general question that I shall endeavor to elaborate. Is there a rigorous and scientific concept of //context//? Or does the notion of context not conceal, behind a certain confusion, philosophical presuppositions of a very determinate nature? Stating it in the most summary manner possible, I shall try to demonstrate why a context is never absolutely determinable, or rather, why its determination can ever be entirely certain or saturated." (2-3)
 * "The absence of which Condillac speaks is determined in the most classic manner as a continuous modification and progressive extenuation of presence. Representation regularly supplants…presence." (5)
 * "In order for my "written communication" to retain its function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication must be repeatable--iterable--in the absolute absence of any receiver or of any empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability (ti//er//, again, probably comes from ti//ara, other// in Sanskrit, and everything that follows can be read at the working out of the logic that ties repetition to alterity) structures the mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved…" (7)
 * "To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance" [//disparition//: also, demise, //trans.//], it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my non presence in general, for instance the non presence of my intention of saying something meaningful [//mon vouloir-dire, mon intention-de-signification//], of my wish to communicate, front he emission or production of the mark." (8)
 * "Thus it is solely in a context determined by a will to know, by an epistemic intention, by a conscious relation to the object as a cognitive object within a horizon of truth, solely in this oriented contextual field is "the green is either" unacceptable." (12)
 * "…the possibility of disengagement and citational graft which belongs to the structure of every mark, spoken or written, and which constitutes every mark in writing before and outside of every horizon of semio-linguistic communication; in writing, which is to say in the possibility of its functioning being cut off, at a certain point, form its "original" desire-to-say-what-one-means [//vouloir-dire//] and from its participation in a saturable and constraining context. Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the current sense of this opposition), in a small or large unit, can be //cited//, put between quotation marks; in so doing it can break with every given context, engendering an infinity of new contexts without any center or absolute anchoring [//ancrage//]. THis citationiality, this duplication or duplicity, this iteration of the mark is neither an accident nor an anomaly, it is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could not even have a function called "normal." What would a mark be that could not be cited? Or one whose origins would not get lost along the way?" (12)
 * "The opposition success/faiture [//échec//] in illocution and in perlocution thus seems quite insufficient and extremely secondary [//dérivée//]. It presupposes a general and systematic elaboration of the structure of locution that would avoid an endless alternation of essence and accident" (15-16)
 * "By definition, a written signature implies the actual or empirical nonpresence of the signer. But, it will be claimed, the signature also marks and retains his having-been present in a past //now// or present [//maintenant//] which will remain a future //now// or present [//maintenant//], thus in general //maintenant//, in the transcendental form of presentness [//maintenance//]. That general //maintenance// is in some way inscribed, pinpointed in the always evident and singular present punctuality of the form of the signature. Thus is the enigmatic originality of every paraph. In order for the tethering to the source to occur, what must be retains is the absolute singularity of a signature-event and a signature-form: the pure reproducibility of a pure event." (20)
 * "We are witnessing not an end of writing that would restore…a transparency or an immediacy to social relations; but rather the increasingly powerful historical expansion of a general wiring, of which the system of speech, consciousness, meaning, presence, truth, etch., would be only an effect, and should be analyzed as such. It is the exposure of this effect that I have called elsewhere logocentrism." (20)
 * "And what if the plural subtitle, "Signatures," were to signal not only the multiplication of the signature, which takes place at the end of the text, but also that, situated //within// the text as its "object," the signature no longer simply signs, even though it does still sign, being neither entirely in the text nor entirely outside, but rather //on the edge?//" (32)
 * "In French one would say that //elle s'imite//, a syntactical equivocation that seems to me difficult to reproduce: it can //be// imitated, and it imitates //itself//. This is all that I ask my interlocutors to acknowledge. And yet, as we shall see shortly, the consequences of this very simple fact are //unlimited// and //unlimitable//."(34)
 * "the terrain is slippery and shifting, mined and undermined" (34)
 * "The gayest thing that Sarl has written, in the "never quite takes place" is "never quite."" (36)
 * "Let us be patient a while longer." (41)
 * "…let us not use the word "understood," let us say instead that Sarl was touched. That is, Sarl has not been missed by the set, the ensemble of these misunderstandings, of these misstating missiles. In the family of Latin languages, a speech act, whether written or spoken, is only said to be //pertinent// when it touches: the object to which it seems to refer, but also--why not?--someone, its addressee, upon whom it produces certain effects, let us say of a perlocutionary sort…." (41-42)
 * "Does the principle purpose of //Sec// consist in being //true//? In appearing true? In stating the truth?…And what if //Sec// were //doing something else//?" (43)
 * "This necessitates, obviously, a rigorous and renewed analysis of the value of presence, of presence to self or to others, of difference and of //différance…//To affirm, as does Sarl, that the receiver is //present// at the moment when //I write// a shopping list //for myself//, and moreover, to turn this into an argument against the essential possibility of the receiver's absence from every mark, is to settle for the shortest, most facile analysis. If both the sender and receiver were entirely present when the mark was inscribed, and if they were thereby present to themselves--since, by hypothesis here, being present and being present-to-oneself are considered to be equivalent--how could they even be distinguished from one another?" (49)
 * "The iterability of an element divides its own identity a priori, even without taking into account the fact that this identity can only //determine// or delimit itself through differential relations to other laments and that it hence bears the mark of this difference. It is because this iterability is differential, within each individual "element" as well as between the "elements," because it splits each element while constituting it, because it marks it with an articulatory break, that the remainder, although indispensable, is never that of a full or fulfilling presence: it is a differential structure escaping the logic of presence or the (simple or dialectical) opposition of presence and absence, upon which opposition the idea of permanence depends." (53)
 * "It is iterability itself, that which is remarkable in the mark, passing between the //re-// of the repeated and the //re-// of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition. Condition or effect--take your pick--of iterability. As I have done elsewhere, i will say it cuts across [//recoupe//] iterability at once, reovering it as though it were merging with it, cutting the cut or break once again in the remark." (53)
 * "Among other words, I have underlined //dehiscence//. As in the realm of botany, from which it draws its metaphorical value, this word marks emphatically that the divided opening, in the growth of a plant, is also what, in a //positive// sense, makes production, reproduction, development possible. Dehiscence (like iterability) limits what it makes possible, while making rigor and purity impossible. What is at work here is something like a law of undecidable contamination, which has interested me for some time." (59)
 * "…the unique character of this structure of iterability, or rather of this chain, since iterability can be supplemented by a variety of terms (such as //différance//, grapheme, trace, etc.), lies in the fact that, comprising identity //and// difference, repetition //and// alteration, etc., it renders the //project// of idealization possible without lending "//itself//" to any pure, simple, and idealizable conceptualization. No process [//procès//] or project of idealization is possible without iterabiltiy, and yet iterability "itself" cannot be idealized. For it comports an internal and impure limit that prevents it from being identified, synthesized, or reappropriated, just as it excludes the reappropriation of that whose iteration it nonetheless broaches and breeches [//entame//]." (71)
 * "More systematically, //Sec's// enterprise is in principle designed to demonstrate a type of "structural unconscious" (p. 18) which seems alien, if not incompatible with speech act theory given its current axiomatics. The latter seem constructed in order to keep the hypothesis of such an Unconscious at a safe distance, as though it were a giant Parasite." (73)
 * "Each time that the question of the "ethical and teleological discourse of consciousness" (ibid.) arises, it is an effort to uncover and to break the security-lock which, from //within the system//--inside of the prevailing model of speech acts that governs the current theory in its most coherent and even most productive operation--condemns the unconscious as one bars access to a forbidden place. By placing under lock and key, or by sealing off; here, by prohibiting that the Unconscious--what may still be called the Unconscious--//be taken seriously//; be taken seriously, that is, //in (as) a manner of speaking//, up to and including its capacity for making jokes. The unconscious not only as the great Parasite of every ideal model of a speech act (simple, serious, literal, strict, etc.) but the Unconscious as that parasite which subverts and dis-plays [//déjoue//], parasitically, even the concept of parasite itself as it is used int he theoretical strategy envisaged by Austin or by Searle." (73-74)
 * "…if what they call the "standard," "fulfilled," "normal," "serious," "literal," etc. is //always capable// of being affected by the non-standard, the "void," the "abnormal," the "nonserious," the "parasitical" etc., what does that tell us about the former? Parasitism does not need the theater or literature to appear. Tied to iterability, this possibility obtains constantly as we can verify at every moment, including this one." (89)
 * "…as though literature, theater, deceit, infidelity, hypocrisy, infelicity, parasitism, and the simulation of real life were not part of real life!" (90)
 * "I therefore cannot accept the distinction between //strategical// decision and //metaphysical// presupposition. Every strategical operation, or more classically, every methodological aspect of discourse, involves a decision, one which can be more or less explicit, concerning metaphysics." (93)
 * "What is limited by iterability is not intentionality in general, but its character of being conscious or present to itself (actualized, fulfilled, and adequate), the simplicity of its features, its //undecidedness.//" (105)

for the sake of misunderstanding, and the sake of iteration, i'll repeat the best poststructuralism joke i've made to date. it happened when a close friend of mine mistook my intent when i told her i was reading something by a "judy b." i meant butler, she understood blume. in an effort to reconcile the two concepts, i suggested someone re-release "bodies that matter" as "are you there gender? it's me, derrida's concept of iterability."

ha ha ha.

iterability, as a concept, first crossed my path in the construction of this joke. when one is dedicated to jokes, they become excellent learning tools. when called upon to sync up the works of blume and butler in one title, i recognized the work i needed to do to complete this project: read the wikipedia pages on judy blume and judith butler and try to figure out where the two could share a syntax. "bodies that matter," wikipedia told me, was butler's effort to refine the argument of "gender trouble" using recourse to derrida's concept of iterability. it made intuitive sense; if gender is a performance (i had not read butler at the time, but certainly remembered having a professor say this to me in a college classroom once, i do not remember when) then the thing that makes gender seem so real is its iteration. no? it didn't matter, the joke was written, sent off in an email.

what i'd like to evoke from this primordial interaction with iteration is the knowledge-seeking aspect of a joke: the joke is not entirely encapsulated in the joy of surprise meaning, but it drives its maker to seek out that surprise meaning. jokes are very serious. [there is an idea here that i am not getting at. a sort of corollary to last week's exposition on puns. it is perhaps forthcoming. more scotch.]

"…as though literature, theater, deceit, infidelity, hypocrisy, infelicity, parasitism, and the simulation of real life were not part of real life!" (90)