Anxious Identity: Education, Difference and Politics (Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series)

Anxious Identity: Education, Difference, and Politics

HO-CHIA CHUEH

PRAEGER

Anxious Identity

Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series Community in Motion: Theatre for Development in Africa L. Dale Byam Nietzsche’s Legacy for Education: Past and Present Values Michael Peters, James Marshall, and Paul Smeyers, editors Rituals, Ceremonies, and Cultural Meaning in Higher Education Kathleen Manning Political Relationship and Narrative Knowledge: A Critical Analysis of School Authoritarianism Peter B. Armitage Education, Literacy, and Humanization: Exploring the Work of Paulo Freire Peter Roberts Critical Education against Global Capitalism: Karl Marx and Revolutionary Critical Education Paula Allman Theory and Resistance in Education: Towards a Pedagogy for the Opposition, Revised and Expanded Edition Henry A. Giroux Social Movements, Civil Society, and Radical Adult Education John D. Holst Knowledge, Gender, and Schooling: The Feminist Educational Thought of Jane Roland Martin D. G. Mulcahy Ideology, Discourse, and School Reform Zeus Leonardo Liberating Praxis: Paulo Freire’s Legacy for Radical Education and Politics Peter Mayo Education and Public Choice: A Critical Account of the Invisible Hand in Education Nesta Devine

Anxious Identity Education, Difference, and Politics HO-CHIA CHUEH Foreword by Michael A. Peters

Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series Edited by Henry A. Giroux

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chueh, Ho-chia. Anxious identity : education, difference, and politics / Ho-chia Chueh ; foreword by Michael A. Peters. p. cm.—(Critical studies in education and culture series, ISSN 1064–8615) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–89789–926–1 1. Political socialization. 2. Political culture. 3. Political science—Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series. JA76.C5364 2004 306.2—dc22 2004016383 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2004 by Ho-chia Chueh All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004016383 ISBN: 0–89789–926–1 ISSN: 1064–8615 First published in 2004 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Series Foreword

vii

Foreword: Locating Otherness in the Self by Michael A. Peters

xi

Preface: A Question of Political Coherence

xv

Acknowledgments

xxi

Introduction

1

1 Desire, Political Consciousness, and Formative Subjectivity

17

2 Lévi-Strauss and the Methodological Value of Concepts of Binary Oppositions

39

3 The Pedagogy of the Politics of Difference

55

4 The Performance of Différance and Deconstruction

83

5 Temporality, Modernity, and Différance

111

6 Transformation, Politics, and Difference

137

Notes

157

References

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Index

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Series Foreword

Educational reform has fallen upon hard times. The traditional assumption that schooling is fundamentally tied to the imperatives of citizenship designed to educate students to exercise civic leadership and public service has been eroded. The schools are now the key institution for producing professional, technically trained, credentialized workers for whom the demands of citizenship are subordinated to the vicissitudes of the marketplace and the commercial public sphere. Given the current corporate and right wing assault on public and higher education, coupled with the emergence of a moral and political climate that has shifted to a new Social Darwinism, the issues which framed the democratic meaning, purpose, and use to which education might aspire have been displaced by more vocational and narrowly ideological considerations. The war waged against the possibilities of an education wedded to the precepts of a real democracy is not merely ideological. Against the backdrop of reduced funding for public schooling, the call for privatization, vouchers, cultural uniformity, and choice, there are the often ignored larger social realities of material power and oppression. On the national level, there has been a vast resurgence of racism. This is evident in the passing of anti-immigration laws such as Proposition 187 in California, the dismantling of the welfare state, the demonization of black youth that is taking place in the popular media, and the remarkable attention provided by the media to forms of race talk that argue for the intellectual inferiority of blacks or dismiss calls for racial justices as simply a holdover from the “morally bankrupt” legacy of the 1960s.

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Poverty is on the rise among children in the United States, with 20 percent of all children under the age of eighteen living below the poverty line. Unemployment is growing at an alarming rate for poor youth of color, especially in the urban centers. While black youth are policed and disciplined in and out of the nation’s schools, conservative and liberal educators define education through the ethically limp discourses of privatization, national standards, and global competitiveness. Many writers in the critical education tradition have attempted to challenge the right wing fundamentalism behind educational and social reform in both the United States and abroad while simultaneously providing ethical signposts for a public discourse about education and democracy that is both prophetic and transformative. Eschewing traditional categories, a diverse number of critical theorists and educators have successfully exposed the political and ethical implications of the cynicism and despair that has become endemic to the discourse of schooling and civic life. In its place, such educators strive to provide a language of hope that inextricably links the struggle over schooling to understanding and transforming our present social and cultural dangers. At the risk of overgeneralizing, both cultural studies theorists and critical educators have emphasized the importance of understanding theory as the grounded basis for “intervening into contexts and power . . . in order to enable people to act more strategically in ways that may change their context for the better.”1 Moreover, theorists in both fields have argued for the primacy of the political by calling for and struggling to produce critical public spaces, regardless of how fleeting they may be, in which “popular cultural resistance is explored as a form of political resistance.” 2 Such writers have analyzed the challenges that teachers will have to face in redefining a new mission for education, one that is linked to honoring the experiences, concerns, and diverse histories and languages that give expression to the multiple narratives that engage and challenge the legacy of democracy. Equally significant is the insight of recent critical educational work that connects the politics of difference with concrete strategies for addressing the crucial relationships between schooling and the economy and citizenship and the politics of meaning in communities of multicultural, multiracial, and multilingual schools. Critical Studies in Education and Culture attempts to address and demonstrate how scholars working in the fields of cultural studies and the critical pedagogy might join together in a radical project and practice informed by theoretically rigorous discourses that affirm the critical but refuse the cynical and establish hope as central to a critical pedagogical and political practice but eschew a romantic utopianism. Central to such a project is the issue of how pedagogy might provide cultural studies theorists and educators with an opportunity to engage pedagogical practices

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that are not only transdisciplinary, transgressive, and oppositional, but also connected to a wider project designed to further racial, economic, and political democracy.3 By taking seriously the relations between culture and power, we further the possibilities of resistance, struggle, and change. Critical Studies in Education and Culture is committed to publishing work that opens a narrative space that affirms the contextual and the specific while simultaneously recognizing the ways in which such spaces are shot through with issues of power. The series attempts to continue an important legacy of theoretical work in cultural studies in which related debates on pedagogy are understood and addressed within the larger context of social responsibility, civic courage, and the reconstruction of democratic public life. We must keep in mind Raymond Williams’s insight that the “deepest impulse (informing cultural politics) is the desire to make learning part of the process of social change itself.”4 Education as a cultural pedagogical practice takes place across multiple sites, which include not only schools and universities but also the mass media, popular culture, and other public spheres, and signals how within diverse contexts, education makes us both subjects of and subject to relations of power. This series challenges the current return to the primacy of market values and simultaneous retreat from politics so evident in the recent work of educational theorists, legislators, and policy analysts. Professional relegitimation in a troubled time seems to be the order of the day as an increasing number of academics both refuse to recognize public and higher education as critical public spheres and offer little or no resistance to the ongoing vocationalization of schooling, the continuing evisceration of the intellectual labor force, and the current assaults on the working poor, the elderly, and women and children.5 Emphasizing the centrality of politics, culture, and power, Critical Studies in Education and Culture will deal with pedagogical issues that contribute in imaginative and transformative ways to our understanding of how critical knowledge, democratic values, and social practices can provide a basis for teachers, students, and other cultural workers to redefine their role as engaged and public intellectuals. Each volume will attempt to rethink the relationship between language and experience, pedagogy and human agency, and ethics and social responsibility as part of a larger project for engaging and deepening the prospects of democratic schooling in a multiracial and multicultural society. Critical Studies in Education and Culture takes on the responsibility of witnessing and addressing the most pressing problems of public schooling and civic life and engages culture as a crucial site and strategic force for productive social change. Henry A. Giroux

Foreword: Locating Otherness in the Self

Those who look into the possibility of philosophy . . . are already engaged in, already overtaken by the dialogue of the question about itself with itself. Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” in Writing and Difference

When we talk about the Other in education, to whom or to what are we really referring? How is Otherness presented or represented in education? Is it the alienated student? The “raced” or gendered student? The cultural Other? The postcolonial subject in the process of education? Is it the non-Western per se, whether it is constructed as Other in the form of subject, curriculum, place, philosophy, or people? Is education itself an instrument of Othering? To what extent does Western-styled education whitewash, exoticize, naturalize, or sexualize the Other? What is the basis of differences between Self and Other, and what role does education play in this division? Are all examples of coming to terms with and theorizing the Other in education, even those accounts that harbor political intentions of emancipation and empowerment, condemned to repeat the mistakes of cultural imperialism? Are there ways by which the binary opposition of Self and Other—especially as they have been historically invested in colonial experiences of education—can be overcome or deconstructed or redrawn so as to avoid the deep conceptual differences and prejudgments between “us” and “them,” between the “civilized” and the “primitive,” between those inside the gates and those outside the gates? These questions, perhaps the most significant for a cultural analysis of education in an age of globalization, in one way or another lie at the very center of this work. Locating Otherness, detecting Otherness, and recog-

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nizing Otherness are both cognitive and ethical tasks. Ho-chia Chueh locates Otherness in difference, and she takes us on a tour of Hegelian dialectics through the modernist territory where difference is constructed in binary oppositions and evidenced most clearly in critical accounts of Western colonization and imperialism. Chueh first sets up and develops the Hegelian tropes of difference and their representation in educational discourses of empowerment before entering on a conceptual journey that begins both to understand the formation of subjectivity and political consciousness in desire. This introduction stands as a buttress to Freire’s pathbreaking thought and its reliance on Hegelian dialectics, most obviously depicted in the formulation of the oppressor and the oppressed. This gentle introduction to Hegel and to Freire is the beginning of a well-structured journey—with all the necessary signposts, local maps, and shortcuts—through the backstreets of Lévi-Strauss and Saussure, Derrida, Spivak and différance, Bhabha and the temporality of infinity. Hochia Chueh’s accomplishment is a nuanced and sophisticated reading of Derrida against Hegel and his descendants, of the Derrideans read against the Hegelians, to focus squarely on the question of difference—its embodiment in education and its relation to temporality, modernity, and transformation. Chueh’s work chimes nicely with a preoccupation of contemporary education, with its multicultural emphasis and its obligation to understand and respond to difference in an ethical manner. It chimes also, although differently, with the claims of postcolonial theory—a field of discourse itself undergoing transformation by the Other. Chueh makes extensive reference to Spivak and Bhabha and seeks to theorize difference in terms that avoid the worst excesses of a warm and fuzzy humanism that characterizes much multicultural education but proceeds from ethnocentric assumptions. David Theo Goldberg and Ato Quayson (2002) in their Relocating Postcolonialism, identify three clusters (or generative ambiguities) of attitudes and ideas that constitute postcolonial studies: “the desire to speak to the Western paradigm of knowledge in the voice of otherness,” (xii) an affliction based on the fact that the field must simultaneously claim and disavow its object of study and its location everywhere and nowhere. The first recognizes how interaction with subjected Others constituted the very experience of Western modernity and today conditions the processes of globalization. This “radical interdependency of forms” (xii) is explored in the value-laden hierarchies of binary oppositions that poststructuralism has taught us to scrutinize and deconstruct. The second refers to the fact that the social referents of postcolonial studies are marked by violence and anguish—a set of objects that postcolonialism is committed to dismantling while being “analytically fixated with it” (xiii). Third, the everywhereand-nowhere hypothesis can be summed up in the question “Is postcolo-

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nial theory the content of particular social referents, or the form of the discursive application of theories?” (xvi). The first of these generative ambiguities contains more than one thesis. The tropes of Otherness, Othering, and the ethics of the Other contain more than is or can be unpacked by the editors in their introduction or, indeed, in one collection or book. The second seems less of an antinomy and more of a historical condition, while the third returns us to issues of space and location, although not as productively as it might. Goldberg and Quayson demonstrate how postcoloniality is as much a question of space as it is of time. Postcoloniality as difference is critical as a condition of education in this time of globalization. We should be concerned not only with conceptual analysis, but also its political economy of the present. In education, is globalization anything more than a contemporary form of Westernization that reconstitutes difference in the commodity form? I would like to suggest, more positively, that the location of Otherness is constructed and fashioned out of our own discomfort with our Selves. As a series of tropes and aporia that constitute us, this discomfit can be represented as another time, another place, another people that help us to monitor the shifting boundaries of the Self and, on occasions and with imagination, to step outside ourselves to view ourselves as Others—ourselves as others. Is this (an)other education? Michael A. Peters

Preface: A Question of Political Coherence

This book was initially inspired by an incident that happened during the early years of my studies at the University of Auckland. The circumstances were such that there was a conflict on account of problems to do with race, culture, and the notion of differences. I was in my third year of studies and at the time worked in the School of Education as an assistant to first-year Asian students. These students spoke English as a second or third language and had a poor background of Western academic disciplines. The most difficult thing for my students and me was not the English language per se, but the academic disciplines, which is to say the style of essay writing used when writing in English and the approach to classroom discussion. These students had to learn a great deal about how to adjust their form of argument from that which they were familiar with to the unfamiliar form preferred in a New Zealand institution. I had hoped that their difficulties would earn them understanding and sympathy from the tutors, who did not belong to the mainstream power. At that time, for me, my principal definition for disadvantage was constructed along the lines of racial or cultural differences. I expected a shared situation that disadvantaged students—a kind of political powerlessness—would result in the reciprocal support for each other’s political agenda. As it happened, the outcome contradicted my naive expectation; disadvantage on basis of race did not make any difference in terms of the tutors’ and the lecturers’ comments. Their comments were severe with respect to the problems Asian students had with the English language. This outcome functioned as a wake-up call for me, inspiring me to explore the notion of difference—what counts as the basis of difference.

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I believe lecturers and tutors whose academic specialties have them focusing on critical educational theories should be familiar with the discourse that is spurned by both early British colonization and the cultural imperialism of more recent times. Lecturers and tutors should be aware that institutions of education have been playing a key role as gatekeepers or as the “State Ideological Apparatus,” as Althusser (1971) observes, which may be involved innocently in the process of cultural assimilation. Since language is an aspect of culture and is an important feature of cultural transmission, the loss of Te Reo Maori and Tikanga Maori as a result of both the colonization process and cultural assimilation has gained political attention within New Zealand society.1 In today’s society, biculturalism and multiculturalism are phrases inscribed in political organizations, associations, and communities. Maori language revitalization, research, and pedagogy from a Maori perspective have also been recognized as important in most tertiary institutions, including the one in which I have been pursuing my studies. Edward Said argues in Culture and Imperialism that, despite the claim that there exists a cultural diversity, most of the English-speaking countries still remain “coherent nations” (1993: xxix). New Zealand is one of these coherent nations, along with the United States, Britain, Australia, and Canada. This is in spite of the fact that some of these countries now contain large groups of immigrants. How are discourses of emancipation of the oppressed coherent to that of the oppressors? Coherence first comes from political engagement: narratives of emancipation and enlightenment in those English-speaking societies mentioned previously are also largely “narratives of integration not separation” (Said 1993: xxix). Their political intentions (“integration”) are clear because the oppressed sector of society that had been previously excluded from the mainstream is now fighting for its place in that same society. Ironically, these engagements run against the original political appeal of the oppressed, to discard the shadow of old colonial or imperial power. As I am going to explain, if political discourse has been contaminated, no matter what political intentions are illustrated, these stories of emancipation and empowerment exemplify themselves as both examples of cultural imperialism and a continuance of imperialism within society at large. D. K. Fieldhouse, a historian on the British Empire, has argued that the basis of imperial authority was about the mental attitude of the colonist, which itself implies an acceptance of subordination. This acceptance is at stake because it makes the notion of empire durable whether it has “a positive sense of common interest with the ‘parent state’ or it [has] ‘an inability to conceive of any alternative’” (Said 1993: 11). The durability of the notion of empire was in fact supported by practices pursued by both sides, the rulers and the ruled. Each may have its own set of interpretations of their common history, but the history is carried out with its own “per-

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spective, historical sense, emotions and traditions” (Said 1993: 11). The acceptance of subordination thus allows the imperial authority to endure. The mental attitude of the colonist is also sustained through ideological practices in the form of a dialectical relationship between the ruler and the ruled. There was the original idea of having an empire for the enterprise of empire, and all kinds of preparations are accordingly made up for this idea. If the imperial authority refers to conceptions and operations of domination/subordination, this ideological formation has been true in the old colonial context as well as the postcolonial contexts (Said 1993: 10–11). The notion of nationalism in both forms of separatism and nativism in postcolonial states does not hold a peculiar tradition but a shared political history and associated political configuration. It thus makes sense that this form of cultural imperialism (political configuration) helps later development of political discourses and achievement of political coherence. The colonial experiences were rooted in a concept between Europeans and their Others. It is a binary oppositional division between us and them, or the Self and the Other. This division, in fact, can be traced back to Greek thought on the Barbarians, but, sadly, “whoever originated this kind of ‘identity’ thought, by the nineteenth century it had become the hallmark of imperialist cultures as well as those cultures trying to resist the encroachments of Europe” (Said 1993: xxviii). This identity formation has been developed more delicately since the German philosopher Hegel developed his theory of dialectics—something I shall review soon. The experiences of colonization tell us that successful domination is often accomplished with the aid of ideological knowledge relating to the beliefs we have about race, alongside political and military violations. For instance, the language of classic nineteenth-century imperial culture is overwhelmingly occupied with vocabularies and notions of “inferior,” “subject races,” “subordinate people,” “dependency,” “expansion,” and “authority” (8–9). These vocabularies became mundane language in most postcolonial states, but the responses to such notions in postcolonial contexts are often twofold: either clarification/reinforcement or critique/rejection. Direct colonialism may have gone, but the trace of that imperialism, the colonist mentality, is still seen inscribed in the political consciousness of contemporary intellectuals. In fact, it may continue to be reinstated within the new emergent intellectuality in a move that is pervasively cultural, political, ideological, and economic and that involves social practice. Said comments on complicit results of cultural imperialism: Western imperialism and the Third World nationalism feed off each other, but even at their worst they are neither monolithic nor deterministic. Besides, culture is not monolithic either, and is not the exclusive property of East or West, nor of small group of men or women. . . .

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However much there are laments that the old course of humanistic study has been subject to politicised pressure, to what has been called the culture of complaint, to all sorts of egregiously overstated claims on behalf of “Western” or “feminist” or “Afrocentric” and “Islamocentric” values. (1993: xxvii)

The language of the dialectical relationship and the application of the ideological formation of identity are certainly entangled with various interests and agendas of oppressed groups. This is even apparent when priorities run against each other. The tensions, inequalities, and injustices, which happen in forums at institutional levels, highlight how this colonial mentality is problematic. Modern imperialism is reflected in the continuance of the colonial mental attitudes and in the uncritical following of imperial authority of the past. This book aims to offer a critical examination of subject formation proposed by some theories with emancipatory goals. I will also look at discourses on difference that support the critique of the dominating status quo while not depreciating other meanings of difference. A critical evaluation of notions and discourses of difference is significant, for it provides a better comprehension of the political consequences that follow. It is a fact that emancipatory efforts are occasionally overtaken by political ambivalence—while they affirm complicity as the basis of political agency, they insist that political agency reiterates the conditions of subordination. They may also claim a political subjectivity at the risk of declining other political subjectivities. In this way, this political gesture repeats itself as an expression of imperial culture, and the play itself is a cultural imperialism. This book concerns arguments of political subjectivity. This book develops a systematic analysis of theories concerning identity construction and the recognition of difference. A special interest has been made in seeking a better comprehension of the relationship between the political theories and identity construction. In other words, the analysis relates to the ways in which political theories contribute to the formation of political subjectivity and the effectiveness of the subjection. Judith Butler has suggested that a critical examination of subjection engages the following concerns: an account of the way regulatory power maintains subjects in subordination by producing and exploiting the demand for continuity, visibility, and place; recognition that the subject produced as continuous, visible, and located is nevertheless haunted by an inassimilable remainder, a melancholia that marks the limits of subjectivation; an account of the iterability of the subject that shows how agency may well consist in opposing and transforming the social terms by which it is spawned. (1997: 29)

Each of the chapters will look at a particular subjection and elaborate the associated arguments concerned with their associated concepts of

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binary oppositions. In chapter 1, I shall examine Hegel’s dialectical relationship between the lord and the bondsman. This dialectical relationship has been the foundation for Hegel’s later political arguments concerning concepts of consciousness and liberation. Many contemporary political theorists have applied Hegel’s analysis to develop such political arguments further. The dialectical relationship between the lord and the bondsman has been developed into a relationship between the oppressors and the oppressed in Paulo Freire’s theory. I shall demonstrate that the Hegelian approach to understanding political subjectivity is the effect of the power of negativity. It shall be argued that the dialectical relationship between the lord and the bondsman is fully determined by a power of negativity. The Hegelian subjection is circulated within this power of negativity and supported by the associated formative activity that helps reinforce the power of negativity. In chapters 2 and 3, I will investigate a decentered approach to political subjectivity. The concepts of binary opposition are given a methodological value. It will be suggested that we can interpret the experience of racial difference or cultural difference by adopting various combinations of binary oppositions. Chapter 2 provides a theoretical discussion on the methodological value of concepts of binary opposition. Chapter 3 analyzes and examines various discourses with respect to the value of the politics of difference where a celebration of multiple identity and difference is the fundamental argument. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 explore French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s theories of différance and deconstruction in connection with discussions on the decentered approaches proposed by Gayatri C. Spivak and Homi K. Bhabha. Derrida, Spivak, and Bhabha all affirm the positioning of political subjectivity. All of their theories involve the repositioning of the Hegelian approach to defining political subjectivity. In chapter 4, I shall explore Derrida’s notion of deconstruction and the importance of his introducing of a new departure point for understanding the political. Spivak’s attempt at incorporating deconstruction within critical feminism is explored and examined here. It is suggested that Spivak misreads Derrida’s notions of deconstruction and différance when he uses the concept of binary oppositions, such as useful/dangerous. Spivak proposes a political gesture as a form of strategic essentialism. It is argued that Spivak fails to understand Derrida’s theory in metaphysics of presence. In chapter 5, I shall examine Bhabha’s revision of the Hegelian subjection in the context of the postcolonial experience. Drawing on Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994), I will elucidate Bhabha’s theories of temporality and the in-between-ness. Bhabha introduces the concept of temporality to suggest that there is a temporary disruption that aids the finding of an in-between shared space in the political community. Bhabha hopes his theories of temporality and in-between-ness justify political appeals

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because these two concepts stabilize the status of political subject. This said, Foucault’s theory of non-place will be introduced to criticize the inbetween thesis. Derrida’s repositioning of Hegelian dialectics will be illustrated in a discussion of the metaphysics of presence in the Hegelian approach of difference. Chapter 6 traces Derrida’s political argument of affirmation. Through a reading of Derrida’s own explanation of the importance of Nietzsche’s idea of the great politics, I explore Derrida’s notions of democracy to come in relation to Nietzsche. Derrida’s theory of the political is further discussed in relation to his affirmation that there is a Hegelian element in Nietzsche’s theory. Derrida’s argument that Nietzsche does not reject Hegelism highlights the presence of a notion of transformation—the transformation of meanings of the Hegelian subjectivity. This transformation also explains Derrida’s repositioning of the Hegelian approach to political subjectivity in his concepts of différance and deconstruction.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge how grateful I am to Michael Peters, James Marshall, Janet Mansfield, Ruth Irwin and Richard Heraud for both the tremendous encouragement they gave me and the valuable dialogue that resulted as a consequence of their involvement in the project. I am also grateful to Chen-hwe, Stacey, Michael and Julie for their limitless love and caring during the course of this project. Special thanks go to my whanau in the International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education (I.R.I.), in particular to Linda Smith, Margaret, Adreanne, Te Ahu, Maxine and Tommy for their support in various aspects of the development of this text. I would like to acknowledge my students at the National Taiwan University for their assistance and friendship. Finally, I would like to thank my family, Ho-sheng, Ho-yen, Jing-yun, Shan-liang and Telu for the patience they have always shown me.

Introduction

INTRODUCTION I will begin this chapter with a historical account of the development of current political theories that I am going to argue in the later chapters. This history, as I shall illustrate, is strictly related to structures found in Hegelian dialectics. This is followed by an analysis of critiques offered by poststructuralists Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. After this, I will briefly illustrate the implications of these political discourses, which are often understood as discourses of empowerment or emancipation, followed by a critique based on my own experience studying at the University of Auckland. THE “HISTORY” AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE HEGELIAN DIALECTICS Robert Young argues, in White Mythologies, that the most significant political meaning of poststructuralism has not to do with the unnerving, weaving interaction of capitalist economic exploitation, racism, colonialism, and sexism, but has to do with the “‘History’ and the structure of the Hegelian dialectics” (1990: 1). The “History” can be seen reflected in the theoretical and practical levels that are imbedded within Hegelian dialectics. For Young, “History” includes the history of Marxism, Europe’s colonial annexation, racism, scholarship on the Orientals, Freud’s characterization of femininity, and so on. Poststructuralists question Hegelian history with its intention to seek the absolute Truth. Instead, they point out that an active involvement of political knowledge within political

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movements has led us to constantly interrogate the close relationship that binds political discourses to political subjectivity. Young reminds us that we can no longer ignore Hegelian philosophy and its implications in the contemporary political analysis that has been operating within discourses of political subjectivity. In general, poststructuralist critiques offer a critical examination of Hegelian negative dialectics. Robert Young (1990) has warned us that the ways in which some political Hegelian structures appropriate the Other— as a form of knowledge—may lead to another project of nineteenth-century imperialism. The Hegelian constructions of knowledge, which operate through forms of expropriation and incorporation of the Other, mimic at a conceptual level the geographical and economic absorption of the nonEuropean world by the West. Thus, even though Marx may reverse Hegel’s idealism, he did not “change the mode of operation of the conceptual system,” (3) and therefore Marxism colludes in the Eurocentric project. From the outset, in Hegel’s classical work Phenomenology of Spirit (1977), discussions of consciousness are based upon a dialectical relationship between the lord (the master) and the bondsman (the slave). Significantly, for most of Hegel’s discussions, discourses on consciousness belong to the bondsman only1 (or the slave) as Hegel implicitly discusses unhappy consciousness. Consciousness in the Hegelian sense refers to the painful realization forms of political subjectivity such as the truth of self-certainty, self-realization, and the struggle of or for recognition. Indeed, these terms—consciousness, self-certainty, self-realization, and struggle for recognition—have attracted most readers of Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel’s philosophical landmark in modern studies. Hegelian discourses on consciousness have been a central notion in Western philosophy and politics. Most political readers have read the chapter on lordship and bondage for “liberationist” narratives that are implemented into various progressive political visions (Butler 1997). These terms have helped construe political discourses on emancipation, empowerment, anti-imperialism, and decolonization. Hegelian dialectics has dominated the development of modern German philosophy. For instance, Benhabib explains the main features of this development as follows, Hegel’s critique of Kant’s pure reason which emphasized the unfolding of reason in history; Marx’s critique of Hegel initiating the turn from the reflective to the productive subject; the early Frankfurt School’s appropriation of insights from both Hegel and Marx to emphasize that the autonomous subject was not an isolated Cartesian ego, but a historically and socially situated, concrete, and embodied self. (Benhabib 1986; cited in Peters and Marshall 1993: 23)

However, some readers argue that Hegelian dialectics has led the development of German modern philosophy to an impasse. The shift from the

Introduction

3

reflective subject of idealism to the productive subject of Marxism offers no real alternatives. For the Hegelian reflective subject, its Desire to reflect a Cartesian ego requires assuming metaphysical structures (i.e., history) as a transcendental stance to project on, to reflect on, and to understand the significance of the Self. This is a process of self-reflexivity. For Marxism and the Frankfurt School, the productive subject denies the existence of a Cartesian ego, but accepts metaphysical structures and the corresponding imagery places. For instance, Marx has worked on interpreting class relations as having a metaphysical structure (based on the production relation), while the Frankfurt School has not limited itself on class issues, which from its point of view have social, cultural, and historical implications. In Benhabib’s view, there is an impasse on account of there being multiple productive expressions of subjectivity that do not change the fundamentally negative and dialectical form of reflexivity. In France, Hegelian analysis on consciousness has had significant influences upon postwar French philosophy, in particular upon the main Left thinkers of modernity such as Alexandre Kojève, Jean Hyppolite, JeanPaul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, and Frantz Fanon. The section on selfconsciousness in Phenomenology of Spirit has worked to provide a model of consciousness for discourses on the Self and identity. With a similar argument to that of Benhabib, Michael Peters (2000) identifies this model as a Hegelian modernity that represents a way of thinking on a basic argument that the Self is the negation of the Other. This form has been seen in Kojève’s phenomenological interpretation of unhappy consciousness. Different interpretations of unhappy consciousness are also seen in Sartre’s existentialism, Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and Fanon’s decolonization. Furthermore, Kojève’s existentialist understanding of Hegelian dialectics delivers double meanings: for self-transformation and the absolute negation of the master’s world in class terms. The argument of the master/slave dialectics that involves discourses on alienation, political struggles, and the process of getting mutual recognition are also seen in Hyppolite’s and Sartre’s interpretations. Although a different emphasis and development of the notion of Hegelian consciousness can be seen in German and French contexts, the fundamental form of Hegelian consciousness works in the same way in both contexts, whether in academic discussion or in political movements. The arguments are carried out through a negative dialectic between the master and the slave. This involves a distinction based on the notion of binary oppositions and a concern with the struggle for recognition and the work that should lead us in the direction of freedom. While the French and German followers have pervasively explored Hegelian consciousness, critical examinations of this notion have emerged from within various groups. Adorno has made a critique of totality and argues for the non-identical. Habermas (1983) has pushed the dialectical

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Anxious Identity

reasoning of the Enlightenment and transformed it into a notion of sensus communis logicus as the name of sensus communis aestheticus. Both Adorno and Habermas do not abandon negative dialectics but revise them. It is argued that the poststructuralists have resisted Hegelian negative dialectics in the way they refine binary oppositional thinking and affirm the existing hierarchy of power relations. For instance, feminist Catherine MacKinnon (1987) has argued that the notion of the feminine is wholly constructed as the Other of the male and by the male gaze. Oppression of the feminine as a “fact” is constructed within male structures of domination. Any attempt to affirm the structure of this domination/subordination as the relationship of male/female suggests a reaffirmation of the female as the powerless. Browyn Davies (1991) articulates the danger of linking the Hegelian dialectical form to the humanist discourse. Davies argues that many humanist discourses are based on the dualist notions of conscious/unconscious and rational/irrational. This application can be seen as a masculinist and humanist construction since, within the Western discourses, the conscious and unconscious minds are often set up in parallel to the male/female relationship. In this way, the dualism of conscious/unconscious and rational/irrational reaffirms the hierarchical oppositions of the meanings of male and female; their meanings are taken in relation to each other. The conscious mind is thought to be superior, and accordingly, this humanist version reflects a masculinist version of the world. Alan Schrift (1995) maintains that French poststructuralist thinkers have adopted Nietzsche’s critique of “truth” and have argued for the differential relations of power and knowledge. This offers a different point of departure for the analysis of power relations than that of Hegelian dialectics. Like Davies’s critique of the universality of the masculinist value, the French poststructuralists have resisted “the impulse toward claims of universality and unity, preferring instead to acknowledge difference and fragmentation” (Schrift 1995: 6–7). Moreover, the poststructuralists have backed up a view of differential relations that understands the subject to be situated “in the complex intersection of discursive, libidinal, and social force and practices” and that questions “the humanist assumption of autonomy and transparent self-consciousness.” Based on Schrift’s comments, Peters (2000) suggests that French poststructuralist Gilles Deleuze radically questions Hegelian negative dialectics, in particular its negative power and its purely reactive dispositions—that is, the positive is achieved only through double negation. By contrast, Deleuze’s thesis on the positive refers to a pure and positive power of affirmation that assumes its inherent difference in its basis. Another French poststructuralist, Jacques Derrida, suggests there is an unfolding of the differences in ontico-ontological difference, something Heidegger would understand as the difference between Being and beings. Différance, as Der-

Introduction

5

rida calls it, is “the movement that consists in deferring by means of delay, delegation, reprieve, referral, detour, postpone, reserving” (Peters 2000: 3). Peters urges us to consider différance as “the common root of all the positional concepts that mark our language” as well as “the production of those differences is the condition for any signification.” One cannot separate the history of political discourse from the social and economic history of that political discourse, just like one cannot separate the history of literature from the social history of that literature. The ethos of thinking reflects in contemporary discourses, and the philosophical argumentation breaks down in much of the academic analysis and most political discourses. Political history, dialectical forms of argument, and notions of self-consciousness and mutual recognition have reinforced each other in the process of forming a political subjectivity. Consequently, community-based political claims lead to particular policies and programs. Individual political claims and responsibilities are often reorganized in accordance with the definition given to the concept of community. Histories that are attached to political communities are conferred in the dialectical form as advantages or disadvantages in terms of comprehensible categories of racial difference, ethnic background, and social classes. In the modern day, political histories and discourses have to cover diverse issues from housing problems, industrial cycles, changes in the labor market, booms, slumps, environment issues, and so on (Rose 1999: 176–77).2 The development and refinement by Hegelian followers of these referents has been called into question by many of the poststructuralists. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida have offered critiques on Hegelian dialectics. Foucault’s critique on juridical power may provide a general critique of the Hegelian negative dialectic. Derrida has criticized metaphysical structures and their referents, their forms of binary oppositions as various interpretations of the master and slave relationship. Their analyses and critiques on this question are the main topics of discussion in the following section. POSTSTRUCTURALIST CRITIQUES OF BINARY OPPOSITIONS Critiques of Juridical Modes of Power Foucault’s theory of power strongly contests juridical modes of understanding power and refutes the latter’s theoretical constructions of the subject, which themselves are based on the juridical mode. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault defines juridical modes of analyzing power in the following way: [The] juridical form must be referred to a historical type of society in which power was exercised mainly as a means of deduction, a subtraction mechanism.

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Anxious Identity

Deduction has tended to be no longer the major form of power but merely one element among others, working to incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimize, and organize the forces under it: a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them. (1978: 136)

Foucault observes that historians have a long history of deducing historical experiences into juridical form—the Hegelian dialectical form. From Foucault’s point of view, narratives construed in this way are inadequate. Although it is argued that the dialectic is the definitive mode of power relations, dialectical narratives represent one force among others. The ways in which deductions work, a seeking of the single origin and single cause, obscure the complexity and multiplicity of the present historical phenomena. Foucault’s primary theoretical and political concerns claim that “in the beginning [historical experience] was multiplicity, a radical heteronomy of events, forces, and relations which historiographers have concealed and rationalized through the imposition of orderly theoretical fictions” (Butler 1987: 180). Foucault is often perceived as an “anti-history” historian on account of his refusal to provide a teleological and unfolding reasoning of historical experiences. Foucault’s historical approach may be seen as influenced by Nietzsche; in “Nietzsche, History, Genealogy” (1984), he makes a Nietzschean claim about the nature and role of history. There are two Nietzschean concepts—herkunft (descent) and enstehung (emergence)—that interest Foucault. These two concepts are central to the methodology of genealogy that Foucault adopts to look at historical experience. By focusing on descents of historical experiences, Foucault directs our attention to those errors and accidents that disturb and upset historical orders. Instead of identifying new and more solid foundations, genealogical analysis reveals “moving sands, fragmented and incoherent events with faults, errors, omissions, faulty appraisals, and pious claims and aspirations” that are often glossed over when grand historical narratives are presented (Marshall 1990: 19). Because of such disruptions, genealogical analysis thus shows multiple factors that resurge from lowly sources and subjugated knowledge. In other words, any assertion of “historical truth” is dependent upon “complex, contingent and fragile grounds” but is not a result of a continuous and uninterrupted reason, like the Marxist interpretation of the class relation as the determining representative of the social relation. In examining the emergence of historical experiences, the present appears not as a result of historical development, but like “a stage in the warlike confrontation between opposing forces in the quest for control and domination” (Marshall 1990: 19). In emergence one observes the movement that particular forces enter when playing on the stage of history—the way “they erupt or leap from the wings to the centre.” Emer-

Introduction

7

gence suggests a scene where different values are displayed, superimposed, or confronted. Thus, Foucault concludes that “descent qualifies the strength or weakness of an instinct and its inscription on a body, emergence designates a place of confrontation, but not as a closed field offering the spectacle of a struggle among equals” (Foucault 1984: 84). If descent and emergence have helped us understand the contradictory and the multiple as the natural forces of historical experiences, the Hegelian proposition of a subject becomes problematic since the Hegelian subject imposes an all-encompassing unity. The genealogical analysis has forced Hegelian dialectics to face the ontological differences of these historical experiences for which it cannot sufficiently account. The impasse of Hegelian dialectics reflects that, if we stay with it, we have to constantly reinstate identity in accordance with different traces or appearances of possible ontological differences. Or we have to totally abandon the overarching dialectics from the outset, take each discourse as a tenuous one, and refuse to accept any synthetic unity.3 Indeed, here comes the gist of the poststructuralist theme: the problematic of the Hegelian aufgehoben. Butler points out that Foucault and Derrida have seen all difference as historically invariant and impassable, and thus they have replaced the Hegelian thesis of relational oppositions by a formulation of difference as primarily and irrefutably linguistic and historically constant. In other words, Foucault and Derrida suggest differences as a historical condition without the assumption of prior ontological harmony, meaning “conflict can be seen to produce effects that exceed the bonds of dialectical unity and result in a multiplication of consequences” (Butler 1987: 183). The importance of both the ontological differences and the ontological condition is that they both should always be taken into consideration at once. This is simply because when there is an effort posited for an identity, it will offend any other form of difference, and also such an identity is inevitably undermined by the difference conditions of such a positing. Thus, no identity in the name of aufgehoben can be proposed since “where identity is posited, difference is not aufgehoben, but concealed” (Butler 1987: 183). To be sure, Foucault attempts to “reformulate the Hegelian master-slave relationship in a framework that at once preserves the relationship of inversion but displaces this relationship from its dialectical framework” (Butler 1987: 183). It is obvious that Foucault has to avoid the false aufgehoben thesis just as Hegel does. On the other hand, Foucault has to avoid being accused of nihilism if he does not support political gestures like those made by Hegel. Foucault, defining his genealogical analysis in relation to the Marxian language, says, It is impossible at the present time to write history without using a whole range of concepts directly or indirectly linked with Marx’s thought and situating oneself

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Anxious Identity

within a horizon of thought which has been defined and described by Marx. (Foucault 1975: 53; cited in Marshall 1996: 33)

According to Jim Marshall (1996), Foucault tampered with Marx; Foucault admits the fact that Marxian Hegelian dialectics has already been part of the historical constant. Thus, “it is almost impossible to formulate a critique of modern society and a theory of resistance that does not presuppose the language and categories that he wishes to reject” (Marshall 1996: 33). The fact is that the Marxist analysis of oppression has occupied the languages of most of the contemporary historians and intellectuals, and even Foucault has adopted the Marxist dualist form of domination and oppression. As Marshall informs us, these Foucauldean terms can at best be understood as that where “economic oppression is one, but only one, and not the most basic form of oppression.” It is argued that Foucault’s productive thesis of power inverts the Hegelian juridical mode of power and that it repudiates any possibility of a Hegelian synthesis on the basis of a binary oppositional concept. His concept of ontological difference extends to proliferating an opposition as a multiple and diffused form and thus goes beyond the Hegelian binary configuration. The Foucauldean position of nondialectical differences understands historical experience as a struggle of forces that does not lead to an ultimate reconciliation, but instead leads to a proliferation and variegation of force itself. Foucault also acknowledges the negative as a qualitative permutation of Being. He has revised the Hegelian understanding of power, interpreting it to be forces that are found in historical experiences in the form of the “directional impulse of life,” “a movement” that is “constantly embroiled in conflict and a sense of domination,” “the nexus of life and power,” and “the movement of their intersection” (Butler 1987: 180). Referent: Limitation and Performance4 Derrida has responded to forms of binary opposition and Hegelian dialectics with a critique of the limited function of the referent. In Hegel’s theory, reference functions as the medium of the signified that transfers meaning to the sign. This discussion of the referent is given and located in a dialectics between the master and the slave. Derrida argues that such a discussion of the referent operates at an extremely conceptual level and is confined and enclosed within the constitution of Hegelian dialectics; it is controlled by particular Hegelian themes. Like Foucault’s critique, Derrida’s enclosure and the reductionism of Hegelian language limit the meanings of difference that ensue from other implications outside that particular discourse. Within the enclosure of Hegelian language, difference is meant to be “the negative,” the Other as opposed to the Same. As the Other is construed through the Same, the

Introduction

9

meaning of difference is already nothing other than itself based on what the referent implies. Derrida thus argues that Hegelian conceptual work, by reduction and enclosure, disguises political subjectivity to be completed. Some French feminists have provided strong critiques of this assumption of a plenitude of meanings of difference and identity—in relation to the Same and the Other. Simone de Beauvoir is dismayed by the categories of opposition and contradiction that are reflected in the masculine privilege that is asserted over femininity. Lucy Irigaray even questions the metaphysical existence of woman as woman, as a name that has never been a referent within the language economy.5 Generally, the limitation of the referent as the significance of the sign and the signified causes an ethical concern with respect to the violation of meanings of sexuality and sexual difference. Derrida aims with his critique, on the closure and reductionism of Hegelian language, to release the symbolic relation of the sign to the signified by suggesting that the referent to the signified is always displaced. While he does acknowledge the value of Hegelian dialectics, he argues that his method of achieving his particular goal precludes its realization. Derrida’s main argument is that the meaning of the referent is part of the performative aspect of language.6 The performative aspect of language suggests that the meanings of the referent be already situated within the context of language. The meaning of the referent is pre-given by various texts, and there is no pure meaning of the referent outside the texts. This is a critique of an ontological relationship between reference (referent) and meaning (Sinn and Bedeutung). The ambiguous relationship between referent and meaning explains, as mentioned earlier, the limitation of Hegelian dialectics as nothing other than itself. The acknowledgment of the performative function of the referent ought not to limit the scope of meanings that can be ascribed to the referent. Rather, because the referent and meaning are intertwined, we ought to understand the meaning of the referent in relation to its own text. That is, we ought to understand Hegelian dialectics and its referent to the extent that it is within that text, that particular Hegelian theme.7 In one sense, for Derrida (as for Deleuze), this realization means an affirmation of multiple plays of Hegelian dialectics. However, we need to be careful to recognize that Derrida defines différance as both “to differ” and “to defer.” Hegelian dialectics may at the most stand for a style of writing, while the notion of différance itself may go beyond the domain of Hegelian subjectivity.8 There are several ways to perceive the Hegelian referent in terms of Derrida’s notion of the performative aspect of language. Firstly, the referent does not act as a means of providing the revelation of the sign. Any linguistic designation of a subject—say, woman—cannot fully contain itself.

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Anxious Identity

The linguistic indeterminacy of naming has made descriptions dependent upon that economy of naming. Some may wish dialectics to retain a certain power, with a footnote of replacements of symbolic significance, in order to ease the anxiety of the linguistic undecidability of the referent and to perform a political totality. The danger, however, as Derrida warns, is that “although there is no truth in itself of the sexual difference in itself, all of ontology nonetheless, with its inspection, appropriation, identification and verification of identity, has resulted in concealing, even as it presupposed it, this undecidability” (Derrida 1979: 103–5; cited in Cornell 1991: 86). Derrida calls our attention to what is at stake with respect to the appropriation of Hegelian dialectics in the form of difference as the representative. Secondly, the referent does not indicate a way of conceptualization, but indicates the existence of a supplementary understanding. The supplementary conceptualization of the referent is, according to Cornell, “to define through the concept, and more specifically the concept of essence in which the thing is understood with its own negativity—totality of identity” (1991: 181–82). This is true in the Hegelian sense of essence. Conceptualization suggests an appropriation and a reinsertion of an identity as its very determination as a concept. Derrida suggests a temporal understanding of this conceptualization, which removes the possibility of the Hegelian subject becoming an ideality of difference. Instead, discourses of difference are both always supplementary to each other and subject to displacement. Thirdly, the referent holds an essential figurative or metaphorical function as a casting character of the real. In other words, the Hegelian referent is undeniable and the engagement of the referent is unavoidable. Derrida explains the necessity of Hegelian referents and responds to a misunderstanding of his deconstruction project as nihilist in the political arena: To say for example, “deconstruction suspends reference,” that deconstruction is a way of enclosing oneself in the sign, in the “signifier,” is an enormous naivety stated in that form . . . Not only is there referent for a text, but never was it proposed that was erase effects of reference or referents. Merely that we rethink these effects of reference. I would indeed say that the referent is textual. The referent is in the text. Yet that does not exempt us from having to describe very rigorously the necessity of those referents. (1985; cited in Cornell 1991: 81–82; italics mine)

Fourthly, the notion that “the referent is textual” and “the referent is in the text” reveals the historical realities of dominance, subordination, oppression, assimilation, and marginalization, to name a few. We have learned that all texts of a subject are open to multiple interpretations and that there is no ultimate to this process of interpretation. The fact is that these historical texts are descriptions that attribute to realities of that sub-

Introduction

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ject (e.g., “the woman,” “the black,” “the indigenous people,” and “the minority”). These historical texts cannot be separated from the subject, although they cannot fully represent an essence of that subject. They are fictions and representations that ascribe facts to the subject and vice versa. We are, in fact, dependent upon referents as metaphors to come to that subject. In the political sense, the textual and metaphorical understanding of referents establishes the need for a metonymic strategy (Cornell 1991: 83). The metonymic strategy affirms the importance of that subject’s difference without assigning the practical reality of that subject. Remembering the fact that “the referent is in the text” informs us that the historical and social realities are not fictional, not simply names given and stored for the purpose of constructing political agendas. Referents as identities of a subject aim to open the space of metaphors to play and further enhance and expand the realities of that subject. The performative power of the metaphors, in fact, helps empower and unfold the truths and realities of that subject.9 Furthermore, with respect to political difference, the metonymic significance of referents suggests the existence of a maverick politics. A metonymic referent rejects authorized and dogmatic forms of historical reason. In terms of maverick politics, Derrida suggests that we think about history and difference in a revolutionary way: [A] history of paradoxical laws and non-dialectical discontinuities, a history of absolutely heterogeneous pockets, irreducible particularities, of unheard of and incalculable sexual differences; a history of women who have—centuries ago— “gone further” by stepping back with their lone dance, or who are today inventing sexual idioms at a distance from the main forum of feminist activity with a kind of reserve that does not necessarily prevent them from subscribing to the movement and even, occasionally, from becoming a militant for it. (Derrida and McDonald 1985: 167)

Derrida considers meanings of the referent and difference for their own performative importance. EDUCATION, EMPOWERMENT, AND HEGELIAN DIALECTICS The Power of Hegelian Dialectics Colin Lankshear, an educational researcher, commenting on the nature of most educational discourses, says “‘empowerment’ has become an educational buzz word par excellence” (1994: 57). When discussed in the name of empowerment, educational discourses often refer to pedagogies, programs, and policies that fight for “educational causes on behalf of disadvantaged

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Anxious Identity

groups” or are spoken about “on the grounds of social justice, equity and like ideals” (59). Disadvantage, justice, and equity are terms that have dominated a large number of discourses on empowerment, particularly in the sociology of education. For a significant number of educational discourses, the issue of empowerment is often mapped out through the Hegelian dialectical relationship in terms of questions of who (who are the disadvantaged groups, who is in control of the system), whose (whose knowledge is valued, whose needs are met by policy, whose perspective is this), and how (how can we regain our autonomy, how can we be powerful).10 There is a group of educational discourses that falls under the umbrella heading of critical theory (or critical theories) that is both mainly framed by Hegelian dialectics and addresses the previously mentioned issues. Rex Gibson, in Critical Theory and Education (1986), outlines the so-called critical theories in educational research: firstly, these discourses all begin with a concern that inquires into inequalities and injustices of education. Secondly, they focus on tracing these inequalities and injustices to their sources, showing how the status quo of an education system is maintained: why and how the disadvantaged group becomes so and injustice remains so. Thirdly, they seek or propose remedies to these injustices. Central to these explanations is an account of practices of the reproduction of inequality. Here there are four discernible themes—economics, state power, culture, and resistance—that critical theorists have identified as the main premises of subjects of reproduction and inequality. Accordingly, critical theories of education cover four major themes: (1) education and the reproduction of economic relationships, (2) education and the reproduction of state power, (3) education and cultural reproduction, and (4) theories of resistance (Gibson 1986: 46). Although Gibson’s analysis is limited to the early development of critical theories in education, Gibson nonetheless makes an interesting observation with respect to these theories. He makes the following dualist analysis: that there are discourses concerning reproduction of inequality11 and those concerning resistance to the status quo and to the dominating power.12 The dualist languages that appear as reproduction/resistance are strongly attached to conceptions of groups—in terms of an oppositional relationship. Quoting Gibson: [T]he reproduction of inequality having four common characteristics. First, that reproduction is never completely or neatly accomplished but is opposed and resisted by some groups. Second, that these groups draw upon their own culture as a resource to sustain their opposition. Third, the act of opposition itself often contributes to the reproduction of inequality. Through their resistance, the oppositional groups contribute to their own “failure.” Fourth, that within the oppositional groups values can be detected the seeds of alternative (emancipation) education.

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13

In turn, this work is drawn upon by . . . [those] who attempt to develop an encompassing critical theory of education with resistance as its central term. (1986: 59)

Understanding empowerment can prevent the possibility of producing educational agendas that are manipulative and oppressive. Lankshear (1994) cites Concha Delgado-Gaitan’s experience to show how a critical analysis of the notion of empowerment has to be dialectical in relation to those who are the subjects of the pedagogy and those who design it. In a study of the implementation of an educational program for a migrant community in California, Delgado-Gaitan resists the term empowerment as a central analytic construction because it has “been used to mean the act of showing people how to work within a system from the perspective of people in power” (Delgado-Gaitan 1990, cited in Lankshear 1994: 59–60). Dialectical communication is necessary to educational discourses and is often considered to be an ethical issue within these discourses. The failure to invite countervoices and to reach a mutual understanding is regarded as inappropriate in the decision-making process. This dialectical communication, as a form of empowerment, reflects precisely the Hegelian understanding of the Self and the Other and the notion of communicative reason. The importance of dialectical communication becomes the discernible feature in critical educational discourses, and it is also the central issue to debates within the tradition of structuralist accounts, humanism, and antihumanism. If the man is considered as the center, the transformative impulse, such discourse holds to a humanist assumption. If the structure overpowers individuals, and society basically only reproduces its status quo and existing power relations, such a discourse is generally regarded as antihumanist. Critical theory has helped our understanding of the political nature of education and literacy. Particular literacies are legitimated by particular politics. The analysis and critique of what constitutes the literacy model in schools and in societies is politics. Paulo Freire’s famous motto “Reading the word, reading the world” has made the nature of literacy as politics clear. The mission of the critical pedagogy of education at the tertiary level is valued for its good intentions: to make a better life and a healthier society for the next generation. The critical thinking/pedagogy that is key to the consolidation of critical knowledge on the intellectual level is no less significant than are the political and social movements on the parliamentary and societal levels. Central to these practices for emancipation and empowerment is the issue of difference, which takes place in any discussion. The passion of educators for politics has gone back to the founding call for academic freedom. Empowerment has manifested itself in a number of ways, from the involvement of academic endorsement of social and polit-

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Anxious Identity

ical movements all the way to the temptations for youngsters to come to tertiary educational programs and teaching degrees and contributions to communities. Yet the practices and forms of today’s tertiary study make the mission of empowering students problematic. My studies at the University of Auckland began with the knowledge and practices of critical theory with the framework as outlined previously, after I arrived in New Zealand and commenced my study at this university. With the help of critical theory, I have always thought about such questions as “What am I?” “How am I different?” and “What does this difference mean to me and to this society?” At least, I have to think about such questions as “What is education about?” “What does education mean to me?” “How has the study of education at the tertiary level empowered me or emancipated me?” “To what extent does the subject of difference make sense in the context of tertiary education?” and “What do ‘cultural differences’ mean in the genre of cultural studies?” Such questions have lead me to examine the impact of Hegelian dialectics on educational theories in the name of difference. Academic Disciplines and Western Colonization I propose to ask questions on critical theory echoing John Brenkman’s thinking on cultural studies: “Cultural studies (critical educational theory), in this its moment of ascendancy, exhibits an exuberant ignorance of itself. It takes great pride in going beyond literature, high culture, and disciplinarity. It defines itself as just this threefold transcendence. But what exactly is the practice of cultural studies [critical educational theory]” (1999: 109)? Brenkman further points out three features of cultural studies that highly resemble critical pedagogy at the tertiary level. For starters, cultural studies is literature. It exists through its journal, essays, conference papers, and books. It occupies a significant slice of contemporary print culture—though a considerably smaller one than, say, the world novel. Second, insofar as the dubious concept of high culture has a reliable meaning in our society, cultural studies—whatever aspects of culture it studies—itself belongs to “high culture.” The studies of critical pedagogy require an extraordinary level of education attainment, the apprehension of complicated academic jargons, the mastery of rarefied styles of discourse and argument, and a methodically alienated attitude toward ordinary cultural objects, practices, and experiences. It bears all the marks of the elite and specialized training on which it depends. Thirdly, as regards disciplinarity, cultural studies’ methods, topics, and discursive norms are, on inspection, narrower and more uniform. (1999: 109)

When we apply Brenkman’s first and third points, we see that critical educational theory and tertiary studies, like cultural studies, are literature.

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15

The academic pedagogy involves academic disciplines such as the lecturer’s intake, tutorial discussion, essay writing, journal publication, conference attendance, and so on. Over the last few years, a large number of discussions, essay topics, norms of analysis around issues of schooling, race relations, and racism have followed critical educational theories that are embedded within the framework of Hegelian dialectics. Secondly, like cultural studies, critical educational theory and tertiary studies are monolithic. To take forms of academic disciplines a little further, I wonder what forms are legitimate in the name of biculturalism or the celebration of cultural difference. Imagining the academic discipline as a public sphere before immigrants come to New Zealand, is there space in this public sphere that would possibly allow other disciplines to come, to be ready to communicate politically, and to change the status quo? The academic disciplines have been successful partly due to the students’ strong sense that their survival was a consequence of their working within these disciplines. In the first instance, learning how to survive in this system and how to continue to study it meant more to me. In order to get rid of my frustrations, I had to remember my family motto, which is “The basic line to win over your rivals is to show them you have mastered what they are good at.” My previous experience in Asia meant there was a conflicting encounter with the Western academic goals that had given purpose to the early stages of my studies. In order to survive within this institution, I had to make compromises when resolving these conflicts. Before I speak and before I write, I have to first make sure that I am going to survive. If not, there would be no chance to have a voice and be silent within in this political community. I was and have always been aware of this. If I wish to have a voice in the near future, I must be temporarily disciplined. If I chose not to be cooperative, I chose to be silent. It seems that I chose to be silent without being forced to do so because one of the a priori in this game is that, firstly, everyone has a basic right and is free to expose their views (if you do not talk, you give up your right). Secondly, everyone is transparent and is speaking the same language, and thus everyone understands each other. My experience of the encounter between East and West in the campus has shown up the poststructuralist notion of immeasurability. I was convinced by the argument that if you do not agree with me, it can be discussed, because discussion in the classroom means contribution. Discussion in most cases refers to the confrontation of opinions that involve analysis and critique. It is often direct and face-to-face confrontation that might seem to create discomfort and be unfamiliar for some students. Discussion in the Western way, in both oral and written situations, often refers to a deductive analysis—a thesis followed by analysis first and then a critique.13

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Anxious Identity

Writing rhetorically in the modern tertiary institution in a postcolonial context supports Said’s statement that “the extraordinary global reach of classical nineteenth and early twentieth-century European imperialism still casts a considerable shadow over our own times” (Said 1993: 4). This is equally true in the postcolonial context of New Zealand, where the colonialization of the British language, as opposed to the Maori, may lead to controversies over the aesthetic form of argumentation. This outcome is due to the little attention that is paid the study of cultural imperialism in the contemporary era. Similar comments are also found in Gayatri Spivak’s analysis of the subaltern about the legitimacy of literacy: “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (Spivak 1988). Writers are mechanically determined by the ideologies of their ethnic background, class, and gender, much more as a result of communication with their societies and histories. In most of postcolonial contexts, culture and aesthetic forms have much more influence than the proponents of cultural studies and political activists would like to see. Postcolonial culture in a general sense is shaped and reshaped by history and social experience. In this way, I should echo Said’s definitions of both imperialism and colonialization. “[I]mperialism” [is] the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory; “colonialism,” which is almost always a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of settlements on distant territory. (1993: 8)

As mentioned earlier, this book concerns arguments of political subjectivity and develops a systematic analysis of theories concerning identity construction and the recognition of difference. Each of the chapters will look at a particular subjection and elaborate the associated arguments concerned with their associated concepts of binary oppositions. In chapter 1, I shall examine Hegel’s dialectical relationship between the lord and the bondsman. I shall offer an analysis of the lord/bondsman dialectical relationship that has been developed into a relationship between the oppressors and the oppressed in Paulo Freire’s theory. Then a critical examination of this application will be offered.

CHAPTER 1

Desire, Political Consciousness, and Formative Subjectivity

INTRODUCTION This chapter examines Hegel’s notion of consciousness or self-consciousness as a fundamental Desire in human life. This examination involves a critical analysis of Desire, Hegel’s notion of consciousness, and focuses on two main arguments: firstly, that Hegelian consciousness is construed as a power of negativity, and this power turns the Hegelian subject into a labor of negativity. Secondly, that Hegelian consciousness employs a series of formative practices in the Hegelian subject’s response to its fear, which can be found in negative dialectics. This examination of Hegelian consciousness calls for a rethinking of Hegelian difference with respect to the political humanist discourses and their Hegelian conceptualizations of subject, agency, and practices. The Hegelian notion of consciousness has been applied in political discourses: the power of negativity has been played out in a strategy for analyzing dialectical relations, in claiming equity and justice, and in seeking emancipation, liberation, and freedom. My analysis of Hegelian consciousness generates a critical concern: that Hegelian political consciousness (such as notions of agency and practice) is a myth in the sense that the Hegelian resolution of freedom is a project of self-enslavement, given the fact that the Hegelian consciousness entails a labor of negativity (Butler 1997). This chapter begins with a brief analysis of the power of negativity of Hegelian consciousness. The power of negativity is further demonstrated by Paulo Freire’s political discourse, these being supplementary explanations to the Hegelian political consciousness. Later in this chapter, another inquiry of the Hegelian consciousness, the theory of formative subjectiv-

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ity, is examined. This is followed by a reexamination of Paulo Freire’s political discourse. THE DESIRE OF CONSCIOUSNESS In Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel claims that “self-consciousness in general is Desire” (Hegel 1979: 105). Self-consciousness comes from an absolute mediation of the subject (“I”) as the subject’s fundamental Desire. The absolute mediation as Desire is initiated by an immediate reflection of the subject as an undifferentiated I, which is followed by another reflective act by the I into itself. Thus this absolute mediation involves a double reflection of the subject: an immediate projection of I as an independent object and a supersession of the independent object. This characteristic of self-consciousness as a double reflection shows itself in a sequential relation of self-consciousness because the supersession of the independent object is a self-reflection of the subject’s first immediate reflection. This double reflection is, in nature, a process of the subject’s self-reflexivity. It is Hegel’s belief that through this double reflection of Desire, the subject reaches its certainty and positivity. The practice of achieving a subject’s positivity is the Hegelian way of conceptualizing subjectivity; it is the basis for the Hegelian notion of autonomy. Hegel explains the notion of self-consciousness: The notion of self-consciousness is only completed in these three moments: (a) the pure undifferentiated “I” is its first immediate object. (b) But this immediacy is itself an absolute mediation, it is only as a supersession of “the independent object,” in other words, it is Desire. The satisfaction of Desire is, it is true, the reflection of self-consciousness into itself, or the certainty that has become truth. (c) But the truth of this certainty is really a double reflection, the duplication of self-consciousness. Consciousness has for its object one, which of its own self, posits its otherness or difference as a nothingness, and in so doing is independent. (1979: 110)

Hegel’s theory of self-consciousness is a philosophy of negativity. The nature of self-consciousness is absolute negation, and the double reflection of Desire is a double negation. This first negation is found in the subject’s negative relation to the independent object. At heart, this negation is the basic requirement for becoming other than itself, in order to know itself (Butler 1987: 6–7). In the process of the subject’s self-realization, this independent object is projected as an entity, as the Other. This further calls for the subject’s supersession or substitution. The second negation thus arises in the subject’s supersession of the object. The subject depends upon this second negation in order to fulfill the satisfaction of Desire. In fact, the subject is conditioned by the other because the subject’s “self-certainty comes from superseding this other” (Hegel 1979: 109).1 The object is taken as the Otherness or difference to the subject, and by doing so, the subject realizes itself and becomes independent. The process of this self-reflexivity is

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dependent upon activities of the subject’s dialectic with the Other. This dialectical relationship between the subject and the Other becomes the fundamental discourse that has been carried out in definitions of identity and difference in Hegelian theories. Identity, which first appears as an immediate subject, is achieved through the subject’s reflection on the independent object—that is, through identifying the Otherness or differences to itself. Desire suggests an application of pursuing difference and the Otherness to the subject, as negation is the basic principle. This notion of difference thus implies “a lack and a being-without” as something “different, strange, novel, awaited, absent and lost to the subject” (Butler 1987: 9). The relationship of identity and difference consists of a relationship of ontological difference, in a relationship of what I have and what I do not have. Thus, the existence of being is caught in a series of ontological differences. The ontological difference of identity and difference has been the base for the Same or the Other in Hegelian discourses. The ontological relationship of identity and difference, or the Same and the Other, is also seen in Hegelian political discourses and is applied in dualist hypotheses such as right/wrong, male/female, friend/ enemy, domination/resistance, and the oppressors/the oppressed. The double reflection of self-consciousness reveals a closure of the mechanism of self-reflexivity. Firstly, the double reflection exposes a mutual dependence on two aspects of self-consciousness: the significance of the independent object is subject to the subject’s Desire of supersession, and for the satisfaction of supersession, there ought to be an independent object. This mutual dependence of the independent object and the subject further suggests a mutual dependence of the definitions of the Same and the Other or identity and difference. This mutual dependence suggests the closure of the definitions of identity and difference. There is a mediation mechanism involving the subject’s search for the object. The subject requires this mechanism (as a reflective metaphysical structure or as a metaphysical place) to be reflected upon for the defining of Otherness, difference, and itself. This metaphysical structure is set up by the subject with the basic requirement of obtaining the independent object—that is, to be the Otherness or difference to the subject. In other words, the metaphysical place is maintained due to its capacity to define the Otherness (in relation to the Same) or difference (in relation to identity). The definitions of the Same and the Other or identity and difference are internally related; they are mutually defined; and they are caught in the relationship of binary opposition, the Same/the Other and identity/difference. Hegel has also expressed that Only [the internal relationship of the Same and the Other] is it in fact selfconsciousness; for only in this way does the unity of itself in its otherness become explicit for it. The “I” which is “the object” of its Notion is in fact not “object”; “the object” of Desire, however, is only independent, for it is the universal indestructi-

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ble substance, the fluid self-identical essence. A self-consciousness, in being an object, is just as much “I” as “object.” (Hegel 1979: 110)

This internal relatedness of the Same and the Other suggests that the Hegelian way of defining identity/difference can be see in an ontological rupture within the subject’s metaphysical structure of self-reflexivity. In the journey of Desire, the metaphysical structure reveals itself as a priori, in which the Hegelian subject finds nothing other than its relation to itself. The Hegelian economy of identity/difference already presupposes and articulates an ontological relatedness as the same and its binary counterpart. The metaphysical structure that conditions the Hegelian subject for reflection contains a homogenous relationship as the ontological relatedness of identity and difference, which suggests nothing other than the subject itself. From Jean Hyppolite’s point of view, the Hegelian philosophy of negativity signifies the power of “the negative in human life” (cited in Butler 1987: 9). Gilles Deleuze further asserts the existence of negative doctrines, including (1) “the idea of power of the negative as a theoretical principle manifested in opposition and contradiction”; (2) “the idea that suffering and sadness have value, the valorisation of the ‘sad passions’, as a practical principle manifested in splitting and tearing apart”; and (3) the idea of positivity as a theoretical principle and practical product of negation itself (Deleuze 1983: 194–95; cited in Peters 1995: 40). The power of negativity becomes the labor of negativity for the Hegelian subject. Because of negation, the Hegelian subject always looks for a lack or a being-without. Because of negation, there is no final accomplishment with respect to the satisfaction of Desire. Self-consciousness as Desire of the double negation becomes the drive for the Hegelian subject to seek a lack and to transform difference into identity. For the Hegelian autonomous subject, being consciousness, is supposed to be achieved “only when the subject discovers itself” through a reflection “in and by those ostensibly external phenomena” (Butler 1987: 8). Desire becomes the capacity to thematize external problems. The power of negativity in human life is conditioned by applications of a lack, which the subject is in pursuit of for the purpose of constructing an identity. The subject is controlled by a constant pursuit of what is Other to itself, and through this constant pursuit, the subject is able to cultivate a more expanded conception of its place. This travel in the search of identity thus highlights the labor that the subject attaches to the power of negativity. POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS: PAULO FREIRE, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND HUMANIZATION Freire’s critical pedagogy is a landmark in education research. Freire’s critical pedagogy, known as the pedagogy of the oppressed, engages the critical analyses of oppression, humanization, and dehumanization and seeks

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a resolution of freedom and emancipation for the oppressed. These political analyses and strategies are developed closely with Freire’s theory of consciousness. Consciousness, Freire explains, “is constituted in the dialectic of man’s objection of and action upon the world,” and consciousness “is never a mere reflection of, but a reflection upon, material reality” (Freire 1998b: 500). For Freire, therefore, man’s consciousness relies on man’s reflection of the world or, more precisely, the analysis of material reality. This doctrine of consciousness also accounts for Freire’s wellknown educational concept, conscientization, which highlights a political movement toward a self-liberation of the oppressed. Freire’s fundamental political base, the concept of the man/world relationship, is argued in the form of an amalgamation of Marxist and Sartrean theories2 (Aronowitz 1993). Freire follows Marx’s Feuerbachean materialist approach and believes that any practice pursued by humans should be understood within its condition, and any problem that arises from these practices should be addressed within that community and solved by the people involved.3 Sartre describes the existence of a mutually dependent relationship between man and the world—the structure of the world is construed of and through human experiences, and human experience is shaped by practices of the world. Like Sartre, Freire argues that the oppressed are not marginals and not those living outside society because “marginality is not by choice [and] marginal man has been expelled from and kept outside of the social system and is therefore the object of violence” (Freire 1998a: 484). Pedagogy as a practice of the world may function either to contribute to the reality of oppression or to transform that reality. If pedagogy sustains and embodies oppression, it is an instrument of dehumanization; on the other hand, if pedagogy defeats oppression, it is a pedagogy critical of humanization (Freire 1972). Because of the mutual dependence in the man/world relationship, the pedagogy of humanization, as a practice, relies on man’s efforts, as “[the alienated men] cannot overcome their dependency by ‘incorporation’ into the very structure responsible for their dependency” (Freire 1998a: 485). That is, “[there is] no other road to humanization—theirs as well as everyone else’s—but authentic transformation of the dehumanizing structure” (Freire 1998a: 485). Furthermore, critical pedagogy exemplifies man’s consciousness as his or her “ontological vocation” to become fully human. The critical pedagogy embodies man’s ontological vocation through existential experience, and Freire believes that man can humanize the world through critical pedagogy, as he argues that “[f]or men, as beings of praxis, to transform the world is to humanise it, even if making the world human may not yet signify the humanisation of men” (Freire 1998b: 501). Critical pedagogy as a pedagogy of humanization would appear to be a realm option if man were to intensively operate his or her existential expe-

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rience and ontological vocation and if he or she were willing to choose to embrace critical pedagogy.4 For instance, Freire argues, “[t]hey may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human” (Freire 1972; cited in Aronowitz 1993: 13). Moreover, “[i]f men are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanisation, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them and then engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation.” The notion of being-for-themselves appears to be consciousness for the man regardless of whether one belongs to the group of the oppressed or to that of the oppressors, as it is an exercise of man’s ontological vocation. The notion of becoming fully human becomes a universal claim of truth. It is this claim that critical pedagogy intends should unlock the intrinsic humanity of the oppressed. The notion of being fully human allows Freire’s critical pedagogy to justify itself with respect to its self-liberation aims in relation to its revolutionary project of humanization. Freire regards the ontological vocation as transparent simply because being fully human is generic with a genuine political interest in the oppressed. This belief denies the possibility of contradictory political interests within different groups. The notion of becoming fully human—man’s ontological vocation— becomes an ethical norm. It is through this ethical norm that both the oppressors and the oppressed ought to liberate humanity. It is this ethical norm that helps man make choices to behave righteously. It is also this ethical norm that provides critical pedagogy with the obligation to analytically critique the conflicts that characterize the material conditions of man’s existence. This ethical norm, in turn, underpins Freire’s Marxist approach to analyzing the relationship of the oppressors and the oppressed as necessary to our understanding of critical pedagogy. Freire’s discussion of critical pedagogy suggests that being-for-themselves is a political gesture designated only for the oppressed. Freire assumes that oppression to be a reality or a condition of the world and that this is the result of a dehumanized pedagogy of the anterior period, a period characterized by an imposition by the oppressors of a (false) pedagogy upon the oppressed, making the latter the object of that pedagogy. Critical pedagogy is deployed across the binary of the oppressors/the oppressed according to their distinctive interests. For this reason, Aronowitz suggests that critical pedagogy is like a Marxist project where “the revolution’s aim is to transform what Frantz Fanon terms ‘the wretched of the earth’ from ‘beings for others’ to ‘beings for themselves’ ” (Aronowitz 1993: 13). The significance of beings for themselves is revealed in the political consciousness of the oppressed—a meaning located in the dialect the oppressed experience in the structure and with the imaginary oppressor. Freire has been criticized for his universal assumption that man may be divided up into the oppressors and the oppressed. Feminist theorists chal-

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lenged Freire’s initial formation of his concept of oppression, stating that was is conceived in class terms and that education was viewed in the context of the experience of peasants and the revolutionary struggle of working people (Aronowitz 1993; Weiler 1991). By assuming a class relation, Freire further claims a male referent framework for the idea of the oppressed and in doing so ignores other possible associations that might conform to the binary of the oppressors and the oppressed, such as the man/woman relationship and the black/white relationship. Freire tends not to recognize the tendency for the coexistence of the oppressed and the sub-oppressor (Weiler 1991: 453). Freire’s reason is that “the oppressed have only the pattern of oppression before them as a way of being in a position other than the one they are in.” Moreover, “their ideal is to be man; but for them, to be man is to be oppressor, this is their model of humanity.” Thus, the ethical norm of the oppressed—to be fully human—is, ironically, modeled on and identical to that of the oppressors. Weiler explains: What is troubling here is not that “men” [are] used [as] human beings, but that the model of oppressor implied here is based on the immediate oppressor of men—in this case, bosses over peasants or workers. What is not addressed is the possibility of simultaneous contradictory positions of oppression and dominance: the man oppressed by his boss could at the same time oppress his wife, for example, or the White woman oppressed by sexism could exploit the Black woman.

Given the feminist critique of Freire, which argues that men are privileged in the term the oppressed, Freire’s theory of humanization (i.e., the humanist practice) is also universal and disregards various definitions ascribed by various groups of people who are not comfortable with Freire’s interpretation of the binary oppressor/oppressed. For Freire, the experience (of being oppressed) is the key to end oppression. The ideal of a Freirean critical pedagogy is to enhance the subject’s knowledge of reading the world as something based upon his or her own experience. Critiques of Freire’s assumption about universal experiences of oppression include Freire’s misconceptions of “uniform for the oppressed” (Weiler 1991: 453), “totalising narratives and binarisms that de-emphasise the mutually contradictory and multiple character of domination and struggle” (Giroux 1993: 180), and the “forced unity of the subject which neglect, negates, the Other” (Peters and Marshall 1991: 126). In the following passage, I discuss Hegel’s notion of consciousness in relation to formative activities. My understanding and argument are heavily dependent upon Judith Butler’s analysis of consciousness in Hegel’s thesis—an analysis illustrated in her book The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (1997).

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CONSCIOUSNESS AND FORMATIVE SUBJECTIVITY Judith Butler (1997) argues that Hegel’s notion of consciousness suggests a formative subjectivity. The meaning of formative implies the existence of practices, of the bondsman’s bodily experiences that are caught solely in an imaginary relationship with the lord. In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the notion of consciousness or self-consciousness in fact refers to “a kind of selfrecognition,” “a fear of expropriation,” “a life-and-death battle,” “a selfterrorising reflexivity,” and “a stubborn attachment to ethical imperative” (Hegel 1979: 117–31). To argue that Hegel’s discussion of consciousness is formative is possible because the experiences of the bondsman are formative in response to the bondsman’s bodily life in relation to the lord. This world of split psyche as embodied in the relationship of the lord and the bondsman relates to distinctive aspects of Hegel’s conceptualization of consciousness, which itself is engaged in a process of self-subjection. I would suggest this concept of consciousness is, in fact, a way of self-subjection that results from formative activities, meaning the formative subjectivity of the bondman. This formative subjectivity also speaks to my understanding of the Hegelian conceptualization of negation, which is interpreted to be consciousness by a large number of scholars. Hegel, in Phenomenology of Spirit, has the following words about selfconsciousness: 194. We have seen what servitude is only in relation to lordship. But it is a self-consciousness, and we have now to consider what as such it is in and for itself. To begin with, servitude has the lord for its essential reality; hence the truth for it is the independence consciousness that is for itself. However, servitude is not yet aware that this truth is implicit in it. But it does in fact contain within itself this truth of pure negativity and being-for-self, for it has experienced this its own essential nature. For this consciousness has been fearful, not of this or that particular thing or just at odd moments, but its whole being has been seized with dread; for it has experienced the fear of death, the absolute Lord. In that experience it has been quite unmanned, has trembled in every fibre of its being, and everything solid and stable has been shaken to its foundation. But this pure universal movement, the absolute melting-away of everything stable, is the simple, essential nature of self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure being-for-self, which consequently is implicit in this consciousness. This moment of pure being-for-itself is also explicit for the bondsman, for in the lord it exists for him as his object. Furthermore, his consciousness is not this dissolution of everything stable merely in principle; in his service he actually brings this about. Through his service he rids himself of his attachment to natural existence in every single detail; and gets rid of it by working on it. 195. . . . Through work, however, the bondsman becomes conscious of what he truly is . . . Work, on the other hand, is desire held in check, fleetingness starved off; in other words, work forms and shapes the thing. The negative relation to the

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object becomes its form and something permanent, because it is precisely for the work that the object has independence. This negative middle term or the formative activity is at the same time the individuality or pure being-for-self of consciousness which now, in the work outside of it, acquires an element of permanence. It is in this way, therefore, that consciousness, qua worker, comes to see in the independent being [of the object] its own independence. (1979: 117–18)

Hegel explains that the essential reality for the bondsman lies in his relationship to the lord. It is this reality that accounts for the bondsman’s independent consciousness. This reality is a truth that may have been carried out with or without the bondsman’s awareness. He may not know, but he has experienced it. The whole process of the bondsman’s engagement is the experience in itself (the experience of being a bondsman), and the bondsman’s realization of himself depends solely upon his own experiences. In other words, the bondsman lives his experience, and these experiences, as Hegel would argue, have the purpose for the bondsman of transforming the experience of being-in-self to one of being-for-self. This essential nature of self-consciousness is one of an absolute negativity and a pure being-for-self. Hegel explains, however, that the experiences of the bondsman are realized either through an awareness or are otherwise subject to a process of realization that is dreadful. The bondsman’s experiences consist of a series of experiences that involve fear. This fear could range from the fear of being expropriated, to a fear of death, and even to the fear of the “absolute lord.” From the beginning, the bondsman has already worked for the lord as a substitution for the lord—in the form of the lord’s body to fulfill the lord’s Desire. The bondsman’s work and products never belong to the bondsman; they are already expropriated prior to any possibility of giving them away. Thus, practices that are embedded in this relationship between the lord and the bondsman are meant to be understood as formative of/for the bondsman—the products the bondsman produces are also formative of the object itself. The bondsman’s labor is formatively engaged in fulfilling both the essential reality of the bondsman and Desire of the lord. The bondsman may not realize the formative nature of his activities in this general sense, but he does become aware of his significance through his work. Whenever working, the bondsman has opportunities whereby he can become self-conscious. Firstly, he can become aware of his own signature on the things that he makes; the artifacts and crafts are the marking of the bondsman’s recognition of his labor. These markings are a confirmation of the bondsman’s labor and his formative activities. Despite the fact that these markings belong to the lord from the start, their meaning is nevertheless reflected back upon the bondsman as his labor, especially when such products, as witnesses of his formative activity, are going to be given away to the lord. His self-consciousness first appears as the bonds-

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man’s recognition of his signature, and this represents an ownership of his labor in the contract he has with the lord. But later, the bondsman’s self-recognition, self-consciousness, is transformed into an experience of absolute fear. Being aware of his own signature only forms a positive sense of consciousness when he gains a sense of his existence because it accounts for only a part of that reality that is his pure being-for-self. As the formative activity develops, the bondsman necessarily has fearful experiences. These fears come as a consequence of the very forfeiture of the signature and the threat to autonomy, as this formative activity, in its nature, leads to an expropriation in the relationship between the bondsman and the lord. It is not an exaggeration to say that the absolute fear works as the primary impetus of the bondsman’s behavior in all circumstances and that it contributes in a significant part to both the formative practice and the process of the development of self-consciousness. This absolute fear is explained by Hegel in the following terms: 196. But the formative activity has not only this positive significance that in it the pure being-for-self of the servile consciousness acquires an existence; it also has, in contrast with its first moment, the negative significance of fear. For, in fashioning the thing, the bondsman’s own negativity, his being-for-self, becomes an object for him only through his setting at nought the existing shape confronting him. But this objective negative moment is none other than the alien being before which it has trembled . . . [I]n fear, the being-for-self is present in the bondsman himself; in fashioning the thing, he becomes aware that being-for-self belongs to him, that he himself exists essentially and actually in his own right. (1979: 119)

Work helps to reveal the negative sense of the bondsman’s consciousness, and it is through work that the bondsman discovers what the truth is—that he experiences his existence as one of alienation. This leads him to understand that he requires a mind of his own if he is to endure his life in the relationship. Work provides the bondsman with an experience of selfreflexivity, and the absolute fear that accompanies this work experience reinforces the bondsman’s Desire to work on creating objects that might reflect the significance of his being. In the context mentioned previously, the absolute fear of expropriation provides the bondsman with the reflective possibility of understanding the being of himself. The bondsman forms himself as a producer of permanent things. It is the bondsman’s hope that through service he can rid himself of his attachment to the natural existence and regain his autonomy. He believes he can regain his autonomy through work. In other words, work shapes and forms the bondsman’s activities and contributes the formative activities that lead to the bondsman’s consciousness. The absolute fear helps Hegel to highlight the importance of formative activity in the process by which self-consciousness is developed. Hegel

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argues that “if consciousness fashions the thing without that initial fear, it is only an empty self-centred attitude, for its form or negativity is not negativity per se, and therefore its formative activity cannot give it a consciousness of itself as essential being” (1979: 119). Yet the absolute fear, work, and formative activity are intertwined in self-consciousness. For Hegel, these notions should be understood at the same time to be in a universal mode. After all, Hegel argues, “without the discipline of service and obedience, fear remains at the formal stage and does not extend to the known real world of existence.” Also, “without the formative activity, fear remains inward and mute and consciousness does not become explicitly for itself.” This reflective understanding of consciousness is indeed formatively self-terrorizing. Hegel conceptualizes a more strict sense of consciousness by which the understanding of consciousness can be seen as having shifted from the bondsman’s servitude into the notion of there being an unhappy consciousness that comes about as a result of the bondsman’s self-reflexivity. It is a life-and-death battle in the sense that it is a battle that requires an overturning of bodily death to a mode of living. The bondsman initially substitutes the lord in that he provides his body in the place of the lord’s, yet that body, embodied as an instrument of labor, is a transient object and subject to death. The bondsman recognizes the limit of this formative capacity and thus engages in a movement where the absolute fear is allayed through a resolution and reconciled to a stubbornness, smugness, or religious contentment of a certain mode of living. Butler explains that “terror is allayed through a resolution of stubbornness or, rather, through the action by which terror of bodily death is displaced by a smugness and stubbornness that . . . is revalued as religious selfrighteousness” (Butler 1997: 42). Hegel’s strict sense of consciousness, unhappy consciousness, thus emerges as a solution, transformation, or sublimeness to that absolute fear as bodily death. This movement is a reflection of the self-terrorizing fact of reflexivity. Butler (1997) also suggests that the Hegelian consciousness suppresses the bodily life of the bondsman. In fact, the bodily experiences of the bondsman have been transformed into the psyche of the latter for the purpose of a disavowal of his servitude status. A suppression of bodily life is required in the Hegelian unhappy consciousness, where the body “is preserved in and by the very act of suppression” (57). The body is no longer an external instrument of labor, but an alterity, which is interior to the psyche in the form of an interior alien and which the unhappy consciousness must forever disavow. As the Hegelian consciousness suggests a stubbornness of attachment to the discourse of self-terrorizing reflexivity, to preserve this bodily experience requires an ethical regulation. Within the Hegelian framework of psychic self-terrorizing stubbornness that belongs to the bondsman, the bodily experience or impulse that has to be negated

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is itself accidentally maintained through that very action of negation. In terms of political practice, this bodily experience or impulse becomes “the focus and aim of [the] impulse itself,” if only to serve to sustain an ideal subject position (57–58). For most scholars, the Hegelian double negativity is often interpreted as a movement of double negation: the first negation refers to a negative dialectic towards the lord, and the bondsman is the oppressed, the disadvantaged, and the negative to the lord. The second negation is interpreted as involving a movement of overturning the first negation, the servitude status. It is through this conception of the double negativity that the meaning of the subversion of the oppressed is captured. However, I would argue that such an interpretation ignores the formative process in the dialectical relationship that exists between the lord and the bondsman. The first negation is in fact the absolute fear that results from the dialectical relationship between these two psyches, while the second negation suggests a flight away from this absolute fear by either a stubbornness and an attachment to servitude or by a defensive mechanism that works against the absolute fear. Absolute fear allows Hegel to highlight the importance of formative practice in understanding self-consciousness. Hegel’s strict sense of unhappy consciousness in fact indicates an attachment to the absolute fear, and, as such, this unhappy consciousness clings to that absolute fear by way of a response. The absolute fear, as suggested previously, refers to a disavowal of the bondsman’s body, the latter being that which contributed to the bondsman’s terror of death. The effectiveness of consciousness is consistent with the force of absolute fear. The stronger the absolute fear is, the more powerful self-consciousness is. Consciousness thus requires and engages the absolute fear by invoking imperatives—that is, ethical norms. Butler explains the consequence of this defense against the absolute fear: “Its fear is allayed by legislating an ethical norm. Hence, the imperative to cling to oneself is motivated by this absolute fear and by the need to refuse that fear. In as much as it is an ethical injunction, this imperative is the disarticulated refusal of absolute fear” (1997: 43). As consciousness is engaged in an interpretation of ethical norms, the absolute fear is shrewdly elevated as an ethical impulse and, more precisely, as a fabrication of norms. This fabrication of norms emerges as a refusal, a way out of the absolute fear, and in turn, it comprises ethical norms by which the bondsman must abide. Interestingly, as Butler explains, “the [bondsman] is subordinate to [ethical] norms and norms are subjectivating” (1997: 43). In other words, “[the ethical norms] give an ethical shape to the reflexivity of this emerging subject.” The Desire of the bondsman, as a self-reflexivity with references of historical and political significance, is indeed a form of self-subjection and self-enslavement constituted by ethical norms. Butler explains:

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The subjection that takes place under the sign of the ethical is a flight from fear, and so is constituted as a kind of flight and denial, a fearful flight from fear that covers its fear first with stubbornness and then with religious self-righteousness. The more absolute the ethical imperative becomes, the more stubborn or eigensinnig the enforcement of its law, the more the absoluteness of the motivating fear is at once articulated and refused.

Hegel further introduces and evaluates three forms of thought as forms of self-consciousness: stoicism, skepticism, and devotion5 (1979: 121–31). These three forms of thought are examples of the pure mental exercise of unhappy consciousness in the history of spirit. A common feature of these three thoughts is a focus on “a being that thinks” (121). The principle of stoicism is that consciousness “holds something to be essentially important, or true and good only [if] it thinks it to be such” (121). Since the meaning of existence has to be subject to a thought, it is both a subjective and rational existence that is acceptable for stoicism. This focus puts the subject into an ambivalent situation. It has to either deny its form in relation to its material existence per se, or it has to underscore the very positivity of the self that it seeks to deny. It is because the very act of conceptualization (i.e., negation) requires a position that such a negation takes place. In brief, skepticism, like stoicism, focuses on the act of thought, though in such a manner that it sustains a skeptical attitude in relation to all thought. In other words, the skeptic believes that consciousness comes from negating all forms of thought that themselves require skepticism. While the thrust of this attitude might enable skepticism to achieve its positivity or pleasure, skepticism nevertheless has to be grounded to be conscious, and in order to be a thought, it has to be certain about itself when it is confronted by another thought. This ground is, ironically, contradictory to skepticism’s fundamental ground—an attitude toward any form of thought. Devotion suggests an act that neutralizes the body in the service of a pure thought—it suggests a certain unchangeable thought or belief. Hegel identifies the possible characteristics of the notion of an unchangeable thought in the following manner: “its thinking is no more than the chaotic jingling of bells, or a mist of warm incest, a musical thinking that does not get as far as the Notion, which would be the sole, immanent objective mode of thought” (1979: 131). While the original idea of devotion seeks transcendental and universal forms of thought, its purpose turns out to be one that is complicated and almost impossible to fulfill. In the end, devotion entrenches the body in a state where it is prevented from being accessed by other purposes. It is ironic that the body turns out to have an unchangeable purpose, rather than any being host to the pure thought, as the notion of devotion it initially designated.

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EXAMINING PAULO FREIRE This section aims to examine Freire’s theory on consciousness as a revolutionary project. It will be argued that Freire’s resolution of freedom, liberation, and emancipation of the oppressed is a project of self-enslavement. My examination of Freire’s discourse of self-liberation mainly focuses on his concept of the structural perception. The structural perception emerges as a critical analysis of oppressive structures and realities. It further entails the absolute fear of the oppressed, which highlights a clinging gesture on the part of the oppressed to an unhappy consciousness. This clinging is expressed in two ways: it encompasses a servitude status in relation to the oppressors, and it involves an urgent refusal of that bodily experience (servitude). The analysis of the absolute fear of the oppressed mainly serves to reinforce the analysis of this clinging gesture and, in so doing, provides a preliminary explanation of the self-terrorizing reflexivity of the oppressed. This examination will be followed by an examination of critical pedagogy as of formative activities of the clinging gesture referred to previously. Thus, self-enslavement refers to a technology of self, an investment in the circulation of certain discourses on subject positions. That is to say, the subject position of the oppressed emerges from a critical analysis of selfliberation and is followed by a series of investments on that particular form of subject position. For Freire, notions related to being fully human and being critical are subjectivating notions. These notions further become ethical norms; the rule is used in operating upon the oppressed through educational practices. Knowledge and institutional practices go hand in hand—they are circulated, maintained, and bound by these ethical rules. The oppressed thus rely on this subject position and are themselves subjected to these ethical norms through self-reflexivity. This consists of a technology of self-enslavement because ethical rules solely result from the ontological status (being the slave) of the oppressed and the oppressors. For Freire, structural perception is a key concept in both construing his man/world relationship and in distinguishing different phases of conscientization. Freire’s notion of structural perception principally implies the use of a critical perspective on the relationship of the oppressors and the oppressed—that is, an analysis of oppression. Structural perception has emerged as a feature of man’s reflective intellect, something that can be seen in the self-reflexivity of the oppressed. Structural perception provides man with both a critical reflection of the world and an understanding of his significance in the historical and physical context. Freire argues that “[t]he reflectiveness and finality of man’s relationships with the world would not be possible if these relationships did not occur in a historical as well as physical context” (1998b: 502). This man/world relationship explains Freire’s critical pedagogy as a method that liberates the

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oppressed as a historical subject. Structural perception suggests that critical pedagogy should be developed within a praxis that entails critical perspectives of knowledge to produce self-directed actions (Aronowitz 1993). In terms of pedagogy, instead of simply being a feature of man, structural perception becomes a skill that has to be brought in and developed in the oppressed so that they themselves might analyze realities of oppression. Freire has introduced three phases of consciousness—semi-intransitive, naive-transitive, and critical consciousness. Structural perception is the basic characteristic of critical consciousness. Semi-intransitive consciousness is both historically and socially structured and conditioned; it is quasi-adherent to objective reality or quasi-immersed in reality. Accordingly, semiconsciousness shows that it fails “to perceive many of reality’s challenges and cannot objectify the facts and problematical situations of daily life” (Freire 1998b: 506). On appearance, naive-transitive consciousness is not much different from semi-intransitive consciousness. For most situations, semi-intransitive consciousness stays on in its state of naivetransitive consciousness; yet naive-transitive consciousness is justified by the phenomenon of emergence that results in structural transformations in society. Unlike semi-intransitive consciousness, naive-transitive consciousness is able to sense ruptures in myths, contradictions, and the alienation of social structures, with a potential to further develop critical consciousness. However, to some degree, both semi-transitive and naivetransitive consciousness exhibit the lack of a proper and well-developed structural perception that is required in critical consciousness. Freire explains, in relation to the features of man that lack structural perception: Men whose consciousness exists at this level of quasi-immersion lack what we call “structural perception,” which shapes and reshapes itself from concrete reality in the apprehension of facts and problematical situations. Lacking structural perception, men attribute the sources of such facts and situations in their lives either to some super-reality or to something within themselves; in either case to something outside objective reality. (1998b: 506)

Freire also argues the importance of structural perception in his theory of conscientization when he argues that “there can be no conscientization without denunciation of unjust structures” (1998b: 514). It is often seen in Freire’s works that structural perception is accompanied by expressions such as “a radical denunciation of dehumanising structures” and “the proclamation of a new reality to be created by men.” Conscientization implies the will to overcome false consciousness as a result of reflection upon the world. Structural perception refers to a kind of ability that a conscienticized person would possess in order to investigate demythologized realities. Both the analysis of oppression and the structural perception of oppression actually reveal in Freire’s discourse what Hegel calls the absolute fear.

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It will be argued here that absolute fear functions to replace the oppressors and becomes the central factor in Freire’s theory of critical consciousness. In other words, this fear is what the oppressed aim to overcome. This absolute fear is what the pedagogy of the oppressed aims to defeat. The response of the oppressed to this absolute fear not only relates to the oppressor’s condition of material existence in terms of ownership and the control of labor, but it also operates in the psychosocial sphere of lordship/bondage relations. The examination of cultural-history reality as an analysis of oppression has brought the absolute fear to the consciousness of the oppressed. Significantly, structural perception is not involved in the analysis in the form of the lord/bondsman dialectic, but in the form of the superstructure/infrastructure dialectic.6 This new structural dialectic suggests a dimension of the absolute fear in the form of a replacement and transformation of the authority of the oppressors. A preliminary argument is put for a further development of consciousness; as Freire says, “to understand the levels of consciousness, we must understand cultural-historical reality as a superstructure in relation to an infrastructure . . . and [we must] discern the fundamental characteristics of the historical-cultural configuration to which such levels correspond” (1998b: 502–3). The absolute fear then appears as a culture of silence that Freire considers to be the first instance that leads to consciousness. “This mode of culture is a superstructure [that] expresses [and] conditions a special form of consciousness. The culture of silence ‘over-determines’ the infrastructure in which it originates” (503). Furthermore, the emphasis on transforming infrastructure and on changing the culture of silence causes Freire to decenter man in the instance of overcoming oppression. Freire says, “it is true that the infrastructure, created in the relations by which the work of man transforms the world, gives rise to superstructure. But it is also true that the latter, mediated by man, who introject[s] its myths, turns upon the infrastructure and ‘overdetermines’ it. If it were not for the dynamic of these precarious relationships, [within] which man exist[s] and work[s] in [this] world, we could speak neither of social structure, nor of man, nor of a human world” (1998b: 503). The absolute fear is, again, therefore shown to be a major component in the discourses of oppression, which dominate discourses on the dialectical relationship between the two groups that have been symbolically named: the oppressors and the oppressed. The analysis of the infrastructure also brings about Freire’s absolute fear as a fear of both material and cultural expropriation. In the course of admitting his concern in relation to the power exercised by the dominated,7 Freire illustrates his fear of practices such as those of cultural myths, values, and the lifestyle of the dominator (the metropolitan society). The absolute fear further includes “the duality of the dependent society, its ambiguity, its being and not being itself, and the ambivalence

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characteristic of its long experience of dependency, both attracted by and rejecting the metropolitan society” (Freire 1998b: 504). The unequal power relation in the domain of ideology practices also reveals Freire’s fear that “the resultant superstructure, therefore, reflects the inauthenticity of the infrastructure. Whereas the metropolis can absorb its ideological crises through mechanisms of economic power and a highly developed technology, the dependent structure is too weak to support the slightest manifestation by the popular manifestation. This accounts for the frequent rigidity of the dependent structure.” The dialectical relationship between the oppressors and the oppressed is thus supported by the absolute fear in the language of realities of oppression. In relation to the context and background that Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed mainly addresses—Latin American society—Freire has demonstrated the existence of even more diverse aspects pertaining to the absolute fear: Latin American societies are closed societies characterized by a rigid hierarchical social structure; by the lack of internal markets, since their economy is controlled from the outside; by the exportation of raw materials and importation of manufactured goods, without a voice in either process; by a precarious and selective educational system whose schools are an instrument of maintaining the status quo; by high percentages of illiteracy and disease, including the naively named “tropical diseases” that are really diseases of underdevelopment and dependence; by alarming rates of infant mortality; by malnutrition, often with irreparable effects on mental faculties; by a low life expectancy; and by a high rate of crime. (1998b: 505)

The importance of structural perception in the consciousness of the oppressed does not necessarily suggest that a liberation project could be directed at negating its counterpart, the oppressors, despite the fact that the framework of structural perception is subject to the dialectical relationship of the oppressors/the oppressed. However, it is the absolute fear that the revolutionary project of the oppressed is targeted as a result of a stubborn attachment to discourses of oppression. Freire occasionally points out different forms of the oppressor, including the metropolis itself (or metropolitan society), the dominator, the class, and those who control the resources. Freire’s revolutionary project for developing the bondsman’s word and literacy-action is no more than a project to overcome oppressive and dehumanizing structures. Revolutionary action only comes from the reflection and analysis of oppression—that is, the absolute fear. The absolute fear both affirms the need for and requires a Hegelian dialectic analysis of oppression. It further calls for consciousness raising of the oppressed with respect to their politics, in the form of both its embodiment in a pedagogy and also as a Hegelian solution for freedom.

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Political consciousness is the structural perception in Freire’s discourse. The development of structural perception is indeed no more than the realization of oppression and realization of the status of the oppressed in social, economic, and political structures.8 The discourse of the absolute fear in Freire’s analysis of oppression undoubtedly contributes to structural perception of the oppressed as it is designed in critical pedagogy. This association of the absolute fear with structural perception leads to a self-terrorizing reflexivity of the oppressed. The absolute fear is conditioned, reproduced, and reinforced within the absolute fear through this self-terrorizing reflexivity. The self-terrorizing reflexivity fatally entices the oppressed to be attracted to the gaze of the oppressors. Furthermore, the effectiveness of critical pedagogy depends upon an absolute stubbornness of consciousness, which leads to a life-and-death battle for the oppressed. Critical pedagogy as a battle not only reflects Freire’s fundamental beliefs that the existence of the oppressed relies upon the work of dialectic reflection within the man/world relationship. But critical pedagogy requires engagement with this meaning of existence. Freire argues, Whereas the being that merely lives is not capable of reflecting upon itself and knowing itself living in the world, the existent subject reflects upon his life within the very domain of existence, and questions his relationship to the world. His domain of existence is the domain of work, of history, of culture, of values—the domain in which men experience the dialectic between determinism and Freedom. (1998b: 500)

In fact, the stronger the absolute fear is, the more compelling the meaning of existence is. Freire’s critical pedagogy has to be a formative activity that functions as a response to the absolute fear. Aronowitz argues that “it is not at all excessive to claim that the presuppositions of psychoanalytic theory are as fundamental to Freire’s pedagogy as the existential Marxism that appears, on the surface, as the political and theological motivation of his discourse” (1993: 15). While the discourse of the absolute fear might well rely on a good understanding of material oppression, the solution to fly away from the absolute fear must be determined by the effectiveness of a psychological construction in the form of a displacement of the absolute fear. Because of this, Freire’s critical pedagogy is more a project of discursive construction (of anti-oppression) than it is simply an analysis of the material facts. The characteristics of Freire’s critical pedagogy (i.e., an attachment to certain subject positions) have shifted meanings of structural perception in pedagogy in a general sense. Structural perception has changed its status from not just simply being a good feature of pedagogy to being a decisive factor in the development of discursive formation. It now provides

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the ethical rules of pedagogy while denying the formations of pedagogy that are other than Freire’s own critical pedagogy. These ethical rules are established through the introduction of a standard pedagogy. This begins the journey of the oppressed and their subordination to ethical norms and regulative practices. Freire defines a standard pedagogy in the following manner: The action of men without objectives . . . is not praxis, though it may be orientation in the world. And not being praxis, it is action ignorant both of its own process of its aim. The interrelation of the awareness of aim and of process is the basis for planning action, which implies methods, objectives, and value options. (1998a: 481)

Freire articulates his ideal for a standard pedagogy with objectives as follows: “it is with the truism [that] all every practice implies a theoretical stance on the educator’s part . . . [that is,] an interpretation of man and the world” (1998a: 480). This interpretation suggests a critical dialogue of man and the world that reflects Freire’s belief in humanization as the ontological vocation of man. However, this interpretation predetermines certain forms of subject position for structural change, thus excluding other aspects of pedagogy. Freire defines a subject position—the dialogue of the man/world relationship—as a legitimate educational practice: Dialogue is the encounter between men [sic], mediated by the world, in order to name the world. Hence dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world and those who do not wish this naming—between those who deny other men [sic] the right to speak their word and those whose right to speak has been denied to them. Those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim and prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression. (1972; cited in Aronowitz 1993: 17; italics mine)

In Freire’s critical discourse, the Sartrean notion of to be fully human, which formulates Freire’s fundamental humanist belief, is the one major ethical norm that must be believed to be also a universal truth. To be fully human has contributed to a praxis that suggests that the revolutionary project is an ongoing project in that it is part of the process of self-actualization. Freire’s notion of the fully human is supportive with a highlight of the superiority of human beings, in contrast to animals.9 The notion of being fully human works as a belief that encourages the oppressed to critically engage with the world, to come out of their silence to look for emancipation and self-liberation. The notion of to be fully human entails discourses of man’s dependency on the revolutionary project for the purpose of fulfilling his being. This dependency is mainly deployed through discourses that are based on individual/community binary oppositions. These discourses are also

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developed into ethical norms in pedagogy. Freire’s individual/community dependency discourses include such notions as individual freedom, reasoning, discipline, responsibility, and obligation. These may be seen in the following quotation: Individual freedom: The revolutionary project is engaged in a struggle against oppressive and dehumanizing structures. To the extent that it seeks the affirmation of concrete men as men freeing themselves, any thoughtless concession to the oppressors’ methods is always a danger and a threat to the revolutionary project itself. Individual reasoning and discipline: Revolutionaries must demand of themselves an imperious coherence. As men, they may make mistakes, they are subject to equivocation, but they cannot act like reactionaries and call themselves revolutionaries. They must suit their action to historical conditions, taking advantage of the real and unique possibilities that exist. Individual responsibility: Their role is to seek the most efficient and viable means of helping the people to move from the levels of semi-intransitive or naive-transitive consciousness to the level of critical consciousness. This preoccupation, which is alone authentically liberating, is implicit in the revolutionary project itself. Individual obligations for transformation: Originating in the praxis of both the leadership and the rank and file, every revolutionary project is basically “cultural action” in the process of becoming “cultural revolution.” (Freire 1998b: 512–13)

Moreover, to be fully human is also developed into the slogan “human right,” which brings a religious self-righteousness to critical pedagogy. Freire basically contends that because pedagogy lacks a connection with critical reflection or structural perception, it therefore also lacks meaning in relation to what the notion human right means. It is “[their] right to participate curiously in the socio-historical transformation of their society” (Freire 1998a: 486). Freire has stated that literacy, as a way of liberation, must involve the implementation of critical reflection—that is, it “must relate speaking the word to [both] transforming reality and to man’s role in this transformation.”10 Learners, as men, will then claim the right to have a voice. To be fully human becomes an ethical imperative—that is, that man should transform society for man. Equally, it is also an ethical imper-

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ative that man should be fully human in pedagogical practices. In this context, the notion of critical reflection and the notion of structural perception equate identically with the notion that man should have “the right of self-expression and world-expression” in pedagogy. Freire argues that “speaking the word is not a true act if it is not at the same time associated with the right of self-expression and world-expression, of creating and recreating, of deciding and choosing and ultimately participating in society’s historical process.” In this chapter I have examined Hegel’s construction of political subjectivity, in particular focusing on his theories of desire for consciousness and the power of negativity. I have suggested that Hegel’s theory of political identity lies in the analysis of the bondsman’s identity. Further to this, the identity of the bondsman has been conceptualized as totally closed within its relationship to the lord. This conceptualization process includes (1) the bondsman’s knowledge about the negative relation between the lord and the bondsman, and (2) the associated practices that help sustain negative power. I have illustrated Paulo Freire’s political theory in the ways in which it exemplifies Hegel’s theory. For Freire, the power of negativity has been carried out in his belief in structural perception as the fundamental understanding toward emancipation of groups of the oppressed. Since Hegel’s construction of political subjectivity is determined by the power of negativity, the importance of the power of negativity to theories of education should not be underestimated and, as such, should be examined for their effectiveness in relation to the power of negativity. I have argued that the power of negativity reveals a suicide attempt for the political subject. The Hegelian approach to political subjectivity suggests a selfenslavement project. The power of negativity limits the bondsman’s political possibility. My examination aims at an appeal to reconsider the influences of the Hegelian approach pursued in educational theory. It also aims to reconsider the value of the notions of emancipation and empowerment in relation to educational practices, including curriculum design, educational research, and classroom practices.

CHAPTER 2

Lévi-Strauss and the Methodological Value of Concepts of Binary Oppositions

INTRODUCTION In this chapter I will make an analysis of the methodological uses Claude Lévi-Strauss gives to his concept of the binary opposition. This analysis is further extended in chapter 3, where I will examine various theories of the politics of difference. This chapter begins with a brief discussion of LéviStrauss’s attitude towards binarism. In it, I discuss the reasons why LéviStrauss on the one hand abandons the ontological value of binarism and promotes the methodological value of binarism on the other. When examining Lévi-Strauss’s approach, I also discuss his idea of bricolage. This chapter continues to draw out the link that is perceived by the author to exist between Saussure and the Prague Linguistic Circle. Following this, I will look at the exact meaning the concept of the binary opposition takes on in Lévi-Strauss’s discourse. Illustrated here will be Lévi-Strauss’s comprehensive approach to understanding cultures based on his definition of the concept of the binary opposition. THE LÉVI-STRAUSSIAN DIFFERENCE: THE PLAY 1 OF BINARY OPPOSITIONS Lévi-Strauss holds an ambiguous attitude toward the concepts of the binary opposition. On the one hand, he states clearly that he wishes to go beyond the ontological value of binarism. Yet, on the other hand, he retains the concept of the binary opposition for its methodological value; that is, the concept of the binary opposition is a useful tool for analyzing the social context. As Derrida points out, Lévi-Strauss “will always remain

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faithful to this double intention [toward the binary opposition]: to preserve [the binary opposition] as an instrument [of] something whose ‘truth’ value he criticizes” (1978b: 284). It is observed that Lévi-Strauss critiques the ontological value of binarism in a certain way. Lévi-Strauss starts by defining various dual terms, such as nature/culture, elementary/complex, and savage/civilized. Then the limitations of the definition of these terms are critiqued. With respect to the limitations of these binary terms, it is found that, between them, there is no absolute discrimination in terms of their essential elements. Lévi-Strauss often critiques the discrimination of binary oppositional terms by applying another concept, which can be said to be a hybrid of these two terms, or which can be said to be an ambiguous term simultaneously belonging to these two terms. For instance, he states that the main purpose of writing The Elementary Structures of Kinship is to show that “marriage rules, nomenclature, and the system of rights and prohibitions are indissociable aspects of one and the same reality, viz., the structure of the system under consideration” (1963: xxiii). When using the terms elementary and complex structures, Lévi-Strauss follows up with the critique that “there is no absolutely elementary structure” (xxiii) or “elementary and complex structures . . . [that] cannot be wholly contrasted, . . . [where] the line separating them is also difficult to define” (xxiv). This said, the significance of Lévi-Strauss’s status in social sciences resides in his intention to argue for the necessity of retaining the binarism on account of its methodological value.2 In Lévi-Strauss’s view, the methodological value of the binarism becomes evident when a general theory in the study of anthropology (e.g., the structures of kinship) is established. For Lévi-Strauss, “this distinction [of elementary and complex structures] will be largely retained, although several reservations must be made” (1963: xxiii). These reservations are made mainly (1) to limit the scope of his approach and (2) to clarify the significance of the binarism within his discourse. A general theory thus suggests a vague boundary between the binary concepts and is tolerated when human culture is classified. A general theory permits the possibility of a compromise between the ontological value and methodological value within the concept of the binary opposition. In The Raw and the Cooked (1969), the methodological value of the concept of the binary opposition is reinstated. In the opening paragraph, LéviStrauss says, The aim of this book is to show how empirical categories—such as the categories of the raw and the cooked, the fresh and the decayed, the moistened and the burned, etc., which can only be accurately defined by ethnographic observation and, in each case, by adopting the standpoint of a particular culture—can nonetheless be used as conceptual tools with which to elaborate abstract ideas and combine them in the form of propositions. (1)

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In the next section, I am going to analyze Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage. According to Lévi-Strauss, bricolage refers to the nature of conducting social-science research. BRICOLAGE, THE BINARISM, AND THE DENIAL OF TOTALITY Bricolage is the concept Lévi-Strauss introduces in order to reconcile the ambiguous attitude he holds toward the binarism and to legitimate the methodological value of the binarism itself. Bricolage refers to projects done by the bricoleur, the bricoleur being someone “who works with his hands and uses devious means compared to those of a craftsman” (LéviStrauss 1966: 16–17). Bricolage indeed summarizes Lévi-Strauss’s anthropological approach, the concept of bricolage also providing Lévi-Strauss with a simple language by which he can explain the nature of conducting research in the social sciences. The methodological value of the binarism relates to its usefulness in distinguishing concepts. It is the functional significance of the binarism that Lévi-Strauss wishes to assign to the nature of the binarism; that is, the concept of binary oppositions is a useful tool, or a principle, in understanding cultures. In contrast to the traditional ontological perspective of the binarism, the binarism as a principle suggests a bottom-up approach (to understanding cultural difference). In other words, Lévi-Strauss wishes to show that when we seek to understand cultural phenomena, if we can successfully apply the binarism, then we can define cultures gradually from one culture to the next, and in this manner the universal significance of the principle of binary oppositions can be proved. The traditional ontological perspective of the binarism is at fault in that it makes the assumption that there exists a foundational or essential relationship between two (binary) subjects. A basic presupposition for the traditional ontological perspective of the binarism is that any explanation for a binary term can be reduced to their essential components, and/or any explanation for their relationship eventually assumes a fixed center for the subject or a specific point of reference in its presence. With respect to the identification of this center, historical data or materials are reduced and organized on the basis of their binary oppositional relations. Added to this, because of the existence of this center, this structured discourse is formatted and oriented according to a single set of binary oppositions, which in turn acts as the guiding principle in both translating historical data and structuring discourse. In critiquing this interpretation, Lévi-Strauss argues that the aim of doing bricolage is to work on the sign. In arguing so, Lévi-Strauss wishes to resist any possibility of the ontological value of the binarism that has been ascribed to a sign. It is suggested here that we should deconstruct

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what has already been added to the sign and evaluate the discourses that are said to refer to the signified. The methodology is in some part retrospective here, in that it includes looking at not only those elements ascribed to a concept (i.e., the signified), but also includes the ways in which these elements are organized. For instance, he says, “[the bricoleur] has to turn back to an already existent set made up of tools and materials, to consider or reconsider what it contains and, finally . . . to engage in a sort of dialogue with it and . . . to index the possible answers which the whole set can offer to his problem” (1966: 18). Through deconstructing the signified, Lévi-Strauss concludes that a serious mistake in relation to the binarism limits us both from other possible translations of the same materials and from other plays of the binarism. The exercise of bricolage includes analyzing those “previously determined sets consisting of theoretical and practical knowledge” and “of analyzing the technical means” that “restrict other possible solutions” (Lévi-Strauss 1966: 19). The tool for doing bricolage is the bricoleur’s hand. Within the social sciences, the bricolage is strongly related to the concept of the binary opposition. Significantly, Lévi-Strauss defines bricolage as “an activity which on the technical plane gives us quite a good understanding of what a science we prefer to call a ‘prior’ rather than ‘primitive ’ ” (1966: 16; italics mine). The binarism has to be a foundation for the social sciences, mainly because the binarism is a language as old as both Western science and Western philosophy. For social scientists, this language of the binarism is a necessary condition, consisting of the tools and knowledge that have already been prior to us. Moreover, the bricoleur’s hands refer to the language of the binarism, in which social scientists have been long immersed, in which the knowledge and methodology of the social scientist have been constructed. The tools and knowledge used in the instance of doing bricolage are both confined to the language of binarism. From the functional point of view, the bricolage thus incorporates a series of new arrangements of elements and a continual reconstruction that is done from the same materials. The inevitable result of this application would be multiple implications in understanding and defining cultures. These discourses are founded and based on the binarism and would be contradictory with each other. For Lévi-Strauss, the methodological value of the binarism—the characteristics of the contradictory and the multiple—are part of the nature of bricolage. While every discourse is conditional, its validity is provisional.3 Lévi-Strauss summarizes the practice of bricolage as follows, [The bricoleur’s] universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with “whatever is at hand,” that is to say with a set of tools and materials which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because what it contains

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bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any particular project, but is the contingent result of all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions. (1966: 17)

Also, because there is no fixed center or essential relationship with respect to binary terms, within a structure the substitution of contents, elements, or terms is always possible. The permutation and the transformation of elements are all possible. By assigning a methodological value to the binarism, each discourse reflects only one possible structure when we analyze cultures. Historical data and materials could be given with different interpretations. Thus the notion of playing the binarism celebrates multiple layers when we define cultures. Lévi-Strauss’s redefinition of the value of the binarism can be clearly identified in Derrida’s words: It has always been thought that the centre, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality. This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the centre is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The centre is the centre of the totality, and yet, since the centre does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its centre elsewhere. The centre is not the centre. (Derrida 1978b: 279)4

With respect to the binarism being functional, every discourse is a partial and possible comprehension of cultures. From Lévi-Strauss’s point of view, this is to say that the function of the binarism relates to the mythopoetical nature of bricolage. Lévi-Strauss argues that this mytho-poetical nature is partly due to the limited means of power and knowledge. That is, it is impossible, for the social scientist, to get away from the language of the binarism, meaning that all discourses within the social sciences have to be completed through the binarism. For instance, Lévi-Strauss says that studies of mythology, as a form of intellectual bricolage, are articulated by virtue of there being “a heterogeneous repertoire which . . . is nevertheless limited. It has to use this repertoire . . . whatever the task [is at] hand because it has nothing else at its disposal” (1966: 17). Elsewhere, he argues, The elements which the “bricoleur” collects and uses are “pre-constrained” like the constitutive units of myth, the possible combinations of which are restricted by the fact that they are drawn from the language where they already possess a sense which sets a limit on their freedom of manoeuvre. And the decision as to what to put in each place also depends on the possibility of putting a different element there instead, so that each choice which is made will involve a complete reorganization of the structure, which will never be the same as one vaguely imaged nor as some other which might have been preferred to it. (19)

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Another way to show the mytho-poetical nature of the social sciences is through an examination of methods other than bricolage. While LéviStrauss has managed to distinguish the approach of bricolage from the approach of the engineer and the physicist, he came to the conclusion that the engineer and the physicist are indeed bricoleurs; all their discourses reveal the existence of a mytho-poetical nature. According to Lévi-Strauss, the engineer, by comparison to the bricoleur, wishes to engage and is able to engage with plenty of resources, constructing the totality of his language, syntax, and lexicon. However, like bricolage, the discourses of the engineer and the physicist will be mytho-poetical if it necessitates borrowing one’s concepts from the text of one’s own heritage. With respect to whether the binarism is functional, bricolage shows itself as a project of the impossibility of tantalization. If the concept of the binarism is functional, it signals that its application can be implied in the analyzing of cultural phenomenon. As a result, a possible discourse about cultures would have to be conducted in a deductive manner rather than an inductive manner. In this sense, tantalization no longer has any meaning as bricolage, and it excludes the possibility of including infinite data. As Derrida explains, the denial of tantalization “is not because the infiniteness of a field cannot be covered by a finite glance or a finite discourse, but because the nature of the field—i.e. the language and a finite language— excludes tantalization” (1978b: 289). Since Lévi-Strauss is often known as a structural anthropologist, in the following section I wish to discuss his structural analysis in relation to those of Saussure and the Prague Linguistic Circle. In doing so, two major characteristics of Lévi-Strauss’s methodology will be introduced in relation to the binarism: its functional significance and its teleological significance. LÉVI-STRAUSS, SAUSSURE, AND THE PRAGUE LINGUISTIC CIRCLE Lévi-Strauss’s approach has often been discussed in relation to both Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural analysis and Roman Jakobson’s (the leader of the Prague Linguistic Circle) phonology. In general, but nevertheless cursorily, Lévi-Strauss’s approach reveals Saussurean structuralism to have been a fundamental inspiration. The basic assumption of structuralism is the view that the human world is a world of objective, unconscious, or collective cultural systems into which individuals are inserted. Lévi-Strauss does not take Saussure’s approach to its limits. While, like the Prague Linguistic Circle, Lévi-Strauss is concerned with Saussure’s systematic characterization of language, he is even more concerned with the mechanisms wherein language is used to achieve its expressive and communicative ends.

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Saussure has distinguished langue from parole. For Saussure, while langue represents the essential, the parole represents the accidental. Similar to Durkheim’s idea of collective conscience, langue represents a systematic entity, which, while it is independent of the individual, could also be against individual will (parole). According to Clarke, the main reason for this distinction is “to separate a system lying behind the linguistic act from the act itself and so to separate purely linguistic questions from those which would introduce psychological, physiological or sociological considerations” (1981: 120). Saussure believes in a pure linguistic system (langue), which is totally for linguistic studies and is isolated from other psychological or sociological effects of speech acts (parole). However, Saussure also believes that langue is “a specific reality which has its ‘seat in [the] brain.’” That is, for Saussure, linguistics is a specialized branch of psychology, and the linguistic sign is a psychological entity, a union of the concept and the sound-image. Both Lévi-Strauss and the Prague Linguistic Circle revise Saussure’s structural analysis by assigning a functional meaning to language. Instead of interpreting language to be an objective system in which the subject is inserted, the Prague Linguistic Circle sees language as a medium for communication, while langue is seen as the communicative entity expressed by the subjects. According to Clarke, the Prague Linguistic Circle has drawn inspiration from a number of sources, including Russian Formalism, Saussure, Neopositivism, and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1981: 120). The close relationship between Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson developed after they met in 1941.5 Although Lévi-Strauss does not particularly specify the functional role of the binarism in his first work, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1963),6 this entire work seems to occupy itself with the analyses of the structure of kinship by imposing a series of binary oppositions. Basically, Lévi-Strauss highlights the illustrative function of the concept of the binary opposition in relation to the study of kinship. This becomes evident in Lévi-Strauss’s conclusion to The Elementary Structures of Kinship, when he says that “the progress of our analysis is . . . close to that of the phonological linguist in reducing a large number of rules to a small number” (cited in Clarke 1981: 160; italics mine). After Lévi-Strauss attended Jakobson’s lectures, he said that he had found a convergence between his approach and that of Jakobson. A close intellectual relationship between them resulted, something evidenced in their copublishing a paper in which they describe a structural analysis of literature.7 Lévi-Strauss later studied mythology for the purpose of elucidating a more comprehensive theoretical foundation for Jakobson’s phonology. Lévi-Strauss actually refers to his approach as that of a metastructure. The metastructure indicates the principle of binarism as the law of the group being found from modal structures. Metastructure also identifies

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the whole picture of all these coexisting modalities found/constructed as being based upon the law of the group. This concept of the metastructure by implication relies heavily upon Jakobson’s theory of phonology. In agreeing with Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss says, Jakobson has suggested that a language may possess several coexisting phonological structures, each of which may intervene in a different kind of grammatical operation. Since there must obviously be a relationship between the different structural modalities of the same language, we arrive at the concept of a “metastructure” which would be something like the law of the group (loi du groupe) consisting of its modal structures. If all of these modalities could be analyzed by our machine, established mathematical methods would permit it to construct the “metastructure” of the language, which would in certain complex cases be so intricate as to make it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve on the basis of purely empirical investigation. (1993: 58)

The functional assumption of language is also evident in Lévi-Strauss’s other discourses—for instance, in the last section, Lévi-Strauss’s use of bricolage as a methodological tool when analyzing cultures. In addition, Lévi-Strauss maintains that the studies of both linguistics and anthropology are simply transformations of the study of language, and as such, they all involve us “in the study of all forms of communication” (1993: 82). Elsewhere, Lévi-Strauss argues, “without reducing society or culture to language, we can initiate this ‘Copernican revolution’ . . . which will consist of interpreting society as a whole in terms of a theory of communication.” Indeed, we have to understand the teleological intention of the language used by the Prague Linguistic Circle as much as we have to understand its functional meaning. As language is allocated with a functional meaning, language is a tool for communication. Linguistics is constructed as an intentional object, and its structure is an expression of its function as an instrument of human communication. It might be a better outline of the whole project of the Prague Linguistic Circle, with its aim being “to discover the system of language by relating it to the functions of language as a means of communication” (Clarke 1981: 146). This is to say, linguistics is a teleological discipline that seeks the structure of language by means of relating linguistic form to linguistic function. The nature of language and linguistic analysis is therefore interlocked because of the teleological intention of linguistics studies. This teleological intention shows that the system of language is revealed in the findings of the expressions of language. In this sense, the division of langue and parole can no longer be interpreted as an opposite relationship, but rather should be interpreted as a dialectical relationship because both langue and parole refer to each other: langue consists of and is created by parole, while parole is an exploitation of language; they are embedded within each other.

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In terms of methodology, we might conclude that Lévi-Strauss, like Saussure, looks to study the objective meaning of culture. However, by adopting the communicative meaning of langue, Lévi-Strauss constructs an objective cultural system that is amenable to studying methods of the positivism sciences (Clarke 1981: 117). IV. BINARISM, THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES (RELATIONS) OF CULTURES, AND HYPOTHESIS Lévi-Strauss once gave a brief but useful summary of his methodology in which the significance of concepts of binary oppositions is asserted. The initial hypothesis demands therefore that from the outset we place ourselves at the most concrete level—that is, in the heart of a community or a group of communities sufficiently alike in regard to their habit, history, and culture. However, while this is undoubtedly an essential methodological precaution, it cannot mask or restrict my intention. Using a small number of myths taken from native communities which, should it prove successful, will be of universal significance, since I expect it to prove that there is a kind of logic in tangible qualities, and to demonstrate the operation of that logic reveals its laws. (1969: 1; italics mine)

We might summarize the purpose of Lévi-Strauss’s approach as one that intends 1. to set up a hypothesis that culture could be analyzed through concepts of oppositions; 2. to verify that this hypothesis aims to empirically test the principle of binary oppositions in different cultural settings; 3. to reach the conclusion that the binarism holds universal significance and that the binarism provides the basis for understanding cultures (e.g., the structure of kinship represents a system of systems that is based upon the binarism).

My focus has been to explore exactly how the functional and teleological meanings of the binarism have been played out within Lévi-Strauss’s discourse. I have also demonstrated how Lévi-Strauss legitimates his play of binary oppositions. In what follows, the discussion and analysis will focus upon how Lévi-Strauss’s binarism relates to Jakobson’s phonology. For Jakobson, the binarism refers to distinctive features within language, which distinguish linguistic units from one another. The creation of these distinctive features is based upon the notion that there exists an opposition between sounds. As Lévi-Strauss found, it is precisely these distinctive features that appear as both the specific and the defining features of human culture. These features also provide the key to an objective understanding of cultural meanings.

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According to Jakobson, these distinctive features of sounds are results of a psychological a priori. This psychological a priori refers to the formal binary structuring capacity of the mind, something expressed in the binary discrimination of distinctive features. With the concept of bricolage, this psychological a priori makes language and meaning possible; this a priori confines us to doing social sciences. For the same reason, the binarism becomes the principle and the defining feature of human culture. Lévi-Strauss found that there existed similarities between phonology and anthropology. Like phonemes, kinship terms are elements of meaning; like phonemes, they acquire meaning only if they are integrated into systems. Kinship systems, like phonemic systems, are built by the mind on the level of unconscious thought. Finally, the recurrence of kinship patterns, marriage rules, similar prescribed attitudes between certain types of relatives, and so forth, in scattered regions of the globe and in fundamentally different societies, leads us to believe that, in the case of kinship as well as linguistics, the observable phenomena result from the action of laws which are general but implicit. (1993: 34; italics mine)

“The observable phenomena” and “the action of laws,” in the preceding paragraph, suggest that cultures are not discoverable in their particular essences, but that they are interpretable through a possible universal rule. In other words, the distinctive features are the basis of Lévi-Strauss’s hypothesis in analyzing cultures. This is the nature of Lévi-Strauss’s inspiration and that which he derived from Jakobson’s theory in constituting of discourse. In agreement with Jakobson’s phonology, Lévi-Strauss is also convinced of the correctness of his observation of the forms of the discourses that are constructed in the natural sciences;8 it seems evident to him that the binarism has become a necessary “property of any system for coding, storing or transmitting information” (Clarke 1981: 172). Clarke argues that this property is to be seen in “the most elementary forms of aural and visual perception, the transmission of genetic information, the most elementary mechanical, electronic, computers and control systems, and in an enormously wide range of human, animal and plants (physiological, neurological and genetic).” As well, there are “physiological, psychological, neurological, chemical or physical abilities to recognize or to impose discriminations.” For Lévi-Strauss, “such evidence from the natural sciences is conclusive proof of his own hypothesis, revealing the natural foundation of culture and the unity of the social and natural sciences.” According to Clarke, Jakobson has sought to identify linguistic universals at two levels: on that of the implication universal and that of the substantial universal (1981: 166). The search for the implication universal depends on the search for the substantial universal. Firstly, for Jakobson, the study of language acquisition in children, of linguistic change, and of

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aphasia helped him develop a hierarchical structure in the system of the distinctive feature (i.e., the binary oppositions) underlying all phonological systems. This hierarchical structure takes its form as “the presence of A implies that of B (or, its absence).” It is clear that, while Lévi-Strauss is not concerned with the nomenclature function of the binarism, he is concerned with the observable behavior in kinship studies. He states that there exists a distinction between a system of terminology and a system of attitudes. The former studies consist of static classifications of kinship terms (e.g., father/son, husband/wife, and so on). These studies, to Lévi-Strauss, would lack real, simplifying, and explanatory significance. He is more concerned about the informative function of the binarism; that is to say, he is concerned that distinctive features of binarism are exemplified in terms of their relations both to and within a discourse. Lévi-Strauss further argues that the study of a system of attitudes should focus on a dynamic integration of the system of terminology, to which he adds that the anthropological study begins with an observable anthropological problem.9 This anthropological problematic bears a methodological significance, referring to a hypothesis as a possible cultural pattern integrated by concepts of binary oppositions. The validity of the implication universal and the validity of the substantial universal, in fact, depend upon each other. Significantly, the validity of the implication universal and the validity of the substantial universal are reached only on account of there existing a strong methodological implication. According to Jakobson’s theory, the binary distinctions found to exist across different languages provide the foundation upon which Jakobson further develops a study of the implication universal. To put it simply, a hypothesis of the phonological distinctiveness is formed through an inductive collection of features of a small number of languages. Then this hypothesis is verified in a deductive way, by applying phonological distinctiveness to a large number of languages. If distinctiveness could be claimed to be universal, then one would be able to conclude that the principle of the binary opposition can be applied, which in turn will identify and generate the sound system of every natural language. This methodology would appear to prove itself; that is, the implication universal and the substantial universal exist within a symbolically interdependent relationship. On the one hand, the validity of the implication universal (i.e., the phonological distinctive features of sounds) cannot be discovered until it is examined through different language systems. On the other hand, the validity of the substantial universal (i.e., the fact of the nature of language) is reached by applying these phonological distinctive features (i.e., implication universal). Lévi-Strauss might be aware that there exists interdependency in the relation of the implication universal to the substantial universal, yet he does not

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discuss the notion of the legitimacy of the binary distinctiveness as a foundation for study. Initially, he does not explain the philosophical background of the binarism in The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1963), while later he simply comes to echo Jakobson’s phonology in his anthropological studies. His main concern is simply to verify the methodological value of the binarism in a deductive way. As far as this methodology is concerned, it merits the same criticism as that which has been ascribed to Jakobson’s methodology. An analogous method has been followed in studying certain features in the area of social organization, particularly with respect to marriage rules and kinship systems. It has been shown that a complete set of marriage regulations operate in various human societies, while usually classified under different headings, such as incest prohibitions, preferential forms of marriage, and the like. The marriage regulations can also be interpreted as being so many different ways of insuring the circulation of women within the social group or of substituting the mechanism of a sociologically determined affinity for that of a biologically determined consanguinity. Proceeding from this hypothesis, it would only be necessary to make a mathematical study of every possible type of exchange between n patterns to enable one to almost automatically arrive at every type of marriage rule actually operating in living societies, with the purpose of eventually discovering other rules that at the moment are merely possible; one would also understand their function and the relationships between each type of rule. This approach was fully validated by the demonstration, reached by pure deduction that the mechanisms of reciprocity known to classical anthropology . . . are but a special instance of a wider kind of reciprocity between any number of partners. (Lévi-Strauss 1993: 60)

A brief summary of this argument would acknowledge that 1. Lévi-Strauss first raises a problematic about the study of certain features of marriage rules and kinship system; 2. this problematic is set up as a hypothesis: “to insure the circulation of women within the social group or of substituting the mechanism of a sociologically determined affinity for that [of] a biologically determined consanguinity”; 3. the methodology to verify this hypothesis is deductive.

In the following section, I wish to discuss the theoretical background of Lévi-Strauss’s hypothetico-deductive approach. This approach can be thought of as largely symbolic of the teleological intention that typifies his approach in general. The nature of this methodology utilizes a hypothesis at the outset. This is followed by a deductive form of examination. Both the Prague Linguistic Circle and Lévi-Strauss have reflected upon Saussurean discourses, phenomenology, and Neopositivism.

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Lévi-Strauss once stated the main purpose of his studies into mythology: “it is enough to establish the conviction that if the human mind appears determined even in the realm of mythology, a fortiori it must also be determined in all its spheres of activity” (1969: 10). Moreover, LéviStrauss summarizes his methodology as “Kantism without a transcendental subject,”10 which he considers to be an inevitable consequence on the philosophical level (11). Indeed, the approaches of Lévi-Strauss, Jakobson, and the Prague Linguistic Circle are closely related to the development of structuralism in linguistics studies. Generally speaking, Lévi-Strauss takes his teleological intention from his phenomenological insight into langue, and to this effect his deductive approach is similar to that of Neopositivism. Lévi-Strauss makes it clear that his ambition is to discover a condition in which systems of truths can be mutually convertible and simultaneously acceptable to several different subjects. As I have shown so far, this condition refers to two things: the principle of binarism and the distinctive features of the binary that function as the implacable rule for illustrating what is the actual character of each distinctive subject. Since the fundamental formation of every discourse is related to this functional principle, each discourse presents itself as an autonomous object that is independent of its subject. Lévi-Strauss further argues that mythology is the best subject for illustrating such an objectified thought and for providing an empirical proof of its reality. The empirical proof refers necessarily to the deductive approach. In his introduction to The Raw and the Cooked, LéviStrauss elucidates this point, saying that “the peculiarity of this book is that it has no subject; it is restricted in the first place to the study of one myth; yet to achieve even partial success, it must assimilate the subject matter of two hundred others. . . . In order to draw my map, I have been obliged to work outward from the centre” (1969: 4; italics mine). I have already briefly mentioned the teleological characteristics of the Prague Linguistic Circle. That aspect of language that concerns the linguist is that aspect that is relevant to function of the language itself. It is this function, on account of the basis from which its systems are constructed, that provides linguistics with the a priori. The function is not derived from properties of the mind, but from the needs of communication. The nature of language is therefore to be understood “theoretically by showing it is a means of communication adapted to its function” (Clarke 1981: 148). As a result, the presentation of the language is subject to, for instance, “constraints of physiology (e.g. the discriminatory powers of hearing), of psychology (e.g. the capacity of the memory), and sociology (e.g. the channels of communication, the extent of shared information, the orientation of the communication).” Thus, Clarke concludes, “Language is, therefore, not an inert object, but a teleological system, that teleology being a social teleology.”

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Similarly, Lévi-Strauss’s discourse on mythology presents itself as a teleological discipline, which results from both the articulation of a teleological intention and a teleological approach. Social scientists, in the form of bricoleur (i.e., the handyman), are “constantly tinkering with heterogeneous objects—objects in which there was no clear distinction between concrete thought, aesthetic form-giving, and a subject’s material practice” (Foucault 1997: xxxix). Lévi-Strauss defends his Kantian methodology by referring to the teleological purpose as a means of analyzing cultural phenomenon; he says, “I start with a myth chosen not so much arbitrarily as through an intuitive feeling that it was both rich and rewarding, and then, after analyzing it in accordance with rules laid down in previous works, I establish the group of transformation for each sequence, either within the myth itself, or by elucidation of the isomorphic links between sequences derived from several myths originating in the same community” (1969: 2; italics in original). The existence of the teleological intention here distinguishes the Prague Linguistic Circle from other Saussurean structural analyses—for instance, phenomenology and positivism. Both of these approaches, following Saussure’s basic principle of structuralism, rely upon the belief that the langue is an unconscious collective entity. While phenomenology proposes that the langue reflects existence of a psychological reality, positivism proposes that the langue is both an ideal-object structure and a collective substance of linguistic performance (parole). For phenomenologists, langue is an abstraction, and the relations that make up the system of langue are abstract relations. These relations are not inherent in the object but imposed on the object by the intention of the speaker, which are then later to be recovered by the hearer. Langue is neither an object reality nor a pure reflection of the subject. Langue is the intersubjective expression of a subjective intention. Both phenomenology and those in the Prague Linguistic Circle agree on the point that language and culture are objective systems of symbols without any meaning in themselves. Language is simply an objective instrument for the purpose of communication. For phenomenologists, the meaning of any symbol within a language system is determined by those who are active in the communicative world. The particular meaning of any symbol disappears immediately if it is isolated from those subjects who gave this same symbol its expressive value. For phenomenologists, “language is not an object but a ‘gesture’ by which the subject signifies the world” (Clarke 1981: 176). However, while the Prague Linguistic Circle does adopt phenomenological insight into language, it takes langue as a subject intention. They do not take this notion to its limit. They see langue as the performative activity of those who use it. Instead of arguing that langue is the expression of intersubjectivity, they argue that linguistics is an intentional object whose structure is an expression of its function as an instrument of human communication.

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The Prague Linguistic Circle is also critical of the phenomenological method. Since language does not express physiological or psychological mechanisms, linguistics cannot tell us anything directly about the mind or the brain. Phenomenology seeks to establish intuitive truths that are secure and indubitable. Similarly, Lévi-Strauss criticizes Sartre’s method. Both Sartre and Lévi-Strauss sought the authentic meaning of human existence they suppose existed beneath the deceit and hypocrisy of contemporary society. While Sartre believed philosophical critique of subjective experience would reveal a subjective meaning, Lévi-Strauss believed his approach would yield an objective meaning—one embedded in human nature and expressed in the objectivity of human cultural achievement. I would like to quote Lévi-Strauss’s own words to summarize his hypothetico-deductive methodology: Once we have defined these differential structures, there is nothing absurd about inquiring whether they belong strictly to the sphere considered or whether they may be encountered (often in transformed fashion) in other spheres of the same society or in different societies. And if we find these structures to be common to several spheres, we have the right to conclude that we have reached a significant knowledge of the unconscious attitudes of the society or societies under consideration. (1993: 87)

In summarizing the methodological value of the concept of the binary opposition and its distinctive features, I wish to briefly outline some possible meanings that might be thought to explain such discourses as those of Lévi-Strauss. In the following passage, for the purpose of convenience, I will simply refer to those discourses, which have the same theoretical basis as those of Lévi-Strauss, as bricolage discourses. Firstly, the bricolage discourse is the result of exercising a teleological discipline. Bricolage is an intentional object, which is structured on the basis of its function as an instrument for understanding cultures. Because of bricolage’s teleological intention, bricolage only focuses on the verification of its universal possibility of the distinctive function in cultures. In this instance, the intrinsic characteristics of the relationships that exist within cultures become irrelevant. That is, the use of bricolage is not concerned with whether culture reflects a psychological reality. The bricolage discourse, instead, imposes a possible discourse in which the subject is inserted. Secondly, this teleological character of bricolage suggests that every bricolage discourse is an autonomous reality. By focusing on the distinctive function, the distinctive features work to distinguish one subject from the other. As the cultural phenomenon can be analyzed from the point of view of the distinctive function, the whole cultural system can therefore be reduced to a series of functionally distinctive relations. Bricolage discourse is interpreted according to a specific, politically interested, func-

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tional, distinctive relation—for instance, Maori/Pakeha, Asian/Pacific, and so on. Thirdly, every bricolage discourse is provisional. The teleological intention of bricolage implies that every discourse represents one aspect of human cultural existence, which results from a political or methodological decision. The autonomy of bricolage discourse is only a provisional autonomy. Its hypothesis is verified as true because of the substantial significance the principle of binary distinctiveness has gained—sufficient support to be true because this principle has successfully gone through a number of langue. In other words, we may find that a further hypothesis only goes to contradict the initial hypothesis, which also must be verified because of its substantial significance. Fourthly, the provisional nature can also be seen for reason of its methodological limitations. The bricolage discourse is the product of an abstraction, an abstraction that ignores all but the distinctive function within a cultural system. The discourse is isolated on the basis of its functional argument and cannot be understood when it is in isolation from that function. When Lévi-Strauss argues for the impossibility of a neat binarism, he is suggesting that not all oppositions between sounds are ontologically significant. In other words, not all oppositions are distinctive. It is only in reference to the linguistic function of differentiated meanings and in reference to the linguistic context within which sounds appear that we can determine which oppositions define the distinctive features of a sound system. In any particular context, one phoneme will not be opposed to others as a whole but will only be opposed by those phonetic features that define its functional distinctiveness. In conclusion, I have provided a systematic analysis of Lévi-Strauss’s methodological meaning of the concept of binary opposition. While LéviStrauss ultimately repudiates the essentialist argument of identity, he does provide a structuralist definition of identity. Lévi-Strauss’s approach is therefore considered to be an attempt to produce a decentered meaning of identity; that is, the meaning of identity is no longer subject to a single origin, but multiple resources determined by different linguistic and structural formations. Lévi-Strauss’s methodological meaning of the concept of binary oppositions has had a significant influence upon political theorists. As he argues for linguistic and structural analyses when defining individual experiences, to him, identity is always subject to different relations of difference. Lévi-Strauss’s approach has been utilized for the purpose of understanding political identity. In a similar way, some political theorists argue for multiple determinations of the political identity for the individual. These theories may be gathered together under the umbrella of the politics of differences.

CHAPTER 3

The Pedagogy of the Politics of Difference

INTRODUCTION Following the discussion of Lévi-Strauss’s methodological use of concepts of binary oppositions, this chapter provides critical examinations of some political discourses that share similar approaches to those of Lévi-Strauss. These political discourses referred to are those of Iris M. Young, Chantal Mouffe, and Ernesto Laclau. These thinkers are known for their political perspective on the politics of difference. The politics of difference is an argument against the essentialist belief that there is a fixed identity, instead promoting the celebration of multiple and diverse values within society as reflecting the nature of difference. The politics of difference concerns the fundamental question of political subjectivity. It makes way for the possibility of new theories regarding political identity (and therefore the individual), a new approach with respect to his or her participation in society. This chapter will consider the ways in which these new theories of political subjects are constructed. A critical evaluation of the subject formation proposed by the politics of difference is made. This is important because such an examination will provide a better understanding of the notions of political agency presented in these new attempts. This may also lead us to a better understanding of the depth implicit in such notions as emancipation and empowerment— notions to which these new theories have led us. My examination begins with an explanation of Lévi-Strauss’s relation to the politics of difference in terms of the ways in which concepts of binary opposition are played out. This leads us to examine the ways in which the political subjectivity is construed in the theories of Young, Mouffe, and

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Laclau. The last section will deal with the possible positions of political agency proposed by Young and Mouffe. My evaluation aims to identify the limits of the politics of difference with respect to their discursive construction in what are general configurations of political subjectivity. LÉVI-STRAUSS AND THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE The methodological value of the concept of the binary opposition is central to Lévi-Strauss’s discourse on culture. This methodological value is exhibited on three levels: (1) the relationship between the subject and language, (2) the meaning of every individual discourse, and (3) the relation that links discourses. Regarding the link between theories of the subject to theories of language, the methodological value is first seen in relation to the essentialist assumption of the subject. That is to say, concepts of binary oppositions provide useful interpretations when defining cultures; multiple binary concepts can be successfully employed to analyze cultural phenomena. A structural analysis can be used to define the picture of cultures, and the subject can thus be asserted into that structure accordingly. The subject no longer expresses itself from within but is given subject positions by discourses construed to be based upon forms of binary oppositions that have been applied to the culture in question. Each discourse is contingent and contextual due to its distinctive application. After all, the concept of the binary opposition functions as a foundation for the picture of cultures, and all subject positions are therefore based upon the concept of the binary opposition. All discourses are variations that share the same applicable module: binary oppositional forms. Therefore, there must be two probable meanings of cultural difference: the first probable meaning is to be found within the local discourse and is also a set of binary oppositions; the second probable meaning is to be found in different discourses and applications that are relational. This relational account of cultural difference can be said to explain the relationship among discourses. There are some discourses on the politics of difference that share a similar means of understanding culture to that of Lévi-Strauss—that is to say, where the concept of the binary opposition provides the fundamental framework. Michael Peters defines the meaning of a politics of difference in the following manner: A politics of difference . . . unfreezes fixed and essential identities. It treats difference as variation rather than exclusive opposition. It sees identities as both relational and contextual, often a matter of political choice. To this extent, a politics of difference understands that the identity of the subject is constructed at the point of intersection of a multiplicity of subject-positions between which there exists no a priori or necessary relation and whose articulation is the result of hegemonic practices. (1995: 49; italics mine)

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The two major resources Peters uses in his arguments for a politics of difference are the poststructuralist critique of subject-centered reason and the new social movements to which are accredited historical importance. By focusing on the politics of the new social movements, Peters has made clear that his position is one of the antinihilist; that is, the poststructuralist critiques of modernist discourses and the political significance of empowerment comprise the same posture. In critiquing liberalism and communitarianism, Peters briefly summarizes the flaw of modernist discourses that involves only one set of binary oppositions, something that both privileges other forms of binary oppositions and overlooks the poststructuralist identification of the multipledimensional social group. My argument is that the project to reform liberalism and the project of radical democracy based on a notion of community, whether defined in universal[ly] or historical[ly] contingent terms, have been unsuccessful precisely to the extent that they have ignored the poststructuralist critique of subject-centered reason and the historical importance of the new social movements. Both liberal and communitarians, for instance, are tied into a basic opposition characteristic of the binary logic of modernism: they each privilege one term or concept that the other seeks to deny. (1995: 43, italics mine)

Peters considers Iris M. Young, Chantal Mouffe, and Fred Dallmayr to be the three main theorists on the subject of the politics of difference. Peters agrees with these theorists in that he too promotes the politics of both difference and identity and the need for the development of a theory of the subject as “a decentered, demoralized agent” (Peters 1995: 49). According to Peters, the development of a politics of difference is one that was inspired by a group of French poststructuralists that includes Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Julia Kristeva. One of the contributions these poststructuralists make to modern philosophy is a critique of the Hegelian dialectic. This critique could be summed up with the following quotation from Deleuze: Three ideas define the dialectic: the idea of a power of the negative as a theoretical principle manifested in opposition and contradiction; the idea that suffering and sadness have value, the valorization of the “sad passions,” as a practical principle manifested in splitting and tearing apart; the idea of positivity as a theoretical principle and practical product of negation itself. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole of Nietzsche’s philosophy, in its polemic sense, is the attack on these three ideas. (Deleuze 1983: 195–96; cited in Peters 1996: 22)

Clearly, the Hegelian negation never disappears from discourses on the politics of difference. The Hegelian negation, in fact, has been played out implicitly, from the outset, in every discourse on the politics of difference.

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To Peters, to draw from poststructuralist insights in discussing difference remains an unsupportable project within the Hegelian thesis. Peters claims that “[it] must be remembered that despite [their] differences with their predecessors, the French poststructuralists can be interpreted as continuing the enterprise of the critique of the subject through a series of reflections on Hegel” (1995: 52; italics mine). To support this view, Peters quotes Judith Butler, saying that “the twentieth-century history of Hegelianism in France [has to be seen] in terms of two constitutive moments: the specification of the subject in terms of finitude, corporeal boundaries, and temporarility” and “the splitting (Jacques), displacement (Derrida), and eventual death (Foucault, Deleuze) of the Hegelian subject” (1995: 52). To put it another way, Peters would argue that Derrida’s revision of the Hegelian subject should be understood as continuing the displacement of the Hegelian thesis. Peters argues for a celebration of cultural difference, a heterogeneity consisting of diverse and multiple Hegelian dialectical discourses. Creating a general picture of the politics of cultural difference, Peters elsewhere argues, The Hegelian dialectic is indeed a reflection on difference, but it inverts its image. For the affirmation of difference as such it substitutes the negation of that which differs, for the affirmation of the self it substitutes the negation of the other, and for the affirmation of affirmation it substitutes the famous negation of negation. (Deleuze 1983: 196; cited in Peters 1996: 23)

Identity is arrived at through the discourse of subject positions where a theory of identity becomes replaced by the idea of the politics of identity. Indeed, identity and difference are both sides of the same coin. While difference focuses on the relations between individuals, identity focuses on the contingent nature of the singularity. In arguing against the Hegelian negation thesis, the affirmation of difference seems to be an affirmation of the ongoing contingency and contextualization within Hegelian discourses for those theories of the politics of difference. The analyses of subject positions and the war of subject positions1 are the starting points for discourses on the politics of difference. We can add to this that the historical significance of new social movement best explains both the heterogeneity of subject positions and the nature of social groups. Equally important, the previously mentioned discourses never deny social movements the right to a political agenda. Like Lévi-Strauss’s, Peters’s theory on the politics of difference is construed and based on a series of binary oppositions. However, in relation to the concept of the binary opposition itself, while Lévi-Strauss attempts to integrate all differences among social groups into a universal assumption on human culture, Peters argues that the necessity of these relations

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between binary oppositions remains open. It would be Peters’s intention to extend the methodological value of the binary opposition to its full potential. Indeed, it is with this concern in mind that Peters quotes Derrida for the purpose of supporting the view that the multiple concept of the binary opposition as a concept provides both the foundation that construes the framework of cultural politics and serves the politics of culture. For instance, Peters claims that there is first the theoretical necessity of a metaphysical reduction, which must be operated in terms of the binary opposition: “[t]he paradox is that the metaphysical reduction of the sign needed the opposition it was reducing. The opposition is part of the system, along with the reduction” (Derrida 1978b: 281; cited in Peters 1995: 29). Moreover, Peters reads Derridean différance as involving a rupture with Hegelian difference because différance ruptures the relation of the signifier to the signified, on account of there being multiple references to the signified. Peters argues that Hegel’s difference is identified through the application of the principle of identity, a dialectical process that unites the signifier and the signified as a reality. In this process, “every concept is to be negated and lifted up to a higher sphere in which it is thereby conserved” (Peters 1995: 31). In other words, a signifier is united with the signified on account of a reference to a concept that, though originally negated, is then lifted up to be conserved. It is precisely this point that Peters maintains Derrida challenges, when the latter contested that the Hegelian theory of the signifier “is able to effect a closure in the symbolic relationship of signifier to signified.” Further, Peters argues that différance ruptures the relation between the signifier and the signified because the “reference to the signified is always displaced.” Any reference that unites the signifier and the signified and any dialectical discourse that unites the subject with a self-representation is simply fiction of linguistic practice. Peters draws our attention to the fact that it is the displacement of multiple references that links the signifier and the signified. This said, he does not challenge Hegelian dialectics per se, that which requires and produces the reference—namely the subject that is derived from a set of concepts of binary oppositions. This is clear when he argues that Derrida interprets and translates the Hegelian Aufhebung as relève, a concept that leads Derrida to develop the notion of différance. The notion of différance can be seen in Derrida’s reading of Georges Bataille; that is “the most general structure of economy,” and, more precisely, as the essay title suggests, “From restricted to general economy: a Hegelianism without reserve”(Derrida 1978c: 251–77). In other words, there exists a play in the Hegelianism that is from the restricted to that without reserve. Also, Peters interprets Derrida to understand that “[t]he Hegelian Aufhebung is produced entirely from within discourse, from within the system or the work of signification” (Peters 1995: 33). Instead of proposing a grand narrative, as the mod-

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ernist notion of difference would propose, Peters holds that although the Hegelian dialectic must function as the foundation for a cultural studies framework, it has a multiple application, with the footnote of the displaceable and local signification of reference. With regard to the argument over the splitting of the unity that binds the signifier and the signified and over displacement of references, Peters’s thesis on the politics of difference certainly does engage Hegelian dialectics, and therefore the concept of the binary opposition must be theorized in the discourse on the politics of difference. I would argue that such an analysis provides a useful critique of the modernist discourses on both identity and difference. Yet with the presumption of engagement with Hegelian dialectics, there is no space for upcoming voices. At best, Peters’s thesis on the politics of difference can only make the slaves become the masters, since the slaves represent the negative of the master’s positive. The slaves have a voice, but they are simple and either mispresented or underpresented. Both identities and differences have to be perceived (to be voiced) in order to be seen (to be heard) so that they gain recognition. Thus, the politics of difference is limited to that which frames the possibility of being recognized. This limitation is further involved, according to Peters, in the modernist business of subjection, which is to say, “categorizing,” “antagonism,” “classification,” “discursive constructing,” and “positioning” (1995: 53). As voicing is necessary in Peters’s thesis, being temporarily silent means the disappearance of the politics of difference.2 In this sense, voice/silence is a black/white relationship, which itself is even more exclusive than the meaning Lévi-Strauss gives to distinctive features by defining relative distinctiveness. I would argue that Peters’s thesis on the politics of difference is limited in the way that it interprets silence as voice. It is also limited for the reason that it accounts for the different forces that belong to different multiple voices, meaning that these different multiple voices may reinforce the hierarchy of power relations that the politics of difference had initially attacked. In Lévi-Strauss’s, Young’s, and Mouffe’s theories on the politics of difference, similarities can be found in terms of the methodological value to be found in the binary opposition. It is worth remembering here that the significance of the methodological value to be found in the concept of the binary opposition, in relation to the discussion of Lévi-Straussian differences, allows the concept of the binary opposition to be constituted as the basis of cultural differences. Any comprehension of cultural difference must be structured on a bricolage discourse and therefore must require the use of a binary oppositional term. A subject’s historical affinities come to be attached to the subject after arriving at a discursive interpretation of that subject. In any discourse, the concept of the binary opposition provides an intelligible reference through which the subject is able to interpret his or her history. In other words, the terms of the binary opposition

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are no longer tools for understanding cultural difference, but have rather become the only way in which we can describe the cultural world as a whole. As language is used in the concept of the binary opposition, it thus determines the description of the subject differences. It is Lévi-Strauss’s intention to test empirically the value of binary oppositional terms in different cultural settings. Reiterating Roman Jakobson’s influence on Lévi-Strauss, this value refers to the distinctive features of culture as they might be applied to binary oppositional terms. Thus, in LéviStrauss’s model of the bricolage of cultures, the intrinsic characteristics that exist in relationships between cultures can be said to become irrelevant. The bricolage discourse implies the imposition of a possible discourse in which the subject is already inserted. Still, Lévi-Strauss admits that his forecast can only be seen as credible when it is made solely for the purpose of seeking the elementary structure of kinship. Meanwhile, he realized that the reality of culture is a complex one, as cultures are governed by different sets of binary oppositions. If the general form of the tool of the binary opposition is the same, we might conclude that for Lévi-Strauss that the relationship of these sets is both coexistent and relational. In Young’s model, justice, the politics of difference, and the meaning of cultural difference are reached first through defining the justice/injustice dualism, then through defining the term oppression, and finally through defining what the social groups are. Young makes it clear that the definition of oppression is an intelligible reference because oppression is a “structural concept” (I. M. Young 1990: 40).3 With respect to the justice/injustice dualism, Young reminds us that oppression/domination dualism contains multiple dimensions and can, as such, be considered to have five faces: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.4 Young begins her analysis of the Hegelian dualism by examining the meanings upon which the domination/oppression dualism relies. These different dimensions are then integrated into a concept or word wherein each dimension becomes incommensurable with the other and yet of the same importance in relation to the significance justice has. Accordingly, Young argues that it is “a heterogeneous public that acknowledges and affirms group difference.” Unlike Lévi-Strauss, though, Young emphasizes the importance of intrinsic relationships with respect to cultural difference. These relationships are claimed to be relational because of a shared principle, the Marxian interpretation of societal experiences. These relationships are also contextual because, as relationships, they realize their incommensurable nature. Such bricolage discourses, although they are sometimes conflicting, can also be supplementary. Moreover, a subject can be both engaged with and inserted into many different juridical discourses. While for both Lévi-Strauss and Young cultural analysis is facilitated in the beginning by the concept of the binary opposition, their approach to analysis is by no means identical. Lévi-Strauss wishes to assign a univer-

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sal principle to the binary term and, as such, to make it a cultural phenomenon, which as a tactic compromises all cultural difference. In contrast, Young makes a Marxian interpretation of cultural difference and leaves this cultural difference unresolved. While Lévi-Strauss attempts to construct from cultural differences an end theory, Young simply leaves cultural differences entangled. Despite the fact that Young argues for multiple discourses in the cultural world, her analysis is based on Marxist theory. We can say, then, that her new theory on the concepts of the binary opposition (as a distinctive feature) does not allow her to escape the Hegelian negations and the labor the negation implies. In a political project Mouffe calls radical democracy and the social, Mouffe argues for a radical democracy in which the project of democracy should intend to “take account of the full breadth and specificity of the democratic struggles in our times” (Mouffe 1988: cited in Peters 1995: 49; italics mine). Like Young, Mouffe maintains that the democratic struggle in our time refers to the existence of new social movements, the “full breadth and specificity” of which indicates the importance of taking into account the notion that all social movements are of equal significance, without privileging a particular political discourse. It is precisely this concern that drives Mouffe to adopt the poststructuralist critique and analysis and to upgrade her theory on democracy. Being well known as a post-Marxist, Mouffe, in collaboration with Laclau, revises Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, as one that critiques capitalist society. In doing this, Laclau and Mouffe, with the aid of a poststructuralist perspective, revise the idea of the social and the meaning of the citizen. While Laclau and Mouffe retain critical theory as their basic framework, they introduce poststructuralism for the purpose of amending the meaning of critical theory, by which they mean us to understand that there is now the need to include the notion that there should be equal recognition for not only all distinctive democratic struggles, but also for all political discourses. Laclau and Mouffe believed Marxism, as a discourse, constituted an attempt “to dominate the field of discursivity, to arrest the flow of difference, to construct a centre” (1985; cited in Poster 1990: 137). In order to propose a decentered and differential view of the social, Laclau and Mouffe had to link critical theory and poststructuralism by introducing a concept of articulation for the social. Laclau and Mouffe understand the social to involve a convergence of articulations and antagonisms. Firstly, they understand these terms to relate to a discourse on social positions that concerns the language of social justice. Mouffe argues, Alongside the question of rights, another current topic of discussion concerns the notion of social justice. This is highly relevant to our enterprise. Indeed, a democratic and pluralistic citizenship requires a theory of social justice that can serve as

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a framework for regulating the diversity and plurality of demands and rights claimed by the various participants in the political community. (Mouffe 1992: 6)

Secondly, to Laclau and Mouffe, articulation and antagonism are key concepts in their discourse on capitalism. This said, Laclau and Mouffe, in redefining capitalism and hegemony, argue that antagonism is no longer only articulated in relation to class, but that it is a characteristic of social experience multiple and continuous—something that can be seen in the behavior of the new social movements. Thus, we can say the capitalist order is rather unstable. Capitalism needs to be open to criticism for the reason that (1) the configuration of identity is ongoing and (2) there is instability among political articulations. Hegemony should accordingly be redefined, as there is at once an insistence of a fixed, natural, and inevitable social order, while at the same time there exists a denial of the instability of capitalist order. Democracy requires a process that makes possible the subversion of hegemonic discourse. If it were to do so, all forms of articulation and antagonism would therefore be recognized. Forms of articulation and antagonism become relational, as they share the same theoretical framework of resistance; that is, the generality of intelligible references of antagonism is presented by each in the form of a dominance/resistance dualism. Laclau and Mouffe believe that, through this approach, a new model of democracy can be realized, meaning that the politics of pluralism gains the aptitude to acknowledge the conditions of both difference and antagonism. To Mouffe, like Lévi-Strauss and Young, the methodological value of the concept of the binary opposition is exemplified in different forms of the dominance/resistance dualism. Young defines notions of oppression as involving first believing that social justice can be achieved by defying oppression through either an individual or a joint social effort. By contrast, Laclau and Mouffe see the dynamics of this process as both ongoing within social movements and important to democracy. The application of the concept of the binary opposition is unlimited and calculated, while subject positions are countless and contextual. Accordingly, the social is understood as a combination of multiple subject positions. Moreover, Laclau and Mouffe believe that democracy should be reached not only by means of negating the antagonism (based on the language used in relation to the Self/Other dualism), but also by acknowledging the need for an open public sphere that should have the purpose of allowing the emergence of different articulations of antagonisms and values. The open public sphere not only engages related discourses, but also opens up new discourses that are the creation of yet-to-be-heard voices. The public sphere utilized in this form is what Laclau and Mouffe mean when they refer to the social as the pluralism of radical democracy. Laclau and Mouffe explain the characteristics of the social in the following way:

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If we accept the non-complete character of all discursive fixation and, at the same time, affirm the relational character of every identity, the ambiguous character of the signifier, its non-fixation to any signified, can only exist insofar as there is a proliferation of signifiers . . . Society never manages to be identical to itself, as every nodal point is constituted within an intertextuality that overflows it. (1985: 113; cited in Poster 1990: 137)

Laclau and Mouffe outline their idea about radical pluralism and democracy in this way: Pluralism is radical only to the extent that each term of this plurality of identities finds within itself the principle of its own validity, without this having to be sought in a transcendent or underlying positive ground for the hierarchy of meaning of them all and the source and guarantee of their legitimacy. And this radical pluralism is democratic to the extent that the autoconstitutivity of each one of its terms is the result of displacements of the egalitarian imaginary. (1985: 167; cited in Poster 1990: 138)

Mark Poster (1990) observes a notion of incompleteness in the social, which characterizes Laclau and Mouffe’s nonessentialist social theory. He suggests that incompleteness relates to the fact that social “objectivities are never seen as self-identical” and “history is not theorized as a closed chain of necessarily unfolding events” (138). Poster argues that the idea of incompleteness is the key to understanding Laclau and Mouffe’s discussion of hegemony. Because of the importance of incompleteness, the process of democratic practices suggests a resistance of one dominant political discourse in favor of the recognition of multiple political struggles. This credit is, in fact, an imaginable something that results from the methodological impossibility of achieving a totality in the manner explained by Lévi-Strauss—a point I discussed in chapter 2. In other words, the concept of the binary opposition, as a tool for application, can only be used to sketch an imaginary picture of culture and cultural differences—a process that ought to be endless—in a domain where subjectivity is generalized into a single entity. Totality, or the completeness of a discourse on culture, is simply impossible. Poster (1990) also points out that Laclau and Mouffe’s approach suggests the existence of a supplementary character with respect to the articulations that are derived from Gramsci’s idea of hegemony. Gramsci’s concept of hegemony only works as a supplement to account for social phenomena such as class consciousness, the reason being that class consciousness can neither be accounted for by the closed logic of the forces nor by the relations of production. While having made this conclusion, Laclau and Mouffe do not suggest that we look for a newer and better substitute to Marxism, but rather that we accept that the “supplement both completes the theory and reasserts its necessary incompleteness” (Poster

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1990: 138). This supplementary character also helps account for the relational character perceived in subject identities. The supplementary also suggests the possibility of assuming a deconstructive approach with respect to both the individual discourse and the individual subject. Laclau and Mouffe insist upon the social or the subject being open-ended ideas, either through constant ongoing articulations or with the help of supplementary and relational narrations. Therefore, nonessentialism demonstrates the view that the social or the subject is “a composite set of particularization of relations of forces,” (Poster 1990: 139) which themselves reject their origins. In addition, the social and the subject express their contingency by suppressing what is outside them. Therefore, as Poster puts it, “society is thus composed of positions that are relational but which systematically deny their relationality. The social fabric invites a deconstructive analysis which destabilizes identities by ‘reading’ their suppressed absences back into them.” With respect to democracy, Laclau and Mouffe have to argue for a “theoretical undecidability, for incompleteness and contingency as strategies for representing the play of antagonisms in history.” In Young’s theory of the politics of difference, we clearly see that the character for each individual discourse is provisional, autonomous, and contingent. However, for Laclau and Mouffe, any attempt to develop a discourse that is reliant upon a temporary consensus would go against their views on democracy. Discourses on identity risk becoming hegemonic discourses. Laclau and Mouffe may have adopted a double play similar to that of Derrida, in which the status of each articulation (for both the subject and the social) is inscribed and, at the same time, denied. They would argue that the signifier is always undergoing resubjection, and in this way, the radical democracy of identity is negotiated with a contingency and in relation to its incompleteness. In contrast to Derrida’s concepts of deconstruction and différance, Laclau and Mouffe’s imaginary deconstructive society is reached entirely through a process of theoretical articulations. Sharing the multiple implications that Lévi-Strauss relates to binary oppositions, Laclau and Mouffe believe that every event makes sense when named politically and when perceived according to Marxian dialectics. In Laclau and Mouffe’s model of democracy, articulation, or multiple articulations of subject positions, comprises the social, the significance of this being that it manifests its political importance. It is only through the appearance of these articulations in discourse that their differential relations of the social become meaningful. While social and political articulations are mutually dependent, political articulations represent the principal deeds necessary to the intellectual texture Laclau and Mouffe wish to give the social. This interpretation even holds when they dispute the distinction Foucault makes between discursive and nondiscursive practices—which is to say, they argue that Foucault’s

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nondiscursive practices are indeed discursive because they are “more or less complex forms of differential positions among objects” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 107; cited in Poster 1990: 139). In other words, nothing exists outside Laclau and Mouffe’s intellectual text. Equally, nothing rises above its Marxian references. Thus, Poster (1990) argues that closure is introduced in Laclau and Mouffe’s thesis on democracy, first by repressing what Foucault names as the nondiscursive complex involving institutions, techniques, and productive organizations. Poster maintains that this movement is intentional because “they have repressed the non-discursive in order to render the field of the social totally amenable to deconstructive tactics” (140). In this way, Laclau and Mouffe’s deconstructive society is reduced to a total intellectual imagination, in order to “suture” or control its object. Yet Poster argues that Foucault’s position of reserving a place for the nondiscursive is important in that it curtails “the impulse to tantalization . . . even if only as a horizon of non-intelligibility.” In this section, I have explored the close relationship between LéviStrauss’s argument in favor of granting a methodological value to the concept of the binary opposition and some of the political discourses that argue for a politics of difference. In the following section, I shall examine notions of the politics of difference despite that these political discourses might have provided us with insight to make a wider acknowledgment of cultural differences. I intend that my critique of pedagogy, as an examination, will provide feedback with respect to the value of these political discourses. By arguing for the necessity of pedagogy, I suggest that we affirm the effectiveness of the notion of the politics of difference—that is, through a celebration of the Hegelian political thesis and the many applications this thesis suggests. We also ought to be aware of the setbacks that these political attempts produce. This examination is critical in terms of the political arguments concerning the notions of emancipation and freedom. My critique of Laclau and Mouffe’s and Young’s discourses begins with a discussion of the subject positions that involve the practice of forming the political identity—a process of self-reflexivity. II. THE PEDAGOGY: SUBJECT/SUBJECTION AND THE DESIRE OF THE OPPRESSED As intelligible references play an important role in Laclau and Mouffe’s and Young’s discourses on political identity, we ought to examine the effectiveness of these intelligible references in the discursive practices that contribute to the configurations of the identities of subjects on both the collective and the individual level. In other words, the pedagogy of intelligible references lies in the examination of its involvement in the process of a subject’s reflexivity with respect to the formation of that identity. In

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fact, it is precisely this operation of reflexivity that Nietzsche’s genealogy aims to examine, a project that is further elaborated in Foucault’s theory of a power/knowledge relation. In On the Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche 1967b), Nietzschean political reason describes the subject as being formed by a will that defies the notion that there exists a subjective autonomy, which itself nevertheless often carries a presumption that it is a reflexive form. In this way, the subject loses its supremacy over its ability to “express itself” and instead becomes “the modality of power” and “the effect of power” (Butler 1997). In discourses on the politics of difference, the arguments of justice, democracy, and emancipation are often concerned with a project of freeing the subject from being dominated and oppressed. In Butler’s analysis, it is important to ask to what extent do discourses on emancipation lead us away from our ability to express ourselves? Or, put another way, as individuals and political subjects, to what extent do we express our political wills? How do we understand our political subjectivities? In this section, I shall focus my examination on Young’s discourses, with a special interest in the efficiency of the intelligible references acted on the process of reflexivity. These will be critically examined using Judith Butler’s (1997) description of Foucault’s analysis of power in relation to his critical analysis of politics. Butler points out that a genealogical reading of the subject, as a critical category, suggests that “the subject, rather than be identified strictly with the individual, ought to be designated as a linguistic category, a placeholder [and] a structure in formation” (1997: 10; italics mine). Since the process of reflexivity only occurs fundamentally within the language of critical analysis, individuals occupy the site of the subject only after an experience of reflexivity, an act supported by such critical discourses. Butler argues that “the subject simultaneously emerges as a ‘site,’ ” and “[he or she] enjoy[s] intelligibility only to the extent that [he or she is], as it were, first established in language” (10–11). The subject thus refers to subject position of any political discourse—likewise, subject position of any political discourse is an expression of the subject or expresses the subject. Critical language dominates the subject’s use of language in that it conditions both the subject’s existence and its agency. Critical language provides the individual with the linguistic occasion to both achieve himself or herself and to further reproduce such linguistic intelligibility. Butler thus concludes that “no individual becomes a subject without first becoming subjected or undergoing ‘subjectivation’ (a translation of the French assujetissement)” (11). Justice and oppression are the fundamental intelligible references of difference in Young’s discourses. Young’s conception of the social group is clearly driven by political correctness where the group identity presumes the existence of the identity of individuals. It is the emphasis that groups

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as entities suffer from oppression and appeal for justice; individuals are thus being oppressed as a consequence of their belonging to oppressed groups. In other words, the group precedes the individual in significance and, as such, is constituted as a sum of individual identities. In Young’s discourse, she identifies three characters when classifying individuals: cultural forms, practices, and ways of life. Young further isolates affinity as being the key notion with respect to the group’s construction of its sense of solidarity. Young sees affinity as having been already introduced and established within the three characters she describes as categorizing individuals. For instance, Young argues that “a social group is a collective of people who have [an] affinity with one another because of a set of practices or way of life” (I. M. Young 1990: 186). Critically, these three characters “are differentiated in[to] groups” and become resources from which they can “differentiate themselves”—with respect to both their appeal for justice and their analysis of oppression. When talking of the language of justice, Young alerts us to the notion of political affinity—a group’s sense of belonging—stating that this affinity is derived from discourses that are deliberately mobilized rather than from expressions that illustrate the existence of an illusion that there are objective similarities that can be culturally defined. It is, in fact, the similarly unprivileged or threatened political and economic situations in Young’s analysis of affinity that are reinforced when she states that “members of a group have a specific affinity with one another because of similar experiences in their way of life, which prompts them to associate with one another more than with those not identified with the group, or in a different way” (I. M. Young 1990: 43). This claim implies that group affinities may arise not only in the absence of a shared objective culture, but also in any disadvantaged location within the labor market that is economically pure and measurable. This notion of affinity arises as the result of a shared experience of hostility perpetrated from the outside and, as such, has become an obvious component in Young’s discourse on political justice. This sort of group affinity is basically a political response to negate, either passively or actively, the possibility of both being named as the Other and being further oppressed by a group.5 Moreover, Young differentiates between the notion of political affinity and the notion of deliberate democracy, the latter of which she is against (Young 1995). To Young, deliberate democracy is a process of sorting out, discovering, or constructing a unity within a populace when some might take this unity to be a prior condition of deliberation. Young’s argument against deliberate democracy is evidenced in her basic theme of political differences representing a rejection of consensus among these political groups. She cites two instances for criticism: in the first, she disagrees with Michael Walzer (1987) when he insists that effective social criticism is located in a community’s prior shared understandings. In the second, she

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disagrees with Jürgen Habermas (1990) because Habermas attempts to restore a disrupted consensus and seeks norms of communication and mutual understanding. In summary, Young identifies two problematic areas of argument on political identity: firstly, she argues that “we cannot assume that there [is a] sufficient[ly] shared understanding to appeal to in many situations of conflict and solving collective problems”; secondly, she argues that “the assumption of prior unity obviates the need for the selftranscendence as an important component of a communicative model of democracy” (1995: 141). Instead, Young proposes the notion of an alliance among political groups in the form of a collective effort pursued by different political movements. The notion of alliance avoids the possible accusation of a coercion or consensus, but “arrive[s] at the common good [that] may be necessary to work through differences.” The notion of an alliance alludes to another version of political affinity as possibly existing in the relations of groups that allow difference “to be transcended, because it is partial and divisive” (italics mine).6 While it seems that Young’s critique of deliberate democracy secures for her a new configuration of the politics of difference, without intentional coercion among different groups, this new configuration still requires further examination. The problem lies with the fact that Young’s general configuration has a similar foundation to Lévi-Strauss’s approach to the notion of difference. I argued earlier that Young has extended the LéviStraussian argument of the methodological value of binary oppositions to its greatest capacity. I have also illustrated that the bricolage discourse is a result of a teleological discipline by which any possible reading of cultural differences can be exemplified and structured with any particular intention in mind. A bricolage discourse is structured upon a binary oppositional concept in which cultural differences are defined for the purpose of being distinctive (i.e., distinctive features). The distinctive features in Young’s discourse appear in the form of cultural forms, a way of life, similar experiences, sets of practices, the oppressed, and so on. These expressions, although somewhat vague, suggest that groups may be formed in a variety of different ways and on a multiplicity of different bases. This approach generates five distinctive faces or forms of oppression, which may be attached to groups singly, in various combinations, or with various permutations. Each might be sufficient enough to be called the oppressed and, at the same time, to be irreducible. However, it is the general configuration of these formations that delivers the same message as that produced by the Lévi-Straussian methodology—which is to say, being different should be taken to mean being distinctive from the Other. Young’s general configuration suggests that there exists a framework of intelligible references that describes the subject’s status, which becomes the intelligible reference that dominates the individual’s becoming. That is, the discourse on the subject’s political status—a political subjection—is

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lifted up and circulated in ways in which it presupposes the very meaning of that subject. The political discourse in the form of intelligible references becomes available to its subjects, the effect of the practice of subjection being like the bricolage, as Lévi-Strauss has already suggested it is— Hegelian subjection is the inevitable result of the language of oppression. That is, the reflexive process of the individual is circulated within, as a result of the discourses of oppression that act as the structural references. The subject refers to its own genesis only by lifting itself through the critical examination of an available reference that refers to itself, thereby making sense of itself through the discourses that narrate its genesis. In other words, the narratives that relate how the subject is constituted already predominate and take place in the constitution of subject. Thus, the notion of the subject’s autonomy is problematic in the telling of its story—a story told both of and for itself. In the process of telling the story of itself, the subject seeks accounts that result from narratives that have already been assigned to that subject; that is, the subject is an effect of discursive subjection. This argument is illustrated by the Foucauldian theory of power/knowledge, which suggests that the subject is interlocked and circulated within the formation of discourse. Butler (1997: 11) draws our attention to the problematic of agency—that is, that the subject reproduces its subjectivity as an effect of the subordination of certain discourses. With respect to the discursive power of both oppression and empowerment, as described by Young, we should consider the effectiveness of agency in relation to subjection. Butler warns us that “subjection consists precisely in [the] fundamental dependency on a discourse we never chose but that, paradoxically, initiates and sustains our agency” (2). Furthermore, “the critical subject[’s] (agency) is not only formed in the language of subordination, but . . . this language of subordination provides the agency’s continuing condition of possibility” (8). It is the Nietzschean genealogical analysis of the subject’s reflexive process that elucidates, as a result of the workings of power, the attachment to subjection. We could say that the history of oppression produces the subject’s reflexivity from which the subject realizes its subject position as a historical definition, a discursive differentiation, and a discursive objection. The modernist discourse of emancipation therefore leads the subject to desire a critical analysis of the past. While the desire of a critical emancipation is aimed at setting the subject free, this desire is impeded by the discursive subjection that operates upon it. No matter how perfect a political discourse is, the subject itself becomes entrapped as long as the political goal forms the operation of that subject’s everyday life, the desire to triumph, and the determination and persistence to accomplish this political goal. This problem is impacted upon by the old modernist theories on emancipation/empowerment more significantly than might otherwise be believed, on account

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of the fact that this problem is the result of there remaining the impossibility of a single satisfactory wholesale goal. Even the later revisions of the deliberate-democracy model can be said to reinforce logocentric Reason and the language of white supremacy. Young has sought to shift the emphasis of political discourse away from emancipation and onto communication. She explains it like this: I propose three elements that a broader conception of communicative democracy requires in addition to critical argument: greeting, rhetoric and storytelling. Because they recognize the embodiment and particularity of interlocutors, these three modes of communication help to establish and maintain the plurality I have argued . . . Where such a public contains group-based cultural, social perspectival and valuative differences, moreover, these communicative forms supplement argument by providing ways of speaking across difference in the absence of significant shared understanding. (I. M. Young 1995: 144)

Accompanying the desire for discourses on both emancipation and oppression is the idea of group affinity. This idea of group affinity supplies the positive sense of group differences that has arisen from the differentiation of the social and cultural aspects with a given group. Young hopes that these supplementary elements of the notion of group difference lead to a political image of difference, wherein different groups “mutually respect one another and affirm one another in their differences” (I. M. Young 1990: 163). However, Young’s efforts do not alter her theoretical framework in that the subject still requires a desire to be oppressed, which, as a condition of his own subordination, is set up as a political practice of itself. To this, Butler poses a question: “what does it mean to embrace the very form of power—regulation, prohibition, suppression—that threatens one with dissolution in an effort, precisely, to persist in one’s own existence?” (1997: 9). This said, we can say that the desire of emancipation-oppression troubles the subject, not on account of there being a pure discourse that requests the subject’s recognition from the Other, but because this same desire (of emancipation-oppression) is totally dependent both upon the discursive formation of itself and the practice that results from the discourse itself. Also, as discourses on emancipation and oppression are mutually interdependent, the subject is entrapped in an ambiguous performance by his or her constant refusal to surrender both to desire and to the subsequent discourses that develop from it. THE PEDAGOGY: THE LINGUISTIC TRAP OF AGENCY In this section, I shall examine Young’s theory of the politics of difference in relation to the linguistic trap of agency. The linguistic trap of

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agency is related to the notion of agency, something that is often conveyed with political ambivalence, the reason being that the agent is subject to a philosophical dilemma. On the one hand, the notion of agency implies emancipation, which is thought of as unrelated to the subjective construction as a discursive effect. On the other hand, agency implies the political significance of empowerment, to empower the subordinate, which often engages the inevitable discursive efforts in expressions of dominance, oppression, and political strategy. Thus the political subject confronts a philosophical impasse, which occurs at discursive contestations involving the wills to act and not to act. The subject’s action toward emancipation is often at the risk of an action of dominance. The language that describes the relationship of the binary oppositions of domination/subordination and oppressors/oppressed operates at the center of the political discourses of modernity.7 I will argue that Young’s solution in relation to the linguistic ambivalence of agency, as expressed in her discourse on the politics of difference, fails to provide a satisfactory answer. Young’s idea of the notion of difference relates to a celebration of multiple values as an expression of human diversity. Difference means variation without priority, without the superiorities and inferiorities of differences in individual subjects (or in different oppressed communities). Difference means being different without any intention of being eliminated or universalized. With this understanding, politics suggests a movement that undertakes the positivity of groups, which affirms difference in relation to notions of liberation and empowerment. Young accounts for the positivity of cultural difference by justifying the cultures of oppressed groups. For instance, she argues that “the oppressed groups have [distinctive] cultures, experiences and perspectives on social life with humanly positive meaning[s]” and “some of which may even be superior to the culture of mainstream society” (I. M. Young 1990: 166). In fact, Young’s argument for the positivity of cultural difference suggests a political subversion of the value of the dominating culture through the violence enacted by multiple forces other than those of the dominating one. It seems to Young that the power of the dominating culture wanes if other cultures and values assume greater recognition in the public space. Young argues that “asserting the value and specificity of the culture and attributes of oppressed groups . . . results in a relativizing of the dominant culture” (I. M. Young 1990: 166). Thus, Young insists upon the assertion of the specificity of the positive group in order to avoid producing a universal claim that further leads to a political compulsion to assert the need for exclusion, oppression, and dominance. Young’s insistence on group specificity and the notion of relational differences calls for an immediate critique. Nancy Fraser (1992) argues that Young’s argument of group specificity does not provide a sufficiently extensive explanation of political contexts. In terms of strategy, group

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specificity may also work well and in some cases actually defeat oppression, but group specificity may also lead to a counterproductive outcome “since [some] oppressions may be better combated precisely by undermining the conditions of existence that differentiate the group as a group” (202). In other words, Young’s notions of group specificity and relational difference seek to provide a specific explanation to a specific situation of oppression by, for example, offering a different definition of oppression. Thus Young’s notions of group specificity fail to provide multiple and intertwined levels to the solution of an oppressive situation. In a more sophisticated examination of agency, Keith Ansell-Pearson (1991: 282) argues that the notion of agency is often endowed with a significant subjugation “in the name of a higher and self-inclusive community.” Such an analysis is also seen in Young’s discourse in that individual autonomy is displaced for group autonomy, or when she wants to achieve autonomy on an individual level as well as collective level (I. M. Young 1990: 34). On the one hand, she suggests that group autonomy replace individual autonomy, blaming the Western authoritative idea of emancipation and empowerment and suggesting that justice is reached only on the basis of a communicative ethics. On the other hand, she juxtaposes group autonomy with an individual autonomy because the individual subject can be coerced to join groups of distinctive forms. Does group autonomy dispense with the need for critiques like those made of individual autonomy? To what extent does this displacement take us? Group autonomy necessarily engages a series of oppressive structures, a process that involves a normalization and moralization of the effect that controls the state of mind. Therefore, Young’s new configuration of political theory reproduces the juridical modes of political discourses and the operation of the power/knowledge relation described by Foucault. There exist good intentions behind Young’s concept of communicative ethics in terms of its general conception of justice. The idea of justice is here shifted from a focus on distributive patterns to procedural issues of participation involving deliberation and decision making. For a norm to be just, everyone who follows it must in principle have an effective voice in considering it and be able to agree to it without coercion. For a social condition to be just, it must enable the possibility that all needs are met and allow a total exercise of freedom; thus justice requires that any group be able to express their individual needs as subjective individuals. Young’s notion of communicative ethics aims to allow voices of different sources not only to be presented, but also to be able to participate in political procedures. To this end, Young holds to two prerequisites for the notion of communicative ethics: firstly, that “social justice concerns the degree to which a society contains and supports the institutional conditions necessary for the realization of values [of the good life]”; secondly,

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that “the values comprised in the good life can be reduced to two very general ones: (1) developing and exercising one’s capacities and expressing one’s experience . . . and (2) participating in determining one’s action and the conditions of one’s action” (I. M. Young 1990: 37). The problem of Young’s notion of communicative ethics becomes clear when she argues that these preceding two prerequisites identify two general values that “correspond to two social conditions that define injustice: oppression, the institutional constraint on self-development, and domination, the institutional constraint on self-determination” (I. M. Young 1990: 91). In other words, there is a universal assumption of individual autonomy that must meet the requirements of both the form of individual capacity as well as the political right of the individual. Individual freedom in Young’s model is not only seen at the level of self-development and determination, but also this self-development and determination is construed through institutional constraint. Moreover, there is an ambiguity, in that the politics of difference will open up the possibility of political recognition and thus provide a space in political life for those who have been politically excluded and neglected due to the difference experienced on account of their distinctive aesthetic subjectivity. Young’s political thoughts give emphasis to the juridical and cognitive aspects of subjectivity but limit themselves to discourses on five basic forms of oppression and domination. I would like to elaborate on Keith Ansell-Pearson’s (1991) critical analysis of postmodern political theories to further my response to Young’s political discourse. Ansell-Pearson argues that postmodern political theory reconstructs its political thought in relation to Nietzsche and often ends up synthesizing Kant and Nietzsche (283). He further explains that the notions of self-expression and self-determination—as seen in Young’s discourse—may be contested for the reason that it is an imaginative reading of Nietzsche’s will to power. Young’s discourse is seen as an imaginative interpretation because such a reading provides “an insufficient notion or motive for the constitution of an ethical community” (284). It is obvious that an individual’s desire for autonomy can be easily backtracked to a prepolitical condition, and from there the will to power represents a warlike competition of desire, an interpretation Foucault argues for so effectively when theorizing on the constitution of the subject. Thus, postmodern political theory will need to seek “some conception of a substantive ethical content” (like the Hegelian notion of the universality of ethical life) in order to avoid both trapping “subjectivity within itself (as in the case of the beautiful soul)” and to avoid being faced with “the constant threat of a Hobbesian warlike state of nature breaking out” (284). As I suggested earlier, Young has called for her communicative ethics to be recognized in the cause of a good life. We might add to the preceding that Young’s definition of group autonomy is based on the notion of a group-reflexivity rather than one of one’s own self-reflexivity. While self-reflexivity relates to the autonomy of indi-

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viduals, group-reflexivity is mainly defined by the group’s disadvantage in terms of political situations.8 In order to promote the importance of group autonomy, Young quickly and accidentally relates individual autonomy to the notion of individualism and the assimilation policy. For instance, Young argues that “where the dominant culture refuses to see anything but the achievement of autonomous individuals, the oppressed assert that we shall not separate from the people with whom we identify in order to ‘make it’ in a white Anglo male world” (I. M. Young 1990: 167). By contrast, group-reflexivity leads to political disadvantages and is able to call for further institutional changes. For instance, Young regards group-reflexivity as something that can only be pursued by whole groups of “Blacks, women [and] American Indians” when “accomplished through basic institutional changes.” Young looks at institutional changes in terms of both “group representation in policymaking and an elimination of the hierarchy of rewards that forces everyone to compete for scarce positions at the top.” Young’s promotion of group autonomy emphasizes the notion of a common identity that inevitably risks harmonizing various voices of individuals. Young further argues that the “dynamics of group” ought not to diminish the power of group autonomy. In terms of the nature of relations of differences, the dynamics of the group are seen from the point of view of coalition and separation, where it becomes extremely important for the exercise of the power of decision making between different groups. Young, in describing the importance of separation and coalition as features of the politics of difference, has the following to say: This politics of group assertion, however, takes as a basic principle that members of oppressed groups need separate organizations that exclude others, especially those from more privileged groups. Separate organization[s] [are] probably necessary in order for these groups to discover and reinforce the positivity of their specific experience, to collapse and eliminate double consciousness. (I. M. Young 1990: 167)

Decision making is, however, taking place in a hierarchy of power relations. Separation and coalition happen when members of a specific group realize what their needs and interests are. As political needs and interests are in accordance with the group’s power hierarchy, this interpretation of autonomy makes no difference to the alleviation of political inequalities, which is contrary to what the politics of difference aims to do. Such a position is at stake in keeping the status quo. I would therefore take the discourse on emancipation as consolatory on account of the fact that Young argues that the politics of difference has defined group autonomy as being “an important vehicle for empowerment and the development of a groupspecific voice and perspective” (I. M. Young 1990: 168). I would therefore

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have reservations about Young’s argument that assertions of a positive sense of group difference would help the oppressed to be in a better position in questioning the dominating social and political order. I would be suspicious of their ability to reproduce this pattern of privilege and oppression. The marriage of Kant and Nietzsche in political thinking seems to get us nowhere. My critique of Mouffe’s idea of agency focuses on her misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s view of pluralism and her misuse of Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power. Mouffe believes her view of pluralism to be influenced by Nietzsche’s theory of pluralism for the reason that she has carried through in her work the basic Nietzschean idea of “a plurality of values” (1996: 137). The problem with Mouffe’s misinterpretation of Nietzsche lies in her attempt to “supplement Nietzsche’s philosophy of power with the Kantian notion of a kingdom of ends” (Ansell-Pearson 1991: 285). Ansell-Pearson argues that such a misinterpretation characterizes one of the problem areas that can be seen in some poststructuralist political theory. Ansell-Pearson (1991) explains the genesis of this new attempt as a way out of the difficulties with respect to the ethics of autonomy that is evidenced in Kant’s and Nietzsche’s theories. Nietzsche challenges Kant’s idea of rational agency by showing that the autonomous self is a result of a historical process. Nietzsche offers a new idea of ethics when he reveals the autonomous self is a historical achievement. However, a difficulty arises from the fact that “Nietzsche does not universalize his conception of autonomy either in terms of [the] categorical imperative or in terms of a notion of the general will” (285). Thus, to many political theorists, “Kant succeeds in offering a conception of rational agency but fails to relate this conception to its social and historical conditions of possibility. Nietzsche succeeds in showing the autonomous self to be the result of an historical process but fails to . . . [elucidate within] his moral and political thought the needs of the self as a communal being.” Some political theorists therefore look to find a way out, by revising Nietzsche’s philosophy of power, through the use of a Kantian notion of ration (or reasoning). Mouffe’s political theory echoes this new attempt, a positioning that leads her to both a misinterpretation and misuse of Nietzsche’s theory, particularly the notion of the will to power. Mouffe misuses Nietzsche’s theory of the will to power, firstly, when she identifies with the articulatory practice as a key concept of political agency. By emphasizing the articulatory practice, Mouffe’s idea of a plurality of values “is . . . distinguished from the relativist position which says, finally, values are a pure question of choice, of preferences” (1996: 137). Therefore, Mouffe believes that Nietzsche’s idea of the will to power relates to the notion that agency exhibits both a will to express its view and a will to participate in the public sphere. Mouffe’s theory of differ-

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ence, plurality, and multiplicity refer to different values expressed by political agency. The will to power, in Mouffe’s theory of political agency, is important with respect to its possibilities to express views and values, since this will to power identifies the agent as a democratic citizen.9 The will to power is further defined as representing a decision-making process in Mouffe’s discourse on democracy. As decision making often brings out the facts that relate to both the conflict and the reconciliation, Mouffe argues for a nonreconciled solution to conflicts of values. The conflictual fact of difference suggests a political action that does not involve choice or exclusion. Mouffe states her vision of the plurality of values as follows: My pluralism of values is much more agonistic in the sense that it recognizes that some values cannot be combined because they are exclusive of each other. You cannot, at the same time, realise values which are linked to being a good husband, a good father, and being a monk, or an explorer. There are many different forms of flourishing for human beings and they are exclusive of each other. It is not that we do not have, materially, the space or the time. It is that if you choose one thing, you necessarily exclude the other. Decisions have to be made, and to decide on one alternative is to exclude the other. (1996: 138)

Mouffe’s misinterpretation of the will to power ignores Nietzsche’s fundamental challenge, which attacks the “question of universality, of how our notions of community and of a common identity are arrived at” (Ansell-Pearson 1991: 285). Nietzsche’s theory of the will to power is further elaborated by Foucault in the latter’s exploration of the theory of a power/knowledge relation. Central to these theories is the argument that revolves around the effect of historical and discursive power on the process of subjection. In Mouffe’s case, the misuse of the will to power arises on account of her insistence upon the individual reasoning for himself or herself. Individual reasoning is important in arguing for individual autonomy as it expresses the individual’s capability to participate in the public sphere. In other words, notions such as decision making and active democratic citizenship are the foundations of a democratic society. Mouffe fails to establish the fact that there exists a historically constructed subjectivity. Thus individual reasoning only allows her to explain the significance of political agency as a foundation of the practice of democracy. My second critique focuses on Mouffe’s vision of the political community. Mouffe adopts Hannah Arendt’s notion of the public sphere, which consists of “the practiz[ing] of citizenship” in a way in which “members of civil society can exist as citizens and act collectively to resolve democratically the issue[s] concerning their life in the political community” (Mouffe 1992: 9). Therefore, Mouffe’s vision of the political community—the public—is an imaginary entity that is constructed around the notion that indi-

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viduals have multiple combinations of political needs and goals. In other words, the public, as a pluralism form, is formulated “as the articulation of an ensemble of subject positions, constructed within specific discourses and always precariously and temporarily sutured at the intersection of those subject positions” (10). Mouffe sees the importance of democracy, in relation to her theory of a political community of plural values, in the individual’s articulations of different subject positions. In terms of democracy, Mouffe argues that her view of a plurality of values within the social focuses on the process rather than the resolution of conflicts. Mouffe criticizes Habermas’s imaginary ideal speech situation with respect to its notion of difference. Habermas’s ideal speech mode is developed for the purpose of communication. Mouffe is right to question this communicable capacity of difference, in which Habermas naively believes. Mouffe defines her idea of democracy as follows: The democracy which I am advocating will always be a democracy to reach for but never attain, because there is no possibility of a final harmony. You cannot be a pluralist and believe in a final harmony because, if it were realized, that would be the end of pluralism. (1996: 138)

Despite Mouffe’s claims that she has no intention of reaching a final harmony with respect to her ideal of the plurality of values, she has construed a new configuration of political community—a dynamic, floating, unfixed, yet-to-be one political community—that is to be decided by the participation of reasoning individuals. Mouffe believes that her new configuration of the political community has reconciled the conflict that exists on account of a distinction that has been made between the private and the public. The configurations of the private and the public are subject to “different mode[s] of articulation” (Mouffe 1992: 9). Because this reconciliation distinguishes between the private and the public, Mouffe further argues for a political vision of pluralism that emphasizes the individual’s capability for change within the public sphere. Mouffe sees this possibility of change, as the role played by agency in the public sphere, a role that draws on the logic of liberalism, itself as an aspect of the logic of democracy. A new version of the private refers to an insistence on the following: the logic of liberalism, popular sovereignty, and the declaration of a set of fundamental human rights. A new version of the public, on the other hand, is related to a particular form of human coexistence. It is significant to note that Mouffe’s reason for incorporating the doctrine of liberalism into her theory of the politics of difference is that liberalism “would guarantee the defense of pluralism and the respect of individual freedom (1992: 11). My third critique focuses on Mouffe’s misunderstanding of the relationship between the private and the public. Ansell-Pearson’s perspective

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on Nietzsche’s view of politics and the problematic notion of agency is that “Nietzsche does not conceive of politics in terms of a vision of a political community made up of free and equal human beings in which the opposition between the individual and the community has at least been overcome” (1991: 285). We ought to remember here that Nietzsche’s will to power should lead us to both question the legitimacy of Truth and inquire into the latter’s effectiveness. The effectiveness of subjectivity is closely related to its discursive power. For example, Nietzsche has always kept “the question of the identity of the communal self open in order to interrogate the claims of morality and to preserve the tensions and ambiguities of political life.” Mouffe’s applications of Nietzsche’s will to power as the power of individual articulations of speech in the public sphere simply defies Nietzsche’s fundamental concern for the ethics of the political. My last critique focuses on Mouffe’s ambiguity toward the definition of agency within the social sphere. Before proceeding with my critique, I would like to state that I agree with Mouffe with respect to her focus on the importance of deeds rather than doers as the key idea to the notion of political agency. For instance, she argues that “the ‘will to power’ of agency actually refers to ‘articulations’ of different values that are practiced by agencies. The deeds of the creation of multiple values are more important than ‘who’ creates those. The agency is the doer behind those deeds” (1992: 9). Moreover, she has defined her idea of political agency as a democratic citizenship in her theory. She adopts Kirstie McClure’s idea of political agency by arguing that citizenship should be allowed to belong to different political groups simultaneously. Citizenship, as political agency, is allocated to “political articulation of relations of race, class, ethnicity and sexuality” (10). In other words, democratic citizenship as political agency is determined by the articulation of relations of difference. Mouffe is right to present such a notion of political agency because a structured, determined self allows her to avoid the position of searching for the Kantian sense of a priori, a prefixed code of moral rules. Therefore, Mouffe’s pluralist notion of a democratic citizenship becomes a selfcreated unit capable both of articulating different forms of difference and of affirming different relations of difference. My disagreement with Mouffe lies with her denial of different referents such as gender, race, and class as elements of citizenship. Mouffe makes her position clear in the following way: [O]ne’s identity as a citizen should not be made dependent on one’s ethnic, religious or racial identity. Following the same line of reasoning we can also affirm that gender should be irrelevant to the practice of citizenship. (1992: 10)

Mouffe has mistaken the political appeal of gender, race, and class as identical to a fundamental assumption of agency. She argues that “[i]t is true

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that the modern category of the citizen has been constructed in a way that, under the pretence of universality, postulated a homogeneous public, which relegated all particularity and difference to the private, and that it has contributed to the exclusion of women” (Mouffe 1992: 9). Therefore, Mouffe is arguing that the introduction of sexual difference, such as that which distinguishes women from men, is an imperative category into which the definition of citizenship will have a negative consequence. It is because of this that such an action reproduces the modern definition of citizenship and thus reproduces the modern structure of relations in gender difference. Mouffe argues that a democratic citizenship should aim to achieve “a new conception of citizenship where such a difference becomes truly irrelevant.”10 Mouffe’s reason for rejecting woman as an element in the definition of citizenship lies in her fear of the introduction of the essentialist argument for the political. She is afraid that such an action would defeat her original efforts to call for both multiple and diverse articulations of values. However, it is significant that Mouffe’s fear leads to her rejection of the bodily experience of woman—meaning body matters. We cannot refuse to acknowledge that the body contributes to the experience of the social and, as such, further extends the subject’s cause for a necessary political articulation of values. If Mouffe rejects bodily experience, where would the substance of articulations come from in her project? Mouffe’s political project holds to the good intentions she relies upon in employing Nietzsche’s philosophical theory of the will to power as a key concept in relation to the notion of difference, yet Mouffe misunderstands Nietzsche’s theory of will to power by, in her own theory, not affirming the existence of both the body and bodily experience. The preceding theories on difference and identity of Young, Laclau and Mouffe have been described and critiqued. Despite their different approaches with respect to the politics of difference, their theories share some distinctive characteristics with respect to the notion of difference to which these theorists hold. They reject homogeneity in support of diversity, multiplicity, and heterogeneity; they argue for the specific, distinctive, and particular; and they emphasize the existence of the contextual, the variable, and the provisional nature of discourse in relation to its impact upon historical experience. This chapter has provided a genealogical examination of the discursive construction of these new attempts to define a philosophical basis for difference. It is suggested that this new knowledge in relation to difference is in fact indicative. Central to the construction of the arguments of the specific, contextual, and individual is their realization as concepts in the formation of binary oppositions. Historical experience is understood as that which should be comprehended through the exercising of a methodology of dialectics based upon the Hegelian analysis of the political dialogue

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that takes place between the lord and the bondsman. Despite the importance of a celebration of the multiple, historical experience is understood to be limited to and dependent upon the modernist approach. Although the politics of difference alters the modernist approach of adopting binary oppositions, it has reduced universal assumptions and grand narratives to notions of community of different dimensions. What therefore remains is a fundamental framework for interpreting human experience, which is to say that new knowledge becomes entrapped in the demise of modernity. These theorists have repeated the setbacks found elsewhere in the modernist approach and as discussed in the previous chapters. For instance, Young’s discourse requires a desire of the history of oppression for one’s identities. The history of oppression presumes the existence of a discursive space for the development of individual subjectivities. The intelligible reference produced by the history of oppression dominates the construction of one’s subjectivity; it determines both one’s subjecthood and the individual’s identity. Mouffe interprets Nietzsche’s will to power as the individual’s authority to articulate and participate in the public sphere. Democracy therefore invites multiple participation and involvement in the public sphere. Mouffe’s model requires the reasoning of individuals to be realized as agency for there to be a democratic society, but it fails to explain the effect of the process of historical construction upon the individual’s autonomy. These new attempts at claiming cultural difference are for the main part hampered by their dependence upon the concept of the binary opposition and their incapability to transform the metaphysical meaning of binary oppositions. In the following three chapters, I will explore Derrida’s transformation of the metaphysics of the present as it is applied to the discussion of the concept of the binary opposition.

CHAPTER 4

The Performance of Différance and Deconstruction

INTRODUCTION I have illustrated in the last few chapters that the concept of the binary opposition operates as a basic framework for the constitution of political discourses. Derrida, in his discussion of différance and deconstruction, describes deconstruction as something that involves a concern for the investigation conducted by his philosophical predecessors, which include Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Derrida’s affiliations with his predecessors have been discussed by many of Derrida’s readers. A reader of particular note is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. This chapter aims to explore the political implications of both Derrida’s notions of différance and his concept of deconstruction. I will begin with a discussion that attempts to relate Derrida’s notion of différance and his concept of deconstruction to the concept of the binary opposition. Following this, I will provide an analysis of Spivak’s interpretations of Derrida’s political philosophy. This analysis will identify in Derrida’s political philosophy two themes: (1) a binary reading of deconstruction and (2) a political and strategic essentialism. This leads me to discuss Derrida’s arguments of the metaphysics of presence, which can be identified as existing implicitly within the notion of différance, both in response to and as a critique of Spivak’s interpretations. DIFFÉRANCE, DECONSTRUCTION, AND AFFIRMATION OF THE OTHER Différance and deconstruction are two popular terms used by Derrida. As a consequence of Derrida’s close affiliations within the tradition of

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Western metaphysics, these two terms can be seen as being closely tied to Derrida’s concept of the binary opposition. For instance, this relation can be seen in Derrida’s works where he reflects upon both French structuralism and Hegelian semiology, something that is in evidence particularly in the works Writing and Différance (1978a) and Margins of Philosophy (1982a). In these works we can see that the doctrine of différance is associated with the concept of the binary opposition. Derrida’s concept of différance is also intended to provide a critique of the preceding philosophical discourses, in particular that surrounding the Hegelian dialectic. In relation to the concept of the binary opposition, Derrida argues that deconstruction is “a kind of general strategy” or “a general economy” (1981: 41). In other words, the main concern of deconstruction as a strategy is that of economy, its purpose within the concept of the binary opposition being “to avoid both simply neutralizing the binary oppositions of metaphysics and simply residing within the closed field of these oppositions, thereby confirming it.” Also, regarding the concept of the binary opposition, Derrida introduces another way of understanding différance. [Différance] is a non-concept in that it cannot be defined in terms of oppositional predicates; it is neither this nor that; but rather this and that (e.g. that act of differing and of deferring) without being reducible to a dialectical logic either. (Kearney and Derrida 1984: 110)

It is thus clear that we cannot avoid discussing the notion of différance without also discussing the concept of the binary opposition. However, in saying this, we must say the doctrine of différance is by no means constituted from the concept of the binary opposition. Derrida explains that the concept of différance “emerges and develops as a determination of language from which it is inseparable” (Kearney and Derrida 1984: 110). In explaining this, Derrida further adds that such language (that expresses différance) comprises a conceptual realm with characteristics that “would allow [terms including différance] to have a univocal semantic content over and above its inscription” (italics mine). Language per se suggests the existence of a trace of language with “no oppositional or predicative generality.” Moreover, this language, when used in defining terms such as différance, is not within the logocentric system of philosophy—that is, the Aristotelian or dialectical system of logic. As différance implies the work of a deconstructive project, which is to say that it involves a radical critique of Western logocentric metaphysics, Derrida maintains that such a deconstructive project has as its purpose the will to “discover the non-place or non-lieu which would be the ‘other’ of philosophy” (Kearney and Derrida 1984: 112). The “non-place” or “nonlieu” refers to a nonphilosophical site, as opposed to the site of discourses related to the metaphysics, the framework of the latter being heavily

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dependent upon the concept of the binary opposition. Derrida’s new perspective in relation to the defining of materials should be regarded as a kind of philosophy for the reason that a nonphilosophical site does not suggest an antiphilosophical position. More important is Derrida’s concern for the question—one central to this issue—that asks, “from what site or non-site (non-lieu) can philosophy as such appear to itself as other than itself, so that it can interrogate and reflect upon itself in an original manner” (108)? Thus, the Derridean philosophy suggests a philosophical position that analyzes Western logocentric discourses without intending to replace them with new ones. The doctrine of différance as a philosophical formation reveals itself not to replace or to deny Derrida’s predecessors. On the contrary, Derrida pays homage to his predecessors, saying that “[he] owe[s] much to the thought of Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger” and that he has benefited from “the genealogical and genetic critique of Nietzsche and Freud” (109).1 In fact, what concerns Derrida is the metaphysics of presence, something that is central to any understanding of Derrida’s notion of deconstruction. According to Alan Bass (1978), the translator of Derrida’s Margins of Philosophy, Derrida has observed that the metaphysics of Western philosophy from Plato to Heidegger has excluded the notion of writing from the philosophical definition of the sign. Therefore, the metaphysics of the presence of writing is excluded from the economy of the sign. Deconstruction, accordingly, tackles by way of a critique this exclusion of writing operating in the name of presence. As a critique, deconstruction elucidates this presence as “a ‘symptom’ which reveals the workings of the ‘repressive’ logic of presence” (xi). Martin Dillon (1995) also suggests the possibility that a similar “non-place” critique can be found in Derrida’s reflections upon phenomenology. According to Dillon, Derrida is influenced by Nietzsche and Freud, as the latter “take[s] the step beyond phenomenology towards a more radical, ‘non-philosophical’ questioning, while never renouncing the discipline and methodological rigor of phenomenology” (109). Derrida’s deconstructive concern for the metaphysics of presence can be seen in his definition of différance as a “non-concept”: [Différance] is not, does not exist, is not a present-being (on) in any form; and we will be led to delineate also everything that it is not, that is, everything; and consequently that it has neither existence nor essence. (1982b: 6)

Nevertheless, the philosophical non-place concern of différance ought not to be confused with the structuralist explanation of differences. As I have shown in the previous two chapters, the structuralist way of defining differences suggests that difference has a structural arbitrariness that is derived from structuralist terms themselves that exist within the system of

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signs. In other words, differences are structurally determined by a system of signs. Differences are differences in terms that are designated within a system of signs. Derrida suggests that the structuralist system of signs basically depends upon the concept of the binary opposition for the development of its character. Therefore, differences in terms are operable not because of “the compact force of their nuclei” but because there are “oppositions that both distinguish them [and] relate them one to another” (10). Derrida’s deconstructive analysis of structuralism reveals that “signified concepts [are] never present in and of [themselves], in a sufficient presence that would refer only to [themselves]” (1982b: 11). Moreover, the structuralist analysis exposes the meaning of every concept, as it is “inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts.” Derrida’s deconstructive investigation thus draws our attention to the importance of the systematic play of differences that structuralism has contributed to through its promotion of a definition of differences. The importance of such play is “no longer simply a concept, but rather the possibility of conceptuality, of a conceptual process and system in general.” As deconstruction opens up a greater number of possibilities of conceptuality than structuralism does, différance will always be beyond the influence of structuralism. We may therefore conclude that while structuralist differences are never sufficient to account for différance in its plenitude form, the notion of différance does contain the presence of structuralist differences. Bass (1982) argues that deconstruction also involves endless confrontations with Hegelian concepts: it moves from a restricted and speculative Hegelian philosophy of economy to a general economy, which also involves a reinterpretation of Hegel’s concept of Aufhebung. Bass explains that the speculative philosophy of economy refers to a system “in which there is nothing that cannot be made to make sense, in which there is nothing other than meaning” (20). A general economy refers to a system “which affirms that which exceeds meaning, the excess of meaning from which there can be no speculative profits.” The Hegelian notion of Aufhebung contains the double meaning of conservation and negation. This enables a process of dialectics where “every concept is . . . negated and lifted up to a higher sphere in which it is thereby conserved.” This procedure suggests the existence of a restricted interpretation of Aufhebung. In Derrida’s case, the deconstructive investigation of structuralism suggests that Aufhebung yields at least two contradictory meanings as an effect of différance. The effect of différance suggests both the existence of “the excess of the trace Aufhebung itself” and that the notion of Aufhebung can never be limited to a speculative analysis to a consistent process (dialectics), the reason being that it entails the notions of lifting up, conserving, and negating. Différance opens up a general economy of Aufhebung, which implies the simultaneous affirmation of various plays of Hegelian differences. After

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the realization of the deconstructive aspect of différance, which criticizes both the essential and the methodological aspects of the Hegelian concept of identity and difference, Derrida cautiously announces the moment of affirmation with respect to his own philosophy. This said, sometimes it seems that the aspect of affirmation presents itself as a passive message, simply as a response to the Hegelian dialectics. For instance, Derrida says, Deconstruction certainly entails a moment of affirmation . . . Deconstruction always presupposes affirmation, as I have frequently attempted to point out, sometimes employing a Nietzschean terminology. I do not mean that the deconstructing subject or self affirms. I mean that deconstruction is, in itself, a positive response to an alterity which necessarily calls, summons or motivates it. Deconstruction is therefore vocation—a response to a call. (Kearney and Derrida 1984: 118; italics mine)

In response to the Hegelian dialectic, we should remember that the notions of both the Self and the Other go beyond the structuralist language of differences in the Derridean paradigm of différance, as these notions open up a general economy of signs. The Self or the Other, as notions of différance, are not objects that can be detected or disclosed within a philosophical sphere—they cannot be limited to the application of a single philosophical episteme. From the point of view of the deconstructionist, the possible meaning of the Self and the Other always arises before Hegelian dialectics have been brought into play. It is in response to this reality that Derrida contends that “it is in this rapport with the other that affirmation express[es] itself” (Kearney and Derrida 1984: 118). Derrida argues that “deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but an openness towards the other” (Kearney and Derrida 1984: 124). It is on account of Derrida’s refusal to adopt the methodological notion of a Hegelian Aufhebung and his strong stance against the structuralist approach that the project of deconstruction and the notion of différance have often been misinterpreted as nihilism, as a total acceptance of oppression, as a refusal to resist politically, and as expressive of a disapproval of Hegelian dialectics itself. Derrida is strongly against such critique, as he argues, “I totally refuse the label of nihilism, which has been ascribed to me and my American colleagues [and] it is totally false to suggest that deconstruction is a suspension of reference” (123). Instead, he says that “deconstruction is always deeply concerned with the ‘other’ of language . . . [and] the critique of logocentrism is above all else the search for the ‘other’ and the ‘other of language’” (123). Derrida argues for the meaning of the affirmation in a more specific way: My own conviction is that we must maintain two contradictory affirmations at the same time. On the one hand, we affirm the existence of ruptures in history, and on

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the other we affirm that these ruptures produce gaps or faults (fallies) in which the most hidden and forgotten archives can emerge and constantly recur and work through history. (Kearney and Derrida 1984: 113; italics mine)

Deconstruction is a project that seeks to highlight the affirmations of différance, a project that calls for a rupture with the references of structuralism. Derrida criticizes the structuralist approach of interpreting history as one that is developed by evolution that “excludes the crucial notions of rupture and mutation in history” (Kearney and Derrida 1984: 113). By focusing on the ruptures and mutations, deconstruction helps to show that “the question of reference is much more complex and problematic than traditional theories suppose. Deconstruction even asks whether our term ‘reference’ is entirely adequate for designating the ‘other’” (123). The meanings of the Other or the Self (in différance) are beyond the language that the traditional linguistics has assigned these notions. Derrida argues that the Other “is not a ‘referent’ in the normal sense which linguists have attached to this term” (123–24). Despite this critique, Derrida argues that the project that seeks to highlight the existence of affirmations does not deny that there exists a practice within the language. Derrida says, “to distance oneself . . . from the habitual structure of reference, to challenge or complicate our common assumption about it, does not amount to saying that there is nothing beyond language” (124). DECONSTRUCTION AND POLITICS: THE RISE OF PERFORMATIVE POLITICS Derrida, in the article “Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism” (1996) and when discussing the political significance of deconstruction, highlights the authority literature and fiction assume in relation to the theory of the meaning of man. This discussion refers to a discussion of the political performance of deconstruction. As deconstruction is a series of political inquiries upon the theme of man, Derrida engages with the concept of man as telegraphed in the Western philosophical tradition by critiquing his predecessors. Discussions of the essence and the nature have been the center to Western metaphysics, from Plato and Aristotle through to Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, and Sartre (Harrison 1999; Peters 2001). The essence and the nature of man, as phenomena that occupy our philosophical interest, define the Western logocentrism against which Derrida’s deconstruction project mounts its critique. Derrida’s deconstruction of structuralist definitions of concepts, literature, and fiction, through a displacement of the conceptualizations of the meanings of man, destroys the argument that promoted the notion of there being an essence of man. This displacement further reveals how fragile the argument of the essence of man is.

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Moreover, literature and fiction help to reveal the fictionality, accidentality, and contingency of the realities of the concept of man and, in so doing, attempt to appropriate the discourse of man. By acknowledging and affirming these realities, literature and fiction reveal the true nature of Derrida’s deconstruction as being one of a political performance. Literature and fiction not only show political critiques in deconstruction, but literature and fiction are also complicit in the practice itself of deconstruction. Deconstruction as a political performance depends upon the practical performance of the forms that we call literature and fiction. To the extent to which fictionality, accidentality, and contingency have value, literature and fiction have a discursive value that contributes to any concept that pretends to explain the meaning of man. Thus, deconstructionists’ political engagement of discursive constructions cannot be understood as being not based upon traditional notions either of Truth or essence. Bernard Harrison (1999) suggests that Derrida’s philosophical investigations into the concept of man involve an interrogation of his philosophical predecessors. Harrison recognizes that Derrida’s relationship to his predecessors involves both dependence and a denial/marginalization. Harrison argues, [On] the one hand, Derrida depends on the power of language to create new meaning through shifting the relationships between signs, to produce the remotely related but utterly alien accounts of the human essence respectively characteristic of, say, Aristotle and Heidegger, and on the other hand, he poses denial and the marginalization of that power in the interests of maintaining the plausibility of the claim that there is such an essence to be sought: original, unitary, and capable of being given with finality to thought. This double movement of dependence and marginalization is, for Derrida, the core of the drive of European culture over the centuries to present itself as definitive of the nature of man per se. (517)

In other words, Harrison argues for the performative reality of the philosophical language Derrida applies in his conceptualizing of the notion of man. Derrida’s resource for the argument of the performative dimension of language interests some of his readers, in that performative language is conceived by the latter as becoming the basis for Derrida’s philosophy of politics. In the article “Signature Event Context,” Derrida explains that his performative argument of language is an idea obtained from John L. Austin’s theory on the speech act (1982c: 321–26). Derrida understands Austin’s meaning of performative to be the result of his analysis of perlocution and illocution, and Austin regards “acts of discourse only as acts of communication” (321). Moreover, Derrida cites Austin’s own words when giving meaning to the performative, saying,

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It is by comparing the constative utterance (that is, the classical “assertion,” most often conceived as a true of false “description” of the facts) with the performative utterance (from the English performative, that is, the utterance which allows us to do something by means of speech itself) that Austin has been led to consider every utterance worthy of the name (that is, destined to communicate, which would exclude, for example, reflex-exclamations) as being first and foremost a speech act produced in the total situation in which the interlocutors find themselves. (321)

With respect to the notion of the performative, Gayatri Spivak, like Harrison, argues that Heidegger must be considered to be integrally important to an understanding of Derrida’s philosophy (1999: 425). Spivak argues that, despite Derrida’s philosophical kinship with various philosophers,2 it is Heidegger that has a particular influence on Derrida, on the issue of the priority the question of Being has to all ontological investigation. In Derrida’s critique of Heidegger, we see Heidegger having a different kind of influence upon Derrida—something evidenced in the articles “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas” and “The Ends of Man.” In these articles, Derrida can be understood to hold a critical intimacy with Heidegger—he both embraces and criticizes Heidegger. Spivak (1999: 425) believes that this critical intimacy exemplifies Derrida’s notion of performative deconstruction. There would therefore seem to be value in discussing Derrida’s performative notion of politics in relation to Heidegger. We have to take Spivak’s and Harrison’s insights seriously with respect to distinguishing Derrida from Heidegger on the philosophical level. We are reminded that Heidegger is a deep reader of Nietzsche’s works. The genre of language and the associated themes on the invention of literature, fiction, and its history are a powerful domain in the political according to Derrida. The performative dimension of language—meaning the speech acts manifested in the political—is understood to be derived from Derrida’s argument on the ends of the man, an argument that is in fact strongly influenced by Nietzsche. Nietzsche and Heidegger are both viewed as antihumanist. When Nietzsche announced the death of God, he destabilized both the notion of an identifiable, definable human mastery and the subject of history. Nietzsche attacks humanism for the reason that it is a doctrine that assigns man the central role of subject, as one that is both a full-being and the seat of the proof of self-consciousness. Nietzsche believes there is no value in relying upon the notion of there being a transcendental foundation in the aftermath of the death of God. Heidegger takes Nietzsche’s critique of humanism further, arguing that man was fundamentally predisposed to a form of mastery, meaning that the reality of man is always something veiled. The question of who man is can only be raised by questioning the meaning of Being. Heidegger argues that “in [the] thinking of Being comes language. Language is the house of

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Being. In its home man dwells” (1993: 217). Heidegger, in demonstrating the nature of the interrelationships that exist between man (or Dasein), Being, and language, introduces the term ek-sistence, which seeks to refer to an existence that is distinct from that which the term existence refers to— that is, beings as commonly understanding. Heidegger explains, Metaphysics closes itself to the simple essential fact that man essentially occurs only in his essence, where he is claimed by Being. Only from that claim “has” he found that wherein his essence dwells. Only from this dwelling “has” the “language” as the home that preserves the ecstatic for his essence. Such standing in the clearing of Being I call the ek-sistence of man. This way of Being is proper only to man. (227–28)

Putting the emphasis on language, Heidegger pursues a hermeneutic study of man, Being, and political performance. Heidegger displaces Sartre’s argument of the Cartesian cogito (the consciousness masters) with ek-sistence. Heidegger abandons Sartre’s Cartesian cogito and his psychologism, maintaining that Being is to be found in the cogito’s condition of existence. Heidegger criticizes Sartre’s attempt to determine the conditions of the cogito. For Heidegger, the theory of ek-sistence identifies a man both who is unavoidably decentered and who is subject to a history of which he is no longer the subject, but is instead its object. This questioning of Being leads to an indetermination and an inaccessibility with respect to what the essence of man is. This questioning of Being exposes man as the trace, the communion, and the witness of its history. The performative meaning of politics is established in the experiences of eksistence and is dependent upon language. In contrast to Heidegger’s hermeneutic interests, Derrida constantly interrogates his predecessors—something the latter once called his quasitranscendentality, meaning the performative that problematizes in the form of posing transcendental questions (Derrida 1996). His explanation for doing this is as follows: “[I]n order to be held within the fragility of an incompetent empiricist discourse, and thus [in order to] avoid empiricist, positivism, psychologism . . . it [becomes] endlessly necessary to renew transcendental questioning” (81). The act of renewing the questioning process is the result of the consideration given to the possibilities offered by fiction, accidentality, and contingency, as discussed earlier. Quasitranscendentality is about politics and man. Derrida’s own unique form of deconstruction, as a transcendental questioning process, ensures that deconstruction “mimics the phantom of classical transcendental seriousness” while not renouncing the existence of “an essential heritage” (82). Derrida, in responding to questions on transcendentality, seeks to avoid reference to its orthodox meaning by reinterpreting the term’s actual meaning—a revision that gives us the term quasi-transcendentality. By doing so,

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Derrida aims to avoid the examination of empiricism, psychology, and developmental theories, which leads him to reflect on his primary philosophical concern, that being to reject existentialist argument about man. When Derrida asks the question “Where is France, as concerns man?”3 he strongly distances himself from Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche. He refuses to simply allow Being to replace or displace the position of God and moral values. Derrida also interrogates Sartre’s attempts to replace God with man. If transcendentality has nothing to do with God, Being, or beings, Derrida argues that this transcendentality requires questioning and that it is therefore a quasi-transcendentality—which is to say, it implies the practice of a quasi-philosophy. So although Derrida accepts Heidegger’s emphasis on the need to question, he does not accept the merit of the parameters or the answer to the question (in this case, Being) proposed by Heidegger. We must then ask the question, is Nietzsche’s philosophy transcendental? What exactly does Derrida mean when he uses the terms transcendentality and quasi-transcendentality? To Nietzsche, Zarathustra might recount a transcendental act in his discourses, but this also can be interpreted as a moment of affirmation. To Derrida, transcendentality might be understood at a practical level, as the way in which Derrida himself constantly engages in both the necessary and continuous conversations he has with his philosophical predecessors, while at the same time keeping a distance in order to listen to the questioning process that engages the political essence in the various fields that make up the experience of everyday life. Meanwhile, the subject is constantly created, re-created, reformatted, and reappeared, as Derrida demonstrates an ambiguous interest toward performative politics, saying, “When I say that quasi-transcendentality is at once ironic and serious, I am being sincere” (1996: 81). To Spivak, Derrida’s discussion of quasi-transcendentality in relation to the notion of the performative gives cause for concern. Spivak provides a binary reading of Derrida’s political philosophy, appropriating two distinctive meanings for performative politics by means of separating the performative aspect of problematizing from the performative aspect of engagement. These two aspects of performative politics form a binary reading of Derrida’s notion of deconstruction for the reason that, as Spivak believes, problematization is opposed to engagement with respect to the meaning of politics. In the following section of discussion, I shall first explain how Spivak’s binary reading of deconstruction functions in performative politics, after which I will examine Spivak’s interpretation of performative politics as a strategic form of essentialism. Spivak’s Binary Reading of Deconstruction Spivak considers the notion of deconstruction to exist in relation to the concept of the binary opposition, a relation she understands can be seen in

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the following binary oppositions: useful/dangerous, good/bad, essentialism/antiessentialism, and intuitive/counterintuitive (Spivak 1993a). Spivak reads the notion of deconstruction as having both useful and dangerous sides and therefore proposes that the synthesis of political discourses be based upon a binary reading of deconstruction. Spivak proposes that this synthesis could be reached through the development of a particular argument on political performance, which as an action would be responsible to the political situation, depending on the analysis of that situation. Spivak’s argument with respect to performative politics is known as strategic essentialism. It is in this argument that Spivak develops a temporal notion of essence for the purpose of intervening in political situations. For the purpose of providing a brief introduction, I shall simply argue that strategic essentialism is a result of her special reading of the notion of deconstruction, a reading that emphasizes engagement in political situations. I will begin with a discussion of Spivak’s notion of deconstruction in which she distinguishes “the useful” from “the dangerous” within the binary. Then I shall analyze this binary distinction in a manner that acknowledges that this distinction is driven by Spivak’s Marxism. Spivak employs Nietzsche and Foucault to support her argument for a Derridean deconstruction—a tactic that allows her to argue for both a temporal notion of essence and the political necessity in structural negotiations. Spivak argues that “the greatest gift of deconstruction [offers us the possibility] to question the authority of the investigating subject without paralysing him, persistently transforming conditions of impossibility into possibility” (1988: 201). In other words, Spivak argues that the process of deconstruction may be accompanied by some degree of danger, given that this particular notion of deconstruction could be carelessly misinterpreted or misused. However, if the process of deconstruction is well understood, it will be useful to change the situation in the political sense. A binary reading of deconstruction, as a useful but dangerous process, therefore becomes implicit to the purpose of this argument. This binary reading can also be seen as evidenced in Spivak’s periodical interpretation of Derrida’s philosophy on deconstruction. As mentioned earlier, Spivak, in her political arguments, is concerned with the issue of the quasi-transcendentality in Derrida’s philosophy. Spivak argues that Derrida has altered the meaning of deconstruction from quasi-transcendentality as “guarding the question” to a “call to the wholly others” (1999: 426). This move indicates that a shift takes place in Derrida’s deconstructive method as it is argued in the earlier works through to the later ones. Spivak argues that Derrida’s earlier work focuses on the questioning of origin; the original thing or thought appears as described with its definition. “It is this question, instituted at the origin that had to be guarded or kept as a task in the first phase of deconstruction.” By contrast, the second phase is more affirmative and first appears in Derrida’s works in the mid-seventies. While the “call to

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the wholly other” is affirmative because it suggests a move away from the proposing of questions relating to origins, it does “address whatever may be prior to the trace of the other-than-origin instituting the origin.” The second phase of deconstruction suggests that the deconstructive project goes beyond being a methodological presupposition that engages in interrogating the legitimacy of names. This is to say, deconstruction enters into a stage in which boundaries and categories of names are blurred as the result of the questions of origins illustrated in the first phase, making questions and presuppositions almost impossible, the reason being that essence is no longer an issue for discussion. It seems that the second phase of deconstruction thus consists of “experiences of [the] impossible,” meaning deconstruction refers itself to a deconstructable project (Spivak 1999: 426). Spivak explains that the meaning of deconstruction is altered when we simply “insist on the priority of an unanswerable question [of différance]” to “that which must be differeddeferred so that we can posit ourselves” (425). In fact, this second phase suggests a radical alterity. The politically performative meaning of politics, as an action, works the same way as the performative significance of language. To Spivak, to understand the performative dimension of language means to understand “language not merely [as a] statement but [as an] act [that] acknowledge[s] the role of force in signification” (1999: 424–25). Language works also to provide “truth-telling which is a performative convention, producing an effect not limited to the transference of a semantic content.” While the first phase of deconstruction focuses upon the experiences of impossibility, the second phase of deconstruction focuses upon the effectiveness of performative actions. Spivak’s binary reading of deconstruction becomes polemic when she accuses Derrida of carelessness in his early attempts at proposing that deconstruction could function with a political attitude. For instance, Spivak believes that “one of Derrida’s most scandalous contributions is to begin with what is very familiar in many radical positions and to take it with the utmost seriousness, with literal seriousness, so that it questions the position (de)constructively as the wholly intimate other” (Spivak 1993a: 5). Furthermore, this kind of attitude in relation to deconstruction overlooks the strategic use of deconstruction, and as Spivak argues, “one is left with the useful yet semi-mournful position of the unavoidable usefulness of something that is dangerous.” Spivak thus signals the existence of a binary reading of deconstruction when she says that there is something dangerous in the notion of deconstruction that remains unavoidably useful. Her argument will become clear to us later in the section, when we look at strategic essentialism—that which identifies Spivak’s performative argument of politics, meaning that which identifies the strategic use of the deconstructive critique of essence.4

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For Spivak, her performative elaboration of the political—to focus on the useful side of deconstruction by strategically using the dangerous side—results from her concern over political situations. Because of political situations, Spivak further considers performative politics in terms of a responsible action (1999: 427). In fact, Spivak proposes a unique way of analyzing political situations and therefore responds with a special notion of a political action. In order to highlight her argument, Spivak criticizes both the aporia experiences and the setting-to-work mode of deconstruction that places emphasis on action as the deconstructive project. The idea of aporia experiences is to acknowledge the experience of being, which has been passed through because deconstruction disputes experiences of essence that are nonpassage in nature. To Spivak, this kind of deconstructive politics has an action orientation despite “deconstruction being without reserve” (427). In terms of political movement, such experiences propose that the experiences of being are “disclosed in effacement” and therefore become “experiences of the impossible” (427). When responsible actions are emphasized, formalization is introduced as a concept for the purpose of giving effect to the aporia experiences, something that is done mainly by means of treating aporia experiences as “practical logical problems” (430). Formalization suggests a kind of performative deconstruction, which adopts the mode for itself of setting-to-work.5 Examples of the setting-to-work of deconstruction are seen as existing in the writing of American literary critics, social movement theorists, and academics. Spivak is aware that the setting-to-work mode of deconstruction concerns itself with diminishing mighty power in favor of a celebration of difference and independence. It could be said that Spivak has used the efforts of the setting-to-work mode in the context of a global economic structure. In that context, for example, Spivak argues that the goals of the setting-to-work mode are clear, because of the active resistance to undeniable and unavoidable facts of globalization and capitalism. Their strategies are meant to be deconstructive on account of either their transforming the economic structure from a state level into a tributary one or their shifting the notion of development from the focus of economic growth to that of well-being. The process is hardly recognizable as a deconstructive one (Spivak 1999: 430). The failure of the setting-to-work mode to achieve a political impact is due to the ineffectiveness of the political gesture by such a deconstructive mode. One of the main features of the aporia experiences is the rejection of the notion of essence. With the claim that essence is denied, the subjects and collectives who produce the setting-to-work mode of deconstruction are “in an aporetic bind” (Spivak 1999: 430) with those who, deliberately or ignorantly, contribute to globalization and development. Without the power of essence, political statements lose their power. Therefore, the responsible action of this setting-to-work mode ends with a verbal action

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that does not effectively change the status quo. Paul de Man describes such a situation as ironic by defining irony as a “permanent parabasis or sustained interruption from a source relating ‘otherwise’ . . . to the continuous unfolding of the main system of meaning” (Spivak 1999: 430). This is to say, the formalization of deconstruction ironically retains the logic of a global development. It would seem that we would lose political power if we reject the notion of essence on the basis of the setting-to-work mode of deconstruction. In fact, Spivak’s reason for paying special attention to the setting-to-work mode in itself raises suspicions: she calls for a strategic meaning of essence for a performative use of politics. Spivak is inspired by the notion of a need for a political positioning and argues that essentialism should be understood in terms of politics. The notion of essence is politically necessary for the reason that, as Spivak maintains, it is “the necessary absurdity of theoretical pursuit” (1993b: 123). Spivak, for instance,6 draws our attention to both the historical contexts of cultural imperialism, class and gender, and the strategic use of essence for the purpose of negotiation in the political genre when issues of gender, culture, and class arise. As Spivak explains it, [I]t is negotiation as a creation of space in the phallogencentrism. This is a more charitable position on the usefulness of deconstruction for feminism than I have supported in the past. It is a negotiation and an acknowledgment of complicity. This is a result of a growing sense that, at home and abroad, postcolonials and migrants are still coming to terms with unacknowledged complicity with the culture of imperialism, in a whole range of experiences including the failure of secularism and the Eurocentrism of economic migration. There may be something like a relationship with how feminists and indeed women in general deal with patriarchy and feminist theory. (121)

Therefore, Spivak’s performative politics suggests that the notion of essence is a political device matched to a political situation rather than a notion that is built up or understood in its own ground.7 Thus it suggests that Spivak’s binary reading of deconstruction is a dialectical one that must be interpreted as being situated within the historical and political parameters. In the following section, we will discuss Spivak’s theory of strategic essentialism in greater detail. Strategic Essentialism Spivak constantly points out that deconstruction suggests the existence of a political subject, her reasoning being that “the useful part of deconstruction is in the suggestion that the subject is always centred” (1993b: 132; italics mine). This centered subject is a result of an epistemological double bind that is integral to the notion of deconstruction. The double bind of

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deconstruction exists on account of there being a compulsory amalgamation of the critique of essence and the political acknowledgment of the necessary existence of such essence. This double bind makes it possible for the subject to be centered on the basis of there being “indeterminable boundaries” as they are “deciphered as determining.” Spivak emphasizes the importance of this double bind of deconstruction, arguing that this double bind can cause ontological/epistemological/ethico-political confusion when deconstructive theories fail to recognize its existence. A Critique of Deconstructive Feminism Spivak is critical of deconstructive feminism because she contends it lacks the double bind. Without the double bind, deconstructive feminism is trapped in a confusion position defined by “the object of the epistemic project and the constituency of antisexism” (Spivak 1993b: 137). By focusing on the object of the epistemic project, deconstructive feminism exposes a historical anxiety that relates to the graphematic structure, and on account of this, as Spivak argues, this anxiety mistakenly transforms the usefulness of the name woman into a narrative. The naming of woman as a narrative privileges the anxiety of deconstructive feminists over the concept of woman that is the legitimate and literal referent. Deconstructive feminists are concerned about the subject as both a subject of ethics and as the agent of the politics, and they raise questions such as “I don’t recognise myself in the object of your benevolence” and “I don’t recognise my share in your naming.” For Spivak, these questions reveal that the deconstructive feminist naively struggles against the authority of narrative in the house of theory and therefore forgets her ontological/epistemological subjectivity. The useful side of deconstruction involves the application of essentialism for political purposes. Since deconstruction has shown woman to be a narrative that is always also a catachresis, the anxiety or rejection of allocating a name simply contributes to “the desire to punish the alibi of justice.” Spivak argues that the deconstructive feminist’s refusal to employ essentialism in the political sense results in an abuse of the theory of deconstruction. Spivak also argues that the double bind should be taken as a whole and that the deconstructive feminist’s anxiety of the writing that relates to the graphematic structure should simply never happen at all. The graphematic structure with respect to the woman as signifier is problematic because woman cannot be the reality and will always be erased, for, as Derrida states, deconstruction always denies the conceptualization of a name. Deconstruction gives the discourse on the woman an identity rather than an essence. Deconstructive feminists make a serious mistake when they ignore the political aspect of essentialism, as that which is the most useful feature of the deconstructive process. Spivak says that “the

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most serious critique of deconstruction is the critique of things that are extremely useful, things without which we cannot live on, take chances; like our running self-identikit. That should be the approach to how we are essentialists” (1993a: 4). Spivak gives a political application to deconstruction in an even more succinct manner when she says that “we have to deconstruct our desire for the impasse, neutralise the name of woman for deconstruction” (1993b: 137). Spivak further argues that “[i]f we want to make political claims that are more useful all around than the general bourgeois academic toothsome euphoria, this seems now to be the only way” (1993b: 137). Spivak offers a synthesis of the danger and usefulness of deconstruction when she offers an interpretation of Derrida’s notion of deconstruction. On the one hand, Spivak admits that deconstruction articulates “the idea of the embattled love of the text” (Spivak 1993b: 135). On the other hand, deconstruction is challenged by the historical fact of phallocentrism, leaving us no choice, as Spivak reminds us, but to insist on the project of antisexism. Spivak argues that the critique of the ontological deception of woman as the oppressed is the non-truth of différance complicit to Derrida’s notion of deconstruction. This non-truth of différance nevertheless should not hamper us from desiring the right to an impasse, as desires the deconstructive feminist. Spivak’s solution for the writing of woman as signifier involves a synthesis of both the ontological concerns and the political goals. This synthesis suggests the existence of a nominalism in which woman is presented for a political purpose. Spivak argues, I would propose that we should not share this anxiety for the name, we should not identify the guarding of the question with this particular name. This would allow us to use the ontological and epistemological critiques found in deconstruction (and indeed psychoanalysis) and appreciate poststructuralist “nominalism.” We must remember that this particular name, the name of “woman,” misfires for feminism. Yet, a feminism that takes the traditionalist line against deconstruction falls into a historical determinism where “history” becomes a gender-fetish. (136)

Strategic Use of Essence Spivak’s politicized use of deconstruction is known as strategic essentialism because her poststructuralist notion of nominalism takes woman as essence for its strategic value. Spivak explains that the “strategy [of strategic existentialism] works through a persistent (de)constructive critique of the theoretical” and that this “strategy is an embattled conceptmetaphor and unlike ‘theory,’ its antecedents are not disinterested and universal” (1993a: 3). Strategic essentialism is different from essentialism because the name of woman, worker, nation, and so on are consciously and strategically applied. Strategic essentialism employs political goals—

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the essence of any particular name always being sustained by these political goals. “It is a strategic use of essence as a mobilising slogan or master,” and it does not involve the “risk of a lasting strategy” (3). This is to say, the “strategy suits [the] situation; a strategy is not a theory” (4). As deconstruction is a political strategy, “one has to look at where the group—the person, the persons, or the movement—is situated when one makes claims for or against essentialism” (4). Spivak claims that feminists might use deconstruction because “it is not just that deconstruction cannot found a politics, while other ways of thinking can. It is that deconstruction can make founded political programs more useful by making their inbuilt problems more visible” (1993b: 121). Spivak is referring here to the use of essentialism. To Spivak, strategic essentialism further explains Derrida’s political insight, in that, as she argues, woman is one of the names that Derrida gives to the problem/solution of founded programs that provide feminism with a strategic significance that suits special situations. Thus, feminism is offered the critical intimacy of deconstruction without being attached to a specific name that is always interrogated within Derrida’s project of deconstruction. As Spivak argues, “I put it so awkwardly because so-called ‘political’ academics will still insist that writing is only script and make the blindingly brilliant critique that Derrida ignores mothers speaking to infants, or ignores orature” (1993b: 121). In order to highlight the political usefulness of deconstruction, Spivak distinguishes the “non-truth of truth” from the non-truth of “truth” of deconstruction. While the “non-truth of truth” entails a deconstructive interrogation of the ontological status of the name, the non-truth of “truth” of deconstruction aims to affirm the name for the purpose of a political performance. Spivak suggests that the affirmative performance of a name can be reached through an affirmative deconstruction by saying yes to a text twice (1993b: 129). Spivak’s reading of the Derridean “non-truth of truth” and the non-truth of “truth” of deconstruction are supported by her analysis of Nietzsche. The argument over the “nontruth of truth” suggests that woman can always be a name without holding ontological meaning. Moreover, Nietzsche helps us to realize that the name woman is caught in the matrix of linguistic and culturally masculine stereotypes men have of woman. Spivak explains that “the name of woman as the non-truth of ‘truth’ can have a significant message for us if we refuse fully to honour the historically bound catachresis” (135). To Spivak, women ought to support a disenfranchised name, and feminist theory ought to acknowledge the right of women to construct “a subject-effect of sovereignty in the narrow sense” (135). Spivak considers this to be a Nietzschean perspective of critique on masculinity stereotypes, something reflected in Derrida’s conclusion to The Ear of the Other (135).

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Spivak also believes that the strategic use of essence for political goals echoes Foucault’s notion of the double play of power. Spivak reads the double play of power as a political correctness, where Foucault attempts to resolve his earlier nonpolitical misunderstanding of the epistemic project. Spivak explains that Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power is evident in the questions Foucault poses in relation to the ontological compulsion to articulate the name as epistemological. Yet the object of Foucault’s epistemic project can only be understood to the extent that it is an itinerary by which recognition itself of male or female is possible. Further, Spivak believes that Foucault’s double play of power looks to the name (such as that of woman) as the phenomenal essence, the reason being that, as Foucault argues, “we must at the same time conceive of sex without the law, and power without the king” (Spivak 1993b: 138). In other words, Spivak believes that Foucault’s double play of power involves the subject of ethico-politics as played in the constituency of antisexism for feminism. The double play of power therefore embraces a politics that “watch[es] out for the historical determinations for the name [of woman] as catachresis in deconstruction” and, at the same time, ceases from “delegitimiz[ing] the name of man.” Furthermore, Spivak argues that the political significance of Foucault’s double play of power shows that there is a particular species of nominalism that sustains “an obsession with names that are necessarily misnames, names that are necessarily catachreses, ‘writing,’ ‘différance,’ ‘power’ (‘woman’ in this case), names that have no adequate literal referent” (1993b: 133). Spivak regards this nominalism as the way in which Foucault naturalizes the name of power as it is applied to the name of woman. Moreover, Spivak believes that Foucault’s nominalism is comparable to Derrida’s notion of différance because the name of woman is “transformed into the central character and the narrative of woman’s recognition within gendering is however [being] deferred” (138). To Spivak, Foucault’s naturalizing of the name power suggests the coding of the phenomenality of power. She explains that we could further take this nominalism as a deconstructive political project if we read this naturalizing of the name power as “the strategic codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution possible somewhat similar to the way in which the state relies on the institutional integration of power relationships” (138). Drucilla Cornell (1991) comments on Spivak’s political argument of strategic essentialism and arguments of nominalism. Cornell argues that we ought not to use a name (an identity or a difference) such as the feminine to be essentialist or naturalist for the purpose of being purely technical. Cornell argues that Spivak is right in critiquing feminine essence as the foundation of any political appeals, but that she should not adopt the word essence as a way of indicating feminine specificity. Cornell’s reasoning is that Derrida’s theory of deconstruction shows the limits of essen-

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tialism to revolve around “one specific discourse in which the being of the thing is unveiled in its universal properties or grasped in its general form” (181). Essentialism is problematic because it attempts to cover up the efforts of writing of other groups with the intent of maintaining an exclusive legitimacy for its own interests. Despite the rejection of the universal assumption over the significance of essence, the determination to give essence primacy puts the value of its own inquiry at risk when it claims an indifference to the suffering of women. Cornell (1991) argues that Derrida’s notion of deconstruction illustrates the limits of essentialism on account of its self-contradictory positioning within language. While the political appeal to context is clear, we need to secure a place for the feminine within the Western linguistic economy. The difficulty exists precisely because we cannot create a specific theory of woman. Those who argue for essentialist and strategically essentialist notions of women both have the difficulty that the very act of conceptualizing difference leads to a reinstatement of the identity through the very determination to realize it as a concept. This difficulty exists precisely for the reason that Derrida’s notion of deconstruction emerges at the very point that Derrida engages multiple rhetorical concepts such as supplement, différance, hymen, temporization, and so on. All of these efforts are directed toward indicating that difference cannot be conceptualized. Cornell (1991) agrees that there is the need for an illumination of a name, an identity, and a difference if there is to be a development of explicit ethical and political positions within language. Instead of arguing for the primacy of essence, Cornell suggests the need for a disruption of the political will to deconstruction. Cornell explains that “disruption takes place from ‘within’ [the linguistic economy]” (85). Therefore, as this disruption occurs within the linguistic economy, it is a mistake to confuse Derrida’s position with nominalism. This is to say, we are all within “the historical burden of our situatedness, that [which] Derrida calls phalleonomy” (85). The very act of writing (of the feminine, for example), as a performative fact, is not a nominal interpretation—it is not a reconceptualization of the essence of women to be a displacement. But the act of writing as a performative fact is mimesis as de-sistance, and through this, the feminine “is no longer repudiated as an imposition, but [is instead] affirmed as a positioning. Such an affirmation is clearly both ethical and political” (182). The analysis of the performance of language becomes significant when we examine its relation to politics. While Heidegger argues that “Being speaks always and everywhere throughout language,” Derrida argues that “Being/speaks/always and everywhere/throughout/language” (Derrida 1982b: 27). In other words, for Heidegger, the search for the human mind is indeed a search of linguistic meanings. Heidegger’s humanism has its basis in a hermeneutics reading on the concept of man. The possibility of there being a thinking subject exists on account of lan-

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guage. Spivak’s strategic essentialism functions in a similar way, as does the strategic use of essence, in that as a political concept it intensely promotes the hermeneutic play of the linguistic meanings of words. Therefore, strategic essentialism depends upon binary (or dialectical) readings of historical contexts as a way of affirming the claim of a name, an identity, and a difference. In the next section, I shall argue against both Spivak’s binary interpretation of deconstruction and her dialectical reading of the politics by drawing into our argument the importance of Derrida’s theory on the metaphysics of presence. DIFFÉRANCE AND THE METAPHYSICS OF PRESENCE Central to Derrida’s theory of différance is his discussion on the metaphysics of presence. When Derrida is to “present” différance (i.e., “the present” of différance) on the metaphysical significance (presence) of the a in différance, he carefully draws a conditional prerequisite. He argues that “[o]ne can expose only that which at a certain moment can become present, manifest, that which can be shown, presented as something present, a being-present in its truth, in the truth of a present or the presence of the present” (1982b: 5–6). The truth of the present of différance can be seen in Derrida’s argumentation about “différance as [a] temporisation and différance as spacing” (9). In illustrating this proposal, Derrida has distinguished différance from both the meaning of difference according to Saussure and Heidegger’s notion of the temporalization of the present—a notion that is also central to the main discussion of this section. Before jumping into a discussion on temporization and the spacing of the Saussurean linguistic structures and references, I would like to once again argue that différance is not constituted upon a Saussurean foundation. I would argue that it is actually worth acknowledging the role of both spacing and temporization, as they assist in the distinguishing of différance from the politics of (Saussurean) differences. If the significance of the sign is not carefully exemplified throughout Derrida’s works, we are at risk, falling into the same mistakes made by those who claim the politics of difference to be that which was identified in the last chapter. A brief distinction between différance, as temporization and spacing, and Heidegger’s transcendental temporalization and Hegelian dialectics is found in Derrida’s texts. He states, I will note only that between différance as temporisation-temporalisation, which can no longer be conceived within the horizon of the present, and what Heidegger says in Being and Time about temporalization as the transcendental horizon of the question of Being, which must be liberated from its traditional, metaphysical domination by the present and the now, there is a strict communication, even though not an exhaustive and irreducibly necessary one. (1982b: 10)

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Furthermore, Derrida explains, The structure of delay (Nachträglichkeit) in effect forbids that one make of temporalization (temporization) a simple dialectical complication of the living present as an originary and unceasing synthesis—a synthesis constantly directed back on itself, gathered in on itself and gathering—of retentional traces and protentional openings. (21)

As mentioned earlier, the rupture is a byproduct of structuralist language, where the Saussurean semiological analysis helps us to understand différance as temporization and spacing, the metaphysical status of the present. The Saussurean analysis does not sufficiently account for difference, yet it provides a supplementary explanation. Derrida argues that Saussure claims the arbitrary and the differential characteristics of the sign. These two characters are inseparable and correlative due to the fact that the linguistic structures are overempowering. The arbitrariness is therefore sustained only through the differential aspect that the linguistic functions manage to retain. The linguistic structures overwhelm the signification of the sign. The meanings of signs always present themselves by resorting to different signification structures. Saussurean Differences and Différance Thinking within the Saussurean linguistic structure, temporization and spacing thus appear to be the results of ruptures that have occurred in the relation between structural analyses, the substitutions of linguistic structures, and the displacements of the meanings of signs. In Derrida’s explanation, he first reiterates the linguistic differences in association with his own philosophical coinage of words: Now if we consider the chain in which différance lends itself to a certain number of nonsynonymous substitutions, according to the necessity of the context, why have recourse to the “reserve,” to “archi-writing,” to the “archi-trace,” to “spacing,” that is, to the “supplement,” or to the pharmakon, and soon to the hymen, to the margin-mark-march, etc.? (1982b: 12)

From this quotation, we do have to pay attention to Derrida’s shrewd warning that we must not fall into the trap set by the Saussurean linguistic analysis of differences (différance). He uses the expression “we [have to] consider the chain in which différance lends itself to a certain number of nonsynonymous substitutions” (italics mine). For the same reason, again, Derrida’s coinages of language, such as those seen in the terms archiwriting, archi-trace, supplement, and so on, escape articulation in the Hegelian dialectic of plenitude.

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Indeed, the discussion of the present of the sign plays a more important role than do linguistic differences, which itself is important to Derrida’s philosophy of différance. Différance is concerned with the scene of the presence of each element. Firstly, the present of the sign always employs a selfdefeating element. Because there are substitutions of linguistic structures, the movement of signification must justify itself by announcing that the alleged element is present in the form of a mark of something other than itself on the basis of that particular temporality. This suggests displacement of the past element, as well as an already to-be-removed element by a future element. As a result, the trace of the displacement/replacement of the signified, Derrida introduces his view on that notion of the present. The present is a trace, and “this trace [is] related no less to what is called the future than to what is called the past, and [this trace constitutes] what is called the present by means of this very relation to what it is not: what is absolutely is not, not even a past or a future as a modified present” (Derrida 1982b: 13; italics mine). Secondly, this self-defeating aspect of the present turns out to be a selfengaging activity. In order to emphasize the metaphysical existence of the present, Derrida introduces the idea of an interval, otherwise named a spacing. As the displacement of signification of a sign is taking place all the time, the interval appears to “separate the present from what it is not in order for the present to be itself” (Derrida 1982b: 13). In other words, due to the displacement of this signification, the interval constitutes itself as the present while it is simultaneously, by nature, dividing itself. We have to think the metaphysics of everything is based upon the différance rationale of the present and that this rationale refers us to “our metaphysical language, every being, and singularly substance of the subject,” as Derrida suggests (13). The interval, the self-engaging aspect of the present, is movement both constituting and dividing itself dynamically. Derrida defines the interval in the following way: This interval is what might be called spacing, the becoming-space of time or the becoming-time of space (temporization). And it is this constitution of the present, as an “originary” and irreducibly nonsimple (and therefore, stricto sensu nonoriginary) synthesis of marks, or traces of retentions and protections (to reproduce analogically and provisionally a phenomenological and transcendental language that soon will reveal itself to be inadequate), that I propose to call archi-writing, architrace, or différance. (13)

Furthermore, Derrida explains that there is an active engagement aspect of différance that is exemplified in everyday life: In the practice of a language or of a code supposing a play of forms without a determined and invariable substance, and also supposing in the practice of this play a retention and protection of differences, a spacing and a temporization, a

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play of traces—all this must be a kind of writing before the letter, an archi-writing without a present origin, without archi-. (15)

Now, it might be safe to move our attention away from referencing itself and to the Saussurean reference, as a means of stating that any Hegelian dialectical form could be exemplified in the thinking of differences. At least, we cannot understand the Derridean différance based on Saussurean metaphysics nor its associated cultural theories. Différance, Derrida argues, is “what makes possible the presentation of the being-present . . . [and it] is never offered to the present” (6). Perhaps the temporization of essence of the reference in the discussion of différance should be understood as “reserving itself, not exposing itself” (6). Derrida explains that in its every presentation “[reference] would be exposed to disappearing as disappearance. [Reference] would risk appearing: disappearing” (6). At best, the essential meaning of the present can only be understood in the discussion of the presence of the present. As différance suggests, there is, as mentioned earlier, a self-defeating fact, this being that the essence of différance simply does not exist. Différance cannot be understood as a presentbeing in any form, and it is not derived from any known category. Derrida warns us that the present-being in any form/category is not in itself everything. Thus différance as present-being has “neither existence nor essence” (Derrida 1982b: 6). Derrida also warns us that the argument that différance has neither existence nor essence should not to be confused as pertaining to the negative theology doctrine. Derrida argues that différance is not “irreducible to any ontological or theological or onto-theological reappropriation.” Meanwhile, the assertion that différance goes beyond the finite categories of essence and existence should not lead us to presume that we should recall God as the predicate of existence. The fact that Derrida has presented différance through detours, locution, and syntax of negative theology indeed reflects any characteristic of différance: temporization. Temporization but Not Temporalization: Derrida’s Critique of Heidegger Derrida has noted that différance is temporization, or sometimes temporization-temporalization, as opposed to the Heideggerian notion of temporalization that accompanies the argument for a transcendental notion of Being. Through a critique (deconstruction) of Saussurean structural analysis, Derrida announces an important postulate in relation to différance, one that is framed in terms of the metaphysics of the present. He says, The paradox of such a structure, in the language of metaphysics, is an inversion of metaphysical concepts, which produces the following effect: the present becomes the sign of sign, the trace of trace. It is no longer what every reference refers to in

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the last analysis. It becomes a function in a structure of generalised reference. It is a trace, and a trace of the erasure of the trace. (1982b: 24; italics mine)

In much the same way, this deconstruction of the Saussurean thesis illustrates the relation it shares to the deconstruction of Heidegger’s thesis on Being and beings. It involves two steps: firstly, a pseudoadoption of Heidegger’s metaphysical discussion on Being and beings and secondly, Derrida’s cunning examination of Heidegger’s thesis carried out in the presentation of his own proposal. Heidegger distinguishes Being from beings in the following manner: Being refers to the nature of beings, and being refers to ontological differences. In making this distinction, he draws a distinction between presence and the present and a distinction between the essence of presence and what is at present. Furthermore, Heidegger proposes that “the oblivion of Being is the oblivion of distinctions between Being and beings” (23). In other words, the oblivion of Being begins with the forgetting of distinctions between Being and beings. Therefore, the meaning of Being begins with the history of beings, the history of the present, and the historical collection of what is the present. By paying attention to the meaning of Being as presented in the history of beings, Derrida employs Heidegger’s thesis and concludes on behalf of Heidegger, saying that “the forgotten of metaphysics [of difference is left] without leaving a trace” (23). As Derrida has illustrated différance as trace through examining the structural analysis, the adoption of différance as trace to this Heideggerian statement becomes the following: this forgotten of différance is left without its trace of trace. In other words, the forgotten of différance means the disappearance of the trace of the trace (of the distinctions/differences). Derrida sneakily applies the Heideggerian proposal when illustrating the existence of the metaphysics of the present and the presence of différance. Heidegger argues that the differences between Being and beings are forgotten and that this forgotten must include two things at the same time: (1) the forgotten of Being (presence, presencing) and (2) the forgotten of trace of distinctions (differences) between Being and beings (the present, what is at present). If presence is manifested in the history of the present, différance is both manifested in the history of the trace and begins with the history of trace (the present). To the notion of différance, the metaphysical meaning of the present is trace. The trace is not an essence in presence but, as Derrida conceives it, “a simulacrum of a presence,” and where the trace “dislocates itself, displaces itself, refers itself, it properly has no site—erasure belongs to its structure” (24). Derrida further explains, [N]ot only the erasure which must always be able to overtake it . . . but also the erasure which constitutes it from the outset as a trace, which situates it as the change of site, and makes it disappear in its appearance, makes it emerge from

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itself in its production. The erasure of the trace is therefore the same as its tracing in the text of metaphysics. The latter must have maintained the mark of what it has lost, reserved, put aside.

As a result, trace is trace and simultaneously erasure. The metaphysics of the present is trace and simultaneously erasure. The Present, Presence Derrida believes that his analysis of metaphysics of the present is close to Nietzsche’s discussion of theme. For instance, Derrida’s metaphysics of the present prescribes a need both to critique and to create meanings, which, as it happens, are linked to Nietzsche’s philosophy of symptomatology. This symptomatology suggests a Nietzschean affirmation that works on “diagnos[ing] the detour or ruse of an agency disguised in its différance, or further, to the entire thematic of active interpretation which substitutes incessant deciphering for the unveiling of truth as the presentation of the thing itself in its presence, etc.” (Derrida 1982b: 17–18). In other words, différance as a temporization and spacing is the Nietzschean affirmation of a temporization and spacing. Derrida asks questions like “What is the present?” “What is [it] to think the present in its presence?” “Can one conceive of a presence, and of a presence to itself of the subject before speech or song, a presence to itself of the subject in a silent and intuitive consciousness?” (Derrida 1982b: 16). Derrida argues that Heidegger feels we are trapped within the language of Western metaphysics. Nevertheless, he proposes a hope and announces a transcendental Being beyond logocentrism, through which the proper word and the unique name for the metaphysics of the present is sought. The hope therefore offered by Heidegger refers itself to the collection of every possible unique name with the purpose of finding the nature of Being. The commitment to a trap within a privileged Western logocentrism and the argument of an open-ended calculation of subject positions is often proposed as a solution to the impasse of the Marxist analysis. Derrida shares this solution with Heidegger. Heidegger delimits the closure of the logocentric metaphysics of signification by (1) soliciting the value of presence to the ontological/theological determination of Being and (2) by selecting whose status must be completely exceptional. In this way, forms and epochs of presence and the singularity of self-presence are both legitimated. The present is no longer absolutely the central form of Being, but it is a determination and an effect within that closure. Thus, Heidegger says, “Being speaks always and everywhere throughout language” (Derrida 1982b: 27). By contrast, Derrida argues that within the system of différance, [a] determination or an effect within a system which is no longer that of presence but of différance, a system that no longer tolerates the opposition of activity and

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passivity, nor that of cause and effect, or of indetermination and determination, etc., such that in designating consciousness as an effect or a determination, one continues—[for strategic reasons that can be more or less lucidly deliberated and systematically calculated]—to operate according to the lexicon of that which one is de-limiting. (16–17)

Instead, Derrida proposes a Nietzschean affirmation of différance by reiterating Heidegger’s statement, saying, “Being/speaks/always and everywhere/throughout/language” (27). To Derrida, the Nietzschean way of affirming the present suggests that we simply forget about the Heideggerian dream and go beyond the dialectical language trap. With this approach of affirmation, Derrida makes his transcendental affirmation in a manner beyond the influence of Heidegger’s transcendental argument of Being. Also on account of this approach to affirmation, Derrida’s relationship with both Western logocentrism and Hegelian dialectics is better understood. That is, without being nostalgic, we are able to trace back every form of Hegelian dialectic and find its origins without even attaching ourselves to the need to map what the future would be like. In Derrida’s words: [W]e must think this without nostalgia, that is, outside of the myth of a purely maternal or paternal language, a lost native country of thought. On the contrary, we must affirm this, in the sense in which Nietzsche put affirmation into play, in a certain laughter and a certain step of the dance. (1982b: 27; italics mine)

With regard to the notion of affirmation as a way of thinking and dancing with language, Derrida suggests that it is a kind of “middle voice” that places emphasis on the notion of the undecided that finds its place between the active and the passive. In Derrida’s own words: “for the middle voice, a certain nontransitivity, may be what philosophy, at its outset, distributed into an active and a passive voice, thereby constituting itself by means of this repression” (9). One of Derrida’s principal critiques of Heidegger involves the daring project of seeking a proper word or unique name for the essential nature of Being. On the one hand, Derrida points out the difficulties of the tautological relationship that exists between linguistics and the question of Being. The very relation of what is present and the rules involved in presenting the essence of that particular presencing already provides a puzzling complexity within the relationship of hermeneutics (language) and ontology (Being). On the other hand, Derrida echoes Heidegger by arguing that “such daring is not impossible since Being [already] speaks always and everywhere throughout language” (1982b: 27). In this sense, Heidegger’s theory accepts a Nietzschean affirmation as its means of speaking. Derrida advocates that another Nietzschean affirmation should

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be adopted in the place of a response to the anxieties that are hidden in the Heideggerian notion of hope. Derrida states that it is “from the vantage of this laughter and this dance, from the vantage of this affirmation, foreign to all dialectics, the other side of nostalgia, [that] what I will call Heideggerian hope, comes into question.” Spivak has misinterpreted Derrida’s notions of deconstruction and différance. Spivak gives deconstruction a binary reading, suggesting that there are both useful and dangerous dimensions to the process of deconstruction. Seeking a remedy and focusing on the useful aspects of deconstruction, Spivak further argues that the meaning of différance has to involve both dialectical reasoning and a strategic use of material essence because of the political vulnerability that sustains itself in a woman’s experience. In terms of looking for a better solution to the political situation of women, Spivak ultimately maintains a Hegelian concern relating to the search for a synthesis in the dialectical relationship between man and woman. Spivak misreads Derrida on account of her ignorance of Derrida’s argument on the metaphysics of presence (the present). Derrida’s notion of différance suggests that the Hegelian concepts of difference and identity are always incomplete and fragmented. More importantly, Derrida deals with deconstruction and différance when discussing the metaphysical meaning of a name and a reference. Derrida suggests that the notion of temporization explains the performative presentation and the limits of both a name and a reference, as phenomena presented in Hegelian theory. For this reason, we ought to remember that the notion of temporization is the key to understanding Derrida’s notion of différance. Temporization unveils Derrida’s philosophical approach with respect to his relation to the tradition of Western metaphysics, which of course includes the metaphysics of both Hegel and Heidegger. For instance, Derrida destroys Heidegger’s concept of temporality without replacing it. In a similar way, temporization allows the theorist who practices deconstruction and différance to escape the problems associated with the Hegelian approach without being obliged to resolve them. This chapter briefly alludes to the fact that Derrida introduces Nietzsche’s philosophy as a means of speaking about the metaphysical meaning of reference.

CHAPTER 5

Temporality, Modernity, and Différance

INTRODUCTION Homi Bhabha proposes a revision of modernity for the purpose of making an adjustment to the Hegelian thesis. Bhabha believes this to be necessary on account of his concept of the poststructuralist argument concerning the issue of undecidability in conceptualizing a name. This revision of modernity remains a political project of modernity because modernity implies the existence of “the moment [of] making a name for oneself that emerges through undecidability” (Bhabha 1994e: 242).1 Bhabha introduces the idea of temporality to resolve the problem of both making a name and determining the undecidable fact of such a name. Temporality suggests that there exists a moment formed by a temporary disruption of historical contexts. Bhabha believes that this temporary disruption allows us to find a common space that is shared by a group of people. This common space helps to legitimate a name and calls for political pleas. Bhabha further develops the idea of common space into an in-between thesis, which speaks to the basic features relating to cultural difference. In this chapter, I will examine Bhabha’s revision of the notion of what comprises the Hegelian differences, as his political theory. This investigation will involve an examination of Foucault’s and Derrida’s perceptions of differences that have become the basis for their critiques of the Hegelian way of defining differences. This investigation begins with an analysis of Bhabha’s revision of modernity and its associated concepts, difference and temporality. This investigation will extend to include the idea of temporality, which I broadly divide into two main fields: (1) Bhabha’s observations (i.e., the subject of proposition) and (2) his strategies (i.e., the subject

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of enunciation). This is followed by a critique that focuses on the problematic proposition of the in-between space and the concept of temporality. A Foucauldian analysis of the relationship of relations as non-place is elaborated upon in the form of a critique and is contrasted with the inbetween space. Furthermore, Derrida’s perspective on the undecidable fact of a name, something Bhabha thinks to be an important factor in the development of both his thesis and his notion of différance, will also be discussed in relation to the Hegelian differences. HOMI BHABHA’S REVISION OF MODERNITY At the beginning of his book The Location of Culture (1994), Bhabha informs us of the primary intention of writing this book. Citing Frantz Fanon and Johnny Mercer, Bhabha states, The architecture of this work is rooted in the temporal. Every human problem must be considered from the standpoint of time. (Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks; italics mine) You’ve got to Ac-cent-tchu-ate the pos-i-tive, E-li-mi-nate the neg-a-tive, Don’t mess with Mister In-be-tween. (refrain from “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive” by Johnny Mercer; italics mine)

The idea of temporality, which is explicated in the preceding phrases in the terms the temporal, time, and in the space of the in-between, is fundamental to Bhabha’s revision of modernity. This undecidability should demand that we persist with Bhabha’s theory on the present. For Bhabha, the present is a historical construction that has been established both in order to signify a specific position of historical enunciation and to address those who bear witness and who are subjugated. With regard to this undecidability, Bhabha disputes that critical theory can consider the subject to be a transcendental being with its own originalities and transparent immediacy; he agrees with poststructuralists on the differences that exist in the nature of the subject. However, with regard to making a name for oneself, Bhabha needs to accept the assumption of critical theory about the public sphere, which holds the poststructuralist theory about difference. Negotiation but not negation is what Bhabha argues for: “The new or the contemporary appear through the splitting of modernity as [an] event and enunciation, the epochal and the everyday. Modernity as a sign of the present emerges in that process of splitting, that lag, that gives the practice of everyday life its consistency as being contemporary” (1994e: 241–43).

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For Bhabha, the idea of temporality is articulated as being the signified cutting moment of the present in the line of history that comes to terms in the in-between space of time and space within the discourse of postcolonialism. In one sense, temporality provides us with an insight into Bhabha’s postcolonial discourse from which he has constructed an inbetween thesis of postcolonial subjectivity—a thesis that uses vocabulary such as ambivalence, hybridity, and in-between-ness. In another sense, temporality offers Bhabha a methodological cleavage that cuts the present from the past and the future, the inside from the outside, us from them, the colonizer from the colonized, and so on. It is Bhabha’s intentions that, by doing this, he can therefore distinguish the very moment of the present that allows him to further a methodological strategy for enunciation and address. While Bhabha is proposing a breakthrough within the discourse of postcolonialism, from my point of view, there are certain warning signs regarding his new initiative; the naiveté of his thinking to some extent somehow shows through his strategy, which therefore brings his postcolonial discourse into question. Modernity, Difference, and Temporality Bhabha’s general postcolonial discourse presents a complex form of Hegelian thesis based on his idea of temporality. In the micro sense, Bhabha first critiques the Hegelian dialectics by introducing an inbetween space for the temporality of the encounter between the master/slave binary opposition. He constructs his thesis on the inbetween based on the binary opposition that exists between master and slave. Bhabha then shifts his theoretical position toward a poststructuralist stance by arguing that the temporality of being, of nation, of community, and of selfhood is disjunctive, incommensurable, and different. Arguing for the performative function of being, Bhabha returns to focus on the temporality of the present in order to argue his own version of modernity. Within this argument, the Hegelian thesis is implicit, meaning it is therefore more correct to say that Bhabha’s theory is in fact founded on Hegelian theory. Regarding the problematic issue of identity, I will investigate whether or not Bhabha’s revision of modernity does in fact represent a breakthrough. Before we move on to his main theoretical framework, it would be useful to look at Bhabha’s personal background for the purpose of understanding why he insists on both an in-between thesis and an emphasis on the present. A basic understanding of Bhabha’s theory is to be found in the ways in which Bhabha constitutes his own identity and his own subject position in the postcolonial world. In an interview (Bennett and Collits 1991), Bhabha accounts for the reasons why he comes up with a commitment to theory: being from the Parsee minority in India, Bhabha experienced a border

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position in which he felt little political influence from his own minority grouping, despite the fact that his community itself was prosperous commercially and had a respected professional status. The need to gain a certain position for political enunciation was always Bhabha’s primary concern. The joy of experiencing two cultures in India brought Bhabha to think of the in-between subject position. He later developed this position as the feature of his postcolonial theory, explaining that this position provided a legitimate place for the postcolonial subject to speak out in what could then be thought of as his or her own colonial mother country. The experience as a postgraduate at Oxford in England offered Bhabha another perspective on the in-between experience from which he could further construct his theory. Here, Bhabha proposes the concept of mimicry. By admitting his inauthenticity, on account of both his postcolonial cultural background and determination to speak from the original cultural text, Bhabha contends that the overlapping interstices between these two subject positions offer him the right to speak out. The postcolonial subject is “almost the same, but not quite” the same, since the slave has already been profoundly influenced by his master, which is to say that he or she has come to inherit something from his or her master (Bennett and Collits 1991: 57). Thus it is possible for the mimicry to appear in the public sphere: “stop being just a form of passive imitation and become a way in which the inappropriateness of the master or the model comes to be visible” (57). According to Bhabha, before the interaction takes place between the master and the slave on the master’s land, we may at most only argue that the colonized possesses a hybrid culture, yet after their interactions, we could also argue that the master himself forms a hybrid culture, in that the original one is never known in its originality. The master has been forced to change due to the enunciation of the slave. Thus, Bhabha notes, “there can be a way of both freeing oneself and then framing the colonizer’s culture through an experience of its colonial dissemination” (58). Due to Bhabha’s transparent eagerness to find his own subject position, temporality at first comes to indicate the significance of the present. In the subtitle to the introduction of The Location of Culture, Bhabha suggests that within the “border live the arts of the present” (1994a: 1). The arts of the present express both his living experiences as well as his intellectual concerns. Rod Edmond (1995: 39) suggests that Bhabha’s discourse has its roots in the work of Johnny Mercer and Martin Heidegger: that he is indebted to Johnny Mercer for the concept of the in-between and to Martin Heidegger for the concept of the ongoing nature of the present—that which is “something that begins its presenting” (Bhabha 1994a: 5). This being the case, what we see more often in Bhabha’s text is the poststructuralist theories, particularly that of Foucault, and the critical theories, in particular that of Habermas. While Martin Heidegger acts as a guide to Bhabha’s theoretical intentions, poststructuralism and critical theory give

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Bhabha the body of his text, making possible the description of modernity, the arts of the present, and the temporality. In the macro sense, Bhabha’s postcolonial discourse, as a whole, presents a Hegelian thesis that reveals (1) the discourse of the temporality of modernity, which is based on both poststructuralism and the theory of Habermas; (2) an antithesis that recognizes a hybrid culture, an inbetween discourse between the master and the slave, which itself is consistent with the temporality of modernity; and (3) a synthesis that is a new vision of modernity, which is, again, another discourse perpetrated by both poststructuralism and Habermas. Bhabha begins his thesis on the temporality of modernity by applying Mladan Dolar’s definition of modernity to both the being of the present and the ethics of self-construction. Dolar’s definition of modernity is as follows: What makes this attitude typical of modernity is the constant reconstruction and the reinvention of the self . . . The subject and the present it belongs to have no objective status, they have to be perpetually (re)constructed. (cited in Bhabha 1994e: 240)

On the basis of his familiarity with the discourses of poststructuralism and critical theory, Bhabha works toward a revision of modernity—and, in his words, toward a contra-modernity. Bhabha critiques both poststructuralism and critical theory,2 while simultaneously acknowledging the arguments offered by poststructuralism that are convincing—in particular the notion of difference—and Habermas’s theory on rationality. He does this in order to maintain the project of modernity, which makes the utterance of the postcolonial subject in any particular possible moment of the present. Bhabha maintains that we need to go “beyond” the prefix of post and “find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity” (1994a: 1). At first, like a poststructuralist, Bhabha negates the merits of foundationalism, as he sees it as both an incommensurable3 fact of modernity and the impossible project of total emancipation for all political purposes, but in the end, he comes to embrace Habermas’s modernity thesis. This latter fact becomes evident in Bhabha’s discussion on multiculturalism. First, he raises a culture-as-difference thesis. In agreeing with T. S. Eliot’s notion of culture, Bhabha asserts that what is at issue today is not the essentialized or idealized Arnoldian notion of culture but “a certain incommensurability, a necessary impossibility, in thinking culture” (1993: 167). Based on an observation Eliot makes in relation to the cultural dynamics at work in a group of immigrants, he points out that, from one’s departure from one’s hometown, the immigration culture differs from that of its parent culture. This immigration culture is always changing and

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reconfiguring itself according to “whatever relations are established.” For instance, after this group of immigrants land in a new country and starts to interact with “some native” and with immigrants other than those of the original group, a certain form of culture is formed and at different times “peculiar types of culture-sympathy and culture-clash appear.” At any temporality when looking at this immigration culture, the boundary of such a culture becomes blurred, and the contradictory happens due to the different temporality of historical circumstance. Bhabha thus contends that “this ‘part’ culture, this partial culture, is the contaminated yet connective tissue between cultures—at once the impossibility of a culture’s containedness and the boundary between [them]. It is indeed something like culture’s ‘in-between,’ bafflingly, [as it is] both alike and different.” The culture-as-difference thesis further offers Bhabha a different view on multiculturalism and by claiming his discourse on multiculturalism; he later shifts to Habermas’s concept of the Reason of modernity. Following a poststructuralist line of argument, Bhabha recognizes multiplicity— the contingency of culture and the social group (e.g., from the minority discourse to the postcolonial critique, from gay and lesbian studies to Chicano/Chicana fiction). He asserts that “multiculturalism has become the most charged sign for describing the scattered social contingencies that characterise contemporary Kulturkritik. The multicultural has itself become a ‘floating signifier’ ” (1993: 168). Nevertheless, in order to theoretically legitimize temporality and to further an enunciative temporality, Bhabha draws upon Habermas in order to appropriate the notion of Reason to the progress of modernity. Quoting Habermas, Bhabha says that the effect of the (postmodern) scattering condition on modernity is one of [an] ever more finely woven net of linguistically generated intersubjectivity. Rationalization of the life world means differentiation and condensation at once—a thickening of the floating web of intersubjective threads that simultaneously hold together the ever more sharply differentiated components of culture, society and person.4

To be sure, within the multicultural discourse, Bhabha differs from Habermas, in that while Habermas argues for an ideal speech community, Bhabha holds on to poststructuralist antiessentialism and instead suggests that we focus on the temporality of both location and enunciation. While Habermas’s ideal speech community assumes the existence of the pre-given identity of each subject, it acknowledges that the contradictory fact exists both within and outside the subject. Modernity, for Habermas, suggests a never-ending communication among subjects within this finely tuned ideal speech situation. However, Bhabha does not believe in a pregiven identity and comes to disrupt this solution based on Habermas’s speech community. His focus is on the moment—temporality—and assists Bhabha in staying within the project of modernity. By arguing that the

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temporality of the in-between position is held by the subject in terms of time and space, Bhabha solves the problematic of a fixed identity and the incommensurable problematic of/among subjects. Bhabha is maintaining an “unhomely” subject position here. By arguing the temporality for enunciation, Bhabha turns his back on the issue of empowerment. This focus on the present and the argument of giving up both the original and initial subjectivity point to Bhabha’s refusal to adopt the Hegelian binary opposition thesis. Bhabha argues that his in-between thesis is not a Hegelian synthesis. The difference between Bhabha’s in-between fact of a subject and the Hegelian subject is that while the negation is the Hegelian subject’s basic principle, the interstitial space is Bhabha’s standpoint. It is the hybridity of the subject position and the culture in societies that stand out as Bhabha’s major theoretical innovations. For Bhabha, a subject, who seeks his place of enunciation, is always standing upon that common ground shared by the master and the slave. In other words, if the Hegelian subject looks for what is negative, Bhabha will look for what is positive in the same relation between master and slave. This point becomes clearer when we realize that Bhabha accepts poststructuralism only as a supplementary interpretation of the condition of modernity. He maintains that what is required is the need to “understand cultural difference as the production of minority identities that ‘split’—are estranged unto themselves—in the act of being articulated into a collective body” (1994a: 3). To cite Renée Green’s words, Bhabha shows his Hegelian intention in terms of the historical significance of raising a multicultural movement when he says, Multiculturalism doesn’t reflect the complexity of the situation as I face it today . . . It requires a person to step outside of him/herself to actually see what he/she is doing. (3; italics mine)

Thus, if Dolar’s definition of modernity suggests that the persisting split (of the subject) is a condition of freedom, would Bhabha further argue for the necessity to “specify a historical condition and [a] theoretical configuration of ‘splitting’ in [a] political situation of ‘unfreedom’ ” (Bhabha 1994e: 240)? Bhabha admits that he is convinced by the argument that “the catachrestic postcolonial agency of ‘seizing the valuecoding’ . . . enables the diasporic and the postcolonial to be represented.” Modernity, for Bhabha, suggests a deliberate return to considering the temporality of the postcolonial subject as a project of empowerment. Yet it must be recalled that since an understanding of poststructuralist antifoundationalism is basic to Bhabha’s postcolonial discourse, the temporality of postcolonial enunciation does not suggest a fixed moment or project. Bhabha’s in-between thesis is always looking to the interstitial

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space alongside the line of time, space, and epistemology. Temporality appears whenever and wherever there is a necessity for enunciation and a chance for the demonstration of a hybridity. In the following paragraphs, I am going to extrapolate in more detail Bhabha’s observations on the hybridity of subject positions, in particular in relation to Frantz Fanon’s decolonization and Edward Said’s Orientalism. Temporality I: Subject of Proposition Bhabha’s in-between thesis is better understood when the occurrence of the disturbing distance of the colonial Self (or the colonized Other) constitutes the figure of the colonial Other, as understood by Fanon. In understanding the in-between or ambivalence of subject identity and the practice of colonialism and decolonialism, the shared symbolic and spatial structures between the master and the slave become, as in Fanon’s Manichaean structure, a space for extensive investigation. The in-between suggests a positive revision of one’s subject position alongside different temporal, cultural, and power relations. Bhabha says one of his favorite Fanonian expressions is “The Negro is not. Any more than the white man” (Bhabha 1994c: 60). However, while Fanon expresses this statement with antagonism, Bhabha interprets it differently. Fanon’s Hegelian negation becomes, in Bhabha’s view, a breakthrough, an inevitable but powerful strategy for the de-/anticolonialism project. For Bhabha, Fanon’s decolonization practice is extremely successful, for the different version of the decolonized he brings to theory.5 Fanon concludes that the Hegelian negation that conceptualizes a black man is nothing more than an artifact of a white conceptualization. He continues to adopt the Hegelian approach of antithesis, which aims to negate his colonizer Other, the colonizer Other always being the enemy for Fanon. From Bhabha’s viewpoint, Fanon is “too quick to name his Other, to personalise its presence in the language of colonial racism.” What Bhabha does is basically to revise totally Fanon’s anticolonialization philosophy. He is trying to soften Fanon’s strong Hegelian dichotomy by elucidating the hybrid in Fanon’s hybridity. In Bhabha’s view, this Hegelian dichotomy is inappropriate not only in terms of Fanon’s ontological status, but also in its political application. If Fanon’s Hegelian thesis is sustained for the white man, “the real Other is and will continue to be the black man” (Bhabha 1994c: 60). Although Fanon restores a dream in both proper political time and cultural space, the fact is that such a position may lead him to a more pessimistic misunderstanding of his successful emancipatory project, which will somehow “blunt the edge of Fanon’s brilliant illustrations.” Bhabha criticizes Fanon for wrongly proposing a polarity of the Same and the Other within the discourses of colonialism and decolonialization. For instance, ambivalence happens to Fanon himself and his

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wretched people. When his people announce, “you’re a doctor, a writer, a student, you’re different, you’re one of us,” ambivalence appears in the use of difference; as Bhabha recounts, “to be different from those who are different makes you the same” (44). In other words, according to the temporality of decolonization, how you are different from us is not important, as long as the in-between space shared by us bonds us together. Another instance of an insistence on ambivalence occurs when those liberatory people present a discontinuous intertextual temporality in their antinationalist movements. Even with a shared anticolonial cultural imposition, these people separate their continuities and constancies from the nationalist tradition, by applying modern Western forms of information, technology, language, and dress. It is significant that there is a discontinuity appearing within the colonized Same. Moreover, this intertextual temporality indicates the existence of the hybrid identity of those who are liberatory people. As the principle of dialectical reorganization in a newly formed culture is adopted from the Western discourse into the national text, the liberatory people negotiate and translate their cultural identity. Thus, the Hegelian negation suggests an ambivalence that ironically splits the colonized Self. In one sense, this in-between-ness reveals a dangerous place where identity and aggressivity are intertwined. In another sense, it opens up a place for the colonized subject to interrogate his own experiences regarding the history of colonization. Indeed, central to Bhabha’s theory of identity is the notion that identification always comes from the ambivalence that exists in the concept of the relationship of the master and the slave. In Bhabha’s account of the Hegelian negation, the space of splitting becomes a questionable arena, which is later reinterpreted as a positive site for power relations. But I would argue that Bhabha does not reject the Hegelian subject and that he even includes a Hegelian negation when he considers the temporality of political strategy, something that is evident in his discussion of doubling when speaking of Fanon’s strategy for decolonization. Bhabha introduces a concept of doubling when identifying the scenarios, which inevitably develop when the slave encounters the master. Doubling suggests a “dissembling image of being in at least two places at once that makes it impossible for the devalued, insatiable évolué . . . to accept the colonizer’s invitation to identity” (Bhabha 1994c: 44). For instance, when Fanon asks, “What does the man want?” Bhabha would argue that this problematic of identity is “a persistent questioning of the frame, the space of representation, where the image is confronted with its difference, its Other” (46; italics mine). We should have no doubt about the necessary interaction that develops between the slave and the master in that the Hegelian subject always looks for what is lacking. Doubling further suggests “the discursive and disciplinary place from which questions of identity are [not simply interrogated but are] strategi-

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cally and institutionally posed” (Bhabha 1994c: 47). When the colonized subject skillfully employs the colonizer’s strategies of modernity, the ambivalence of the site becomes a useful common area from which the colonized can gaze at the colonizer. Bhabha naively argues that, given the Hegelian space of splitting, “the fantasy of the native is precisely to occupy the master’s place while keeping his place in the slave’s avenging anger” (44). In Fanon’s case, Black Skin, White Masks is successful in its doubling, because it creates a dissembling image of being in at least two places at once, an action that at the same time contains a mimicry strategy that aims to subvert. Bhabha says, “it is a mode of negation that seeks to unveil the fullness of Man and to manipulate his representation. It is a form of power that is exercised at the very limits of identity and authority, in the mocking spirit of mask and image” (62). In concluding Bhabha’s analysis of Fanon, I wish to emphasize the importance of the Hegelian negation that can be found in the theory of temporality of Bhabha’s postcolonial discourse. The access to the image of identity is only ever possible in the negation of any sense of representation/repetition [and this] renders it a liminal reality. (1994c: 51)

Another example of ambivalence in Bhabha’s postcolonial discourse can be seen in Edward Said’s Orientalism. Since Orientalism was published in 1978, Edward Said has been criticized for his overwhelming use of the binary opposition in his attempt to theoretically analyze “the Orient” and “the Occident.” There already exist critiques on the question of whether or not there is a real Orient and/or a real Occident. In Bhabha’s reading of Orientalism, he initially disagrees with Said, but later he defends Said when he resolves Said’s mistaken introduction of the question of enunciation. Therefore, in contrast to how the other critics responded, Bhabha turns Said’s Orientalism into something positive. First, Bhabha points out that Said refuses to engage with the alterity and ambivalence for the reason that Said followed the traditional literarycritical way by referring to a single originating intention (Bhabha 1994c). Said is wrong, according to Bhabha, not because he applies a Hegelian dialectical analysis of the Occident and the Orient but because Said is defining the terrains of the Occident and the Orient as exclusive, such an analysis leaves no room for negotiation or resistance. In other words, Bhabha criticizes Said for not seeing the positive in-between space between the Occident and the Orient, meaning Said not only misinterprets the postcolonial condition, but also fails to recognize a powerful site from which the Orient might interrogate the Western discourses. Clearly, Bhabha’s thesis of the temporality of subject proposition is not found in Said’s Orientalism due to this theoretical mistake made by Said. Nevertheless, for Bhabha, another temporality—the temporality of enunciation—is applied to Said’s discourse where Bhabha turns Said’s

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Orientalism into a powerful discourse. He takes Said’s theoretical intention seriously, as Robert Young has identified when writing on Bhabha: Orientalism may be a representation but it also takes part in an entire discursive field, any consideration of which, he argues, must include the question of enunciation, that is, of who is speaking to whom. It cannot be assumed that representations are just static entities which may or may not correspond to the “real”—because they must always also form part of an address, whether written or spoken, with a specific addresser and addressee. (1990: 142)

Obviously, Bhabha sees Orientalism as a tool that can be used instrumentally in the domains of colonial power and administration and that can therefore be used to fight the Western discourse, or the Occident. As with Bhabha’s comments on Fanon, the political goal for the postcolonial subject should be taken as the fundamental principle. As Young says, “Bhabha shows how the question of enunciation already elucidates the operation of a subject. The concept of enunciation directs our attention to “the repertoire of conflictual positions that constitute the subject in colonial discourse” (R. Young 1990: 142). Therefore, I would conclude that despite the fact that Bhabha acknowledges the postcolonial condition as a multiplicity, he regards the representation of the colonial subject as more important than that the voice of the postcolonial is necessarily heard. Even though Said exhibits ambivalence toward his difficulty in matching the representation, the Occident and the Orient, such ambivalence remains the preoccupation of Bhabha’s temporality of enunciation. Because of this, I would argue that Bhabha’s argument remains in line with Hegelian dialectics. Temporality II: Subject of Enunciation As I have demonstrated, Bhabha’s in-between thesis is constructed on the basis of a Hegelian negation. Bhabha actually modifies the Hegelian negation into a negotiation between communities; this modification comes about as a consequence of the revision he does on poststructuralism and critical theories. Hybridity is central to Bhabha’s model of multiculturalism. Bhabha says, within the multicultural society, “communities negotiate ‘difference’ through a borderline process that reveals the hybridity of cultural identity: they create a sense of themselves to and through an other” (1995: 114). In fact, Bhabha’s own strategy of empowering the colonized subject indicates a more or less mutual recognition, and it is argued about, always, based on the traditional attributes. Bhabha explains that “the enunciative process introduces a split in the performative present of cultural identification . . . the struggle is often between the historicist teleological or mythical time and narrative of traditionalism” (1994b: 35). Bhabha’s strategies are argued as follows: first, he splits the master and the slave (for instance, by splitting the traditional culture of the master from that of the slave). Then, Bhabha argues for the significant meaning of

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a performative present of cultural identity, by reinforcing the hybridity of the master and the slave and the importance of time. Finally, Bhabha rejoins the traditional cultural discourses of the slave and the political to the necessary negation of the certitude by resisting the master. Hybridity, Bhabha suggests, carries a political dimension. Borrowing from Baldwin’s notion of empowerment, Bhabha argues that, with respect to the colonial subject, the power of the colonized subject relies on the ubiquitous everyday experience lived in recognition of his or her cultural and psychic hybridity. Baldwin writes, Alienation causes the Negro to recognize that he is a hybrid . . . In white Americans he finds reflected . . . his tensions, his terrors, his tenderness. Dimly and for the first time, there begins to fall into perspective the nature of the roles they have played in the lives and history of each other. Now he is bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh . . . Therefore he cannot deny them, nor can they ever be divorced . . . It is difficult to make clear that [the African American] is not seeking to forfeit his birthright as a black man, but that, on he contrary, it is precisely this birthright which he is struggling to recognize and make articulate. (cited in Bhabha 1995: 114; italics mine)

From this statement, it is interesting to note that the “birthright” has a dual meaning: the birthright of a black man and an essentialist notion of a black man that is argued based on his or her birthright. With regard to postcolonial discourse, the traditional culture is thus disguised in that it is no longer conceived of as a “historical memory” but as “a strategy for representing authority in terms of the artifice of the archaic” (Bhabha 1994b: 35). As the hybridity of culture indicates an ambivalence toward the discourse of the master and the slave, Bhabha would argue that this ambivalence signals a Third Space, one that represents not only the general conditions of language within the social but also carries “the specific implications of the utterance in a performative and institutional strategy of which it cannot ‘in itself’ be conscious” (35). Bhabha’s arguments are exemplified by the discourses of Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, both theorists concerned with the notion of hybridity being produced from/in the social, which is constitutive of the nature of the ambivalence. In fact, Bhabha agrees that there exist different forms of linguistic position (e.g., the social position) in any master/slave relationship;6 yet when the issue the temporality of enunciation is raised, he argues that the hybridity of linguistic difference in the society allows cultural performance to be “dramatised in the common semiotic account of the disjuncture between the subject of a proposition (énoncé) and the subject of enunciation” (36). Moreover, the culture of the society is “not represented in the statement but [that is] the acknowledgment of its discursive embeddedness and address, its cultural positionality, its reference to a present time and a specific space” (36).

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By introducing the temporality of enunciation, Bhabha clarifies a closure within the difference in the society. The discourse of colonial history affirms the cultural and historical dimension of the Third Space. For Bhabha, it is because of the temporality of enunciation that this Third Space offers a powerful cultural change, and it is because of the temporality of enunciation that the Third Space accompanies the “assimilation of contraries” and “creates an occult instability” (1994d: 195). Nevertheless, it is because of the temporality of enunciation that this Third Space, in Bhabha’s point of view, represents a productive capacity, which has a colonial or postcolonial importance. It is precisely this point that Bhabha disputes with Foucault, arguing that Foucault fails to elaborate on what to the former is both the certain position of the postcolonial subject and the historical constitution of colonial history. It is in Bhabha’s mind that his inbetween thesis—working as a curious indeterminacy that is able to enter the chain of discourse—offers a discursive temporality, which is not a fixed discourse but another point (of enunciation). In Bhabha’s viewpoint, if Foucault refuses to acknowledge the colonial moment as an enunciative present in the historical and epistemological condition of Western modernity, he provides little reference to the transferential relation that links the West to its colonial history (195–96). TEMPORALITY OF INFINITY: METAPHYSICAL NON-PLACE VERSUS THE IN-BETWEEN SPACE It is nothing but the space that divides them, the void through which they exchange their threatening gestures and speeches . . . it is a “non-place,” a pure distance, which indicates that the adversaries do not belong to a common space. Consequently, no one is responsible for an emergence; no one can glory in it, since it always occurs in the interstice. (Foucault 1984: 84–85)

Both Bhabha and Foucault deal with time and the discursive space historical experiences. While Bhabha argues for “astringent” postcolonial moments, both in the temporality of proposition and the temporality of enunciation, Foucault claims for space and time a “disperse” nature. My critique of Bhabha’s claim will utilize Foucault’s notion of non-place. Central to Foucault’s genealogical thesis on historical experience is the experience of human history as a stage, where the discursive space is characterized by a struggle of forces. As the endeavor of descent and emergence have illustrated in the genealogical discussion of historical experiences, these forces are not the result of and will not result from an ultimate reconciliation; instead they are themselves, by nature, proliferation and variegation. As Judith Butler suggests, the term force is to be understood as “the directional impulse of life, a movement, as it were, that is constantly embroiled in conflict and scenes of domination” (1987: 180). Additionally, she describes force as “the nexus of life and power, the

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movement of their intersection.” If we perceive postcolonial experience as one force, among others, which is at play on the stage of human history, Bhabha’s theory of the temporality of both proposition and enunciation will be subject to question because both these temporalities respectively present one force among others and should be viewed individually as a variation on all others. First, I would like to point out that there is a theoretical gap between the temporality of proposition and the temporality of enunciation. Bhabha’s postcolonial discourse aims to find a subject-position for the ever-colonized to speak aloud in the postcolonial world by arguing for the existence of the hybridity of selfhood and culture. Yet these two temporalities are not compatible with each other; they are grounded in different historical discourses. Benita Parry considers Bhabha’s in-between thesis to be “a solidarity fashioned in the intersubjectivity of dispersed subjects” (1992: 30; italics mine). For his part, like Edward Said, Bhabha argues for both a decentered subject and a hybrid culture. While Said contends the need for a strategy of “simultaneous affirmation and cancellation of an insurgent native subjectivity and a resurgent cultural nationalism” (Parry 1992: 30), Bhabha claims the need for a strategy of empowerment, which is precisely advanced and based on the notion that there exists a common space between the master and the slave. Personally, I do not accept Parry’s intersubjectivity account of Bhabha’s thesis for the reason that Bhabha’s in-between thesis designates a rather static scene of the intersection with respect to the relationship of the master and the slave. As I have shown, along the time axis of history, the notion of temporality suggests that we should see the in-between space in terms of moments that concern the postcolonial subject. As far as the temporality of enunciation is concerned, Bhabha sees an unequal power existing in the relationship of the master and the slave. But with respect to the temporality of (subject of) proposition, Bhabha’s theory of the in-between common space does not take the history of imperialism into account; it deliberately ignores it altogether, for the purpose of highlighting that this in-between common space is developed after the demise of those ugly histories. I would thus argue that the in-between thesis is different from the intersubjectivity thesis advocated by Habermas and which, in the context of the master/slave relation, contains strong indications of unequal power. The analysis of the dynamics of power has been a major theme of critical theory, including that which concentrates on the field of culture. If Bhabha’s apolitical and ahistorical in-between thesis inadvertently neutralizes the hybridity of selfhood and culture, it is likely that he will also be accused of ignorance with respect to the role the state plays in this inbetween space and its associated impact on colonial history such as cultural imperialism.

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Foucault wishes to point out that it is the non-place, or the pure distance, that characterizes the nature of the scene of confrontation that ensues between forces. Butler explains that, according to Foucault, the emergence of value, or what Nietzsche would call instinct, “is not specifically the energy of the strong or the reaction of the weak,” as it is within Hegelian dialectics; rather, it is “precisely this scene where they are displayed superimposed or face-to-face” (1987: 180). Butler goes on to point out that “significantly, the strong and the weak, the master and the slave, do not share a common ground; they are not to be understood as part of a common ‘humanity’ or system of cultural norms” (180). For Hegel, the scene of confrontation between the master and the slave always has to occur in a shared social reality; this is to say, the concepts of domination and subordination coexist. But Foucault, on the other hand, revers[es] the Hegelian claim altogether, arguing that historical experience “emerges” precisely at the point where common ground cannot be ascertained, i.e., in a confrontation between differentially empowered agencies whose difference is not mediated by some more fundamental commonality. (181–82)

The importance of the non-place of emergence that Foucault suggests is the generative moment of history itself. For instance, Foucault argues that dominance is not the ultimate result of all historical narrative; domination occurs repetitively, something seen in the values that are proposed and power that is produced. In fact, the conflict of forces accounts for the conflict scenes and the moment where different values emerge and where different meanings of power are deployed. Moreover, we are living in an uncertain age, since the moment of emergence suggests a historical innovation that has occurred when these conflictive forces produce some new historical configuration of forces. According to Foucault’s notion of the emergence in a non-place, we may argue that Bhabha’s hybridity oversimplifies both the colonizer and the colonized subject. The danger of looking for the common shared space of the master and the slave is that this search represents an attempt to find a consensus among difference voices. When Bhabha argues for a temporality of enunciation for the postcolonial subject, he is cautious with respect to arguing for a consensus among postcolonial subjects. There are many examples of arguments that are contra Bhabha’s thesis of the shared ontological space. For instance, in New Zealand, before the initiation of British colonial influence in the history of New Zealand, there was not “one Maori,” but “Maoris” of different tribes (Peters 1994). Cameron McCarthy (1990a) also provides us with evidence of a number of nonsynchronistic relations of subject identity that can be found in minority groups that exist on account of their struggles with race, gender, and class.

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I also want to argue that Bhabha’s notion of temporality does not necessarily affirm the existence of a hybridity. If there does happen to be a hybridity, it may not be as pleasant an outcome as Bhabha would like us to believe. Because of Bhabha’s urgency with respect to his attempt in applying temporality to his postcolonial discourse, it would seem he finds himself obliged to cut the present from both the future and the past. Bhabha makes this break with the future and the past in order to find the space of the in-between for the colonial subject, and therefore he fails to think about those discourses that are not able to participate in the public sphere and that are not able to be asserted in the in-between space. It seems simple that Bhabha should argue for an intersection that results from two crossing lines and therefore leads to an inter-space of two overlapping discourses. Bhabha might be naive when he maintains that there can exist an interface between three, four, and even more discourses. If a number of discourses exist simultaneously, it should be harder to find both a temporality emerging in each discourse and the inter-space that results from the meeting of these discourses. As Rod Edmond argues, Bhabha makes the same mistake Walter Benjamin makes, claiming that: “Bhabha seriously underestimates the way in which such apparently transgressive discourses are sidelined or incorporated” (1995: 39). A hybridity selfhood or culture does not necessarily assure that life will be an enjoyable experience and as such result in a harmonious hybrid culture. As Edmond asserts, “for many people the position of ‘in-between’ is life-threatening, and their fragmented identities are the sign of damage rather than of discursive possibility” (1995: 39). The circumstances when a Pakeha subject refutes the political objection of a Maori provide an interesting case in point. Questions are often raised, such as, how many pure Maori are there in New Zealand society today? I would argue that the issue here is more political than Bhabha might imagine. In addition, my personal experience tells me that a lot of New Zealand–born Chinese feel lost at the point where they have difficulty in fitting into any ethnic group in New Zealand: their hybrid cultural heritage often brings with it ambivalence toward their ethnicity. Bhabha’s in-between thesis naively argues for a happy temporality and common space, but it is not too difficult to find another example of “the disturbing political blindness” that much critical theory in this century fails to consider. Finally, I wish both to highlight the temporality of language (language such as that found in Bhabha’s discourse) and to question Bhabha’s temporality of proposition and enunciation. Rey Chow (1993) introduces speed in discussing language as a medium of interpretation. Chow contends that language is itself (a concept of) speed, and in a deconstructive sense, language is a form of speed that eventually destroys itself as a way of captur-

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ing the truth. Chow considers speed referring to the ways in which a specific discourse emerges in order to make things visible. Within the domains of mass communication and epistemology, in order to “deliver the truth” and to let the “visuality expose the truth,” language such as that used in the media and in philosophical discourse is accordingly “worked much more in terms of a collaboration and coalescing of the sense than in terms of their differentiation” (166). In other words, language such as that used in the media and in philosophical discourse has implicit to its purpose the watching of the event. When considering this question from a deconstructive perspective, language, when submissive to speed, ultimately leads nowhere. Speed is understood in terms of the scene and time. No matter how late or fast it is, speed signifies the existence of a scene as one that can be created at any specific moment. Language, when submissive to speed, is observed when there is a temporality, meaning language (or discourse), in this instance, unfolds the scene through time. According to Chow, Paul de Man is the first and foremost theorist to privilege the temporality of language. De Man believes that language is a process of negativity because the language can never reflect the representational and symbolic fullness of anything that the language is supposed to work. This is because at any temporality, language is functioning with a telos of that particular moment. Yet it is undermined by its subsequent temporality of differentiation. Chow presents an eventual “death” of language: in terms of speed; a deconstructive way of looking at language is to take language as “mediatized to the utmost”—“to the point where it destroys its own existence as medium (fabricated sensation) and as message” (1993: 174). Thus language itself becomes a form of speed. The question is not in whether language can rapidly capture the motion, but whether the language is capable of capturing the scene. In addition, as the time goes, the speed does not allow a motion that remains unchanged, and it is impossible to capture a motion “because ‘arrival’ is no longer possible because it is already (a thing of the) past” (Chow 1993: 174). Chow concludes, “[i]n the simulacrum of a representational medium, language is a constant departure from some place for nowhere, or from everywhere for the same kind of place: It is thus ‘allegorical’ and ‘empty.’ ” Bhabha’s postcolonial discourse is a language with the telos of both a postcolonial enunciation and a subject proposition. However, because of the temporality of language, Bhabha’s discourse itself becomes questionable with respect to its capability to express the truth of the temporality of the postcolonial subject. In the following section, I shall discuss (1) the significance of time in Derrida’s theory of différance and (2) the meaning of the Hegelian definitions of difference in différance.

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DIFFÉRANCE AND THE PRESENCE OF HEGELIAN DIFFERENCES Time, the Present, and Difference-and-Contradiction We may argue that Koyré’s theory on time and the present further results in a Hegelian synthesis. Bhabha’s revision of modernity can be seen to echo that of Koyré. The Hegelian discourses on difference can be understood in Derrida’s terms to be equivalent to the latter’s notion of differentiated relations. Derrida describes the characteristics of Hegel’s theory on differences as follows: Hegel, in the greater Logic, determines difference as contradiction only in order to resolve it, to interiorize it, to lift it up (according to the syllogistic process of speculative dialectics) into the self-presence of an onto-theological or onto-teleological synthesis. (1981: 44)

In fact, it is Koyré’s interpretation of Hegel that helps Derrida to understand the Hegelian theory of difference. Koyré reads the expression of differente Beziehung (different relations) as the Hegelian difference in Hegel’s texts and pays attention to the importance of time and the present (Derrida 1982b: 13). In Hegel’s text, it is stated that “Diese Beziehung ist Genegwart, als ein differente Beziehung (this relationship is [the] present as a different relationship)” (14). Koyré further argues that the term different has to be read in an active sense. It is the importance of time and the present that leads to actions of distinguishing differences and approaching identities. To elaborate, these actions entail engagements of internal contradictions and the synthesis as the means of providing solutions for these contradictions. Koyré thus suggests that the Hegelian difference—different relations (differente Beziehung)—suggests an action that signifies the intent to differentiate, and Hegelian difference refers to differentiating relations accordingly (14). The emphasis on time and the present determines that the action of the Hegelian negation must be presented at particular moments. That is, the Hegelian negation has to be carried out within the basic dialectical relation framed by the relationship of the Self and the Other for there to be a particular interest of the present. It is also the force of the present—the force of the moment—that represses the Other and transforms it into the negative through simplifying it, in so doing becoming the opposite of the identical Self. There are two forms of simplicity pertaining to our understanding of the Other that can be found in Koyré translations of Hegel’s Jena Logic: the simplicity of the infinite and the simplicity of the diversity. The extreme condition of the present refers to the absolute limited moment of the now. Under the absolute moment, the infinite of the

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moment and the diversity of the moment become the absolute negative. They are transformed and reduced to a moment, as opposed to realizing the moment through attaining the status of becoming the equal-to-itself. While the infinite is presented to and in itself as the totality, the diversity of the moment “absolutely excludes from itself all multiplicity” and is revised as an “indifferent (gleichgultig) or exterior in itself” (Derrida 1982b: 13–14).7 Derrida argues that his theory of différance is by no means related to a genre of differences in terms of that which is defined as difference-andcontradiction. Derrida clearly states that the Hegelian determination of difference, as a contradiction, is where Derrida’s intention precisely comes from with respect to the intention to distinguish différance from the Hegelian difference. Différance contains productive and conflictual characteristics with respect to difference and thus goes beyond the Hegelian system of difference-and-contradiction. Within différance, the Hegelian concept of contradiction can only be understood, at best, as a conflict of différance. In contrast to the Hegelian notion of difference, the conflict within différance refers to the effects it has upon a text, which is to say, this conflict is never totally resolved. The conflict is not fully resolved due to the implication that différance has an effect on the text in general— meaning that the text “is not reduced to a book or a library,” a text “can never be governed by a referent in the classical sense,” and a text is not regulated by “a thing or by a transcendental signified” (Derrida 1981: 44). Différance and the Hegelian difference are notions determined by different views on the metaphysics of time and the present. The Hegelian difference would eventually become a collection of physical entities alongside recognition of the fragmentary and conflictual nature of differences. Différance is “an active-movement of production without essential origins” as opposed to the Hegelian differentiation, which is “a synthesis constantly directed back on itself, gathered in on itself and gathering” (Derrida 1982b: 21). Derrida’s notion of différance includes meanings of differal and deferral. This notion assures that there exist activities of originary differences as well as temporizing detours of deferral. In relation to the Hegelian discourse, différance operates like “a kind of infinitesimal and radical displacement” of the Hegelian difference (Derrida 1982b: 14). The Hegelian difference is played out in a relation that involves the processes of contradiction, resolving, interiorizing, and synthesizing. This approach to differentiation, as Derrida comments, “would have left opened the possibility of an organic, original, and homogeneous unity,” but would eventually have “come to be divided, to receive difference as an event” (21). Moreover, the Hegelian difference often involves an action that seeks both to differentiate in line with the requirements of Hegelian dialectics and to

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search for a synthesis. Thus, the importance of the deferral in différance, the detour and the temporizing delay, is reduced to an involvement of the living present in the form of “an originary and unceasing synthesis” in the Hegelian discourse (21).8 Derrida argues that one of the advantages of différance—as the différant aspect of différance—is that it has become possible to translate Hegelian differences “without further notes or specification” (1982b: 14). Such a translation would involve a transformation of languages and their language economies. Both the Hegelian difference and Derridean différance involve and affirm the play of Hegelian dialectics. Yet the characteristics of the economy at work in the Hegelian difference implicate the affirmation of the presence of every single Hegelian discourse, and the Hegelian subjects are displacements among themselves. By contrast, the characteristics of the economy of différance do not necessarily imply a final destination of the deferred presence. Within the economy of play, while the Hegelian subjects are always engaged with displacing each other, différance “only refers to an investment that provisionally and calculatedly delays the perception of its profit or the profit of its perception” (20). Within the context of différance, Derrida argues that “the displaced presentation remains definitively and implacably postponed” (20). It is in this way that Derrida gives meaning to the phrase that “whoever loses wins and in which one loses and wins on every turn” (20). Like Foucault’s idea of the “void” of differentiated relations, this postponed nature of the present should not direct our attention to seek a synthesis and to claim that there is either a present that remains “definitively and implacably postponed” or that there is a present that remains absent or hidden. Derrida argues that “différance maintains our relationship with that which we necessarily misconstrue, and which exceeds that alternative of presence and absence” (1982b: 20; italics mine). It is this kind of position that frees us from feeling handcuffed in playing out the Hegelian discourse. It is a certain alterity that is definitively “exempt from every process of presentation by means of which we would call upon it to show itself in person” (20; italics mine). In this sense, the manifestation of the present in terms of its differences could be presented in either the conscious or the unconscious form. The Hegelian subject may be presented within the metaphysics of the presence of différance, in that these differences may be interpreted as delegates, representatives, and proxies. Also, the provider of proxies might exist, might be present, be itself with the unconscious, remembering that this unconscious is of the same metaphysical significance as any virtual or masked manifestation of consciousness. In summary, this radical alterity allows every possible mode of presence, and that is a result of “the irreducibility of the aftereffect, the delay” (21). “[T]herefore the concept of trace is incompatible with the concept of retention, of the becoming past of what has been present. One cannot think of the trace—and therefore, différance—on the basis of the present or of the presence of the present” (21).

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Force, the Same, and the Other Derrida engages Nietzsche’s analysis of force for the purpose of articulating the Hegelian semiological discourse in the economy of différance. Force refers to the present that pertains to the Hegelian subject that is itself simultaneously presented and erased—something Derrida defines in the following way: Force itself is never present and it is only a play of differences and quantities. There would be no force in general without the difference between forces; and here the difference of quantity counts more than the content of the quantity, more than absolute size itself. (1982b: 17)

Derrida follows Deleuze’s analysis, with regard to the Nietzschean idea of force, and argues that the “quantity of differences” explains the character of force: “[t]he difference of quantity is the essence of force, the relation of force to force” (1982b: 17). Accordingly, the Hegelian notion of the Same and the Other becomes “the dream of two equal forces even if they are granted an opposition of meaning,” even when they are presented as forces among others. As forces, the Same or the Other “[are] approximate and crude dream[s], statistical dream[s] plunged into the living but dispelled by chemistry” (Deleuze 1970: 49; cited in Derrida 1982b: 17). Derrida believes that différance carries a Nietzschean meaning with respect to philosophical critique—“an active indifference to difference”— because différance implies a philosophical critique of the Hegelian difference, something illustrated in “the system of a diaphoristic reduction or repression” (1982b: 17). In thinking of binary oppositions, différance does not follow the logocentrism that sets “some generative point of view” against “a structural-taxonomical point of view,” as “such oppositions [do not have] the least pertinence to différance” (12). Instead, as a philosophical critique, différance takes place almost under the sign of the name it uses in the text and in such instances where everything is at stake. In the case of thinking speech, a phenomenon interpreted here to be the opposite of language, différance covers the play of difference within language as well as the play of relation of speech to language (the detour, the silent promise, the pyramid of the death of semiology). While it might be insisted that the Hegelian definition of the Same and the Other is described with the language of différance, Derrida himself suggests the discourse of the Same and the Other has to come through by way of “blinding itself” to the Same—which is to say, without mentioning the nature of that which is not identical. The Same and the Other, which are of the same logic, do not exclude that philosophy which lives in and on account of différance. In fact, Derrida points out that the Same and the Other is like différance in that it refers to the displaced and equivocal passage of one different thing to another, from one term of an opposition to the other.

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In addition, despite the refusal to merit any significance to the notion of essence, erasure and displacement hold a performative significance with respect to the Same and the Other because “all the pairs [are] opposites on which philosophy is constructed and on which our discourse lives” (Derrida 1982b: 17). Derrida further explains the performative meaning of différance when he suggests that we not should see the Same and the Other in a relation of opposition, which through its opposition erases itself. He also argues that “what indicates that each of the terms must appear as the différance of the other, as the other different and deferred in the economy of [the Same].”9 This performative meaning of différance that we use to interpret the Same and the Other refers to “the site of a reinterpretation of mimesis in [an alleged relation with respect to the opposition].” Therefore, the performative meaning of différance suggests actions of unfolding meanings of the Same and the Other; both are inscribed within its performative meaning of différance, both of which are subject to the repetitions of the eternal return. As the performative meaning of the Same and the Other are no longer subject to a solution that must be attained through the synthesis as defined by Hegel, Derrida argues that the Same and the Other as expressions of différance cannot therefore even be thought of as being together within the economy of différance. Derrida explains: It is evident—and this is the eviden[ce] itself—that the economical and the noneconomical, the same and the entirely other, etc., cannot be thought together. If différance is unthinkable in the way, perhaps we should not hasten to make it evident, in the philosophical element of evidentiality which would make short work of dissipating the mirage and illogicalness of différance and would do so with the infallibility of calculations that we are well acquainted with, having precisely recognized their place, necessity, and function in the structure of différance. (1982b: 19)

Another discussion on the relationship of the Same and the Other can be found in Derrida’s discussion on dissemination, this latter concept being defined as “the seminal différance.” The importance of dissemination lies both in the way it is used to conceptualize history and in the way it provides for the reinterpretation of the relations of difference (differentiated relations). The notion of dissemination alludes to the idea that Derrida’s conceptualization of history is one that should be contrasted against Hegel’s notion of differentiated relations. The notion of dissemination points to the importance of the interval in that it finds the meaning of differences in the economy of différance. Hegel’s argument for a new concept of history, according to Derrida, is as follows: That being said, the concept of history, no more than any other, cannot be subject to a simple and instantaneous mutation, the striking of a name from the vocabulary. We must elaborate a strategy of the textual work which at every instant bor-

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rows an old word from philosophy in order immediately to demarcate it. This is what I was alluding to just now in speaking of a double gesture or double stratification. We must first overturn the traditional concept of history, but at the same time mark the interval, take care that by virtue of the overturning, and by the simple fact of conceptualization, that the interval not be reappropriated. (1981: 59)

In the following section, I will look at the transformations of Hegelian difference in contrast to Derridean différance.10 The notion of différance is discussed in relation to Derrida’s idea of dissemination, Althusser’s analysis of the Hegelian concept of history, and dialectical materialism and “concept of matter.” Différance and Differentiated Relations Derrida contrasts différance with Hegelian differentiated relations in his discussion of dissemination. A fundamental argument about dissemination is that “dissemination, seminal différance, cannot be summarised into an exact conceptual tenor, [which] is because the force and form of its disruption explode the semantic horizon” (Derrida 1981: 45; italics mine). Dissemination goes beyond the discussion of any possible transformation of Hegelian dialectics, there being no essence to dissemination. The materials of dissemination do not refer to a series of displacements within the Hegelian thesis or to a bunch of Hegelian subjects that are differentiated along lines of some formulation and, as such, taken into account on the same ground. Derrida argues that dissemination, in fact, “means nothing” and “cannot be reassembled into a definition” (like to name a Hegelian subject) (44). Polythemia or polythematism are terms that perhaps best describe the nature of the Hegelian difference as evidenced in Derrida’s texts and that have misled a few theorists in their discussions on the politics of difference with respect to the transformations of classical Hegelian dialectics (Derrida 1981). Theoretically, polythemia and polythematism have advanced the linearity of the Hegelian discourse from one that is monothematic and essentialist and that relies upon a foundationalist assumption of difference. Polythemia has also advanced in the direction of a new essentialist assumption that is “always anxious to anchor itself to the tutelary meaning, the principal signified of a text, that is, its major referent” (45). However, Derrida criticizes this for being an infinite thematic Hegelian model, as it is “organised within the implicit horizon of a unitary resumption of meaning, that is, within the horizon of a dialectics.” Derrida concludes that naming the multiple, heterogeneous, and fragmentary Hegelian discourses basically remains a teleological and totalizing dialectics that at a given moment, however far off, must permit the reassemblage of the totality of a text into the truth of its meaning,

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constituting the text as expression, as illustration, and annulling the open and productive displacement of the textual chain.

Dissemination is not to be taken as synonymous with the notion that there exist infinite Hegelian discourses; rather, both result in and result from a nonfinite number of semantic effects. Dissemination is different from genealogy, where questions of “tracing back to the origin” and “tracing down of linkages” are the primary concerns and characteristics (Derrida 1981: 45). Instead, dissemination is by nature a “practical representation of all the false departures, beginnings, first lines, titles, epigraphs, fictive pretexts.” The searching of either “a present of simple origin” or “an eschatology presence” is not a concern in the discourse dissemination at all. While acknowledging an irreducible and generative multiplicity, it admits that “the supplement and the turbulence of a certain lack fracture the limit of the text” and “[forbids] an exhaustive and closed formalisation of it, or at least a saturating taxonomy of its themes, its signified, its meaning.” Another effective analysis of the Hegelian polythemia and polythematic differences can be found in Althusser’s thesis on the Hegelian concept of history. This thesis takes issue with the ways in which historical materials are governed by the force of a system of predicates, which is forever reappropriated by metaphysics. Derrida agrees with Althusser’s critique of both the Hegelian concept of history and its notion of an expressive totality—that is, that the Hegelian concept of history implies that “there is not one single history, a general history, but rather histories different in their type, rhythm, mode of inscription intervallic, differentiated histories” (Derrida 1981: 58). Considering this critique, Derrida furthers adds significance to his inquiries by asking, “on the basis of what minimal semantic kernel will these heterogeneous, irreducible histories still be named ‘histories’?” (1981: 58). To this question, he adds another: “How can the minimum that they must have in common be determined if the common noun history is to be conferred in a way that is not purely conventional or purely confused?” (58) In other words, it is about “the question of the system of essential predicates” and “the risk of metaphysical reappropriation” (58). Derrida directs our attention back to the question of the foundation and the discipline, just as Foucault does when he pursues the theme of power/knowledge; in other words, he seeks that which regulates these differentiated Hegelian histories, that is, the historicity of history. Derrida contends, As soon as the question of the historicity of history is asked—and how can it be avoided if one is manipulating a plural or heterogeneous concept of history?—one is impelled to respond with a definition of essence, of quiddity, to reconstitute a system of essential predicates, and one is also led to refurbish the semantic grounds of

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the philosophical tradition. A philosophical tradition that always, finally, amounts to an inclusion of historicity on an ontological ground, precisely. Henceforth, we must not only ask what is the “essence” of history, the historicity of history, but what is the “history” of “essence” in general? And if one wishes to mark a break between some “new concept of history” and the question of the essence of history (as with the concept that the essence regulates), the question of the history of essence and the history of the concept, finally the history of the meaning of Being, you have a measure of the work which remains to be done. (58–59)

Houdebine, for his part, reads Althusser’s analysis of history in the form of a dialectical materialist logic. He reads Althusser’s analysis as representing the historicity of history that remains both the Hegelian thesis as well as an irreducible heterogeneity of Hegelian subjects. Further, the general economy of history relates to a conceptual series of matter. The matter is conceptualized in the form of the composite “matter/contradiction/struggle of the contraries,” a composite that is exposed both to a “unity-inseparability” and to a “convertibility of the contraries in the process of their transformation” (Derrida 1981: 60). Derrida warned that we should not reinvest matter with logocentric values. The reason is that these values are associated with the presence of either the sensible (thing, reality, or presence in general) or the visible sense (substantial plenitude, content, and referent). Here, Derrida is talking about realism, sensualism, and empiricism, all of which he considered to be modifications of a logocentrism. “Matter,” the signifier, should not be given to be a “transcendental signified” (Derrida 1981: 65). Nor can ‘matter’ be read in the sense of [a] “metaphysical materialism”; being read [to be] an “ultimate referent” that “according to the classical logic implied by the value of referent, or it becomes an ‘objective reality’ absolutely ‘anterior’ to any work of the mark, the semantic content of a form of presence which guarantees the movement of the text in general from the outside.” Given this, how do we understand matter in différance? First of all, Derrida argues that both the Althusserian materialist reading of Hegelian difference and the heterogeneity conceptualize both its necessity and the rules of deciphering it with respect to the general economy of différance. In the economy of différance, Hegelian difference and its heterogeneity are to be read in the form of being an absolute exterior and a radical heterogeneity. It is in this sense that Derrida considers himself a materialist. Derrida suggests the notion that matter is endorsed within “La double séance” (double science, double sense, and double scene) (1981: 65). That is, “the operation of the double mark or the re-mark” (65). He explains, The concept of matter must be marked twice (the others too): in the deconstructed field—this is the phase of overturning—and in the deconstructing text, outside the oppositions in which it has been caught (matter/spirit, matter/ideality, matter/form, etc.). By means of the play of this interval between the two marks,

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one can operate both an overturning deconstruction and a positively displacing, transgressive, deconstruction. (65–66; italics mine)

By revising Hegelian dialectics, Homi Bhabha suggests a specific reading of the in-between theory that was considered as a positive feature of the relationship between the lord and the bondsman. Temporality is a concept that has been introduced both to emphasize the contingent characteristic of one’s historical experience and to stabilize one’s fragile political position. However, Foucault’s theory of the non-place exposes the failure of the in-between thesis in explaining the emerging force as it is to be presented in the public sphere. The Hegelian dialectics in différance suggests the existence of an ambiguous significance and position. Derrida echoes Nietzsche, transforming Hegelian dialectics into that which might provide for an understanding of forces. Derrida’s repositioning of Hegelian dialectics provides us with new perspectives on both representation and reflexivity of the Hegelian form. Différance and Derrida’s theory on the metaphysics of the present in fact affirm Hegelian dialectics and difference. Deconstruction and différance are often misunderstood as nihilism simply because Derrida’s critique of Hegelian dialectics has been focused on the disruption of Hegelian dialectics. It is thus crucial to understand the ways in which Derrida repositions Hegelian dialectics within différance.

CHAPTER 6

Transformation, Politics, and Difference

INTRODUCTION This chapter explores my understanding of the meaning of affirmation in Derrida’s political thinking. It will focus on the influence of Nietzsche’s works upon the development of Derrida’s political ideas. For Derrida, the essential political reading of Nietzsche involves recognition of “the great Nietzschean politics” (Derrida 1985: 31). Derrida urges that “the future of the Nietzschean is not closed.”1 Derrida highlights “the great politics” as being an idea fundamental to Nietzsche’s philosophy. Derrida illustrates this belief in the following text: I have kept a passage from Ecce Homo in reserve. It gives us to understand that we shall read the name of Nietzsche only when a great politics will have effectively entered into play. In the interim, so long as that name still has not been read, any question as to whether or not a given political sequence has a Nietzschean character would remain pointless. The name still has its whole future before it.2

Therefore, with respect to Derrida’s Nietzschean connection, the significant topics should include Derrida’s exploration of Nietzsche’s idea of the great politics, Derrida’s political idea of the democracy to come, and Derrida’s theories of performance of the political idea—the double, the Dionysian, supplementarity, and arche-writing. It is argued that, through revising the meaning of the concept of the binary opposition, Derrida provides us with a new approach to understanding political thinking. Derrida’s notion of différance better accounts for increasingly complex societies and the wider history of emancipatory discourse.

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THE CRITIQUE OF ALAN SCHRIFT Alan Schrift (1996) considers Derrida to be one of the principal French poststructuralists to have developed Nietzsche’s philosophy.3 Schrift has gone as far as dividing French poststructuralists influenced by Nietzsche into two groups: those who interpret Nietzsche and those who put Nietzsche to work. Schrift further argues that Derrida belongs to the second group; that is, Derrida carries Nietzsche’s work forward in that he uses Nietzsche as “a reference point for his own philosophical-critical ends” and that he “use[s] [those] Nietzschean motifs and find[s] advantages in the development of their own critical projects” (325). In other words, Schrift suggests that Derrida (1) pursues different arguments from those of Nietzsche when they may speak of the same subject matter and (2) is not interested in interpreting or developing Nietzsche’s philosophy. Throughout Schrift’s work, the idea of putting Nietzsche to work refers to the circulation of Nietzschean themes within recent French thought. Schrift argues that these Nietzschean themes include “the emphasis on interpretation, the critique of binary thinking, the link between power and knowledge, the emphasis on becoming and process over being and ontology, and the necessity of judging in the absence of criteria” (1996: 335). Schrift also argues that Derrida’s many discussions elucidate a connection with Nietzsche’s thought. For instance, Derrida comments on Heidegger’s interpretation of the history of metaphysics for the attempt of totalizing. Derrida’s différance of force and power are related to both Nietzsche’s rhetorical strategies and his multiplicity of styles. Derrida’s notion of deconstruction is seen as related to what Derrida calls “the axial intention of [Nietzsche’s] concept of interpretation” of multiplicity as the emancipation of interpretation from the constraints of truth. Derrida’s argument for the playfulness of the interpretative could be seen as drawing on Nietzsche’s notion of the non-truth of truth. In addition to the Nietzschean motifs mentioned previously, Schrift highlights examples where Derrida pays homage to Nietzsche in his texts. By homage we mean, for example, Derrida’s lists of Nietzschean themes that are in evidence in “Qual Quelle: Valéry’s Sources” (1982e) and his acknowledgment of Nietzsche in Of Grammatology (1976). Schrift cites Derrida as saying that “a great deal to the liberation of the signifier from its dependence or derivation with respect to the logos and the related concept of truth or the primary signified, in whatever sense that is understood [by this] radicalising of the concepts of interpretation, perspective, evaluation, difference” (Derrida 1976: 19; cited in Schrift 1996: 335). I would argue that Schrift is mistaken with respect to the relationship Nietzsche and Derrida share, as it would appear that there are fragmentary similarities to their philosophical concerns and themes. A similar usage of terms and themes by Derrida and Nietzsche is not in evidence

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with respect to Derrida’s fundamental theories, such as différance and deconstruction. Schrift’s indifference to developing a systematic analysis of Nietzsche and Derrida’s relationship is self-evident. Schrift states that “[r]ather than comment upon Derrida’s particular references to Nietzsche, I would like instead to examine one specific Derridean theme which more than any other indicates Derrida’s debt to Nietzsche” (1996: 335). If we take a specific theme, the critique of oppositional hierarchies, and, for example, refer to it without explanations and comparisons, the NietzscheDerrida relationship is simply reduced to the theme of a critique on the concept of the binary oppositions. Moreover, Schrift regards Nietzsche and Derrida as “philosophers of critique,” an interpretation he alludes to when he adopts Gilles Deleuze’s words that “philosophy is at its most positive as critique” (1988: 193). Schrift is right to argue that Nietzsche’s genealogy and Derrida’s deconstruction are critiques of the dominance of the concept of binary oppositions in Western philosophy. Schrift explicates himself in the following way: Specifically, I show the way a certain critical strategy found in the works of Jacques Derrida has a precursor in Nietzsche’s method of genealogical analysis. This strategy involves rejection of the binary logic both Derrida and Nietzsche view as a mainstay of the philosophical tradition. I suggest, finally, that Derrida and Nietzsche are engaged in a similar critical project, and the particular attacks they advance should be understood in the context of a general critique of authority.

However, Schrift makes a mistake when arguing that the notion of critique is a biphasic movement. Schrift argues that both Nietzsche and Derrida dismantle the binary thought in two phrases: firstly, by overturning the traditionally privileged relationship between two values by proposing such notions as “non-truth of truth” and “rupture” and secondly, by seeking to displace binary oppositions altogether by proposing notions such as the will to power and displacement or supplement (1996: 337). As I stated earlier, regarding Spivak’s binary reading of Derrida’s notion of deconstruction, such a reading ignores both Derrida’s discussion of the metaphysics of presence and the performative meaning of critique. We should be reminded that the notion of critique is in part the practice of language in everyday life, a notion evidenced in Derrida’s taking up of Austin’s notion of the performative dimension of language. Critique, like language, is performative because it not only transmits information, but also performs acts in that it repeats the already existent discursive practice in the ways of doing things. Therefore, the performance of critique affirms the presence of what it critiques, while the action of critique allows other possibilities to arise. These acts are simultaneously taking place and ought not to be described as biphasic movements.

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For those who believe in the biphasic characteristics of Nietzsche’s and Derrida’s philosophy of critique, the second phase is often taken seriously as an expression of political movement. This second phase is also taken for being an affirmation of multiplicity that involves an active interpretation. For Schrift, in Nietzsche the second phase “flows from the active imposition of new values arising from a healthy will to power that has displaced the hierarchy of good/evil altogether” (1996: 338). Schrift maintains that the active interpretation is also seen in Derrida’s text.4 As he explains it: The affirmation of perspectival multiplicity thus emerges as the life-enhancing alternative for those with a will to power sufficient to go beyond the reactive decadence of binary morality. This life-enhancing multiplicity continues to function within Derrida’s own interpretative practice in his call for a productive style of reading that does not merely “protect” but “opens” texts to new interpretative possibilities.

My critique of the active interpretation as an emphasis of the political meaning of the second phase of critique lies in the misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power and Derrida’s notion of différance. In chapter 3, I have described the myth of the active interpretation as being a phenomenon that expresses an interest in political justice and emancipation. In order to argue for a political subjectivity, active interpretation is often understood to be a call for interpreting political and historical contexts as requiring discursive constructions of both one’s past and the reestablishment of one’s political identity. This conceptualization of political agency ironically does not emancipate individuals, as the individual’s identity is often inscribed in the group identity, which is to say, the individual’s identity is often predetermined by the group identity. Moreover, the affirmation of multiplicity suggests the existence of a collection of multiple active interpretations of group identities. As the basic framework of these active interpretations is subject to Hegelian language, this collection of multiple identities consists of multiple Hegelian theses. The collection of multiple identities functions to affirm difference as being a thing that certainly is different from what Derrida’s notion of différance is thought to mean, the reason being that it is the former fundamental conception of difference that is derived from Hegelian philosophy. As I have argued in chapters 4 and 5, to argue for a Derridean affirmation as a collective multiple of Hegelian difference would represent a failure to recognize both Derrida’s notion of time and temporization. Such an understanding would also fail to recognize his critique of Hegelian difference as difference-and-contradiction and differentiated relations. In the following sections, I shall outline my perspective on the relationship I believe exists between Derrida and Nietzsche in terms of its politi-

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cal character. Democracy to come is seen as the phrase that best describes Derrida’s theory of politics. Democracy to come suggests a movement and affirmation of that which is political. In the following section, I will illustrate the significance the affirmation has in Derrida’s political theory, and to do this I will draw on Derrida’s own account of the influence Nietzsche had in his work. DEMOCRACY TO COME AND NIETZSCHE It appears that the phrase democracy to come first appears in Derrida’s article “Nietzsche and the Machine” (Derrida 1994a). Democracy to come is given a performative meaning, because it is linked to the idea of the promise. Derrida has explained that democracy to come does not mean that democracy will come tomorrow or that democracy will be realized some day. Rather, it is a promise and an act of engagement. Derrida borrows the concept of messianism to give meaning to both this promise and to this act of engagement. Messianism is not to be understood according to its literary meaning but according to a messianic structure that pertains to all language. Derrida further explains that the messianic structure shared by all language is “the performative dimension of the promise”—which is to say, “the minute I open my mouth I am in the promise” (1994a). It is probably not difficult to understand that, in Derrida’s theory, messianism does not refer to a particular promise but to a general performance of the messianic structure. As deconstruction suggests, the formal structure of the promise as the meaning of democracy always exceeds the meaning of messianism. Therefore, democracy to come is linked to the understanding that political movements have always been presented with something beyond themselves, and this “beyond” makes the notion of democracy problematic. It is precisely this problematic area of the beyond that allows Derrida to build on the idea of democracy to come. For instance, Derrida argues that “what remains irreducible to any deconstruction, what remains as undeconstructable as the possibility itself of deconstruction is, perhaps, a certain experience of the emancipatory promise” (1994b: 59). Moreover, the effect of deconstruction explains the meaning of promise as the central idea to democracy to come. The effectiveness of deconstruction makes messianism into a concept without localized inscriptions, such as religion, nation, gender, class, ethnicity, and so on. The significance of deconstruction is illustrated well by Ernest Laclau when he states that the meaning of messianism requires the promise that “opens to the others, to the unforeseeable, to the pure event which cannot be mastered by any aprioristic discourse” (1995: 90). The implication of deconstruction in understanding the promise is also revealed in Derrida’s arguments on the idea of justice as an idea that should be distinguished from law, right, or human right, and his

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idea of democracy should not be confused with a movement with determined predication (Derrida 1994b: 59). The performance of the promise expresses the global significance of Derrida’s idea of thinking democracy, the expression of which justifies Derrida’s rejection of thinking democracy something that can be pursued in the name of the rights of man. To Derrida, to think democracy in terms of the rights of man is to pursue “alibis for the continued inequality between singularities” (1994a: 66). Derrida transforms the meaning of the individual’s role in the thinking of a democracy to come. He explains: [I]n the determination or behavior of each citizen or singularity there should be present, in some form or other, the call to a world democracy to come, each singularity should determine itself with the sense of the stakes of a democracy which can no longer be contained within frontiers, which can no longer be localized, which can no longer depend on the decisions of a specific group of citizens, a nation or even of a continent. (65–66)

The influence of Nietzsche can be seen in the articulation of Derrida’s notion of democracy to come (Derrida 1985). While democracy to come is an idea that concerns the problematic representation of a “name” or a “singular,” it also carries a unique understanding of the affirmation of the political. That is, Nietzsche’s idea of self-presentation is an idea that is implicit in Derrida’s idea of both being singular and the problematic of naming. Nietzsche’s idea of affirmation is therefore seen in Derrida’s affirmation of the value of dissimulation. Regarding Nietzsche’s idea of selfpresentation, Derrida explains it this way: “it is by doing violence to himself that he promises to honour a pledge in the name of the name, in his name and in the name of the other” (10). Moreover, Derrida argues that Nietzsche constantly affirms the value of dissimulation and that the Nietzschean way of naming (an auto-presentative exhibition) refers to “a ruse of dissimulation.” In other words, “it as a simple presentation of identity, assuming that we already know what is involved in self-presentation and a statement of identity (‘Me, such a person,’ male or female, an individual or collective subject, ‘Me, psychoanalysis,’ ‘Me, metaphysics’).” Derrida also found that Nietzsche describes the moment of affirmation through telling the story of Zarathustra, where the name Zarathustra is identified as having a political significance. Derrida states that “it is a shadowless moment consonant with all the ‘mid-days’ of Zarathustra. It comes as a moment of affirmation, returning like the anniversary from which one can look forward and backward at one and the same time. The shadow of all negativity has disappeared: ‘I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once’ ” (1985: 12). This conception of an affirmation leads us to believe that while the con-

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ception of the negativity does not disappear, the temporality of the affirmation makes its singularity go beyond good, bad, and other binary forms. In a similar way, Derrida acknowledges Nietzsche’s influence upon his idea of the affirmation in relation to the notion of différance. Derrida’s acknowledgment is seen in his analysis of the idea of hymen: Thus, you cannot think the name or names of Friedrich Nietzsche, you cannot hear them before the reaffirmation of the hymen, before the alliance or wedding ring of the eternal return. You will not understand anything of his life, nor of his life and works, until you hear the thought of the “yes, yes” given to this shadowless gift at the ripening high noon, beneath that division whose borders are inundated by sunlight: the overflowing cup of the sun. Listen again to the overture of Zarathustra. (1985: 13)

Furthermore, Derrida relates the idea of hymen to another Nietzschean theme, the eternal return. This discussion relates to his idea of the affirmation in relation to the idea of Hegelian negativity. Derrida argues that the eternal return relates to the constant affirmation—the “yes, yes”—and that it is a selective action that takes place within a differential relation of forces. Derrida explains that this affirmation achieves the possibility of “a selective return without negativity, which reduces negativity through affirmation, through alliance or marriage [hymen], that is, through an affirmation that is also binding on the other or that enters into a pact with itself as other” (1985: 45). Our understanding of the affirmation is therefore one that suggests all signs exist in the form of a return, that they cannot be understood in a simple form. Derrida has restored the political significance of différance, taking care to remind us that the eternal return does not imply itself the return of something empirical, individual, and so on. Political singularity, or the naming, is like the autobiographical signature that is reflected in the fact that “one always expects to be idiomatic, singular, subject to chance” (Derrida 1985: 46). However, Derrida draws our attention back to Nietzsche’s specific coinage of the term eternal return, the intent being that we should not mistake its meaning for either “a new metaphysics of time” or “the totality of being.” Accordingly, the Nietzschean autobiographical signature, or political singularity, “would not come to stand like an empirical fact on a great ontological structure.” Therefore, on these grounds, we should problematize the Heideggerian interpretation of the eternal return. Derrida argues that “the eternal return always involves differences of forces that perhaps cannot be thought in terms of being, of the pair essence-existence, or any of the great metaphysical structures to which Heidegger would like to relate them.” In the following section, I shall explore another of Derrida’s perspectives on the Nietzschean idea of the affirmation: the double. A discussion

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of the double is important, not only because it helps us to develop different perspectives of the positive, but also because these perspectives of the positive contrast with those promoted in Hegelian theory. Yet, this said, the notion of the double helps us understand the ways in which the Nietzschean affirmation affirms Hegelian theory. The understanding of the double is therefore important with regard to our interest in understanding Derrida’s political argument. I will illustrate the way in which Derrida interprets Nietzsche and how this Nietzschean interpretation is revealed in Derrida’s own texts regarding the latter’s thinking of the political. The section begins with an examination of Derrida’s argument regarding the Hegelian in Nietzsche. THE DOUBLE AS AFFIRMATION Derrida argues that we ought not to think of Hegel as Nietzsche’s great adversary, but that instead we ought to think that “there will be moments when [these] adversaries greatly resemble each other” (1985: 59). In other words, “there is a dialectic, a Hegelianism in Nietzsche” (59). From Derrida’s Nietzschean perspective, it is a mistake to think that Nietzsche would totally reject Hegel’s thesis (i.e., the latter’s theories of the dialectic and negation). It is also a mistake to regard Nietzsche’s notion of the affirmation as an action to affirm a denial of the importance of Hegel in philosophy. It is thus important to explore the ways in which Derrida transforms Hegelian theory as an illustration of Nietzsche’s theory of affirmation. It is the notion of the double that becomes the principal motive for Derrida, with respect to his interest in advising us that we should read Hegel. He articulates this counsel in the following manner: We are not, I believe, bound to decide. An interpretive decision does not have to draw a line between two intents or two political contents. Our interpretations will not be readings of a hermeneutic or exegetic sort, but rather political interventions in the political rewriting of the text and its destination. This is the way it has always been—and always in a singular manner—for example, ever since what is called the end of philosophy, and beginning with the textual indicator named “Hegel.” This is no accident. It is an effect of the destinational structure of all socalled post-Hegelian texts. There can always be a Hegelianism of the left and a Hegelianism of the right, a Heideggerianism of the left and a Heideggerianism of the right, a Nietzscheanism of the right and a Nietzscheanism of the left, and even, let us not overlook it, a Marxism of the right and a Marxism of the left. The one can always be the other, the double of the other. (32)

In his article “Otobiographies” (1985), Derrida suggests that we examine Nietzsche’s idea of exergue in relation to genealogy and, in particular, focus this examination on the idea of speaking about one’s own identity. This idea of speaking about one’s identity can be closely identified with both

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Nietzsche’s idea of genealogy and Derrida’s notion of différance. The idea of speaking about one’s identity explicitly illustrates the significance of both Nietzsche and Derrida’s play of the double in Hegelian dialectics. It is this double play that explains Derrida’s performative action with respect to the political aspect of his philosophy, which occurs in the aftermath of the realization of the end or the impossibility toward a definition of man. In speaking about one’s own identity, Derrida refers to an unnoticeable but critical self-narration in Nietzsche’s autobiography, Ecce Homo—“Ich bin der und der”—meaning “this is who I am, a certain masculine and certain feminine” (Derrida 1985: 16). Derrida expanded his interpretation of this phrase to serve the name in the following manner: “you will not be able to hear and understand my name unless you hear it with an ear attuned to the name of the dead man and the living feminine” (16). This name consists of the dialectic, this being “the double and divided name of the father who is dead and the mother who is living on” (16; italics mine). In recognition of Nietzsche’s double identification, Derrida reproduces his view of identity, stating, I am a master, I am the master, the teacher [Lehrer] “par excellence” (the latter words in French, as is decadent earlier in the passage). I know and I am the both of them (one would have to read “the both” as being in the singular), the dual or the double, I know what I am, the both, the two, life the dead [Ia vie le mart]. Two, and from them one gets life the dead. When I say “Do not mistake me for someone else, I am der und der,” this is what I mean: the dead the living, the dead man the living feminine. (17)

The importance of “Ich bin der und der” not only lies in the discussion of autobiography but also in the domain of the political. Derrida suggests we read this phrase in the way that Nietzsche interprets it “in Rätselform”— that is, “symbolically by way of a riddle and in the form of proverbial legend” (1985: 17). In this way we will come to understand the meaning of the birth of one’s identity as both being a double birth and a neutral one. This double and neutral meaning of the birth of a name determines one’s identity. In a politically symbolic way, the discourses of birth and identity ought to be closely related to the interpretation of what political representation means: the political presence and the political absence. The emergence of origin or birth is, in Derrida’s own words, the double origin itself. In order to read this message as a political metaphor, the concepts of the binary opposition, as along with the Hegelian discourse, should be considered with serious intent in their relation to their significance to the double and the neutral. We might therefore take occasion to rethink the birth or the origin of the Hegelian discourse through Derrida’s explanation of a double origin. Related to this question, Derrida has the following to say:

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What, then, are the consequences of this double origin? The birth of Nietzsche, in the double sense of the word “birth” (the act of being born and family lineage), is itself double. It brings something into the world and the light of day out of a singular couple: death and life, the dead man and the living feminine, the father and the mother. The double birth explains who I am and how I determine my identity: as double and neutral. (1985: 16)

In order show the intimacy of the kinship that exists between Derrida and Nietzsche in relation to both the idea of the double and the further need to understand the meaning of the double, it is worth citing Derrida’s commentary on Nietzsche in relation to what Nietzsche has to say about his own genealogy. Before the cure or resurrection which he also recounts in Ecce Homo, this only son will have first of all repeated his father’s death: “In the same year in which his life went downward, mine, too, went downward: at thirty-six I reached the lowest point of my vitality—I still lived, but without being able to see three steps ahead. Then—it was 1879—I retired from my professorship at Basel, spent the summer in St. Moritz like a shadow and the next winter, the most sunless of my life, in Naumberg as a shadow. This was my minimum. The Wanderer and His Shadow was born at this time. Doubtless I then knew about shadows.” A little further, we read: “My readers know perhaps in what way I consider dialectic as a symptom of décadence; for example in the most famous case, the case of Socrates.” Im Fall des Sokrates: one might also say in his casus, his expiration date and his decadence. He is a Socrates, that décadent par excellence, but he is also the reverse. This is what he makes clear at the beginning of the next section: “Taking into account that I am a décadent, I am also the opposite.” The double provenance, already mentioned at the beginning of section 1, then reaffirmed and explained in section 2, may also be heard at the opening of section 3: “This dual series of experiences, this access to apparently separate worlds, is repeated in my nature in every respect: I am a Doppelgänger, I have a ‘second’ sight in addition to the first. And perhaps also a third.” Second and third sight. Not only, as he says elsewhere, a third ear. Only a moment ago, he has explained to us that in tracing the portrait of the “well-turned-out person” [wohlgerathner Mensch] he has just described himself: “Well, then, I am the opposite of a décadent, for I have just described myself.” (1985: 18)

The death of his father gives life to Nietzsche during his time of illness, and this is symbolically reflected in a shadow play. Here the double reveals itself as a shadow figure—a shadow figure of death—that casts its influence over the link that ties his father to Socrates as a result or symptom of a dialectical play. The shadow works both visibly and invisibly, in the form of the possessive and the dispossessive, and upon the subject that is central to Derrida’s theories on language and writing in general. Language, to Derrida, works simultaneously, both constituting and deconstituting the subject. This is because “it operates as a power of death in the heart of living speech: a power all the more redoubtable because it opens as much as it

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threatens the possibility of the spoken word” (Derrida 1976: 141). The idea of the shadow is an idea different from that of either Lévi-Strauss’s bricolage or Heidegger’s linguistic articulations. Both bricolage and linguistic hermeneutics only relate to (and can only be related to) the discourse of the present. On the one hand, the bricolage may contain a repressive idea of language, as it does for Lévi-Strauss when he calls it a linguistic trap. Foucault would see this repression of the idea of language as a constitutional formation through the development of the power/knowledge relation. On the other hand, language is subject to a constant reinterpretation or rearticulation in the way that it seeks the truth, a subjugation that is fundamental to Heidegger’s argument. For Derrida, language is possessed and released at the same time, a process that sustains our attention when we are engaged in this shadow play. Another way of showing the unattached identification to language (as distinct from the Heideggerian identification of language) is seen when we consider the double as a constant displacement or replacement. This displacement itself comes from both a double provenance and a dual series of experiences. The existence of the double does not suggest to us the possibility of both a second sighting and a reply, but rather invites the possibility of a third and more displacements. This is Derrida’s idea of dissemination. This reminds us of the Saussurean concept of the sign being two-sided—the signified and the signifier are the two faces of a single coin, the two sides of a single page, or the two sides of a single identity. We might therefore assume this concept of the sign to be two-sided as evidence of a basis for Saussure’s influence upon Derrida. In fact, Derrida further develops Saussure’s influence by defining the signified and the signifier in the articulation of his theory of the absent and the present. In this theoretical development, Derrida exposits a kind of reflective double of the meanings of both presence and absence. For example, we might take the concept of the musical symphony for the purpose of understanding this reflective double. When the symphony is being played, different instruments play different parts in their role of realizing a rendition of the symphony as a whole. There are always different combinations of instruments being played at different moments. For each instrument, there are certain moments that require both the contribution of its sound and its abstention in the form of its silence. The development of these different intercombinations of sounds and silence provides the rendition and the performance of the symphony as a whole. The importance of these sounds and silences lies in the accuracy of their articulation or expression in the given moment. Therefore, silence as an absence for some particular moments has, in fact, a necessary presence within the symphony as a whole. In other words, all instruments are always being played whether voiced or not voiced. Even though silence is itself not played, it is as though the audience hears the sound of an instru-

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ment. The sound of the instrument in this moment is expressed as if were absent from the stage, as if were eliminated or repressed. The meaning of presence and absence are reflective depending upon the performative significance of the signified and in relation to the distinctive moment in which the signified is being discussed. The absent sign as signified in relation to the signifier is by no means repressed or erased. The double of the dead man and living feminine is again seen in Derrida’s illustration regarding the political argument. He says that “I have, I am, and I demand a keen ear, I am (the) both, (the) double, I sign double, my writings and I make two, I am the (masculine) dead the living (feminine) and I am destined to them, I come from the two of them, I address myself to them, and so on. How does the knot of all these considerations tie up with the tangled politics and policies in The Future?” (1985: 21). THE PERFORMANCE OF THE POLITICS This section focuses on Derrida’s discussions regarding the performance in the political domain—in particular it focuses on the Dionysian and supplementarity. The Dionysian is Nietzsche’s concept that he appropriated to explain a certain force. I draw attention to Derrida’s focus on the Dionysian in order to illustrate the existence of political texts as a form of affirmations. The discussion on supplementarity is mainly pursued with respect to the issue of relations with respect to the notion of différance. This section concludes with a brief discussion of Derrida’s notion of archewriting as a form of political performance. The Dionysian and Self/Other Nietzsche has claimed that his idea of affirmation is not just reached via the Dionysian spirit, but in combination with the strength offered by the Apollonian spirit.5 According to James Marshall, Nietzsche understands Apollo as “the god of all plastic energies and the soothsayer, the ‘shining one,’ a god of restraint, of freedom from the wilder emotions, and a god of philosophical calm” (2000: 113). The Apollonian is characterized by ideal values associated with the beauty, the optimistic, the positive, and the certain. By contrast, Dionysius is a figure of the sublime in excess of the Apollonian experience. Marshall suggests that the Dionysian experience involves “a return to or a communing with nature, the overthrowing of Apollo and reason, and a return to nature and to the frenzy and daring of the world” (114). The relationship of the Dionysian and the Apollonian brings a new perspective to the idea of antithesis. The idea of antithesis is translated into the metaphysical. The new meaning of antithesis can be seen in Nietzsche’s articulation of his idea of the birth of tragedy. This new meaning is also understood as being indicative of a relationship existing between the

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Dionysian and the Apollonian. Nietzsche explains the metaphysical meaning of this antithesis as follows: [I]n tragedy this antithesis [is] elevated to a unity; from this perspective things which had never before caught sight of one another suddenly confronted with one another, [were] illuminated by one another and comprehended . . . [something seen] for example, [in] opera and revolution. (1967a: 271)

In Ecce Homo (1967a), Nietzsche emphasizes the existence of the Dionysian spirit as something that can be seen in all his works. Derrida gives special attention to Nietzsche’s explication that the Dionysian spirit is expressed in the figure of Zarathustra, “that [Zarathustra] is the concept of Dionysus himself ” (Nietzsche 1976a: 271). Derrida further explores the concept of Dionysius in the following text: This double descent [Diese doppelte Herkunft], as it were, from both the highest and the lowest rungs on the ladder of life, at the same time décadent and a beginning— this, if anything, explains that neutrality, that freedom from all partiality in relation to the total problem of life, that perhaps distinguishes me. I have a subtler sense of smell [pay attention to what he repeatedly says about hunting, trails, and his nostrils] for the signs of ascent and decline [literally of rising and setting, as one says of the sun: für die Zeichen von Aufgong und Niedergong; of that which climbs and declines, of the high and the low] than any other human being before. I am the master par excellence for this—I know both, I am both [ich kenne beides, ich bin beides]. (1985: 16–17)

With his interpretation of the Dionysian spirit, Derrida has transformed or restyled the Hegelianism in Nietzsche. The distinctions between the concepts of the binary opposition suggest that the Self and the Other invite one another to present each as both the Self and the Other. In this form they render the significance of the Dionysian spirit. This is to say, the concept of the binary opposition can be thought of as being associated with the knowledge of the Dionysian even before it is subject to any modernist interpretation. The modernist discourse might be thought of as an Apollonian illusion, which displaces and ignores the Dionysian in the context of that thought which relates to cultural politics. For example, the argument surrounding various structuralist displacements with respect to understanding cultural difference suggests a repression of those characteristics that are Dionysian, the reason being that within each discourse, the Other is expected to be repressed. With respect to our understanding of the Dionysian, although the Other is literally absent from the Self, the Other implicitly exists even if its meaning is repressed or deferred. These themes of displacement, deferral, absence, and presence inspire Derrida and are consistent with the Derridean notions of supplementarity and difference. In the following section, I will further illustrate the preceding

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description of double play in relation to the relationship the Self and the Other share, and the politics of the Hegelian subject. Supplementarity and Rousseau In Of Grammatology (1976), Derrida developed a new logic of supplementarity, a logic that has its derivation in Rousseau’s intellectual endeavors. Rousseau views writing both as a destruction of presence and as a disease of speech, while Derrida, for his part, rehabilitates writing to the extent that it promises a reappropriation of that which speech allowed itself to be dispossessed. To Rousseau, the act of writing is a desire to master absence, to restore what has been absent. The desire of writing, as absent from speech, is first formulated as a theory of language and then regulated by the experience of the writer. For example, Derrida found that, in Rousseau’s text Confessions, the writer, Jean-Jacques, has given writing the role of restoration, a role that involves a dissatisfaction of the absence and calculated effacement of speech. Writing is supplementary to speech because writing is a way of keeping or recapturing speech, this outcome resulting from the fact that speech denies itself as it gives itself. In this sense, writing and speech are supplementary to each other. Absence and presence always exist in a relation to a mutual deferral. The presence could also be an absence, but the presence is not that presence that defers absence. Some form of absence is a concept of the missing person or thing, but whose presence is not deferred by that absence. As Derrida explains, presence and absence are supplementary, in that “[nature’s] departure from itself is simultaneously absolutely natural and absolutely artificial; it must simultaneously respect and violate natural legality. Nature itself inverts itself, which it can only do on the basis of a point absolutely exterior to itself, that is, on the basis of a force simultaneously void and infinite” (1976: 146). The supplement is a kind of double, something at once integral and exterior to that which is supplemented. Absence and presence, writing and speech, the Other and the Self are mutually deferred according to Derrida’s theory of language. Moreover, once the act of deferring absence becomes an act of presence, this mutual deferral reverses the relationship of absence/presence as supplementary, and accordingly the status of absence and presence becomes ambiguous (indeed, what is presence and what is absence?). This is exactly as Rousseau assumed in his romanticizing of the ideal of community, an assumption espoused by Lévi-Strauss. In the end, the ideal of the community is implicitly tied to the economy of signs. In this way, Derrida explains that writing, being the process of substituting speech, therefore indicates the performance of presence must be replaced by value. The Rousseauian Self/Other is simply interpreted by Derrida in the following way: “I renounce my present life, my present and concrete existence in

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order to make myself known in the ideality of truth and value. The battle by which I wish to raise myself above my life even while I retain it, in order to enjoy recognition, is in this case within myself, and writing is indeed the phenomenon of this battle” (1976: 142). However, Derrida argues that, despite the fact that the relationship of writing and speech has been revised, a process that involves the transformation of a mutual deferral to supplementarity in presence, the act of writing essentially becomes a great sacrifice, in that it becomes a great symbolic reappropriation of presence. Derrida maintains that “différance began by broaching alienation and it ends by leaving reappropriation breached” (1976: 143). Through an analysis of supplementarity, our understanding of différance helps us understand that Rousseauian death is not only not the simple outside of life, but that this death would not also be a movement of différance if the movement is necessarily finite. Therefore, Derrida argues that “différance makes the opposition of presence and absence possible” and that “without the possibility of différance, the desire of presence as such would not find its breathing-space.” In The Philosophy of the Limit, Drucilla Cornell has critically analyzed Rousseau’s idea of community, in which she says that Rousseau argues for a kind of “egalitarian community” that originates “in the festival and [is] based on direct, unmediated face-to-face relations” (1992: 50). Cornell points out that the Rousseauian community reflects “Rousseau’s dream of [a] non-opposition between human beings and nature, the individual and the community, the desiring, wilful subject of the flesh and the public role of the citizen.” In this way, Rousseau privileges the living voice, speech, as the vehicle for coequals who are literally present to one another as they codetermine their government and, indeed, their destiny. Central to the rationale of this community is the goal of full presence, which is thought to help us escape fate by redefining destiny itself. Derrida is critical of the goal of full presence for the reason that it replicates the violent hierarchies inherent in the principle of identity. Derrida’s criticism relies heavily upon the linguistic trap. Rousseau’s creation of the original myth of full speech is one that assumes there is a linguistic system already in place before the members of a community come to language. Speech implies writing. Derrida’s critique is as follows: [Rousseau] wishes on the one hand to affirm, by giving it a positive value, everything of which articulation is the principle or everything with which it constructs a system (passion, language, society, man, etc.). But he intends to affirm simultaneously all that is cancelled by articulation (accent, life, energy, passion yet again, and so on). The supplement being the articulated structure of these two possibilities, Rousseau can only decompose them and dissociate them into two simple units, logically contradictory yet allowing an intact purity to both the negative and the positive. And yet Rousseau, caught, like the logic of identity, within the graphic

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of supplementarity, says what he does not wish to say, describes what he does not wish to conclude: that the positive (is) the negative, life (is) death, presence (is) absence and that this repetitive supplementarity is not comprised in any dialectic, at least if that concept is governed, as it always has been, by a horizon of presence. (1976: 245–46)

Derrida argues that there is no possibility of there being an innocent community initially free of writing, which is then corrupted by the unintentional imperialism of the anthropologist. Indeed, Derrida exposes the myth of natural innocence, which he associates with the belief in a community free from writing, as itself a version of ethnocentrism. Derrida rather offers a contingent reading of supplementarity and différance. He suggests granting the text a paradigmatic value for the reason that the text is only provisional and does not prejudice what the discipline of a future reading might rigorously determine. Derrida prefers to call it a text rather than a document, and as such, he argues that no model or reading is capable of measuring up to it both fully and rigorously, which is to say, “beyond what already makes the text most legible, and more legible than has been so far thought” (1976: 149–50). Derrida explains the meaning of a text as a supplement and différance in the following way: To speak of the writing of Rousseau is to try to recognize what escapes these categories of passivity and activity, blindness and responsibility. And one cannot abstract from the written text to rush to the signified it would mean, since the signified is here the text itself. It is so little a matter of looking for a truth signified by these writing (metaphysical or psychological truth: Jean-Jacque’s life behind his work) that if the texts that interest us mean something, it is the engagement and the appurtenance that encompass existence and writing in the same tissue, the same text. The same is here called supplement, another name for différance.

Arche-writing: Writing Over and Under Erasure The present and the absent, the Self and the Other, are in relation to the exercises of writing over and under erasure. The presence is always under erasure by an absence, while the absence is writing over the presence. Derrida introduces writing over by crossing out the presence while leaving that presence visible. This methodology reveals the absent on the basis of the appearance of the presence. Erasure does not make the presence disappear from the text, but simply is absent as a silent trace. The presence and the absence exist mutually and are both dependent and displaceable. The presence is under erasure by the absence, and the absence writes over the present. Likewise, the absence is under erasure by the presence, and the presence writes over the absence. The presence and the absence are in a supplementary relationship.

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The Self (the present) and the Other (the absent) are in supplementary relations characterized by a write over and an under erasure. The Self is present on account of the action of writing—or, more correctly, archewriting—of the Other, the absent. The absent, the Other, is a de facto present, as if it were under erasure. The supplementarity, as discussed preceding, leads us to understand that the Other (the absence) cannot simply be equated with presence. Derrida’s idea of arche-writing better explains the relationship that exists between the Self and the Other, which above all is about the presence of Self-as-Other and the politics of that presence. Derrida argues that only on one condition is the performance of writing possible, this being that it is original, natural, and irreducible, and it is for this reason that Derrida names the performance of writing arche-writing. Although Derrida sometimes uses the term writing instead of the term arche-writing, writing is by no means separated from the meaning of being original, by unfolding possibilities from within the closed economy of both the signified and the signifier. For example, Derrida argues, [W]ithin the work of historical repression, writing was, by its situation, destined to signify the most formidable difference. It threatened the desire for the living speech from the closest proximity, it breached living speech from within and from the very beginning. And as we shall begin to see, difference cannot be thought without the trace. (1976: 56–57)

Thus, arche-writing can never let itself be reduced to the form of presence. Arche-writing suggests original and irreducible forms of expression. CONCLUSION Nietzsche’s philosophy could be regarded as both disturbing and practical. His theory is disturbing for the reason that he claims himself to be like dynamite. He is discomforted with texts’ potential to turn truths into the Truth, and his uneasiness has imposed a pressure on language that draws toward the argument of uniformity of meaning. He is thus often mistaken for being a nihilist. Nietzsche’s uneasiness with respect to the stability of language leads to his attempt to theorize the idea of textual heterogeneity. If we are to understand the ways in which Nietzsche justifies the status of textual heterogeneity, in particular in relation to its political implications, we perhaps need to give special attention to his ideas on the affirmation. Derrida’s theory of deconstruction has been discussed here with particular emphasis given to the interruption and displacement of all authority appropriated to meaning, a discussion that leads to the possibility of there being a celebration of different meanings, the latter as forces of dislocation. The significance of Derrida’s theory lies in its reflective thought with

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respect to the modernist discourse whose framework is dependent upon the concept of the binary opposition. By examining Nietzsche’s influence upon Derrida, we elucidated the Nietzschean theory of affirmation as one played out in Derrida’s philosophy. Therefore, we are led to understand that Derrida’s notion of deconstruction is one that provides a strategy to examine political discourses in terms of a critique that focuses upon notions of liberation, emancipation, and empowerment. More importantly, we are led to understand that the idea of the affirmation is inherent in Derrida’s notion of différance. The significance of the affirmation in Derrida’s notion of différance explains his reflective thoughts with respect to not only modernist political theory, but also to the transformations of the political subjectivities with which this political theory concerns itself. This book has examined a variety of modernist political theories, including traditional Hegelian theories and various postcolonial revisionist theories. The modernist political theories are characterized by their dependence upon the concept of the binary opposition, which is thought to function as the fundamental theoretical construction in these theories. For instance, the Hegelian theory of dialectics has developed a concern for the political subjectivity regarding relationships in terms of class, gender, and race. I have argued that these traditional and modernist political theories are problematic because of their attempts to formulize a universal claim, essentialist assumptions, or the oversimplification of the Hegelian dialectical relationship they make in relation to the binary of the lord and the bondsman. Chapter 1 reveals that there is a closed reproduction and reinforcement that is existent in the political relationship of the lord and the bondsman. This relationship between the lord and the bondsman is sustained forever. It is a closed relationship where notions of the lord and the bondsman oversimplify the complexity implicit in political subjectivities. The examination in chapter 2 and chapter 3 shows that, despite the existence of theories of politics of difference and their seeking notions of multiple identity and difference, the politics of difference maintains the modernist flaws that were discussed in chapter 1 while they suggest multiple applications of modernist political construction. This book suggests the practical importance of Derrida’s notions of both deconstruction and différance for reasons of their affirmative significance. Deconstruction minimizes the authority of any political subjectivity that is provided by the modernist discourse. Deconstruction does not replace the modernist political discourse with another one. Nor does deconstruction dispose of modernist political discourses. Instead, deconstruction adopts a playful manner toward the modernist discourse as a way of affirming the movement of difference, diversity, and multiplicity. Derrida provides a different perspective for interpreting text. The text is affirmed with political meaning in terms of the performance of its language. In chapter 4, I

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have discussed Derrida’s notion of temporization to explain the performative presentation and limitation of both the name and the reference. Chapter 5 focuses on Derrida’s transformation of the modernist approach (i.e., Hegelian dialectics) into the understanding of forces. Chapter 6 traces Derrida’s connection to Nietzsche both in terms of Derrida’s political thinking and his exploration of the notion of affirmation. I suggest that deconstruction and différance provide both a better understanding and better strategies for rethinking the political aspect of philosophy. The discussion on deconstruction and différance suggests that we should reconsider the influences of the Hegelian approach upon educational theory; we should examine the meaning of the notions of emancipation and empowerment in relation to educational practices—including curriculum design, educational research, and classroom practices. It is also expected that such discussions of deconstruction and différance should contribute to our thinking on cultural difference.

Notes

SERIES FOREWORD 1. Lawrence Grossberg, “Toward a Genealogy of the State of Cultural Studies,” in Cary Nelson and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, eds. Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1996), 143. 2. David Bailey and Stuart Hall, “The Vertigo of Displacement,” Ten 8 2:3 (1992), 19. 3. My notion of transdisciplinary comes from Mas’ud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton, “Theory, Pedagogy, Politics: The Crisis of the ‘Subject’ in the Humanities,” in Theory Pedagogy Politics: Texts for Change, Mas’ud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton, eds. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 10. At issue here is neither ignoring the boundaries of discipline-based knowledge nor simply fusing different disciplines, but creating theoretical paradigms, questions, and knowledge that cannot be taken up within the policed boundaries of the existing disciplines. 4. Raymond Williams, “Adult Education and Social Change,” in What I Came to Say (London: Hutchinson-Radus, 1989), 158. 5. The term “professional legitimation” comes from a personal correspondence with Professor Jeff Williams of East Carolina University.

PREFACE 1. In Maori, Te Reo Maori means “the Maori language” and Tikanga means “Maori lores or customs.”

INTRODUCTION 1. This argument shall be explored in chapter 1. However, for the purpose of an introductory note, this idea is supportive of Hegel’s own words: “The truth of

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the independent consciousness is accordingly the servile consciousness of the bondman” (1977: 117). 2. Rose maintains that in the contemporary era the notion of community must be located “within a wider array of social and economic forces,” and configures the notion of community to include relations in “the labour market, booms, slumps, industrial cycles, the exigencies of urban environments, problems of housing supply” (1999: 176). 3. The difference between these two positions can also be seen in the current debate on the post-Hegelian multiculturalism. For instance, Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren are inclined to adopt the former position, while Michael Peters prefers the latter one. See Kanpol and McLaren 1995. 4. Referent means the same as reference throughout my discussion in this chapter. 5. Cornell explains that the reason why Irigaray does not want to define woman conceptually is because “this determination through the concept would inevitably reinstate the specific, phallogocentric structure of identification in which subjecthood [has already] been defined” (1991: 181–82). 6. I shall develop a discussion on the philosophical meaning of this performative aspect of language in chapter 4. 7. This argument is similar to Foucault’s, as articulated in “Truth and Power” (1980). There is no absolute Truth, but there are multiple truths. 8. Like structuralist Lévi-Strauss, Derrida affirms and celebrates multiple plays on the Hegelian dialectical relationship of the Same/the Other. But in his theory of différance, Derrida works on the problematic area of the signified where references play. Lévi-Strauss reworks the multiple references and implications of the symbolic relations of the sign to the signified for the purpose of revealing multiple meanings for the sign. 9. Derrida argues that woman does not have a history “not so much because of any notion of the ‘eternal feminine’ but because all alone she can resist and step back from a certain history [precisely in order to dance] in which revolution, or at least the ‘concept’ of revolution, is generally inscribed. That history is one of continuous progress, despite the revolutionary break—oriented in the case of the women’s movement towards the reappropriation of woman’s own essence, her own specific difference, oriented in short towards a notion of women’s ‘truth’ ” (Derrida and McDonald 1985: 167). 10. Michael Young’s Knowledge and Control (1971a) is a landmark in the sociology of education and exposits the idea that the curricula are introduced as an arena that involves the control of power and struggle. Curricula define a domain that is not only about knowledge, but also is about who defines it and who challenges it. Curricula define a political site contested by various groups. With regard to power relations that accompany curricula, Young suggests to us that we look at the curriculum, aware that the assumptions will relate to “those in positions of power [that] will attempt to define what is to be taken as knowledge, how accessible to different groups any knowledge is, and what are the accepted relationships between different knowledge areas and between those who have access to them and make them available” (M. F. D. Young 1971b: 31–32). 11. These discourses include discussions on the reproduction of economic relations, the reproduction of state power, and cultural reproduction.

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12. For instance, theorists who focus on the reproduction of dominating power include Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein, Samuel Bowles, and Herbert Gintis. Henry Giroux and Michael Apple are theorists who argue for a resistant power. The focus on the notion of resistance and on the critiques of the culturalreproductive and hegemonic-state-reproductive models appear in the early works of Henry Giroux’s—for instance, Giroux 1983. 13. That there are numerous aids on essay writing means that to suggest critical essay writing should involve counterargument all the way through writing in presenting the thesis statement. The thesis statement appears in the introduction. Essay writing is written work in the form of an “academic conversation”—a conversation between you (and your like) and the Other. Argumentation is a conversation between thesis and counterthesis. A good thesis is achieved when the writer successfully defeats the Other. This implies in this situation that the positivity of the thesis statement is worked out through the Hegelian double negation—the negation of counterargument. According to Grabe and Kaplan (1996), the quasi-inductive form of argument is dominant in the Asian rhetorical framework. It is a style that is unfamiliar to the English writers. The quasi-inductive framework of writing means an argumentation that possesses “a delayed introduction of purpose” (Grabe and Kaplan 1996: 190). The thesis statement is presented in a hidden way—it is often buried (Japanese) or even not given (Korean) in the passage. An essay is presented with “the topic implied but not stated.” Writers of this rhetorical background may illustrate the thesis statement by listing points revolving around an unstated central theme and develop their arguments with the aid of subthemes. By contrast, a “writer-responsible language” has to present a purpose, develop the relationship between its inherent components, and illustrate main passages as transparently as possible. Different forms of rhetorical writing lead to different writing disciplines as well as different disciplines for readers. With a quasi-inductive rhetorical background, readers do not expect a thesis to be explained at the outset. In this instance, a writer who does all the work for the reader is not as highly valued (Grabe and Kaplan 1996: 189–90). By contrast, Grabe and Kaplan argue that, in the case of reader-responsible language, it is the reader’s responsibility to fill in the information and make the transitions. These readers often become better at contextualizing a text than English readers do. Grabe and Kaplan further argue that a reader-responsible writer often uses shorter sentences when writing in English. Some studies have further argued that this feature equates Chinese students writing in English in too abbreviated a manner, and that in such circumstances it becomes necessary to read between the lines of the Chinese writing rhetoric employed. Grabe and Kaplan refer us to the studies of Reid (1988), Matalene (1985), and Ostler (1987).

CHAPTER 1: DESIRE, POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS, AND FORMATIVE SUBJECTIVITY 1. Hegel, in Phenomenology of Spirit, further explains the Desire of the Self as an experience that is closed in its relations to the Other: “In this satisfaction, however, experience makes it aware that ‘the object’ has its own independence. Desire

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and the self-certainty obtained in its gratification, are conditioned by ‘the object’, for self-certainty comes from superseding this other: in order that this supersession can take place, there must be this other. Thus self-consciousness, by its negative relation to ‘the object’, is unable to supersede it; it is really because of that relation that it produces ‘the object’ again, and the desire as well. It is in fact something other than self-consciousness that is the essence of Desire; and through this experience self-consciousness has itself realized this truth. But at the same time it is no less absolutely for itself, and it is so only by superseding ‘the object’; and it must experience its satisfaction, for it is the truth. On account of the independence of ‘the object’, therefore, it can achieve satisfaction only when ‘the object’ itself effects the negation within itself; and it must carry out this negation of itself in itself, for it is in itself the negative, and must be for the other what it is. Since ‘the object’ is in its own self negation, and in being so is at the same time independent, it is consciousness. In the sphere of Life, which is ‘the object’ of Desire, negation is present either in an other, viz in Desire, or as a determinateness opposed to another indifferent form, or as the inorganic universal nature of Life. But this universal independent nature in which negation is present as absolute negation, is the genus as such, or the genus as self-consciousness. Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness” (1977: 109). 2. In Aronowitz’s words: “in adopting the language of humanism, Freire’s debt to the early Marx and to Sartre is all too evident” (1993: 12). 3. According to Aronowitz, Freire “addresses the problem of the authentication of humans by means of their self-transformation into a universal species” (1993: 13). 4. For instance, Freire maintains that “[i]t may simply mean impregnating the world with man’s curious and inventive presence, imprinting it with the trace of his works. The process of transforming the world which reveals this presence of man, can lead to his humanization as well as his dehumanization, to his growth or diminution. These alternatives reveal to man his problematic nature and pose a problem for him, requiring that he choose one path or the other. Often this very process of transformation ensnares man and his freedom to choose” (1998b: 501–2). 5. In Phenomenology of Spirit, there is a section titled: “Freedom of SelfConsciousness: Stoicism, Scepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness” (Hegel 1977: 119–38). 6. The second structural perception that appears in Freire’s theory is the dialectical relationship between superstructure and infrastructure. Freire argues that “if we underestimate either the superstructure of infrastructure it will be impossible to explain the social structure itself. Failing to understand this dialectic, we will not understand the dialectic of change and permanence as the expression of the social structure” (1998b: 503). 7. Freire contends that it is “the introjection by the dominated” and “the infrastructure of the dependent society that is shaped by the director society’s will” (1998b: 504). 8. Aronowitz (1993) provides an analysis of oppression in which the oppressed are mainly defined in terms of economic status. As he puts it: “This is the significance of working with the most oppressed, who in Brazil and the rest of Latin America, are poor agricultural labourers and the unemployed huddled in

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the city’s flavellas, shantytowns, which in Sao Paulo, for instance, harbour a million and a half people. Many of these are migrants from forest and agricultural regions that are in the process of being leveled for wood processing, mining and ‘modern’ corporate farming” (13–14). 9. Freire (1998a) has made a comparison between animals and human beings. He argues that “[i]f, for animals, orientation in the world means adaptation to the world, for man it means humanising the world by transforming it. For animals there is no historical case, no options or values in their orientation in the world; for man there is both a historical and a value dimension. Men have the sense of ‘project,’ in contrast to the instinctive routines of animals” (481). 10. Freire’s idea of critical reflection is important to pedagogy and learning, as he argues that “[l]earning to read and write ought to be an opportunity for men to know what speaking the word really means: a human act implying reflection and action. As such, it is a primordial human right and not the privilege of a few” (1998a: 486).

CHAPTER 2: LÉVI-STRAUSS AND THE METHODOLOGICAL VALUE OF CONCEPTS OF BINARY OPPOSITIONS 1. I borrowed Derrida’s term play from a chapter title: “Structure, Sign, and Play” (1978b). 2. Lévi-Strauss says that “[a]bove all, it is beginning to emerge that this distinction between nature and society (‘nature’ and ‘culture’ seem preferable to us today), while of no acceptable historical significance, does contain a logic, fully justifying its use by modern sociology as a methodological tool” (1963: 3). 3. It was mainly because of this point that Lévi-Strauss was once considered as a postmodernist. See Weinstein and Weinstein 1993. 4. However, Derrida goes further to argue that a new attempt, presumably the one like Lévi-Strauss’s, does not turn over the page of Western philosophy. He says, “[b]y orienting and organising the coherence of the system, the centre of a structure permits the play of its elements inside the total form. And even today the notion of a structure lacking any centre represents the unthinkable itself ” (1978b: 279; italics mine). 5. This is dated according to Roland A. Champagne’s collection of the chronological development of French structuralism. See Champagne 1990. 6. The Elementary Structures of Kinship was originally published in French in 1949 and later translated into English in 1969. 7. For example, Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss 1972. 8. According to Roland Champagne (1990), most of the theories of the French structuralists are related to scientific reason, and this scientific reason draws a strong implication from natural sciences and mathematics. For instance, Champagne points out that “Lévi-Strauss saw himself as a man of science, the ethnologist who used empirical examples and mathematical models” (125). 9. For instance, Lévi-Strauss says, “Granted the hypothesis (to which we whole-heartedly subscribe) of a functional relationship between the two systems, we are nevertheless entitled, for methodological reasons, to treat independently the problems pertaining to each system. This is what we propose to do here for a

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problem which is rightly considered the point of departure for any theory of attitudes—(that of the maternal uncle)” (1963: 39). 10. I wish to include Lévi-Strauss’s own lengthy explanations of his Kantian methodology: “In allowing myself to be guided by the search for the constraining structures of the mind. I am proceeding in the manner of Kantian philosophy, although along different lines leading to different conclusions. The ethnologist, unlike the philosopher, does not feel obliged to take the conditions in which his own thought operates, or the science peculiar to his society and his period, as a fundamental subject of reflection in order to extend these local findings into a form of understanding, the universality of which can never be more than hypothetical and potential. Although concerned with the same problems, he adopts an opposite approach in two respects. Instead of assuming a universal form of human understanding, he prefers to study empirically collective forms of understanding, whose properties have been solidified, as it were, and are revealed to him in countless concrete representational systems. And since for him, belonging as he does to a given social milieu, culture, region, and period of history, these systems represent the whole range of possible variations within a particular type, he chooses those that seem to him to be the most markedly divergent, in the hope that the methodological rules he will have to evolve in order to translate these systems in terms of his own system and vice versa, will reveal a pattern of basic and universal laws: this is a supreme form of metal gymnastics, in which the exercise of thought, carried to its objective limits (since the latter have been previously explored and recorded by ethnographic research), emphasizes every muscle and every joint of the skeleton, thus revealing a general pattern of anatomical structure” (1969: 10–11).

CHAPTER 3: THE PEDAGOGY OF THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE 1. Peters (1995) uses Stuart Hall’s notion of the war of position. The war of position refers to a perspective on the politics of identity, in which the “notion of a politics . . . as it were, is increasingly able to address people through . . . multiple identities” (Hall 1992; cited in Peters 1995: 53). 2. Peters (1995) cites Stuart Hall’s story as an example of the ambivalence of the essential black subjectivity. Hall proposes this ambivalence in the question “what is it like to live, by attempting to valorize and defeat the marginalization of the variety of Black subjects and to really begin to discover the lost histories . . . of Black experience, while at the same time recognizing the end of any essential Black subject” (Hall 1992; cited in Peters 1995: 53)? 3. For instance, Young offers a section titled “Oppression as a Structural Concept” in which she pursues a structuralist approach to analyzing the notion of oppression (I. M. Young 1990: 40–41). Young’s structuralist conceptualization of oppression is evidently present in the following statements: “New left social movements of the 1960s and 1970s . . . shifted the meaning of the concept of oppression. In its new usage, oppression designates the disadvantage and injustice some people suffer not because a tyrannical power coerces them, but because of the everyday practices of a well-intentional liberal society . . . Oppression . . . is

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structural, rather than the result of a few people’s choices or policies. Its causes are embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences of following those rules” (41). Young further suggests there are multiple structures that make reference to the notion of oppression. In support of this, she argues that “[i]n this extended structural sense oppression refers to the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions, media and cultural stereotypes, and structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms” (41). 4. For definitions of these five faces of oppression, see I. M. Young 1990 (48–63). 5. Young also cites the assimilation of the German Jews under Nazism as an example (I. M. Young 1990: 43). 6. Rather, she suggests we might consider difference as resource. Difference as resource by no means suggests a distributive injustice that would help us understand the nature of the relations of oppression, discourses on injustice, and categories of social groupings. Young explains that “distributive injustice may contribute to or result from . . . forms of oppressions, but none is reducible to distribution and all involve social structures and relations beyond distribution” (I. M. Young 1990: 9). 7. Ansell-Pearson maintains that discourses on modern political theory are “established on the basis of oppositions, such as those between [the] oppression and [the] emancipation of rulers and ruled, [and] presupposes the validity of the historical construction of the self as a juridical subject” (1991: 282). 8. Young describes political autonomy as an “assertion of positive difference the self-organisation of oppressed groups follows” (I. M. Young 1990: 167). The principle of group autonomy is mainly related to the notion of societal justice, something Young further explains when she says, “In a humanist emancipatory politics, if a group is subject to injustice, then all those interested in a just society should unite to combat the powers that perpetuate that injustice. If many groups are subject to injustice, moreover, then they should unite to work for a just society.” 9. Difference is expressed by means of citizens’ articulatory practice (Mouffe 1992). For instance, Mouffe argues that “a radical, democratic citizen must be an active citizen, somebody who acts as a citizen, who conceives of herself as a participant in a collective undertaking. The citizen . . . requires that we think from a perspective of commonality: this is incompatible with an individualistic framework” (4). Moreover, “the victory of democratic pluralism requires the acknowledgment that the multitude of dreams is irreducible. An organic unity can never be attained, and there is a heavy price to pay for such an [importance]” (5). 10. Mouffe’s mistake in relating the political appeal of gender difference to the argument for an “essence” of woman is further articulated in her insistence upon a “non-gendered” concept of citizenship. She argues that “within the perspective of a project of radical and plural democracy such a ‘non-gendered’ conception of citizenship is more promising because it allows for the articulation of many democratic demands and does not focus solely on the exclusion of women. But it requires a non-essentialist framework, which implies that there is no fixed identity corresponding to men as men or women as women. All identities, including sexual

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identities, are forms of identifications and are necessarily precarious and unstable. This precludes any possibility of reaching their ‘essence’ ” (1992: 10).

CHAPTER 4: THE PERFORMANCE OF DIFFÉRANCE AND DECONSTRUCTION 1. Derrida’s philosophical affiliations with Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger have been discussed by, for instance, Vincent Descombes, who reads Derrida through Husserl’s phenomenology (1980: 136–42); Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut have read Derrida as a “French Heideggerian” (1990: 122–34). 2. Spivak explains that these philosophers include Immanuel Kant, George Friedrich Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Walter Benjamin, and Emmanuel Levinas (1999: 425). 3. This question appears in Derrida’s article “The Ends of Man” (1982d: 114). 4. Spivak’s interpretations of deconstruction in relation to the notion of essence can be seen in the following text: “[T]o think about the danger of what is useful, is not to think that the dangerous thing doesn’t exist. The former is the lesson of deconstruction for me. Thus does deconstruction teach me about the impossibility of anti-essentialism. It teaches me something about essentialisms being among the conditions of the production of doing, knowing, being, but [it] does not give me a clue to the real. The real in deconstruction is neither essentialist nor antiessentialist. It invites us to think through the counter-intuitive position that there might be essences and there might not be essences” (1993a: 10). 5. Spivak argues that formalization distinguished itself from structuralism, as it may be at best understood as a “structureless structure” (1999: 430). 6. Spivak is here in particular referring to her own experience. She argues that “those few months in India, spent as a diasporic Indian and a working academic, gave me a sense of how peculiarly uneasy people were about the cultural legacy of imperialism. This was certainly true in my own class but [it] was also pervasive, however inarticulately, across the classes. The unease straddled the genders, and in its context, varieties of elite nativism or isolationist nationalism seemed peculiarly out of touch with national and international ‘realities’ ” (1993b: 123). 7. Spivak argues that strategic essentialism should be considered as an interpretation of Derrida’s notion of deconstruction. Strategic essentialism is “strategic, because it is consciously directed toward a political goal, [and is] essentialism because it reinstates some version of the essence of Woman and the feminine, even if only temporarily and for a political purpose” (Cornell 1991: 179–80).

CHAPTER 5: TEMPORALITY, MODERNITY, AND DIFFÉRANCE 1. It is important to note that, in the beginning, for Bhabha, with respect to his postcolonial discourse, French poststructuralist discourses and German critical theory come under the same umbrella of modernity. Bhabha says, “my interest in the question of modernity resides in the influential discussion generated by the work of Habermas, Foucault, Lyotard and Lefort, amongst many others, that has

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generated a critical discourse around historical modernity as an epistemological structure” (1994e: 239–40). Later he states, “I want to pose my questions of a contra-modernity: what is modernity in those colonial conditions where its imposition is itself the denial of historical freedom, civic autonomy and the ‘ethical’ choice of refashioning?” Bhabha does not, as most historians do, distinguish poststructuralist discourse from that of critical theory, which is often assumed to be part of the project of modernity. 2. Bhabha attacks the poststructuralist satirizing of Foucault’s and Lyotard’s literature when he says, “the death of the author, or the interral of intention, are occurrences that arouse no more scandal than the sight of a hearse in a Palermo suburb” (1993: 167). Later in the same text, Bhabha shows he is fearless in the business of critical theory, saying, “I look these days I find myself staring into the eyes of a recruiting officer . . . who stares at me intensely and says ‘Western Civ. needs you!’ At the same time, a limp little voice within me also whispers, ‘Critical theory needs you too!’ ” 3. I would argue that Bhabha applies the poststructuralist meaning of the incommensurable to his own purpose. If Bhabha wishes to stay on the ship while carrying the project of modernity, arguing for a recognition of acting in the present, he would certainly disagree with the poststructuralist’s gist of the incommensurable, which maintains a multiple and fragmentary public sphere. The adoption of certain aspects of the concept of the incommensurability in order to fit into the project of modernity becomes the most significant weakness of Bhabha’s theory— a position I will critique in the latter part of this section. 4. This text is originally to be found in Habermas 1987 (346). 5. For instance, Bhabha states, “It is Fanon’s temporality of emergence—his sense of the belatedness of the black man—that does not simply make the question of ontology inappropriate for black identity, but somehow impossible for the very understanding of humanity in the world of modernity” (1994e: 236). 6. For instance, “black or minority intellectuals committed to an antiseparatist politics of community have no option but to place themselves in that dangerous and incomplete position where the racial divides are forced to recognise—on either side of the colour line—a shared antagonistic or object terrain. It has become a common ground, not because it is consensual or ‘just,’ but because it is infused and inscribed with the sheer contingency of everyday coming and going, struggle and survival” (Bhabha 1995: 114). 7. “The infinite, in this simplicity, is, as a moment opposed to the equal-toitself, the negative, and in its moments, although it is (itself) presented to and in itself the totality, (it is) what excludes in general, the point or limit; but in its own (action of) negating, it is related immediately to the other and negates itself by itself . . . The limit or moment of the present (der Gegen-wart), the absolute ‘this’ of time, or the now, is of an absolutely negative simplicity, which absolutely excludes from itself all multiplicity, and, by virtue of this, is absolutely determined; it is not whole or a quantum which would be extended in itself (and) which, in itself, also would have an undetermined moment, a diversity which, as indifferent (gleichgultig) or exterior in itself, would be related to an other (auf ein anderes bezöge), but in this is a relation absolutely different from the simple (sondern es ist absolut differente Beziehung)” (Derrida 1982b: 13–14).

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8. Derrida further argues that the Hegelian synthesis is “a synthesis constantly directed back on itself, gathered in on itself and gathering—of retentional traces and protentional openings” (1982b: 21). 9. For example, Derrida argues that, “the intelligible as differing-deferring the sensible, as the sensible different and deferred; the concept as different and deferred, differing-deferring intuition; culture as nature different and deferred, differing-deferring; all the others of physis—tekhne¯, nomos, thesis, society, freedom, history, mind, etc.—as physis different and deferred, or as physis differing and deferring. Physis in différance” (Derrida 1982b: 17). 10. I am using contrast for discussing differences between the Derridean différance and the Hegelian difference. This usage is explained to avoid any misunderstanding in relation to the binary opposition problematic.

CHAPTER 6: TRANSFORMATION, POLITICS, AND DIFFERENCE 1. Derrida further suggests an attitude toward the Nazis’ misreading of Nietzsche. He puts it in this way: “if, within the still-open contours of an era, the only politics calling itself—proclaiming itself—Nietzschean will have been a Nazi one, then this is necessarily significant and must be questioned in all of its consequences” (1985: 31). 2. The passage from Ecce Homo that enlightens Derrida’s political reading is cited by Derrida as follows: “I know my fate [Ich kenne mein Los]. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something monstrous [Ungeheures]— a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience [Gewissens-Kollision], a decision [Entschiedung] that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.—Yet for all that, there is nothing in me of a founder of a religion—religions are affairs of the rabble; I find it necessary to wash my hands after I have come into contact with religious people.—I want no ‘believers’; I think I am too malicious to believe in myself; I never speak to masses—I have a terrible fear that one day I will be pronounced holy: you will guess why I publish this book before; it shall prevent people from doing mischief with me. I do not want to be a holy man; sooner even a buffoon.—Perhaps I am a buffoon. Yet in spite of that—or rather not in spite of it, because so far nobody has been more mendacious than holy men—the truth speaks out of me . . . The concept of politics will have merged entirely with a war of spirits; all power structures of the old society will have been exploded—all of them are based on lies: there will be wars the like of which have never yet been seen on earth. It is only beginning with me that the earth knows great politics [grosse Politik]. (‘Why I Am a Destiny’)” (1985: 31–32). 3. For instance, Lohren Green expresses the close relationship between Derrida and Nietzsche in the following way: “Jacques Derrida interprets Nietzsche’s text as incessantly caught up in the play of différance, as playful logic of signification which is expressed in what he calls ‘writing’ (ecriture). He therefore finds that, as a result of the undecidable play of signification in Nietzsche’s text from Spur, ‘reading is freed from the horizon of the meaning of truth of being, liberated from the values of the product’s production or the present’s presence. Where upon the

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question of style is immediately unloosed as a question of writing’ ” (Green 1998: vi). 4. Schrift argues that Derrida in fact uses “active interpretation” in order to “distinguish deconstructive reading from textual doubling of commentary” (1996: 354). This argument is found in Derrida’s discussion under the title of “The Exorbitant. Question of Method” (1976: 157–64). 5. See Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” section (1967a: 8).

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Index

Absence and presence, 149, 150 Absolute fear, 26–28, 30–34 Absolute negativity, 25 Affirmation, 83, 86–88, 92, 101, 107–9, 137, 140–44, 148, 153–55 Affirmation of difference, 58 Affirmative, 93, 94, 99; deconstruction of, 99; performance of, 99 Agency, 17, 55, 56, 67, 70–73, 76–79, 81 Ansell-Pearson, Keith, 73, 74, 76–78 Antagonisms, 62, 63, 65 Anti-humanism, 13 Antinihilist, 57 A priori, 20 Arche-writing, 137, 152, 153 Aronowitz, Stanley, 21–23, 31, 34, 35 Articulations, 62–65, 78–80, 82 Articulatory practice, 76 Aufgehoben, 7, 16, 86, 87 Austin, John L., 89, 90 Autonomy, 18, 26, 67, 70, 73–77, 81, 82 Being, 84–92, 94–97, 99–102, 104–9 Bhabha, Homi, 111–28, 136; ambivalence and, 113, 118–22, 126; hybridity and, 113, 117, 118, 121, 122, 124–26; in-between and, 111–14, 116–21, 123, 124, 126, 136; mimicry

and, 114, 120; temporality and, 111–27, 129, 131, 133, 135, 136 Binarism, 41–45, 47–51, 54 Binary oppositions, 3–5, 8, 16, 19, 22, 23, 35, 39, 40–43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53, 54, 55–59, 61, 65, 69, 72, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 92, 93, 94, 96, 102, 107, 109; methodological value and, 39–43, 45, 47, 49–51, 53, 56, 59, 60, 63, 66, 69 Bondsman, 2, 16, 24–28, 33, 37 Bricolage, 60, 61, 69, 70; discourse of, 53, 54 Butler, Judith, 2, 6, 7, 8, 17–20, 23, 24, 27, 28, 58, 67, 70, 71; and The Psychic Life of Power, 23 Cartesian cogito, 91 Catachresis, 97, 99, 100 Chow, Rey, 126 Colonialization, 16 Communicative ethics, 73, 74 Communitarianism, 55–81 Concepts, 86, 88, 101, 105, 109 Configuration of identity, 56, 63, 66, 69, 73, 78 Consciousness, 2–5, 16, 17–37 Contextual, 56, 58, 61, 63, 80

176 Contingent, 56–58, 65 Cornell, Drucilla, 10, 11, 100, 101 Critical consciousness, 31, 32, 36 Critical educational theory, 14, 15 Critical emancipation, 70 Critical pedagogy, 11, 20–23, 30, 31, 34–36 Critical theory, 12–14, 112, 114, 115, 124, 126 Cultural difference, 14, 15, 56, 58, 60–62, 64, 66, 69, 72, 81 Cultural identity, 119, 121, 122 Cultural studies, 14–16 Culture-as-difference, 115, 116 de Beauvoir, Simone, 9 Deconstruction, 83–103, 105, 106, 109, 141, 154, 155; deconstructive and, 84–87, 93–95, 97–100; deconstructive feminism and, 97; usefulness of, 96, 98, 99 de Man, Paul, 96 Democracy, 57, 62–69, 71, 77, 78, 81, 141, 142; deliberate, 68, 69, 71 Derrida, Jacques, 1, 4, 5, 7–11, 39, 43, 44, 57–59, 65, 81, 83–94, 97–109, 111, 112, 127–36, 137–55; aporia experiences and, 95; archi-trace and, 103; archi-writing and, 103–5; democracy to come and, 137, 141, 142; dissemination of, 114, 132–34; hymen and, 143; Margins of Philosophy and, 84, 85; non-place and, 112, 123, 125, 136; temporization and, 101–5, 107, 109; under erasure and, 152, 153; Writing and Différence, 84; writing over and, 152 Desire, 17–29, 31, 33, 35, 37 Dialectics, 1–12, 14, 15, 16 Différance, 85–87, 95, 100–106, 109, 111–13, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 127–33, 135–40, 143, 145, 148, 151, 152, 154, 155. See also Jacques Derrida Difference, 4, 5, 9, 55–81, 111–13, 115–17, 119, 121–23, 125, 127–36. See also Différance Differentiated relations, 128, 130, 132, 133

Index Displacement, 139, 147, 153 The double, 137, 143–48 Double negation, 20, 28 Doubling, 119, 120 Dualism, 4, 8, 12 Educational discourses, 11–13 Emancipation, 1, 2, 12, 13; of the oppressed, 30 Empowerment, 1, 2, 11–13, 55, 57, 70, 72, 73, 75 Epistemology, 96–98, 100 Equity, 12 Essence, 85, 88, 89, 91–102, 105, 106, 108, 109 Essentialism, 55, 56, 64, 80, 89, 92–94, 96–102; strategic use of essence and, 96, 98–102 Ethics, 22–24, 27–30, 35, 36; norm, 22, 23, 28, 30, 35, 36; rules, 30, 35; ethico-political and, 97 Fanon, Frantz, 3, 22, 112, 118–22 Feminism, 96–100 Fiction, 88–91 Force, 123, 131, 133 Formalization, 95, 96 Foucault, Michel, 5–8, 52, 54, 57, 58, 65–67, 73, 74, 77, 93, 100, 111, 114, 123, 125, 130, 134, 136; descent and, 6, 7, 16; emergence and, 6, 7, 16, 123, 125; Enstehung and, 6, 16; genealogical analysis and, 6, 7, 16; Kerkunft and, 6, 16 Freire, Paulo, 1, 2, 4–7, 13, 16, 18, 14–21; conscientization and, 21, 30, 31; emancipation and, 17, 21, 30, 35, 37; freedom and,17, 21, 30, 33, 34, 36; fully human, 21–23, 30, 35–37; humanization and, 20–23, 35; the man and, 21–23, 34, 35; the man/world and, 21, 34, 35; naïvetransitive consciousness and, 31, 36; the oppressed and, 19–23, 28, 30–35, 37; the oppressors and, 19, 22, 23, 30, 32–34, 36; semi-intransitive consciousness and, 31, 36 French structuralism, 84

Index Giroux, Henry, 23 Gramsci, Antonio, 62, 64 Great politics, 137 Group autonomy, 73–75 Habermas, Jürgen, 3, 4, 69, 78, 114–16, 124 Hegel, Georg W. F., 1–4, 7–13, 15, 16, 21, 57–62, 66, 70, 74, 80, 88; and Hegelian dialectics, 1–15, 17–20, 24, 27, 28, 33, 37, 84, 87, 102, 103, 105, 108, 109 113, 121, 125, 129, 130, 133, 136; and Hegelian difference, 86, 111, 112, 128–31, 133, 135; and Hegelianism, 144, 149; and Hegelian negation, 57, 58, 62, 118–21, 128; and Hegelian political discourses, 19; and Hegelian semiology, 84; and Hegelian subject, 117, 119, 130, 131, 133, 135; and Phenomenology of Spirit, 18, 24; and selfenslavement, 30 Hegemony, 62–64 Heidegger, Martin, 83, 85, 88–92, 101, 102, 105–9 Heterogeneity, 135 Humanism, 13, 90, 101 Humanist, 17, 23, 35 Humanity, 22, 23 Identity, 84, 86–90, 92, 94, 96–98, 100–102, 104, 106, 108, 109, 113–22, 124–26, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136 Immeasurability, 15 Imperialism, 2, 16 Incompleteness, 64, 65 Interruption, 153 Intersubjectivity, 116, 124 Interval, 104 Irigaray, Lucy, 9 Jakobson, Roman, 44–51, 61; distinctive features and, 47–49, 51, 53, 54; hypothetico deductive and, 50, 53 Justice, 61–63, 67, 68, 73, 74 Koyré, Alexandre, 128

177 Laclau, Ernesto, 55, 56, 62–66 Language, 39, 41–49, 51, 52, 84, 87–91, 94, 101, 103–5, 107, 108, 118, 119, 122, 126, 127, 130, 131 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 39–54, 55, 56, 58, 60-66, 69, 147, 150; and bricolage, 39, 41–44, 46, 48, 53, 54; The Elementary Structures of Kinship, 40, 45, 50; The Raw and the Cooked, 40, 51 Liberalism, 57, 78 Liberation, 17, 21, 22, 30, 33, 35, 36 Linguistics, 45, 46, 48, 51–53 Literacy, 13, 16 Literature, 88–90 Logocentric, 84, 85, 107 Lord, 2, 16, 24–28, 32, 37 Marxism, 6, 8, 16 Metaphysics of presence, 83, 85, 102, 109 Metastructure, 45, 46 Modernism, 57, 60, 70, 81 Modernity, 111–13, 115–17, 119–21, 123, 125, 127–29, 131, 133, 135 Mouffe, Chantal, 55–57, 60, 62, 63–66, 76–81 Multiple identities, 140 Multiplicity, 138, 140, 154 Negation, 86 Negativity, 17, 18, 20, 24–28, 37; power of, 17, 20, 37 Negotiation, 93, 96 New social movements, 57, 62, 63 Nietzsche, Friedrich W., 4, 6, 83, 85, 87, 90, 92, 93, 99, 100, 107–9, 125, 131, 136, 137–46, 148, 149, 153–55; Apollonian and, 148, 149; Dionysian and, 137, 148, 149; Dionysus, 148, 149; Ecce Homo, 137, 145, 146, 149; eternal return, 143; genealogy, 139; Nietzschean genealogical analysis, 70, 82; will to power, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 100 Nominalism, 98, 100, 101 Non-concept, 84, 85 Non-discursive, 66 Non-essentialist, 64

178 Non-lieu (non-place), 84, 85 Non-site. See Non-lieu Non-truth, of difference 98, 99; of truth, 99, 138, 139 Norms, 28, 30, 35, 36 Ontology, 90, 97–100, 105–7; ontological/ epistemological/ ethico-political, 97; value of, 39–41 Oppression, 61, 63, 67–74, 76 The Other, 2–4, 7–9, 13, 16, 18–21, 23, 24, 83, 84, 86–89, 94, 98, 99, 108, 109, 118, 128, 131, 132 Performative, 9, 11, 83, 85, 87–89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 113, 121, 122, 132; politics of, 88, 92, 93, 95, 96; significance of language of, 94 Peters, Michael, 2–5, 20, 23, 56–60, 62, 68, 88 Philosophy of negativity, 18, 20 Play, 39, 42, 43, 47 Pluralism, 63, 64, 76–78 Political, 37, 140–145, 148, 154, 155; affinity of, 68, 69; articulations of, 63, 65; community of, 63, 77–79; consciousness of, 17, 19, 21–23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33–35, 37; identity of, 55, 66, 69; performance of, 88, 89, 91, 93, 99; subjectivity of, 37 Politics, 137, 141, 143, 145, 147–49, 151, 153–55 Politics of difference, 39, 54, 55–61, 63, 65–67, 69, 71–75, 77–81 Polythemia, 133, 134 Postcolonialism, 113–17, 120–27 Poster, Mark, 56, 59, 61, 63–66 Poststructuralism, 114, 115, 117, 121; and poststructuralist, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 15 Prague Linguistic Circle, 44–46, 50-53 Presence, 83, 85, 86, 102, 104–7, 109 Present, 102–9, 112–15, 117, 126, 128–31, 136 Public, 63, 72, 76–79, 81; and public sphere, 63, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81 Quasi-transcendentality, 91–93

Index Radical democracy, 57, 62, 63, 65; and radical pluralism, 55–82 Reason, 2, 4, 6, 11, 13 Referent, 8, 10, 11 Reflexivity, 2, 3, 16, 18–20, 24, 26–28, 30, 34, 70 Relationships, 56, 61, 63, 64, 65, 72, 73 Relève, 59 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 150-52 Rupture, 59, 139 Said, Edward, 16, 40, 42, 45, 71, 87, 95, 118, 120-22, 124, 132 The Same, 3, 8, 9, 15, 16, 19, 20, 23, 25, 27, 37, 118, 131, 132 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 21, 35 Saussurean differences, 102, 103 Schrift, Alan, 4, 138–41 The Self, self-consciousness and, 17–20, 24–29; self-recognition and, 26; 87, 88, 104; self-reflexivity and, 18–20, 27, 28, 30; self-subjection and, 24, 28; self-terrorizing and, 27, 30, 34 Self/Other, 63, 148, 150 Singularity, 142, 143 The social, 61–67, 71, 78–80 Social justice, 12 Social sciences, 40–44, 48 Spacing, 102–104, 107 Spivak, Gayatri, 16, 83, 90, 92–100, 102, 109, 139 Strategic essentialism, 83, 93, 94, 96, 98–100, 102 Strategic use of deconstruction, 94 Structuralism, 84, 86, 88 Subject-centered reason, 57 Subjectivity, 2, 3, 5, 9, 16, 17–19, 21, 23–25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37 Subject positions, 56, 58, 63, 65, 66, 78 Supplement, 101, 103, 137, 148–53 Suppression, 18, 19 Teleology, 44, 46, 47, 50–54 Totality, 41, 43, 44, 64 Transcendentalism, 90–93, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108

Index Western logocentrism, 88, 107, 108 Woman, 97–101, 109; the name of woman 98–100 Writing, 84, 85, 95, 97–101, 103–105; act of, 101; and speech, 150, 151

179 Young, Iris M., 55, 55–57, 60-63, 65–76, 80, 81 Young, Robert, 1, 2, 14

About the Author HO-CHIA CHUEH teaches at the Department of Agricultural Extension, National Taiwan University. She has also been a researcher, International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand.