Labyrinths of Exemplarity: At the Limits of Deconstruction (Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

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Labyrinths of Exemplarity At the Limits of Deconstruction

Irene E. Harvey

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2002 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Michael Haggett Marketing by Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Harvey, Irene E., 1953– Labyrinths of exemplarity : at the limits of deconstruction / Irene E. Harvey. p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5463-0 (acid-free) — ISBN 0-7914-5464-9 (pbk. : acid-free) 1. Example. 2. Paradigm (Theory of knowledge) 3. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778. 4. Derrida, Jacques. I. Title. II. Series. BD225 .H37 2002 110—dc21 2002022790 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface: Dimensions of Exemplarity

vii

Introduction: Exemplarity As the Elixir of Thinking

1

PART 1. Threads of Exemplarity 1

For Emile Emile’s “Own” Experience Emile’s Experience of “The Others”

13 16 41

2

For Sophie Self-Image As Self-Misunderstanding Sophie’s Relations to Others

73 73 79

3

For Us Reading Emile Reading Sophie/Women Reading Male/Female Relations

83 85 97 107

PART 2. Theories of Exemplarity 4

Thematized: Exemplarity in Pedagogy For the Tutor Rousseau’s Method: For Us

121 122 132

5

The Unthematized Theories of Exemplarity Methodologies Within the Thematized: Rousseau’s “Theory” and Theories

147 147 151

v

CONTENTS

vi

PART 3. Exemplarity and Deconstructibility 6

Derrida’s Rousseau Introduction Derrida’s Rousseau Example, Exemplar, Exemplarity Between Use and Usage: The “Lens of Differance” Excesses and Exemplarity

179 179 181 182 196 200

PART 4. The Rhetorics of Exemplarity 7

Theories of Rhetorics and the Places of Example Introduction Theories of Rhetorics and the Places of Example Aristotle’s Rhetorical Discourse Articulations of Exemplarity: Thematics The Rhetorical Discourse of Exemplarity

209 209 214 219 226 246

Notes

263

Index

279

Preface: Dimensions of Exemplarity

In asking the question of exemplarity, we are asking a number of related questions from a number of standpoints. First we are seeking to articulate the issue of what makes examples possible. From a Kantian point of view, this entails the framework of inquiry, which insists that examples and their conditions of possibility must be seen as two distinct levels of analysis and explication. In short, the conditions of the possibility of examples cannot itself be an example, from a Kantian point of view. We also are asking the more Platonic question, which can be formulated in the following manner: What is an example? As this articulation implies, what is sought here is framed in the manner of an essence, an unchanging, atemporal, decontextualized structure that would be found in all empirical instances of exemplarity (or the manifestation of same). Thus exemplarity would take the shape of a concept to be clarified via its empirical, actual manifestation as examples. Far from assuming that the issues of exemplarity can be adequately dealt with by the above formulations, we will suggest that the limits of both a Kantian and a Platonic understanding of this issue must be articulated here. In addition, we seek to examine, through a Heideggerian framework, the thematized “nature” of exemplarity—how examples are thought to function, clarify, and illustrate things other than themselves—and in turn the unthematized usage of examples within particular texts. Rather than opening the ontological Pandora’s box here, we seek to again reveal the limitations of such a formulation for an adequate description of the functioning and structures of exemplarity. This process leads naturally enough to the work of Derrida, following and expanding upon Heidegger’s restricted economy, at least in Being and Time, to an extended or a more general economy that appears under the sign of deconstruction. In his own work, exemplarity has taken a central and problematic place inasmuch as Derrida has sought to begin an articulation of the non-Platonic, non-Kantian and, precisely, non-Heideggerian manifestations of exemplarity. However, we will seek to show here the limits of Derrida’s reworking of

vii

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PREFACE

the issue here via “parergonality” and to reveal in addition the excess that his articulation does not and cannot account for. Through this labyrinth of approaches we are aiming toward the plurality of structures, functions, and manifestations of exemplarity as they exceed all previous formulations and assumptions made within the philosophical tradition. In turn, the most common, indeed, almost colloquial understanding or misunderstanding of examples and hence exemplarity as simply the translatability of generality into particularity, and vice versa, as if each is commensurate in some manner with the other, will be overturned. That this notion was born with the Platonic–Aristotelian tradition of philosophy one can little doubt, but that the issue itself of exemplarity—or what makes examples possible (in a non-Kantian sense)—has never until the work of Derrida been made into a thematic issue for investigation is equally clear. The assumptions of the tradition as well as the colloquial “understanding” of exemplarity will thus be problematized and thematically described in what follows, as well as precisely where and why this formulation cannot account for what it purports to explain away merely by assumption. As Heidegger might put it, the issue of exemplarity has been concealed by a tradition that has made unclarified and unexamined assumptions and presuppositions concerning the matter. This burial of the issue before it has ever become an issue will be our focus here, insofar as we aim to unearth what has in effect not yet seen the light of day: the issue of exemplarity. In so doing, we seek not only to examine what exemplarity in itself—as a plurality of structures—entails, but also how the recognition of these structures may perhaps reorient the nature of philosophic inquiry itself, which without exception operates upon the assumption of precisely the translatability (between general and particular) that we seek to question and problematize. That the translation has always already occured—in its most violent and paradoxically most pure form with Hegel—cannot be doubted, but that the translation can be warranted, legitimized, and comprehended is as yet an open question. Far from assuming with the tradition that an example is simply a mere particular or general model (Exemplar), we will bracket out this ready-made reception and concealment of the issue and begin to examine what is occurring as examples are manifest. What “takes place” in the usage of examples? What function is the example performing, aside from concealing its own performance and structure in the name of what it always already “exemplifies”? That there is a hermeneutical frame around each and every example can be doubted as little as the assumption of the general/particular matrix that philosophy has insisted on misunderstanding exemplarity within. But how this hermeneutical frame is operating, how it relates to the example “framed,” as a way of reading the example as (something else) will be examined here for the first time. That a traditional hermeneutical framework will

Preface

ix

not and cannot exhaust the performance of exemplarity also will be shown. Examples always exceed whatever frame one seeks to place around them, or whatever cage one strives to capture them within. Such is the necessary danger of the use of exemplarity. Outstripping any argument or as-structure placed around, in front of them, or behind them, examples retain a secret of their own. It is this secret, this excess from every theory to date, that we seek to explicate, analyze, and formulate here. Our focus will not be an example in the traditional sense, though it will necessarily appear as such. Thus we must resist the given preunderstanding that will paradoxically allow access to our investigation—as an example—yet thereby also conceal the actual detail of what we seek to analyze, namely, the excess that such a ready access conceals and cannot account for. Our “example” thus must be justified in advance insofar as the choice itself, as part of our investigation here in general, will come under scrutiny. The texts of Rousseau, in particular, Emile, a central subject of this book, rely on a multiplicity of notions of exemplarity and at the same time they thematize the issue itself as being central to the constitution of the political, social, historical, pedagogical, theological, and psychological domains, to name just a few. Rousseau focused more directly on the exemplarity issue than any other thinker before or since, with the notable exception of Derrida, yet nonetheless he did not reach the level of an actual thematization of exemplarity itself. His work revolves around the sun of exemplarity, one might argue, without ever facing it directly. It is precisely this mode of indirection, therefore, that we seek to articulate in what follows, in particular within the text of Rousseau, which most nearly focused on the thing itself: Emile. On every single page of this extensive work of pedagogical theory, Rousseau frames his approach explicitly and implicitly by examples. This is the method that he espouses for Emile, and for us, all would-be teachers and raisers of children. Thus we can justify, in a certain way, the choice of Rousseau and, in particular, Emile, as a result of the omnipresence of this issue in his work, and his having reached the brink of the cave in attempting to formulate precisely how and why exemplarity operates in the ways that it does, and how and why it is seen by him as the most effective, useful, profound, and memorable mode of pedagogy and, therefore, of philosophizing itself. He is obsessed with the issue in short, and it is this obsession—its insight and its blindness—that we seek to address in what follows. In effect, we will be asking: What did Rousseau see without seeing it, what did he know without being able to express it, what could he not know from within the assumptions he was making, and what exceeds his own understanding of exemplarity in his precise usage and reliance on the same? This examination of Emile will thus be akin to De Man’s reading and that of Derrida but will have the following important differences. Nothing in what follows will be restricted to the Doppleganger hinges that both De Man and

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PREFACE

Derrida rely on. This will not simply be a matter of blindness and insight, nor of declarations and descriptions. Nor will it be a return to the Heideggerian assumptions that both Derrida and De Man make concerning thematization and its underpinning, nonthematization. We, to repeat our earlier claim, intend to show precisely where these formulations find their limits within the functioning of exemplarity itself. In short, the duplicities of the Heideggerian–De Manian–Derridean tradition (not unlike though radicalizing Platonism itself ) will not be assumed in what follows but rather a plurality of frameworks, interlocking and interdependent, yet unhinged and unhinging, exceeding doubleness will be revealed within the following problematics of exemplarity. In short, exemplarity will be shown to problematize the deconstructive limits as well as those of traditional classical metaphysics, which the former seeks to problematize. Far from a critique of deconstruction then, this analysis via Rousseau via Emile via the ostensible issue of pedagogy as the structure of philosophical textuality will aim toward what exceeds deconstruction but can only be revealed through the latter orientation. That deconstruction is not enough to articulate the structures of exemplarity also will be shown in detail. But that deconstruction is the only route toward this excess will be reaffirmed again and again. Thus as Derrida has relied on the insights of phenomenology to launch his project of deconstruction through the detour of Heidegger (and Rousseau, we should recall), we seek here to launch a reformulation, indeed, a first formulation, if not a first principle, of the issue of exemplarity itself insofar as its structures exceed all hitherto formulated paradigms of analysis, explanation, and assumption. To launch such a project we must begin with the outer edges of the philosophic tradition, the only place, to date, where exemplarity has been thematized as a problem to be explored, namely, Derrida’s formulation of the need for such an inquiry. From this perspective, then, we will begin to exceed the very foundations that Derrida, on the one hand, calls forth and yet not without irony forbids. Thus it is to the forbidden fruit, an other Rousseau, that we will turn here and now.

Introduction: Exemplarity As the Elixir of Thinking

He [she] who is not with me is against me, and he [she] who does not gather with me, scatters. —Luke 11:23, New International Version Study Bible In responding to a recent collection1 of “critical essays” devoted to his work, Derrida alludes to the twelve contributors as being akin to the disciples, with perhaps a Judas among them (us) as he countersigns and becomes the thirteenth. As he says: “I” who am both a twelfth insofar as I am part of the group, one among others, and already, being thus split or redoubled, the thirteenth insofar as I am not one example among others in the series of twelve . . . speaking last . . . treating all these thinkers as disciples, indeed as apostles. (emphasis added)2 Who, then, does this make Derrida? Let us begin elsewhere then with the “with” in Jesus’ everlasting controversial claim above. How can one be “with” Derrida, for example? We have seen, with some dismay, how those who are perceived to be against him have been and are to be (?) treated in the examples of Wolin and Sheehan3 having taken him on, as one says. Yet the vision here is not simple, nor a simple duplicity of for and against, to and fro, pro and con. How can one be with a singular example—Christ or Derrida?—not assuming a parallel here. Clearly there is an implicit double bind lurking in this form of exemplarity, so that to be with cannot mean truly with: the same as, of the same stature, or on a par with, but more with than without. Yet Jesus’ disciples remained skeptical until after His death, even and until His Resurrection and all that followed before the ascension. We know of Thomas’ doubt more so than of Judas’. If we treat Derrida here as an example it is only to consider the prophesy, at times explicit, at times lurking in his discourse, concerning the issues of

1

2

INTRODUCTION

exemplarity. It might be said that all of Heidegger’s work can be found in a single sentence of Husserl’s, or Derrida’s in a likewise pregnant statement, as prophetic, of Levinas’. But this phenomenon, as with the Kantian awakening from dogmatic slumber, is only the beginning—and not even that. The example of Derrida is actually not our focus here, though it is our beginning in precisely this prophetic sense. As always with offspring and offshoots, the source usually and of necessity knows not where the latter may end up. Such is the case here as well. Nonetheless, Derrida’s statements, at times pithy and undeveloped (thus overdetermined), at times developed in detail, open this problematic of exemplarity, which will be addressed and analyzed in what follows. We are not in this sense either for or against Derrida, but we take seriously those, which are for us, prophetic statements in his texts, and we aim to venture forth and explore these hitherto uncharted waters. Ironically, it is Paul de Man whose singular phrase in his analysis of Kleist4 most directly cracks open the metaphysical closure, indeed foreclosure, we contend, which has locked away exemplarity since Aristotle as a seemingly straightforward relation of general and particular. De Man asks the following question: But can any example ever truly fit a general proposition? Is not its particularity, to which it owes its intelligibility, a necessary betrayal of the general truth it is supposed to support and convey?5 Here one can begin to glimpse the trouble that we will be pursuing in what follows. The issue is not only how examples function and how examples are created, but how they serve to provide the intellectual elixir to move the particular to the general or the general to the particular with no inertia, friction, or detours. De Man states quite boldly that they do not. They involve, he says, a “necessary betrayal,” a typical DeManian metaphor. Examples only seem to provide this movement of thinking, but they do not reach this intended or supposed destination. Two issues arise immediately here: (1) Why is this general/particular structure assumed in the first place, and from whence does it come? (2) What else is taking place behind the appearance of this easy transition and slide? De Man continues: Instead of inscribing the particular in the general which is the purpose of any cognition [a strange assumption perhaps] one has reversed the process and replaced the understanding of a proposition by the perception of a particular, forgetting that the possibility of such a transaction is precisely the burden of the proposition in the first place. (emphasis added)6

Introduction

3

Thus the usage of examples presupposes what they seem to accomplish after the fact— but how is this possible? The effect seems to precede the cause. What constitutes this “forgetting,” the “transaction,” of which he speaks here? Why forgetting? What else is taking place here? These are some of the mysteries that we seek to address in what follows. The transaction is indeed complex and multifaceted—not a simple transition. In addition, the source of this assumed binary system or motion from the particular to the general, or the reverse, which is the same thing, must be addressed and will be in what follows. For De Man we seem to have a vision of exemplarity as defaulting on its promise or not reaching the end that it seeks, and of our usage of examples as occulting this secret—forgetting it—as never having been. Exemplarity thus seems to be less than what it purports to be from this perspective. For Derrida less is more, as we have seen so many times in his work. The issue of exemplarity, signaled above by De Man, though not originated with him, revolves for Derrida around his particular sun—the excessive. Examples always (already, one could add) are capable of exceeding their promise, namely, to make the passage from particular to general, or vice versa. Let us press on and in an attempt to convince more quickly, let us take an example, whether or not it is valid for the law. What example? This one. And certainly when I say this very example, I already say something more and something less; I say something that goes beyond the tode ti, the this of the example. The example itself, as such, overflows its singularity as much as its identity. This is why there are no examples while at the same time there are only examples. (emphasis added)7 We should note that Derrida uses and plays with the traditional metaphysical notion of example at the outset when he says, tongue in cheek, perhaps, “in an attempt to convince” (the rhetorical posture of exemplarity) “more quickly” (the need for the economy of textuality for Derrida and for his readers, one might assume). “Let us take an example” (from where? as a decontextualized instance? taken from?), and he ends with the paradoxical claim, “whether or not it is valid for the law.” The example, then, would be of what use here? Is this not the function of exemplarity itself: to exemplify the law, for which it stands, by which it is invoked, and to which it owes allegiance and meaning? How could the status of the example become “whether or not” or irrelevant, hence, questionable, and still be useful, meaningful, or convincing? All of this is left unsaid here, but this Pandora’s pandamonium opens the way for our analysis that follows We pursue and address this overflow that Derrida claims here, without evidence, proof, or illustration, without example, one might say. That examples

4

INTRODUCTION

seem to either inflate beyond themselves and/or self-destruct is another mysterious claim that we seek to unravel here. If this is happening when examples are in play in a discourse, any discourse, then (1) how is this possible? and (2) what consequences do these other dimensions have for any and all usage of examples, or what we will call exemplarity? Tracking these mysteries requires a methodology unlike Derrida’s, though not either for or against his. This tracking will be an issue of the functioning of exemplarity in a context, namely, Rousseau’s Emile, where we find one of the widest possible arrays of the many structures of exemplarity in a discursive setting. Tracking this usage, then, will be our first task: to locate and follow without assuming the metaphysical (foreclosure) of the general/particular matrix in advance. That this matrix continues to foreclose, or make invisible, this problematic also must be addressed. The best and most articulate example is to be found in Alexander Gelley’s recent collection of essays,8 which claims to focus on exemplarity in this “modern age” when to think of the generals, universals, or the transcendant as adhered to by the ancients and medievals is, he says, no longer credible.9 Ironically, far from displacing the general/particular matrix, these essays (with one exception)10 play out, even in the most intricate of analyses, this very foreclosure of the issue with which we aim to take issue. Just when exemplarity is on the brink of being revealed as something other than its metaphysical demarcation, as functioning in ways that make this structure suspect, the meaning of exemplarity itself is never questioned, and these other functions are given other names, leaving the foreclosure of the issue intact. At issue for us: What is being and has been discovered at these moments but not seen? What is uncovered and then concealed? What is revealed but not thematized? Revealing the problematic of foreclosure is only the beginning, however, and what is needed is to artculate and describe the structures operative though concealed within exemplarity as a labyrinth of discursive functions. In Part 2 we will turn to Rousseau’s explicit claims concerning exemplarity as he both understands and misunderstands it. This too has many levels, including a level of discourse on examples “for the tutor” (of Emile, Rousseau’s ruse of the fictional, ideal, singular pupil/son), and another level “for us,” the reader or audience of this performance. Following a Heideggerian trajectory, we will seek to reveal what is in play in the discourse but left unthematized as such; what is presupposed and what seems to go without having been said and is not addressed by Rousseau directly but that maneuvers the argument as it stands. This leads us to the structures of exemplarity operative within the text yet oftentimes only implicitly available. These will be shown to be outside and other than the metaphysical matrix of the general/particular, so that many labyrinths are in play, sometimes acting simultaneously on the discourse to make it appear as it does. Part 3 returns us to Derrida’s analysis of Rousseau, which does not focus primarily on Emile and the issues of exemplarity per se. We will analyze again

Introduction

5

how his discourse functions and uses exemplarity to perform the analysis he does and to show how this usage exhibits something other than his own claims for exemplarity. Ironically, here we have his own claims being outside of the metaphysical foreclosure and his usage as relying on that same narrowed and what one might call mythic formulation. In turn, we seek to locate the “excesses of exemplarity” that his own later work has thematized somewhat. The issue also will be what forms these excesses have, and for us it will not be that of the secret, as it is for Derrida and that of the valorization of the undecidable. Finally, we will turn back to the earliest and most thorough articulation of a theory of exemplarity, as laid out by Aristotle under the category of rhetoric. This turning back will take us to the place of the foreclosure and also to the opening to what else exemplarity exhibits in discourse, even in that of Aristotle. The very moment of the foreclosure will be marked here to reveal the opening that is concomitant with it, which grounds this enterprise as a whole. This foreclosure is still very much with us today and marks most of the discourse on exemplarity, as well as, more significantly, what goes without saying in the pandemic of usage of exemplarity—in life and in discourse. The foreclosure of which we speak here is both revelatory and obfuscatory, and we will examine both in some detail. Paul De Man hinted at this when he signaled the betrayal that marks the usage of examples whenever they are assumed to fit neatly and persuasively into the general/particular matrix. Derrida has recently returned to this issue of exemplarity in relation to literature and again to the problem or virtue of undecidability therein. As he says: There is in literature, in the exemplary secret of literature, a chance of saying everything without trading upon the secret. When all hypotheses are permitted, groundless ad infinitum, about the meaning of the text, or the final intentions of an author . . . when there is no longer even any sense in making decisions about some secret . . . when it is the call of this secret . . . then the secret impassions us. Even if there is none, even if it does not exist.11 Thus the “exemplary secret of literature” seems to be its very status as undecidable in the realm and for the realm of truth telling—epistemology. Derrida valorizes this undecidability here, exemplary in literature, as the exemplary secret and perhaps in turn as the secret of exemplarity itself. For him: As for the exemplary secret of literature allow me to add this note before concluding. Something of literature will have begun when it

6

INTRODUCTION

is not possible to decide whether, when I speak of something, I am indeed speaking of something (of the thing itself, this one for itself ) or if I am giving an example of something or an example of the fact that I can speak of something, my way of speaking about something, of the possibility of speaking in general of something, or again of writing these words, etc.12 We are on the brink of discovering the ontological status of exemplarity, yet Derrida turns away from it just as he signals it above. One might well ask concerning the above claim: What is the status of the switching “or” that he uses to move from one undecidable option to the next? Are they really conjunctions that add and multiply the options and not switchers that would make each mutually incompatible with the others? The issue for us concerns the capacity for exemplarity that Derrida signals here as being inherent (in potentia) in all things, or, as he says, the thing itself. There is a theatricality here marked by exemplarity that seems to prohibit knowing for sure and thus knowing at all whether something is an example or not, or an example of being an example or not, and so forth. What makes this recession possible, and what makes the potential of exemplification itself possible? Can nothing resist, or better, is not this potential as potential inherent and thus ontological? Derrida’s analysis continues with what appears to be the valorization of concealment, of the secrecy of the secret, of being hidden from view and the gaze in particular, epistemologically, of the other. As he says of exemplarity: For example, suppose I say “I,” that I write in the first person or that I write a text, as they say, “autobiographically.” No one will be able to seriously contradict me if I claim (or hint at by ellipsis, without thematizing it) that I am not writing an “autobiographical” text but a text on autobiography of which this very text is an example. (emphasis added)13 In other words, no one would seriously be able to defend choosing or deciding if something is an example or not (or the real thing, as Derrida sets it up). For Derrida, this does not lead to the ontological status of exemplarity but instead to the value of the secret, and the exemplary status of literature as keeping that secret—as undecidability. Again he says: No one will seriously be able to contradict me if I say (or hint, etc.) that I am not writing about myself but on “I,” on any “I” at all, or on the “I” in general, by giving an example.

Introduction

7

I am only an example, or I am only exemplary. I am speaking of something to give an example of something (an “I”) of someone who speaks of something. And I can give an example of an example. (emphasis added)14 Again at issue for us, assuming for the moment the validity of Derrida’s claims here, is how are they possible? Or what must exemplarity be that this slippage or what Derrida calls undecidability or what we call theatricality of exemplarity is possible? How is it that one cannot tell whether something is an example or not? The question might serve us better if we ask: What is this pervasiveness of exemplarity that haunts all things and indeed things as things? It is again the ontological question not the epistemological frustration of the undecidable, we suggest. Further, one needs to ask how this supposed transformation from the nonexemplary to the example is itself possible. What happens to the thing or to me when it/I become an example, as if this was not the case to begin with. This is what DeMan has called the “transaction” that is always already frustrated. Yet, for Derrida, here it is always already possible and, indeed, even uncontrollable. Derrida extends the issue beyond literature in the following way when he says: What I have just said about speaking in general on some subject [above] . . . is already valid for every trace in general.15 This “what has been said” here is referring to this exemplary possibility as a potential of all things—they could always become examples, hence, implying a prior nonexemplary status. That literature is only an example now also is brought in to seemingly universalize exemplarity and the undecidability that Derrida locates there. Literature is only exemplary of what happens everywhere each time there is some trace (or grace, i.e., each time there is something rather than nothing; each time that there is (es gibt) and each time that it gives [ca donne] without return, without reason, freely, and if there is what there is (i.e., testimony, bearing witness) and even before every speech act in the strict sense. The “strict” sense is moreover always extended by the structure of exemplarity.16 It is this “always” here that is taken back as it presents itself, as only a possibility “it is always possible that this was only an example, not me, but an example, not my autobiography but an example of autobiography.” That secret, the

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INTRODUCTION

secrecy at issue here for Derrida, is underwritten by exemplarity, and as such it underwrites the trace. What is ironic here is that this underwriting is itself not pursued, but instead the metaphysical foreclosure of exemplarity as the elixir between general and particular for thought is unquestioned. John Caputo’s recent text, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, for all of its innovation and creativity and critical analysis of detail in Derrida’s work, also reinvokes the foreclosure of which we speak here. This is not an indictment but a remark of description to note that this powerful metaphysical closure and the assumptions therewith are in place, even in such a text as one of the most thorough analyses of Derrida to date. Consider in what follows the easy slide from “for example” to “singularity” here, as particularity and in turn the law and generality, which are simultaneously invoked. The tout autre, the wholly other: God, for example, or any singularity whatever, no matter what. Like the singularity of an event whose uniqueness makes each occurrence both an unprecedented first time and an unrepeatable last time.17 We seem to have the idiom here, the wholly other, yet by a mark of the colon it is transformed into God, for example, or any singularity whatever. What makes the wholly other or any singularity whatever into an example? How is this economy of exemplarity so easily ready-to-hand here? What makes it visible and invisible at the same time is our question here. Caputo continues: The wholly other is any singularity whatever, whoever, whose thisness we cannot lift up, cannot generalize, cannot universalize, cannot formalize, any singularity which fixes us in this place so that we cannot look away, cannot look up to the eidos of which it would be “but an example” which would allow us to get on top of it, dominate it, enable us to envisage it instead of finding ourselves fixed by its gaze. Derrida here takes up a uniquely biblical sense of singularity, as opposed to a Greek sense of subsuming the less real particular under the truer unversal.18 Leaving aside just how singular singularity can be, as an example earlier, and for Derrida as the idiom, the “I” which can always become (however latent within it one might think) an example. Leaving all of this aside, consider the notion of exemplarity that Caputo invokes above, as if it goes without saying, as self-evident, the elixir of thinking. True to his style of negative theology, the nonexemplary is defined by what it cannot do, as he says, since it, the seemingly radically, irreducible nonexemplary, singular as wholly other, God,

Introduction

9

for example, cannot “universalize, generalize, formalize, cannot fix us with its gaze in any one spot, cannot reach an eidos, form, or Idea.” All of this, by the trick of the photographic negative, can thus be applied as assumed by Caputo’s unthematic use of exemplarity, since he says, by implication, if the above were true “it would be but an example.” Thus minimized and maximized at the same time, “example” stands in here for the villain, which would simultaneously, it would seem, paralyze us and which we could dominate, get on top of, and envisage. The seen one sees in this seer’s paradise. More straightforwardly, what Caputo invokes under the sign of example is precisely the metaphysical foreclosure that we seek to examine and problematize, to rearticulate in what follows. The citation from the Derrida text from which Caputo draws this dramatic conclusion of Derrida’s singular adherence to a biblical rather than a Greek notion of the singular, the idom, reads as follows: The other, that is God or no matter who, precisely any singularity whatsoever, as soon as every other is wholly other. For the most difficult, indeed the impossible, dwells there: there where the other loses his name or is able to change it in order to become no matter what other.19 This “or” again opens the door to the secret of literature, or the literary as the place of the secret. The secret here is not singularity, however, in either the biblical or the Greek (as metaphsyical, as particular related to a general, for Caputo). The secret is the undecidability that relates for Derrida the nonexemplary thing itself to the exemplifying functions of its theatricality and disguisability. It might be “just an example” or an example of an example, and so on. This status of undecidability for the potential of exemplarity located always already for Derrida in the singular is precisely the Greek sense, a particular as possible example and not, we suggest, Caputo’s sense of absolute irreducible singularity—Christ, for example. We are back to the status of the “with” with which we began this exergue. To be with Christ has its undecidable dimensions, to be sure, but also its double-bind structure; to command to follow and the impossibility of merely following—being with. Our task in what follows picks up these threads that we have sought to outline above to weave them into something we call the labyrinths of exemplarity. Rather than the metaphorics of tapestry and textuality that entail and presuppose structures of doubleness, always and everywhere in Derrida we seek to bracket out the diadic as a ready-made option for (mis)understanding and (mis)articulating exemplarity. Instead we will trace the path of the functioning of exemplarity and seek to articulate the multifaceted aspects of this powerful and pervasive structure in our thinking and lives.

10

INTRODUCTION

Ultimately the issues of exemplarity affect not only literature and the secrets of discourse, which remain undecidable, but the nature of epistemology and ontology. If exemplarity can be shown to be part of the ontological structure of things themselves and in turn part of the necessary structure of epistemology not only as inside the general/ particular matrix but well beyond it, then we shall have accomplished the beginning of our task here. It is not so simple to say that everything is or could become an example, or that one might resist this usurpation. If instead we are always already examples and can be seen and known only through these structures, then it becomes crucial to better understand the kinds of detours and theatricality that are actually taking place in this potent elixir of thinking.

PART

1

Threads of Exemplarity

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1

For Emile

The labyrinths of exemplarity take a number of forms and operate on a number of levels in the text of Emile. In order to begin to elucidate these pluralities we will separate, for epistemological rather than ontological purposes, the usage, functions, and structures of exemplarity from the thematized, explicit, formalized, and formulated “theories” of exemplarity for Rousseau concerning the issue of pedagogy in particular. That pedagogy, for him, is tantamount to a theory of human nature, culture, and capacity will be explored as well as the connections he establishes between pedagogy, rhetoric, and philosophy itself. That the philosophical enterprise is necessarily discursive, therefore, rhetorical and communicative, makes it necessarily framed by the issues of pedagogy. Thus the pedagogical theories articulated in Emile form a framework for his understanding of philosophical discursivity itself. With respect to the usage of exemplarity, which we will call its threads, following a metaphorics of textuality, texture, weaving, threading, and stitching, we will begin by analyzing Rousseau’s explicitly marked moments of exemplarity. This is not simply an issue of when or where he says, “for example,” but rather of where his multiple notions of exemplarity infiltrate and inform his own text as he moves from what he calls the “illustrations” to the “theory” and back again. These threads are multiple and form many tapestries here, not simply one, unified whole. Initially, the way exemplarity is used to frame Emile’s experience—from infancy to adulthood—will be traced, through his relations to nature, to his tutor, to the idea of property, and to the “necessity of things.” In addition, and not without interweaving, his relations to others will be traced via the thematics of pity, history (Plutarch’s Lives, in particular), fiction (Robinson Crusoe), the transition from Telemachus for Homer1 to Télémaque for Fénélon,2 and the transformation of his travels into descriptions of sociopolitical and economic issues in general. What is at stake 13

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THREADS OF EXEMPLARITY

here will be the way Rousseau frames the frames for Emile to see (and constitute) himself through and in turn be framed (and constituted) by. Education thus will be understood through this process of “going through,” undergoing, being framed, and framing in turn. These are only the first threads of exemplarity in our project. Following this, we will focus on Sophie’s educational process—from infancy to her meeting Emile, her future spouse—as this is again mediated by exemplarity itself. Her relations to herself as well as to others will be traced at each stage. Finally, the third level we will examine here will be the usage of exemplarity “for us”: the stated “we” of Rousseau’s text. At this level, the “we” is both the reader (outside of the text) and the tutor (inside of the text), though later these two audiences will be separated, and the relations of exemplarity for each will be discussed individually. At the level of performance and usage, that is, the practice of rhetoric and discourse, Rousseau combines the two “we’s” so that he gives the tutor/reader examples concerning how “we” are to understand and see the pedagogical/philosophical project itself. These frames will be elucidated via the fabrics of Emile (for us), Sophie (for us) and, of course, their relations (for us). The shifts in these three sets of relations will be explored as one structure of exemplarity shifts almost imperceptibly into another. The labyrinths of vision and hence action for Rousseau here indicate a rather complex relation to the traditional “metaphysics of presence.” That Rousseau is framing exemplarity itself as a way of enframing and thereby constituting vision, experience, and, hence, thought and understanding will be clarified in what follows. In turn, that he does not abide by nor submit to, constitute or reconstitute the so-called “metaphysics of presence” also will be argued. “Presence” is always already a result for Rousseau, in everyday life as well as epistemologically and ontologically, as we shall see. The traditional Cartesian notion of the “self ” will thus be challenged here inasmuch as Rousseau is thought by some3 to adhere to a notion of self-identity based on “the metaphysics of presence.” The desire for presence will be shown to orient neither Emile nor the tutor, but rather a certain relation to desire itself that is constitutive of experience as thrown, as cast out, cast away, and as casting in turn. That Emile thereby illustrates the fort/da structure of writing, as Derrida4 calls it, also will be shown here. In turn, his experience of repetition in and through and only as a result of exemplarity will be shown to be a relation to iterability5 so that Emile’s identity, at any particular stage, will be constituted and thereby ruptured by this structure. Again, far from explicating a notion of personal identity as Cartesian, certain and present-to-itself, Rousseau’s Emile will provide evidence for just the reverse, that is, a notion of the postmodern self or subject that is always already thrown from itself, toward itself and this for the most part and necessarily, unbeknownst to itself. We are not reading a Heideggerian Dasein into the

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text of Emile, but rather claim to be finding it there in and via the issue of exemplarity as it organizes the very texture of Emile’s life. From the “threads of exemplarity” we will pursue Rousseau’s “theories of exemplarity” as he provides a metanarrative “for the tutor,” on the one hand, and the reader, on the other hand, concerning the essential place of exemplarity in pedagogical theory and practice. These moments, which occur throughout the text and life of Emile/Emile, provide a network of explicit, thematized claims for what one might call Rousseau’s theory of exemplarity. However, the many claims, contexts, and references for the theoretical eruptions of exemplarity do not cohere or collapse into a unified theory. Thus we will search beyond this level of sporadic though obsessively repeating metanarrativity to consider what we will call the “unthematized” theories at work in Rousseau’s discourse itself. This will return us to the detail with which we began, but at a different (neither higher nor lower, but other) level. That usage (or practice) is the expression or manifestation of theoretical assumptions will be our principal assumption here, a metaphysical one to be sure, indeed, the metaphysical assumption par excellance, but that the underpinnings of Rousseau’s multiple levels of usage with the recurrent issues of iterability, nonpresence of the self to itself, the framing and enframing of experience and vision, will necessarily shift our focus from one unthematized guiding assumption to a plethora of unthematized networks, allowing for the usages as we find them. In turn, we must think the relation between usage, thematized expositions of exemplarity, and the unthematized other imposition, implicit but operative, within the usage. Rather than predict or foretell in advance what these relations will be, we will aim toward whatever they are, to reveal step by step on site rather than prescribe the findings here. Thus we will not say in advance any more than the direction in which we will begin to analyze the text of Emile. Precisely what the notions of exemplarity—in place, in usage, thematized, and unthematized—will be revealed to be cannot be stated in advance as such, and the reasons for this will emerge as the analysis proceeds. Emile’s “own experience” is never truly his own, nor is it separable from relations to “the other” as manifest by the tutor, Robinson, and Telemachus, to name just a few. What is at stake thus in distinguishing here between Emile’s “own experience” and his “knowledge of others,” which is based upon and constitutes his knowledge of himself, and, hence, “his own” experience, is the structure of the text, Emile itself. Rousseau seeks to take “us,” the reader, through the experiences of Emile as much as he places Emile in specific situations to provoke certain particular experiences. Thus Emile’s journey from himself (via the other) to the other via himself will form our path here in the analysis of the same. That the self-other relation is a nondialectical one will be

16


established in what follows, as well as the fact that exemplarity—via a multiplicity of foundations—organizes Emile’s relation to himself and thus his “own” experience. It is to these structures that we will now turn in order to begin our analysis in a sense where Rousseau begins his (of Emile) and Emile begins his (of himself, and life in general). Our aim here also will thus be pedagogical, inasmuch as all philosophy has the form of pedagogy, and thus all philosophical discourse is pedagogical discourse.

EMILE’S “OWN” EXPERIENCE Rousseau opens the “case of Emile” with a few remarks concerning the difficulties of his own method and project here, insofar as the function of the tutor will be central to the constitution of Emile’s experience. How can one find a tutor suitable for such a project? How can one find a model, an example for Emile, which ultimately will be a model of Emile himself—as a result or product of himself? In short, how can we create or envision the infant Emile being educated by the future and adult Emile? How can Emile be both the subject and the object of his own pedagodical, developmental, and transformative/formative process? He is the arche and telos of himself here, yet Rousseau recognizes that this structure, which organizes the “case as a whole,” which will mirror itself and allegorize itself through each and every stage, cannot be explicated, articulated, or lived through, except by violating itself. In short, he will presuppose the tutor (Emile) as a result of the very process yet to be experienced by Emile (the infant). These two are not related, not tied by blood; the tutor is not to be Emile’s father, for reasons that are essential, as we shall see. What this avoidance avoids also will be examined in due time. At this juncture, we have the infinite regress of beginning confessed by Rousseau as he at once manifests it and states its impossibility. He simultaneously insists upon it and violates it as he says the following: It would be necessary that the governor had been raised for his pupil, that the pupil’s domestics had been raised for their master, that all those who have contact with him had received the impressions that they ought to communicate with him. It would be necessary to go from education to education back to I know not where. How is it possible that a child be well raised by one who was not well raised himself? But let us suppose this marvel found.6 What is necessary here is precisely the impossible situation of having Emile-the-adult precede Emile-the-child in order to be sure that Emile, the growing youth, will become himself, the adult. This would ensure the process,

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close the circle, and confine and restrict the uncertainties of the example/Exemplar, and this cannot be done a priori. Thus the Exemplar—to be known as the tutor—entails the possibility of his own failure, of the nonexemplarity within the Exemplar, or better, of what is not-supposed-to-be-exemplary but can always become so. This contamination as prescribed within the structure of exemplarity itself of the always possible detour—away from the telos, away from the destination—will surface repeatedly in the stages of Emile’s education. For now it is necessary to show that from the beginning Rousseau recognizes the impossibility of his own demands, and his response to them is to create a fiction that would be what he ought to be—that can be controlled through and through, though he has no history, no past, and a fortiori, no education. Such is the frame in which Rousseau situates his introduction to our/Emile’s tutor. We shall return to this mirroring relation that has distortion prescribed within it from the beginning, but first let us make a detour through the issue of masks as they exhibit another aspect of exemplarity in the constitution of Emile’s “own experience” and the experience of this “ownness” as a self and as his world. Very often Emile’s pedagogical process takes the form of repetition, which does not itself repeat but shifts the form of itself over time. We might call this “iterability,” to use the Derridean vernacular, but let us not be too hasty to introduce the closure of names, let alone proper names here. Rousseau claims that all children have a “fear of masks” (and a love of the truth, one might argue). It matters little whether the mask itself (whatever this might mean) is pleasant or fearful (itself ) in this regard; young children fear them all. Notice the role of “itself ” here as a mark of the narrator, not the tutor and not necessarily Rousseau. What is a fearful thing in itself, or a pleasurable one? What can a fearful thing-in-itself be, if one does not ask fearful for whom, since a “thing,” in this case, a mask, clearly does not produce its own relation (indeed, emotion) to itself. Or does it, for Rousseau? The place of fear in Rousseau’s thinking—throughout his corpus—allows him to generate a theory of the origins of language, society, culture, and the political. Thus it is not surprising that he uses this issue in his description of the infancy of Emile as well, to begin to illustrate (exemplify) Emile’s relation to himself and his world. This fear is not to be enhanced, however; it is to be overcome—in every case—in order to create language, society, and the political as well as the successful pedagogical process. Thus “fear” serves metonymically to connect the “case of Emile” with the “other” cases of language, society, and the political. It also serves here synechdochically to stage the issue of the transformation of the natural into the cultural (from the pleasure principle to reality, for Freud, though the content is reversed, from pleasure to something less than pleasure), the transformation of pain into pleasure—whether the mask is pleasurable or painful, we should recall. Fear, then, as an example here is the first in a possible series (though infinite, if listed) of emotions to be

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“transformed,” not out of the emotional realm but from natural emotions to cultural ones. In addition, fear is to be overcome by a process now called “habituation” in behavioral psychology. Repetition of the fearful, if associated with pleasure, will gradually shift to a pleasurable experience by the internalization of what was once, in the beginning, external. Thus fear is taken in, inverted, and subsumed, absorbed by the self but behind the mask of pleasure—the pleasurable or painful masks. Is fear, then, as an example here, a particular that would signify a general, for example, emotion in general, or pedagogy in general, or Emile’s nature in general? No. None of these types of generals apply here or are relevant to the situation in question. Rather, fear can be seen as a law of the series7 (not given but supposed). It can be seen as having a metonymic structure insofar as it relates the case of Emile and pedagogy to the “other” uses and cases in the corpus of Rousseau. It also can be understood as staging a relation of synechdoche so that this part (fear) substitutes for, represents, and preempts the whole it stands in for. Thus the role of fear here is to teach teaching, or to teach learning to Emile; that is, “fear” becomes the part-object for repetition itself. This repetition that alters both the “object” and the “subject” by altering simultaneously their relations is the whole that is both invoked by fear and preempted by it. This repetition is what allows for the destruction of fear (its repression, perhaps) and the outward manifestation of its ingestion. This repetition is thus a whole that is not a whole, a completion that destroys itself, if successful, which Rousseau tells us, it is. Furthermore, we are not presented en bloc with Emile’s fear of masks but rather introduced first to the general issue: children’s fears of animals in general, and following this frame, of masks (one could presume of animals, but Rousseau does not say as much). From the general issue, Rousseau zooms the lens in to the case of Emile, as syllogistically belonging to this issue and problem and, hence, the general procedures of pedagogy introduced by “children in general,” “animals in general,” and “masks in general.” But the syllogism is interrupted and left incomplete with the insertion of the “example” of Astyanax in his relation to Andromachus and Hector. One might quickly metaphysically conclude that Astyanax will serve here for the example of fear, on the one hand, and of Emile, on the other hand. But the situation is not so simple. Let us return first to the fears of Astyanax at the moment of saying “goodbye” to his father. As Hector reaches for the child (his son), the boy (Astyanax) manifests two complex reactions. First, he shows a fear of the helmet with plumes, etc., and second, he (Rousseau tells us) does not recognize his father while bedecked with this same helmet. The father’s response is that he takes off the helmet (a fort/da situation, perhaps), presents himself (as the child usually sees him) to Astyanax, and caresses the child. Gradually he introduces the child to the plumes, which evidently please the young boy as he begins to play with them.

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19

In addition, the nurse, also waiting in the wings here, places the helmet on her head, all the while “laughing” at the situation. Which situation? We cannot be sure here, but what is at stake in this “case” for Rousseau for Emile is that the laughter and the gradual process of coming from the known “father” to the unknown “father” transforms Astyanax’s relation to the “fearful object”: his father. What is not mentioned here, either by Homer or Rousseau, is the possibility that little Astyanax is not at all fearful of the “plumes on the helmet” but cries when he sees his father so bedecked for the same reason Andromachus is not at all pleased with the same scene. That Hector is off to war, in battle dress, and may never return home is assumed to be “beyond” the awareness and comprehension of little Astyanax. He is not afraid of his father’s possible death or of the dangers than are immanent for him but merely of the plumes on the helmet. That the plumes please him is thus not accounted for in this story, since they serve to link the transition from fear of helmet/father to the overcoming of the same fear, if not the outright pleasure from the same scene. The nurse’s laughter and, indeed, the nurse herself are not the central part of the original Homeric rendition but are made so by Rousseau.8 In fact, the issue of laughter is what turns the tide in Rousseau’s rendition of this pedagogical example. As he says, returning to Emile and the issue of masks: “I will laugh, everyone will laugh, the child will laugh.”9 That the contagion of laughter at the repulsive/fearful object will change the fear into pleasure is not seen by Rousseau as a problem but rather as a solution to the problem of a child’s natural fears. These natural fears are unnatural fears inasmuch as they will not adapt the child to sociocultural-political life but rather separate, isolate, and hermetically seal him off from the same. But Rousseau’s reading of Homer, in an effort to use Astyanax as an example, transforms the Homeric instance in a profound and not insignificant manner. Once Hector removes his helmet, Homer tells us, Astyanax is not encouraged to play with the plumes, but instead he takes the boy in his arms and prays to Zeus “grant that this boy of mine may be, like me, pre-eminent in Troy; as strong and brave as I; a mighty King of Ilium.”10 With these words uttered, he hands over the boy not to a laughing nurse but to his wife Andromachus, herself in tears for fear of the fate of her husband now going off to war. Again, that Astyanax is not following the example of his mother here, and hence is not experiencing fear due to either understanding the pathos of the situation, or by simply being open to the contagion of feeling expressed by his mother—fear—would seem to make this case less than or at least other than one of an example. Of what is Astyanax an example if he is one? How can one distinguish the fear he expresses seeing the helmet on his father (whom he presumably does not recognize) from that of his mother seeing the same spectacle who

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presumably does recognize the warrior as her husband? What is at stake for us is not so much an examination of Homer’s understanding of Astyanax’s fear but rather of Rousseau’s reading of this fear and of his usage of the fear to follow the general claim that “all children fear masks” (here Astyanax fears the mask of his father), and in turn to precede the particular solution to Emile’s fears—the syllogistic fears resulting from the major premise/minor premise conjunction. Again, what is at stake here is the place of the Example— Astyanax—though misread, indeed, due to this misreading by Rousseau. Astyanax is taught to love his father, or the latter’s plumes at least, via the laughing nurse, in Rousseau’s rendition, rather than an appeal to an outside intervention from Zeus to “make the [cowardly and fearful] boy brave,” “like his father,” “with plumes.” Why is the nurse laughing here, in Rousseau’s account? Because “he will laugh, everyone will laugh, [and hence] Emile will laugh,” as we cited earlier. Thus the result here, the case of Emile, in this instance in relation to his “own” fears, which will have been transformed into pleasure (not the pleasure of fear, but presumably real pleasure, though Rousseau leaves this strangely ambiguous) will inform the reading of the “example” (Rousseau’s Astyanax) to make it follow rather than precede Emile’s experience as a victory over fear. The battle will be won therefore without Hector and especially here without Zeus. This is not exemplary for Rousseau, in that these aspects of the story nullify the translatability—analogy, allegory, and translation—that Rousseau aims to establish here between Emile and Astyanax and, by implication, himself and Homer, though this is not our issue yet. Homer will surface again with the emergence of Emile’s sexual desires and the control of sexuality itself, for both Emile and Sophie, as we shall see later. The issue here can be summed up in the following way: how can the example precede what it actually follows? That is, how can Astyanax precede Emile, when it is Emile’s fear that will eliminate Astyanax? It is the laughing from Emile to Astyanax that will transform Astyanax into Rousseau’s Astyanax rather than Homer’s. Thus the exemplarity relations here multiply themselves as allegories allegorize themselves. More specifically, Rousseau’s reading of Astyanax via the fearless Emile, in order to show in advance how Emile’s fears can be conquered by analogy to the ways that Astyanax’s were (always already) overcome (by Rousseau), shows also that the relation between Homer’s Astyanax and Rousseau’s Astyanax is precisely analogous to the pairs of Astyanax (with fear) and Astyanax (without fear), on the one hand, and Emile with and Emile without fear, on the other hand. In this case, as in many others to come, less is more for Rousseau, later is earlier, and the exemplified is in truth the exemplifier. To ask who came first, Emile or Astyanax, is thus a nonsensical question here, since we have more than one Emile and more than one Astyanax, plus we have this duplicity doubled by the descriptions of Rousseau and Homer as they replay the “experienced” fear for us.

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Exemplarity as it emerges here takes on the forms of allegory, analogy, enframing, contamination, parasitism, and center/margin valorizations, to name a few. What it decidedly does not do in this “case” of the case, at least, is simply translate a general into a particular or a particular into a general via the ladder (simultaneously going up and down) of the syllogism. What we have framed here is the disruption of the syllogism in the very attempt to put the ladder in place. Rather than simply multiple syllogisms, or a double ladder, a stepladder, we have revealed structures operative here that are simply other than syllogistic. The ladder of philosophy thus has no privilege here; indeed, it is shown to be an epi-phenomenon, constituted by the erasing of these other multiple, overlapping, and interacting structures. From the issue of “masks” and the means of masking, if not transforming, the original fears of Emile, Rousseau moves to the “place” and the “placing” of the boy’s experience in the context of nature. He moves Emile, in short, to the country, though not to the wilderness. From the evils and vices of bad examples in the city, we turn with the tutor, the narrator, Rousseau, and Emile to the “good examples” of “country people,” namely, peasants and, in particular, peasant children. The first reason Rousseau offers us for their positive contextual exemplarity concerns the realm of language acquisition. Peasant mothers, since they often are absent or at least at-a-distance (fort) from their children (i.e., in the fields and hard at work) thereby induce their children to speak clearly and loudly. Peasant children learn, by necessity, to enunciate letters and sounds in general more clearly than do city children. An added absence in this picture is the lack of a governess or nurse for the poor peasant children and hence again the advantage of having to “speak for themselves.” The theory is, Rousseau suggests, that by being-in-this-context, Emile will, “by example,” pick up these same traits of “better pronunciation.” Exemplarity is at work here in the matrix of contiguity, which is manifest as absence and distance (fort), on the one hand, and proximity or closeness (da), on the other hand. The fort/da here of Emile’s relation to peasants will take on a double relation to their children. He is not to become a “mere peasant,” not to follow their example as a model, but rather to speak as they speak with regard to two aspects in particular of their speech. This “example” too, of speech, does not take the form of a model to follow for Emile but rather a partial object to repeat: a fetish. What Emile is not to copy, repeat, or ingest from the peasant children’s speech is their tendancy to always speak too loudly, too exactly, too roughly.11 Thus Emile’s relation to these children also is structured by a fort/da relation; he is not to merely do what they do, though he is to be “influenced” by them, by their own existential fort/da relation to their parentsin-the-fields. Emile is to keep a distance from these children (fort) while at the same time allowing himself to be contaminated by them (da). How he is to mark the distinction here, between what he is to withstand and what he is to

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be influenced by, cannot be accounted for by Emile himself or his own relation to others yet. In turn, the paradoxical plan of the tutor enters in order to establish the possibility of the fort/da in its proper place for Emile’s earliest experiences and relations to and from—of contamination and distance—the other children. As Rousseau says, “if children are left to themselves, they set a bad example for each other. They will use only the easiest of syllables to pronounce.”12 Thus if Emile is left alone with the other children, he will learn poor pronunciation, Rousseau now suggests, rathen than good—clear and distinct—pronunciation. The difference here between fort and da, between Emile and the others, is thus to be determined (implicitly) by the tutor. The tutor will, it seems, be able to control the contagion of the bad examples offered by the “presence” of and interaction with peasant children. But the issue now becomes how the peasant children can be both a good example and a bad example at the same time, and further, how they can be “models” for good and bad pronunciation at the same time. One might think a choice between these values would be necessary here. According to classical metaphysics, such would be the case in order to “make sense” of Rousseau here (and, by implication, eliminate the hints of contradiction surfacing). But let us bracket out the “law of non-contradiction”13 here for a moment and analyze the double roles of exemplarity as they emerge here prior to submission or repression by the law. The peasant children exhibit a usage of language that Rousseau deems useful and valuable for Emile to learn. In addition, he suggests that Emile himself cannot judge what is good, useful, and valuable for himself, since he is governed, as all children are, by necessity and pleasure— including their conflicts and interlacings. Thus Emile’s pleasure would be to learn the “easiest” syllables and to never learn what he should from the “examples” before him. In short, he has not yet learned to read examples or to read from examples. He simply absorbs, copies, and mimics at this stage whatever is around him. He determines nothing but is determined. He submits to laws that he has no awareness of as yet. Thus it befalls the tutor to frame the “examples” of peasant children’s speech for Emile. What is to be copied must be framed as what their speech is, and what is not to be copied, namely, the coarseness, roughness, and monolithic volume without discrimination of context, is to be concealed from Emile. In short, Emile as an example is framed for us here by this foregrounding and backgrounding (the foundations of perception itself, according to Merleau-Ponty14) by Rousseau, and in turn the peasant children as an example for Emile are framed by the tutor so that only part of their speech is “audible” to Emile, reaches Emile, and is perceptible by the absorbing, mimicking Emile. Such is the way he learns and experiences the world at this stage. Examples are at the same instant, in-themselves both good and bad; or better, neither good nor bad. That is, they are, as Nietzsche might put it, “beyond good and evil.”

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What is not “beyond good and evil” is the framing, the enframing around them, in this case by the tutor (for Emile). The contagion of examples is the condition of the possibility (and impossibility) of education for Emile and thus framing15—foregrounding, backgrounding—becomes the central issue. This can now be understood as the hermeneutical aspect of exemplarity, but not in any traditional theory of hermeneutics.16 That examples can always be read otherwise is what is at stake here,17 and that examples to be examples must be framed as such; that is, examples always make their appearance as partial, as exceeding whatever determination is given to them from the hermeneutical standpoint. Thus they cannot be accounted for by a hermeneutical formulation but nonetheless exhibit a hermeneutical structure that allows them to be seen as examples as such. Returning to Emile, we thus find that the fort/da relation that makes possible the peasant child’s exemplary speech, which is in turn organizing Emile’s relation to those children, is in addition organizing and structuring Emile’s relation to himself via those examples. The tutor’s role in framing Emile’s experience as exemplary (contagious) is thus of necessity concealed. He is fort, from Emile’s point of view, but necessarily da by enframing what Emile takes to be his “own experience.” This structure will surface again and again as we proceed here, but for now let us note that exemplarity is presented here—in the frame of the peasants, in the frame of Emile—as allowing the fort/da structure to manifest itself. Revealing and concealing at the same instant, this notion of exemplarity is reminiscent of what De Man calls “textuality”18 itself and what Derrida calls “arche-writing.”19 Yet exemplarity is manifest here in this case in only one of its many modes. This is not the center of exemplarity, nor is it the margin. This is not the law of exemplarity, nor is it a mere example (in the sense of a particular). It is one of the threads of exemplarity, rather, and as such it is one of the many structures that we are seeking to elucidate here. It has no privileged place but is one of a multiplicity that as yet we have no name for, no concept of, and may ultimately suggest as a multiplicity as such—without closure. Returning to the peasant child’s speech example, there is one further issue that Rousseau insists must be taken into account, as it will affect Emile’s “own experience.” This is the problem of a child repeating words that he or she has simply heard spoken but does not (yet) understand the meaning of. Rote learning—merely external copying—is acceptable concerning the phonetic but not the semantic side of speech. It is acceptable for the letter of speech to be copied directly (in its best case, good pronunciation and clear enunciation) but not for the letters as such to be copied as such. That is, “a child,” Rousseau says as a general rule of thumb here, should only use words that he or she understands the meaning of. In other words, utility itself is to be the guide in learning vocabulary, not mere access via contagion of the auditory faculty. Again, the proximity to

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utility is the issue here, and again Rousseau takes Emile out to the country— the country of peasants. Peasants, contrary to the city bourgeoisie and aristocracy, are, we should recall, the people who work, for Rousseau. They “truly work,” and they work at the world’s oldest (and in a sense, noblest) profession: agriculture. We shall return to Emile’s first encounter with agriculture as such—planting beans—but for now his relation to this issue is decidedly fort. For Rousseau, the peasant children’s speech contains “few ideas,” their vocabulary is more limited (than city folk), and thus they know less, but they know it well. This, then, is the semantic example for Emile: to have few ideas, a small vocabulary, but to be able to use it appropriately. What is at stake here is propriety and its constitution, not semantics as such. Later it will be acceptable, indeed encouraged and necessary, for Emile to leave the country, the peasants, and their limitations behind. Only now he must learn, by their example, the connection between the spirit and the letter, and it is the peasants, Rousseau insists, who have more true spirit, that are plus juste than city folk, and this spirit is exemplified by their relation to language, limited though it is. This spirit of peasants that Emile is to learn is thus the inseparability of the spirit and the letter in language use itself, to never use the letter without also using (controlling) the spirit that inhabits that letter. In other words, one might say: do not send anonymous letters, but rather sign them always. In learning to sign his letter, to inhabit his words, to keep body and soul together, Emile thus learns the functions of language and language use itself as functional: useful. He learns, in short, the value of utility—the neccesity of incarnation (body and soul, spirit and letter) and thus has the tools for further reflection concerning his own relation to himself as linguistic; that is, as spirit and letter, and ultimately, how to be plus juste than city folk. All of these examples and structures of exemplarity are present in Emile’s “own experience” only as seeds of things to come. They are the “not yet” of the “always already,”20 and they have their origins in the excess of exemplarity, the shadows that of necessity are attached to the manifestation of the light, the other side of spirit/letter that will threaten this connection, this incarnation. The trinity (and its disruption) is at this stage still waiting in the wings, though prescripted by Rousseau here in Emile’s “own experience.” One might well ask, why privilege the country and indeed the peasants here in Emile’s linguistic pedagogy? Rousseau seeks to justify this privilege by using yet another structure of exemplarity. He argues that “what he himself has experienced” in the country can represent the “country as such” and thus the “country as such” can serve as an example for Emile. It is not that Rousseau himself grew up in the country. On the contrary, he only moved to the country much later as an adult, and not in the company or context of peasants. Thus the exemplary relation here between Rousseau’s experience and

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Emile’s experience is not an autobiographical repetition. Rousseau instead suggests that his partial (necessarily partial as one man, one life, one time, place, etc.) experience of the country can signify (exemplify) the country as such. This partiality here in standing for the whole—the fiction, as Hume21 would have it—takes the form via exemplarity of synechdoche. The partobject is now seen as the whole and is extended to fill the space—conceptual—for the complete object (which does not exist). Thus Emile is situated in a fantasy of the country as such as a totality that is based on an extension of the letter of Rousseau’s experience beyond its meaning (or referent in experience), beyond the actual, to another realm. In short, the synechdochal structure of exemplarity here that allows Rousseau to speak of the country as such—in a clear and distinct way—violates the very principle that he aims to inculcate into Emile by being-in-the country (the fiction) himself. Rousseau’s violation of the letter of his text, via exemplarity, to an extension beyond all possible experience, far from being useless, defines utility for him, though it is precisely this extension of the letter beyond the spirit (usage beyond meaning and understanding) that defines proper usage for Emile. In other words, the laws that are to organize Emile’s “own experience” are neither adhered to by the tutor, in constituting and enframing the same, nor are they adhered to by Rousseau, in constituting and enframing the same. What Emile is to learn— namely, propriety—must conceal, to be effective and useful, the very foundations of that propriety—namely, impropriety. We shall, of course, return to Rousseau’s own improprieties, but first we must address those of the tutor as he plays into Emile’s experience—framing it, constituting it, and concealed by it. The relations of exemplarity hereby invoked will be allegorized by the story of the magician, as we shall see. A third matrix of exemplarity relations emerges concerning the issue of mimesis between the child and the tutor. Far from being a unidirectional flow of influence, Rousseau sets up the mimetic exemplarity relations as “mirroring” processes that move in both directions: from tutor to child and from child to tutor (to child). We will thus begin with the former and follow Rousseau’s order of presentation of the latter, where we will find that Emile’s actions are to be repeated step by step by his tutor. How exemplarity operates in both cases, and between these apparently reversed processes, will form our focus of investigation here. Rousseau is renowned for his examples of fear, pain, and suffering as they relate to the origins of society, but these also are the dominant motifs in his theories of pedagogy. Consistent with his general notion of the imagination, as more powerful than actual (empirical) experience,22 he suggests that the occasions of accidents—necessary but accidental—in Emile’s childhood can serve as examples (for “us”—the tutor and reader) of pain, and in turn the example of pain can serve to reveal or illustrate the “proper” way to teach

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Emile to “properly” feel and hence interpet that same pain. In short, Rousseau claims, “It is less the blow than the fear that torments, when he is hurt.”23 Fear here concerns the meaning of his (Emile’s) pain when he hurts himself in play. Pain and fear connect in an exponential relation, due to the amplificatory capacities of the imagination. The fear is more painful than the pain itself, or at least in principle this is true. But the way to tame and restrict the imagination from turning a small pain into a deep fear of serious injury is to have the tutor intervene to mediate this relation (now “internal” for the child) between his pain and his fears (of the meaning of that pain). Rousseau adds, “He [Emile] will judge his pain as he sees that I [the tutor] judge it.”24 In turn, the tutor becomes an example for the process of judging itself. Insofar as Emile’s judgment will automatically follow that of the tutor, Rousseau supposes here in the painful example that the relation between the two judgments would seem to be one of mimesis—plain and simple. But there is another judgment being made here by Emile that is not a result of nor a copy of the tutor’s judgment. It is the judgment that allows for mimesis in the first place. It is the judgment that is in this situation “without example,” as Derrida might say.25 Being-without-example here involves the capacity of Emile to judge that the judgment of his tutor is to be followed (i.e., to be seen as an example). Rousseau notably does not mention this proto-judgment and presumably, since he denied rational capacities to children prior to the magical age of twelve, would insist that children are simply incapable of judgment as such, since they cannot yet “rationally deliberate”—the antecedent condition for all judgment, according to Aristotle.26 Yet why does Emile repeat the tutor’s judgment of his own pain? Why and how this is possible must still be asked. At this stage, Emile still has no “pity,” no empathy for others, and hence in turn he could not begin to understand the empathy of others for him (i.e., the tutor). So the question remains, what is the source of the tutor’s authority here over Emile so that the latter judges that the former is a good judge of the latter’s situation? The authority here, Rousseau insists, comes from “the necessity of things” that the tutor is supposed to both display and represent for Emile by his absolute stance: say no and mean it, Rousseau tells him absolutely. We shall return to this. At this point, we have the tutor presented for Emile as the correct interpreter of the latter’s experience. In itself, it has no meaning, and for himself, Emile’s experience provides no meaning—not without example. In short, the example of the tutor’s judgment in the case (for Emile) itself turns Emile’s actual experience—this pain here—into an example. The tutor’s judgment—it is not serious—thus operates in two different economies at the same time. The first is the productive relation to Emile’s judgment so that the first judgment (by the tutor) is an example for the second judgment (by Emile). Thus a form of rote learning, mimesis, external repetition seems in process here. Yet in giv-

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ing this pain a meaning, limiting the fear, giving it a name, in short, the tutor transforms the experience prior to interpretation into a representation. The meaning of the experience thus comes from the outside for Emile, and he accepts and adopts it. Insofar as the latter takes place, Emile now is able to “interpret” his own experiences—to truly feel pain not simply actually feel it. Hence, the truth and the actual are forever divided by the exemplarity relation exhibited by the tutor/external, which becomes internal/sovereign over the subject/Emile. The third exemplarity relation here between the actual and the true must be analyzed in these terms now. On what basis does Emile follow and judge the judgment of the tutor? On what basis does he allow the actual to be transformed into the true? Clearly this other frame of exemplarity is neither “actual” (an experience per se) nor “true” (given that this is the domain of the tutor’s/sovereign judgment). What status and what structures can Emile’s judgments of judgment (meta-judgments) thus take or have here? Let us tentatively call it the erotic matrix of exemplarity governed, if governed at all, by the laws of transference, as Freud described them.27 Emile cedes authority (his own) to the tutor only and on the basis of these laws of transference. The tutor is thought to know more and know better (than Emile’s imagination) due to the delusions of transference. These imaginary attributes include an assumption of omnipotence and omniscience, and in general the inflated virtues of perfection itself. Thus the tutor cannot be wrong, cannot err (yet) for Emile. Thus Emile is wise to judge against his own judgment and follow that of his tutor. In short, this relation to the tutor, as structured by exemplarity, since the tutor is said to be the Exemplar for Emile here, retains the fundamental ambivalence that so characterizes transference itself. Namely, Emile rejects himself as he sees, experiences, and feels himself (via his imagination) concerning pain and fear, in this case, in the name of the tutor’s version of how he should/must see himself, his experiences, and his pain. He has substituted the other’s judgment for his own, yet this on the basis of his own judgment. What sort of paradox is this? Placed in the register of feelings, which is the framework for the expression of transference relations, we would have a love/hate relation set up here so that Emile now hates (rejects) himself (his own judgment) and loves (accepts) that of his tutor, and this is done via his own judgment. The erotic nature of turning away from oneself toward the other is thus already in place here, and always already in place, one might argue, insofar as one finds the “true meaning” of the “actual.” Hegel, of course, describes precisely this process as he rejects sense certainty at the outset of the Phenomenology of Spirit.28 To recap these structures of exemplarity in place here, we find that what organizes the possibility of Emile taking the tutor as an example, and in turn substituting the latter’s judgment of his pain for his own, is that he does not

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cede all judgment to the tutor. He holds back a part of his own judgment— indeed, he conceals it from the scrutiny of the tutor, which he must do in order to retain it—in order to appear to follow, by example, the judgments of the tutor. This double relation is itself an expression of another structure of exemplarity operating within the first and indeed making it possible. This other structure is that of transference, so that exemplarity of the first type becomes possible and yet also and ultimately impossible at the same time. It is the necessary ambivalence of transference that allows Emile to follow the tutor (his example) but also ultimately to resist him (and his example). It is transference, then, that organizes the mimetic order of exemplarity, and yet it also is a structure of exemplarity that is organizing what we understand by the term transference. This idolization of the other as loved/hated object to follow and reject is itself unconsciously constructed in this process as a substitution (for what never existed in the first place), namely, the ideal parent as all-knowing, all-powerful, and so forth. In short, what is transferred in the transference is the fiction (from the unconscious imaginary desire) of the perfect parent onto, in this case, the tutor. Hence, Emile’s first-order exemplarity relation to his tutor (when he follows the latter’s example of judgment) functions only because unconsciously the boy attributes qualities (by transference) that originate in his unconscious imagination. Hence, we can attribute the order of the meaning of the actual experience, its truth, now to a fiction that allows this claim to be taken/seen/experienced as truth. This meta-frame will of course break down, yet its breakdown also is prescribed as part of the metaframe itself, namely, negative transference. But we are ahead of ourselves here. At this point, the tutor does indeed function as an example for Emile, in particular for the judgment of the latter’s pain that functions (for us) as an example of Emile’s experience as such and its interminable mediation by structures of exemplarity. To put the matter bluntly, Emile’s experience is not in the order of presence, it is not to be trusted, nor left as such, but is always already disordered and reordered to appear as it does via structures of exemplarity. And this at the earliest stages when the only names that can be given to the child’s experience of pain are those of degree. How much it hurts is thus determined by the other. Yet the exemplarity relation between tutor and child is not so simple. Rousseau insists in addition that the tutor should follow the child’s examples, repeat what the child does, present the child to himself, in effect. As he says, “one must find in himself [the child] the examples that one should then propose to him.”29 Furthermore, if we look inside the block of marble, we find that “Each spirit has its proper form, according to which it should be governed.”30 What is at stake here is a mimesis that would operate in the reverse manner from the first-order exemplarity described above, namely, the tutor should now not set or be the example but rather should simply repeat what Emile (his example) now does. He (the tutor) should be a friend to the boy (as distinct from a

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parent figure); he should be his partner, his playmate, and his accomplice. And, indeed, the criminal metaphor is not without relevance, as we shall see. In short, the tutor is now expected not to lead Emile but to follow him. And Emile is still a boy here, indeed a young boy in Book II. He is still at the stage prior to the ability to be “reasoned with,” according to Rousseau. This reversal is only apparent, however, and does not change the order of exemplarity that we discussed above in the slightest. Instead, it operates on a more clandestine level—a further betrayal of Emile, one might argue—in that the tutor is anything but sincere in all of this with the boy. The notion of following the “spirit’s proper form” is what guides the guided guide here—seemingly. That is, the tutor is expected to judge, indeed, foresee, the true nature of the child and to govern that child accordingly. In short, he is to follow the form of the child, not the actual content, or so it would appear. But how is he to learn or know what this form is except by the actions of the child? Thus the tutor is now instructed to see the child’s actions as examples of the form hidden though organizing the spirit of the child. The actions-as-examples are to guide the guide here, and hence the child is an example for the tutor to be an example for the child. The child’s form—spirit—is made accessible, presented or staged, one might call it, for the child via the tutor who is to be his example. Thus the ego ideal is presented by the tutor here for the actual ego and the exemplarity relation takes the form of what Lacan calls “the Imaginary.”31 To see this more clearly, Rousseau suggests that the tutor “teach” Emile about “the oldest profession”: agriculture. The procedure to be used here—to present the image of Emile to Emile—is to follow, indeed, copy, what Emile himself does. Emile is thus led to the plot of land and allowed to plant beans in it with the help of his accomplice/tutor. Emile leads, the tutor follows— does what Emile does, after Emile does it. He represents Emile, or so it would appear. But why is this representation, or simple mimetic action on the part of the tutor, a presentation of Emile’s ego ideal rather than a simple repetition of his actual ego? What is at stake is what takes place in the act of staging,32 in the process of repetition, in the manifestation of exemplarity itself. In the process of doing what Emile does, the tutor only partially presents what Emile actually does but aims (at least) to fully present what Emile is. What is at stake is what Emile’s own action itself exhibits, and it is this that the tutor seeks to express in his exhibition of the only apparent mimesis here. Hence, what the tutor presents of Emile is what Emile cannot see in himself—the truth of himself—as distinct from his actual self. Again, the actual is substituted here for the truth, and the truth then rebounds to substitute for the actual. What is seen as actual is thus already contaminated by the nonreversible reversing/entrelacement of exemplarity. Emile is to learn, first and foremost, according to Rousseau, from “the necessity of things.” He is to take lessons from his experience with the things

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of the world, in particular, the “things” of nature as an example of the nature of things. That his experience is “framed” by the tutor is not to be seen or recognized by Emile (yet) nor to be revealed to him (explicitly). Instead, he is to be thrust into situations in which he will return to the tutor “with questions.” As Rousseau says: Let the child come to you impressed by what he has seen, he will not fail to ask you questions.33 Emile’s earliest experiences of things are designed to provoke him, to challenge him, to produce the wonder in him about his world that returns him to the tutor. The particular example that Rousseau offers “us” here is the case of the “angry man.” Show him a man in a fit of rage, Rousseau suggests, let him experience the anger of the other, directly, and he will come back to you with questions. At this moment, Emile’s experience is framed and will be reframed as a citation in a larger text that he is not writing, nor can he write. Nor is this larger text simply written by the tutor. It will have been written “by necessity,” and this is the necessity of things, of nature, Rousseau tells us. Hence, he instructs the tutor to interpret the experience for Emile: Tell him calmly, without affectation and without mystery: this poor man is sick; he is in a fit of fever.34 In short, the tutor names the experience for Emile and tells him why the man is as he is. The tutor is thus the source of the source here, and by so “presenting” the angry man as an appresentation,35 Rousseau suggests that this occasion can lead to the presentation of an idea of the sick. As he says: On this basis you can find occasions to give him, but in a few words, an idea of illnesses and their effects, for that, too, belongs to nature and is one of the bonds of necessity to which he should feel himself subjected.36 Let us examine those structures of exemplarity in place here in order to make Emile’s experience of this angry man as such possible. First, the translation is made from Emile’s question, implied though not stated: What is wrong with this man? From the question, we are given the name of this man’s situation: he is angry. Yet, in turn, this anger is translated into illness, indeed, a sign for the idea of illness. In addition, this idea is itself “turned into” what it is not, namely, a natural effect, which then leads us to the lines of necessity by which Emile should feel himself subjected. Thus what is at stake in the angry man’s anger as displayed for Emile, or at least as experienced by Emile? We must

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consider the direction of the movement of exemplarity here that circles around Emile and ultimately leaves the angry man untouched. Each example, or each level of transition of meaning, hermeneutical example, exceeds itself and blossoms further into yet another level. One might well ask what motivates this incessant, transitional movement of exemplarity here? In what respect is the economy an unstable or a transitory one? The most evident structure to notice here entails intentionality, as described by Husserl,37 in particular, in relation to consciousness itself. He insisted that consciousness is always and by necessity situated ahead of itself; that is, consciousness is always and necessarily “consciousness of something.” In this respect, he called it “intentional.” Another motif we might use is excess and incompleteness. Consciousness always and necessarily exceeds itself, moves beyond itself, and this is its ontological structure as movement. Turning back to Emile’s experience here, we find that the angry man is to be seen as an example of something else, namely, of being sick, and initially of his being sick in particular—he is in the throws of a fever, hence, he appears angry. In addition, this exemplary structure itself is to be turned into an example of something else: the idea of the sick, and so forth. At each turn, then, the economy moves and seems to come to rest on the basis of an intentional structure. An example is always and necessarily an example of something (else). Exemplarity thus exceeds itself inasmuch as it partakes of an economy that in turn organizes its transitions. These transitions are not simply from particular to general, since at each moment the “general” turns into another “particular.” In the end, where does this process lead? In this case, which is our focus of analysis for the moment, it leads us back to Emile, and necessarily so. What is at stake here, via the detour of the economy of exemplarity—via the world, via experience—is Emile’s knowledge of himself, not the world as such. He is not concerned (yet) with the other, with the pain and suffering of the other, though he might have been as a consequence of the example “we” are given by Rousseau. Rather, what he is to see here in and through the multiple structures of exemplarity, which the particular angry man gives Emile access to, are the lines of necessity that impinge upon him, not the other. Indeed, the result of this experience and its labyrinthine exemplarity is to be, should be, a feeling produced in Emile, in particular, the feeling of being subject to necessity, governed by and restricted to necessity. Ironically, the type of necessity here is the necessity of things, not of his own necessity, nor of the freedom that arises from this recognition. All of this comes later. Thus Emile is returned to himself only to find himself displaced, subjected, overcome by “the necessity of things.” An ironic narcissism is in place here, due to the structures of exemplarity that “intentionally” lead him through an exhibition, to its name, to its idea, and ultimately, to a feeling. Thus the power of the “proper feeling” that Emile is to have in such a situation also is mediated by exemplarity. At this point,

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without such mediation, the experience of the angry man would presumably lead him neither to pity, empathy, or sympathy for the man, nor to identification by resemblance to himself, at least not directly, but to the feeling of necessity itself. One might well ask, how does the idea of the sick, which also is that of nature, lead Emile to feel subjected, rather than a subject of these necessities? What is necessary here about the man’s anger and sickness in relation to Emile? Nothing. The event is a staged event. The man’s illness, too, could not have been necessary but a “chance” event, from Rousseau’s point of view. Hence, how and why should Emile begin to feel the necessity of things from such a chance encounter of chance? It is the necessity expressed within the economy of exemplarity here that is at stake, not the sources of it, which are indeed to be concealed from Emile by the tutor. It is the necessary relation between his anger and the illness that makes it necessary that Emile is to realize here. It is, in short, the causality inherent in natural relations that he is to begin to feel here, though not necessarily understand. In addition, it is the man (as angry and, hence, sick) as himself subjected rather than subject that Emile is to recognize here, or at least to feel. It is the subjection of the subject—beyond his control—that is exhibited here for Emile, and it is supposed to produce the same feeling in Emile. What is that feeling of subjection and necessity for Rousseau’s Emile? What name could one give to it given Rousseau’s definition of happiness as entailing the capacity to satisfy all desires? Emile’s feeling here via the angersickness idea of necessity must be, ironically, anger. The anger of the man thus is transmitted to Emile, not through empathy but through a chain of exemplarity that in the end (at this age) does not result in identification with the man as being sick but rather with being “equally” subject to such laws of necessity that fundamentally subject the subject to the laws of nature. Thus Emile’s feeling for the man is a feeling for himself and his own sickness, indeed, the idea of sickness as restricted by laws of necessity beyond his control. Exemplarity operates here in a circular fashion via the structure of intentionality that exceeds each finite manifestation of itself and results in an ironic narcisssism at this point that via an identification with the other’s pain one feels pain for oneself, not for the other. The other is used here, by the tutor, as an example (in multiple ways and senses) as a detour for Emile to see himself as subject to, not the subject of, the laws of nature. He is thus shown an angry man in order to feel anger, not the other’s anger, but his “own” as produced by the recognition of the sources of the anger of the other. The other in this case could have been a non-human, indeed, non-animate “thing,” but for the need to produce in Emile the feeling of subjugation to a necessity he does not command. Ultimately, Emile is to take his lessons as a young child “from nature itself,” though the above instance begins to illustrate just how mediated this notion of “nature” will become for Emile. As Rousseau says:

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He gets his lessons from nature and not from men. He instructs himself so much the better because he sees nowhere the intention to instruct him.38 The tutor is to remain behind the scenes, though always available to answer questions provoked in Emile via the experience itself of nature itself. The lie of the tutor’s role, as magician, as liar, as the enframer of Emile’s experience and his world, will be addressed more fully in what follows. For now we must follow the process of producing examples for Emile as his earliest experience, and indeed the transformation of his earliest experience into examples. Rousseau says explicitly that at this stage “the lesson always came to him from the thing itself.”39 Thus Emile’s experience, for him, is to be seen as direct, as chance, rather than necessity, as occurring to him rather than produced for him. He is to feel as though he is producing it, he is choosing to do and to be what he desires (again the recipe for a child’s happiness, according to Rousseau), and he is not to know otherwise, at least not yet. Rousseau says as much explicitly: It is by these means . . . that . . . I got to the point of being able to make him do everything I wanted without prescribing anything to him, without forbidding him anything, without sermons, without exhortations, without boring him with useless lessons.40 In short, the prescribed experiences of Emile are to conceal their own prescripted nature though via the hermeneutical structure of question and answer, to be turned into “meaningful events” through exemplarity. What is present for Emile is thus presented to him, though the act of presentation is concealed from him. In this staging of his experience, Emile is provoked to question its origins, its sources, and its structures, and the tutor is enlisted in this endeavor. But far from revealing the truth of his experiences as staged, the tutor is to show, staging again via exemplarity, the laws of necessity that govern Emile through the “necessity of things,” which includes others at this stage at least as “things” to learn from. This pedagogical procedure, far from being a novel innovation by Rousseau, relies on the Socratic strategy as exhibited in the Meno in particular. The pupil is taught to reveal the laws of geometry through a simple procedure of asking questions. Yet in the Meno, it is the tutor who asks the questions, not the pupil. It is Socrates, as usual, who claims not to know and who enlists the help of the pupil to teach him. Rousseau’s Meno, here the young Emile learning geometry, inverts the earlier example, however, as he also follows it and reproduces it. Emile, the pupil, is here provoked, by his staged experience, to ask questions of the tutor. In turn, the tutor frames the experience explicitly in

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order to teach Emile how to feel correctly about it. Via judging and naming, then, the trajectory of exemplarity in the case of Emile is not directed toward universality or the general law but rather toward the proper (informed, mediated, instructed) feeling. As Rousseau says: To exercise the senses is not only to make use of them, it is to learn to judge well with them. It is to learn, so to speak, to feel [a sentir].41 (author’s translation) We should recall that it is not how to feel that the pupil in the Meno is to learn but the correct ideas concerning geometry: its laws and truths as such. Rousseau inverts the apparent example here, which seems to precede his own case in two ways at least. First, the pupil/tutor relation of question and answer is reversed, and second, the aims of the pedagogical process itself are transformed. Far from resting with the idea of illness—parallel perhaps to the ideas of geometry (by analogy at least)—Rousseau turns this too into an example for something else that will return Emile to himself, but otherwise. The pedagogical process here, for Emile, transforms natural feeling into “proper” feeling via the proper judgment of those feelings. Hence, judgment is not an end in itself, nor is the universal, for Rousseau. On the contrary, good judgment (produced by feelings) leads us back to good feelings, produced by judgment. Good feelings can be painful, angry, but they are now the proper feelings—the way one should feel, should learn to feel, for Rousseau, and this is his aim. The final exemplarity structure in place for the young Emile prior to his feelings for and recognition of the other as other is located within a matrix of experience that is designed, Rousseau insists, to teach Emile his first idea. This idea evidently is to have a status above all others for Emile, and for Rousseau and it is to serve as a foundation for the boy. Notably, it organizes what we have already found as the aim of the pedagogical process itself: the establishment of the proper or propriety itself. The idea of property is already in play in Emile’s experience, but so far not explicitly so. In the next step, the idea will be manifest as such via two networks of exemplarity. The first will focus on agriculture, in particular, Emile’s first experience of planting and raising a crop. The second network entails the breaking of windows and the tutor’s response to this. These two cases are not without inverse analogies to each other, but we shall initially explore them as separate cases to analyze the precise usage of exemplarity that Rousseau exhibits herein. Rousseau claims that the precondition necessary for Emile to obtain the idea of property is that he have the experience of something that would be properly his. We shall see that these two levels—of the idea and of experi-

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ence—shall be interdependent for Rousseau in practice, not merely a unidirectional conditionality. Let us begin, however, where he begins and where he wants Emile to begin: The first idea which must be given him is therefore less that of liberty than that of property; and for him to be able to have this idea, he must have something that belongs to him. [il faut qu’il ait quelque chose en propre.]42 The levels of irony this en propre entails will be unraveled in what follows, but first let us make a detour through the works of Locke, also following Rousseau, to consider his notion of property and the origins of this “idea.” Initially, Locke remarks, following the Christian tradition: no body has originally a private Dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them [the fruits of the earth], as they are thus in a natural State; . . . yet being given for the use of Men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular Man. The Fruit, or Venison . . . must be his, and so his, i.e., a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his life.43 The initial paradox of the granting of all the Earth to all Mankind, equally, yet the need for a particularization of “the fruits of the Earth” in order to be used, and hence, an exclusive demarcation of all for this one house, is thus described by Locke. In short, the double bind of all for all, but this for me, and not you is overcome by Locke, and Rousseau will follow him in this respect: Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.44 Propriety, exclusion, and inclusion of what is in principle available to all are thereby grounded in labor. It is work that allows for possession, in principle, of what has been worked (upon). The legitimacy of what seemed illegitimate has thus been grounded on the most exclusive property: possession of all one’s own labor. And so Locke concludes: Whatsoever then he removes out of the state of Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.45

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Property in turn begets property: the proper of the self (one’s own proper labor) grounds the proper of the thing as one’s own. That labor is most properly proper is not questioned by Locke, however, nor is it legitimized further in the Two Treatises. What is at stake here is rather how to legitimize exclusion; indeed, how to establish exclusive rights. Right itself is thus defined as exclusive—as legitimate exclusion. Who and what is excluded here? The other, as always. As Locke says: It being by him removed from the common State of Nature placed it in, hath by his labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men.46 That one’s labor is truly one’s own is of course assumed here and later challenged by Marx and his followers. But the issue for us at this juncture, and for Rousseau, is this power of labor to make the world one’s own—and exclusively so. On the one hand, labor has this exclusive power itself, and on the other hand, it is the power of exclusivity. It creates exclusivity exclusively. The question might well be: How is this possible, and what is it that makes labor power exclusive, in both senses of the term? What is it that makes labor itself the appropriating instrument par excellance for Locke? Let us examine an example, first from Locke, and then we will turn to Rousseau’s phenomenological staging of this Lockean paradigm. He that is nourished by the Acorns he pikt up under the Oak, or the Apple he gathered from the Trees in the Wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No Body can deny but the nourishment is his.47 What is at stake here is a primary appropriation: an act that once society is established will be called theft. By taking what one needs, at this point—still the State of Nature, on its way to Culture—one actively, with labor, makes it one’s own. The labor here is nothing more than a gathering up of what is already there: the “Fruits of Nature,” which will directly nourish this first man of property. Henceforth, he also will have to transform his labor—from gathering what is already there to producing something new from what already exists. His nourishment, initially resulting from an act of theft that is prior to theft, will henceforth result from his labor as making [poesis] rather than gathering [legein]. It is labor itself that has transformed itself here, as well as the world in which theft has now by its very success become illegal. This first thievery is thus the condition of the possibility of property, society, and labor proper. It is theft, then, that marks the first act of propriety, which henceforth will be called improper—illegal. As Locke says concerning this addition to nature and to what we might call natural labor (theft):

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That labour put a distinction between them and common. That added something to them more than Nature . . . had done; and so they became his private right.48 And so the story of the rights of privacy and the privacy, exclusiveness and expropriating structures of right become established in the Lockean doctrine. That the distinction is “undecidable” between legitimate and illegitimate appropriation at this point must now be clear, since the first theft is the first labor that gives birth to labor proper and, hence, to property itself. Rousseau follows this motif step by step, though he transforms the theoretical paradigm into a phenomenological account. Emile, the boy, will now experience this “first theft,” the first labor, and undergo the transformation from appropriation as undecidable to the creation of property itself, and in turn the notions of legitimate and illegitimate property. Private property will emerge first for Emile, paradoxically, as what is not his, what he is not entitled to and, in short, what belongs to the other, although initially, he does not recognize this and takes it for his own. We shall see that his labor in this instance is not enough to “make it his own.” On the contrary, this work will reveal precisely the reverse. That Rousseau may well be parodying and satirizing Locke here could reasonably be supposed, though in the end he supports the doctrine as such, or so it would seem. But let us follow this extended example here of how Emile learns his first idea: the idea of property. Emile is now living in the country with his tutor and Rousseau tells us, “he will have seen the gardener at work, and thus he will want to garden himself.” The plan initially runs as follows: According to the principles previously established, I [the tutor] in no way oppose his desire. On the contrary, I encourage it, I share his taste. I work with him, not for his pleasure, but for mine; at least he believes it to be so. I become his gardener’s helper. [je deviens son garcon jardinier.]49 Let us examine these beginnings more carefully. Initially Emile seeks to copy the other, and in this case, the other is the gardener. The tutor will play the role of copying Emile, reproducing what Emile does, portraying Emile to himself, as we have shown earlier. The gardener will not have a role here, though he seems to be the example for the example. He will be the “apparent” source of Emile’s desire: to garden himself. The pun here is not without significance, since it is precisely as a plant that “we” were instructed to view the boy, Emile, earlier in the text. Now he is to plant himself, indeed, to create or find in himself what is most properly his own. In short, the propriety

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of property must come from Emile, though it will appear here as elsewhere to come from outside of him. He has been planted by Rousseau here, and the tutor is the gardener. But now it will appear, to Emile, that he is his own master, and that he has taken what is properly his: this land here. As Rousseau says: “he will take possession of it [the land] by planting a bean.”50 Here Emile acts “as if ” he is in a State of Nature, and the tutor does all he can to foster this false impression: Day by day I increase this delight by saying, “those belong to you.” To explain what the word “belong” means, I will show him how he has given his time, his labour, and his trouble, his very self to it; that in this ground there is a part of himself which he can claim against all the world.51 So it would seem that Emile follows Locke here via the phenomenological design of Rousseau. But the story, or example, does not end here. This “belonging,” now reinforced by the other (the tutor) and felt by the boy, will be stripped away from him. One day, so the story goes, they walk out to his bean patch, only to find that the plants have all been pulled up and the soil dug over. His reaction: “Who has stolen my property? Who has taken my beans?”52 His feeling, Rousseau tells us, will be of injustice, of a violation of his rights, of disappropriation, of a violation of himself and what is or was proper to him: his labor. Thus he will realize, experience, and come to know the idea of property as it is taken away from him. Until this time it was only being nurtured, as the beans, but now the idea arises as such with the withdrawal of the object and the possession itself. In short, Emile’s recognition, though too late here, will produce a reversal within him, and he, though not having property as such any more, will have the idea of property in its place. Hence, it is not appropriation (theft) that gives him the idea of what is most his own, it is the counter-theft, the disappropriation, the displacement, the rupture between Emile and himself, his “property,” which must be performed here in the pedagogical process. The tutor is not separated from the boy at this juncture but forms an “apparent” alliance with him. And this is true from the moment that Emile begins to work: he works with the other here, though he sees the property as his own. This paradox is not addressed by Rousseau, and we shall only take note of it here. I share his sorrow and anger, the tutor tells us, and at last we discover the gardener did it. Evidently, it was the real gardener, and it turns out the real owner and worker of the land. It was Emile who stole the gardener’s property, not the other way around, though the latter had been staged for the boy with the help of the tutor and perhaps also the gardener. At any rate, Rousseau exhibits in and through this example as phenomeno-

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logical description an ironic relation to Locke and his theory of the origin of property as privatized. Emile violates the law here without knowing it. He is portrayed as a tragic figure, caught and betrayed by his own ignorance, and this with the knowing assistance and support of his tutor. What Emile is to undergo here is not the Lockean paradigm but its inversion. He steals the land, thinking it his own via his own labor, and in turn he accuses the other, whose land it truly is, of stealing it from him. The cunning of Reason is not far behind this scenario, one might argue. Neither is the ironic structure of exemplarity here. This case of the improper property—stolen property— reveals in the end that Emile’s actions constitute his sense of propriety only through violation of the same as its first necessary act. For Locke, this violation brings forth legitimacy, rightful ownership, property, and propriety themselves. For Emile, this violation leads him to ironically accuse the other of what he himself, though unbeknownst to him, is guilty of. He is what he thinks the other to be. In short, his sense of himself, and what is properly his, has been constituted, only to be stripped away. That is not what is most properly his. That is only falsely properly his and, hence, is stripped away by the real gardener himself. If this experience is to give Emile the idea of property, as Rousseau seems to suggest, it is only by inversion, and this in a twofold manner. First we have the inversion of the Lockean theory of the origins of private property evidently parodied here. Second, we have the inversion of the results themselves: it is only by not having property, by not owning his own labor, that Emile realizes what property is. It is by the lack of a self present to itself, in control of itself, knowing what it is doing, that Emile comes to know, be, and most properly become himself ironically as not what he thinks he is. Thus Emile comes to know the idea of property here only though impropriety, being-without-property, rather than as he first imagined, being “landed.” He is, one might say, at sea. The notions of exemplarity at play here thus entail the satirical, ironic, and parodic inversions that take place between the “theory” and the “case,” and within the “case” itself. Emile no more represents Locke than he misrepresents him. His experience here phenomenologically repeats the structure of the Lockean theory, yet something else takes place in the process. Indeed, the “more,” or the supplement of the labor process itself, is parodied here, so that the distance separating the “theory” and the “case” allows for a mockery that only occurs in repetition as an original and a copy at the same time. Emile reproduces the Lockean theory only by violating it and showing its own internal violations more vividly than ever. Emile deconstitutes what Locke seeks to establish and in so doing establishes a rather different “theory” of property and its origins as such. Thus the example here is far from a mere repetition, translation, or reproduction of the “theory,” and yet it is all of these and more. It plays, parodies, and enacts the theoretical matrix and thereby stages it, opening up

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a theatrical distance in which parody, satire, and irony have their proper place. Thus exemplarity is clearly productive here of its own portrayal, paradoxically, as well as the idea of property. Rousseau’s theoretical account of the origins of property also should be acknowledged here, since it seems to differ from Locke’s account as well, thus making the exemplarity relation perhaps dubious between Locke and the case of Emile. Rousseau’s claim can be summarized thus: the “right of first occupant” is predicated upon the “institution of property,” he says, rather than the reverse. In addition, “what this right makes one aware of is less what belongs to others than what does not belong to oneself ”53 (emphasis added). Hence, it would seem that the idea of property for Emile would be instantiated by showing the boy or allowing him to experience directly “what does not belong to himself.” In short, a limitation placed on his freedom will reveal property to Emile, one might argue. But Rousseau turns back to the Lockean paradigm with the following, more traditional, claim: As a general rule, to justify the right of first occupant to any piece of land whatever, the following conditions must obtain: 1. the land shall not be inhabited by anyone else. 2. the claimant occupies no more than he needs for subsistence. 3. he takes possession . . . by actually working and cultivating the soil—the only sign of ownership which need be repeated by other people in the absence of a legal title.54 We clearly have Locke’s theory writ large here, and we in turn have the same structure of exemplarity operating as previously described between this “theory” and the “case of Emile.” The same notions of labor and legitimacy obtain here, and the fact that Emile acts as if the above obtains in his situation, thereby establishing a false sense of property and what is properly his (which will be taken away and given back later), changes nothing. It is precisely this ignorance that governs the paradigm itself, as we have shown. Finally, it should be recalled that Emile, once “his land” has been stripped away from him, his beans uprooted and the soil dug over by the gardener, is now given back “his land” to use, to work and raise crops on. It is this appropriation/expropriation/reappropriation that Emile undergoes, which reproduces, again phenomenologically, the structures of the social contract itself, according to Rousseau. By giving up what he takes to be his own—in this case, having it taken away from him—he in turn makes an agreement with the gardener, by which he regains all that he lost, but at a price. The agreement limits what Emile can and cannot do with the land. The gardener agrees to let Emile work the land, to garden himself, as long as he does not dig up the melons already planted by the gardener ironically, for Emile. Thus Emile’s idea of

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property is handed down to him in return for his illegitimate appropriating/expropriating activities. In addition, what will be understood as “his own” will henceforth be so only in and by virtue of the granting by the other, as we shall see.

EMILE’S EXPERIENCE OF “THE OTHERS” Though Emile has experienced the other, others, indeed, the “otherness of the other,” almost ubiquitously to date in his education and upbringing, he is, Rousseau claims, not yet aware of this. Thus we have the first major pivot in the thematics of Emile’s development, and again, though it has always already begun—from the beginning—only at this point does Emile see the phenomenon that he has been living with all too closely: the “other.” It is in Book III—still Emile’s childhood—that the book Robinson Crusoe is introduced into the boy’s world. Indeed, it is the articulation of his already lived world that Emile begins to have access to, and this via the story of Robinson himself, who also is alone and isolated on an island of nothing but nature, as Emile will perceive initially. This text and, in particular, this life, of Robinson Crusoe (RC) serve as an example for Rousseau, indeed, the example as the first in a series of examples, of the other and the introduction to the other for the boy. As the first in the series, one might conceive of this particular example as being more than simply one among others. It is itself not just one among other others, but rather, as Derrida has claimed for Kant’s examples of series as examples, the law of the series, and this, albeit implicitly, rather than thematized as such. With this in mind, though not as a guaranteed deciphering of the case of Robinson-for-Emile, we will approach this first example of the other as Emile experiences it. It should be noted that the examples of others, for Rousseau for Emile to this point and beyond in Emile’s life, will provide nothing but a bad moral influence. The “other” as his “peer” will corrupt him and should be kept away for as long as possible. Hence, the fictional hero is introduced so as to be a proper example—a good example—and this insofar as he (RC) will be an example of “the proper” that Emile is to become and yet at the same time recognize himself as already being and having been. Here RC is more than a mirror for Emile; he will constitute Emile’s sense of himself as other, as what he is/was without knowing it. Furthermore, RC will be a model only in the sense of this radical past that is to be Emile’s future, as we shall see. Up until this point in Emile’s life, he is to have been taught primarily by “the necessity of things,” and to have learned to see his experience as an example of precisely this necessity. In turn, the necessity of things is to be understood as that of Nature, and later, as the sign for the work of God that makes

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its appearance via this very order of Nature. But now, Rousseau says, Emile must begin to transform his sensations into ideas, indeed, to take control of this process, to intend to do this, to learn how to do this. As Rousseau says: Let us transform our sensations into ideas but not leap all of a sudden from objects of sense to intellectual objects. Make your pupil attentive to the phenomena of nature. Soon you will make him curious. But to feed his curiosity, never hurry to satisfy it. Put the questions within his reach and leave them to him to resolve.55 Emile is thus to have been taught, to this point, to be attentive to nature, to become curious, and to have questions delivered to him. He is, in short, not yet (and perhaps never) to be at home in the world. He is to feel as a stranger: dislocated, puzzled, if not mystified by his own experience. Thus the way has been prepared for Emile to learn from himself: to turn inward, to begin to recognize himself as such. In this mood then he is given his “first” book—after the “book of the world” and of “nature”—the book that will exemplify all other books for him: Robinson Crusoe. It is, as Rousseau declares, a “treatise on Natural Education,” and thus the counterpart to Plato’s Republic, “the treatise on public education.”56 Emile, however, is to see this text, to read this text, with the force of identification, with the attentiveness he had hitherto given the “phenomena of nature.” He is to simultaneously transfer onto Robinson—as hero, father, mentor, survivor—and to see him as himself as a peer, a brother, if not himself as such. Furthermore, this text is now to serve Emile as an experience, indeed, a recollection of his own experience in nature and also as a text of nature to form the basis for the commentary to come. It will be the text for which all our discussions on the natural sciences will serve only as a commentary.57 Emile’s experience of nature is now supplanted and at the same time recognized as such. His double experience of this text—as the image of his past and future self—and of the other as the same, is itself, however, not to be revealed here. The text is now to serve as a phenomenon, indeed, the phenomenon of nature, so as to investigate it with scientific discussions. The text is now to produce the wonder and curiosity that has hitherto been reserved for the “pure” (though very much mediated) experience that Emile thought he had had. What is at stake in the status of this text is the issue of the frame, indeed, the example in this case as frame. In framing Emile’s experience as Robinson’s experience, as the other’s experience, it returns to Emile as his own in and by

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this alienation and distanciation in the name of the other. Indeed, Emile appropriates his “own” experience only as that of the others—but this is not all. The dislocation that takes place here, that is staged here, if not restaged, is one that has long since taken place, though unbeknownst to Emile. His “own” experience from the beginning has never been his own but a production of an elaborate theatrical enterprise. Call it education. But now, Emile is not only to see himself as having been Robinson Crusoe but also to become RC, to actively take on the role that RC manifests in this text, to actively explore nature, to inquire, to ask questions of nature, and to pursue some questions that have been delivered to him. Rousseau suggests that the relation between Emile and Robinson is one of analogy, indeed, exemplarity, as structured by analogy in the following way: . . . to put oneself [de se mettre] in the place of an isolated man and to judge everything as this man himself ought to judge of it with respect to his own utility.58 (emphasis added) What is at stake in the analogy is to paradoxically preempt Robinson—to know Robinson better than he knew himself, as some, including Kant, might put it. What is at stake here is to learn to judge as Robinson ought to judge, not necessarily as he in fact does or did judge. In turn, Emile is to learn to judge Robinson—to be RC’s father, not RC’s son. But this is a temporal, historical process that will take Emile time and will transform him from one stage to another. He must first have the capacity to see himself as RC—to become the other, to take the place, to hold the place of the other, and to live the other’s situation. To adopt a world—a possible world—rather than and presumably distinct from his own actual world and situation. After all, Emile is not stranded on a desert island, does not adopt a man Friday, and is not eventually rescued. But more of this later. For now, what is crucial is the leap that Emile is expected to make from his own experience and world to that of the other. It is this leap that marks a transition in Emile’s development, which is the precursor and necessary precondition for his becoming a citizen and member of society, that is, for him to learn to feel pity for the other’s misfortunes as his own. At present, however, he is pre-pity, he is only expected to enjoy the identification with RC, to partake of the latter’s adventures vicariously but with an emotional proximity not to be underestimated. After all, cathexis is essential for the identification to take place. Thus emotionally, Emile feels he is RC. Only in this way, Rousseau insists, can he take a distance from and, indeed, make judgments for, this alter-ego. He is, therefore, initially to think of himself, more precisely, feel himself, to be RC: “I want him to think he is Robinson himself.”59 But, in this very depth of proximity, he is to transform his feelings into ideas and begin to learn to judge otherwise. What

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will return him to himself here, as other than RC, only via RC, will be judgment. He is to see RC’s mistakes, he is to be RC’s critic, and thus recognize that had he been in RC’s situation, he would not have done the same things. He would not have made the same mistakes. As Rousseau says: . . . to note Robinson’s failings attentively; and to profit from them so as not to fall into them himself in such a situation.60 The spell is henceforth broken when Emile can distinguish not his feelings from those of RC, but his judgment. In turn, Emile is to have a future other than that of RC and, indeed, other than that of his own past, which is, after all, that of RC. Emile gains his own identity through all of this, which includes who he was and simultaneously, other than that, who he will become. But he is as yet unaware of this, in the same way that he is unaware (and is to be kept so) of the role of the tutor in orchestrating these presentations and interpretations. After all, their discussions are to serve as commentary for the text, which is to serve as the phenomenon of nature to be understood. The book of nature has thus been inverted to become the nature of the book—both of which are to serve as examples. What is the difference between these two matrices of exemplarity, if any? It is not that Emile sees RC as an example; on the contrary, he sees him initially as a hero to identify with, to transfer onto, to idolize, to cathect onto. He does not thereby see RC as an example but as the truth of himself yet masquerading as other—as a fiction. In the overturning of this transferential mode of exemplarity, Emile is to reject RC; not totally, but only the rational side, only the side of judgment that is now seen as different, as other, and this in the name of utility rather than pure idiosyncracy. This is not a defense of liberal versions of reason but rather the contrary. Only one reason—true reason—will be correct, will be right, will be adequate. Emile’s differing from RC will be understood (via the tutor’s help as commentator of this process as well as the text) as Reason itself. Emile will thus break from RC at this moment, and this moment alone, which will not be without pain for the loss of the relation to the one he has hitherto identified with emotionally. This pain of loss will arise again and again in Emile’s education, not unlike the process of transformation depicted in Plato’s allegory of the cave where the light of knowing, of reason, will initially, if not forever, be experienced as painful. In addition, it is the pain of separation, for Emile, that will be experienced here. RC, though fictional, has been his only friend to this point, other than the tutor (who will play this role soon), and now he must leave him, decathect from him via his judgment of the fallacious judgments of RC. RC is not as Emile thought he was—the hero who can do no wrong—and the identification, the specular image, as some would say, is

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gone forever. Thus, far from foreshadowing the Lacanian Mirror stage, Rousseau here shatters the mirror at the very moment or perhaps a second later, that the image is constituted and recognized as oneself. It is not that Emile is now haunted by this image as an ego ideal. Rather, he has lived out the ideal itself, with actual emotions and judgments and thereby transformed the very status of RC for himself. What he does not realize (yet) is that this process forever returns, the fictional image will guide him, will haunt him, but not the same one, not RC, never again. Thus this motif of exemplarity as frame is not a stable one that would serve as a regulative ideal in the Kantian sense. Nor is the motif one of the Imaginary duplicity, as described by Lacan. But these aspects are a part of what takes place— though it never really takes place—for Emile. Only partial exemplarity here opens itself as the opening, as the clearing in which and by which Emile can become other than himself, and thereby return to himself as other than he was, and yet also recognize that other self as his own—as himself. He is now what he was, and thus he is no longer what he has been hitherto. Thus, Rousseau portrays exemplarity here as the very historicity of Emile. This incompleteness, fictionality, and concealment, in the very moment of revelation and recognition, are still concealed from Emile, and necessarily so. As Emile sees it, the situation at this point is as follows: Forced to learn by himself, he uses his reason and not another’s; for to give nothing to opinion, one must give nothing to authority.61 In an ironic twist, Rousseau thus proclaims Emile’s feelings of freedom and autonomy. Emile has little knowledge, but what he has is truly his own.62 Emile thinks, though he knows little, what he knows is really, properly his. Yet nothing could be further from the truth at this juncture. As he approaches the central issue of pity—its formation and engendering—Rousseau leads us into a labyrinth of exemplarity for Emile as he, indeed, any child, relates at this stage to others. On the one hand, the proximity of others, the world of others, gives the child nothing but examples in both word and deed. The others serve, Rousseau tells us, as models in their acts and as laws in their judgments. As he says: If they live in society [le monde] they hear odd talk; they see things [des exemples] that strike them. . . . The actions of others must surely serve as models [de modele] for them when the judgments of others serve as laws [de loi] for them.63

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The influence of others on the child is seemingly all-pervasive at this stage and is possible only through the structures of exemplarity operative therein. What we have here is an implicit rhetorical theory of exemplarity, or the example as rhetoric. What makes this “influence,” indeed, contamination, as Rousseau calls it, possible? It would seem to be an infinite regress if one searches for the beginning of this chain of exemplifiers, since each child serves as an example to the others, and yet each simultaneously follows the examples of others. It is the a/logic of the crowd, of the group, of the mass (indeed, also of the bureaucracy, from a Kafkaesque perspective) here, where no one leads and no one follows, yet there is influence that is transformative and seemingly teleologically directed toward homogeneity. The underlying assumption here in this rhetorical play of exemplarity is the privileging of the same over the different, unity over diversity, and of a notion of inclusion on the basis of this law of identity. Though metaphysical through and through, the notion of a proto-community in childhood is decisively not the model for community as such for Rousseau. It is this model, this example of exemplarity as contamination, as metaphysically governed, that Rousseau claims needs to be resisted. And this resistance is to begin with another example—the example, of course, of Emile. His status here is questionable—that is, undecidable—since, on the one hand, he is the example, seemingly, for all children, for a possible education and upbringing as such, and yet he also is to be seen as the exception, the non-rule that opens yet other possibilities beyond the very notion of “education as such,” as standardized, universalized education. This text, we should not forget, is simultaneously a response to Plato’s Republic—mass education—and a counter-point or supplement to it—revealing natural, private education as distinct from public, state-organized pedagogy. Thus Emile, in a sense, is not “in the world,” that is, he is not in the city; he is not part of this massification, contamination and mutual influence of peer groups tending toward homogeneity. Rather, as we know, he has been kept apart from all this64 and in a sense has no friends, no peers, and certainly no community. Yet again Rousseau seems to generalize to all children with Emile as a particular case when he says: The child raised according to his age is alone. He knows no attachments other than those of habit. He loves his sister as he loves his watch; and his friend [ami] as his dog.65 Of course, Emile has neither a sister nor a dog (as far as one knows from Rousseau), yet if he did, his attachment to them would not be (to see them) as others, not even other selves, let alone genuine others, independent of him as the model of their being, but rather to see her (his sister) as a thing (a watch) and him (his friend) as a dog. The as in question here is the as of exem-

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plarity, not the as of identity, which collapses very quickly via analogy into is. The as of exemplarity instead opens up a relation of difference without acknowledging it here. As Rousseau says, in this same paragraph: He does not feel himself to be of any sex, of any species.66 The strangeness of this “stranger” status67—as outsider, alien, other—is precisely what is at issue here. Having made the distinction above between seeing the female (sister) as a thing and the male (friend) as an animal, Rousseau now insists that this distinction has not yet been made—by Emile. In short, he makes it without making it; he sees it without seeing it. Another distinction is in play here, which has this same “strange” status: that of self/other. To this point, he has no sense of the other as other, nor (a preliminary step) of the other as another “me.” At this stage, on the contrary, the other is nonhuman. Only Emile (and perhaps the tutor) is a human being at this stage. What allows for this distinction again made and not made by Emile in such a case? It is a recognition without recognition of the difference between self and other and further, of the otherness of the other. But this mis(sed) recognition must be concealed even further before it will be seen as such, and even then, the as such of seeing will have, of necessity, been radically and forever denied or bypassed.68 He sees when he does not see, and does not see when he does, and this of necessity via the labyrinths of exemplarity, as they incessantly mediate all relations of supposed access. Returning to the first paradox here in Rousseau’s movement toward the issue of pity, he separates Emile now from the broader category of children in general, or as he calls them, your children [vos enfants]. Instead of being influenced (and thereby contaminated) by the discourse and actions of others, Emile is instead immunized against their examples. He can resist their lead and their pressure to have him “follow suit” and conform. As Rousseau says: Their speeches [discours] interest him no more than do the examples [leurs exemples] they set. All of that is unsuitable for him. [tout cela n’est point fait pour lui.]69 It is not examples as such that Emile is impervious to but only and especially those of his “peers.” Thus he is able, so it would seem, to distinguish good examples from bad, indeed, to judge them as such at this point. One should recall that his relation and distance from RC are determined in precisely this way, and thus the latter serves not as a good example for Emile but rather as a bad one. RC’s judgment is to be judged as failure, as wanting, and hence his life-as-example is to be seen as a bad example. What is judged here without being judged is precisely Emile’s own past, seen here as RC’s present. It is

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Emile’s negation of his own past that takes him away from himself and then toward himself as thrown, from a Hegelian–Heideggerian point of view. Thus RC, as the first example in the series of “others” here, does indeed appear to serve as a law, or at least the opening to the law,70 of the difference between good and evil. That RC and the Adam (A) of Genesis have an uncanny relation rather than a directly analogous one—RC wants to be released and freed from the garden, whereas A apparently, at least, does not—is clear, and yet the issue of an entrance into the world of good and evil (of knowing the difference), or rather, as Nietzsche might have it, being beyond the difference, seems to be precisely the point here. Without discussing ethical or moral education as such, Rousseau introduces the issue indirectly as one of good judgment, indeed, good judgment concerning examples and their prospective goodness or evil. This role of examples as a positing of a possible future—one to be followed or avoided—will surface again and again in what follows, as Rousseau warns continuously of the danger of examples. It is not examples as such that are dangerous, but only dangerous examples that are dangerous: the morally undecidable ones. These are the examples that seem to be what they are not: the theatrical ones. The irony here is, of course, that theatricality itself opens up the very possibility of examples. The issue of examples as visions, as visible portrayals of the invisible, also surfaces here and will return to haunt the discussion that follows. One of Rousseau’s, and many others’, implicit assumptions concerning the work of exemplarity—what makes its functioning possible—is precisely this reliance on exemplarity as an imaging, if not imaginary, function. The example as image and, hence, as theatre, thus enters at every level in Rousseau’s display of the work of exemplarity as itself an example in at least two senses here. That Rousseau displays what he discusses will be thematized more precisely in what follows, but for now it is necessary to at least mark the place(s) where this issue begins to arise, and this is at the very brink of Emile’s awareness of the other as such. This otherness must now be addressed, again as it is structured by and made possible through a variety of manifestations of exemplarity. We are introduced to the other, for Emile, not surprisingly through suffering, pain, and their resulting production in the boy, for the first time, of the feeling of pity. Though Emile was seen to identify with the example of RC, this enabled him to judge the other in the end, not to feel pity for him. Now, however, judgment is to be reserved, suspended, it would seem in favor of precisely this feeling aroused by the other. RC in this sense was not seen as suffering, though he may well have been. Now the other is to be seen as feeling pain, and this is to be embraced by Emile rather than resisted, as earlier. The example of the other now will not serve as the basis of judgment and distance, nor as the object of a possible contamination to be resisted, but rather as the object of the imagination to become one with. We will pursue the stages in the

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exemplarity relation here to reveal the transformations that are to take place in Emile and, hence, in his relations to the other. Initially, Emile is to be exposed to the other as suffering rather than the other as content or even happy, since the latter case is apt to produce jealousy and resentment, if not hatred, rather than identification and empathy. Thus pain (the other’s) is contagious in a positive way for Emile, whereas happiness and pleasure (the other’s) are dangerous and to be avoided. His pleasure is not lacking, however, in this address to the other’s pain, as we shall see. As Rousseau says: Imagination puts us in the place of the miserable man rather than in that of the happy man. We feel [on sent] that one of these conditions touches us more closely than the other. Pity is sweet because, in putting ourselves in the place of the one who suffers, we nevertheless feel the pleasure of not suffering as he does.71 (emphasis added) Thus the imagination is motivated by and produces pleasure for us via the suffering of the other—an indirect pleasure to be sure, a painful pleasure one might call it. But the question is, what makes this painful pleasure, or the pleasure of pain—pity—possible here for Emile, seemingly for the first time? He had no pity for RC, since in a sense he must have felt more pure pleasure, pleasurable pleasure, than painful pleasure for him. Indeed, RC is seen as a scientist investigating nature, as another first man on the island of nature, almost an Adam. In addition, Emile’s identification with RC is structured via a relation to Emile’s own past—as portrayed and staged by the RC story—and it is a past that he has, for the most part, been happy in and with. His needs and wants have been commensurate, as Rousseau would say. But now, with the presentation of the sufferer to Emile, Rousseau asks: But who does not pity the unhappy man whom he sees suffering?72 The difference here is not, as one might suppose, between the imaginary fictive character, RC, and a real person, present to Emile in the flesh. No, the issue is not presence here, in any sense of the term and especially not in its phenomenological incarnation. Rather, the suffering of the other is mediated through and through here via Emile’s own past (again) and his imagination (again). Let us consider the danger to be avoided here before turning again to the positive side of this example of examples: the pitiable. The danger and the bad example to induce this imaginary identification would be the happy man. Should Emile be presented with such an image—real or fictive—he is likely to feel envy . Yet is Emile not happy? On what grounds would Emile feel such

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apparently groundless desire for the happiness of the other and, hence, simultaneously for this pain? First, Emile is said to be happy, by definition, by Rousseau, yet he also has experienced pain and suffering. He has been humiliated by the experience of gardening on the other’s land, by being punished (placed in the dark, confined room) for breaking windows, and by being tricked by the magician, among other instances. His has not been a painless childhood, to be sure. Thus the happiness of the other, as seen by Emile, might lead him to jealousy and resentment and, hence, might drive him away from the other, or worse, toward the other in vengeance, as a brother might do in seeing his sibling better off than himself. We must recall Rousseau’s grounds for such an assumption here; namely, that mutual pleasure would not be forthcoming from the pleasure of the other, but rather mutual pain. And in addition, mutual pain—shared pain—is the necessary basis for all community and thus society. As he says: It is man’s weakness which makes him sociable; it is our common miseries which turn our hearts to humanity.73 One of the many paradoxes that emerges here is that the example of the other’s happiness, as well as the other’s pain, leads to mutual unhappiness or mutual pain, according to Rousseau. Hence, society, it would seem, could not not happen—regardless of the initial contact with the other as painful—due to the other’s pleasure and/or due to the other’s pain. The question becomes, what difference does it make, in this case for Emile, if he is presented with a happy other, for whom he is envious, or an unhappy other, for whom he feels pity? Both cases seem to produce mutual pain. But the case of originary pain allows Emile to return to himself in a way that vindicates himself—as different from the other, rather than actually in pain with the other. In seeing and feeling the pain of the other, Emile has, unbeknownst to himself, returned to his own experience of pain and suffering. He must have already felt pain in order to identify with the other’s pain, Rousseau insists. Thus the situation presented anew to the boy is in fact a repetition, again, of something that has not yet taken place for the boy. The experience, then, of the suffering of the other recalls the suffering of oneself, and it is from this foundation that the boy is able to feel (again) for the other. The identification is within himself, however, and ultimately not with the other, except insofar as the other represents Emile to himself. The suffering of the other is accessible, therefore, only as Emile’s own, not as the other’s as such. If we follow the path of the other’s happiness presented, which would produce pain in the self (Emile) in the form of envy and resentment, we do not, according to Rousseau, end up in society but instead are more likely to

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either run from the other—yelling “Giant!”—or kill the other—as radically other. Thus in either direction the identification with the other, indeed, the constitution of an identity of the self, is ruled out. In turn, no community would be possible, though again there would presumably be mutual pain. In short, the pain that is at stake in the first feeling of pity, for Emile, is a recognition of his own pain—his former pain, now presented to him as the pain of the other, as a future pain, indeed, as a possible pain. The ultimate trajectory of this relation to “otherness,” which is essentially the self as rediscovered, is to establish distance from the other. The other’s pain here is thus essentially temporalized as Emile’s past, reexperienced now as an echo, and yet also his possible future, as an already will-have-been self. As Rousseau says, in presenting the human condition for Emile: Seek out for him examples, always too frequent, of people who, from a station higher than his, have fallen beneath these unhappy men.74 Rather than now feeling superior to those who suffer, Emile is to be provoked into a kind of fear of the possible here. He is to be humbled, warned, virtually threatened by these examples of the suffering of others formerly in a state above him, now to be found in one below him. Notably, Emile is not instructed to help these pitiable others but to view them, to see them, to feel for them, and to imagine their plight. It is a lesson by example here, not a moment of intervention. Emile is to watch the others, to spectate, to speculate here; the pain of the other is a spectacle for him, and he is the happy-unhappy voyeur. Ultimately, he is happy, however, in that he is not the other, though it was only via identification of himself with the other that he felt the other’s pain as his own. But now he is to feel his own pain, in part, as, indeed, other than, who/what he is now. The identification has been overcome in this movement of apparent transcendence of the other, of the pain of the other, and the pleasure in the status of voyeur has returned, not unlike that of Rousseau himself, as we shall see. That this experience for Emile is ultimately a visual one, a visible one, a spectacle, is reinforced by Rousseau when he says: Above all, do not go and tell him all this coldly like his catechism. Let him see, let him feel the human calamities. Unsettle and frighten his imagination with the perils by which every man is constantly surrounded. Let him see around him all these abysses and, hearing you describe them, hold on to you for fear of falling into them.75 (emphasis added) By this provocation of fear for what surrounds him as it engulfs others, Rousseau proclaims: “Let us begin by making him human [humain].”76 To be

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human is thus to be able to feel pity for the other, to identify with his or her suffering, via having suffered oneself, and yet also to be able to resist falling into that same suffering in the future. To be inhuman or not human is to feel no pity for the other—to keep an emotional distance from his or her pain and to see oneself as radically other. Along these lines, Rousseau raises the issues of why kings feel no pity for their subjects, and in turn why we (humans) feel no pity for animals. In the first case, kings have no fear of becoming “ordinary men” or on a par with their subjects, Rousseau says ironically. They thus do not and cannot identify with what they take to be radically other forms of human beings: Why have Kings no pity for their people? Because they never expect to be ordinary men. Why are the rich so hard on the poor? Because they have no fear of becoming poor. Why do the nobles look down upon the people? Because a nobleman will never be one of the lower classes.77 Thus the hierarchical ordering of society itself produces and sustains inhumanity and, hence, injustice. Rousseau further assumes that having suffered, humanity will identify with sufferers and seek to avoid returning to suffering in the future. But this is not a recipe to alleviate suffering itself. It can easily supply the justification for the suffering of the other and for precisely the distance that Rousseau seems to want to overcome between the classes. It is useful to have suffered in the past, to see suffering around one, but then to take a distance from it, from his point of view. It is precisely this strategy that characterizes the stranger, the immigrant, or the newcomer seeking to adjust to a foreign land or society. It is not the newly accepted immigrant who will assist the immigrant, or the newly saved who will help the fallen—on the contrary, and Rousseau is not unaware of this. His second case or example of the lack of pity “we” feel is for animals, and in particular he uses the examples of domestic animals. As he says: We scarcely pity the cart horse in his shed, for we do not suppose that while he is eating his hay he is thinking of the blows he has received and the labours in store for him.78 Rousseau thereby denies any awareness of temporality to animals, and to the cart horse in particular. It has, he thinks, no memory of the past and no anticipation of the future. He is not thinking as he eats his hay, Rousseau claims. If, however, we could attribute such temporalizing dimensions to the consciousness of animals, perhaps we should pity them their lot—the blows and the labors in store for them. That animals are able to work as domestic ser-

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vants for humans implies the capacity to form habits so that they need not be trained and retrained each day. The cart horse has learned, one must suppose, to be a cart horse. He has the appropriate habits to work as a domesticated animal and thus must have, even if only a few moments before and after he eats the hay, some sense of what is in store for him and what he has just accomplished. But Rousseau denies this and thereby justifies our lack of pity for the same horse. In addition, he says: Neither do we pity the sheep grazing in the field, though we know it is about to be slaughtered, for we believe it knows nothing of the fate in store for it.79 Thus pity, by inversion, seems to essentially depend on an identification with a suffering other, and whose suffering is determined as his or her fate and recognized as such. Pity, then, is not a relation of the self to its future but of the self to the future of the other and the suffering engendered thereby first in the other and second in the self, by identification. What is this future that the other is now seen to dread in contrast to the sheep headed for slaughter? Surely it is the death of the other that is at stake here, and it is the suffering that both presents and appresents this real possibility. It is suffering that itself stages this future and the limit of mortality here and now, and this in and via the other. Thus the other suffers his or her fate, and we suffer it with him or her, thereby seeking to avoid it—his or hers and our own. This moment of naivete is left with Emile, the boy, at this point, and Rousseau does not yet strip it away from him. That terrifying moment of recognition of the other’s fate as indeed his own—which here he thinks he can distance himself from— will appear in the context of his relation to Sophie somewhat later. Ultimately, at this stage, the example of the other is to serve Emile as the example of humanity as such and thus includes himself. But this inclusion is selective, just as the example chosen of the other has been. In appearance then, Emile is to begin to feel himself to be a member, a part, and at the same time ultimately free of those same contraints that bind others: In a word, teach your pupil to love all men, even those who despise men. Do things in such a way that he puts himself in no class but finds his bearings [qu’il se retrouve] in all. Speak before him of humankind with tenderness, even with pity, but never with contempt.80 In having introduced Emile to the other in himself and himself in the other, he is being introduced to the “genre humain,” Rousseau tells us. The pitiable other becomes seemingly only one in a series of others to be seen as examples in this trajectory toward the species as such. Yet again the pitiable

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other—as me and not me, for Emile—is not just one example among others but rather the second in the series. The “first” other having been RC, the second other as the pitiable and suffering other; the first as Adam, the second as Job. These examples of examples of the “genre” in question here form the poles or pillars perhaps for what Emile is to begin to constitute for himself as a concept of the human species as such. But far from a general concept common to all, this notion will be shattered virtually prior to its constitution by the introduction of the next examples in the series, which will in turn shatter the series as such. As Rousseau says: To guide him in this research, we must now show him men by means of their differences, having already showed him men by means of the accidents common to the species [from Adam to Job]. Now comes the measurement of natural and civil inequality and the picture of the whole social order.81 It is thus time for Emile to recognize the differences now that he has seen the similarities. It is time for him to see the other as other, rather than as another “me,” indeed, as simply a specular prop to return the “me” to itself. It is, so it would seem, time to see the other as truly other, different, and radically so, such that no absolute appropriation of identity (Aufhebung) is possible. No further analogies can usurp the differences, nothing can overcome the abyss: this is the “natural and civic inequality,” indeed, incommensurability that Emile is coming to at this point. Hence, the series of examples, as a series, breaks down and shatters itself as it stages the shattering itself. It is uniqueness now, difference that is to be staged, and that in a spectacular manner: by example. What is at stake here, as Rousseau says, is: Society must be studied by means of [par] men, and men by means of [par] society. Those who want to treat politics and morals separately will never understand anything of either of the two.82 This term par is of the essence here, since it points toward the issue of exemplarity embedded in the strategy that the tutor will be employing in what follows. We will address the level of method somewhat later, but for now it should be recognized as constitutive here in Rousseau’s portrayal of this impending transition in Emile’s educational development. This par indicates the indirection and theatricality, indeed, the semiological strategy at work in Emile’s education. How is he to learn about society? By studying men (a generic term presumably, though for Rousseau it is indeed engendered males who run society, whereas females run only the domestic economy of the household). How does he come to know men? By studying society.

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The question is, why does this apparent reversible dependence not preempt the process itself, making each aspect the necessary precondition of the other and thus paralyzing the process before it can get underway? It is not a circular and thus reciprocal preconditioning process at stake here, however, since the missing distanciating and, hence, productive term here is temporality. Again Rousseau insists that a temporal distance must be inserted to allow Emile to envision the example as such—to see men as they are and via (par) what they were. And this past tense is multiply mediated as well, as we shall see. Thus the other in question here and now is the other of other times and other places, indeed, other societies as well. It is the “other” as depicted by others: as constructed, reconstructed, scripted, and described. It is the “other” of history: the great others, the singular others, the unique others who are to be revealed to Emile now—not the masses, not the general species as such—but the unique and specific individuals. As Rousseau says: I would want to show him men from afar, to show him them in other times or other places and in such a way that he can see the stage [voir la scene] without ever being able to act on it.83 The distance that allows Emile to see men and thus society will be that same distance that makes him nothing more than a spectator—an observer and not a participant. Emile has no role to play here in the events, since they are over, finished and complete. Or so it would seem. A radical shift is to take place at this point in Emile’s relation to the “other” of his imagination. Far from identifying with these historical figures to be presented to him, he is to distance himself from them, and this a priori. He is to view their actions, their judgments, and their passions without passion, indeed, without interest. Yet he is to judge them, their situation, and their judgments “not as their accomplice, but as their accuser.” He is to spectate therefore at a trial of history, in particular, of historical men. The war crimes—moral and political—are to be judged here by the boy. We know that this exposure to historical figures is done with an eye to exposing Emile to what makes society society, but Rousseau takes the process a further step back as he specifies that in order to know men, one must see them act. One should recall that it is precisely this possibility that is denied to Emile at this point, and not without reason, since he is to aim his vision outward, radically outward rather than narcissistically inward, as before. The other as an example is not to serve his idea of himself now but his notion of society, in the past and therefore in contrast to the present. We shall return to this. The process of unveiling is what is at stake here, as it involves action itself in history—producing and being produced by historical events.

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To know men, one must see them act. In society one hears them speak. They show their speeches [discours] and hide their actions. But in history their actions are unveiled [devoilees], and one judges them on the basis of the facts [on les juge selon les faits].84 Thus Rousseau distinguishes the contemporary scene, the world where men expose their speech and hide their actions, from the historical distance that one can obtain from the past where nothing but the actions [les faits] and their results (supposedly known) can be judged. It is the letter of the law that is crucial here, not the spirit, for Rousseau, and it is thus the body of man, not the intent, that is to be judged. History reveals, Rousseau seems to say, what has been done, despite the speeches about what the actors thought or intended to do. History provides evidence, and it is on this basis that one can judge. Yet the issue of historiography surfaces here, and Rousseau does not ignore it. On the contrary, it is this irony that opens up the issues of exemplarity already in play in this preliminary speech concerning the introduction of Emile to history and history to Emile. The framing of history as a speech, as discourse, opens up precisely the problems that Rousseau has suggested above concerning the actual time of historical events. The duplicity always already inscribed at any one time in history—between the speech and the act—is always already simultaneously inscribed in the supposed documentation, presentation as appresentation, of those same historical evets. Thus history as event, as action, is divided upon and within itself in the same way that the event in the here and now is divided. In this sense, it would seem that historical events present more problems of mediation, more layers of distancing, framing, revealing, and concealing portrayals than any description of an actual or imagined event. Yet this issue is located by Rousseau in relation to the role of the imagination in fictive writing and historical truth telling when he claims that, in fact, there is little difference between novels and histories, except that a novelist follows his or her imagination and a historian follows that of the other (the protagonist, presumably).85 Yet, again, this apparent difference collapses with Rousseau’s help, since it also is the novelist who follows in his or her imagination, the imagination of the other (his or her protagonist). What is at stake here takes us back to the issue of judgment—systematic excluding and including processes—which the “good novelist,” the examples of the good novel, manifests in the form of a moral, whereas the historian, on the contrary, proposes no moral, only the events “as they occur.” Along these lines, Rousseau cites the Exemplar of historiography—following his own theory—as Thucydides: “the true model of/for [des] historians.” Why is he the prototype of the good historian? “He reports the facts [les faits] without judging them, but he omits none of the circumstances proper to make us judge them ourselves. He puts all he recounts before the reader’s eyes. Far

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from putting himself between the events and his readers, he hides himself. The reader no longer believes he reads; he believes he sees.”86 This visual and visible aspect of the “good historian” is crucial for Rousseau at this point, since he claims that children learn best and retain most from their visual faculty. Rather than discourse, they need to experience and see things for themselves. Thus good discourse removes itself from the scene (just as the good tutor, good magician, good lawgiver, and so forth, for Rousseau) and simply appears to present the scene as such. Hence, what is at stake here is the presentation of an example that conceals the presentation of the example as such. Concealment much more than presentation is the issue here, insofar as all presentation is fundamentally and necessarily—morally and politically—appresentation. Among others, Tacitus and Herodotus also are invoked by Rousseau as relatively good examples of good historians of good examples. What is a good example here? A visual example: a vivid, detailed, lively, nondescriptive description. But one can go too far in this direction, as with the example of the style of Herodotus: The good Herodotus, without portraits, without maxims, but flowing, naive, full of the details most capable of interesting and pleasing, would perhaps be the best of historians if these details did not often degenerate into puerile simplicities more fit to spoil the taste of youth than to form it.87 Though a good historian does not appear to present a moral, nor appear to make judgments, but simply presents the facts, the events, the actions of men, he should nonetheless orchestrate the details in such a way as to prevent the spoiling of taste of his young reader and instead aim to properly form it. That he is forming (being productive) and not in-forming (merely reproductive) is crucial here, and it is to be a a moral and political formation to come. The best example, now Rousseau’s last in the series, not the first, is to be Plutarch inasmuch as he is able to appresent a moral through and by virtue of his apparently simple presentation of the facts and events as they occurred. It is thus Plutarch’s Lives that are to serve as the good example of good examples: great lives of great individuals rather than what the species as a whole might share. The unique and inimitable Plutarch thus serves to present uniqueness for Emile. The metaphor—example—that Rousseau chooses to depict the portrayals of Plutarch is again visual rather than discursive, and as such it reinforces the faculty of vision that is to be strengthened in reading. Plutarch, Rousseau tells us, excels in these very details into which we no longer dare to enter [in modern times]. He has an inimitable grace at depicting [a peindre]

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great men in small things; and he is so felicitous in the choice of his stories [le choix de ses traits] that often a word, a smile, or a gesture is enough for him to characterize his hero.88 Examples of such heroes characterized abound, though Rousseau only names a few: Hannibal, Agesilas, Caesar, and Alexander. “This is the true art of painting [le veritable art de peindre].”89 The true art of painting, then, is to be found in historiography, which makes itself invisible in its staging of events to produce a seemingly pure spectacle of what took place—via the details. Thus some details take the form of examples such as synechdoche, whereas others (presumably in the hands or pen of Herodotus) simply conceal and cloud the text with too much paint, imagery, and visuality. The art of painting, then, for Rousseau, is to use a minimal amount of detail with the maximum effect, whereby the uniqueness of the detail and its specificity in time and place will manifest by example the uniqueness of the event and its grandeur, if not sublimity. Where the maximum and minimum meet, here we find exemplarity, but this is not a meeting of general and particular but rather of two limited cases of uniqueness that produce and transform each other. The paradox of detail, however, and its danger, is that it is “what makes history interesting [and] what lets one know and love”90 [the men involved]. Thus in reading and seeing the details of these portraits, one identifies with them, loves them, and becomes them. But not for Emile, since this process is denied him. His access and interest in history must be without interest and without passion, we should recall, and thus he will be able to rationally judge the events and the judgments that take place before his eyes. Rousseau’s example of an example to be read here is paradoxically based on the RC motif of identification, not this latter one of impartial judgment. He chooses the case of Augustus Caesar, as depicted by Plutarch, who he says wants to govern the world but is unable to govern his own home.91 His ambition has been thwarted by what might appear to be a minor detail. Rousseau is quick to justify this choice of example, since he claims that the boy, Emile, will be able to identify with him and learn lessons from his passions—presumably those of Caesar. That passionate identification is at stake is reinforced when Rousseau follows up with: The time is approaching when the life of Antony will provide the young man with more relevant instruction than the life of Augustus.92 Why Antony and not Augustus soon for Emile? Surely because it is Antony who falls too much in love with Cleopatra and whose life will be determined, if not undermined entirely, by his passions. Hence, passionate identification is

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not far away here, though for the moment the historical figures are to present scenes of other things. It is this passion that must be delayed as long as possible from developing in Emile and, consequently, the examples for the moment must interest his judgment, not his passions. As Rousseau claims: What would be required, then, in order to observe men well? A great interest in knowing them and a great impartiality in judging them. A heart sensitive enough to conceive all the human passions and calm enough not to experience them.93 (emphasis added) What is being developed in Emile via the examples of others here is the structure of relations named by Rousseau as amour-propre. The boy begins to compare himself to others, and he now judges as follows: “I am wise, and men are mad.”94 It is precisely this naivete that the exemplary relations to history will foster and encourage, though Rousseau is fully aware that ultimately “This is the error to fear most.” Emile’s audacity, his distance from others, and his judgment as the law of the others, his sense of superiority over Adam, Robinson, and Job is thus fostered deliberately at this point, only to be shattered in what follows. Emile, to this point, does not see his world as a world of examples, nor himself as an example, but this too will come. From the others and, indeed, the otherness of history and its heroic figures as examples, Rousseau turns to the issues of religion and its pedagogical possibilities. He seems, however, to open this discussion with the disclaimer that any child who claims that he or she believes in God is necessarily an idolater; he or she is anthropomorphizing, and nothing more. Thus it would seem a fruitless activity to engage in the impossible instruction of religion beyond such a fallacy. It is evident that Rousseau does not (yet) reduce religiosity to the trope of anthropomorphism as, for instance, Nietzsche would be renowned for 100 years later. What is at stake here instead is the child’s supposed incapacity for conceiving a pure spirit: bodiless, immaterial, without example. In turn, the issue of exemplarity is again raised as the only possible strategy for giving a child access to that which he or she by nature is forbidden at this point, namely, the otherness of religion as radically other, pure spirit, indeed, as the Other. Rousseau’s preparation for this eventuality for the child is essential here in that it frames the possibility and necessity of exemplarity (in this context) itself. On the one hand, a child’s religion-to-come is to be seen as a chance event, an accident of geography. One’s birthplace, seen now as one’s country and, therefore, one’s religion, is the determining factor concerning which version of the Other one will adopt, and Rousseau insists, ought to adopt. If born in Rome, one ought to become a Christian, as a Roman (of the Holy Roman Empire at least); if born in Mecca, one ought to become a Muslim, as a good

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Saudi. Thus the world into which one is thrown will and ought to determine the specific type of religion that one ought to adopt as one’s own. As a good citizen, of a good monotheistic state, one becomes a member—body and soul—of the country as such. Thus chance and religion do not collide for Rousseau. They permit each other, and they foster each other, but as mutual necessities. The paradox at this stage is that the child is only able to repeat without knowing—by rote learning, or external repetition—what goes on around him or her in the arena of religion. He or she cannot understand this truth (yet), Rousseau insists. Furthermore, this rote learning is empty and to be condemned, we are told, since the child merely repeats what he or she does not know, mimics the truth and thus deforms it. This pure repetition by the child—of the religious practices of his or her country—is to be seen as mockery (unwitting, but nonetheless satirical) and to be prevented. Rousseau insists, therefore: When a child says he belives in God, it is not in God that he believes, it is in Peter or James, who tell him that there is something called God. And he believes it after the fashion of Euripides. Oh Jupiter! For other than the name I know nothing of you.95 The child is seen here as being incapable of supplying the referent for the word “God” and illegitimately using language beyond his comprehension of the same. The word says more than the child knows and thus says less, according to Rousseau’s logic. The word “God” said to another in this case, is not enough for the child to truly reach religiosity, the Other, as such. At this point, he is restricted again to the letter of the law and does not, apparently, reach its spirit. This capacity to be beyond oneself, which characterizes subjectivity here as elsewhere, is precisely the place and time that exemplarity enters to articulate and structure this beyond. Rather than a confused labyrinth of satire, irony, and mockery, each building upon each other exponentially, what is required here is secrecy, concealment from the child of that which he is not yet ready to comprehend— as other, indeed, as the Other. Rousseau says “do not tell a child the truth before he is able to understand it.”96 This will only lead to deformed images of God, indeed, images of God rather than God Himself; bodies, examples rather than the pure spirit seemingly beyond all exemplarity here. But again, we are returned to the Other via the other in Rousseau’s reliance on the examples needed to reach (seemingly) beyond exemplarity. Beyond the religion of one’s own country—ideally one, homogeneous and unambiguous— one is to follow, he says, the religion of one’s father. What is to occur here is a repetition that is simultaneously double and one: a repetition of his nation’s religion, and the same for the father’s religion, which ought to be the same as

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the state’s. In this case, it ought to be redundant to name the father as well as the state, yet Rousseau does so and seemingly in the effort to reinforce this juncture. Yet by himself, repeating what ought to be redundant, he names, via the letter, the precise opening for otherness within the same that haunts his entire discourse here and elsewhere: the space between the father and the state, the two examples for the child that ought to be identical. Two laws, which ought to be one and the same. Two laws—that of the public and the private, the general and particular wills, the society and the home; two economies—which ought to be one. Thus the chance of one’s country is now doubled, rolled as a die, with the chance of one’s paternity (perhaps even biology, but we shall return to this issue when we come to sexual difference, which is, of course, pending here already albeit denied). Thus two chances enter into the specific determination—indeed, predetermination—of one’s religion. But what is not a chance event is religiosity itself; it is instead governed, law bound as nature itself, and ultimately, for Rousseau at least, it is a given. This givenness of the Other is, however, misrecognized again and again by the child, even when, and especially when, he says the name “God” to another. Far from a Levinasian portrayal of access to the Other via the other, this dialogical motif for religion is to be resisted. The other here is not the route of access to the Other but its deformation, its contamination, and perhaps even its loss. Thus again the example of the other as peer—Peter or James—is to be resisted here, as well presumably reciprocally their discourses on God, the name, the letter as distinct from its meaning. To be embraced instead is the example of the father, as he exemplifies the state’s religion. Thus the child ought to be governed by examples, and in this case examples of the law—two chances—which ought to coincide. The case of Emile and his religion is brought in after the above prelude and preconditioning of the situation concerning a child’s access and/or lack of the same to the Other. But the case of Emile violates the specifications dictated above, in that Emile is, and was chosen by the tutor/Rousseau because of this, an orphan. He is without recognizable, knowable, traceable parents and, hence, origins. He is decidedly ahistorical: he is the universal boy and, hence, he lives in France, that most European (and hence the epitome of civilization, Rousseau says ironically) of countries, and speaks French, that most universal of tongues. Such is Rousseau’s justification for his choice (as construct) of the boy, Emile. Yet how then is he to gain access to the Other, law/chance/die, and without the legacy of paternity—that other law/chance/die? What are his chances, one might well ask here? From whence is he to grasp religion beyond the mere word, letter, body? It is not from the tutor, at least not directly, as a surrogate father in this case. Rousseau turns instead to the reservoir of Emile’s experience itself as a source for his religiosity. Emile is nothing if he is not curious, and curious in

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particular, concerning nature and its laws. He has been a physicist, an astronomer, and a biologist as a boy, and he has investigated nature as a book, and books as if they were nature. He is already aware of the law of the law— nature itself—which would bring forth such particulars as societies and fathers; chances that he has hitherto missed. The examples for Emile will at this stage be from his own experience as structured by examples, which in turn will become an example, writ large, as a sign. It will be the semiotic function of examples now that Rousseau will use in giving Emile access to the Other— as to the depth and innermost place and time of himself. Truly Augustinian in structure, Emile’s experience calls him forth to the infinite, but again this will be mediated and indirect. He is told a story (to serve on one level as an allegory, perhaps analogous) of the Savoyard Priest and his story to a boy. A phenomenological account is produced and staged as a narrative this time for the boy, in that the path to the Other is produced following the Cartesian methodology and principles, yet via an experiential, existential perspective that feels the process rather than thinks it. But he is to think the process of feeling the process rather than simply thinking it, insofar as it is a portrayal of this process done by another that he is presented with here. Whether Rousseau meant it or not as a true path to the truth of the Other is not the issue here for us, though it does surface for the selfdescribed esoteric strategies of reading Rousseau. What is at issue for us instead is the role of exemplarity in constituting the path that Emile is given access to as his means of access per se to himself, to the world, to others, and to the Other. In the end, it is nature, however, that is to be understood now as a sign, as an example of an intellect, a Being capable of having produced it—presumably by intent, rather than by chance. The steps are described by the priest in the story as Rousseau tells it when he says, for instance, of nature: I believe therefore that the world is governed by a powerful and wise will. I see it or, rather, I sense it; and that is something important for me to know.97 The question is herein raised, in the story in the story, of what makes nature, as Emile has understood it and experienced it to date (as ordered), possible? Who made it, and what and whom is it a sign of? What must this creative force be in order to have produced such a world? All that nature is, the priest says (to Emile), proclaims a single intelligence; for I see nothing which is not ordered according to the same system and does not contribute to the same end—namely, the preservation of the whole in its established order.

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This Being which wills and is powerful, this Being active in itself, this Being, whatever it may be, which moves the universe and orders all things, I call God.98 And so the name “God,” the word, the letter here, arrives after and only through the experience and its recognition of what it is: a sign, an example. The letter paradoxically arrives here prior to the spirit—as an example, as nature, as the experience of orderliness and law, and also after the spirit, to name it, to call it and, indeed, to invoke it by example. The question at this point might well be: Where is the letter? Where is full speech (as Lacan might well call it)? Where is the incarnation that has seemingly brought body and mind, letter and spirit, the word and its meaning together? It is in experience, but in this case the experience, not without irony, is that of the other. It is the priest’s experience, retold to Emile via the tutor via Rousseau who himself as a boy had met such a priest in Savoy. Thus Emile’s experience here is again as a spectator, as a listener, in this case, but still as a voyeur. He hears the word, he hears the experience of the other only insofar as he has had “the same” experience. That is, his experience of nature is the example from which the priest now draws the religious conclusions. Exemplarity here would seem perhaps to again be structured by analogy: from the experience described (by the priest) to that undergone (by Emile), but we suggest that this is an inadequate rendition of the structures involved. Rather, the role of nature, now transformed into a semiotic function, is no longer commensurate with what it signifies. The letter and the spirit no longer re-present each other. There is no analogy in this vertical motif portrayed by Rousseau, by the priest(s), for the boy(s). The issue of a lateral analogue between experiences misses the point of what is at stake here. It is decidedly not the mutual recognition of two boys’/men’s experiences. It is not a community of belief that is at stake here, or Emile would have been simply born into one. The very positing of Emile as isolated, as in a world without equals, without peers, sets forth the possibility of this vertical Augustinian relation mapped doubly between himself and the Other, and what is specific to Emile distinct from Augustine’s conversion experience, between nature and God as incommensurate and, hence, semiologically related. That nature exemplifies God is only possible through the matrix of law, and it is this that is in play here. It is the order of nature, its repetition, its iterability, its predictability, its intelligibility, which bring forth the notion of its lawfulness. It is not that God is the law of nature, the order of nature, but that He is to be understood as having signed nature with his law. In the same way, Descartes understood that He signs His human creatures with the notion of infinity, as the mark of His creation. It is precisely this trademark function that is at stake here and is exposed via exemplarity. Nature’s law is an example of lawfulness as

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such—of order as such, of the very capacity to produce order. Nature’s law is thus a sign for what it is not: pure legality, pure spirit. Nature is the body of the law, and yet it is and is not also its spirit. It is this paradox that Emile, being provoked by the story of the priest (to the boy), is to begin to understand and comprehend. The relation between source and creation—or creation and creation, in two senses—is what is at stake here, and it is one to be understood by example. Creation is an example, in the sense of a sign, for the source, not an analogy, not an inversion, not a part of a whole, not a subset of the former set. The latter is an exemplifier that is of necessity incommensurate with the exemplified. There is no unity, perceived or otherwise, between body and spirit here. The body is an example to reveal, in the name of revelatory enlightenment, what is necessarily beyond the body and other, radically other, than itself. There is no incarnation in this model, though incarnation serves again by example, to lead Emile toward that which is of necessity beyond example. It is, in other terms, the experience of Emile (of nature and its laws) that will take him toward the conditions of the possibility of that experience which, as Kant was later to describe it, can never be or become an experience. Thus Emile lives through the very ends and limits of phenomenology here, by example. Emile’s sense of the other(s) by the time he reaches puberty has extended from the identification with the other (as another me), to the other as different and to be judged by me (read condemned by me as superior), to the other as radically Other: beyond my judgment, if not my comprehension via feeling. He now approaches the sense of the other as other than all of the above—the sexually engendered other. Not only does this engender Emile— explicitly, seemingly for the first time—this moment will also, of necessity, be the moment of castration. As the organ begins to appear for Emile, so too will it be denied, transmuted, transformed, if not deformed. Its formation, then, will be seen to be its deformation. It rises as it falls, and falls in order to rise. The foundations for this emergence into a sexually differentiated and magnetized world will be shown here to be imaginary for Emile, if not for us all. What is at issue here involves the multiplicity of senses of the term imaginary as not “real,” hence, “fictive,” as generated by the faculty of the imagination, as “opposed” to the senses and/or the understanding, and as Lacan would later discuss it, as neither “real” (absolutely what it is, selfsame, self-identical and nonrepeatable) nor “symbolic” (as located in and through the linguistic function of being-in-the-world). Rather, Imaginary here, including this latter Lacanian sense, will entail a function of envisioning that will govern the self and its relation to itself and a fortiori, the other—the sexual other, in this case. Rousseau’s usage of the term imaginary then will be seen to play on all three registers of meaning and contextual organizations above, though he does not thematize them as such. What is at stake for us, at this point, is how Rousseau uses exemplarity, which is in this

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case to be seen as the imaginary realm(s) in the very constitution of subjectivity (of Emile in particular). Rousseau opens the issue here with a recognition of the irrelevance, if not the undecidability, of the opposition between real and imaginary. The image haunts the real, and in a sense allows it to appear as such. In another sense, it is only the image that is real. The real as such is never seen but only ever seen as something. The as-structure articulated most thoroughly by Heidegger will be seen here within this imaginary functioning, which in concealing itself as such will “present” (by appresenting) the “real” as such. (At this moment, all terms might be in quotation marks, since they are terms of the as if, which are in play here.) First, let us turn to Rousseau’s portrayal of this issue: It is unimportant whether the object I depict for him is imaginary; it suffices that he everywhere find comparisons which make him prefer his chimera to the real objects that strike his eye. And what is true love if it is not chimera, lie, and illusion? We love the image we make for ourselves far more than we love the object to which we apply it.99 Thus the image of his love (to come) will initally, Rousseau contends, protect the boy/man from himself and his desires. It will prevent him from being tempted by those (women/girls) he sees around himself. He will withdraw and be withdrawn from his own attraction to them by this imaginary image. But prior to this image of desire of what/whom is to be desired and, hence, what/whom is not, Emile’s puberty and his relation to his own sexuality are to be delayed, deferred, postponed for as long as possible, Rousseau insists. This too is effected via exemplarity, as we shall see. In Book IV the boy/man whose sexual drives are emerging is to be taught to hunt rather than be allowed to develop his budding amorous feelings. Instead, the chase, the hunt, and the kill are to replace this desire for love, tenderness, and seduction. But it is clearly not without an inverse analogy that Rousseau sets up hunting as on the way, though to be seen as a delaying detour, toward puberty, and realized sexuality. Not only is the hunter/hunted opposition the dominant motif for seducer/seduced in the misogynistic tradition that Rousseau adopts uncritically, but also he focuses on the issue of blood. The boy must become accustomed to seeing blood, to the kill that will (since hunting is valorized as useful) allow him to live. The other, as animal here, is thus to be seen as given-toman, as part of man’s proper dominion, for his own use. This too will permeate the motif/example for intersexual relations, if not domestic ones, in Rousseau’s account to come. What is crucial here is that hunting used as a diversion away from Emile’s impending manhood is in fact, although concealed and concealing, the foundation for what is to come. He is only in appearance the master in this example, he is only in appearance the killer, he is only in appearance the sole

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power and force which by an act of will can and will come to dominate all others. This show of force and power will be simultaneously repeated and inverted as Emile moves on to the seducer/seduced relation to come. The deferral that takes place here does so via the illusion of omnipotence, of a pure hierarchy, of a pure victim, and a pure victor. Emile acts out the victorious heroes of his childhood reading in a world and in a way that is purely fictive, purely theatrical, though also very real and actual. The deaths do indeed take place, unlike cartoon characters who walk away from their own deaths, after the fact. But the reality produced here for and by Emile will serve as an example of what is to come, only insofar as his own limits—castration—will become apparent in his search for this idea, now imaginary love. His power is nothing but an illusion here, with and over animals, and it is this reality that he will be thrown into only by his assumption of it. Thus Emile the hunter precedes Emile the lover, in precisely the way that Emile as Telemachus precedes Emile as Télémaque.100 The relation, however, between hunting and falling in love could not be further from analogous, even in Rousseau’s rendition of the same. Only in appearance is the one the preparatory school for the other. Only in appearance will the techniques and assumptions that make hunting possible and successful be applicable to the seducing/seducer situation. Only by seeing rape, to be explicit, as the model, the example, for all sexuality, can hunting be seen as the exemplar for seduction. And, we insist, this would be to seriously misread Rousseau at this juncture. Hunting precedes seduction as Eden precedes the Fall, as Job’s good fortune precedes his tragedies, not as one side of an analogy precedes the other. What is at stake here in this relation of exemplarity—between one example and another, one imaginary image and another—is also a reversal, an irony that will thereby break open the illusions of the former motif. Not unlike the Hegelian dialectic and its structure as an Aufhebung of earlier oppositions, Rousseau sets Emile up for the fall which his very strength will produce. And he does so again and again. Thus the ideal and success of the hunt are precisely what will be shattered and reformulated in his attempt to apply the principles and practices of the former situation to the latter. His failure will lead him on, not his success, and hence it is not analogy that the exemplary relation between one example and another here portrays but its very impossibility. The impossible analogy itself, as a structure of exemplarity, is precisely what will be put in motion in the controlling of Emile’s very imagination. A brief detour into the methodology of the tutor is necessary at this point in order to clarify that Emile is to be controlled by controlling his imaginary examples. Rousseau explains: I shall begin by moving his imagination. I shall choose the time, the place, and the objects most favorable to the impression I want to make.101 (emphasis added)

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Having organized Emile’s pedagogy to this point by controlling his experiences, the experiences he has of others and of their experiences via history, the tutor now reaches into the burgeoning role of the boy’s imagination as it will engender his desires. It is the control of the boy’s very production of desire that is of concern here, and it is this that the tutor must foster at the same time as he inhibits it. Thus we arrive where we began this excursion, via the detour of history, at the production of an ideal image (of love), of the beloved, for the boy to prevent him from being attracted to anyone he is likely to actually meet. In this way, Emile is given an image to love instead of the real person. He is given an impossible desire that he can “realize,” and he is denied thereby any real attachment to women/girls as possible lovers. Such is the theory at least. As Rousseau says: But, by providing the imaginary object, I am the master of comparisons, and I easily prevent my young man from having illusions about real objects.102 But this is not the end, or telos of our story here, for us or for Emile. This moment of pure pleasure, between Emile and his imagined love, is also, of necessity, a moment of lack, of desire that is fundamentally not fulfillable. Its very presence spurs Emile on to search for the real, actual person to truly realize his image. What he does not realize, and the paradox of Rousseau’s position here, and indeed the structure of exemplarity that is operative and productive here, is that he will frame what or who he actually does see. Not only will it prohibit access to another (as engendered), it also will, and of necessity, constitute this same access. The other as such, independent of the imaginary, could never engender desire, Rousseau tells us. It is only via this imaginary framing that desire is produced in the first place. It is the veil that allows one to not only see but to fall in love. It is the process of what Stendhal aptly called idealization, and without which loving and being loved would not be possible. Not only does one love the image more than the “object” one applies it to and compares it with, but the “object” is it/her/himself always already an imagined (mediated through this imaginary exemplarity) object, insofar as the other is loved, or to be loved at all. Not that the imaginary simply conceals the flaws of the other, but it frames and thereby opens up the charming and seductive qualities that in turn affect and effect the relation itself. Rousseau puts the matter in its strongest form when he says: If we saw what we love exactly as it is, there would be no more love on earth.103 Thus exemplarity, operating here on at least three levels (between two sets of examples), opens up the very possibility of loving as a relation to the other. Only via this imaginary access is there access at all. And, of course, this is reciprocal

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and yet different. Emile himself, for Sophie, is eventually told to read of Télémaque as described by Fénelon, since it is this imaginary imagining that Sophie’s imagination sees Emile as and wants to desire him as. Thus Emile himself is to become an example, following the example of the other—in this case, Télémaque, though having to this point followed among other examples, that of Telemachus as described by Homer. Now far from searching for his lost father, he is to search for an imaginary love at the same instant as leaving home to play the role of the same for the other. Having now found Sophie, through his imagination through the artistry of his tutor (as a painting), Emile must now learn to live without her before he is allowed to live with her. That he is in love with her, sees her everywhere, sees everything and experiences everything through his idealization of her, is a given here, and it is in this context that the tutor discusses the ontological possibility of her absence, her death. In thinking this loss, as a possible loss, of the other, Emile is of course devastated and thrown into complete disorientation. The very example of this loss of example—of his other—returns him to himself in a way where he experiences nothing but loss. Mourning the possibility of mourning, Emile is now instructed to leave his home, to leave Sophie, and to leave himself as lost in his love of Sophie. He is instructed to travel, to see other worlds, cultures, homes, and lands.104 He is to learn finally of government, of the other as power, of the other as the general will, and he is to do this via the examples of those men he is to meet, by chance, in his travels. Emile’s travels have in a very real sense been pre-scripted all along through his reading of RC and Plutarch. Far from now becoming Robinson or any of the Roman heroes or generals, Emile is, however, to view his travel experiences through these networks of exemplarity so as to see his existential situation, in particular, his relations to others as exemplary. He is to see others as examples of their cultures, of their traditions, of their lands, homes, and histories. He is in addition to see the actions of others as exemplifiers for their morals. He is to see the world through exemplarity, though still not exemplarity itself. As Rousseau says: Studying men by their morals in the world as he previously studied their passions in history, he will often have occasion to reflect upon that which delights [ce qui flatte] or offends the human heart.105 Thus he is to seek to know men through their morals and their morals through their actions—in particular, via that which delights and that which offends the human heart. The rhetorical structure of exemplarity as it operates aesthetically here is hence in play. It is, we should recall, after all the taste [le gout] of Emile that is the primary focus of his pedagogy in general.

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We must analyze more closely here precisely which structures of exemplarity are operating in Emile’s travels, in his experience through travel, and how they in turn relate to each other. There is no single telos for this voyage, no ultimate circularity so that he would be guaranteed the return home, to live happily with the waiting Sophie. There is also no dialectical Aufhebung through which opposing experiences can be collapsed (or surpassed) into an overall unity—the concept of man, for instance. Rather, Rousseau has always claimed that talking with or studying “Peter and Paul” (particular people) will not lead one to a general concept of man. The example, in short, is decidedly not a mere particular for a general, an instance of a law, a subset of a larger, all-encompassing set. But this is not to say that Peter and Paul cannot serve as examples for what they both are and are not. It is only through Peter and Paul as actors in a world, in the Heideggerian sense, that their world as such becomes visible. It is this “worldhood” of the world that is thus at stake here, for Emile, in his travels. Ultimately, it is an ontological quest for which the actual historical instances and experiences will serve as examples. The ontic, the actual, existential level of Emile’s voyage, can thus be seen as such only through exemplarity, which in this case operates in both directions: from the ontological to the ontic, and vice versa. Since the ontological cannot be experienced directly, but always only after the fact, via exemplarity,106 it is to the ontic that we and Emile now turn, seemingly away from the direction intended. The valorization of travel for Emile is specifically directed toward the economic and political aspects of Emile’s education, which have been most decidedly absent until now. Having discovered the possibility, if not the foundations, of economy with and through his relation to Sophie, he must now explore that world in which economy (the home) becomes possible. In turn, the political, the state, and the governing of men by men (not women) take priority, for Rousseau and Emile, over the economic. That states, statesmen, and statehood have an inescapable moral dimension and connection are crucial relations that Rousseau will maintain, by example, from the ancients. Thus Emile is instructed to see morality through actions, as Plutarch had done in his Lives, and in addition, to see statecraft in and through the morality exhibited thereby. In a word, it is the institution behind the scenes that is at issue here, and the institution that organizes all others for Rousseau is the state. Thus the political dimension of exemplarity surfaces in everyday life, in everyday discourse, and in each and every action of the citizenry. What Rousseau is assuming here about the hegemony of statecraft as the institutionalization of power is not unlike the hegemonic discursivity of the political and institutions in general, as analyzed by Foucault not so long ago.107 Rousseau does not preview Foucault’s discovery, but he does, through this complex network of exemplarity, operating between discourse, nature, politics, ethics, and institutions, set the stage for what Foucault will later (re)discover.

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What allows Emile to learn about government by traveling to foreign countries is not textbook descriptions of how the machinery of power has been established, nor through meeting and talking with heads of state. Rather, he is to approach whomever he meets with an eye toward this institutional-political-ethical world that situates each and every member. He is to see through and by means of those “common” people he meets, by chance, to what allows them to be as they are, to do what they do, and to say what they say. Conversely, he will learn what prohibits and limits, indeed castrates, those same actors. Emile is to become a theatre critic in a sense, as he travels in order to begin to understand the ethico-politico-institutional elements of everyday life. Beyond this observational/analytic stance, of course, Emile is to judge what he sees and to evaluate the statecraft in evidence via the examples of the respective citizenry. Ideally, for Rousseau, it is the discovery of the general will—as the organ of power without organs as such—that Emile is to begin to fathom. Insofar as he will experience the violations of this structure, such as tyranny and dictatorship, among others, Emile will come to realize the central role of moral political structures in order to allow the possibility of moral (political) actions and, hence, moral agents (citizens). It is this connection through bad and good examples alike that Emile is to decipher in his travels. In turn, his relation to Sophie and, in particular, her death, will have changed by this focus on the political foundations of economy, if not love itself. In returning home, Emile the man is now an example of himself—of his past—as that of potentially any man, yet also and necessarily only himself. His past, his life to date, is an example for Emile of what childhood ought to be, of what education ought to be and, hence, not surprisingly, he turns to the tutor in due time to ask him to educate—in the same way—his own son. The key for us here is the status of exemplarity in this constitution of Emile’s identity and subjectivity as such. What allows Emile to experience, to think, to understand, to decipher, to feel, and to conceptualize his world— here of the others in that world—is nothing other than and always exemplarity. What is at issue here, in particular, are the multiple structures of exemplarity that Emile maps out in his path toward and away from himself, yet without knowing or thematizing them. He is not a thinker of exemplarity at this point; he acts out (of ) exemplarity, he performs the structures and is performed by them. He is not the agent of this work, he is the agent of the letter; or the letter of the letter as agent. In turn, we must begin to analyze here the thematized structures of exemplarity as Rousseau understands (and/or misunderstands) what he is doing here in the performance of Emile as Emile. But first we must not fail to address the issue of the education of

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women, as Rousseau understands it, through the example of Sophie. We will begin with a focus on the examples for Sophie, as she experiences them, for herself and for others (for her). This will of course lead us back to Emile, but from the side of the other, which we have here only addressed from the side of the same.


2

For Sophie

SELF-IMAGE AS SELF-MISUNDERSTANDING Sophie, as the image of woman as little girl, for Rousseau, is to be nurtured according to an archè and a telos designated as “her destiny.” Though insisting that there is no difference between men and women other than genitalia, Rousseau elevates this difference to the level of the essential determining factor that ought to govern all pedagogical practice in the cases of boys and girls differentially and, hence, child rearing as such. Having no concept of childhood in general, Rousseau situates Sophie’s apprenticeship within a matrix of exemplarity totally other than those we have examined for Emile. As a little girl, as the prototype of little girls, as the seeds of women, mothers, homes, and the state, Sophie as example here is a singular case. We will examine her relations to others—their engendering, promoting, and sustaining of her—in the next section, and following that we will investigate “Sophie for us,” or how “we” are to read Sophie, her life, and her example. But first we will turn to Sophie for herself, her own vision of herself, how she is to become herself—in and for herself—an object and a subject of exemplarity. In general terms, Sophie, as the paradigm of women, for Rousseau, is to understand herself via a series of self-images, each of which is produced by structures of exemplarity in which she finds herself. That this series produces self-(mis)understanding will be analyzed through the ways in which Sophie is to become blind to herself, her needs, her feelings, and her true self. In this blindness she constitutes, ideally, according to Rousseau, a proper self, a valued self, a self of worth, since it is worthless on its own. In turn, the paradoxical structure of the self of Sophie will be revealed as it appears within each structure and matrix of exemplarity. She learns (and ought to learn) from her childhood to not be a child, to not be natural, to not be practical, to not be a 73

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mere appearance, to not be truthful, and to not simply obey her husband, while also learning that each of these ways of being is also demanded of her. Far from being rebellious as a child, Sophie is nurtured so as to not see the contradictions therein. She is to fulfill her destiny, once she truly understands what it is. She is to be natural, once she understands her nature; she is to be reasonable, once she understands her own brand of reason; she is to be obedient, once she learns to command, and vice versa, and so on. The systematic blindness that structures Sophie’s childhood and henceforth her being will be analyzed here at each moment of its production. Rousseau’s treatment of women is particularly instructive, since it offers such a detailed description of the production of women’s self-destructive, self-hating, and self-denying self-image as if this were the proper place, role, and function of women in men’s society. And it is, and this is the problem. Our issue and focus here remain that of exemplarity, but now we must consider the violence as well that this seemingly neutral structure is able to produce in the lives of women, as examples of their own nonexemplary status.

THE TOY OF CHOICE: A DOLL The proper destiny of women, Rousseau announces, is to have/make [faire] children.1 Preferably a woman should produce four, since two are likely to die, and the aim should be to represent, if not to reproduce, the father and the mother. Thus a woman’s aim in life is to reproduce herself, not as a woman but as a mother. In addition, this reproduction is to take place prior to being the very one that is to be reproduced. Although one must be a mother in order to reproduce a mother, represent a mother, one cannot, of course, be a mother first and then reproduce. The catch here is symptomatic of the entire structure of womanhood that Rousseau will proceed to lay out for us in what follows. Let us begin, then, with the chosen toy: a doll. Boys, Rousseau says, naturally search for toys that move and make noise, whereas girls are naturally attracted to things they can see and can serve to ornament. Thus little girls naturally turn toward their destiny as women/mothers when they choose to play with dolls. It is their “eternal occupation” that reveals itself and is exemplified here in the choice of toys. The wrong choice is a violation of nature, of destiny, of the world order, and it threatens the very existence of society, the state, the family, and mankind in general. In choosing the doll, then, the little girl chooses herself, accepts her destiny, likes her nature, and submits to a preordination unknown and unknowable to her. She sees the doll, Rousseau says, but “does not yet see herself ” (as doll).2 The structure of exemplarity here is to this point invisible to Sophie, the doll-girl, though operative nonetheless, indeed, all the more so in its invis-

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ibility to her. She enacts or performs her nature, though unbeknownst to herself. She is at once a mother and a child, as a child, yet she sees only the mother side of this duplicity. She cares for (presumably) the doll, as if it were her child (an orphan, adopted, to be sure, and not unlike Emile to come). She does not play as a child but as a mother. She pretends and, in short, she is not what she is: a child. This is her natural and necessary first step toward loving her own destiny of self-denial, self-overcoming, and self-blindness as selfimage. That she is pretending also is an essential lesson to be included in her feminine repertoire at a later stage in a more subtle way, but pretending already comes naturally to her, Rousseau says, whereas boys really play. They are the dolls in a way that little girls are not. Little boys play with things in the way that little girls make dolls play with things. Thus boys have an immediacy in their experience that little girls do not. Little girls, and Sophie in particular, care for the doll who is itself playing. She mothers the doll, which in turn can be allowed to be a child. Thus her childhood is removed from her at the instant she accepts it, embraces it, as her own proper choice.

THE NATURE OF LITTLE GIRLS Far from endorsing human nature as a general concept, Rousseau specifies a uniquely other framework for childhood. Children lack what adults have, namely, reason, the capacity to be moral beings, responsible beings, and all that follows from this, and thus they are to be treated otherwise. In lieu of adult qualities, children are granted access to and guidance from their own nature. In addition, as we have seen, this nature differs from little boys to little girls, again as a difference determined by lack. We shall return to this shortly. If the nature of a little girl is to guide her, it also is to guide her tutor if she has one. (Rousseau is somewhat noncommital on this point, since ultimately a girl’s mother is her best guide and model, for the two share the same nature as potentiality if not actuality.) Nature as example is the standard here for propriety of action, pedagogy, and for determining the direction of the will. Therefore, little girls are to submit to their natures and in so doing are to learn submission itself. Constraint is the lesson here, so that they will become obedient to the men who will control them. Thus “nature” functions an an example here, insofar as it substitutes for what is to come (as prophesy)—namely, man, culture, society, history, the state, and the family. “Nature” is thus to be heard and not seen, and this is not without reason. What little girls must learn is to obey, not their own nature but the commands of others, and this by nature. In turn, they are to listen to nature, to obey nature, and so to disregard it, to overcome it. This apparent contradiction can be unraveled when one recognizes that Rousseau

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is indicating two different natures here. The nature-to-be-obeyed is the command of the other, and the nature to be overcome and denied is one’s own as other than the nature of the other, hence, a new third nature is engendered via this “pedagogical” process that fictionalizes Sophie’s nature for Sophie. She henceforth sees her nature as obeying the other’s nature. She henceforth has no desires apart from her desires of the other; she is only through the being of the other. And this is her nature, and this she must learn. Not unlike the master/slave dialectic that Hegel depicted, Sophie is to take on the role of the slave while understanding herself to be master—of her own house, of her own feelings, of her own nature. She plays both roles while denying, concealing, and blinding herself to the enslavement of herself to the other’s desire as her own desire. She has no other nature, no other desires henceforth. Rousseau portrays this submission in the following way: All their lives they will be enslaved to the most continual and most severe of constraints—that of the proprieties [bienseances]. They must first be exercised in constraint, so that it never costs them anything to tame all their caprices [fantasies] in order to submit them to the wills of others.3 Furthermore, “women,” Rousseau insists,”were made [by nature] to obey men.”4

PRACTICAL REASON: WOMEN’S REASON There are two kinds of reason, Rousseau insists, and they are by nature distributed between the sexes so that males tend toward speculation, ideas, projects, and insight (truth), whereas females tend toward practicality, detail, pragmatics, and logistics. Women, females, little girls, have the natural attributes to be the secretaries, the functionaries for men, the thinkers. Thus Sophie must learn to recognize, reformulate, and embrace this part of herself. She is to learn how to do things, not choose what is to be done. She is to make arrangements for events, ideas, plans, and projects of men, not decide what is to take place. Her natural talent is for logistics, not logic, for detail not abstractions, and in this she complements her male counterpart. Equal but different is not the principle here, however. Priority in value, import, and significance is given to the male form of reason, while the pragmatics in the service of accomplishing the male’s goal are attributed to women’s natural talents. Yet Sophie is encouraged to learn the arts, in particular, the art of pleasing men. It is her task, as a child, as an apprentice to womanhood proper, to “cultivate the arts,” as the Muses told Socrates in his last dream. Sophie is to learn how to please others, and, in turn, herself. Her own pleasure again is to

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be determined or governed by the production of pleasure in others. She is to please herself only insofar as she pleases others. She has no proper pleasure other than the others’. This is her nature, and her childhood destiny is to learn to love this nature as she learns that it is hers, to be hers, to be herself. As she cultivates her taste, by singing, dancing, and the arts generally, she begins to have ideas. The proper idea here to be generated is that of beauty— in all of its senses—Rousseau tells us. Sophie is to be the agent of beauty, of harmony, at the same time she blinds herself to the denials that structure her being. She pretends harmony, unity, and wholeness; she portends synthesis, peace, and tranquility—for others. In turn, her morality is to be learned under the sign of “the rights of others.” Not having a self apart from others, not having desires apart from the others’ desires, not having feelings other than the others’, Sophie is now to begin to misunderstand all of this as her proper morality. She is to be the enabler for the desire of the other and to have the other’s desire as her own.

MORALITY Rousseau insists that conscience is a universal moral faculty shared by all humans and to be learned through recognition as children. It is a rule prior to opinion, common to all, an internal feeling that is to be relied upon as a standard for action. This natural capacity has nonetheless still to be learned, however. Men have a greater natural capacity for this natural capacity, Rousseau claims, since what is essential concerning the proper use of conscience is to be able to judge which feelings are legitimate and which are not. Legitimate feelings come from conscience, illegitimate from prejudice, and only reason can tell the difference. Alas, women and little girls even less so, have only the faculty of practical reason, and hence they are in need of a supplement to help them distinguish prejudice from conscience. This supplement, for women only, is to come from “the opinions of others,” Rousseau unequivocally states. Women must rely not only on inner natural resources but also on the feelings, ideas, and insights of those around them. Thus one’s own feelings are not sufficient here, and not to be relied on as a foundation for moral judgment. Neither is one’s own reason sufficient. Hence, deficient by nature, women’s moral judgment, when properly learned, is to arise from and follow the judgments of others. What safeguards this reliance on others from “mere prejudice” is nothing but an infinite regress, unless the one she relies on has better judgment than herself—more reason, a clear conscience, and more insight. Namely, her husband’s judgment is to serve as a guide for her own, in particular, with regard to moral issues. Not trusting her own reason, not trusting her own feelings, Sophie is now instructed to not trust her own conscience. And this is her

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nature—to distrust, to mutilate, to defer, and thereby to overturn by crippling her own nature—by nature. Not surprisingly, Rousseau insists that what women truly have as a natural capacity—all their own—is the capacity to pretend, indeed, ultimately to pretend to be natural, to pretend not to pretend, and so forth. And this too is natural.

THE TRUTH OF WOMEN Yet far from being subject to man’s truth, women are expected, according to Rousseau, to pretend to be. The natural talent of females for pretense, for the ruse, is not only the currency of their economy with others in general, and men in particular, but also with themselves. The ruse is “the natural talent of females” and should be cultivated. Theatricality as truth is what the young Sophie is to learn, but not as such. She is to believe it, she is to become the pretense, to lose the lost self totally, to obliterate the obliteration, to truly become the pretended self. Hence, her identity, her self-image, is to be created as this self-obliteration that obliterates itself. It is the double concealment that makes this system work within Sophie and within all of her relations to others, as we shall demonstrate. The secret of woman, Rousseau says, is to be modest, to conceal, and the inner secret is the truth here. She is to learn to conceal herself from herself so that she—as a feeling, thinking, acting being—no longer exists except through the other whose example she follows. Her simultaneous creation and destruction of her self is this displacement that displaces itself—completely. This art, of pretense in women, is to be raised to the level of a science, and in so doing women not only have the right but the duty to control men. Women are not servants to men, they govern them; they run the home, form the models for statecraft and statesmen, but only via the ruse of not doing the same. They must appear to not do what they do, and to do what they do not do. They must not feel what they feel, not think what they think, and not want what they want. And they must forget this displacement so that the appearance cannot only take on a reality but be the reality that it in fact is. There is no return for Sophie, no nature that is not learned, nothing that does not mirror her own inadequacy, yet she is secure, bound in her internalization of the other as herself. She now has a self, insofar as she has a self-image, insofar as it is the image of the other(’s image of her) as herself. Insofar as she sees that image as hers (mis)recognizes herself there, she has been educated, she will achieve and reach her destiny, preordained from the outset, and she will become the mother she always already was with her own dolls. And this is the truth, her story, that she tells herself as she presents and performs it for others.

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Exemplarity in the childhood of Sophie thus erupts at each moment when she is to claim her being. At each natural stage when she is to embrace and learn her true nature, it appears as an example for her—of her and for her, of the other as self. Hence, exemplarity is functioning in a tropical manner here as before within the education of Emile, but also in a doubling form that simultaneously produces, as De Man would call it, blindness and insight. It leads Sophie away from herself, mutilates herself and conceals the scar, almost totally. Exemplarity is itself structured as ruse here, as double bind, as paradox, and as Kant would have it, as antinomy. Insofar as Sophie makes the choice, which is not a choice, and betrays a self that she has never seen and never been, she overturns the antinomy and overturns the overturning. Thus exemplarity conceals itself here, as elsewhere, as the real, but concealing the as that allows it to operate. The as if of exemplarity is its being, it is that which simultaneously reveals and conceals it, for us and, potentially as least, for Sophie, as we shall see.

SOPHIE’S RELATIONS TO OTHERS In the development of Sophie’s sense of herself, as self-image, as archè and telos of her present(ed) self, as self-(mis)understanding, she has been surrounded by others and their influence. However, as with Emile’s earliest years, Sophie has not yet seen the otherness of the other(s). She has had no other, as self, as peer, but only others as not selves, as radically other. The doll, on the one hand, and her mother, on the other hand, have served only to isolate Sophie from others in her paradoxical identification and distance from these examples of her self. She does not see herself when she looks at the doll, but she sees herself as mother, and likewise, she does not see herself in looking at her mother, but rather as other than the maternal figure. Hence, she is caught within a labyrinthian structure, bounded on all sides by exemplarity, which initially produces a sense of herself as that which is to be denied in order to be. This self-denial is constitutive, insofar as she takes on otherness as her own. Indeed, this paradoxical overflowing of examples into being is precisely the structure of her being, at this point, as she understands it. Her being is to be other, not yet the other, but to be divided and ruptured from herself from within. At this juncture, she has no name for this duplicity except “self ” and no name for the other except as an idealized, if impossible, self. In short, she has no stance of her own other than the other’s for her, and this by her engendered being as destiny. The next stage of her development will be to see the other as other, not as model, nor as ideal to strive toward but as a master to be followed and obeyed. To address herself to the other is now the issue. This postal structure of

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her relations to others will be analyzed again through the issues of exemplarity that organize and facilitate it. Sophie learns to send herself to the other, to package herself for the other, to be legible to the other, to arrive at the disposal of the other. In short, she is to learn the rhetorical nature of her being and, indeed, her being is to be constituted in essence as rhetorical. The other for Sophie now is to be understood as the man, or men, in general. Her mate, her husband, is to be seen as an example of men in general, and vice versa, so that Sophie’s relations to men are to be parallel if not identical to her relations to her husband. The analogical structure of exemplarity here is ruptured, however, in the idealization she is to produce via fiction of her mate in particular. But this will come later. Rousseau’s treatment of Sophie frames her development as a memory rather than as a lived process. Contrary to Emile’s education, Sophie’s is structured by the trope of recollection so that we begin with the issue of fidelity to a mate and conclude with the issue of falling in love and the courtship leading toward matrimony. This temporal reversal is of some consequence, though Rousseau himself does not account for it. He reverses the natural process of Sophie’s development and thereby begins with the end, with the finality that is to govern each step of the process. In short, he begins in the middle, in the static nature of women, which Sophie-the-girl will share with Sophie-thewife-and-mother. Hence, Rousseau begins with the example of fidelity in marriage, which becomes an allegory of itself. Fidelity here is to nature, to Sophie’s nature, and it is Sophie who is supposed to be faithful to that. In turn, Rousseau aims (he says) to be faithful to this fidelity that he demands of Sophie. Thus fidelity to fidelity is displayed here, and consequently Rousseau betrays nothing in such a focus and with such an orientation. Yet what is at issue in Sophie’s display of fidelity is precisely the display. She must not only be faithful in fact to her husband (or to her nature perhaps) but must in addition and with equal import appear to be so. For women, appearances are everything, Rousseau insists. Sophie, the married woman, must now be concerned with and pay attention to her reputation, her performance in public, and this will be governed by men’s judgments. She is to masquerade as faithful in their eyes, in order to be respected and honored as such. She thus has to learn to act to not act— to become the performance, at least in appearance, and for this she will be respected. In turn, what governs Sophie’s sense of the other here is precisely the sense of being governed, being seen, and being judged by others. She must learn, therefore, to respond to this response and to play into their desires for her to appear faithful. Yet this is not necessarily their desire at all and, hence, she is to resist their desires at the same time as fulfilling them. This will produce respect in their eyes and, in turn, Sophie will have, by implication, self-respect.

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Other-directed totally, Sophie will have a self only through this postal structure of exemplarity. She must exemplify, perform, the role that she thinks they will interpret as honorable, in order to be seen and judged as honorable, in order to be (seen by herself as) honorable. Her being is thus constituted here as elsewhere only by the openings, sendings, and returns of exemplarity. As Rousseau says: It is important, then, not only that a woman be faithful, but that she be judged to be faithful by her husband, by those near her, by everyone.5 Thus fidelity to fidelity is not simply the issue here, though it appeared to be so at the outset. Rather, fidelity to appearance, as judged by others, is equally central if not more so. Sophie’s education in relation to others here is a pedagogy of drama—a dramatization. Her being is to be understood as theatrical, and in order to be true to her nature, she must become the ruse she pretends to be. This is the case even and especially with her husband, Rousseau insists. The more reserve a woman has, the more art she must have, even with her husband. Yes, I maintain that in keeping coquetry within its limits, one makes it modest and true; one makes it a law of decency.6 The law of honesty, for Sophie, is thus the law of pretense: of being the pretense, of losing herself in the performance, of forgetting herself in order to be herself. This takes the form of a rhetoric of being—of being for the other, of being the desire of the other, of being for the desire of the other. The question thus arises: how is Sophie to know how to perform thus and so? How does she know how to be as, except insofar as she knows how this or that performance will be judged? She must learn, Rousseau insists, how to read men. They are texts for her, as well as her judges. They are to be deciphered so that in turn they will read her as what she tries to be, or perform as. In short, the twin as-structures of performance will be mediated here by structures of exemplarity. More precisely, the performance is addressed to the interpretation that Sophie has of the other’s desire and judgment. Yet Sophie’s judgment is itself mediated by the judgment of others. She has no proper judgment, we should recall. She is not allowed or instructed to trust her own feelings, thoughts, and ideas but must rely on those of others. Thus the question arises as to who is to judge the performance? Furthermore, according to what script, written by whom, is Sophie to act for the other? There is a point of origin here, though it is not located in this escalating oscillation between as-structures of exemplarity operating between performance and audience. This point of origin is located, so it would appear, in

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Sophie’s desire. Here the erotic natural desires are a source of the desire to act, to perform, to be in the first place. Sophie’s desire is to be informed, however, and she is to idealize and transform this impulse into a fictional character who will then frame her actual search for an actual mate. We saw this same process emerge in Emile when he was instructed to read Fénelon, to become Télémaque replacing the image of (Homer’s) Telemachus in order to be seen as the object of Sophie’s desire. Armed with this idealization of her future (im)possible husband she is to perform for later, Sophie learns that her desire is other than what it is. It is not only for the other, it is other than itself. It divides from within, in the same ways that her own being divides and ruptures itself. Her desire is itself a performance that she strives to realize and to actualize. In turn, her performance and her way(s) of life enact a response to this performance of her own desire as she projects it onto and into the eyes of the others. Her being as Sophie—as honorable, respectable, in others’ eyes—is thus mediated, structured, and organized by seeing others as examples of her idealized other. Insofar as they are not this idealization, they cannot see her as respectable, honorable, and the woman she wants to be; thus she cannot receive from them what she desires: approval. And this limit keeps the marriage intact, insofar as Emile will become the idealized image of her desire— Télémaque—and see her as she wants him to see her. It is here that Emile’s judgment as other than others is to be sustained. Yet Sophie is condemned by others for acting at the same moment that she is embraced by Emile for being the object of his desire. Emile’s resistance to others here is as essential as Sophie’s lack of the same. She is guilty and innocent at the same time. She is acting and real at the same time. She is nothing other than the image others have of her, and here she obtains two conflicting images. She cannot be a unified self, as we have seen, and she cannot have a unified image insofar as she is a married woman. Since it is her destiny to marry, to pretend as well as to be faithful, and to be a mother, Sophie must live with these ruptures and pretend that they do not exist. Inasmuch as she does not display, she is not. And what is not displayed has no being, in Sophie’s world. Yet, it remains, it is the remainder, and it is this rupture that Sophie is condemned to accept and forfeit as her nature, her destiny, herself. This is her secret and indeed the secret of her nature.

3

For Us

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, in describing the phenomenology of Spirit, sunders consciousness irrevocably into two aspects of itself. One stands at the Absolute standpoint from the beginning, and it is thus able to see at a distance though also to undergo each stage of the process. The other stands within time and more fully undergoes each moment as if it were its last. This side takes the partial for the whole, missteps and mistakes each moment as the Absolute. The other half watches and understands the tragic-comedy, though it can do nothing. Rousseau, Hegel’s predecessor in Spirit and in fact, sets forth this duplicity in a more complex way that entails additional levels destined to be collapsed and reduced by Hegel. We have so far sketched the fictional phenomenological dimensions of Emile and Sophie as characters in their respective relations to the performance of exemplarity in, through, and behind their experiences. We have seen how exemplarity is operative in constituting what they take to be real, actual, and their innermost proper subjectivities. We also have seen the systematic blindness engendered thereby, insofar as the structures of exemplarity are themselves hidden from (and by) the phenomenological viewpoint. With this blindness in mind, we must now turn to the ways in which Rousseau opens the reader to an experience/reading of Emile and Sophie by setting forth a series of complex relations within a labyrinth of exemplarity. We should not see this level, however, as the Absolute standpoint, since we, the readers, also are being played upon and with by Rousseau here. We are enacting a parallel experience to the characters’ experience that we have analyzed thus far. In so doing, we, the readers, thereby become characters also contaminated by the performance of exemplarity orchestrated behind our backs. What must remain in the shadows here is the method used by Rousseau to produce these effects: seeing Emile as . . . , and Sophie as. . . . In the next section, we will 83

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step back further to the level of thematic expositions of exemplarity for the “tutor,” according to Rousseau, and finally for Rousseau, according to Rousseau. We also will withdraw from that level in our effort to reveal what allows Rousseau to make the claims he does, and to compare his use of exemplarity with his thematic exposé of the “same.” Returning to our Hegelian touchstone here, we will find that in reading the levels of Rousseau’s text here, we or he never reach(es) the Absolute standpoint; that is, the blindness at each level though revealed and clarified with each step back (withdrawl) can never be fully overcome. What saves this reading from pure circularity here is mnemosyne. Though the whole cannot be glimpsed at a glance, or from any one vantage point, what is invisible at one level can be viewed from another. As Derrida says, what we can do is shift the play of blindness and insight, darkness and light, though never totally eradicate either side of this only apparent duality. In this light, we will proceed from the fictive phenomenological account to a more explicitly hermeneutical level of analysis. The use of examples “for us” in order that “we” (readers) will “see” Emile and Sophie in carefully orchestrated ways, though similar to a phenomenology of reading, will overturn the same in a number of ways. The issue here is not our experience of Emile’s experience but rather how we are to frame this experience. This enframing is what is organized here by a variety of structures of exemplarity that are neither developmental in a progressive or regressive sense, nor static and cumulative. What takes place instead involves a multitude of viewpoints that themselves remain “unrelated,” or metonymic, for Rousseau at least. The viewpoints we are to take involve only aspects of Emile and Sophie and never offer us a vision of the whole. In short, no one perspective can be adequate to the task at hand, and in turn we will find Rousseau heuristically adopting and disowning these same frames. Kaleidescopic in effect, these frames thus offer us multiple views of Emile and Sophie as well as multiple Emiles and Sophies. What is perhaps most disconcerting is the disavowal, not contradiction, we suggest, of each form of approach. Having seen Emile as a plant, to be cultivated, as a seed that will grow into its true being, we are then instructed not to see Emile as a plant at all but as something else. The memory of this lost Emile haunts the (re)birth at each step, but once again these stages are not progressive for our experiences or Emile, nor are they cumulative. Emile is not to be seen as all of these alternatives, nor simply as one. This paradox embedded within Rousseau’s use of exemplarity here will form our focus of analysis as we attempt to reveal the ways in which our experiences of Emile and Sophie are constituted for us. The specificity of the frames also will be sustained, since to generalize at this point would collapse the issue into a concept that is to reduce the complexities, tensions, and struc-

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tures to an abstract fallacy. We will begin with Emile, since we aim to retrace Rousseau’s path of exposition in order to reveal the links and breaks in the temporality of the text itself.

READING EMILE Rousseau’s frames for our reading of Emile move from seeing the boy as a plant, as a Spartan, as a Roman, as a modern, as akin to savages, as being privately educated rather than publicly, and finally as an animal. The as-structures here are not simply analogical in form, nor are they metaphorical comparisons or leaps in the logic of similarity. Further, the as-structures do not form an allegorical parallel story in which to see Emile or through which to understand him. The examples we shall examine, notably arranged in the above order by Rousseau, primarily in Book I of his text, will reveal more complex tropical relations than any one of the above suggestions. Not simply metaphors but also metaphorical, not simply allegorical but also that, the structures of exemplarity here will exceed these traditional and ultimately metaphysical formulations. Rather than revolving around the sun of identity, in whatever form with whatever detours, the tropes of exemplarity will be shown to break from this universe, and the universality it conjures as normality, as identity and ultimately, as meaning itself. Rather than propose a general theory here, we are still at the stage of examining the functioning itself of the multiple structures. We aim to exhibit their performance and in turn reveal how the effects that these structures produce, namely, examples, are constituted. Such is the work of this project as it seeks the unthematized structures of exemplarity.

EMILE THE PLANT Rousseau opens the discourse here by substituting la jeune plante (the young plant) for Emile himself. As if synonymous, as if signs for each other, the plant supplants the boy here to set the stage. In one of his numerous passages on “advice to young mothers,” Rousseau suggests: “Cultivate and water the young plant before it dies. Its fruits will one day be your delights.”1 The boy-as-plant is to be cultivated, grown in a garden or controlled environment, domesticated, housed, and tended in this context. We, the readers, are then to see Emile through the system of metaphors associated with plants—he will sprout, he will grow roots, he will tend to develop according to his own internal nature (entelechy), he will obey the laws of nature, by nature, though he needs assistance to become who he is. Thus in seeing Emile-as-plant we also

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see what he lacks, and this seems to be such a perfect set of analogies (insofar as metaphor is thought to be based on or creative of analogy) that the example loses its difference. Emile seems to be a plant, in all of the above senses, and he can be understood through these frames. As we identify the other attributes of planthood, we can identify the like attributes of boyhood. Further, the lack that will locate the interface between plant and world will reveal the necessary place of the mother, Rousseau tells mothers. More rhetorically effective than the above, Rousseau then appeals to the narcissistic strand of the mother’s character when he says, “you will benefit from this cultivation of your plant/boy,” and “His fruits will be your delights.”2 Whether Rousseau is serious or rhetorically manipulative here is not for us to decide, though one could mount evidence for both judgments. What is at issue here is the structure of this example so that it encircles the growth of the boy, not only from birth to death when he mentions “before she dies,” but also the circularity of the “gift” so that the boy’s debt will be paid (to his mother) before she dies. His fruits, his products, his results, will be hers and, in effect, they have always already been hers. This is the promise of cultivation, Rousseau suggests, and the promise of this structure of exemplarity. The “plant” too is set up as a promise of detour and return—to the boy’s life and back to nature with his death, the plant’s death and, hence, death itself. Thus the relation between plant and boy is parallel to that from mother to boy; the plant engenders the boy, for us. We are to see him through planthood. Not as a plant, not as similar to plants, but through all of the attributes that can be applied analytically to the plant. They apply to the boy not through analogy or metaphorical transfer, but the very same attributes apply. This is not to identify the essence of the plant with that of the boy, clearly, but rather to recognize that the attributes are themselves transferrable from essence to essence. In addition, the rhetorical relation of mother to son is reproduced by that from the plant to the boy, insofar as both are structured as promises of return. This is far from the last word on plants here, however, and we must proceed to examine Rousseau’s two other such references in this context. An analogy based on ratio is seemingly set up with the following claim: “Plants are shaped [on façonne les plantes] by civilization, and men by education.”3 Thus the analogical reading would imply that as cultivation is to plants, so education is to men. When examples seem to double in this respect (analogically), we must examine them carefully prior to assuming traditional names and structures for the functioning that takes place here. The question might well be: Where is the example here? Is it plants as examples for men? Is it cultivation (gardening) as an example for education? Is it the relation between plants and gardening, which is to be seen as an example for the relation between men and education? The latter case would assume that exemplarity functions via analogy, and we would end our investigation here. But,

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we suggest, the relation is not so simple. Let us examine the term façonne to begin with, since the entirety of the relation of relations hinges on this term that seems to serve as the bridge of identity between one side of the ratio and the other. Façonne means the following plurality in French: “to work, shape (wood, metal, etc.); to fashion (clay); or to mould, form (character).”4 The dominant (first) meaning of the term seems to be applicable to plants themselves only by a further tropic reorientation. One works (façonne) woods and metals, one fashions (façonne) clay, and one molds (façonne) character. Plants evidently can only be related here through a number of mediations—to see a plant as a piece of wood, clay, metal, and so on, or even as a soul whose character is to be molded. Thus we move already to humans (“men”) at this first level in order to set up the “analogy” between plants and humans, which the statement ostensibly articulates. What is hidden but functioning here is the prior exemplarity of seeing plants as humans (having a character to be molded) so that humans can be seen as plants in the explicit claim. Simple analogies? We suggest not. Further definitions, human in priority, of the term façonne, only complicate this issue, but let us consider them nonetheless. The second meaning is “to make (a dress),” and third: “to work (the soil).”5 Again, if we accept the second definition, we must place the cart before the horse in order to see the reverse in Rousseau’s statement. If we accept the third definition, however, we seem to unravel all that has been claimed above, but this is only an apparent perception. If façonne is seen as work (the soil), then we can translate the original claim as “one works the soil of plants in order to cultivate them.” Thus one cultivates them in order to cultivate them. The status of the “par” (in order to) thus is redundant in such a transformation. We cultivate by cultivating. What can this mean? If this doubling is to have any signification, the first cultivate must be separable from the second and, hence, the first cultivate is neither cultivation of the soil nor of the man. It is not what it is (by definition). It is, in short, other than itself in precisely the same way that the two cultivators are other than themselves. The first literally means what the second is to mean, yet it cannot be used or cannot function literally so that the second can function literally, so that in turn it (the second cultivation) can serve as an example for education, which is the issue here. The key here is the duplicity embedded in cultivation, which is marked by Rousseau in using the term façonne here, which is, properly speaking, neither cultivation nor education. It is preparatory, literally and figuratively, and it allows the literal/figurative dimensions to be split from the first part of the phrase to the second. The fourth meaning of façonne, as if we needed more complexity, is stated as “accustom oneself to discipline.”6 This adds a new dimension altogether, so that one, the subject of Rousseau’s claim after all, is now to accustom oneself to plants by cultivating them and to men by educating them. Thus again the initial frame here seems to beg the temporal

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structure of the phrase itself. One should already be accustomed to men and plants prior to educating and cultivating them in order to be able to do the latter at all. Yet now we are instructed to learn this in the process, not prior and not after, but in the midst of the action itself. In other words, one is instructed here to educate and cultivate oneself via doing the same for men and plants, respectively. Where is the example here, and what has occurred to our structures of exemplarity? Have these been buried beneath this work of textual exegesis? Not at all. Rather, we have shown here that: (1) exemplarity does not function as a simple analogy (in this case), but at the very least as multiple analogies each hinged upon the others in nonanalogical ways; (2) the ratio structure of analogy cannot account for the hinge itself, which sets up the apparently double structure; and (3) the functioning of exemplarity allows for multiple readings, so that no one case or example of exemplarity can be legitimately seen to be the law of the others. Rousseau adds one heliotropic example of the plant as its natural inclinations reveal the same in men (and, hence, one might assume, in Emile). In discussing education as habit formation, as a transformation of nature, yet also relying on nature and limited by the same, Rousseau suggests the case of plant growth and direction. He says: Such, for example, is the habit of the plants whose vertical direction is interfered with. The plant, set free, keeps the inclination it was forced to take. But the sap has not as a result changed its original direction; and if the plant continues to grow, its new growth resumes the vertical direction. The case is the same for men’s inclinations. So long as one remains in the same condition, the inclinations which result from habit and are the least natural to us can be kept; but as soon as the situation changes, habit ceases and the natural returns. Education is certainly only habit.7 Let us initially examine the apparent “theory” (signifie) proposed here using a traditional metaphysical schema. Rousseau seems to be claiming that following the example of plants that can be trained to grow in other directions than the vertical (their natural impulse), but whose nature returns unabated once the force to alter it has been removed, so too for men. In addition, one would have to include Emile within the syllogism: All men do this; Emile will be a man (is a man, by species); ergo, Emile, too, will do this. The structures of exemplarity functioning in the above claim are not so simple, not so linear, however. Returning to Rousseau’s claim for plants, let us consider the statements now from the standpoint of the signifiers and in turn the constitutive structures of exemplarity operative within and between the terms of reference given here.

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The content of this claim gives us reason to believe that Rousseau himself does not believe it to be an accurate statement. He sets up an interlocutor who plays the incessant role of skeptic for many of his arguments proposed throughout the text, Emile. Thus it is his would-be opponent who says, leading up to the “example of plants”: “Nature, we are told, is only habit. What does that mean? Are there not habits contracted only by force which never do stifle nature?”8 Between one question and the next, however, Rousseau-therespondent reenters the dialogue and begins to refute his interlocutor. The second question responds to the first, and it is this claim, though formulated as if a question, that frames the issue of the example of plants that we cited above. Now the example becomes such in a twofold manner. On the one hand, it is an example of this second question/claim that there might be habits that one develops only by force and that far from natural in themselves only conceal one’s nature but do not in essence alter it. Thus plants, which forced to grow in a nonnatural, nonvertical (nonheliotropic) way, will, if left alone, return to their natural growth tendencies. The forced plant example thus seems to be a case of the initial general claim, yet the structure is more complex, since this particular now serves as the rule for what is to follow. It is simultaneously governed by a rule preceding it and forms the rule for what follows it. Its rule is external to itself (forced upon it from the outside), and in turn it forces this “same rule” on the following example of men. That the forced plant example is both a rule and not a rule, a case and a general, sets up something other than a duplicity here. It functions within a matrix of textual temporality, so that its meaning is only via the past and the future, and it is this that it guards, conceals, in its forced usage. The forced plant example is itself forced—ruled from the outside, metonymically, and in turn, it rules from the outside, metonymically. In addition, we must consider with greater precision the differences between the first and second rules and the first and second examples. The first pair seem to relate as set to subset, whereas the second pair seem to relate as set to set, parallels not hierarchically interrelated. We stress the term seem above, however, since again the structure operative here is more complex than this twofold difference that translates readily into verticality, on the one hand, and horizontality, on the other hand. Such is the traditional matrix of metaphysics that governs all possible relations, and that we seek to expand here via this somewhat microscopic analysis of exemplarity. Returning to our focus here, it is clear that there are a number of hingeterms that operate in all arenas without apparent differences in level or functioning, for instance, the issue of retension, the memory of nature, which cannot be forgotten by force. This floating term links the three matrices in a way that allows one to shift from one to the other. It spans the metonymic gap, yet the meaning of this memory is distinct in all three realms. Indeed, the nature

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that is itself concealed though not forgotten also is significantly different in each case. What is at stake here is the linkage that allows an example to be an example of something, the linkage that Husserl termed rather vaguely for consciousness as intentionality. This “of-structure” inhabits examples, so that their form is nothing other than “ek-static,” in Heidegger’s restricted sense of the term.9 In being ek-static, examples always entail a temporalization that exceeds their own proper being. Or rather, their being is itself ek-static and always already ahead of themselves, and re-tracing a hitherto silent past. Thus our reading of the “example” of forced plants, which cuts at least two ways, took us outside of it in order to reveal its innermost proper structure—as outside of itself. This temporalization is one of the structures of exemplarity, we suggest, and it locates yet another of the places where examples function in a nonmetaphysical manner. Not static, not merely hierarchical, examples entail an absence that organizes this functioning. Ironically, the example above allegorizes precisely this without meaning to or intending to. It reveals the metaphysically forced functioning and reading of examples which, though an actual possibility and a manifestation of the significance of examples, remains an external possibility that conceals an-other nature of the same. Something else remains, hidden but remembered, which can be revealed once the force has been lifted. It is this gesture that we are attempting here. Returning to Rousseau’s example for us to see Emile as, we must add a final note concerning the plant examples as a series. The last in the series denies the connections hitherto established. Rousseau seems to be openly and violently contradicting all that he has established thus far in this connection. In discussing nationality, allegiance, “isms” and “ites,” roots and soils in general, Rousseau insists: “A man is not planted like a tree in a country to remain there forever.”10 We began, as readers, to think of Emile-the-boy as a plant, to be cultivated, to be nurtured according to his nature, yet now we are told that he is not a tree, not rooted in one country, and that he need not live in the same place forever, as a plant is generally forced to do. The question might well arise: Is he a plant or not a plant? Is the plant an example or not for Emile? One could respond that he is both, in some ways to be seen through the example of plant in general, but this would be missing the point here. There is no conceptual framework for understanding examples as such. Indeed, examples do not function as such at all here, we suggest. Rather, the plant-man connection established by exemplarity is to be severed over time, is to be overcome, transplanted as we further understand Emile. Thus we are not to simply see the exemplarity relation as a static, fixed conceptual schema but as a fluid, dynamic, and metonymically organized set of possibilities. Rousseau uses this dynamism throughout the text, insofar as he relies on exemplarity to connect and disconnect our view of Emile to and from various others. This to and fro (fort/da) is what organizes exemplarity itself. It is

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in essence a transient notion, nonconceptual, not fixed by esssences but fluid, according to properties that themselves alter. Furthermore, one must consider the role of the negative in the formation and functioning of examples. To say “this is not an example of that” already links the two respective objects, the subject and object via a relation of denial. “This is not that” must be said, stated and implanted within the text in order to establish a distance, but at the same instant, a relation. Rousseau has to say: “man is not a tree” in this manner, because he has already established the relation, the proximity, though forced from the outset between plants and humans. Now that the force is removed, the guarded though hidden nature of things is revealed again. This “nature” of the relation between two natures is structured by ambivalence; indeed, in some cases, in most cases, “man is a tree” rooted in his own land, Rousseau claims. Un homme [a man], however, is not any man, it is Emile; it is this man, this case, this unique boy. Thus the initial relation of exemplarity is maintained only insofar as Emile becomes its exception. He is not a plant, he is not a man, any man. He is not a concept. He is not an example, in that sense, and Rousseau says as much. Emile is anything but typical, anything but a boy as such. His specificity now locates him outside of the very frame in which we thought we were to see him. He has been hidden from us, for us, at the very moment of his description and presentation. Rousseau’s appresentation of Emile is effected through his usage of exemplarity, which again can be seen allegorically through his plant-man examples. Emile is indeed a particular of the species, man, yet he is also and always other. He exceeds this nature or essence, and it is precisely the excess that Rousseau seeks to describe. He is not a vertical representative of the heliotropic metaphysical plantlike desire, nor is he a merely horizontal case like any other. He is, however, an example but in a sense yet to be defined. Emile also is to be seen through the examples of the ancients, Rousseau claims, and for his examples of “ancients,” he chose the Spartans, on the one hand, and the Romans, on the other hand. The issue here is that of the education of the good citizen, the true patriot, and both Sparta and Rome offer lessons in this regard for Rousseau. In Sparta, he says: Every patriot is harsh to foreigners. They are only men. They are nothing in his eyes. This is a drawback, inevitable but not compelling. The essential thing is to be good to the people with whom one lives. Abroad, the Spartan was ambitious, avaricious, iniquitous. But disinterestedness, equity, and concord reigned within his walls.11 Thus the Spartan example here reveals the truth of the citizen, the patriot as one whose actions, values, and standards vary depending on whom one is dealing with or addressing oneself to. The difference between inside and outside, foreigner and citizen, is absolute here, and the Spartan lived such a difference.

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The Roman case, also for the good citizen, involved the intimate connection between nature and state, nature and culture, and nature and citizenship: “A citizen of Rome was neither Caius nor Lucius; he was a Roman.”12 Thus the true citizen has no proper name nor shares the same patronymic with his compatriots. They are all Romans, not individuals, but members. We should recall that Emile has no known father and no proper family name. He was an orphan whose heritage is left unknown to us, the readers. He is thus a Roman in this sense at least. The question is: Is he to become a Spartan in the sense of the Spartan patriot—to love his kin and to hate strangers? Rousseau certainly wants him to become a good citizen, but he retracts the Spartan and Roman senses of this the moment that he invokes them. They are again negative examples—invocations of what we are not to see. The trace, the ghosting, will remain, however, and of necessity via exemplarity. Rousseau’s denial here of this “model” of the good citizen is structured by recontextualizing the issue, by historicizing the notion itself. The ancients are other, for us, foreigners for us, and we are to reject their model. The reason for this is a new relation between nature and culture that characterizes us irrevocably as moderns. Thus as Spartans, we are to see Spartans as radically other than ourselves, to reject them on the basis of their difference. Inside our walls, as moderns, we must recognize that the locus of conflict is no longer between states or societies but precisely between nature and culture. The external conflict for the ancients has shifted to become an internal one for us, and Emile. The soul of the modern exhibits the worldly conflicts of the ancients. In short, the enemy now is within in a sense as the foreigner is us. The question now becomes: What is foreign, and what now is the status of the negative examples above? They have been internalized, consumed, and they live on now within the walls of the city/world. For the ancients, one’s nature was equivalent to one’s culture, and vice versa; to fight against nature was to reject one’s culture. For us moderns, nature is to be seen as precultural, as in need of cultivation, education from the standpoint of culture; we must fight against our natures in order to be educated, cultivated, cultured and, hence, become good citizens. But this frame of exemplarity as internalizing the external is itself overcome by Rousseau’s next step. He invokes the cases of Plato and Lycurgus in this context and praises Plato’s Republic as the foremost document on public education for the end (telos) of citizenship. Lycurgus’ laws, on the contrary, denatured the heart of man and in a sense gave way to what will be seen as the modern era. Thus modernity begins with the ancients, not the moderns. Rousseau’s response to this, however, ultimately supports both Plato and Lycurgus but also sees them as foreigners, in the Spartan sense. Since nature and culture are now at odds, and since Plato wrote the definitive guide for the education of citizens, what is needed is the counterpart and fulfillment of what both Plato and Lycurgus began: the treatise on the domestic

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private nature and education of man. Far from an oxymoron, Rousseau’s notion of private or personal education of the natural man as natural becomes a way of combating what he sees as a corrupt culture: modern so-called culture. Not a return to the ancients or a rejection of the ancients, Rousseau’s use of them as an example is neither as a model to be followed nor a danger to be rejected but as an incomplete picture to be fulfilled. The example here is of incompleteness, of a project left unfinished, of the lack in the apparent completeness of the past. In a sense, the examples here function as the reverse of supplements in Derrida’s sense. They call forth a supplement yet to be developed. They call forth what Rousseau will provide, as we have seen. Two other systems of examples remain in this opening to Emile “for us,” as readers. The first, in order of appearance in the text, is that of the Caribs, those so-called natural people who know better than we moderns how to raise children according to nature. Rousseau’s anthropological data, however dated, is significant here in its functioning rather than its factuality or lack of same. The city of the Caribs gives Rousseau ammunition for his cause in the education of Emile according to his own proper nature. Thus it would seem that this anthropological example functions simply as a model-to-be-followed in Rousseau’s text, for us. Two issues are raised in this context to situate this choice of examplars. The first is freedom, and intimatedly bound up with this is happiness. One is concomitant with the other, Rousseau seems to assume here. He announces the example through the claim to the greater happiness of those “primitives” than that which civilized Europeans have known. They are half again as happy as we, he tells us. Two pages later, Rousseau overtly claims that such peoples, the Caribs now used as an example, are more sensible than we Europeans. The reason, the evidence for such praise from Rousseau, is given in their manner of child rearing, which involves leaving the infant free (naturally) to move its limbs rather than being wrapped tightly in swaddling clothes, as was the dominant custom in his day. Thus freedom is the cause of happiness, and it is brought forth by Rousseau within the issue of natural child-rearing practices. Now it would seem that he is suggesting that we turn to the “primitive societies” as an examplar-to-follow, to reproduce in our radically other “modern” world, but this is far from the case. The natural peoples of natural societies are in essence precultural and even prehistorical, in Hegel’s sense.13 They cannot form a model, though they are used as an example here. Freedom, for Rousseau and as for the ancients, is not fundamentally a natural attribute of mankind. It must, on the contrary, be developed and fostered in and through a community, an education, and a state that will promote and safeguard it. Hegel later was to thematize this same structure, which is announced by Rousseau in The Social Contract and, of course, much earlier by both Plato and Aristotle.14 Thus why turn to the infant whose happiness seems safeguarded by the absence of constraint rather than the recognition of

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same? Rousseau was careful to defend the rights of non-Western, non-European societies, peoples, and religions as civilizations in their own right. They are not simply natural societies or peoples. They do have a different cultural relation to that same nature that we as the human species share. This other relation is revealed in his example, and it is this moment of insight, one of many, one might argue, that Rousseau chooses to focus on here in order to raise the “more general” issue of the relation between freedom and happiness. What is natural is to desire both; what is impossible, however, is to transfer the relation one society has to these desires to another, as we said in Rousseau’s relation to the ancients. The issue that is raised for us here is that of application and exemplarity. An example traditionally is thought to be so insofar as it can be applied to some other case; this structure entails the duplicity (impossible to overcome, so many would claim) of the example as particular and the example as model or Exemplar. What we have seen here, however, is another structure of exemplarity that disrupts this easy applicability. What the “primitive societies” do to obtain happiness and freedom cannot be used as an “example” for us; we cannot simply follow them and apply their system to ours in any simple teleological fashion. Instead, the matrix in which freedom, happiness, and nature are related can provide insight for us by contrast rather than by similarity. Rousseau’s usage of the Caribs and “such peoples” is not simply an indictment of European society for its differences from the former. Rather, it reveals what also is true of the moderns and of the ancients: that nature, culture, happiness, and freedom are not antithetical poles. In obtaining or fulfilling one, the others are fulfilled or obtained as well. That is, one’s happiness depends on one’s freedom, which is both a cultural and natural phenomenon for humankind. The ways in which these connections are manifest are not transferable from one civilization to another, however. Rousseau makes this latter point clear when he says, unequivocally, that despite this happiness/freedom relation for “savages,” they are in comparison to Europeans, terribly “cruel.” Furthermore, their cruelty is a result of eating meat, which Rousseau insists instills the aggression and savagery (of animals) into men. Insofar as Europeans eat meat, he adds quickly, they are as cruel for the same reason. Thus the chasm is bridged in a moment of identity that is simple and not analogical. In this regard, the Europeans can serve as examples to “illustrate” savages who eat meat and are therefore cruel. Homer makes his flesh-eating Cyclops a terrible man, while his lotus-eaters are so delightful that those who went to track with them forgot even their own country to dwell among them.15 In addition, he cites Plutarch’s discussion of Pythagoras as a non-meat eater and, hence, an example of civility. Are savages, then, the examples for Euro-

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peans here? Are natural men the examples for cultural men? Yes and no. Not in the sense of a model to follow, nor in the sense of a particular case of a general, such as mankind as such, but rather an example as contrast is set up here to point out by detour and deflection what not to do for Emile. Though the Caribs seem happier, then, one must beware of simply dividing the world into natural and cultural, happy and unhappy, as one cannot divide savages from Europeans according to aggression or peaceful tendancies as instantiated by eating habits. That the European civilization itself so divides between these is evidence for the same inability to judge “non-Europeans as such” in the same respect. Thus the categories of us and them, civilized and uncivilized, and natural and cultural themselves unravel and are not simple concepts with sweeping realms of ubiquity. Rather, in each supposed realm the other lives and divides the realm against itself—for us Europeans as well as for those natural societies. Far from either glorifying or expunging the natural, Rousseau adopts it as a cultural achievement—in Europe and elsewhere where it exists and decries its lack in “both” realms where it is ignored in favor of a more primitive culture. Rousseau’s last example for us of Emile is a complex one, in that he discovers many attributes and issues that themselves do not form a unifiable totality. He begins with a discourse on sickness, suffering, and resignation to the same in animals, and he seems to praise them for this. When an animal is sick, it suffers in silence and keeps quiet. Now one does not see more sickly animals than men.16 This valiant absorption of pain and suffering is what it seems Rousseau would have Emile learn to reproduce. The animal here thus seems to be a model-to-follow again for Emile. Rousseau seems to explicitly make this claim in what follows: I will be told that animals, living in a way that conforms more to nature, ought to be subject to fewer ills than we are. Well, their way of life is precisely the one I want to give to my pupil. He ought, therefore, to get the same advantage from it.17 One should recall here that pity, or compassion for one suffering, forms the foundation of human society. Our passions unites us, and our needs drive us apart. Our compassion unites us in a way that keeps us apart, however, and this will be known as society. The suffering of animals, which does not draw compassion, since they do not form societies, in Rousseau’s precise sense of the term, is done in silence. They have no voice for this pain, no language to call forth the other, but it is

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not this silence that Rousseau would have Emile learn to exhibit. It is the harmony of Emile with his own nature, which is revealed through the example of animals as a separate, nontransferable reality. “This manner of living,” Rousseau says, which is “plus conforme à la nature” [conforms more closely to nature] does not mean that humans should live as animals. “Animals” are not an example here in that simple analogical sense. We do not share a common ground with them, and this is made clear by Rousseau himself when he states: All the animals have exactly the faculties necessary to sustain themselves. Only man has superfluous ones.18 These “superfluous” ones are, of course, a benefit and a curse for us, as Rousseau will incessantly state. But the point is, the example of animals functions here not as a model, an ideal, or an analogy. Rather, the wisdom animals exhibit in their own sphere concerning their response to suffering and ultimately to death, is to be seen as profound and insightful within that sphere. This response would not provide the sustenance needed for humans; it would not be sufficient, since we have “superfluous faculties” that in the end are natural to us. Inasmuch as nature itself does not exist, for Rousseau, as a concept, there is no bridge, no analogy, between animal nature and human nature. Thus when he proclaims “live according to nature, be patient, chase away the doctors,”19 he is not saying to live in accordance with animal nature. Further, Rousseau says: “The first law of resignation comes from nature. Savages as well as animals do not fight against death, they endure it almost without complaint.”20 That humans have foresight, however, a knowledge of death in advance of its factuality, leads to other laws of resignation, including writing, martyrdom, and the General Will within us that “protects” us from our otherwise certain early death. That animals are used as examples here is clear in that Rousseau invokes them as a type of elastic extension from his discussion to other ostensibly related issues. By bringing in the extraneous, Rousseau invokes what does not relate as related, the other, and in a very particular way. Thus, again, examples function here in a contrasting manner to exhibit in detail what Rousseau is not discussing, is not referring to, in humans and, in particular, in Emile’s nature and education to come. In summary, we the readers are to see Emile through this kaleidescopic functioning of exemplarity but are not to unify any one image as a model or an analogy. Rather, Rousseau overturns each moment of exemplarity as he takes back what he seems to give forth. Is this a fort/da21 relation organizing exemplarity in general? We will not assume so at this juncture, though it has been found to animate much of what Rousseau has done to this point within his usage of examples through which we are to “see” or envision Emile.

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READING SOPHIE/WOMEN We have seen above how Sophie has been educated to see herself through a variety of examples and structures of exemplarity. It is now time to analyze, beyond this, how we, as readers, are to see Sophie’s experience and image of herself. Our understanding of her will thus at this stage not be phenomenological, not a mere description of her experience, but an analysis of what allows her experience to be what it is. In short, we will be concerned here with the production, beyond and outside of her experience, of what she has come to regard as her own (propre). Rousseau discusses with his reader in a way as we have shown that repeats the way he sets up his characters’ experiences. More precisely, he doubles the blindness/insight relation as he produces “our experience” of his characters’ experiences. Thus we shall have to step back again from this stage to analyze what makes this level of insight itself possible. At no stage is the process as a whole totally visible, we suggest, but rather each moment of vision is of necessity also a moment of blindness, which is the condition of that same vision and visibility itself. It is this thesis that we have sought to display all along and will continue to reveal in what follows. Sophie, for us, is initially introduced through the example of a machine. We should recall that this apparently distant metaphorical transfer was not uncommon in the eighteenth century and, indeed, most philosophers of Rousseau’s day used it to great effect. The universe itself was thought through the example—as allegory, analogy, and metaphor—of the machine. God was the great technological source of technè as manifest in the order of nature as such. Rousseau’s reference to the machine here thus invokes much of this context without explicitly naming it. As he says: In everything not connected with sex, woman is man. She has the same organs, the same needs, the same faculties. The machine is constructed in the same way.22 (emphasis added) And by the same source, Rousseau might have added, and certainly supposes here, that the machine is not limited to the body here as such, since he includes needs and beyond this the faculties. Thus “the machine” example is more than a mere machine, or mere technè—it is also having faculties. But since all that it houses are natural attributes, the machine is really a metonym for nature. It is by nature (the machine) that woman is man, Rousseau tells us. What status does Being have here via this example and, more precisely, via the essentially metonymic structure of exemplarity functioning within this citation? Rousseau qualifies the being of woman as man the instant he names it and seems to withdraw the being of woman as such at the same moment he invokes it. She is by nature a ruse, for Rousseau, we should recall.

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This exposure of her being is thus a moment of immodesty—a violation of her nature—and Rousseau takes it back, replaces it with his almost simultaneous qualifications of that “is” which seemed to equate women with men. She is and is not man, and in that order. Thus the trace of identity, indeed identity itself as trace as a past that was never present, as Derrida and Levinas before him called it, is revealed here in the structure of Rousseau’s discourse itself. But what precisely is a machine? Rousseau’s discourse divides itself between women and men and further divides this division under the sign of “is” into organs, needs, and faculties. Then we have the singular machine invoked that is “constructed in the same manner.” “The machine” itself is constructing the same here out of what has already been distinguished. Rousseau opened the issue, we should recall, by a caveat, a qualifier in which to find the being of woman as man’s being, her being as within man, and yet prior to men and outside of them: “In all that does not pertain to sex,” Rousseau says at the onset. What “all” is this, and which sex—as a being and/or as an activity—is referred to here? Rousseau leaves the issue notably ambiguous. This ambiguity henceforth structures the being of woman as man and as not him, as prior to him and yet dependent on him. Thus woman as ruse, as duplicity, as the ambiguity that will not be resolved, is performed here in the structure of Rousseau’s discourse itself. His signifier says what he can only point toward now and yet deny explicitly what (the signified) he says. Returning to the example as machine, machine as example, we have found it divided, and division as it seems to unite differences between the sexes. Insofar as the difference is a sexual one, there is no single machine here; there are two which nonetheless have the same organs, the same needs, and the same faculties. Thus enmeshed, these two machines can be sexual, can be related evidently in a nonmechanical way. It is sex, their sexes, that machines do exhibit here. Thus the machine lacks sexuality, though it has the equivalent of faculties, needs, and organs. The very condition of its possibility, sex itself, is outside of its realm, and necessarily so. Thus the machine-as-example displays its own lack, its own incapacity, as it is related to what it exemplifies. Incomplete, this structure of exemplarity is thus mechanical—lacking—and thus also complete; a perfect match, a perfect fit in the same respect that, as Rousseau puts it, woman is man. Again we return to the structure of Being here as as, and as negating itself in the very moment of its enunciation. It takes itself away, conceals itself in its revelation. The “is” is being divided here in the same way that the machine is from its point of origin, from what makes it make. Being is thus revealed as separated from, cast off from what makes it be. Why is this the case? We have yet to discover such depths, but what is clear at this juncture is that the functioning of exemplarity takes us very close to such a vantage point.

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Rousseau turns from the machine example to his historic touchstone again, and he invokes Plato, specifically with regard to what he calls the latter’s “civil promiscuity.” Far from endorsing Plato’s “liberated” treatment of women, Rousseau now condemns the example of Plato as one to be warned against, to ward off, to prohibit from being spread about, from being, as he puts it, promiscuous. The proper limits of Plato’s contribution are thus located within the realm of public education, in particular, for men only. Plato’s treatise, “the first ever on public education,” according to Rousseau, is thus to be circumscribed at this juncture. As Rousseau says: I am speaking of that civil promiscuity which throughout confounds the two sexes in the same employments and in the same labours and which cannot fail to engender the most intolerable abuses. I speak of that subversion of the sweetest sentiments of nature.23 Though Rousseau accepts the idea of women having the same organs, needs, and faculties, this does not result, and ought not, in women having the same work or the same employment. Their role in society is totally other than men, and this as regards the purely sexual difference. What is at issue here is Rousseau’s usage of Plato as an example to not see Sophie through. What Sophie should not be, should not do, and should not be educated for is what Plato’s example represents here. It is the “subversion of the most sweet sentiments of nature.” Consider for a moment that Rousseau earlier characterized Plato’s treatise on education (The Republic) as the greatest fulfillment of man’s nature, and Lycurgus, on the contrary, as having “denatured man” by his laws. Thus Lycurgus became, from Rousseau’s position, the first modern. Here we have a contrary use of Plato-as-an-example so that he is to be blamed for the denaturing of women, for this civil promiscuity that would allow women into the realms of men: the workplace, the economy, and perhaps more significantly, the political arena. This inclusion of women is scandalous, Rousseau insists, since what is violated here is women’s nature. Women have lost their virginity in Plato’s examples and have been led to the role of prominence, called promiscuity by Rousseau. Thus Rousseau sees Plato’s women as whores, prostitutes, immodest, and theatrical. They are the other women, women as other here, to be contrasted with the proper of women, women as proper, as properly women. The latter role functions as a prophylactic for Plato’s example, which overruns itself when we consider it carefully. Women are men and can thus be as men, do what men do and, hence, what happens to sexual difference? The state absorbs it, as it does the children in Plato’s world. It provides day care, child-rearing institutions and, hence, women can be men, or rather, the sexual difference need not transform the being of women into a restricted,

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purely domestic function. Rousseau is evidently horrified by such a prospect, since the woman’s role now becomes an example, the first in a series, whereby one can understand the state, the family and, ultimately, the citizen. . . . as though the love of one’s nearest were not the principle of the love one owes to the state; as though it were not by means of the small fatherland, which is the family, that the heart attaches itself to the large one. As though it were not the good son, the good husband, and the good father who make the good citizen!24 The “as thoughs” here function evidently via the path of via negativa. Each “as” example resulting from the example of Plato’s treatment of women is thus named and taken back, condemned at each moment. The linkage is cumulative, however, and not overturning from the former to the latter, as before. Each “as though” is the necessary consequence of the one preceding, so that the whole state as family and as the locus of the good husband and father who will engender the good citizen is torn apart. The house of cards effect here is magnified by the absence of woman. We are forced to see woman by her absence at the same moment the state, family, husband, father, and good citizen are seen by their absences. She is, however, not absent at all in Plato’s view, and it is this that Rousseau is addressing here. From where is she absent? From the home, from the hearth, from the very center of the state’s economy—the source of citizenry itself? Again, the father/husband is invoked. Each of which to be what it is requires the woman, but here in the discourse she is not mentioned and not invoked except by silence: that “necessary” absence that is her role, in essence, contradictory, as we have seen, the role(s) of woman as the key and condition of the possibility of the good state, family, husband, father, and citizens. In turn, woman is the center but must remain unacknowledged as such. Plato acknowledges woman and places her beside man in the workplace—not central enough and too central, too visible for Rousseau. He takes woman out of the picture, out of visibility, without a name, and thus he makes woman central to the constitution of the state as such. Rousseau himself plays the role of woman here in his very duplicity. Woman’s political role is to be seen as subversive, however, in the same way that Plato’s leveling of woman was subversive. But Rousseau’s examples here turn to women-in-history as revolutionaries. Setting the stage for his examples, Rousseau claims that a sign of the moral development and/or decay of a people is its treatment of women. Civilizations that show disrespect, disregard, and general contempt for women have not long to survive, nor the moral character to be considered virtuous. What this respect entails, as the basis of morality, is not far from what Kant later would claim as the feeling that is not a feeling, properly speaking.25

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“Respect” for both meant distance, and a respect in addition for the distance and difference created and recognized by respect itself. The distance to be kept from women (by men) was also, for Rousseau, the distance that recognized their power—as ruse, pretense, and theatricality. It also was this power that could place women at the forefront of historical movements and in the vanguard for justice. Women should be seen potentially as the heroes, in Hegel’s sense,26 and this as part of their destiny. At this juncture, Rousseau cites historical examples of such women under the banner that reads: “All great revolutions came from women.” “Great revolutions” here means, as it would be for Hegel later, the progress of freedom as manifest by a people following a revolutionary hero. The latter, not unlike the role of legislator in his other works, founds or gives birth to the new state with a new set of values. It is the morality that changes in revolutions or, better, that brings new politico-socioeconomic formations into existence and, hence, in line with the morality that the earlier state could not condone. Rousseau, without naming the women in question, provides examples in the form of evidence with the following series: . . . by a woman Rome acquired her freedom, by a woman the plebians obtained the consulate, by a woman the tyranny of the decemvirs was ended, by a woman beseiged Rome was saved.27 Thus the Roman female revolutionary is cited as the evidence, the illustration, a particular case following the “general claim” that “all great revolutions came from women.” One might conclude that Roman women of the Empire form the model here, the form from which the general claim itself is derived. Thus the hermeneutical circle of exemplarity could be easily drawn here, as elsewhere. What this structure would entail is that the example, as a particular, serves to frame the rule for itself as the general. The question as to which comes first is moot, since they co-determine each other, and each depends on the other as prior. The order of appearance in the discourse is arbitrary, one might claim, since either the “rule” or its “illustration” could precede or follow the other with equal effect. But the ruse at play in this hermeneutical aspect of exemplarity is that the rule is independent of the very example it has been produced by. The ruse of independence is thereby concealed in appearance by the order of appearance itself. The rule could, it would seem, be cited without a supporting example. The example, as particular women in Rome, could have been omitted. Yet Rousseau seems to make his case explicit, another ruse, by explicitly offering this evidence for what might otherwise appear as an arbitrary generality and indeed one that his earlier discourse on the role and place of women in Plato’s discourse and Republic had discounted. Far from being politically promiscuous, revolutionary women have no fixed status, indeed no role to play in a state once established, again

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parallel to the role of the legislator, such as that of Moses, Solon, and Lycurgus. Thus having no place in the state—either the old or the new—women serve to give birth (give life and death, more specifically) to our states. They are the bearers of morality, of respect, and thus of the progressive instantiation of freedom in the world. The space wherein the revolutionary functions is not unlike that space we have located between the so-called rule and so-called evidence for that rule. It turns out that their roles are reversed in order to function as if they are rule and evidence. The evidence has been revealed as forming the rule of the rule, yet it cannot be seen as a rule. The series of examples, itself displayed as Rousseau’s evidence here, is the hidden rule of the rule. As neither rule nor case, it gives birth to the new rule, the new state, the new morality. The series provides the foundation for the link between so-called case and rule yet is not a rule in itself. What we have discovered here is that the hermeneutical displacement that functions within this “example, as one of the structures of exemplarity, is displayed or performed by the “example/rule matrix” and yet denied by the explicit claims that Rousseau makes. This duplicity itself organizes “the woman” in Rousseau’s text as wife, mother, and bearer of domesticity, as well as the vanguard heroine carrying a society from tyranny to freedom. There is no contradiction here; there is no identity either, however. But there is a continuum, not unlike that circle revealed only as an arc or a bridge or span on the surface that animates this hermeneutical structure of exemplarity. The next major motif used by Rousseau to depict women and, hence, Sophie, for us is that of animals. In contrast to Emile and animals, in this case the female of the species for animals in general is itself contrasted from the outset with human females. He begins: Female animals are without the least sense of shame, but what of that? Are their desires as boundless as those of humans which are curbed by this shame?28 Here the lack of shame or modesty in female animals sets them apart from female humans for whom this feeling is natural and, hence, innate. Women cannot thus be understood here through the frame of animals it would seem. But Rousseau continues, as usual, to further complicate the relation: “The desires of the animals are the result of necessity, and when the need is satisfied, the desire ceases.”29 The internal economy of animality thus entails an exact symmetry between desire, needs, and the capacity to satisfy the same. Once satisfied, the desire ceases. In short, animal desire is finite, whereas human desire is seemingly infinite, if one assumes a simple, oppositional format here between the contrast example and its other. But the relation is not simple. Instead, Rousseau draws “the female” closer and seems to propose a

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pure analogy of relations with the following economy that operates between the animal species and the human: “But what would take the place of this negative instinct in women if you rob them of their modesty?”30 This negative instinct that curtails desire (though it might not satisfy it) in women is therefore a modesty that can be seen as parallel to natural instinct in animals. But which instinct is represented here? It is precisely the lack of this “instinct of modesty” that female animals exhibit. The other instinct that is not an instinct, since it is not a drive, that animals exhibit is the precise economy that allows desires and capacities to synthesize and produce satisfaction. In humans, we might recall, when desires and capacities to fulfill them match, what results is called “happiness.” Thus we might, from Rousseau’s perspective, call animals “happy.” In turn, women can be called “happy,” can match desire and capacities only with modesty or shame. But this symmetry falls apart when we consider what modesty and shame are. They are not the fulfillment of desire nor the curtailing of desires so as to be finite. They are instead the self-destructive feeling that produces guilt within women, in facing themselves. They should be ashamed of their natures, of their natural desires, and this shame will thus inhibit action. It will force them to act in ways that are discordant with their desires and, hence, to not meet their needs, and this lack must be concealed. Nothing could be further from “happiness” here and from the animal economy that has no part in the production of shame. The analogy thus forms a parody of analogy itself here and returns us to the original rupture stated explicitly by Rousseau himself when he says, “Female animals are without the least sense of shame, but what of that?”31 Far from a model, far from a simple opposition, Rousseau makes much of this in his portrayal of women as being in need of something that he calls “this negative instinct.” As we have seen above, Sophie has to learn to hate herself, to hate her being-as-woman, and above all to love her role, as hating herself and as concealing this hatred. Modesty covers all such functions, and in radical contrast to the ways in which female animals both desire and meet their needs. This truncation of women by themselves is to be seen and not seen here through the “example” of animals and the apparent contrast; what is lacking in animals, the lack in women, and the education that will institutionalize, formalize, reify, and condemn that same trait. Rousseau’s last major motif concerning how “we” should read/see Sophie/women returns us again to the Greeks, but this return is not to Plato’s theory concerning women, education, and the state.32 Rather, it is to the historical facts of Spartan life. “L’ancienne Grèce” now stands in for Sparta alone, and in this it is monumental. Again, the monument as example here is not simple, however, and Rousseau is not univocally advocating Sparta-as-model, or Sparta-as-standard. Specifically, Sparta is not an example in the classical sense

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of either a particular or a general. Though Rousseau’s equivocity is not new or newsworthy, what is at issue here is the structure of exemplarity operative within such a blanketing and ultimately camoflaging word as the rather clumsy “equivocity.” More than simply “multiple meanings,” Rousseau’s discourse exhibits, as we have shown, specific structures of exemplarity that govern these possibilities of “multiplicity,” and as some have called merely “confusion.” The Spartan example is itself Sparta: sparse and terse and minimalist, one might argue, in this context. Nonetheless, the complexities of exemplarity are signaled here in the complex relation that Rousseau has to Sparta, in particular with their treatment of women. On the one hand, girls were trained and exercised in military games, just as the boys. This is justified, from the Spartan point of view, in order to train the former to be physically strong enough and fit enough to carry (in many senses) their children. Thus as men carry arms to war, women are to carry their children in their arms. Such is the Spartan rationale for equal, if not identical, education for girls as for boys. War sets the standard. Death and the heroes of battle orient the formation of little girls toward motherhood, yet it is this aspect of Spartan education that Rousseau does not accept or approve. As he says: The girls of Sparta exercised in military games like the boys—not to go to war but one day to bear children capable of withstanding war’s fatigues. This is not what I recommend.33 (emphasis added) Carrying rifles, and what would become known as Prussian training, is thus inappropriate, Rousseau says, for training little girls to become mothers. The means, in short, is what is at issue here, not the end itself. “To become mothers” is, we should recall, the destiny of women/girls, according to Rousseau, and this is not in question here by him. The only issue is how to create the best preconditions for such an end (telos). Thus Rousseau agrees with the Spartan end for women, as mothers, which is to produce soldiers for the state. Boys are, of course, more valuable than girls, politically and militarily speaking, for Sparta and Rousseau, and hence the aim of motherhood is itself fodder for the military machine that will sustain the state. Rousseau continues in this way: It is not necessary for mothers to have carried the musket and done the Prussian drill in order for them to provide soldiers to the State.34 Again, the end is not in question here, only the means. Thus one might ask: What sort of example is Sparta for Rousseau’s image of women/girls/Sophie for us? Are we to follow or not follow the Spartan image? Yes and no is the only proper way to answer the question asked in this metaphysical way.

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Indeed, Rousseau commentary is filled with such confusion, which is in turn attributed to Rousseau rather than to the metaphysics of the commentary. But if we understand “Sparta” as an example here, the question becomes, what type of example? Or better, what are the structures of exemplarity operative here that allow us to see Sophie/girls/women through this lens of simultaneous revelation and concealment? First, it is clear that the example of Sparta gives Rousseau a historical case of an actual system, which means that it has the pragmatic value of an actual precedent. Yet Rousseau’s myriad analyses of the “origins” of language, society, music, and culture provide evidence that the historical, actual precedents are of no relevance in developing a theory of what ought to be the case. One could argue that this is true a fortiori for the field of education, which in essence grounds all others. Thus it is not the historical facticity that serves as an example here for Rousseau, except perhaps as that to be avoided—another example, in contrast perhaps, though Rousseau makes no note of this aspect. However, the Spartan example here does serve as a telos—a future perfect case—with its pedagogical telos for women and the focus on the security of the state as uppermost. That men are to be trained as soldiers and women as mothers (of soldiers)—to produce soldiers—is the issue that Rousseau accepts from Sparta. Hence, the transfer seems to occur from Spartan education to Rousseau’s theory, but the very means of the same, that which will make the end possible from a Spartan point of view, is denied by Rousseau. What sort of example can be dissected in this way? What sort of example can be taken-as-end and discarded-as-means to that same end? The Spartan example, the example of the essentially pragmatic society itself, whose goal is strength as a means to the basic end of survival itself. Almost animalic, Sparta “represents” here precisely this separation and unity of means and ends; strength is the end, and strength is the means. The “example” here—what Rousseau takes from Sparta—is this double relation of means to ends. On the one hand, he separates means from ends—he takes the end and leaves the means; on the other hand, he accepts this unity of means and ends that “Sparta” was built upon. Seemingly nonaesthetic to the limit, Sparta is pragmatism in its essence. Yet Rousseau invokes precisely the aesthetic heights of Spartan civilization, in particular for women, when he says: . . . it is an unchanging fact that of all the peoples of the world— without excepting even the Romans—none is cited where the women were both purer and more lovable, and where they better combined morals with beauty than in ancient Greece.35 Here “ancient Greece” means Sparta for Rousseau, not Plato’s nor Aristotle’s Greece. Concerning the aesthetics of Sparta, women represent its highest

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achievement, which for Rousseau is precisely pragmatic. Pragmatic here means functional, useful in the production and reproduction of the society and state at hand, and it is the woman who is unifying beauty/aesthetics and morality (Plato’s ideal, one should recall), forming a singular example for all peoples of the world. We have already seen that, for Rousseau, it is the task of women to “cultivate the arts” and to entertain their men and families. Women are responsible for the beauty of the society, and Spartan women have found the knack of uniting beauty (read ruse) with morality (read truth). Spartan women are in this sense an ideal—an actual historical case that can orient the future, contrary to Rousseau’s other usage of the past as necessarily fictional, prehistorical, and mythic. Thus the Spartan example is of the coexistence of myth and history, of ruse and truth, of morality and statehood. In addition, it is women who lead the men in all of this, for Sparta, for Rousseau. He sums up their grandeur in the following way: You will cause a nobler ambition to be born in them—that of reigning over great and strong souls, the ambition of the women of Sparta, which was to command men.36 Women here are ultimately understood not as an example for men but as their mothers, wives, and leaders. Women command in Sparta; women do not go to war, but they are in charge. Women combine morality and beauty (read wisdom), and in this they represent the ideal of their sex: their true nature. The elevation of Spartan women is tempered by Rousseau’s insistence that though women rule, they do so by indirection, implicitly, invisibly, and almost magically. Women remain in the Spartan home—outside of politics— both before it, excluded—and above it—more powerful than the political realm can control. Though “girls” often appear in public, in Sparta, the key issue is that “women, once married (and married once only) are not to be seen in public, are to be kept in the house to care for “the family.” Severely restricted socially, economically, and politically, women are kept under control despite their actual role of “controlling men.” This paradox serves Rousseau well as that frame to be carried over to his own theory of education. Yet education is a focus on a means as well as an ends to be achieved and, as we have seen, it is the means to such ends that Rousseau refuses from Sparta. It is the very conditions of the possibility of Sparta’s success that Rousseau rejects, an example without fact, without foundations, an example that serves as a transcendental, if not a regulative, Idea of Reason, as Kant would later say. In so structuring his relation to Sparta, Rousseau undermines the very possibility of ever achieving his said “aims.” Instead, the goal is set off at the horizon—as a direction to aim toward, without the means to achieve it. And this example as

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an Idea in the Kantian sense here is the way that Rousseau accepts and rejects Sparta, in particular with its practices of educating/training women. The example as model is not an adequate formulation here, since it is not a model to be made, but a “model” that never existed and because of that can serve as an Idea to regulate the only the direction of education. Thus it is not a matter of confusion nor indecision nor simple contradiction that makes Rousseau say yes and no to Sparta as an example. It is instead a more complex relation that the tradition of metaphysics has not yet articulated as example.

READING MALE/FEMALE RELATIONS Implicit and grounding the ways in which we are to read Emile (men) and Sophie (women) is their relationship (male/female relations), and what it ought to be. Further, it is a question here, in Rousseau’s text “for us,” as to how we are to see/read these relations. This reading will thus determine their being, at least “for us.” Again, ontology must be understood here as being, fundamentally, a hermeneutical question. Rousseau frames his series of examples, which in turn frame our vision and understanding of male/female relations, with the following claim: Women possess their empire not because men wanted it that way, but because nature wants it that way. It belonged to women before they appeared to have it. The same Hercules who believed he raped the fifty daughters of Thespitius was nevertheless constrained to weave while he was with Orphale; and the strong Samson was not as strong as Delilah. This empire belongs to women and cannot be taken from them, even when they abuse it. If they could ever lose it they would have done so long ago.37 Within this frame we have what appears to be a structure of exemplarity operating so that the general claim concerning the empire des femmes (empire of women) is supported, evidenced, and/or illustrated by the specific mythicohistorical Greco-Biblical cases of the same. We will examine this closely, since the frame itself will govern the examples that follow later in the series concerning this issue. The general claim that insists on l’empire (the empire) must be understood as itself having a plurivocal structure. L’empire, in French, entails simultaneously the following in English: sovereignty, authority, control, sway, dominion, influence, and empire. What women have “over men” is multiple, powerful, cunning and beyond the desire of women per se. “It,” l’empire, is so designed by nature that women are not themselves in control of the control that they are said to exercise over men. This out of control control is

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precisely what animates, frustrates, and organizes male/female relations, Rousseau claims. In this case, his statement makes an ontological claim—simlutaneously historical, mythical, natural, and essential, so that at all levels, in every respect, despite appearances to the contrary, one might have said, women are in control of men. Even Hercules and Samson, prototypes of men, extremes of the male, larger-than-life figures, were controlled (Rousseau will claim) it seems by women—Omphale and Delilah, respectively. We must analyze here the details of these pairs of relations in order to uncover the complexities involved in this out of control control. Far from being a simple claim, the apparently general rule, if not natural law, which Rousseau frames his frame with, is itself divided. The control is not controlled, and the “sovereignty” (empire) admits of degrees and a variety of means—from dominion and sovereign authority (seemingly external, explicit power based on force—Amazonian) to influence and sway (seemingly implicit, based on cunning and ruse rather than force). In the case of Hercules, the slave of Queen Omphale, despite his ability to do violence to (violate) the fifty daughters of Thespius, we are offered what can only be called an example. First, it is worthy of note that there is no connection historically, in time or place, between the Thespian incidents of violence and the enslavement to Queen Omphale. One is not the result or cause of the other, except through an implicit but operative notion of character that would be Herculean—Hercule’s own. Indeed, it is the man, the self, the being of Hercules who is to be exposed here, and his strength in relation to Thespian daughters (potency)—his power over women, which is countered, limited, and itself overcome by the strength of the Queen to whom he is later enslaved. The events between these two pillars of Hercules are worthy of note here since they contextualize the conquest and failure of Herculean strength in relation to women and, in turn, the “empire of women.” Hercules, son of Zeus and Alcamene, at age eighteen, sets up for himself the mission of destroying in Citheron a lion that is demolishing the herds of King Thespius there. This feat takes the young Hercules fifty days to accomplish, and during each of the nights it was the king who gave Hercules a different one of his fifty daughters for the latter’s pleasure. Thespius’ aim, it is said, was that each of his daughters should have a child (preferably sons) by the great son of Zeus himself. Hercules, so the story goes, believed himself to be sleeping with the same, eldest daughter, Procris, each night and not ravaging the entire flock. There is, in addition, one daughter, destined to become a virgin priestess, who refuses her father’s command and does not go to Hercules in the night. The result of these visitations was fifty-one sons—including two sets of twins, and the death of the troubling lion in addition. Victorious on all counts was the eighteen-year-old Hercules. At this stage, he vanquishes woman and beast, except for one.

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The time between these conquests and his enslavement by the queen involves his marriage to King Creon’s daughter as a reward for battle prowess, a typical prize given from one man to another. This is not the “empire of women,” at least not yet. Here woman is submerged, submitted to the demands and desires of men: fathers and husbands. Rousseau notably omits this time in the life of Hercules, though he marks its presence with the Thespian performance. Indeed, the daughers of Thespius are not an example in the sense of a simple case or an instance of the general law, seemingly, “the empire of women.” The Thespian daughters hold no sway, have no authority or dominion over the king, their father, or Hercules the hero. Yet the one daughter, not noted by Rousseau, confirms the general rule cited above; the one who “says no” to the violence, violation, and conquest, the one who refuses to be ravaged by Hercules, which illustrates by her very action and distance the possibilities of “all women.” Why does she say no, and why do the others not? This is unclear in the legendary account that we have. Yet her refusal places the others in a different light and Hercules’ conquest and violence itself in a perhaps less violent light. It is certainly too simple of an assumption to make that if one daughter said no the other forty-nine (fifty, according to Rousseau) said yes. Perhaps only one could not be overpowered; perhaps she was her father’s favorite, and so on. This action’s foundation is in essence undecidable here and cannot be resolved fully one way or the other. Why does Rousseau not mention it? Why does he collapse all of the daughters into one category? The concept of the “empire of women” seems to govern this reading, but paradoxically it is the reverse that is shown by the “concept” here of a Thespian daughter: precisely the lack of power, savvy, and control. Rousseau, it would seem, wants to have things both ways in claiming Hercules’ power and “empire” here, which is then stripped away from him by Queen Omphale. The castration has already taken place, but Rousseau conceals it. The second major concealment at issue here is the madness of Hercules, instigated by Hera—a goddess, not a woman—and the ensuing atonement to be made to Eurystheus. The relations between these two men are said to be homosexual and the twelve labors of Hercules to be performed for Eurystheus out of love and desire, but this reading is disputed in some respects by the deal offered to Hercules at the Delphic oracle: “to perform whatever labours might be set him (by Eurystheus), and in return he will become immortal.” In the end, after twelve years of this labor—being the servant of a man— Hercules returns home, gives away his wife (six of whose children he had murdered during his madness), and proceeds to fight with Apollo. This deed can only be atoned for by being sold into slavery for one year. Hercules submits, and the person who “buys him” is precisely Queen Omphale. Here is the “empire of women” again, yet throughout his life to this point he had

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dominated every woman he made contact with and had been a servant to a man for twelve years prior. Now for one year as a servant to a woman, we are offered this incident as an example of the empire of women. Irony, parody, and satire abound if this is to be thought of as a particular case of the general rule cited above. Perhaps this is the key to this issue and no more. Rousseau does not mean what he says and turns the empire on its head, so to speak. Yet things are not so simple. If we leave aside the metaphysical conception of example, then we can see this relation in a different light. The so-called “empire of women” is, first, not an empire of all women over all men. Nor is it a power that women themselves can or do control, as we have seen. Rather, it is a fatal power, a power of death and destiny, so that both men and women become victims, are castrated, and are made powerless by it. This power is nature, for Rousseau; fate or destiny, for the Greeks, and in the end, it is not in the hands of women at all. The “of ” (empire of women) in this issue cuts both ways—empowers and disempowers women at the same time. Even Hercules must submit to his fate in this story, and in the case of Thespius’ daughters, he seems to control women, but in the case of Queen Omphale, he seems to be controlled. One must recall that he submits to the Delphic command concerning atonement for his acts, in the latter case, and in the former, one daughter, left unnamed in the legend, refuses him. Thus in the situation where he appears to lose control and power, he has made a decision to give up this power, and when he appears all-powerful, as a god, he is powerless over one of the daughters, indeed, the very one who will have a divine destiny as priestess. The shattering of the “empire” thus takes place in this “case” as it did in the general rule, but one cannot claim that the shrouds that remain will match one for one from the general to the particular. On the contrary, the multiplicity illustrated within “the rule” is not mapped out in “the same way” in the “particular” case. Indeed, the latter is not a particular, nor is the former a general. The case of Samson and Delilah is equally complex and offers yet another framework for the male/female relation said to be part of “the empire of women.” What connects the Hercules/Omphale pair with those two is a colon, and the simple conjunction, “and” (et). But what status is this “et” to have here and how does it link one example to another? Are they a series, a pair, an opposition? Do they progress, regress? Are they complimentary, symbiotic, assymptotic? In order to answer the question of relation here we must begin with the second term of the relation; namely, Samson/Delilah. Rousseau’s invocation is brief but poignant when he says: . . . and the strong Samson was not so strong as Delilah. This empire belongs to women and cannot be taken from them, even when they abuse it.38

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The excesses of women, it would seem, are not curtailed or to be controlled by men, and Delilah herself offers illustrative evidence of such a claim. This is at least the metaphysical reading of the above claim. We shall begin there in order to document how far such a reading can lead us and where it turns into a labyrinth of other structures not captured by that essentially binary metaphysical formulation. We must examine closely the claim that “the strong Samson was not as strong as Delilah,” for this particular case of the “empire of women” does not fit easily into the metaphysical matrix of exemplarity. Samson, an infant announced by an angel of the Lord to his “barren mother,” is blessed from the outset. This privilege, his superhuman qualities, also will be his downfall. God uses him initially “to provoke an occasion against the Philistines,” then rulers over the men of Judah. To this end, Samson takes a wife from among the Philistine women, and on his wedding day he announces the famous riddle, the answer to which he will tell his wife, who will then tell her countrymen. Made furious by this loyalty/betrayal in his wife’s act, Samson takes revenge by killing thirty Philistines. The occasion has thus been established that the Lord sought to produce between the Philistines and the men of Judah. Shortly after this, his wife’s father gives her to a companion and offers Samson his other daughter instead. In return, Samson sets fire to the Philistine grain and olive orchards. The vengeful Philistines then attack the poor wife and her father as the source of Samson’s wrath. Samson takes revenge again but is then bound by his own countrymen and handed over to the Philistines, still rulers of the land. God intervenes, loosens the ropes, and frees Samson, and he in turn kills 1,000 of his would-be captors. Delilah is still not part of the story here, though Samson’s character, morality, and exploits have been established. What is clear, prior to Delilah’s entrance, is that Samson considers justice to be done only in an eye-for-an-eye fashion, and that his ultimate loyalty is to himself. His countrymen have betrayed him, his wife, and his family. Samson, in short, sustains only the vertical relation to the Lord, and all horizontal ones have been shattered. He does not make peace with his enemies but punishes them for their existence. After a brief interlude with an unnamed harlot, Samson meets Delilah in the valley of Sorek. At issue here is the nature of Delilah’s “empire” over Samson and in turn the nature of Samson over whom she has this influence. In Judges 16:4–5, we read: After this he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And Lords of the Philistines came to her and said to her, Entice him, and see wherein his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to subdue him; and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.39

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The “power” of Delilah, thought to be a Philistine, is now to choose between Samson and her countrymen, now represented if not substituted by a sizable amount of silver. Delilah’s choice, in turn, is synechdochal, for the choice is between oikos and polis, between the home and the state, between lover and fatherland. This choice results in betrayal, no matter which decision she makes. The question is only betrayal of whom, and for what? What price is allegiance? Betrayal? This is “Delilah”: framed to have no choice. Her choice is itself already made for her, in advance, by the very terms of the deal that she is offered. This double bind has already structured Sophie’s childhood and her educational history, as we have seen. Now, for Delilah, her choice is not a choice at all. Yet she has l’empire (the empire), and we have still to establish in what sense this could be the case. Delilah, for perhaps a multitude of reasons, not the least may have been coercion by the Lords of the Philistine, chooses to obey them and to openly ask of Samson wherein his strength lies. He seemingly tells her, openly. Yet, three times he denies her and tells her fictional accounts in response to her questions, and three times the lurking Philistines rush in to capture him, only to be likewise denied. In Judges 16:9 we read: “Now she had men lying in wait in an inner chamber. And she said to him, ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson!’”40 On which side is Delilah here? Is she warning her lover to give him a chance of escape, or merely announcing the capture with relish? The tone is all-important here, and no clue is given in the text as to how this has been said. At any rate, Samson, by the third such performance, is clearly aware of the plot against him, yet when asked a fourth time by Delilah, he tells her the truth—wherein in fact his strength lies. Does he know this? The evidence leads to the negative conclusion here, since in Judges 16:20, we are told: “And he did not know the Lord had left him.” Thus Samson is taken prisoner, and Delilah is rewarded with silver. Samson’s ignorance here, which leads to his blindness and imprisonment, must be seen as genuine. Hence, in telling Delilah the truth, he must have (mis)understood his own speech as yet another fictional account. “He did not know the Lord had left him.” Who betrays Samson here? It cannot be Delilah, since her plan is evident to Samson—openly repeating the process to be sure that he is aware of it. Samson does not give himself up. It is instead the Lord who betrays Samson. The Lord left him (and did not tell him); Delilah’s “empire” in this case is more that of the messenger than the active participant. She announces the Philistines’ presence, she repeats the “secret” openly, and she gives it away, and this is perhaps her cunning. She is loyal to both Samson and the Philistines, and in the end she loses Samson by God’s action, not her own. She is neither pure nor external to the situation, however, as a messenger bringing news, she also creates a situation in which it can be heard and misheard. The ambiguity in her claim “The Philistines are upon

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you, Samson!” reveals this role in its very form. It remains undecidable and allows her to be “loyal” at one and the same time to both Samson and the Philistines—lover and fatherland. In addition, Delilah is loyal, faithful to herself, to this doubleness that marks her as a woman. What power has Delilah over Samson? What influence, what sway? As a Philistine, she has no power, no influence, so it would seem, over her own countrymen. She is commanded by the Lords of the Philistines, and it is not clear that she has the option to refuse their wishes. Thus she is “enslaved” by her countrymen and ordered to betray Samson. The easy reading here involves a simple condemnation of Delilah as having the power of cunning over Samson. Indeed, Rousseau seems to suggest such a position by this thematic development of the natural powers of women over men. He says explicitly concerning this case that “the strong Samson was not as strong as Delilah.” Further, “the power of women is not theirs because men wanted it, but because nature wanted it that way.” If, to frame the issue according to a metaphysical notion of exemplarity, Samson and Delilah are merely an example as a particular case of the natural powers of women over men, we thus would have a “nature” itself governed by men—other men, indeed, strangers, men of another country, alien, foreign others. Women would then be the liaison between countries—between self and other—a middle term, a third term, and a reducible term, an expendable means to a dialectical end. Yet Delilah does not fit such a schema, nor does Samson. Rather, she has no power as such— she is the link to the Philistines’ power. But the Philistines have no power over Samson unless “the Lord leaves him.” The hidden fourth dimension here is that of the Lord, who until this point has sided with Samson and aided him in his victories. When He leaves him unannounced, it appears to be Delilah who has, in repeating the question to which Samson, unbeknownst to himself, now answers truthfully in a sense (by sheer metonymy), betrayed her powers. The truth of the matter is, however, quite the contrary. Delilah is powerless here but for speech, and her speech announces the presence of the Philistines to Samson. Her speech cuts both ways as we have seen, but unlike Samson’s, it is true no matter which way one reads it. His speech as to wherein lies his power is false, no matter which way he intends it. The appearance of its truth comes only by the contiguous relation it has to the Lord leaving him; his power is not in his beard but in the Lord’s presence, now gone. Is this the empire des femmes? Can Delilah’s true speech be the place wherein women’s power lies? One should recall that Rousseau insists it is the ruse that empowers women; it is this that women control and are experts in using. Ironically, it is the double bind into which Delilah has been placed by the Lords of the Philistines that her speech both repeats and shatters, and if there is a ruse, this is it. In speaking truthfully, she is not believed; she is not seen as the bearer of truth, hence, her speech cannot in its essence be heard. Samson

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hears it not, or would not have “allowed” himself to be captured, or he would not have trusted the Lord, who in this case let him down. Who controls Samson? The Lord, not Delilah and not the Philistines, until the Lord allows them to capture him. At issue here is the relation between Samson and Delilah and the general claim concerning the “empire of women.” Delilah’s power such as it is reframes the meaning of this “empire” to display it by an ironic inversion. Her ruse is the truth, and by speaking it openly, she hides it. The structure of exemplarity operative here is thus not that of the Samson/Delilah relation posited as a particular case of the general relation. Rather, the Samson/Delilah relation modifies the meaning of the “empire,” transforms it, inverts it, and redirects it. Such is not a particular case but a multidimensional tension that is transformative of “both” poles of its relation. In bringing these “two terms” of the relation together, the “empire” and Samon/Delilah, they are both altered and pluralized, and the pluralities are then related in a multitude of ways. Thus, again, the metaphysical structure of general and particular is exceeded and transformed. Male/female relations also are to be read via the matrix of the body; in particular, the mutilated body or, as Nietzsche would later put it, the body become organ. The eye and the arm are to respectively represent the roles of the man and the woman, but their relations are more than simply one of seeing, the other doing, though this also is involved. In following this eye/arm matrix, we will pursue the underlying structure of exemplarity located here as well. Rousseau introduces this relation via the unifying concept of a moral person: This partnership produces a moral person of which the woman is the eye and the man is the arm, but they have such a dependence on one another that the woman learns from the man what must be seen, and the man learns from the woman what must be done.41 (emphasis added) Woman thus represents the visual faculty, and man represents the pragmatic, active side. But an oppositional framework here between the active and the contemplative, or between the aesthetic (without telos) and the pragmatic (essentially teleological), results in a reduction and simplification of the complexities involved in how “we” are to read male/female relations. As Rousseau explains, neither function (the eye or the arm) can perform autonomously; neither begins or ends with itself. What is to be seen is determined by man; what is to be done is determined by woman. The source of each and hence, the ends are respectively determined each by the other. But this framework is still incomplete in the understanding of the complexities here. What is to be done, determined in advance by woman, is to fulfill an aesthetic expectation, also determined by her, just as what is seen fulfills a pragmatic expectation determined, guided, and controlled by man. All of this makes up what Rousseau

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will call the “moral person.” What ought to be seen and done is at issue here, as well as the ways in which these acts are to be performed and the resultant effects. An aesthetic and a pragmatic morality is thus in place, which also is a moral aesthetic and moral practice. These two facets are combined, just as man/woman are the indexical markers of this pseudo-polarity. The union creates a harmony wherein tous les deux sont maîtres (both are masters). Each is master of his or her own house, and each depends on the other for the source and ends of that mastered domain, a master without sovereignty, an autonomy without independance. In using the body as the matrix of exemplarity here, Rousseau opens a field that his examples—eye/arm, man/woman—cannot, in principle, saturate. Excessive throughout, this metaphor or example of a single, corporeal, moral unity, in which man and woman fulfill differing functions dependent upon each other, leaves open the rest of the body. In thus situating our reading of male/female relations in a body, they are taken out of the body—excluded, amputated, separated from the whole in order to represent it. This mutilation has no place and, hence, no name in Rousseau’s thematization here, yet it is operative. The violence done—the eye, the arm—is not a metaphorical one. In selecting these body parts, we are denied access to the system as a whole—in principle and in fact—and this is no accident. In order to set up a relation of exemplarity, the violence of mutilation or castration, if one prefers, is unavoidable. In turn the denial, or concealment, and its concealment must be established to set up an economy of terms having an effect beyond themselves. In short, the impossibility of saturation of an exemplarity matrix is precisely what allows the “system” to work, to produce effects, and which, when revealed as such, paralyzes that same effectiveness. The excess, when revealed, troubles the safe economy in which the parts and roles are played so smoothly. The remainder of the body—at once invoked and exorcised here—can thus never be spoken of, yet it is the condition of speech itself. This structure will be shown to be in effect throughout the workings of a variety of structures of exemplarity. One of the ways in which examples are rhetorically marked in French is by the word, “par,” meaning by, by way of, by means of. This placing of “par” then sets up a middle term effect without necessarily having made explicit that for which, from which, or to which “par” is to produce its effects. In this context, we will examine “par” as it functions in establishing male/female relations for us, as we are to read them. Women, Rousseau tells us, are to learn to “read men” as if they were texts. In turn, a hermeneutical frame is set up through which women are to see men, and see their seeing, which in turn is to guide what men do, and which (to further complicate the image here) men are to have determined in the first place. The “words” to be read are men’s discourse, actions, looks, and gestures, and what is to be found and sought in these signs are their feelings:

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She must learn to penetrate their sentiments by their words, their actions, their looks, their gestures.42 Furthermore, he claims that women are better readers than men when it comes to feelings: [S]he will read in men’s hearts better than they do.43 Women read more effectively, one should recall, because they are considered the masters of the ruse, of deception, and, hence, of the semiotic dimension. Men are the more truthful, hence they conceal less and belie themselves less; they are more self-congruent and more easily read—at least by women. In being able to disguise, women are able to read disguise, to decipher, by knowing better how to cipher, hence the greater ability is a result of vice, not virtue, a result of duplicity in women that makes them party to the duplicity that they find in men. In addition, duplicity is what makes the hermeneutics of sexual difference possible. Men’s feelings are not simply enacted or displayed but rather displaced into a network of signs that we are now able to decipher and decode. If man is text and woman is hermeneutic, what makes this system itself possible? The circle is closed when Rousseau claims that because women have such a talent for “reading men,” they can then use this to produce, not simply to record and passively be aware of men’s feelings. Women’s power enters here to claim authorship, copyright of the text of man. Women create the feelings that they are then able to decipher in men via the latter’s actions, gestures, and so forth. Ideally, the reading here is totally circular, merely confirmational, a true hermeneutic circle—not vicious—but a circle nonetheless. And this is the circle of control and power: the archè and telos of man’s actions, discourse, looks, and gestures, insofar as they are themselves signs of their feelings. “Signs” here entails the sense of originary power and not merely representation. “Signs” do not “re-present” feelings, but they are the feelings incarnate—feelings become flesh, as it were. Feelings are not in existence prior to the text, prior to the act here; the act is itself formative, but creating the possibility of the act is woman’s vision, which in turn is made possible by man’s action choosing what she will see. Who controls whom here is an undecidable formulation of the issue. At stake instead is the structure of the enmeshment and reciprocally determining matrices in which male/female relations are caught, as in a web with no exit. The concealment is complete, ideally, if women are able to produce the feelings, gestures, and actions by not appearing to do so. Writing the text, they thus do not sign or deny authorship, and with it the authority that they are dispossessed of from the start. Men sign, men originate, men are the archè and telos of their

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actions—the propriety of propriety is at issue here, and Rousseau shows how it is established and concealed simultaneously by women who themselves have no proper place, without men. As he says: She must know how to communicate to them—by her words, her actions, her looks, her gestures—the sentiments that she wishes to communicate without appearing even to dream of it.44 What is clear from this analysis is, first, there is no single way in which “we” are to “read” male/female relations. The so-called empire des femmes has been shown to be much more complex than a pure mastery over a pure slavery, and distinct from the master/slave dialectic. From Hercules and Omphale to Samson and Delilah, the “empire” is mediated through and through by a series of structures of exemplarity, in which power is concealed, encoded, and decoded, and by which it is transferred. In addition, the eye and arm parts of the moral body, perhaps the only truly potentially moral (choosing) parts of the body, reveal, via the mutilation that makes this matrix possible, the violence underlying the system of “morality” thereby installed. Further, the man as text and woman as reader exemplarity relation opens up the question of authorship and authority as being essentially illegitimate and impossible for women, yet also their duty, responsibility, and obligation. Reading male/female relations through the structures of exemplarity set up and put into place by Rousseau does not allow: (1) exemplarity itself (as multiple structures) to be underwritten simply by metaphysical structures, nor (2) male/female relations to be understood as definable, classifiable, or “reifiable” within any fixed address. Rather, a network of overlapping and mutually excluding systems of exemplarity is operative here, in which webs and webs of networks of power—empowerment and disempowerment—are put into play.


PART

2

Theories of Exemplarity


4 Thematized Exemplarity in Pedagogy

Set an example! Otherwise one never succeeds with children. —Rousseau, Emile Rousseau, unlike virtually all other philosophers throughout the history of philosophy, not only uses examples to clarify, illustrate, formulate, and orient his thought, but he also speaks of exemplarity itself. In Emile, more than in other texts, and more explicitly than elsewhere, Rousseau speaks of the need for and the centrality of exemplarity as a pedagogical method. In addition, he insists that the philosophical enterprise itself is essentially pedagogical. Insofar as it is a written challenge, philosophy produces itself necessarily in the form of a pedagogy, thereby entailing an essentially rhetorical dimension. Long before Derrida, Rousseau claimed that rhetoric is at the very core of philosophical activity. In turn, the place of exemplarity within philosophy is concomitant with the latter’s birth and very possibility. Concerning Rousseau’s explicit formulations of this centrality, we will begin with his counsel “for the tutor” and the use of exemplarity in pedagogical practice as such. Second, we will turn to his counsel “for us” (readers) and his reflections on his own usage of exemplarity in “our” education, or his philosophical enterprise. There is no single theory here, and no one archè or telos for the use of exemplarity. Furthermore, there is no single simple concept of “the example” in play here. Rousseau himself never formulated a treatise on exemplarity as such, but it is our contention here that the foundations for such a work are contained in his claims in Emile. The level of analysis here will thus be twofold. In addition to analyzing Rousseau’s usage (threads) and his explicit claims (theories) for both the tutor and for us, we also will pursue the

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THEORIES OF EXEMPLARITY

implicit foundations of these claims. This latter concern we entitle the unthematized “theories of exemplarity.” In order to reach that level, we will begin with what is most explicit and attempt to sustain the multiplicities involved here as well as unify the notions of exemplarity wherever possible in order to reach toward a theory of exemplarity as such. Not reaching this, which we suspect is impossible a priori, will not be a failing but rather a fidelity to the nonmetaphysical structures that we suggest constitute exemplarity “itself.” That there is no “itself ” to exemplarity is, however, precisely what we aim to show throughout the detail of this textual analysis.

FOR THE TUTOR We saw earlier in this book how the children, Emile and Sophie, are to be raised through a labyrinth of exemplarity structures. Yet in each case the theory of such action was not expressed as such. Rousseau has used exemplarity throughout the text, and up until this point we have focused exclusively on this usage. Now we will turn to the explicit marking of that usage, which will appear as a number of burgeoning theories of exemplarity (and pedagogy as exemplarity), yet without being unified as such. To this end we will follow Rousseau step by step where he explicitly speaks of the need and centrality of using examples as the method for teaching (children). As a general rule, for the tutor of the boy, Rousseau advises not to prescribe or proscribe actions for the child but rather to show, to demonstrate by example: On this earth, out of which nature has made man’s first paradise, dread exercising the tempter’s function in wanting to give innocence the knowledge of good and evil. Unable to prevent the child’s learning from examples out of doors, limit your vigilance to impressing these examples upon his mind accompanied by the images suitable for him.1 At this juncture all that a child “sees outside himself ” is understood to be in potentia, at least, an example. The issue in pedagogy, and here it is of morality per se, is to mark some examples rather than others, to impress them upon his mind, to stamp the wax slab, or to engrave on the tablet. Thus experience itself is seen as and through exemplarity, and in this mode it is understood by Rousseau to be contagious or, better, rhetorical. To be open to influence is to be open to pedagogy, and to one’s own potential, hence, the world offers itself as and through examples. The tempter motif, to be avoided by the tutor, reveals what is at issue in pedagogy: to separate the good from the bad exam-

Thematized: Exemplarity in Pedagogy

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ples. Which examples are to be followed and which to be avoided, this is the question here. There is no possibility of the nonexemplary. In turn, we have an ontological structure of the being of Dasein, as Heidegger would call it, revealed in exemplarity. The world is seen as an example, all that is seen, exposed, and revealed is so only through the structures of exemplarity. The role of the tutor, then, is not only to distinguish good from bad examples but to prevent exposure to “bad examples” in the first place. In addition, the tutor as the example of examples for the child is himself to be a good example—an example of examples. Masters, leave off pretenses. Be virtuous and good. Let your examples be graven in your pupil’s memories until they can enter their hearts.2 As with Aristotle’s notion of the pedagogy of morality, a child learns goodness not only by doing good but also by seeing the good done. Repeating the example (of examples) of the tutor, through external repetition, this eventually will be internalized—written on the heart—and will become a spontaneous act originated by the child himself. The capacity for this engraving is itself equated with the capacity to learn—to be open to examples, indeed, to see examples as examples. What this entails is to see beyond the act of the other to its possibility for me as my act in some future situation. This act as example becomes pregnant with my future possibility. What I see in this case is not simply the act of the other, but with it, insofar as I see it as an example, I see myself doing the “same” thing. In addition, as a later phenomenon, the child sees himself as not doing the same thing—resisting the power of the examples of the other. But the primordial relation is one of influence, of seeing the other’s act as a potential for me—my act, likewise— and in turn of seeing the other as my future self. Such is the ontological structure at work here in this pedagogical theory wherein examples are the very being of the process. The source of the tutor’s act-as-example is paradoxically to be found in the child. What the tutor is to be for the child as example is the child himself as his own potential. Ironically, the tutor as example of the child’s possible future is precisely that and not the tutor as example per se at all. The tutor’s action, then, for the child is to originate on the basis of what the tutor is able to see in the child, which in turn serves as an example for the example. In this way, exemplarity is necessarily a dual structure that, being split, is able to mirror itself and yet be productive at the same time. Exemplarity here is not representational but productive. As Rousseau says: One must find in himself [the child] the example that one should then propose to him.3

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As such, this proposition must and ought to appear as coming from the other, and the child, then, will aim to become like the other, thereby becoming himself more truly. In thus orienting the pedagogical practice around the child’s own possibilities, one does not impose anything on him but rather brings out what is already there. The motif of the midwifery of Socrates is pertinent here, and that of the sculptor bringing out from the marble the figure already there, latent though perceptible, also is of relevance. Rousseau’s notion of the example here as proposition, as actor, as visible act, is thus a moment of the word become flesh as well. It is the externalization of the inner child that that child can then follow and become. Without a tutor, the implication at least is that the child’s inner potential would never have such a chance for fulfillment. Such is the role of the other here, which far from marking the child as a mimic, aiming to merely repeat what the tutor does, instead realizes, makes manifest via the ruse of seeming to actually be it, the child’s future being—or becoming itself. Thus in principle, exemplarity takes on a life of its own and operates essentially clandestinely. The nature and origin of the example (the tutor) is precisely what must be concealed from the child, who at this point wants to be like the other. Rousseau likens the pedagogue to a magician, as we shall see. Within the focus on seeing examples is the example of seeing itself, for Rousseau, and this becomes primary in the early stages of the learning process. The visual image is a locus of memory and, hence, the capacity to learn, Rousseau claims. A child remembers what he has seen, felt, and heard—in short, sensations of the world—not ideas and certainly not judgments. Hence, pedagogical method must be attuned to these capactities and their limits. In response to Locke, as is well known, Rousseau denies the need for reasoning with a child prior to age twelve. The reason given is that a child’s capacity is limited and will inevitably turn in a circle. Essentially vicious, children’s reason when it is demanded of them to justify their actions will inevitably turn into deceit. Hence, reasoning with a young child will serve only to teach him to lie, to conceal the truth, and to create a false appearance. This art ought to be kept from him as long as possible In turn, the truth should focus on images, not precepts, and such is the place of exemplarity at this level. Indeed, exemplarity often is understood merely as the imagistic—essentially sensual, essentially illustrative—parergon rather than ergon. Yet here the image is the only currency that will access both memory and the child’s inner being, extend it beyond himself or herself, portray it as other so that he or she can then seek to make it his or her own: himself or herself. This is not ruse but pedagogy, proper pedagogy and noncircular, as opposed to reasoning.4 As Rousseau says: Before the age of reason the child receives not ideas but images; and the difference between the two is that images are only absolute depictions of sensible objects, while ideas are notions of objects


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determined by relations.5 Therefore I say that children, not being capable of judgment, do not have true memory. They retain sounds, figures, sensations, ideas rarely, the connections between ideas more rarely. . . . Their entire learning is in sensation; nothing has gone through to the understanding.6 The mode of exemplarity at this stage is sensual and aesthetic, and in this it is rhetorically and mnemonically effective. The aim of pedagogy, one should recall for Rousseau, is to engrave the example on the heart, to impress upon the mind. Thus the etching of the example, itself a nonvisual process, is possible only via vision here used synecdochically for all senses. Ironically, it is vision that will serve to lead beyond itself to the realm of ideas, as the sensory in general will become exemplary in a totally different sense. Gradually the child will have to read his experience, to read the examples otherwise and to see the ideas, as relations between objects—concepts, on the one hand, and in turn make judgments, on the other hand. That process, still to come, also will be made possible and will be essentially constituted via structures of exemplarity. There is, however, one area of images that the child should not be exposed to, since he will learn the reverse of what ought to be learned from such an example. This is the realm of fables. Rousseau is unequivocal on this point when he insists that fables are for adults only and not for children. The latter will identify with the villain, not the hero, and will learn just the reverse of what is intended. Rather than explaining the true meaning of the fable to the child, which will not be effective anyway, one must avoid exposing him to such works at all. Instead, Rousseau insists, “speak the naked truth to the child,” and by this he means not speaking at all, but doing. Being the example, not speaking of it, that is, revealing the truth by images, not by discourse. In short, it is the discourse of images as examples that will have the proper effect (controllable by a tutor) rather than the imagistic discourse of fables that will be inverted by the child and seen as just the reverse of its intended effect. This prism possibility of exemplarity is pointed to by Rousseau, though not examined as such. That examples can equally well portray “A” and “–A,” and that at a certain stage of development a child will necessarily see “–A” in the example, though “A” was intended, must be accounted for within a general notion of exemplarity. Rousseau cites this as an image of what takes place but provides no explanation at this point. We will return to this in Chapter 5 but for now let us consider this fabulous issue at hand in more detail. Rousseau claims: Fables can instruct men, but the naked truth has to be told to children. When one starts covering the truth with a veil, they no longer make the effort to lift it.7

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The example of the fable, then, for Rousseau, reveals something characteristic of a child’s perceptual capacities, namely, that he is unable to see beyond the literal, beyond the seen. In short, the child is not yet able to see the fable as an example but sees it literally. But this dichotomy itself is flawed here, since seeing literally also is and in essence to see-X-as-an-example. The division and distinction here is thus not between example and non-example but between two types of examples. Seeing literally is seeing without inversion, seeing the visible as an example-to-be-followed, as we said earlier. Seeing beyond the literal, seeing fabulously, is to see the example-not-to-be-followed, and in turn to be able to generate its other: the example-to-be-followed. It is this inversion that the young child is not yet able to perform or produce in his own mind. Hence, he sides with the villain, and he learns the inverse lesson of a fable— the immoral rather than the moral—since he is not able to invert the inversion. The fable as an example is thus to be seen as itself an inversion of the world, as Hegel put it and Plato before him, and whose proper reading can only be seen by yet another inversion. The child, however, is caught in the inverted world, precisely because he is unable to reinvert it and, in short, turn it right side up. Hence, immorality appears as morality, the evil appears as good, the bitter the sweet, and so forth. This inability to reach this second order of exemplarity is to be countered by the tutor by prevention—not exposing the child to the inverted world at all at this stage. Rousseau is clear on this point as well when he says: Follow your children learning their fables; and you will see that when they are in a position to apply them they almost always do so in a way opposite to the author’s intention, and that instead of looking within themselves for the shortcoming that one wants to cure or prevent, they tend to like the vice with which one takes advantage of other’s shortcomings.8 For example: In the fable which follows, you believe you are giving them a cicada as an example, and it is not at all so. It is the ant they will choose. One does not like being humiliated. They will always take the advantageous role. It is the choice of amour-propre; it is a very natural choice.9 The side taken or identified with by a child is thus to be understood as the example, in the primordial sense of example-to-be-followed. Why follow vice? Because it is on the side of self-love, a natural choice and, hence, not yet a civilized, a socialized, or an educated choice. Often Rousseau chooses omis-


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sion as a safeguard in pedagogical practice, since any exposure of a child to some things is too much and will of necessity corrupt him. No counteraction is possible in the case of the bad example, at this stage, since the child can only see examples as essentially part of himself—as his future self. Seeing is the first step toward doing at this stage, and having seen, the child is likely to do, no matter what restrictions the tutor may impose. Hence, the concealment in pedagogy is instantiated from the beginning due precisely to this power of exemplarity inherent in the child’s capacity to learn through and by examples. Eventually, however, the discursive aspect of exemplarity becomes central, and the child moves naturally toward this. According to Rousseau, the task of the tutor is to expose the child sensorily to a series of problems and puzzles that will lead him to question what he senses and to begin to analyze foundations, sources, origins, and reasons. Thus the sensory world is to be seen as exemplary in a totally new respect, in that it will serve as a question, posed to the child, who then will be stimulated to himself raise the question that his experience has offered. Rousseau explains: Be satisfied, therefore, with presenting him with objects opportunely. Then, when you see his curiosity sufficiently involved, put to him some laconic question which sets him on the way to answering it.10 Further: These examples ought to suffice for you to teach the celestial sphere very clearly while taking the earth as the earth and the sun as the sun.11 And in general: Make your pupil attentive to the phenomena of nature. Soon you will make him curious. But to feed his curiosity, never hurry to satisfy it. Put the questions within his reach, and leave them to him to resolve.12 Thus sensory data are to become just that via exemplarity, for the child. What he sees now is to be seen as an example of something he does not see. And this structure itself will serve as a grand allegory to reach the divine, as we shall see later. In the transition here from one level of exemplarity—images as such—to another—images as signs for the nonimagistic—the tutor’s method is not purely one of exposure here either. Instead, what is behind the example, or that for which the seen is an example, is to be suggested by the tutor’s questions themselves. Thus the framing of the experience is made more explicit here via the insertion of the tutor’s discourse, yet that is itself concealed, since

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it takes place in the form of a question, hence, concealing itself as frame. The questioning form as frame thus points beyond itself, away from itself, and seemingly back to the sensory data—the experience—yet the frame is in place so that the experience itself no longer is what it is for the child. It is explicitly seen as an example now, yet the frame of exemplarity itself is not seen. Thus revealing and concealing at the same time, the tutor’s discourse is itself framed and frames the exemplarity latent and yet exposed now within the child’s experience. In turn, the “objects” presented are now to be seen as questions for the child, not as answers as they had previously been “seen.” Hence, the inversion has begun here, and it is the child’s search beyond the visible, via the tutor’s questions, via the world as a question, which will lead him, still unbeknownst to himself, to another inverted world of exemplarity. Ironically, Rousseau calls this itself seeing the world as the world, and the seen as the seen and, hence, the figural takes on a literal meaning insofar as it is now the realm of the true. In turn, the fabulous can be approached now, and the child as an adolescent will begin to see beyond seeing and to read history as examples, others as both good and bad examples, to resist exemplarity and to choose his examples for himself. All of this will be possible once the child is able to invert the example he sees before him, and to reinvest exemplarity with a new form of pregnancy. It is in short the pregnancy of the question, of the world as question, and of the examples as questions that will orient the child henceforth. Insofar as he is able to ask a question, he is able to see the world as an example of a nonworld that will, in turn, in the future, be seen to ground the only world that is. This move is a spiritual one, and one that the tutor must reinforce in the child so as to reach yet another level of exemplarity via inversion. Now it is time to invert the world as a whole, not simply this or that phenomenon or object but the objectivity of the world as such. As with the earlier instruction in the sciences, now the laws of appearance are to be found through and behind the appearing of the appearance as well as in the unity of this hidden ground. As Rousseau explains: The incomprehensible Being who embraces everything, who gives motion to the world and forms the whole system of beings, is neither visible to our eyes nor palpable to our hands; He escapes all our senses. The work is revealed, but the worker is hidden.13 To this point it was the senses that gave access to knowledge, the senses that led to ideas, but now the senses reveal only the concealment, the signature of the work that is the world. The child (the boy, in this case) is to be led to an understanding of the incomprehensible—indeed, that it is incomprehensible—via the aesthetic to the scientific to that which is beyond science and a return to aesthetics. The tale of the Savoyard Priest offers the context for not


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only Rousseau’s views on natural theology but also his theory of theological instruction—for boys. We shall address the girls’ education in this domain shortly, as it is quite otherwise. At issue here for us is the use of example, indeed of exemplarity, in the process of religious pedagogy. The world as a whole—specifically, nature, as the best example, according to Rousseau—is now to be seen as an example. The example of examples here is that of a work—l’ouvrage—a product, which as such would have been a result of design, intelligence, and teleology, not mere chance—a familiar motif but, concerning exemplarity, the issue is paradoxical from the start. The key here is that there can be no example of the divine per se. The motifs of artist, worker, or even scientist do not fulfill the demands of intelligibility here. Thus at each level of education, the child can take his former way of learning as an example, in the sense of motif, through which to see his current stage. This reinterprets each former level in light of the current one and, hence, the pedagogical process entails not only learning something new and integrating it with the old, in a somewhat linear fashion, but also of rethinking the old in light of the new. Hence, nothing is ever learned once and for all, and yet something is accumulated at each step as a trace—perhaps simply of the past naiveté. In the case of religious teaching, the paradox in this regard is as follows. On the one hand, all former learning—both aesthetic and scientific—can now be used as an example of something else that is strictly neither purely aesthetic (sensational) nor scientific (law bound). The structure of exemplarity here involves a process of exceeding the very delimiting characteristics “the example” seems to be pointing out. This structure is one of betrayal, but in a very resticted sense. It is a systematic excess that is installed here, and a systematic rereading of the aesthetic and scientific to find the “incomprehensible” within it. The excess is inside of each domain—not elsewhere and, more precisely, not beyond either domain. What makes this paradoxical structure of exemplarity “incomprehensible” is precisely what makes it intelligible and accessible at all, namely, both the aesthetic and scientific styles of inquiry. Within the aesthetic, the divine as such does not appear but is the condition of the same. Likewise for science and scientific inquiry. As Rousseau says: But that an inanimate body at rest should succeed in moving itself or in producing motion—that is incomprehensible and without example.14 If exemplarity provides the conditions of the possibility of intelligibility, then the divine as the incomprehensible must be understood as being without example, yet not without a sign, indeed, signs. In fact, nothing is not a sign of the divine—a work by the worker. How, then, are we to understand this sense of exemplarity that defies intelligibility and in a sense is outside of the orbit

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of all exemplarity? How can something be both seen everywhere through its works yet be nonetheless without example? Let us not assume that this is yet another simple contradiction in Rousseau’s text. Rather, let us turn to the issue here with an assumption of subtlety rather than confusion. What form of seeing can be possible of the incomprehensible? Only by indirection, via the route of via; mediation as detour thus allows access to the law, or at least that has always been the premise of Western philosophy and Christianity. Barring direct access, then, Rousseau is on traditional ground here, and as yet is simply reaffirming the twofold historical foundations of his own culture. Yet the path, as a series of signs, as a text to be read, is not thereby understood as a set of examples. The divine is without example, does not show Himself as such. In this case the “as such” is the place of the example, and as such both are denied. That God can be pursued via things, via the world and our experiences of it, is not to say that He offers Himself as an example of, in or by those things. The wildflowers in the alpine meadows are not examples of God, though they can be signs of Him. They are the works of God, not examples of Him. What, then, is the sense of exemplarity here? The example in this case would be a possible substitute for, would be in some sense commensurate with, that which it exemplifies. This is not the structure of signs but rather of symbols that are a part of, if not synonymous with that which they exemplify. In short, the example here which is impossible, we should not forget, is that which could symbolize God. He has no other here, for Rousseau. Teaching the boy about religion, then, will be both more subtle and more naive than all previous pedagogy. He is to learn to see what he has already seen in a new way. To re-read the book of the world, beyond science and aesthetics, as we mentioned earlier. He is also to look inward—a new step—to find the voice of God inside of him. As Rousseau says: I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.15 In this sense, both the world and the self are examples of God, who is, in essence, without example. As part of God, not in an arbitrary or a semiotic relation to God, Rousseau figures the relation here within exemplarity, as defined above. . . . as soon as I want to contemplate Him in Himself, as soon as I want to find out where He is, what He is, what His substance is, He escapes me, and my clouded mind no longer perceives anything.16 It is thus the “as such” of God that can never be found, never be established in and for itself. The objectivity of God will be forever beyond us, from


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Rousseau’s point of view, and this must be taught to the child. The method: via feeling. “I feel it in myself,” the Savoyard Priest says, and by implication, “you will feel it in yourself.” What orders this feeling is nothing, and it is the precise nothing that one finds in the attempt to reach the “as such” of God. Falling back into this world—of science and the aesthetic—there the child will find God, and for Rousseau, true religion. No catechism, then, no rote religious training; rather, the child is to be led to religion via his experiences of the world, and to at last turn inward—inside those experiences and himself—to reach that place that is beyond example, incomprehensible and, hence, as with all mysticism—beyond words. Teaching the little girl about religion is quite another matter and worthy of our notice here, as it reveals again the abyss separating the sexes from early on in pedagogical practice and orientation. Again, nothing is to be learned by rote, no memorizing of texts or prayers. Rather, the girl is to learn precisely by example. “Pray in front of them,” Rousseau instructs the girl’s mother/tutor, “show it by example.” Thus the way to God, for girls, is not through science but through action, not by analyzing the world but by repeating religious actions—analogous to Aristotle’s teaching of morality, via doing—the girl attains religion. As he says: . . . instead of long speeches about piety, they are content to preach piety to her by their example, and that example is engraved on her heart.17 Little girls need to imitate their mothers, Rousseau insists, not to understand the world. Little girls are motivated purely be the aesthetic domain and never truly reach outside of it. Hence, it is not for them to move beyond science, since in essence they are kept prescientific. Their world is a world of feeling, sensation, pleasure, and pain. Their world-to-come will be that of the theatre—of the ruse, of the act. Hence, they must appear to be religious—perform the rites and rituals—and leave the understanding to the men. True to form in a mysogynist world, Rousseau aims to keep the female population out of religion, yet to sustain the appearance of the reverse. By example, as positive contagion, the girl will learn all she needs to do concerning religion. The excess of exemplarity will be the guarded domain of the male population. We have seen in the above how the tutor is instructed by Rousseau to use examples: “Examples! Nothing but examples!” in the pedagogical process. We also have seen that the term example carries a number of directions, orientations, and usages within it, so that no simple concept of the same, or of the example as such, can be established. Rather, the pedagogical use of exemplarity must itself shift as the child learns from one notion of it to another. The final resting place leads back to the beginning of the process, the aesthetic, and turns inward to the aesthetics of the self, only to begin anew at another level.

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Again, we have the ghostly premonitions for Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit—perhaps more clearly here than before, though Hegel’s use of exemplarity is surely quite dissimilar to Rousseau’s. Nonetheless, the movement of Absolute Spirit, for Hegel, is foreseen by Rousseau by placing exemplarity and its many structures at the heart of the very possibility of the pedagogical process and, more importantly perhaps, of intelligibility itself. Beyond exemplarity—that place that is no place—is also, of necessity, beyond intelligibility. Beyond examples, one is one with God, and this for Rousseau, is an impossibility. The paradox, of course, is that this is the telos—the impossible project— toward which all education moves, for Rousseau at least.

ROUSSEAU’S METHOD: FOR US “If you have to be told everything, do not read me,”18 Rousseau says. Though his theory of pedagogy via exemplarity for the tutor may seem synonymous with that “for us,” the reader(s), these are in fact two very different levels of his discourse. Sometimes they occur simultaneously with the same message being directed to the would-be tutor of a would-be pupil, as well as to the reader, whose concerns extend beyond a particular pedagogical situation to the philosophical issues of pedagogy, and to philosophy ultimately as pedagogy. This simultaneity can be deciphered and determined as a duplicity of layers by reading differentially. Analogous to the process of Emile re-reading his previous experiences and interpretations of them, as he moves on to a higher and deeper level of understanding, we are instructed oftentimes by Rousseau to beware of reading his own text in a simple, univocal fashion. He does not tell all, explicitly, he warns us and, hence, the layering is to be seen as part of our own pedagogical puzzle. Re-reading his text as a philosophical treatise on exemplarity, in addition to a particular pedagogical technè, we can switch to the level of the “for us” via that which is explicitly marked “for the tutor.” We too are Emile, as readers at the same time we are “tutors” for future and possible Emiles. Rousseau’s text is itself an aesthetic-scientific-theological work, through which we can see the worker, author, creator, and foundation. This is not a simple matter of an exoteric versus an esoteric reading, however.19 The pedagogical principles set down are not a mask but one level of the text just as “esoteric” as the others. But these are incomplete if read only at “face value.” The entire first level becomes an example, or a series of examples, linked metonymically between themselves and to the second level “for us.” Again, the parallel to Hegel’s Phenomenology is striking here, in that Hegel too developed a second dialogue within the first that was addressed “to us.” “We,” in Hegel’s text, are split between the undergoing consciousness and the observing consciousness, and we are both in reading the text. This double mapping of consciousness had


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been staged already in Rousseau’s Emile. We, the readers, undergo what Emile is to undergo, and yet we also are told, via what appear to be theatrically staged asides to the audience, more than Emile is told. We are told what appear to be the reasons things are set up for Emile as they are, and why he is not to know these secrets yet that we are privy to. Hence, we readers are both Emile and the tutor at the same time, yet we also are outside of that symbiotic relation between teacher and pupil, looking on from elsewhere, with “Rousseau,” the narrator, who tells us, another us, what is behind setting up the tutorials as they are. It is to this, a third vantage point, that we must now turn to view Rousseau’s method “for us” in the asides that he offers explicitly. Behind this we will, of course, pursue that which he does not say but must assume in order to do, say, and promote what he does in the name of examples.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS EXAMPLE We have reached the stage where we must examine not the way examples are used and function in Rousseau’s discourse but what he claims explicitly that their function is. In short, we turn now to confessions of method, whereby Rousseau seeks to justify his usage of examples with claims concerning exemplarity itself. These claims embrace two levels within the same discourse: first, they entail a rationale for a particular use of particular examples, and this much is explicit; second, this rationale supposes and depends upon unthematized notions of exemplarity “as such.” The first level will be our focus here, and we must now turn to the confessional mode as it animates Rousseau’s justifications for using his own life as the matrix from which to draw particular examples. As he says: My reasonings are founded less on principles than on facts; and I believe that I cannot better put you in a position to judge of them than often to report to you some example of the observations which suggested them to me.20 Further, he insists: What makes me more assertive—and I believe, more to be excused for being so is that, instead of yielding to the systematic spirit, I grant as little as possible to reasoning and trust only observation. I found myself not on what I have imagined but on what I have seen.21 Thus Rousseau’s general method of philosophizing itself begins, he tells us, in experience: in the events, actions, and doings from which he then develops

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theories that can account for the same. Rather than following the Scholastics, Rousseau chooses the Cartesian method, so it would seem, of turning inward to one’s own life as the stage from which to decipher hidden scripts that will have a depth and a significance beyond the context from which they were drawn. The place of exemplarity here is so central it becomes invisible, in that everything and nothing are examples, potentially, if not in fact. At issue here becomes the selection of this rather than that as exemplary—as more than itself—as transcending the principle of identity so that a thing, an event, or an experience speaks of other experiences or events beyond itself. One could argue that such is the nature of things in general—to be, in essence, more than they are as such. But this also would instantiate exemplarity everywhere and nowhere and would not help in the clarification of how exemplarity is possible. Although potentially everything exemplifies everything else, as Leibniz might have it, in fact and in particular in Rousseau’s case, as in all philosophical work, limits are set and privileges are established. Some examples are better than others—some things are good examples rather than others. Long before Nietzsche’s claim that all philosophy is essentially autobiography, Rousseau is already on this track and is proclaiming as much. His own life, and this includes his “own” reading, will serve him as the place from which to develop theory via the function of exemplarity as such. More precisely, how does exemplarity function here in the life, writings, and works of Rousseau concerning pedagogy in particular? Rousseau himself admits: “I always go back to my examples.”22 One of the paradoxes here of taking the events in one’s own life as examples involves the hermeneutical fact that in order to be seen as an example, that of which an example is an example must already (always) be in place. In short, seeing an event or a situation as an example presupposes the theory for which it will be enlisted as an example. Though Rousseau insists that the theory comes after the examples, it simply comes after the lived experience, which once having been returned to, as an example, already houses the theory for which it has been selected. Which comes first—the exemplifier or the exemplified—is thus a nonsensical question here, since the process is not a linear one. Neither one nor the other are what they are without the other; they coestablish each other’s identity. Thus the theory and the example “of ” that theory come into being simultaneously, though obviously not ex nihilo. This process, not thematized by Rousseau explicitly, must involve a making and a remaking of one’s interpretations of things as events—the eventful character of events—as we have seen microscopically with Emile, the boy. His vision of his vision as aesthetic, scientific, and theological is nothing more than re-readings of experiences, which in turn generate new experiences. For Rousseau, clearly Emile’s procedure here is his own writ small—an example of Rousseau’s own life’s way. Yet Emile’s pedagogy as a whole is an example of something else that Rousseau estab-


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lished from his own life as a series of examples for his theory, which is then played out on the set of Emile’s fictional life. To ask where the theory begins is to miss the point here. To ask from whence come examples also is to beg the question and to foreclose the issue. A single starting point for an assumed linear or progressive process is yet another metaphysical assumption that we will transgress in the understanding of exemplarity here. As an event both is and is not an example of something else, so Rousseau’s life experience serves him selectively in the development of his theory of pedagogy, and philosophy itself. It is not from the thoughts of others that one ought to take one’s bearing, in philosophy as in life, for Rousseau, but from their actions. Hence, reading Plutarch, Thucydides, and other historians helps one find “good” examples rather than reading Plato or other philosophers. To do what Plato did is the key here, and not to follow what he says. Events then, for Rousseau, have an essentially textual nature; they are to be read, and being read they are to be seen as examples. Yet how can one see an example prior to the theory, or have the theory prior to the example? The key issue here is the excess built into any reading of any event. An event as an example of something also is not an example of that same thing. The example betrays and opens up an essential incommensurability with any hermeneutical matrix established to constrain and control it. Thus to give an event a meaning by calling it an example of “X” is not to understand the event, to name it, but to attempt an impossible appropriation. The excess is what will allow the event always to be read otherwise, to have a future rather than an identity. With this revolving spiral, we can now approach Rousseau’s usage of his own life experiences as he marks particular events as examples. He opens the issue apologetically: Readers, pardon me, therefore for sometimes drawing my examples from myself, for to do this book well I must do it with pleasure.23 But this pleasure is the real basis of the philosopical enterprise itself as opposed to using the texts of others: This is armchair philosophy; but I appeal to experience.24 In turn, what Rousseau has actually seen for himself forms the basis for what he will claim signifies human nature, the human condition—its origins and capacities as such. Although it may seem, in some senses, that one experience of one person—other than oneself—can be enough to reveal human nature in general, Rousseau will resist this usage of exemplarity, whereby one particular can house the general as such. But neither does one need to see the whole (all particulars) in order to see the whole—the principle. To have seen “ten

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Frenchmen” is enough (and needed, not just one) to able to claim to know “the French,” he will later tell us. Yet here there are cases when one example is enough to establish a more general theory: Permit me a single example taken in all its puerile naiveté.25 The usage in many cases of just one example by Rousseau is done with a juridical eye rather than a logical one. One case, one example, is cited as evidence for a claim—not as proof. Here the distinction between evidence and proof must be clarified. An example as proof will make a case conclusive, by one logic or another. An example as evidence will offer an instance where the said claim is in effect. In short, in the example as evidence no universality for the claim is assumed. No closure is established, but only that such a rule is manifest in such a case. It is this latter formulation that is often instantiated in Rousseau’s work, though he has been mistakenly read as offering the former and, hence, charged with inconsistency when he introduces contrary examples and rules for “the same.” There is no universality supposed here, and this opening must be sustained in the understanding of exemplarity, we insist. Let us consider one such case: I have seen these little prodigies who believed that they spoke five or six languages. I have heard them speak German in Latin terms, in French terms, in Italian terms, successively. They did in truth make use of five or six lexicons. But they always spoke only German. In a word: give children as many synonyms as you please; you will change the words, not the language. They will never know but one.26 With this evidence-example Rousseau seems to claim that learning foreign languages for a child is nothing more than a sham issue, since all that he or she will ever do is have a basis in one language and use apparent synonyms in others. Thus only one language is truly learned, whereas the others are only mapped onto it. Yet if one is careful to read only what Rousseau says here, he says that these childrean, he has seen, who thought they could speak five or six languages, actually were duping themselves and could only readily speak one, in this case, German. This example of another example—in this case, German—is preceded by the claim that Rousseau denies that a child is able to learn more than one language. The reason given is that in order to do so, one must be able to compare ideas, but at a young age, a child’s reasoning capacities for comparison are not yet fully developed. Hence, it is by nature that a child is essentially restricted to one language, one mother tongue. Following this general prohibition, Rousseau introduces what he has seen in his life—those German children—and uses, it would seem, the “case” as a particular instance of his


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general claim. This experience of others’ experience—indeed, this reading of their experience, which overturns their experience and this undertanding of it—is posited as evidence for the general claim. What status can such an experience of others’ nonexperience have? Is it one particular among others? Is it paradigmatic—rule setting rather than rule governed? Is it typical? Atypical? Can one generalize from this? Rousseau does not. He generalizes first, then he cites his experience as an example. Far from obeying his earlier claim, that he does not begin with general principles but leads us toward them via his experience, here he does precisely the opposite of what he has claimed his method entails. The example as following the rule is thus not the source of the rule, or is it? Rousseau himself gives us a clue here when he says explicitly that his text and a fortiori his theory are independent of his examples. Far from being drawn from such experience, then, Rousseau insists that his experiences are inserted in the text as signatures, as moments of giving himself pleasure, in order to better create the text at all. The examples thus function for Rousseau as mnemonic devices marking his own life experience as exemplary and, in this case, as exemplary of itself. It is Rousseau’s experience and no one else’s; it is an example that claims absolute uniqueness, and as such gives pleasure—the pleasure of the one. How are we to interpret the relation between the apparently general and particular here? Is the example not the particular from which the general has been drawn, as we suggested earlier with the hermeneutical circularity inherent therein? In this case, no. In fact, in every case, no, Rousseau insists, though he also claims that his theory comes from his experience. What can be made of this? No simple answer will be adequate to the complexities here. We cannot take Rousseau at face value, especially since he gives us clues to not do so. He tells us explicitly that he is not telling us everything explicitly. Thus what status can such a claim have that his examples are independent of his theory? They are selections from his life experience; they are choices, and he is what they signify. And what has determined the choices is not the theoretical matrix that they advance, but Rousseau’s pleasure as he writes and rewrites his life in Emile. Here his own life enters, via the rhetoric of confession, the rhetoric of the ornamental itself and, indeed, via the rhetoric of metaphysics, thereby heightening the import of the unique case that in the end, as Rousseau is fully aware, can never be an example, nor serve within the economy of the same. It is no doubt ironic that the one is not the same as the same, and has never been.

SYNECHDOCHE: THE SAMPLE From the notion of example as evidence, we now move to the place where example is understood and thematized as proof. At this juncture, Rousseau

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admits that one case in the end tells us nothing—nothing conclusive, that is. But a series of the same, a type of impossible repetition, does tell a different story, and it is this that we will examine here. As he says concerning the need for multiplicity in the framing of examples as examples: I hold it to be an incontestable maxim that whoever has seen only one people does not know men; he knows only the people with whom he has lived.27 One people, one case, is thus not enough to extend what is known there to any others and, indeed, not to humanity at large, so Rousseau claims. With this lacuna in hand, he suggests travel as the best way to discover les hommes (men). The sample (example) must be larger than one—oneself, one other, one people—and, hence, will allow for generalization. But the question is, how large of a sample is necessary in order for it to become an example and to serve in the capacity of synechdoche, to stand for the whole? The limit here is economic, and this in two distinct senses. On the one hand, mortality of the observer must be considered an ontological limit to the capacity to form and frame examples. On the other hand, a certain repetition once in evidence in the samples provides evidence, not proof, that this series is a series of something. In short, the example manifests itself over time via the differences. The relation here that allows the repetition to surface is not identity but an analogous relation to some other as yet undefined and unnamed, for which these are to become examples. In short, the exemplified takes shape via the repetition that is formative in the process of repeating. Thus an exemplifier is formed at the same instant and by the same process that the exemplified is formed and takes shape. Just as a gestalt is both gradual and instantaneous for the observer puzzling over a shapeless mass, so too the “cases” form clues that converge as the exemplifier to be. Far from having a concept in advance, then, or rules, or a notion of humanity, the traveler, in this case, simply moves into different contexts of humanity noting the bridges and abysses between the groups. Neither the identity nor the differences are at issue here, but rather a repetition that is formative and productive of a gestalt in the repeating itself. This gestalt, the exemplifed, is both beyond the exemplifier—the series—and nowhere else. Rousseau suggests all of this in a number of ways, which we will examine as a series here: 1. But if one wants to study men, is it necessary to roam the entire earth? Is it necessary to go to Japan to observe Europeans? Is it necessary to know all the individuals to know the species? No. There are men who have such a strong resemblance to one another that it is not worth the effort to study them separately. [Further:] Whoever has seen ten Frenchmen has seen them all.28


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2. That repetition between the cases is at issue is clear as Rousseau rejects the analysis of one single member: [E]ach nation has its own specific character which can be inferred from observations not of a single member but of several.29 3. The number ten seems crucial, though it is perhaps also an example “only,” as Rousseau claims by saying: Whoever has compared ten peoples knows men.30 4. At issue in this series is its supposed infinity, should one have the immortality to pursue it. Continuing the list then is essential to this mode of exemplarity, though this is written into it in principle only and, of necessity, not in fact. It is a series beyond ten, or any finite number, or it is not a series. Rousseau suggests this in the following, where he claims his example, as a single one, is itself part of a series (therein partaking of the proof-structure of exemplarity, not simply evidence, though the details of the series are not given): To these examples M. de Buffon could have added that of England, where the extravagant and barbarous practice of swaddling is being done away with day by day. See also la Loubere, Voyage de Siam, Mr. le Beau, Voyage du Canada, etc. I could fill twenty pages with citations, if I needed to confirm this by facts.31 Thus the series, as repetition of the analogy to the exemplified, could and does in principle confirm. The series as a whole, then, serves as an example, each member of which, either in fact or in principle, serving as a part of that example-as-whole. In the end of time, space, and history, the exemplifier and the exemplified would be the same, but insofar as we are not gods, the leap of exemplarity must be taken, which allows one to assume, in principle, if not in fact, that not only could the list go on forever but that all future members will only confirm what is already known. This knowledge, fundamentally at risk, fundamentally based on the leap over the abyss to the infinite, is the only knowledge examples can establish from Rousseau’s point of view. But this is the structure of knowledge as such insofar as it is based on the structure of exemplarity in play here. The gap is overcome only by the leap to the exemplified, which in the end is in fact never made. Things are what they are, and they resist this bad faith of exemplarity if seen without an eye to the structure of exemplarity. But since this structure is always in play—we never see things “as they are”—they are always in potentia: examples of something else. Such is the economic and, of necessity, theatrical relation, we suggest, between all things.

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Rousseau also warns in this regard of the danger of examples here understood again as contagious. The observer of the human condition, the traveler, is not immune to the potentially dangerous possibility of “going native” and adopting the vices via the examples of the same that he or she sees around him or her. The qualities that make a good traveler, therefore, are those that are able to hear the “voice of error without being deceived.” This voice speaks, of course, through the example. To see an act as an example of vice is thus the quality of a good traveler—to resist the other inasmuch as he or she is a bad example, or an example of the bad. But the resistance is not total, nor absolute. The traveler must allow himself or herself to be influenced—made whole—by the good examples that he or she finds. To listen to the good example, to see it as a model for oneself, to become it, is the flip side of the resistance to be mustered, or the reverse. Thus good and evil have become flesh, and they have become so only through exemplarity. A person as example of vice is not vice incarnate, nor the reverse, but rather displays vice in and through his or her actions. The theatrical notion of the good and the vicious is thus installed within exemplarity in this case. In turn, to follow the good example and to resist the bad are ways of becoming part of a series in which and through which the “as such” itself will be manifest. As Rousseau says: [T]here are very few people that are really fit to travel; it is only good for those who are strong enough in themselves to listen to the voice of error without being deceived, strong enough to see the example of vice without being led away by it. Travelling accelerates the progress of nature, and completes the man for good or evil. When a man returns from travelling the world, he is what he will be all his life; there are more who return bad than good, because there are more who start with an inclination towards evil.32 The danger of the example can thus not be overestimated, since one participates in the series as well as observes it “from afar.” What governs the contagion and/or resistance, both of which are needed, depending on the nature of the example, is the natural inclination already in place in the traveler. Ironically, the example, among other things, has the capacity to denature the traveler, not unlike what Lycurgus did with Plato, from Rousseau’s perspective. The bad example can thus rob a person of his or her own inner voice and substitute nothing in its place—the nothing here being the substance of exemplarity. Prejudices, authority, necessity, example, all the social institutions in which we find ourselves submerged would stifle nature in him and put nothing in its place.33


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Yet the example contains a power greater than discourse, greater than texts that have lost the flesh of life for Rousseau. The nothing of the example is thus its power, its breath, its spirit, its voice, and in this it would seem that Rousseau is typically phonocentric in his privileging of the example as the present: the presencing of the word made flesh. Yet, this privilege also is that of the bad example, the dangerous example, the privilege of the empowered that denatures nature. The positive side of this power is the completion of what nature had been, and it is only the example that can do this, as we have seen. Thus the status of the example here is supplementary, as Derrida would call it. The example is added in order to fulfill what is already in itself complete.34 Finally, the example as apparent synechdoche, traditionally understood as a part standing for the whole, is thwarted by Rousseau in yet another respect. He speaks of generalizing from his ideas, extending them to further examples, and he speaks of establishing the rules for observing particulars prior to that observation itself. In both cases, it is clear that the example as such does not come first but, then, as we have shown, the example does not simply fill in a blank left by the rule established independently of the former. Rather, observations are framed, as hermeneutics has long claimed and Heidegger would clarify much later, by a forestructure that allows us to see things as things and, indeed, in this case, examples as examples. Yet the move from things to examples is not simple nor instantaneous. Rather, a thing becomes an example through a complex oscillation process, whereby the exemplifier and the exemplified mutually define each other, thus more than one “example” (thing to become an example) is always necessary, from Rousseau’s position. One example, as we have shown, can always be understood as evidence but never as proof. Indeed, a series of examples becomes a proof only insofar as the promise of an infinity to the series is wagered, though it can never be fulfilled. It is, of course, the wager that makes this structure of exemplarity both possible and impossible. Thus it would be inappropriate and reductionistic to claim that Rousseau uses exemplarity here as a mere particular case of a general rule, the latter framed either by induction or deduction. Exemplarity as synechdoche here functions in a radically different manner and presupposes other dispositions of the user in order to function at all.

EMILE AS AN EXAMPLE Rousseau distinguishes between a rule to be followed and an example as a manner or style when he states the reason for including the story of the Savoyard Priest concerning religion and its pedagogical possibilities:

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I have transcribed this writing not as a rule for the sentiments that one ought to follow in religious matters, but as an example of the way one can reason with one’s pupil in order not to diverge from the method I have tried to establish.35 In a sense, this limited claim could be extended to a meta-textual level concerning the status of Emile as a whole. Both inside and outside the text, this claim locates the differences between example and rule and the resulting status of the work here to be seen both as an example and not as one, as we shall see. Emile, the boy, Rousseau insists, is unlike all other boys. His uniqueness serves Rousseau in such a way as to place him outside of the orbit of exemplarity itself, so it would seem. “Emile will not be like everyone else, and God preserve him from ever being so.”36 Furthermore, Emile is to learn to have pity for his fellows, to resist their examples, and to be able to decide “for himself ” in dialogues with his inner voice: “Although in general Emile does not esteem men, he will not show contempt for them, because he pities them and is touched by them.”37 Yet Emile also is “vulgar” and in this is able to represent the “common man”: I have assumed for my pupil neither a transcendent genius nor a dull understanding. I have chosen him from among the ordinary minds in order to show what education can do for man. All rare cases are outside the rules.38 Thus Emile’s uniqueness is withdrawn, and he is placed, concerning innate intellectual ability at least, in the camp of the average, the “vulgar,” the common, as opposed to the rare and the elite. Rousseau qualifies this claim earlier in his text with an intensely equivocal turn of phrase: In assuming he has a watch as well as in making him cry, I gave myself a common [vulgaire] Emile, to be useful and to make myself understood; for, with respect to the true one, a child so different from others would not serve as an example for anything.39 Emile, as unique, cannot serve as an example, yet Emile as “vulgar” is useful and helps Rousseau become understood and, indeed, serves as an example. The question here for us is, “example” in what sense? Above, Rousseau has claimed that the unique is outside of the rule, the exception, whereas the common, the average, fits precisely into the economy of exemplarity, or so it would seem. Yet insofar as Rousseau’s own theory is unique, rare, without example, it would seem that he must require a unique example to exemplify it. But this


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latter assumption is not simply true as it stands. Rousseau insists that he, too, is following the examples of those before him, namely, Plato, and all who chose the contemplative life over the active: Not in a condition to fulfill the most useful task, I will dare at least to attempt the easier one; following the example of so many others, I shall put my hand not to the work [l’oeuvre] but to the pen; and instead of doing what is necessary, I shall endeavor to say it.40 In following the examples of others, it would seem that Rousseau’s own uniqueness is shattered and, hence, his work as an example of examples becomes useful. Yet at the same time, he distances himself and the status of his work from all others who have preceded him: I know that in undertakings like this one, an author—always comfortable with systems that he is not responsible for putting into practice—may insouciantly offer many fine precepts which are impossible to follow. And in the absence of details and examples, even the feasible things he says, if he has not shown their application, remain ineffectual. I have chosen to give myself an imaginary pupil.41 In the pedagogy of Emile, the boy, we should recall, Rousseau instructs the instructor to give examples, not precepts; show by example, not by discourse; offer the example as a puzzle to be solved, not a solution to be memorized by rote learning. Likewise, Rousseau performs this same process “for us” in his portrayal of Emile-the-boy learning by example. Emile is what Emile does. Emile functions the way Emile functions and, of course, vice versa. The text and the boy mirror each other as micro/macro ironic examples of each other, but there is at least one slippage or indeed hinge point, and this has to do with what is forbidden to Emile in order to teach him and to direct his gaze elsewhere. Crucial to us here is the fable against fables. No stories for Emile, the boy, lest he learn the wrong examples, follow the vicious villain rather than the virtuous hero. Children cannot resist the bad example offered in fables, and they should not be exposed to this. Instead, Rousseau insists, fables are for adults only. “Children’s stories,” then, are to be read by adults who, with their ability to invert the world and at times invert the inversion, will see the examples therein. This fabulous ability to read fables marks Rousseau’s text of Emile itself and offers the reader yet another hint toward how to read Emile. It is an example, yet it is not; it is a series of examples, yet the series can never be completed, and this we know a priori. Rousseau states openly that his work is to be seen as proof, indeed, continual proof—a series of series of examples:

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The whole book is only a constant proof of this principle of education.42 Which principle? Why that of exemplarity, of course. Furthermore, he insists: The goal is less to teach him a truth than to show him how he must always go about discovering the truth. In order to instruct him better, you must not undeceive [detrouper] him so soon. Let us take Emile and me as an example.43 Here he seems to be offering advice to the “tutor” concerning how to read Emile-the-boy, his (the tutor’s) tutor, and their relation. But, by inversion, reading the text as fable, we can also see that this suggestion can (and perhaps) must be read as “take Emile, and I, Rousseau, as examples.” In the end, Rousseau even authorizes this inversion when he admits to the literary character of the work itself: If I have said what must be done, I have said what I ought to have said. It makes very little difference to me if I have written a romance [roman].44 If, then, Emile is a fable, for adults only, the authority of inversion is itself authorized here. In appearance, one could invert the fable in order to find its truth, through the examples, and could leave the examples behind, as if detachable from what has been said via them as a medium. This would be the traditional metaphysical rendering of the role of example here as elsewhere. But the situation here and the use of exemplarity in framing Emile and Emile are more complex. Rousseau claims that at times he is able to state the principles directly, sheerly, and face-to-face when they appear self-evident, and when each person should feel truth without need for example. Yet there are other rules in need of “proof,” he says, which he has applied to Emile, the boy, when it is necessary for one to see in the details how the rule works and functions. This, at least, he says, is the place, the rule of the rules and nonrules, the examples and non-examples. Stated baldly, one might say that this is Rousseau’s explicit intent: to speak directly without examples wherever possible, but in complicated instances to speak via showing, via the example of Emile undergoing the principle left unthematized. Yet what status does such a claim have? Is this the hermeneutic key to reading Emile, to reading exemplarity as such, and otherwise? Or is this also a ruse, a fable in need of inversion, a part of the “roman.” Rousseau also says: However, that may be, my method is independent of my examples. It is founded on the measure of man’s faculties at his different ages and on the choice of occupations which suit these faculties.45 (emphasis added)


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Is this fable, too, to be inverted? What status can this independence have once Rousseau has instructed us that examples are the only method of teaching? Let us not be resigned to the simplicity of claiming inconsistency, confusion, and contradiction. Rousseau gives us enough hints to solve the puzzle here, as an example of his own theory. Since his method, for us, and for Emile and Emile, is via example, via exemplarity, how can this independence be sustained, or if it collapses, how is it possible to still distinguish method from example as separable terms, though bound together? The independence is fabulous, we suggest. The independence is that which relates and separates the thematized from the unthematized. It is that which allows the ruse to be effective, yet not mystically so. Controlled, on the one hand, and mysterious, on the other hand, the example is always to be decoded. Left as such, it is not an example but a thing. Seen as an example, its exemplified is not given but suggested, and to be found only, if we are reading fables and if all reading is fabulous, by inversion. Inverting the inversion itself does not give us blinding light but the paradoxes that Rousseau’s text is so filled with each time he seeks to give the rule to the reading. This too must be read, and oftentimes not, according to its own stated rule, and this, we have shown, is itself a stated rule in Rousseau’s text. Thus far from a simple contradiction here in pointing toward the independence of examples and method, the “of ” of the independence and the frame that the independence frames are precisely the links that betray any notion of independence as such. Thus this was not Rousseau’s claim here, nor could it be. There is no “as such” to method, nor to exemplarity, as we have seen.


5

The Unthematized Theories of Exemplarity

METHODOLOGIES In some respects, the “unthematized” aspects of exemplarity in Rousseau’s text have already been brought to light insofar as this theme has dominated the analysis to this point. It is essential, therefore, to now clarify a distinct sense we give to this term, the unthematized, as it has been inherited from Heidegger and, before him, from Kant, under the sign of “transcendental.” We shall here make a brief detour back into the methodological routes of the project in order to show both an allegiance to this tradition and our divergence from it at crucial points. This is not a transcendental project, as Kant understood the term, nor is it an ontological one, as Heidegger used that term, in his early works at least. Our method here, in searching for the unthematized, does borrow, nonetheless, from the styles of investigation of both Kant and Heidegger. We omit the name, Derrida, here, since our relation methodologically to his work is much more complex and labyrinthian, because we are aiming to work at and to some extent within the limits of deconstruction. We shall return to those issues in the next section. At present, we aim to show precisely from whence the “unthematized” has come, and for what purposes it has been thus drawn out earlier and in what follows. We have not focused on the unthematized, technically speaking, as yet, but we have merely prepared the ground to begin to be able to perceive it. The first section of our text aimed at the functioning of exemplarity in all of its specificity and richness of detail and context. From within this functioning, we will draw out its unthematized dimensions. The prior section treated the thematic, explicit approaches made by Rousseau to the questions of exemplarity, but this too has yet to reveal the unthematized within the same. We now turn to these 147

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two layers of the text—the functioning or usage and the theories or explicit claims—in order to reveal within each what we will call the unthematized “theories of exemplarity.” This non-place within/without the text cannot be considered authorized or intended by Rousseau, yet his text carries it and is carried by it. Hidden within the architectonics of style, thematics, theory, and rhetoric, the unthematized operates nonetheless at the most powerful, controlling, constraining, and limiting level. This is neither technically transcendental nor ontological and, indeed, these terms and their textual locations also can be analyzed from the unthematized yet operative pre-/post-textual architectonic, as we shall see. Kant defined “transcendental” in the following way in The Critique of Pure Reason: I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects insofar as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori. A system of such concepts might be entitled transcendental philosophy.1 Immediately following this announcement, Kant denies that his own work fulfills this requirement, insofar as it is a preliminary undertaking working toward the possibility of such a philosophy. Nonetheless, “transcendental” is located within the rhetorical dimension of the mode of our knowledge of objects and its possibility a priori. Thus Kant was concerned with what we already claim to know and to understand the necessary conditions of the very possibility of such knowing. In addition, he claimed that his own strategy could be called “transcendental critique” in the following sense: It is upon this enquiry, which should be entitled not a doctrine, but only a transcendental critique, that we are now engaged. Its purpose is not to extend knowledge, but only to correct it, and to supply a touchstone of the value, or lack of value, of all a priori knowledge.2 In this light, Kant’s project as a correction of previous knowledge, a justification, an analysis of boundaries, resetting the margins and, hence, the center, claims to analyze what we know from another perspective, another level, with other criteria to judge it. Again, he qualifies the type of judgment that is at issue here when he steps back from judgment itself to what makes judgment, insofar as it is accurate and reliable, possible: . . . what here constitutes our subject-matter is not the nature of things, which is inexhaustible, but the understanding which passes judgment upon the nature of things; and this understanding, again, only in respect of its a priori knowledge.3


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The boundaries of the project are thus set so that the a priori knowledge of the a priori will be justified, or at least thematized. What allows the judgment to be judged is of course the subject of the Critique of Judgment, which is arguably the foundation of the first, thus making aesthetics the foundation of the episteme, as some have claimed. At issue for us is the transcendental move itself as a mode of inquiry—not into things in nature, or the nature of things, but into inquiry itself. A metaphilosophical project, critique, in this case, transcendental critique, begs the questions concerning the nature of things and sets itself the task of moving yet further away from things—as if one could reach them without a pre-understanding and conceptual schema mediating the relations—to bringing to light the necessary foundations lying within the framework of seeing, judging, and understanding as such. This Copernican move is of course well known, but our aim here in recalling such a starting point is to locate our own method in close allegiance with the Kantian turn. However, where Kant places the boundaries and borders around his inquiry, we do not accept or utilize in this project. The “a priori” carries no sacred boundary for us, either as origin or telos; this is itself in question within our perspective here. Thus we cut loose the anchor of the a priori and open the inquiry not to an infinity without bounds but to a thematic whose boundaries become apparent in the analysis itself. This thematic is of course called here the labyrinths of exemplarity. The transcendental aspect of our inquiry is the focus on precisely what makes the functioning of examples (as they do) possible, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, what grounds the thematized explicit theories of exemplarity, as offered in this case by Rousseau. In addition, we must relate these two areas of the transcendental-unthematized in order to begin to think exemplarity in a new way—beyond the general-particular matrix that has foreclosed precisely such an inquiry up until now. Our analysis as a whole therefore includes the transcendental-critical method but also betrays it in two ways. First, our textual analysis of functioning is not to be seen as transcendental and, second, our thematic-unthematic analysis is only partially transcendental, insofar as it is not to be guided or limited by the notion of the a priori principle to be either justified or criticized. Rather, we are concerned with locating the essential and necessary conditions of the possibility of the functioning and theories of exemplarity and with analyzing their relations. This will lead us to a new theory of exemplarity that does not adhere to a tradition accepted dogmatically and uncritically, for the most part, which proclaims examples to be mere particulars or mere generals, or the easy bridge between these two pillars of metaphysics. Our second “source” for methodology is to be found within Heidegger’s early work, in particular where he focused on rethinking the Western traditions of philosophy. At issue for him is the “destruction of the history of

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ontology” so as to understand both the “tradition” and “ontology” in new ways. What has been concealed by the tradition is to be examined, and the concealing of this concealment is precisely the locus of the analysis as such. Heidegger insists that: Kant shrinks back, as it were, in the face of something which must be brought to light as a theme and a principle if the expression “Being” is to have any demonstrable meaning. [In addition, Heidegger promises to] show why Kant could never achieve an insight into the problematic of temporality.4 Kant’s blindness, as systematic, thus forms a clue as to what he could not have seen, nor have investigated, given his assumptions, allegiances, foci, and commitments. One of these is his dogmatic, unquestioning adoption of the hidden ontological commitments in Descartes’ position. Heidegger’s procedure or style of analysis, known as “destruction,” is well known and will not be summarized in full here, since our aim is much more narrow and precise.5 His reading of the unthematized within the thematized also is bounded by a matrix of origin and telos whose single role is fulfilled by the question of the meaning of Being or the meaning of the question of Being, as Dasein’s perspective sees it. This limit forms the interest and capital, one might call it, of Heidegger’s analysis. It frames his inquiry and forms a direction, an orientation, and a style within which his analysis as such takes place. As he re-reads Kant’s epistemology through the lens of ontology, and Descartes as well, Heidegger’s style seeks to uncover what is within yet unthematized in the works of each thinker, and the “tradition” as a whole. Thus his work also does not focus on the nature of things but on the nature of our judgment and being, through which we see things as things. In our analysis we accept the locus of inquiry as within the textual manifestations of the tradition, and as a re-reading of both the text and the tradition, but we do not accept the boundary—invoked dogmatically and uncritically in our judgment—of the question of the meaning of Being. This question does not guide our inquiry, though the latter does, it seems to us, have ontological consequences. As is clear by now, we seek to thematize the structures of exemplarity beyond any traditional (mis)understandings of the same, and we have chosen Rousseau’s text, Emile, to function as the center of this analysis in this text. We also have analyzed the processes involved in justifying a choice and defending an allegiance, and we have in turn “justified” our choice. We part company with Heidegger thus on his ontological dogmatism, and thus we suggest that his own usage of Dasein as an example is itself invoked dogmatically from the tradition that he seeks to “destroy.” As he says:


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If our analysis is to be authentic, its aim is such that the prior task of assuming ourselves “phenomenologically” of that entity which is to serve as our example has already been prescribed as our point of departure.6 Further, the ontological structure of Dasein, once revealed, will lead to the meaning of Being itself, or an authentic ontology. That Dasein can be “used as an example” conceals the structures of exemplarity presupposed here. Heidegger points out Dasein as the only case, the only place, where such an analysis can begin, and in this sense Dasein is not one “entity” among others and does not form a series—in principle or in fact. It is Dasein’s uniqueness that qualifies it to “serve as an example.” This underpinning for the “disclosure to come” of Dasein is not thematically taken up by Heidegger. One could rightly claim that exemplarity is not his forum, topic, or concern. But what is done by thus invoking exemplarity and moving on without further analysis, uncritically and dogmatically therein, reinstates “exemplarity” as self-evident and, according to Heidegger’s own perspective, conceals it within a web of inauthentic everydayness, which also can be called “the tradition,” which is no longer thought but used almost as a tool or piece of equipment. Thus we part company with Heidegger, only to approach more closely what he leaves unthematized yet operative and active within his own text. Our allegiance in methodological respects should by now be clear with respect to both Kant and Heidegger, yet given our turning away from the a priori and the question of Being as our guiding threads for inquiry and analysis, we suggest that the divergence is of perhaps more consequence than the allegiance. The styles overlap in a sort of homonymy—each sounds the same, yet means something entirely different. And thus we begin anew, starting from Kant’s and Heidegger’s approaches but redirecting them both toward our thematic of inquiry, namely, the labyrinths of exemplarity, or as the traditional style might have said, exemplarity as such. It should by now be clear as to why we cannot formulate this project in that respect without concealing the very issues that we aim to disclose.

WITHIN THE THEMATIZED: ROUSSEAU’S “THEORY” AND THEORIES We have found the structures of exemplarity operative within Rousseau’s text to be, without exception, tropological. That is, the general/particular metaphysical matrix within which examples have been traditionally understood has been revealed to be inhabited by multiple figures of speech which, although operating clandestinely, organize the resultant and indeed only

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apparent general/particular relations. But reducing metaphysical structures to tropes, or philosophical logic to the figural of literature as such, is not enough, nor is it the aim of this book. At this juncture it is necessary to return to philosophy in order to understand and underscore what has gone before. Rather than reduce philosophy to literature, we must now turn back to the philosophical domain proper to organize and indeed to articulate the literary findings. One could leave them “as is,” but this would not satisfy our fundamentally philosophical desire here and throughout this book. One caveat is essential to bear in mind in what follows, however, and this is that we are not seeking to now foreclose within metaphysics the very discoveries that we have made “beyond” metaphysics. The “old categories” no longer fit precisely, since what has been found here and by Derrida and others before him is that the “old categories” always included by exclusion as remainder and surplus the difference that could never be called identity. Insofar as we are operating here at the limits of deconstruction, we have gathered these remainders throughout Rousseau’s text in order to now examine them as a collection—not as a concept—at least not yet. In turn, what follows will proceed in several directions, philosophically borrowing from traditions as diverse as Platonism and existentialism, hermeneutics, ontology, mysticism, rhetorical theory, and Kantian philosophy. In concluding this section, we will seek to gather again, at a higher level, the findings revealed here within these various frames of reference. The gathering aims toward unity, systematicity, but it does not presuppose it nor seek to collapse differences. We strive here in short, as elsewhere and before, to reveal what might be called an economy of exemplarity; a multiplicity of structures, indeed, a labyrinth, which does not fall apart as sheer cliffs separated by an abyss but rather includes numerous interlocking, interdependent, and symbiotic relations. Far from an organic whole, and equally far from a mechanistic totality, we nonetheless seek to show how the multiplicity relates disparate regions to itself and to themselves.

THE EXAMPLE AND THE OTHER Examples are said to be equally dangerous and useful within pedagogical practice, by Rousseau, inasmuch as they exhibit the capacity of the audience to repeat what the example exemplifies—to repeat the example itself. The question for us here turns on the issue of what makes this repetition (by a self ) of the example (of the other) possible. Or, what must the example entail in this case, so that it can be seen as affecting one (self ) in such a way as to change one’s behavior in accordance with it? To follow an example, to learn by example, to be influenced by examples, to be warned by examples, and to


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be shown by example are the modes of expression used by Rousseau, among others, to mark this place of repeatability implied within the structure of exemplarity here. If we consider the “example” here as an other, it becomes clear that the self-other relation involves a struggle of identity that is lost from the outset. The other-as-example has power over me, insofar as I have any contact with or awareness of it. The other here as example is the master in the master/slave dialectic, but this model does not adequately describe the possibilities that Rousseau attributes to this situation. Indeed, giving the other total power and the self none would eliminate the dialectical struggle itself. The self would never even achieve or reach the status of a threat or an opposition to the other. In addition, it is not clear that in all cases the self is doomed to lose the battle with the example. In some cases the example as other is to be resisted, and can be; in others, it is to be followed, and can be. In one case, the self is immutable, unaffected (by a process of resistance) by the other, impervious to the example; in the other, the self is mutable, molded, and transformed, and it follows or repeats the example of the other. What, then, can be said to be the self-other relation here? There is clearly no single category, name, or structure that would include both directions; we have two trajectories here, both of which are equally possible. No fixed end is set in advance; it is radically uncertain whether the self or other will win out, whether the self will or will not be mutable. The issue here does not dissolve into a problem of the will—philosophical or psychological—nor does it include two dialectics where in one case one “side” wins, in the other, the other. Rather, we have a dialectical usurpation, on the one hand, in the name of “influence,” and an abyss and total resistance, not opposition, on the other hand. There is no dialectic in this second case, no struggle. The self remains the same before and after the appearance of the example. Memory clearly plays no part here, and the memory of the example plays no role in transforming the self, at least in appearance. What allows for the resistance or what gives way to the example is not an issue here, either since again we are resisting a psychological explanation. At issue instead is the duality of dialectics and non-dialectics, a relation (opposition, struggle, usurpation) and a non-relation. What, we ask, as Derrida has before of this duality, revealed in Hegel’s own text, is the relation between the relation and the non-relation?7 Or, more traditionally framed, is there a common ground between dialectics and non-dialectics? Is the non-dialectical non-relation (resistance, in this case) in opposition to or the opposite of the dialectical relation? Or, are all relations necessarily dialectical? We can only begin to suggest directions for answering these issues. First, it is clear that all relations are not oppositional relations and hence not included within the term dialectics. Thus dialectical relations are a type of relation. The question is, are non-dialectical relations a type of relation? Not in the sense of sharing common features with

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all relations. That is, no concept of relation can include dialectics and nondialectics, we suggest. In turn, no concept of exemplarity is assumed or manifest by the notion of example as other. Rather, this relation itself splits or is split in its most primordial form between dialectical usurpation and the abyss of non-relation. Exemplarity here is thus situated prior to the metaphysical notions of concept, unity, oneness, and identity. We shall have reason to return to this in the analyses to follow. The example-as-other situates the other, for Rousseau, in both cases (resistance and usurpation) as another me. This second one, the other one, is to be undertood here as a possible me, as my possible being, my other being, my possible future being. The other, then, is a fictional me; it may be my truth-to-come, what I will become, or my non-me, one of my possibilities that I will not become, but resist, turn away from. In such a mode, the other as example functions theatrically as the ek-static structure mapped out, projected, acted outside of the self.8 The other, as future here, is thus by being an example, either to be followed or resisted. As such, it is both more real than the self, or the truth of the self, and more universal—its fictional possibilities, which are not yet real and perhaps never will become so. This ek-static structure of exemplarity found in the example-as-other shows the self to itself and allows it to take it in hand or not. The ek-static structure of the self is thus no longer inside, inhabiting and concealed within the self, but mapped out in front of it—ahead of it—apart from it. The other thus functions here as “me” inasmuch as I am not yet there and may not arrive there. The other is not my destination but my ontology. Thus what allows the example-as-other to function at a deeper level is that the other is seen as both not me and me at the same time. It is me in the sense that it offers me my possibilities, but it is not me in the sense that these are possibilitles and not necessities. Again, whether I become or follow the other here or not, and why or why not, is not the issue here for us, but rather that this structure exists, and what its characteristics are. What we have found here is that the identities of both self and other and, hence, their differences, are eroded. We do not have, as aforesaid, a pure relation or pure non-relation here of self and other, whereby the self would be identical to itself and other than the other, and likewise the other identical to itself and other than the self. The very structure of self-other exposed as exemplarity here functions in an essentially temporalized and temporalizing sphere. The other is present to me as my possible future, to repeat, not me, not another me—as the same as me, nor as totally other than me, as truly, wholly other. Insofar as the other is an example, this concealed interplay of ek-stacy is in play from the moment the other is seen as example—both as threat to be resisted (the “bad” example) and as model to be followed (the “good” example). Symbiosis would be too complimentary a term for this relation of nonrelation. We do not have a reciprocity here but a self that finds itself here and


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there; there in the other as its own possible future. Thus the ek-static structure of exemplarity is revealed here as it appears under the guise of the other-asexample. Whether this is true in all cases is yet to be determined, and whether the ontological structure of self-other relations is determined by mutual ekstasis is another issue still to be left open. What we offer here is the fictional, hypothetical “other” possibility that this might indeed be the case.

THE EXAMPLE OF RHETORIC We use here the notion of rhetoric inherited from the ancients as opposed to the Moderns, since the latter’s sense of this term has itself been severed from its own rhetorical power. The phrase “mere rhetoric” is rhetorical in the ancient sense through and through, insofar as it functions to reduce the rhetorical effect of itself. As self-destructive internally, the modern sense of the term rhetoric will not be of any assistance to us here. The question is, however, whether using the stronger sense of rhetoric, as effective and powerful speech, which alters its audience, will not also be revealed as internally divided and “self ”-destructive. The issue here is the power and effectiveness of the example, and of exemplarity generally, assumed by Rousseau. It is this rhetorical dimension of examples that makes them so dangerous, on the one hand, and also so well suited to be the pedagogical method par excellence, on the other hand. As we have seen, Rousseau claims that the tutor must teach by nothing but examples, and that his text is to be seen as nothing but examples. The rhetorical side of “the example” is thus of central import, and we must now begin to analyze more precisely what is at issue here. How and why do examples have power, produce effects, influence, and transform? What are the politics of exemplarity, one might ask in this context? On what grounds are examples given such power, embodied with such power, and exercise such power, and is this responsible, accountable, motivated, or not? Is there an ethic of exemplarity to be adduced here? Or are we “beyond good and evil,” with no agent in the example to be held accountable, responsible, motivated, oriented and, hence, guilty? Are examples innocent? Are they accidentally powerful? It is to this web of issues concerning the rhetorical dimensions of exemplarity that we now turn. First, it is clear that the self-other relation of relation and non-relation is not sufficient to explain the potency attributed to examples and exemplarity “itelf.” It is not the possibility of my being such and such that in itself is powerful, persuasive, or rhetorically effective. In short, the power of the example is to be drawn from some other dimension than that of “the other,” as described earlier.

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Rousseau insists that the example’s persuasive power is “greater than discourse” and, hence, he argues that we must teach by examples as opposed to precepts. Indeed, the text itself is proposed as an example of such a claim, despite the ironies and paradoxes inherent therein. Yet why and on what grounds can the example function in this “more powerful” manner than discourse? This power is itself divided, we suggest, among the following appearances of exemplarity. Sometimes it occurs as a puzzle, a problem, or an issue taking the form of the question. In this mode, the example opens up the possibility of inquiry rather than settling a dispute or providing a path to some other (exemplified) conclusion. The example is thus powerful for its intellectually seductive qualities. The question provokes, destabilizes, ruptures complacency and satisfaction, dislocates habits of thought and action, and sets the stage for the pedagogical practice and process itself. Thus we have an erotic substructure here within the rhetorics of exemplarity, so that the example functions to draw the questioner into himself or herself—to be provoked, disturbed, puzzled—and does not provide a ready answer to the unasked but motivating issue of “what is being exemplified here, by this, and for what ends?” What is this an example of is thus the question’s format, which would reduce the example to a means only and not an end in itself. We suggest the whatness here, and the supposition of the independence of exemplifier from exemplified, is an inadequate direction to follow and to be presupposed ad hoc. Rather, the form of the question is what is at issue, since our concern is not teleological per se but rhetorical—focused on the means of the means, and not its supposed end, as if that were elsewhere. This dimension has been called in Speech Act Theory (and elsewhere) the performative dimension of language.9 Let us suggest here that this notion of the performative is not limited to the linguistic realm but is in fact a much broader rhetorical region. Indeed, at issue is the rhetorical quality of performatives and why they are considered more effective, that is, more powerful, more persuasive, than “mere” constatives. To make a positive claim in itself (as if devoid of rhetorical devices) is the mere shell of the performative impact. A performative is said to do, to be what it exhibits or says. In short, the referential aspect of the performative is constituted in the act of communication itself and exists nowhere else. That there is a trace, a memory, or a result of such a rhetorical moment is without doubt, but that is not our issue at present, nor does that “memory” constitute what could be called an independent or external referent. It is precisely this internally referential and internally constitutive dimension of the performative in general that this structure of exemplarity, in the form of a question, as we have described, can thus be understood here as a performative. This question need not be a “precept,” verbalized, or made linguistic at all. The sense of wonder, if it still exists in the one confronted with an inexplicable, will be sufficient. The world presents itself as a question


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or an infinity of questions within this view. Such is one of the places where Rousseau’s claims to teach by example can thus be understood as the performative quality of the rhetoric of exemplarity. It remains to be seen as to why the performative is to be privileged rhetorically—the most powerful method—and what other structures are in place so that the example functions as such. A second motif in which the power of the example is to be found is that of the model. In this case of the example as model, we shall henceforth call it an Exemplar to distinguish it from the “mere particular.” The model as example seems to represent the ideal, the perfection of a form already supposed elsewhere. The model is this perfection, does this perfection, and does not stand in for it nor signal it. The Exemplar is thus no puzzle to be solved or question to be answered; it is the solution to the puzzle and the answer to the question. The model forecloses investigation, closes the circle, and ends the teleological drive. The model, in short, satisfies the erotic desire that makes demands on the world. Yet, as beyond, how could such an example have the rhetorical power it does? Why, then, does it not thwart desire and nullify its own rhetorical effectiveness a priori? The goal has been reached, and the process is over. So why is the Exemplar not a death sentence, the sentence of death, which is far from an end to be reached, but turned away from, resisted, seen as a threat, and thus thwarting desire and the movement of exemplarity itself? It would seem that we have returned to the matrix of self-other here, but we have not. Neither is the Exemplar a performative. It is more than this. It is the excess that appears under the sign of unity—a pure unity, an absolute unity, Perfection itself. In such a guise, excess appears stable, fixed, firm, and complete, yet as an example it cannot be identical to itself and function as such. The example in whatever form ex-tends, at-tends, and pre-tends and, hence, it is structured by this framework of intentionality, as Husserl described it,10 though here exemplarity is not located within the structures of consciousness—neither empirical, and even less so transcendental— but rather within the structures of the relations of things to things. We, as humans, have no privileged place here as yet. The question arises then as to how the Exemplar can function rhetorically at all if it is considered to be both a model or Perfection of some sort and an example (of something else). The effect of the model is to reveal the excess as lack, though the appearance of the model conceals both. Thus it seems that the Exemplar, perhaps more than other structures of exemplarity, conceals its own modus operandi in the very effectiveness of its functioning. In order to function as a model, it must appear complete, yet in order to function as an example, it must be both lacking (not complete) and exceeding itself (ek-static). This paradox is closely related to what Derrida called the structure of supplementarity, in Rousseau.11 That notion entailed a supplementary addition being necessary to something that nonetheless claimed to be complete in itself. Hence, “supplements” include the

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notions of lack and excess at the same time. What we have added here is the nature of the form of concealment and revelation inherent in the duplicity that is presented as Perfection. Performatively, of course, such an example functions—presenting Perfection already makes it less than what it is—as mere presentation, and not the thing itself. Concealed again by its revelation, Exemplars conceal both the ek-static and intentional structures that allow them to function. In so doing, they can appear as perfect and yet function necessarily as imperfect, thereby maintaining the appearance of Perfection. A third motif in the rhetoric of exemplarity is that of the more profound and complex structure of incarnation. The example functions in this case not by its perfection as the highest ideal, or model, nor by its unity of form and content as referential and semiotic functions but rather by a supposed embeddedness of the flesh and the Word: the spiritual and the material, and the theory and its praxis, or embodiment. Another form of ideal, perhaps, this mode is not necessarily an ideal in the sense of Perfection. Rather, this unity (supposed) claims a power of synthetic, conciliatory, harmonious dimensions so that the example as incarnation is seen as an achievement or accomplishment. This is not fatalistic but designed. This is not accidental but rational, so it would seem. The structure of incarnation here seen within examples carries a force, a persuasive influential burden that is “the most effective,” Rousseau claims. Christ must be seen here as a specific case of this structure of exemplarity, but not its epitome. The religious case has no privilege here, though it is prevalent, especially in Rousseau’s work. The question is: How is the incarnation’s power possible? What allows it to function as it does, and in this respect again Christ can be seen here as a particular case. How is it that Christianity became not only possible but so all-pervasive in the Western world? This is a rhetorical (in the ancient sense) question, not a historical one. The issue is not which events led to what and why, but why some events were powerful, influential, and persuasive, while others were not? One could put it this way: Christ was one of many self-proclaimed messiahs, so why was He rhetorically successful, while others were not? This is the issue here, though we have sidestepped the ontological questions by taking up the case of Christ. Thus we will return to our explicit focus and leave the Christian issues in the margins, at least for now. The incarnation structure of exemplarity certainly connects with Rousseau’s privileging of the living over the dead, in appearance at least. The living voice, the presence of the other, the authorial speech as opposed to writing, and the direct revelation of the divine by feeling and direct governance as opposed to proxy or by respresentation are some of the ways this issue surfaces in the diversity of his works. Yet why is “the living” notion here rhetorically effective? Wilhelm Dilthey would later answer (several


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centuries after Rousseau’s death) that life understands life (meaning humans understand each other through their common humanity) and, hence, the pull of authority commands incarnation as a motif from the inside, not from the outside.12 In short, the incarnation structure calls the self from within, not from without. There is no other here but a new interiority constituted and/or discussed so that the example appears there, not externally. The incarnation is thus one’s own animation presaged, staged, yet it provides meaning seemingly from one’s own being, as alive. The “other” example here would thus return to the self as an awakening of itself—its own vitality, and presence to itself. Yet this model of exemplarity collapses here when one recognizes that the conditions of its possibility are also those of its impossibility. More specifically, the awakening of the self to itself as incarnate, present(ed) to itself, reveals the opposite—the it has been called back to itself from elsewhere, that it was not and is not present to itself, except by an external prompting—the example as incarnation. Hence, this motif defeats itself in its own rhetorical success. The self is revealed as non-present to itself at the very instant it seems to be most closely unified. Unification already entails partiality, difference, and severance within itself. Just so with incarnation, but the question is, how is this possible? Is all incarnation truly reincarnation? Are we reliving our lives, returning to our lives each time we become aware of our very vitality? We suggest that this return is what is functioning within exemplarity as (re)incarnation and, hence, the life, present to itself, is revealed as inhabited by death—within—as well as absence and difference. Not only is the self non-identical to itself, absent to itself, it is also, as is said in the commonplace way, dying as it lives. The life/death, as Derrida puts it, of the self ’s relation to itself is not an equilibrium, not a resolution of opposites, nor are they separable. Just as reincarnation is within incarnation, so, too, death inhabts the life principle.13 Again, the question arises as to how and why such a function—(re)incarnation—is rhetorically effective. How is it that we can be called back to who we are/were? Previously we revealed exemplarity as a being ahead of ourselves, being called forth, forward, ek-statically determining us. Now we have a seeming reversal of this, yet it is the same structure of the ek-static in operation here. Why does death have the rhetorical effects it does is another way of formulating this issue. Insofar as exemplarity as reincarnation inhabits such a future, we must address death itself rhetorically. Psychologically, one might easily claim that the fear of death drives this model or matrix of exemplarity. Yet we are not simply driven away by it. Quite the contrary. We do not flee in the face of the incarnation model—we embrace it, Rousseau says, and we are swayed by it. Why? Far from a perfection beyond us, and far from rupturing what seemed complete, as our earlier two motifs of the rhetoric of exemplarity have been described, here we have a notion of a “perfection”/unity/synthesis

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within us (as possible, if not in fact). This can be seen through self-other relations, but it need not be. In short, the example could be any functioning process insofar as it is functioning. Theory in practice, or acting in/on theory, can serve us here as specifics of this type of example. Why is this persuasive, we repeat? We suggest that the actualizing embodied by this embodying is what is at issue here. The self-other model focuses on potentiality as possibility, whereas this one focuses on the reality of an actuality. Its facticity is what carries the day here, rhetorically speaking. It is the rhetoric of “brute facts,” or the “actual” experience of having been there, seen it, felt it, touched it, and lived it. It is the rhetoric of the trivial that is complete in itself and, hence, can function as perfection. This rhetoricity carries the weight of influence here by its seeming independence, satiety, and fulfillment of its own demands on its own terms. Not a model to be followed, not a puzzle to be solved, this sort of example shines forth to us with a certain aesthetic pleasure offering the harmony of itself. This appeal of the example (as calling us and pleasing us) is satisfactory. It satisfies us; it is not the rupturing of the sublime, nor the Idea, in the Kantian sense. It is instead the aesthetic pleasure of harmony in and for itself. Nonteleological, this form of example pleases by itself, by its own being, its own existence. It stands above, and in so doing it serves as an example. What is exemplified here? Its own structure—the harmony, unity, presence, and life/death—is brought to light, though it does not fall into the performative structure. It does not produce its unity by being an example; it presents itself at least as independent of that. It is the constative component of the rhetoric of exemplarity, one might call it. In sum, it would seem that there is no rhetoric of exemplarity in general. We have brought forth three suggested matrices here in order to show the distinct functioning of distinct structures. It is premature to collapse them, as one always can, into an identity of structure, or to find some “common ground.” At stake for us are precisely the differences, the details, and the specifics. The third case, incarnation, has shown itself to be fundamentally oriented and guided by an aesthetic dimension, though the presentation itself both presents and appresents (by implication) this aspect. We do not see the aesthetic dimension of incarnation; we live through it, yet we do not. It is appresented to us even in the most explicit of cases, and we must be concerned with such an allusion. The incarnation, though it can be a work of art, need not evidently be so. We shall address this in the following section as we now turn to the question of the ontological structures of exemplarity and, more precisely, exemplarity as ontological. This relation is not one of an easy distinction and distribution of logical types. Rather, we will suggest that ontology and exemplarity mutually constitute each other as (if ) separate and separable domains.


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EXEMPLARITY AND ONTOLOGY: RECIPROCITY? In what sense, one might well ask, could exemplarity be considered ontological, equiprimordial with ontology, and at the same time constitutive (partially at least) of ontology as such? Exemplarity and, indeed, examples themselves may seem an essentially epistemological issue—bounded, surrounded, and requiring an ontology as its foundation. Indeed, one might connect exemplarity to ontology in the manner that Heidegger reads Kant as thematizing epistemology and unthematizing ontological commitments that themselves exhibit a unified ontology drawn from the ancients. But our aim here is distinct from such a reaffirmation of the essentially hierarchical relation traditionally posited between epistemology and ontology, on the one hand, and the easy assimilation (read concealment) of exemplarity as essentially epistemological, on the other hand. Though epistemologically constitutive, rather than parergonal, we suggest that exemplarity also is more than this. Exemplarity, as it functions in multiple ways in Rousseau’s text and elsewhere in the history of philosophy in particular, governs the formation of ontological structures and commitments themselves. To see, we shall claim, is not only to see as, as Heidegger stressed, but essentially to see-as-an-example. Things are not identical to themselves but examples of themselves. What is at issue here is a selfexemplifying structure that is self-concealing, making things appear as things, and indeed this “as” too hides itself, making the hermeneutical Being of things disappear and the apparent self-identity of things in themselves, as such, manifest. One must guard against lapsing back at this juncture into an easy Platonism, whereby the thing-as-an-example would be the place where the two worlds meet, and both signal and conceal each other. The sensible brings forth the intelligible and thereby serves, as Plato has called it, as an example of both the process of recollection itself (not an example, so it would seem) and also of the Forms. Further, the examples that Plato himself chooses to introduce the notion of Forms are always and necessarily from the sensible realm.14 Discursivity in this regard changes nothing, or so it would seem. We are aiming here, however, in quite another direction, since it is perhaps the opening itself that constitutes the two worlds—a member of neither—which we might consider the site/cite of exemplarity. Thus examples are not both sensible and intelligible only but also neither sensible nor intelligible. The easy transition from one world to another, via the step back to an earlier nontemporal time, is to be questioned here in what follows. The example is not a copy of the Form, not a mere sensible, nor is the Exemplar merely a Form that henceforth provokes the mimetic functioning of the world as we see it, if not know it. Exemplarity, as we have seen it functioning above, is not situated here. Instead, we will insist, it allows this matrix to be constituted, which at the same time threatens it insofar as left unconcealed. Hence, examples must,

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from Plato’s viewpoint, be considered outside of the argument, extrinsic, external, and parergonal. This imperative surfaces again in Rousseau, of course, when he says (and one must wonder if he is serious in so doing) that his theory and text are essentially independent of the examples he used to illustrate it. Theory is one thing, illustrations and images of that theory another, so it would seem. But all that he has done in the text belies this claim; it is clearly not to be taken so literally and provokes a re-reading in another light. Just as in saying “I am not telling you everything explicitly,” the claim appears redundant, superfluous, and unnecessary, on the one hand, and the essential key to any hermeneutical practice, on the other hand. So too with the grand claims concerning exemplarity’s structure as extrinsic. As Freud would say, beware of what is “outside” of the text, what the person does not say, and tells you that he or she is not saying or not doing. Empty speech becomes full speech, as Lacan would later put it.15 The intricacy and complexities of this connection are thus our task to describe and analyze in what follows here. Emile is instructed time and again, as is his tutor, to take the world as an example, to see his experiences as examples, and to observe things as examples. Thus we have the Heideggerian asstructure permeating experience, sensibility, thought, analysis, and the awakening that is philosophy itself. The “as” in this case has the structure of a question—of an opening—not a fixity or closing off of readings. It is the opening of mythos rather than logos, one might say. As-an-example translates thus into as-a-question, to see the puzzling side of things—that they are not only not what they seem, but that they seem at all. That they appear to us is the puzzle in the exemplifier/exemplified here. And this performs the function of a rupture from being-in-the-world as enmeshed in it to being thrown out of this everydayness and complacency to find it mysterious. This, in a sense, is the place for what Albert Camus would later desribe as the “absurd”: the place of the strangeness of things, their utter incomprehensibility.16 Yet as language is always already a part of this “as-structure” for Heidegger (explicitly or implicitly), the “as-structure” translates itself into “as-something,” as a positing of things, as a hermeneutical giving as well as a withdrawing.17 The “as” of exemplarity ruptures this also, however. To see “X” as-something is to see “X” as-an-example. This in turn is to situate, to circumscribe, “X” within an economy of exemplarity, where “X” is what it is only in relation to “non-X.” Far from the Hegelian notion of identity in and through difference conceived ultimately and always as opposition, which is necessarily dialectical, these relations implicitly posited here in designating “X” as “X” (as an example of “X”) rework the identity of “X” in two ways. First, “X” is no longer unitary but multiple—it has multiplied itself, one might say, from the side of metaphysics, or it has always already been more than it is. “X” exceeds Being in fundamental and primordial ways if, of course,


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Being is understood as presence, identity, selfhood (which is a questionable though powerful and traditional motif ). At issue here is precisely the Being of “X” insofar as it is seen and not seen. Yet there is no “X” in itself, for that is precisely the matrix in which epistemology operates, though it most often claims the reverse, namely, not to reach the thing in itself but only our structures of access toward it. Yet epistemology in all of its manifestations is the field that posits a thing in itself in order to set itself thus against it, as other and as determined by that difference. Ontology, of course, claims to reach the Being of things—the in itself-ness of things. But this too accepts the epistemological determination of the differences between the in itself and the for itself (for us) and simply claims to articulate “the other side.” Exemplarity can offer us another alternative to this alternative, to the switching and to the sides set up here as a hierarchy, indeed, as an opposition. Exemplarity sets up this duplicity, organizes all possible relations between ontology and epistemology, and yet is essentially within neither and both. Examples are the link, bridge, and gap between these two competing arenas. Indeed, the competition is played out within each arena, and as supposedly separate and separable, the arenas themselves do not clash as such. Exemplarity both makes the clash possible and shows the arenas’ essentially common ground, which is not a ground and not common, nor could it be merely essential. Exemplarity is the region between essence and accident, between general and particular, between ontology and epistemology. One might well ask, then, what is the status of exemplarity? The answer most assuredly cannot be either epistemological or ontological, since then we would have severed one or both of the “said” arenas above. Taking sides is not the point here, nor is setting up camp in a camp. The site of the camps already in place is what is at issue for us. Exemplarity, with its multiplicity of structures, allows the one realm to exceed itself as other than itself. This internal/external otherness is not captured by exemplarity, but the movement outward—centripetal rather than centrifugal—is articulated within these structures of exemplarity. There are of course many ways of exceeding any supposed totality or identity, and we have named just a few above. The question now is, how can this occur within the field, the play, or place of what is taken to be the most primordial—ontology itself? How can ontology exceed itself, one might ask? In such a form, we have not yet opened the opening to the question of exemplarity. It has instead been foreclosed yet again. Ontology is not ontology once the excess is recognized— it cannot contain itself and the exceeding form that breaks the totality and the conceptual hold itself, which is referred to as the “as such.” Ontology thus is to be seen from this perspective as nonidentical to “itself,” or themselves, and multiply so. What exceeds ontology most certainly also precedes it, according to the logic of supplementarity, articulated by Derrida. What precedes ontology is “everything else,” or the ontic, as Heidegger succinctly put it. This

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precedent carries itself ahead of ontology as it is prior; it is the beginning/end of ontology and that for which, from which, and to which ontology stands against. It is the supposed other of ontology, which appears here as the otherness within ontology and shatters the complacent and only apparent identity of the notion. After all, ontology itself is a concept—unlike all others—but a concept nonetheless. The key here though is that ontology must betray its own foundation in order to appear as ontology. It is ahistorical through and through in appearance. It is ontological itself; that is, ontology and the Being of things are thought to be commensurate though not identical, or else we would have discovered ontology to actually be epistemology. But we are approaching such a claim. Exemplarity, one should recall, is in neither domain, though it allows for the constitution of both and the commerce between them. Exemplarity allows us to name the excess and the excession, as structured moments extending beyond and prior to identity. Exemplarity, in short, allows for the traffic between the ontic and the ontological, and indeed Heidegger said as much in the opening to Being and Time.18 We must, he claimed, take the detour to Being via Dasein, via Dasein’s ontological structures, in order to then return to the essential issue—the question of the meaning of Being. How is this movement possible? Only by considering the example, as Heidegger puts it, of Dasein. But exemplarity operates more surreptitiously than this, we suggest. It allows not only for Dasein to be an example of what it is not but also for the relation to be established at all—between Dasein and Being. We are the being that raised the question of Being, Heidegger says, and with this our primordial place in the ontological arena is secured. Yet what is the question of Being? The puzzle of Being—Being as an example? Without referent? Without exemplified? An exemplifier without exemplified is the structure of the question, and this structure animates, motivates, and orients Heidegger’s quest in Being and Time. Yet Dasein as example—as both exemplifier and exemplified in relation to Being— comes along to close the opening, to answer the question and foreclose the issues of exemplarity. In this way, Heidegger could be said to conceal the very thing he discovers: the incommensurability between not only Dasein and Being, Being and the question, but ontology and exemplarity. Exemplarity is in the service of ontology, but not as Heidegger assumed, as its epistemological servant, a go-between, a means to a loftier (ontological) end. Exemplarity serves ontology in the sense of serving it up—preparing it, offering it, constituting it—presenting and thereby absenting itself, as if “merely parergonal” at best, and at the most extreme, totally independent of the results, the constituted ontology as if a thing-in-itself itself. Where, then, is exemplarity in Heidegger’s work? Between the ontic and ontological, and as such it never appears. Indeed, exemplarity does not appear as such as such. This doubling of metaphysics is itself essential, as we have shown.


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THE EXAMPLE AND HERMENEUTICS Rousseau has framed, via the tutor, much of Emile’s experience as a series of examples-to-be-read as such. Emile, the boy, was “given” experiences to be deciphered, decoded, interpreted as examples and beyond them as examples of something else. We, too, as readers of the work, are given stories as examples and theories as examples to be read, interpreted, deciphered, and understood beyond their “literal” scope. This work is the work of hermeneutics, which organizes all reading per se, insofar as reading presupposes legibility, which is then translated into intelligibility. We shall see in our next section that exemplarity and intelligibility are commensurate terms and categories for Rousseau, but for now we must investigate the layers of hermeneutical structures operative within the functioning and usage of exemplarity here. Hermeneutics traditionally conceived by Schleiermacher, Dithey, Gadamer, and others involved a theory of interpretation that would set guidelines as to the limits of legibility, meaning, and the frameworks within which meaning could be produced by a reading. These guidelines were variously drawn from psychological intention to a Gestaltist framework seeking a totality of all of the parts of a text as a unified, coherent whole. Rousseau was not a theorist of hermeneutics, and exemplarity as such had not yet become a major theme within the hermeneutical traditions. But this intersection is not only essential in order to improve an understanding of textual interpretations when it comes to “reading examples” but also in order to understand the hermeneutical project itself as essentially made possible in and through exemplarity. It is this mutual constitution of exemplarity and hermeneutics toward which we will now turn our attention. If we begin with the most literal sense of examples and consider the contexture that they are necessarily and in every case located within, we find that examples are never self-evident or internally defined as such. Rather, they make their appearance in and through an enframing structure, which both announces their presentation to come and sets up a closure to the free play of interpretative possibilities. This framing, both before and after the appearance of the example, is itself hermeneutical through and through. The preparation of the reader is always preliminary in order to state what is being exemplified by the upcoming example. This foreconception in turn frames the interpretative possibilities of the example itself. In short, “it is to be read this way” is what the preliminary framing demands. The issue here is the need for such a frame in order to control the meanings to be released by the invoked example. The guardian of the law sets the boundaries, the border, and the limits on the possible meanings of the example, thereby foregrounding and backgrounding and making visible and invisible at the same time various possible readings. This frame is itself incomplete and fragile, since it requires its partner, which

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appears directly following the examples, to reset and reaffirm the closure: this was an example of “X” and is not to be read otherwise. The attempt thereby of these bracketing frames around the example is to saturate the reading so that this direction and only this can be taken from the example. The danger that Rousseau spoke of so often is thus warded off, so it would seem, by these two hermeneutical gailors. But the example can, by definition and of necessity, always be read otherwise, and this is inescapable, since the frames would not be in place otherwise. The plurivocity of the example can thus be suppressed by the hermeneutical guidelines, but never overcome. Hence, examples are always potentially the betrayors of the text, the unwitting parasites seemingly expendable, which merely “clarify, illustrate, or picture” the general claims but which in fact structure the text and always already destabilize it. The need for the hermeneutical frame as the guideline or guardrail for reading the example in this way is thus instantiated and thwarted at the same time. Always more than this reading would have it, the example awaits future readings, other possiblities, and in this it lurks within the text, haunting whatever readings are “intended” or presented as such. The issue here remains: What does this phenomenon tell us about hermeneutics itself as that set of guidelines that would inform us of the limits of interpretation and the project of reading? If, as Heidegger insisted, all of our experience is fundamentally hermeneutical, or a process of reading, interpreting, projecting, framing, and so forth, then the centrality of the exemplarity issues becomes even more pressing to analyze. If we perceive through projections and anticipation and gather together our experience into wholes, thereby excluding and including according to a schema, then what can the function of exemplarity, as outlined above, tell us concerning the nature of our experience as such? We can only sketch an outline of an answer here, since this is fundamentally a preliminary work that aims to clear the way in order to envision the issues of exemplarity and not to close off the investigation with a seemingly coherent, conclusive, or finished theory. If what we experience, perceive, and understand already has the form and is caught in the framework of exemplarity, then insofar as we see this cup as a cup, we also of necessity and by implication see this cup as an example of a cup. This is not to say that it is an example of cupness, since then we would return to Platonism and would have foreclosed the questions of exemplarity as being outside of the general/particular matrix. The issue here is that all experience as a reading aims to saturate the seen with a meaning that would be commensurate with it. In so doing, we frame our experience as “what it is” in order that it can be this and not otherwise. This “as” is the “as” of hermeneutics, Heidegger claims, and the “as” of exemplarity for us.19 Insofar as each particular experience is an example, that is seen here and now as an example of itself and what it is not simultaneously, and of necessity of exemplarity (though not as a


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single concept), the hermeneutical frame that allows for that experience is at once instantiated and shattered. At issue here is the impossibility of closure, which is revealed as the simultaneity of the structures of exemplarity, both promoting and prohibiting readings at the same time. What is prohibited is invoked by this same prohibition. Thus insofar as this cup is an example of a cup, it also is an example of not being, and not an example of being. These “not”s or negations have no place in cupness. They are situated within, though hidden by, this designation of cup. “This cup” thus departs from cupness in precisely this way, in that “this cup” sustains though conceals all that is not this cup, whereas cupness can contain nothing other than cupness, by definition. Thus far we have moved only from Plato to Hegel. The infinite richness of examples as self-betraying or excessive ontologically is revealed so that conceptual foundations are seen as the most poverty striken of all and, hence, perform the function of foreclosing. In turn, we leave the Platonic world for the hermeneutical one but must also transcend or transgress the latter. The function of the hermeneutical perspective is to reveal the frameworks in which and through which we read, decipher, interpret and, indeed, for Heidegger, see what we do. Yet it is clear as one analyzes the functioning of this framework as it relates to exemplarity that it is incomplete at best, inconclusive and a mockery of itself at worst. The example eludes the frame as it is simultaneously revealed by the same. It slips into the background as the spotlight hits on a single thread of the fabric; once pulled slightly, this thread reveals itself as caught within a much larger texture, woven and interwoven, visible and invisible, indeed, concealed as a whole by the hermeneutical intent. Thus hermeneutics cannot contain nor adequately articulate the functioning of examples, since it participates in the foreclosure of the thickness, plurivocity, and multiple functioning of exemplarity. Insofar as hermeneutics can be seen as one aspect of exemplarity, we have turned the logical types upside down, or at least sideways, in order to show that each constitutes and deconstitutes the possibility of the other. What shows is essentially partial and inconclusive, and conceals the functioning, rather than the reverse. The demand for totality and closure sought by the recent hermeneutical theories of Gadamer and his followers is precisely what is thwarted here, as the example always and of necessity slips away from any given reading. It reads the reading otherwise and returns to comment on and of necessity undermine the commentary. This richness has always been excised and suppressed, if not repressed, and it is perhaps time to allow this very fact to appear. Insofar as hermeneutics is unable to account for the functioning of examples, and insofar as exemplarity is always already excessive with regard to this framing and its demands, we must now consider the implications of this untamable, nondomestic aspect. Does exemplarity have limits? Is it an opening to infinity within the text? Are we on the brink of something else—

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nontextual, nonexemplary, perhaps—or does exemplarity itself have levels of being? Rousseau’s work guides us here, in that he insists that there is a “place” beyond exemplarity that would in turn set the limits and bounds to this extensive structure with polymorphic possibilities. The “beyond” here is the dark light of the mystical tradition, though these are not Rousseau’s terms for it. Beyond the example, for him, means quite simply “beyond intelligibility.” Logos and homoios are not only co-determining but co-extensive. Where one stops, the other stops, and for the same reasons and reason. Thus the logic of exemplarity has a limit and is parallel to, if not identical with, reason, according to Rousseau. We shall explore what is beyond this limit in what follows, but first let us explain the setting of the boundary here. Rousseau often claimed that without examples we could never achieve adequate pedagogical progress with children, and that without fables, as examples for adults, the latter would not see his theory as such clearly enough. Thus he spun tales within tales and without explanation, as he himself tells us in Emile. Direct access to truth—as experience or as theory—was thus for Rousseau never a possibility. Instead, a mediating web had to be spun in order to situate oneself in relation to the world, oneself, others, and knowing in order to then begin to perceive and understand. This distance of being-in-relation to is precisely the business of the economy of exemplarity—in all of its aspects. Holding apart and etablishing a connection, exemplarity is itself the web of connection to the world that Rousseau will call intelligibility. It is not the world that is intelligible but our thoughts, the web, the examples that are to be so called. Yet they call us to them and beyond them. They call us forth to ourselves and beyond ourselves. Examples thus do not prohibit their own self-disclosed limits from appearing, and when they do appear, intelligibility itself is thwarted. In short, exemplarity is nothing other than the condition of intelligibility. This much should by now be clear, though also problematized by relating exemplarity as intelligibility to the hermeneutical tradition, which also seeks to establish closure in this domain. What is readable and hence unreadable are the ultimate issues for all hermeneutics, including Heidegger, where the issue becomes one of experience and perception, as such, of the “as.” If there is an economy of exemplarity, which we have not as yet thematized or explicitly hypothesized, then all examples are related, though at various removes, to all other examples. But if examples also point beyond this same economy as a whole, how can one begin to speak of such a place except as a non-place, a non-example, and ultimately as non-intelligible? In order to do this, Rousseau instantiates a distinction between the example and the sign and insists that something—beyond examples—can be apperceived, known if not intelligible to us—by signs. Indeed, this nonexemplary example gives off signs, not examples of itself. In turn, we have a new nonexemplary economy invoked, so that non-examples have a relation to each other outside, so it


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would seem, of the intelligible sphere. Where is this? Who is this? What is this? It is simultaneously the divine, God, and the infinite that lurk in the lurking otherness of exemplarity itself, which hermeneutics, in spite of itself, has revealed. Is this negative theology, in a sense the via negativa of mysticism? Let us not yet answer this but leave the question open to investigation in what follows. Let us also leave as an open question here that supposed, by Rousseau, distinction posited between signs (of God, which are not only possible but present everywhere) and examples (of God, which are by definition impossible and beyond conception).

“BEYOND” EXEMPLARITY There is only one region that is, for Rousseau, “beyond” exemplarity, understood as intelligibility in a logocentric, rationalistic, Enlightenment sense. This region of the “beyond” is essentially that of spirituality rather than religion as organized, formalized, institutional dogmatics. Rousseau leads the tutor/Emile toward religion through science and aesthetics, as we have seen, beyond reason to the realm of the intelligible but felt, sentient realm of the inner voice. Contrary to the inner light of Reason, as referred to by Descartes, Rousseau speaks through the Savoyard Priest of the inner voice of conscience as an ultimate guide in spiritual and, hence, ethical, political, communal, and personal affairs. But it is not conscience that is beyond exemplarity. It is the source of conscience, the source of the order in the universe, in the laws of nature—whether chemical, physical, or biological. The source of this order can be felt through the knowledge we have of the latter as a sign of something else. This distinction between sign and example is crucial at this juncture and must be addressed. God does not show Himself through examples of Himself and, hence, Christ and Christological dogma have no (privileged or necessary) place in one’s relation to the divine. If Christ were central, we would indeed have an example, in multiple senses, of God, the divine, and spirituality, from a Christian point of view. But the Savoyard Priest tells us of his own rote learning in this regard and of its inevitable downfall and collapse into the dark night of his soul. Hence, the turn inward to the depths of pain and despair is what leads the priest to the foundations, source, and origins of his new being as inside and outside himself. The divine is immanent and transcendent and has no example, yet there are signs. Indeed, everything is a sign of the being of this Being—the source of all that is—if one can only read them as such. This reading is not a logo-centered one but a sentient one, though the logical-deductive method also is used in the Savoyard Priest’s portrayal of his journey to God. From sense data to judgment to knowledge, he pursues the divine beyond reason to feeling. As he says:

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In this way, contemplating God in His works and studying Him by those of His attributes which it matters for me to know, I have succeeded in extending and increasing by degrees the initially imperfect and limited idea I had of this immense Being. But if this idea has become nobler and greater, it is also less proportionate to human reason.20 To contemplate God in His works thus leads the priest to the mystery that God must exist, though He is essentially incomprehensible and beyond the reach of human intellect. The idea of creation confuses me and is not of my reach. . . . That a being which I cannot conceive of gives existence to other beings is only obscure and incomprehensible.21 Finally, the more effort I make to contemplate His infinite essence, the less I can conceive it. But it is; that is enough for me. The less I can conceive it, the more I worship it. I humble myself and say to Him, “Being of beings, I am because You are; it is to lift myself up to my source to meditate on You ceaselessly. The worthiest use of my reason is for it to annihilate itself before You. It is my rapture of mind, it is the charm of my weakness to feel myself overwhelmed by Your greatness.”22 And so the Savoyard Priest finds strength in weakness, power in impotence, greatness in the minute, and something beyond reason that is more true and the foundation of the former without being accountable to it. All of this can be said likewise for exemplarity insofar as the scope of reason, intelligiblity, and exemplarity are thought by Rousseau to be commensurate; why exemplarity cannot reach beyond its own economy insofar as it is already structured via intentionality or ek-stasis, and in a way that we have shown that reason is not. The rational must be self-identical or adhere to both the principle of contradiction and identity in order to function as laid down by Aristotle and carried through the logocentric tradition of Western philosophy. Mysticism, in the West, including Christian medieval mystics such as Nicholas of Cusa, has always claimed the necessity of reaching beyond reason to the place where contradictions meet, where paradox reveals the true nature of things as not selfidentical or non-contradictory, but the reverse. Reason is not the highest source of wisdom, knowledge, or enlightenment for such thinkers but rather an opening to what is beyond it, beyond the force of the will to that which has willed our will and makes our will what it is. This source of our being is not an act of our will, and the knowledge of this source also is not attained through an act of will but one of grace, from the medieval mystical point of view.


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Soren Kierkegaard would later call this opening to the divine or the spiritual that is beyond reason a leap of faith—a willful letting go and standing in the paradox with all of its consequences.23 As Abraham was the father of faith, for Kierkegaard, so too was he the one who first saw the necessity of going beyond reason, the universal as the ethical and the communal to that inner place that communes with its source if only it is willing to not will but to be in the paradox without turning away from one or the other pole—the side of the ethical (living Isaac), or the side of faith (living God). As is well known, Abraham is allowed to keep Isaac only because he is willing to sacrifice him to something higher. The Savoyard Priest, in Rousseau’s story of the journey toward God as allegory for Emile and surely “for us,” also makes the leap, but only after he suffers through the torment, the despair, and the dark night of having lost his comfortable, superficial, dogmatic version of religion. Having lost this, or reason, he will thus attain a deeper, truer spirituality when he gives up the attempt to conceive all, the absolute, the Infinite, and he worships it instead. In short, he learns to pray to One beyond instead of either classifying it or ignoring it. Beyond exemplarity, this realm would thus seem to ground the possibility of the economy of exemplarity itself. The question here must be, are we to turn toward yet another negative theology or back to logocentric metaphysics? Are these the only two choices for an ultimate grounding of exemplarity? From Rousseau’s point of view, the answer must be affirmative, and the choice he has made is clear. It is the choice of Nicholas of Cusa before him, though with a modern attempt to reach as far as reason will take him prior to letting go of this approach.24 In each case, the journey is inward, ontological, and not epistemological. We are with Rousseau and Nicholas of Cusa outside of the matrix through which we see things to how they truly are. The paradox, however, is that how they truly are is barred from us—except by an act of grace, which either is or is not bestowed upon one who waits, prays, and contemplates the possibility of the same. In this project we can only point to this moment wherein exemplarity seems to be demarcated as finite and in essence as essentially a lateral or horizontal economy without transcendence. Insofar as one might include transcendence within exemplarity, one finds Christ, or one finds Platonism, both of which are to us unacceptable termini to the analysis undertaken here. Can one not challenge the ontological/epistemological split in a way that does not require choosing one of them but rather establishing a relation between them which itself is both ontological and epistemological, and neither one simply? What this relation might be called, from Derrida’s standpoint, could be differance.25 This spacing/timing notion opens the space for both epistemology and ontology and establishes the possibility of their difference. It opens the

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space, as Derrida puts it, between beings and Being—the ontological difference itself. And where is exemplarity in relation to this? Which is more primordial? That framework is an essentially hierarchical and competing one inherited from traditional metaphysical foundationalism aiming to reach the summit or bottom of things—simultaneous trajectories and ones that we must place in question. It is also the question of the law and where to place or find the Law of the law. In such a framing of the issue, there is only one place for such a Law of the law, and that is at the center, the summit or foundation, all three being synonyms in this context. At issue in this formulation is power, control, dominance, and pre-dominance. What organizes what? It should be clear by now that exemplarity is something of a lingustic disease which as an economy organizes intradiscursive relations. This is not to say that it is not an ontological phenomenon; on the contrary, since to speak of being outside of language is as inconceivable as to speak of living without breathing or without blood running through one’s veins. We must therefore address the inescapable aspects of exemplarity. As a labyrinth in which language functions and relations, hence, judgments are possible and made possible, exemplarity could now be said to ground epistemology just as it equally grounds fantasy, allegory, and the fabulous in general. But insofar as epistemology is at the heart of the ontological, which is our contention throughout here, then exemplarity also simultaneously “grounds” what we will call the ontological. Yet from Rousseau’s point of view, exemplarity cannot lead us to the spiritual, to the ultimate issues of ontology, just as reason cannot. But for us, reason and exemplarity are not commensurate. Exemplarity operates within “rational arguments” as both an appendage and support and the very place of betrayal or subversion of that same argument. Thus exemplarity as intrarational also is extrarational; it is both and neither and cannot be reduced by either the principle of identity or of contradiction. The structures of exemplarity betray or exceed both such logocentric syntaxes and, hence, exemplarity, as we have shown, is not in its functioning nor in its structures, contrary to Reason, logocentric. In turn, we can claim that there may indeed be a place for exemplarity in relation to “the mystery” that reason is incapable of reaching, let alone describing. The inarticulation of reason, however, also is the opening of exemplarity and its economy. That exemplarity transcends itself in its very structure is not enough for us to conclude that exemplarity will of necessity lead to the infinite. An infinite play of substitution—insofar as one never gets beyond examples—is reached and is clear at this juncture. The question remains: What of the divine, the spiritual, the mystery in, of and/or through this play? The very finitude that is performed by exemplarity as well as its simultaneous infinity— ever opening beyond and beyond that beyond—the defiance of closure stages the infinite though it speaks it not. No statement could ever say what the


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functioning of exemplarity by its functioning does. Thus the acts of exemplarity dramatize the infinite by the incompleteness and excess that each moment in the economy exhibits. Supplementarity, as Derrida describes it, also serves to portray this duplicity. But supplementarity, notably in Rousseau’s work for Derrida, is a term that does what it says and is nontranslatable, as Derrida says.26 What we are suggesting here with exemplarity is an infinitely translatable process that sustains itself by its incompleteness. This is the place where the incomplete and the excessive meet or, in traditional terms, where the finite and the infinite are transposed. This is not theology, nor necessarily theological. On the contrary, we are at the place where logocentrism falters and where mysticism has not yet laid hold and swept us away to its heights of conclusiveness. The question here— the ultimate question—is itself still open, and this is of necessity due to what we consider quite lawful reason. And this is the paradox. Our next section and our final element to be analyzed in this series of the “unthematized” aspects of exemplarity will turn to this question of the law. One should recall what we began here in our opening chapter and though we are far from our conclusions, we will return now to reanalyze this issue from a quite different vantage point. Since in almost every case the example seems to surface in relation to other examples, we must reconsider this in relation to structure here. It is again the question of the series, of iterability, of the constitution of the same through the various, and of the production/revelation of lawfulness through, by, and despite repetition.

EXEMPLARITY AND “THE LAW ” That there is no single law of exemplarity should by now be abundantly clear. In turn, there is no single concept of exemplarity within which all functioning, as described above, could be enclosed. Given such a situation, what remains to be clarified in this regard is still the relation(s) between “the law” and exemplarity. Writ large, one might say, this entails the analysis of the relation(s) between exemplarity and metaphysics, indeed, exemplarity and philosophy itself. Let us not allow philosophy itself to be seen as a law, if not the law of the law, and instead stay within the bounds of the determinate notion of law as conceived through the functioning of exemplarity as series. In this locale, the issue is one of repeatability insofar as that which repeats within and/or between examples is said to form the foundation for the demarcation of lawfulness. From case to case, example to example, something remains, stays the same, or exceeds each instance, and this is what eventually will come to be called “the law.” From a Platonic perspective clearly only one instance is

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required in order to find or locate its law, though Plato himself always invokes a series of examples in order to “illustrate” his arguments.27 That problem is one that we shall address a bit later in this book in more detail, but suffice it to say that the notion of “law” that we are using here is that suggested more explicitly by the Enlightenment tradition; Locke and Hume, in particular. Rousseau’s text, too, is peppered with multiples of examples, or series, “intended” to direct the reader to a converging sense that each manifests but that only the series as a whole specifies. We have discussed this functioning above in detail and have aimed at the distinction between evidence and proof as they relate to series usage. Now it is time to reexamine the unthematized issues that arise here insofar as lawfulness, legality, justification, and foundations also are invoked though often unsaid and implicit. At times, for Rousseau, it is clear that one case is sufficient to provide evidence that since this one is, the law of its possibility must necessarily be. In other cases, as we have shown, the conclusiveness of examples is clinched with the enumeration of a series that stitches together the fabric of the argument in a tighter and tighter web. Thus each example adds weight to the claim and in turn exhibits the law ever more clearly. Within the scientific method, still operative today, the experimental results are never in themselves conclusive data. Instead, the experiment must itself be proven to be valid through replication—by the same experimenter and also, more crucially, by others following the exact same procedure. Should these results reinforce each other, then one begins to think in terms of reliable findings and perhaps even discoveries. In our own day the so-called discovery of cold fusion by Pons and Fleishman evaporated under the scrutiny of replication by others. The nonrepetition of results eventually became tantamount to disproving the credibility of the former’s experiment and, indeed, in extreme cases, the experimenter’s credentials as well. In addition, what was required was the repetition of the nonrepeatability of the first results. Thus in both cases—of proof and disproof—what stands as convincing evidence is repeatability itself. Insofar as the disproof was repeatable, it was a reliable disproof. Insofar as differing results for each experimental trial had occurred, no knowledge claims one way or the other would have been possible. Thus repeatability stands as the central criterion for epistemological concerns in science and in much philosophy, one might add. This concerns us, since it also structures the usage of exemplarity by Rousseau, among others. When we have a series of examples offered as proof, we are being offered replication of results (of a logical, nonthematized process from the exemplifier to the exemplified). What makes a series convincing? Only that it could go on forever. That is, the implication must be that this series itself could be repeated, hence making the case for a law of the law, and in turn setting the stage for seeing the series as a whole (as presented), as itself an example (of


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the series as a whole, not presented). Such ramifications are far from idle or spurious trajectories here, we contend, but rather they form the implicit and necessary foundations through which the presented case or series takes on its significance and rhetorical power. There is no logic that a series by itself either guarantees or is the guarantor of. Rather, the series participates in this “alogic” of repetition that itself serves by definition synecdochically to reinforce what it cannot present or even represent. Instead, the series, incomplete by definition, and this is what gives it its power, points toward not only its own completeness but also infinity itself. In this, it points toward, though it simultaneously exhibits, the opposite, the so-called positive infinite: the law. As incomplete, one can never know the law of the series, yet only as incomplete (i.e., finite) can a law be drawn up. This paradox is not only unavoidable but part of the essential inner workings of exemplarity as it relates to the episteme. The leap that is required for lawfulness, which always already grounds the series, though only from a backward glance, is simultaneously a leap into the imaginary beyond, and the essentially prior. The leap simultaneously transcends and grounds the series thereby and, hence, it is always already presupposed once the series is given. Indeed, one might extend this analysis further and apply it to the first term, as the one example, insofar as it may be the first in a series to come, which is not presented but could always be or could have been. Thus the one turns into the many, inasmuch as there is a call to meaning, a call to law, a call by the exemplifier to be exemplified. But are we not back in metaphysics here, since we seem to have found nothing more than particulars (examples) as they relate (of necessity) to generals (or laws)? Not at all. This is a lateral move epistemologically and ontologically, though rhetorically and/or politically it is indeed a transcendental move. Contrary to Kant and Heidegger, finding the already-in-place legality for what is is coterminal with what is—not its primordial ground but its co-constituting other. The flip side of the visible here is the law, not its condition of possibility, except in a mutually constituting sense. What is not reversible here is the rhetorical or political hierarchy. On this scope the law takes precedence, even though constituted through and through by a fictional leap and a rendering complete of what is forever incomplete. The leap cannot be justified or legalized. It can only be performed under certain circumstances—textual, discursive, and categorical. The leap is yet another version of the leap of faith—caught between the universal and the radically particular solitude of the mysteries beyond language—this leap has no foundation, nor does it produce one. In this regard we are not “back” in metaphysics—on the contrary. Though pulled beyond what is and what is given, the leap is not without reason, nor without direction. Rather, it is guided precisely by the direction given by what is and what does appear. The next step, the desire, demand, and performance of closure, is what the leap is to

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and from—simultaneously. Thus we are all Abraham when it comes to examples, insofar as we read them, use them, and find them legible. What we are thus doing is no less mystical than Abraham’s leap, about which he could not speak, not to Sarah, let alone to Isaac. What is significant here is that from the leap, from the mystery, we are given Isaac back—we have the law, the universal, the ethical and, of course, the community.

PART

3

Exemplarity and Deconstructibility


6

Derrida’s Rousseau

INTRODUCTION We have previously shown how Derrida frames his reading of Rousseau through exemplarity insofar as he submits to an unthematized logic therein. He attempts to justifiy, legitimize, and legalize his choice of Rousseau as both a particular example (substitutable in principle) and as an Exemplar (a unique and special case), though these terms of justification are mutually exclusive, according to metaphysics. That exemplarity “itself ” is not thematized but assumed to be a relation of general/particular moving from the former to the latter as Exemplar, or vice versa, as mere example will be our focus here. Our question will be in complicity with the problematic that can be framed as follows: What makes deconstruction possible? In turn, what is, if one can so ask it, deconstructible and, hence, deconstructibility? That Derrida has acknowledged the lack of methodology severable from the particular text under scrutiny in deconstruction will not be violated here, since our focus will be exclusively on Rousseau. But again, that this case may have implications for others will not be denied nor presupposed a priori. A much closer examination based on the findings of this analysis must be made. The question of the relation between exemplarity and deconstruction, indeed, deconstructibility, must be asked in light of Derrida’s own problematizing of the not so easy relation between exemplarity and textuality in general. In his analysis of Kant, as we have shown, he exposed an-other logic inhabiting examples in the text, which was simultaneously revealed and concealed by them. But that this “logic” played the role of a governing frame was not questioned but left unthematized by him and certainly by Kant as well. Why move directly, swiftly, and without question from the issue of example to

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its law, its logic, and its rule? On what grounds is such a move necessary? Possible? Assumed? Only on those which we have systematically placed in question here; namely, the metaphysical assumption that reads examples as particular cases of a general and/or as generals or models for particulars. Either direction amounts to the same inner logic, which we have shown to be illusory in the actual workings of exemplarity. Far from a simple trajectory from particular to general, or vice versa, the relations and the economies operative between exemplifier and exemplified have essentially a multitropic structure. The details of such tropicality that are concealed by this metaphysical usurpation have been discussed earlier and will not be repeated here, but it is crucial to recall that the metaphysical misreading of exemplarity, though unthematized as such, has been displaced. In returning to Derrida and deconstruction, then, we return with an eye to this issue as it remains unthematized by his praxis, in particular with respect to Rousseau. Thus we aim to re-read Derrida’s deconstruction of Rousseau through the lens of exemplarity and to examine the unthematized relations therein. What we hope will emerge here via this critical backward glance will be, in traditional terms, the conditions of the possiblity of deconstruction— deconstructibility, or in postmodern terms, the conditions of possibility and impossibility of deconstruction. The latter formulation does not throw into question the entire enterprise but would be consistent within a “Derridean viewpoint,” and such a formulation would inherit Gasché’s term: quasi-transcendental. Such would be a nonfoundational foundation, the nongrounding ground, this slippage that deconstruction itself cannot account for but requires in order to operate as it does. Our analysis will not be a deconstruction of deconstruction, nor a meta-deconstruction, nor just another deconstruction. Rather, we seek to plunge into a space that although signaled by deconstruction is not within the realm thereof. Far from a usurpation, then, of deconstruction, this project aims at an expansion from within to a space “without” deconstruction. Exemplarity will for now be the name of such a non-place. Since exemplarity appears only as a specific structure in any one situation, no one case can represent the others and, hence, there will be no law of exemplarity. Rather, one might speak of structures of exemplarity that in no way form a unified system but by effacement contribute to that same unification. Insofar as metaphysics has always comprehended or usurped the structures of exemplarity as if unifiable, lawbound, and ultimately within its sphere, it has misapprehended them. Insofar as Derrida has used exemplarity without problematizing its internal multiplicities, his work of deconstruction has reinstated the very metaphysics that he would trouble and disrupt. Leaving unthematized and focusing elsewhere, leaving as that which “goes without saying,” is tantamount to a co-signing of the concealment effected by metaphysics, and above all, this is the lesson one learns from Derrida and from deconstruction.


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The reading that follows thus will aim to reveal that which “goes without saying” in Derrida’s reading of Rousseau. Of course, this is his own phrase concerning his analysis of Rousseau’s text also, and thus we will be repeating the deconstructive question, at the outset, in order to arrive elsewhere. Rather than a confrontation, or a simple confirmation or disavowal of Derrida’s reading, we will not be sitting in judgment here. Rather, we aim to analyze that which inhabits Derrida’s text and which is not-yet thematized by him then and there. In thus offering up the text to its own limits, the functioning of exemplarity as nonmetaphysical will be exposed. Far from being another logic, or the law of deconstruction, the structures themselves of exemplarity will be shown to trouble the effective, if not the teleological, functioning of the machinery of deconstruction. Perhaps outside of the orbit of deconstruction, perhaps not, this analysis focusing on exemplarity will seek to take at least one step in another direction from a mere repetition of the same. And it could not be otherwise.

DERRIDA’S ROUSSEAU In re-reading “Derrida’s Rousseau,” we shall focus here on two themes of particular interest in this analysis, namely, exemplarity as it surfaces through the marks of “example” and “exemplar(y)” and, second, necessity as it is marked in the English translation by “we must,” “we should,” and “it is necessary,” and in the French original by an il faut. The first series will reveal two levels of discourse for us, including the “said,” explicit and more significant for us, and what is “unsaid,” or as Derrida expresses it, “that which goes without saying.” We have analyzed this discursive aspect as the “functioning” of exemplarity, albeit unthematized as such, within the texts of Rousseau. This term is taken directly from Levi-Strauss by Derrida and used to signify that which has not been said, spoken, or voiced but has nonetheless “written itself ” within the said, what has been written and not said by the text, if not the author. Thus we will turn to Derrida’s use of examples and exemplars, both as said and unsaid but written in his text. At issue here are the unthematized structures inhabiting the usage. The question will be: What is assumed by Derrida in his reliance on these terms? What notion of exemplarity is “going without saying” here so as to not be worthy of explicit thematization? How is it possible that examples and exemplars are functioning in his discourse, and according to what? This latter concern will divide into two domains, as we shall see, so that the assumed functioning implied by the usage itself of examples will not of necessity cohere with the actual functioning that actually makes the discourse move. That the latter will not be assumed a priori to be differance ought to “go without saying” perhaps. That something always “goes without saying” is not

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challenged here, but the focus will be on why and how exemplarity can be operative within such a sphere and yet arise as a thematic “later” in Derrida’s work. Our claim here, to be explicit and thematic, involves the centrality of exemplarity for the structures of metaphysics and their discursive operations. That this has been overlooked by Derrida is not our charge, but that it has not been thematized as such by him is our claim. In such a realm, then, our argument takes shape and form on the borders of deconstruction rather than inside or outside of its sway. The second issue is no less central than the first but is intimately intertwined in its root system, that of the rhetoric of necessity operative in Derrida’s Rousseau—what il faut, why “must” we, as Derrida’s discourse tells us repeatedly in its movement from evidence to claim, and vice versa. What sort of necessity or imperative is operative at these moments, and on what basis? Is this rhetoric of necessity that of a moral injunction or a logical one, or some other phantom magnetism? Is this necessity a mock necessity, that is, a fictional repetition of metaphysics outside of metaphysics yet using its own logic in order to challenge it? Such a repetition would find metaphysics accountable (or unaccountable, if its deconstruction is correct) to its own “inner” logic. Yet the necessity seems often, as we shall see, to be an other logic of necessity, if not a moral, tonal injunction. The necessity here is not of reason but of textuality, differance, the economy that supplements, demonstrates, and performs for us in Derrida’s reading. If this necessity is a non-necessity, as differance has been claimed to be, then what pull to cohere, submit, listen and be heard and to see and be seen is operative here? This issue will take us to our second section, which will consider the conditions of the possibility of deconstruction—of Rousseau, specifically, but potentially, in general—as they relate to the duality located in textuality between what is declared (said) and what is described (goes without saying, but is written). The question of desire will therein be raised: both Derrida’s, when he says il faut, and that of the text/author, when something is said to be “declared.” But let us begin at the beginning—in the middle—and focus now on the explicit marks of exemplarity in Derrida’s Rousseau in order to find “what goes without saying.”

EXAMPLE, EXEMPLAR, EXEMPLARITY Derrida’s troubling attempt to “justify” his choice of the example of Rousseau in his introduction to the supplementary reading has been analyzed in some detail elsewhere. We left the trouble, or difficulty, as it was, and simply marked its acknowledged “presence” in Derrida’s text as thematized by him. We shall pick up this thread here as it surfaces through the analysis of the “supplement” in Rousseau’s corpus.


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Beyond his troubling introduction, Derrida begins the main body of his analysis with the following usage of “example”: Metaphysics constituted an exemplary system of defense against the threat of writing.1 The question as to how and why this is the case is buried in the next immediately following claim as the focus shifts from a defense and a threat to the question of violence: What links writing to violence? What must violence be in order for something in it to be equivalent to the operation of the trace?2 With the speed of light we have moved from metaphysics as exemplary concerning its “defenses” against writing to an equation of writing with trace and, ultimately, violence. The rapidity is concealing as well as revealing in that the potential thematic of the exemplariness of metaphysics in this regard has been overturned in favor of “its interpretation” of writing as violence. Derrida thus shifts gears and situates his theme within metaphysics, within the exemplarity that sets up this thematic as a possibility from the outset. Why not focus on metaphysics as exemplary? Is this not exemplary? Does this go without saying more? Is this self-evident? If metaphysics is exemplary, does this entail that other “systems of thought” might also set up a “defense against the threat of writing,” but that they do it less effectively, proficiently, or completely than metaphysics? No thematics here on this either. The issue of the sense of “exemplary” here is thus not addressed by Derrida and is left in a puzzling penumbra. Precisely what can exemplary mean here? Is metaphysics unique and, hence, exemplary? Or is it the best case and, hence, exemplary? Is it a model, in a teleological sense, for other thought systems and, hence, exemplary? Or is it the regulative ideal and, hence, exemplary? One cannot say, at least not according to Derrida’s stated claims here (and elsewhere). On what basis, then, is this claim left to become the premise of the “rest” of the text—to be considered or seen to be “self-evident,” on nothing less than a promissory note? It sums up what has gone before it: two citations, one from Rousseau and one from Levi-Strauss, the double foci of Derrida’s analysis here. Rousseau calls writing, in the citation above Derrida’s opening line, a “trifle”; Levi-Strauss announces that writing “had allied itself with falsehood.” From these claims we have Derrida’s conclusion offered as the opening to his analysis: “Metaphysics has constituted an exemplary system of defense.”3 Now it remains an issue as to precisely how Rousseau and Levi-Strauss are to be related to (be examples of ) metaphysics and in turn their claims concerning writing related to those by “metaphysics” in general. Again, this appears, at the outset at least, to “go without saying.”

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Are Rousseau and Levi-Strauss exemplary of the exemplary system of defense or mere examples—substitutable and not models—chance choices for the analysis to come? This problematic repeats that of our introduction, insofar as the issues of exemplarity that structure the discourse remain unthematized, and insofar as the duplicity annnounced by Derrida himself as troubling and ultimately unjustifiable—why these examples?—is not only unresolved here but surfacing as unresolved, as “going without saying.” Let us remain at a standstill with this one “example,” citation, or point of reference, though its repetition of the original problematic may reveal more than a chance, textual effect. For now let us suspend judgment and track the emergence of the marks of exemplarity in order to analyze what “else” is taking place or concealed thereby. Our analysis here will follow the time/space of Derrida’s discourse and not be selective at the outset. We will not choose examples of examples, therefore, but speak of each as it arises when, how, and where it does so. Only after tracking several of these can we perhaps begin to make more general claims. In his description of a play of “appurtenances” as historical and general considerations in reading texts of anthropology and the “science of men,” Derrida asks: Does it [the play of appurtenances] somewhere force the closure? Such is perhaps the widest horizon of the questions which will be supported by a few examples here.4 Before we consider “what” the examples are by names, specifically listed in what follows, let us re-read the claim above in light of what may be again “going without saying.” The role of the examples will be a supportive one, a supporting role as opposed to a central one, or a supporting role as foundational and ground, or a supporting role as nurturing, fostering, and enhancing. To be supported by example, then, is in no way a simple, self-evident structure, nor is it reducible immediately to any one of the above choices. Which sense of support do examples offer? In the merest of metaphysical senses, are they support as evidence, proof, or support as illustration? In addition, if we step back slightly, one might well ask: What is being supported here? Derrida’s stated answer is “the widest horizon of the questions,” which in turn refers back to the issue of the possibility of “forcing the closure.” The closure, we should recall, is that exemplary system of metaphysics announced earlier. Now examples may be cited to support the question of the forcing of this closure, this exemplary closure. A touch, at least, of irony seems to surface here, insofar as the unthematized use of exemplarity in both cases is played off against the thematic of metaphysical closure. The unsaid also is a closure, and yet the marks of “example” are potentially the very place where the “closure” is forced,


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or perhaps cracked, ruptured and, hence, revealed while yet remaining unsaid. In this case the roles of examples surface as performances of the thematized issue—metaphysical closure and openings—yet they not only animate or move the argument, they also potenially thwart or stall its movement as well. Only if exemplarity “goes without saying,” according to some closure implied and functioning that allows us to not see it as such but to move beyond it, can Derrida’s discussion attain the telos it seeks. Yet which usage is “going without saying”? Let us turn to the examples of examples, the list that Derrida provides, which he names as “a few” such cases. A “few” presuming an excess that remains unnamed and suggests a list that could go on forever (if one understands it as a rule that governs its production). The list reads as follows: To which proper names may be assigned: the sustainers of the discourse, Condillac, Rousseau, Levi-Strauss; or common names: concepts of analysis, of genesis, of origin, of nature, of culture, of sign, of speech, of writing, etc.; in short, the common name of the proper name.5 (emphasis added) The assigning of proper names is presented here not only as the support for examples but also as an unnecessary option, indeed, one that is replaced by the end of the list. The proper name is, for Derrida, we should recall, nothing more than “the index of a problem.” Thus the first list of examples functions by a sort of displacement to represent (exemplify?) the second list, which serves to represent the first which is first. Which is origin, which is copy? Neither, as they are substitutes for each other. Two lists, both of examples, also are hinged and separated as examples of each other. Which is the exemplary (as unique) and which the mere, substitutable example? This distinction is impossible to draw rigorously here, and for essential reasons. The two categories, “sustainers of discourse” and “concepts of analysis,” also operate via structures of exemplarity that remain unmarked—gone without having been said—herein but nonetheless operative. Again, one “name” can represent or substitute for the other, each of which can be seen as the truth (a general containing a concept) of the other. This play with general and particular and proper and common or improper will be thematically addressed in all that follows in Derrida’s Rousseau, but the role of exemplarity in constituting those possibilities and movements within and by the discourse is virtually concealed here. It is doubly concealed in that exemplarity is not marked, and thus the concealment of the mark and by the mark is itself concealed. Why “concealed” rather than simply “not there,” one might well ask. Concealed here means, to follow Derrida, what “goes without saying, and doubly concealed, so that the concealment is concealed, we have called “gone

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without having been said,” the more radical past that nonetheless haunts “the present,” the presentation or, in this context, the discourse. Let us move on to the next mark of exemplarity that does present itself in Derrida’s text, and this is in the context of “phonology” or structural linguistics, citing Saussure’s claim that phonology will certainly play the same renovating role with respect to the social sciences that nuclear physics, for example, has played for the physical sciences.6 In analyzing this, Derrida says: . . . a phonology exemplary as the example in a series and not as the regulative model. But on this terrain questions have been asked.7 And Derrida turns to the presuppositions contained within such a linguistics and metaphysics, namely, that speech is raised above writing. In focusing on the speech/writing dyad, thematizing this “history” or structure as it is found and refound in metaphysics’ history, represented by Levi-Strauss, Saussure, and Rousseau, for instance, Derrida shifts exemplarity again into the penumbra of his own text. Surfacing in a complex way as “exemplary as the example in a series and not as the regulative model,” the issue is thus bypassed, posed as self-evident, going without saying as to what structures exemplarity so that “it” could be assumed to operate in this way. Derrida’s adherence to the metaphysical concealment of exemplarity is striking here, though he oftentimes claims to use metaphysics in order to deconstruct metaphysics. But here and elsewhere, as we have seen, this usage is neither strategic nor tactical. Rather, it is an unproblematized adherence that participates in the violence that would elsewhere be deconstructed. In reenacting the concealment, leaving it in the shadows, the discourse here not only depends on metaphysics, which Derrida again readily and openly admits, but on the dependence. That is, the thin adherence of strategy is not what is in play here, or elsewhere we suggest, but a thick adherence of essential appurtenance without which the text/discourse could not move as it does. The “go-carts of judgment,”8 as Kant referred to examples, are essential here, we suggest, not accidental, and this is problematic. On what grounds can “exemplary” be seen as either: (1) a mere example in a series (a particular, as metaphysics has always already defined it), or (2) the regulative model? Are these the only two choices, and why do they emerge as that which “goes without saying” here? They emerge as the general/particular matrix that oftentimes Derrida would deconstruct. Yet without questioning this functioning here, the general/particular matrix, is reinstated, reinstalled as the operative structure through which to “see” the deconstructive


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practice. How, then, can this usage be strategic, in Derrida’s sense of “merely” strategic, as preliminary rather than constitutive? In fact, it would indeed seem to be constitutive and thus it must “go without saying.” Still within the preamble leading up to his “proper” analysis of Rousseau, Derrida speaks of examples within the discourse of Levi-Strauss in the following way: it will be demonstrated that “one . . . never names: one classes someone else . . . [or] one classes oneself.” A demonstration anchored in some examples of prohibitions that affect the use of proper names here and there.9 To be “anchored in some examples” can signify many uses of example here. What is at issue for us is that Derrida’s text moves swiftly on leaving “example” and exemplarity within and beneath it to be self-evident or at least to “go without saying.” On what account, to what end, is “example” used above? To anchor a demonstration is perhaps to stabilize it, to settle it, to fix it at a certain point, indeed, even to ground it, if only temporarily. The “anchoring” at issue here seems paradoxical at best, however. The role of example-as-anchor, as opposed to at-sea, one might claim, would seem to stop the movement of the demonstration, to paralyze it where it stands, to prevent it, in short, from functioning as a demonstration-of-something. Yet the anchoring also can be seen as grounding, touching, a foundation that being the basis of movement and its condition of possibility is itself immobile. Thus examples reach the ground, whereas the demonstration without them is, it would appear, at sea. Which ground? The empirical actual earth, or some other place? This remains unsaid and perhaps unsayable here and, hence, undecidable in a grounded, anchored fashion. Thus the anchor of the anchor, or that which allows examples to function as-an-anchor, is left “at sea”—unthematized. The frame of this usage will, however, give us a clue as to the metaphysical usage of example instantiated here. The chapter under scrutiny by Levi-Strauss for Derrida is entitled “Universalization and Particularization,” and the follow-up claim or frame notes that one should carefully distinguish between the essential necessity of the disappearance of the proper name and the determined prohibition which, contingently and ulteriorly, be added to it or articulated within it.10 Thus the metaphysical matrix of universal/particular, and essential necessity versus determined contingent, is in place surrounding the usage of “example” here so that its function—going without saying—becomes a particular of an

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essential necessity, a determined ulterior, continuing addition or articulation. What authorizes this frame? What necessity governs this usage? Only the metaphysics that Derrida would deconstruct, and again we should note that by not thematizing example here Derrida is not thereby found guilty of anything. Rather, we aim here only to locate the space of exemplarity within his discourse, which his own usage—within metaphysics—cannot account for. Again, as shown earlier, the universal/particular matrix is itself a concealment of a plurality of possible structures. In this way, then, Derrida’s usage of example contributes to the concealment, especially since it remains, for the most part, “unnoticed,” unsaid, unmentioned, unremarked. Let us turn now to Derrida’s reading of Rousseau “directly” rather than through Levi-Strauss, though the mine of exemplarity is rich in the latter. Economy of analysis prohibits a detailed account of each particular instance. That several “cases” have been located is not necessarily intended to signify a rule or a general indictment here, but that any one usage of exemplarity can be cited that banks on a metaphysical foundation that “goes without saying” is enough to prove our point. Under the heading “That Dangerous Supplement,” Derrida presents his thematic of the usurpation of writing by speech, in desire if not in fact, again within a framework of exemplarity. As he says: Such would be the writing lesson in Jean-Jacques’ existence. The act of writing would be essentially and here in an exemplary fashion— the greatest sacrifice aiming at the greatest symbolic reappropriation of presence.11 This “exemplary fashion” is again left as if self-evident by Derrida, as his discourse moves on to what “the greatest sacrifice” might be. “An exemplary fashion” is thus left unthematized to orient, in the dark, what appears in the light, as if present. “Exemplary” is a word that Derrida often uses to signal uniqueness, but this in a teleological if only regulative fashion. “Exemplary” thus functions as an empty word toward which it moves as well as all that is not exemplary. Hence, “exemplary” is distanced from itself in its very instantiation, yet the limit here is marked as “the greatest,” and this twice in succession. In addition, one of “the greatest” is headed toward, teleologically, one might add, the other “greatest.” In turn, the duplicity of exemplary used here is mapped between the first and the second usage of “the greatest.” The first “greatest” is a sacrifice, the first half of exemplary or indeed the “exemplary fashion,” the style of the exemplary, while the second “greatest” is reappropriation, the return, the product, the result of the first loss. We have a fall and a restoration built into the structure of exemplarity as its fashion, its style, its way, its Tao, yet there is more than this teleological, circular notion to the circle, or is there?


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The usage of exampary here is framed as the writing lesson, and this within the act of writing. In addition, the essential within the latter is signaled via this exemplary style, this style of the exemplary. Which writing lesson? The writing lesson, the lesson of writing as such, or better, the lesson as such of writing (as such)—the essential lesson, the metaphysical lesson, the lesson of lessons, the writing of writings, the examplary lesson of exemplary writing. All of this doubling does nothing, however, to minimize or trouble the role of metaphysics within such a discourse. What “goes without saying” here is the essential role within “exemplary,” so that “the” takes on the significance of the concept-as-exemplary and the exemplary as concept. Thus the exemplary here seems to turn the wrong way, from Derrida’s point of view, insofar as it reinstates the proper name, the concept, the title at the very moment it is under the deconstructive scrutiny. What is not scrutinzed is exemplarity, and this is unfortunate since without being kept “at bay” the “exemplary” form organizes Derrida’s discourse and sets its limits. The next paragraph insists, however, that the economy of differance will not be dominated by this classical conceptuality. Yet this may seem here to be a promissory note rather than a reality within the presentable present, as Derrida wishes it to be. By locking his own discourse into metaphysics through allowing example to move freely seemingly between general and particular, the limits of the slippage are outlined, guarded, and instantiated, if not articulated. What allows differance to be a “logic,” to be a law, to be an economy? This will lead us back to exemplarity as functioning within Derrida’s discourse in the most clandestine manner possible—explicitly. We shall return to this. In a moment of confession within his analysis of Rousseau, Derrida states in a minimalistic way the extent of his desire or ambition: My only ambition will be to draw out of it a signification which that presumed future reading will not be able to dispense with; the economy of a written text, circulating through other texts, leading back to it constantly, conforming to the element of a language and to its regulated functioning. For example, what unites the word “supplement” to its concept was not invented by Rousseau, and the originality of its functioning is neither fully mastered by Rousseau nor simply imposed by history and the language, by the history of the language. To speak of the writing of Rousseau is to try to recognize what escapes these categories of passivity and activity, blindness and responsibility.12 (emphasis added) Let us leave aside the question as to whether Derrida is serious or not when he says “my only ambition,” as it may or may not be a rhetorical ruse analogous to that used by Rousseau throughout his Confessions. Of greater interest to us

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here is the mark, “for example,” which connects the opening line above with what may seem to be their specific, contingent, determined counterparts. Is there an economy of the written text operative between the statement before “for example” and that which follows? If so, what form might this economy take? A ready answer might be metaphysics or differance, depending on which way one is reading Derrida—as a thinker of differance, or as a philosopher of metaphysics. What is given as an example, following the “for example,” includes a certain displacement, a distancing from Rousseau that one can situate (Derrida situates) within Rousseau, as an example. The writing of Rousseau is thus “of Rousseau” in at least two distinct senses. First, it is Rousseau’s, goes under the proper name of Rousseau, controlled by him, created by him, said by him. Second, the “of ” here can be taken as governed by “writing” not “Rousseau,” so that the subject governs the object here—the subject being writing and the object being Rousseau, used here as an adjectival form added to writing. Is “of ” thus exhibiting the structures that Derrida will call differance, that economy of presence and absence that displaces activity/passivity? One could easily affirm such a claim, according to Derrida’s texts. Yet the “of ” here also can be the unconcealment of exemplarity, which will in addition displace the dual limits, or the economy of duality, the doubleness, and the duplicity in which reside differance, supplementarity, and archè-writing, to name a few in the series of Derrida’s new “concepts.” The writing of Rousseau, for example, is named by Derrida via the notion of speech: “to speak of the writing of Rousseau.” All of this follows the mark that displaces and connects this passage to and from Derrida’s “ambition.” Why “speak” of this writing? What function does speech have in this example, and how does this speech relate to writing? It usurps it. Specifically, Derrida’s “speech” (his metaphor) will articulate, we are promised, what “goes without saying,” what is not said, unsaid but “written” within Rousseau’s text. Two voices, one writing. Indeed, a concept of writing that one voice conceals, says without saying it, which the other will speak of, explicitly, thematically. Yet this second voice, this echo, cannot be full speech, and this we know from Derrida’s work itself. Rather, the second speech must be inhabited (or perhaps haunted) also if Derrida is correct; that which “goes without saying” writes itself within his text. By acknowledging his own appartenance—said and sayable—from the outset to the metaphysical tradition, Derrida seems to have said the unsayable, to have spoken the written, to have said the unspeakable. Yet we know that such full speech is the dream of metaphysics, the dream of full presence, and that it must include within it its own paradox of displacement. Such, we suggest, is the centrality of the thematics of exemplarity here and elsewhere within Derrida’s writing/speech. We shall turn now to the question of his desire, his will, and his speech (to follow his own metaphorics of control and noncontrol of the patterns of


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language one uses) as it surfaces in his reading of Rousseau, often under the signifier of il faut. The phrases “we must,” “it is necessary,” and “of necessity” function to install an imperative within the text and within the reading, and we shall trace this metaphysical gesture with an eye to its rhetorical effects as well as its potentially revealing connection to our issue at hand: exemplarity. What can “we must” mean within a Derridean text? Within the Derridean corpus? Is this a logical necessity or a moral imperative, or some other force at work? What impulse is driving the text here and elsewhere under the name of “desire”? When Derrida locates Rousseau’s “desire,” he speaks of it almost simultaneously as intention, wish and will, as if these terms were synonymous. It could be said, however, that intention and desire are hardly identical from the perspective of current psychoanalytic theory, which Derrida himself borrows from heavily. The question here might be seen as the issue of the slippage in textuality itself. We shall return to this following the tracing of the moral/logical/political injunction by which Derrida lays claim upon his readers when he says “we must.” A second element of that which “goes without saying” in Derrida’s text on Rousseau involves a tonal quality that we will designate here as the imperative mode. This “imperative” is marked in the text by the terms il faut, nous devrons, and en fait translated, respectively, as “it is necessary,” “we must,” and “in fact.” We bring these three aspects together as they suggest the same mood, tone, or quality that we wish to address here. Derrida has claimed that an-other element (in) the text writes itself there without having been intended or deliberately written/said by the author. These “other” elements or elements of the other of metaphysics leave their mark on the discourse so that they can be traced as symptoms of something surfacing, yet not revealed as such. The deciphering of these symptoms decodes this other level of textuality that the first, the intended, “seeks” to conceal. In terms of Derrida’s own work, we will examine here this “other level” of the imperative mode which, we suggest, “writes itself ” within his text on Rousseau and which, when compared to his thematics, will be shown to be a disruptive element. Far from synthesizing or being compatible with his discourse of differance, these marks under the heading il faut displace the differential discourse and return it to the metaphysical one it would thematically seek to rupture. Ironic, to be sure, this tone within Derrida’s own text will reveal the “truth” of his work rather than its falsity, but in so doing it will also show its weakness, its dependency on metaphysics—always admitted, yet also paralyzing concerning the issues of exemplarity. Under the heading “That Dangerous Supplement,” Derrida cites Rousseau complaining of being misunderstood, misappropriated, and dislocated from his own discourse. In addition, Levi-Strauss is invoked as being “faithful” to at least one particular motif in Rousseau.

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This motif comes to terms with and is organized by its contrary: a perpetually reanimated mistrust with regard to so-called full speech. In the spoken address, presence is at once promised and refused. The speech that Rousseau raised above writing is speech as it should be or rather as it should have been.13 Following the stress on “should have been”—an imperative mood—Derrida says, and this is crucial for us here, . . . we must [nous devrons] pay attention to that mode, to that tense which relates us to presence within living colloquy.14 By focusing our attention on the imperative within Rousseau, he thereby shifts our gaze away from the mode in which he, Derrida, makes this claim: the imperative. Further, in the same section where he is describing the “strange unity “ he “finds in Rousseau’s text,” that “strange unity” of condemnation and rehabilitation, of promise and loss, of valorizing and disqualification, Derrida’s imperative mode surfaces again: We must [nous devrons] try not to lose sight of its strange unity. Rousseau condemns writing as destructive of presence and as disease of speech. He rehabilitates it to the extent that it promises the reappropriation of that of which speech allowed itself to be dispossessed.15 Ultimately, exemplarity is invoked here to sustain the ultimatum of the imperative mode, as he says: Such would be the writing lesson in Jean-Jacques’ existence. The act of writing would be essentially—and here in an exemplary fashion— the greatest sacrifice aiming at the greatest symbolic reappropriation of presence.16 Let us examine this mood in Derrida’s writing, if not his speech here, as it leads “ultimately” to exemplarity and the exemplary status of what is invoked above. The imperative tone here can be understood in a number of ways, including: (1) logical necessity—obedience to a law, to legality itself, to reason, to sanity; (2) moral requirements—what one ought to consider, by rights, according to a system of values that one is thought to adhere to, commit to, and obey; (3) an erotic drive [Trieb], which by its nature impels one to commit to or cathect with particular objects (of discourse or the world) in particular ways—at once both blinding and visionary; or (4) social/political/cultural constraints, which would bind one’s vision in a necessarily biased, historical,


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contextual way, and one which is by its nature collective. These possible interpretations of the imperative tone in a text open the way to very different and often incompatible readings. Let us examine this mood in Derrida’s writing, if not his speech here, as it leads “ultimately” to exemplarity and the exemplary status of what is invoked above. The question may well be, in reading Derrida, which “type” of imperative would he be intending here? Yet intent is always decentered by the written, from his perspective, so there is no centrality in this regard that would authorize one reading over another here. If, however, we posit coherence in a text— against Derrida’s contentions for differance—then the most coherent imperative modality might be seen as the erotic drive that impels him to “pay attention” and commands us to do the same, to one aspect rather than another of the argument at hand. This selective vision, at once castrating and enabling, one might say, cathects or valorizes the choice of vision and devalues all others. In so doing, the “we musts” would enlist the eros of the reader to likewise cathect onto the “given” object already cathected, indeed, performatively cathected, by Derrida’s imperative. It is the imperative of preference, an imperative that chooses itself, in a sense, and for no reason. Yet this “coherent” reading of Derrida’s imperative would deny that which “writes itself ” as disruptive within Derrida’s text. This reading would confirm traditional hermeneutics and deny deconstruction its basis for operation. To be more “faithful,” then, to the spirit of the work of deconstruction, if not Derrida, we would have to “take” the imperative as anything but erotic. As erotic, it may well be intended here not the “unsaid” but only another element of the “said.” Since Derrida does not thematize “his own mood” here, we suggest that his tone is not easily assimilable with justification to the “said” of his discourse. As “unsaid” it cannot, according to his principles of textuality, simply repeat, confirm, and reiterate without difference, the said. It must speak otherwise. Which “other” speaks here then? Considering the “imperative” as logical, as rational, as metaphysical, would be the most antithetical to Derrida’s own concerns, it would seem. He claims throughout his work—both the early and later—to seek to disarm metaphysics, rationality, the universal logic of Western thought. He seeks to “deconstruct” this privileged discourse and to reveal its own limits, its internal inconsistencies and dilemmas that it cannot resolve as self-contained. Given this erotic direction and motivation of his work, it would seem plausible that the unintended elements of his discourse, that which writes itself against the authorial intent, and outside of authorial control, might well be this imperative. The logical necessity under fire is most probable as that which will appear as a Hydra, ever renewing itself within a discourse that seeks to castrate it. Indeed, the castration maintains it, and this of necessity within Derrida’s own position.

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The question, therefore, must be: In what way does the “we must,” the “it is necessary that,” “in fact” essentially disrupt the thematization of difference and disruption within Rousseau’s texts? Another way of describing this doubling would be that, if Derrida can be taken “at his word,” as the saying goes, then his text “ought” to perform that of which it speaks, and this is precisely our contention here. Far from assailing him or his work, this perspective would show that his analysis of others is indeed as he describes it, exemplary (i.e., contagious) and infinite within a particular sphere. We shall return to this. The first “we must” that we have cited insists on directing our attention precisely to the mode or tense of “should have been.” Although a past tense, this also is an imperative past tense. The subject matter of “presence” is overridden in favor of a certain relationship to it. The relationship is established by the mode, the tense in which it is described. Likewise for Derrida’s own text, though again this aspect is not thematized, reflected upon, or discussed explicitly. It is simply done. In so doing, it is performed, it is connected, it is related to that of which it speaks, and one might say essentially so. Only by abstraction, after the fact, can the tone, the mode, in this case the imperative, be withdrawn as if separate. This is the mood of the text one might say, and it is ontological, as it is for Dasein, for Heidegger. Derrida’s mood, then, takes the form of the metaphysical, rational, and logical imperative. Is this a ruse, or is it real? Such a question presupposes that metaphysics can become theatre, or is perhaps always already theatre: a show, a play, a script for being, not being itself. Let us say that it is a ruse, but then it is a ruse of a ruse, since the theatrical is only possible if that which is acted out is in its first time, its origin, also already an “act,” a play, a selection of form to produce an effect. At issue for us is not, however, the theatricality of metaphysics and Derrida’s unthematized reproduction (mimetic doubling of the same) but whatever else this mood portrays and betrays. After all, it is of necessity one of the disruptive elements of Derrida’s text here. If we consider Derrida’s unthematized use of exemplarity as the culmination of his description of Rousseau within the imperative mode, we will find a clue to answering this question. As he says: The act of writing would be essentially—and here in an exemplary fashion—the greatest sacrifice at the greatest symbolic reappropriation of presence.17 Here we have exemplarity invoked under the sign of “exemplary,” “in an exemplary fashion,” within a framework situated at the limits. We have “essentially,” “the greatest” sacrifice, and the “greatest” symbolic reappropriation. We have, in short, a use of “exemplary” as demarcated by this “greatness, this “essentiality.” It (the act of writing, according to Rousseau) is exemplary pre-


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cisely because of this location—being at the limit. In short, exemplary here is used in the most traditional of metaphysical usages—as the model, as the ultimate, as the standard, the general, the rule by which to judge, measure, and compare all other instances. It is the rule, it sets itself up as the judge, the measure. It is thus not measured—it is immeasurable—the greatest. This divinity of the concept, of the law, is another version of the most patriarchal, authoritative use of metaphysics possible. It is now possible to see that the il faut mode that readies us for this “exemplary” status of the argument at hand is of necessity metaphysical, rational through and through. Whether “real” or feigned here makes no fundamental difference, as we have shown. Rather, the usage of “exemplary” as if this “goes without saying” reveals a deep allegiance to the metaphysics inhabiting Derrida’s text. Has he ever claimed anything else? Yes and no. At issue for us is not whether or not Derrida is consistent or inconsistent in his claims, though this formulation is far too linear to truly capture the complexities of textuality, if one understands Derrida’s insights, but rather what happens to “exemplarity” within Derrida’s text, in particular, on Rousseau. Here and elsewhere, it is foreclosed within metaphysics as just another term that needs no further exploration, explanation, or analysis. No remarks are made as it is invoked, and the discourse then rapidly moves on— from one necessity to another. It is this usage that we question—this readyto-hand discourse of metaphysics that limits all deconstructive effects, as it also, of course, enables them. This swing bridge effect, or hinge effect, is what we will question henceforth in order to show how even this which Derrida claims is outside of the orb of metaphysics models itself on the very binarism that it would deconstruct. Exemplarity, as one of the places of metaphysics’ claims—if not the place, for philosophical discourse especially—will serve as the opening out beyond the doubleness of the rhetoric of otherness, excess, mirroring, mimesis, reiteration to a genuine plurality, which does not simply echo that which it would resist. By echoing, doubling metaphysics, one ultimately reinforces it, stays within it, and reproduces it, we insist. And we shall see that exemplarity, far from remaining double, since it has always been understood as doubleness— general and particular and the commerce or economy between them—provides a paradigm case for a truly new beginning in philosophy and in Western discourse itself. That an example is not reducible to being a particular of a general transforms the possibilities of the particular, particularity and, hence, generality as such becomes obsolete. It is this overturning of the duality that we seek here, and with this we insist on the polyphony of moods or imperatives, in all senses above, excluding, of course, the metaphysical, logical, purely rational, patriarchal one. Let us explore the “duality” as it appears in Derrida’s Rousseau, as the paradigmatic duality and doubleness that he will use ad infinitum in the so-called

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deconstruction of metaphysics. The “lens of differance” marks a place between, not among, differences. It is marked by the duplicity between space and time, between spacing and timing, between differing and deferring.

BETWEEN USE AND USAGE: THE “LENS OF DIFFERANCE ” The dualities that animate textuality come ready-made for Derrida’s use, ready-to-hand and often unthematized as such. We shall explore here how, when, and ultimately why this matrix functions in his work on Rousseau, and we shall examine the implications as limits of this lens. Having examined structures of exemplarity in Rousseau, we approach this issue here with those structures and that type of plurality in hand and in mind. How the revelation and marking of differance occurs or is produced in Derrida’s text will be suggestive of the unthematized constraints within which his analysis operates and to which the implicit laws pay homage. The relation between differance and metaphysics or “classical conceptuality” is familial to say the least, incestuous and progenetive to speak the limit: But the work of writing and the economy of differance will not be dominated by this classical conceptuality, this ontology, or this epistemology. On the contrary, these furnish its hidden premises. Differance does not resist appropriation, it does not impose an exterior limit on it. . . . This means that differance makes the [metaphysical] opposition of presence and absence possible. Without the possibility of differance, the desire of presence as such would not find its breathing-space. . . . Differance produces what it forbids, makes possible the very thing that it makes impossible.18 The complicity could not be more intensive or extensive or familial here between differance and metaphysics. Preceding, producing, and prohibiting the effectiveness of metaphysical closure, conceptuality, force, and violence, differance is in a sense “in on” the game. But these two matrices—differance and metaphysics—are mutually excluding, impossible to view simultaneously, and mutually disruptive. Metaphysics obliterates differance as the origin of absence and presence, as Derrida states it. Let us trace their relation and the dualities that mark not only metaphysics, as binary oppositional, but also those within, and produced by and as the “other” of differance. The work of deconstruction, Derrida tells us, consists in its most cryptic form of explication in “castration and mimesis.” Castration of? Metaphysics’ phallocentrism. Mimetic of? Metaphysics’ conceptuality as duality, hierarchy,


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and oppositional. That this work is a two-stage process is not insignificant, and that this duality has no third, no overarching synthesis, is not accidental. Further, these two processes are, in a sense, mutually exclusive. They do not happen, are not done, at the same time. They are temporally determined with respect to each other, lest deconstruction simply castrate itself and identify completely with metaphysics. Thus we have the first duality: a staged, temporal, irreversible process, indeed, a teleological process. Derrida speaks of this process in terms of his “principles of reading,” where he articulates the temporality of this duality: And what does produce mean here? In my attempt to explain that, I would initiate a justification of my principles of reading. A justification, as we shall see, entirely negative, outlining by exclusion a space of reading that I shall not fill here: a task of reading. To produce this signifying structure obviously cannot consist of reproducing, by the effaced and respectful doubling of commentary, the conscious, voluntary, intentional relationship that the writer institutes in his exchanges with the history to which he belongs, thanks to the element of language. This moment of doubling commentary should no doubt have its place in a critical reading. To recognize and respect all its classical exigencies is not easy and requires all the instruments of traditional criticism. Yet if reading must not be content with doubling the text, it cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something other than it, toward a referent. . . . That is why the methodological considerations that we risk applying here to an example are closely dependent on general propositions that we have elaborated above.19 And so in the name of duality, merely doubling commentary is unsatisfactory according to Derrida’s program here. Merely reproducing authorial intent is only one side, one half, of the two-step process. The other involves finding, writing explicitly what was written in the text but left unsaid, as Derrida speaks of it. The doubling that deconstruction involves doubles the double by following a duplicity already there in the text. This is not produced, it is revealed; it is not created, it is exposed. Thus deconstruction finds duality between the intended and unintended, the thematized and unthematized, but on what basis do we have these signposts, this pathway, these marks of differance? From whence comes the duplicity of blindness/vision, darkness/light, presence/absence, willful/nonwillful, revealed/concealed, indeed, time/space but from metaphysics? One could read our work through this viewpoint as well, since we began with the thematized as contrasted to the unthematized,

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but this was only the beginning for us. This matrix itself was overturned insofar as we set up the notion of structures, and of functions considering (1) what Rousseau does with examples in his text, (2) what he says about them, and (3) what other theory or understanding might account for the usage. We sought not to locate the intended versus the unintended as the place of rupture in the text. Rather, we sought to reveal and reconstruct the multiplicities and complexities of exemplarity beyond the scope of precisely this metaphysical binary conceptuality, in this case, of general and particular. Derrida does not. He speaks of the declared elements of Rousseau versus the described, the said versus the written, and this relation of rupturing he describes as the “play of differance.” In addition, this duality is returned en bloc to us for interpretation as a product, a result of his analysis as an example, indeed, as exemplary. Thus all that has been revealed is returned to us packaged, constrained, controlled, and subsumed within the metaphysical matrix of general and particular. The use of exemplarity by Derrida here can be considered “strategic,” though it is never thematized as such. No questions are raised by him of this packaging of his findings. Let us examine them in some detail. Referring to Levi-Strauss’ insistent adherence to Rousseau, Derrida frames his results as exemplary in the following way: It is therefore a declared and militant Rousseauism. Already it imposes on us a very general question that will orient all our readings more or less directly: to what extent does Rousseau’s appartenance to logocentric metaphysics and within the philosophy of presence—an appartenance that we have already been able to recognize and whose exemplary figure we must delineate—to what extent does it limit a scientific discourse?20 (emphasis added) That Rousseau is an exemplary figure, that his ways of belonging to logocentric metaphysics reveal an exemplary figure, figuration, namely, differance, goes without saying here. The issue is to delineate this finding, to show it, to demonstrate it. Such is the preconception of the work of deconstruction here, and within it the pre-preconception of exemplarity as a relation of general/particular, so that “exemplary” stands in for more than one case. It is precisely this logocentric metaphysical use of exemplarity that allows Derrida to make the claims he does not for the “existence” of differance only but for the extension of this existence. The range of textuality is coextensive with Being itself, if not identified as such: there is nothing outside of the text. In addition, the economy of differance inhabits textuality—all textuality—as the play of differing/deferring, timing/spacing, and shadow/light that makes textuality what it is. On what grounds can differance usurp this extent of territory? Only via the traditional, metaphysical, unquestioned structure of


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exemplarity, misunderstood as the relation between general and particular. Inflating a particular case to make it not only a particular but paradigmatic, the law of itself and all others (like itself ) has its foundation and authorization only in this web of unexamined exemplarity. The foreclosure is reinforced by leaving the issue outside of the text—outside of the bounds of relevance, as if it also “goes without saying.” Derrida’s own use of exemplarity abounds throughout his reading of Rousseau, and in every case he relies on the metaphysical foreclosure in order to extend the economy of his own discoveries. Could it be otherwise? Yes, in short, quite otherwise. That differance is found to structure, rupture, organize, and disorganize Rousseau’s text is no ground for it being omnipresent in all texts (under whatever name), unless Rousseau’s work functions in a restricted metaphysical economy as an example: both as mere example and, especially for Derrida, as exemplary. What sort of claim is this? Can it ever be proven? One could argue that Derrida’s work has proven this claim repeatedly in every text that he has chosen to read. Indeed, one could argue that he finds nothing else. But this claim, if it were true, would only show that the lens of differance is being applied hither and yon, without regard to the “real” (other) differences between the texts under scrutiny. Indeed, Derrida makes no claim to be searching for differance everywhere, nor to be doing nothing but deconstruction, nor to limit all analyses to finding the rupture in an otherwise closed, coherent universe of the text at hand. As we mentioned, most of his later work extends itself in multiple directions that themselves do not reproduce each other’s findings, are truly context specific (i.e., what produces itself in Heidegger’s text, in Hegel’s text, etc.), and extend beyond the duplicitites, binarities, and banalities of metaphysics. But our concern here is not to generalize, not to exemplify in this inflationary sense that simply functions to falsely increase the value (and power) of a claim without any foundations. In short, to make the exemplary claim that some finding, reading, or analysis is exemplary is simply to transvaluate it—to rhetorically cathect a “particular” as if it is more than itself, indeed, as if it is not one but the One, not a reading but the reading. In short, the rhetoric of “exemplary” or “exemplary” used rhetorically, does nothing other than conceptualize, make lawful, based on nothing but the performativity of itself. I made it, and I said that it was good. And it was good. Beyond the accepted binarism and dualities of Derrida’s reading of Rousseau, and his framing of the same as exemplary—if not his reading per se, at least, his findings—we turn to the issue of excess. In every instance, Derrida claims to exceed the logic of metaphysics, to reveal the excess, to be outside of the “orb” of metaphysical closure, and so forth. We need now to examine just how excessive this excess in fact is. Is excess merely the mirror image, the doubleness, the ellipse as the elongation of the closed circle? Is excess

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thereby essentially phallic, essentially double and, hence, essentially metaphysically determined? Insofar as we seek to show the mulitplicities of the functioning of exemplarity, one could see this work as aiming toward the excessive. Thus it is crucial to distinguish what we will call genuine multiplicity from the reduction to dyads, in whatever form. In this sense, “excess” is not enough to describe itself. It must exceed this other-identified term. “Excess” relies on that which it exceeds to define itself. It is nothing without the claim it defines itself against. We shall proceed here to examine Derrida’s sense of “excess” as it characterizes differance and, more precisely, the latter’s relation to metaphysics, and to consider whether this is excessive enough to thematize exemplarity as radically plural rather than essentially double. The question essentially stated is thus: Is the double in essence the essence? Is the double essentially essential? Is it the essence of essence, or the nonessence of essence, as Derrida might put it? And thus is there any difference between essence and excess, other than the other of the same?

EXCESSES AND EXEMPLARITY We have seen that exemplarity, as understood within metaphysics, both in the form of the mere example and of the Exemplar, remains caught within a duplicity that far from describing the economy taking place occludes it from vision. It is the binarity of metaphysics and its hierarchy, privileging, inclusions, and exclusions that demarcate the place of this occlusion or, as we called it earlier, this foreclosure. Considered from within the Derridean framework or lens, as we have called it, of differance and its coterminus, deconstruction, exemplarity remains lodged in the foreclosure that he would deconstruct. Indeed, his own acknowledged reliance on the binarity and hierarchies of metaphysics reduces his own radicality in this regard. Exemplarity is again divided between the mere example, as a particular illustration or application (of a general), and the Exemplar or model, as the unique, privileged, and paradigmatic case. His own reworking of this model—of the model and the application—does not suffice, we contend, to break the bondage that prevents deconstruction from “repeating” the old structures. The allegiance allies itself in a sense and binds the freedom it claims to reveal. This is nowhere more evident than for the issues of exemplarity. If we consider exemplarity from the standpoint of differance, which Derrida does not explicitly do, we would find an implicit, illicit commerce between the two “sides”—the mere example and the Exemplar. The opposition would be shown to “deconstruct itself ” so that the application of the general would actually be written in advance of the general. Reversing


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general and particular, one reverses the traditional philosophical privileging of the intelligible over the sensible. But is this enough to dislodge the duality itself, the privileging (of one term over the other), or does it in fact merely reproduce the metaphysical gestures and, in essence, reinstate them? This has been argued, despite Derrida’s attempts to illustrate that neither “sensible” nor “intelligible” are “the same” after deconstruction. One is shot through with the other, each “grounds” the other, each is the origin of the other, yet he does not apply his transformative deconstruction to exemplarity. This structure houses his work as deconstruction and makes its particular work general. “Exemplary” marks the place of this inflation and the status of his text and his work as exemplary—of a larger, as yet unwritten terrain and text that could be produced but need not be. In short, his work presents itself as the rule for itself and, hence, it is not a mere example but an Exemplar. In order to have the scope he claims it does, and to establish “metaphysics in general,” exemplarity must be used in its most traditional form. In framing the force of deconstruction as exemplary, it is difficult to see the play of differance, supplementarity, or the “unnameable” truly at work, taken seriously with respect to this frame. The frame itself that allows for the vision of deconstruction itself also is framed, and this latter, second-order frame is occluded thereby. By accepting the metaphysical notion of example in its essentially double economy, Derrida ends up revealing, via deconstruction, the economy of the double, an economy not the same as the same but not radically dissimilar. Indeed, it is a mirror image at issue here; the circle of metaphysics has become elliptical by the work of deconstruction. Bearing the same marks of closure, of doubleness (albeit doubled) and of the two-dimensional gesture of departure and return—repetition, iterability—the ellipse here reproduces more than it violates of the metaphysics that Derrida would borrow and deconstruct. It is no accident that Rodolphe Gasché speaks of the taine of the mirror21 as the metaphor for Derrida’s work. That which allows for vision (mirrored and reversed) is itself behind that vision and not visible in the mirror of metaphysics itself. Yet how much closer can one get to the metaphysics of presence than to be its backing—its ground, its other, its double? Despite all claims to the nonreversibility of deconstruction, the nonoppositional, nonsymmetrical forms revealed, the essentially nonmetaphysical doubleness revealed, it is ontological doubleness itself that we question here. Irigaray, as a self-proclaimed “feminist deconstructor,” states this problem in a similar way, though concerning a somewhat different problematic. The duality that Derrida reproduces via what is essentially a specular motif— the visible and the invisible, the shadow and the light, the play of presence and absence, and so forth—must be broken through. The notions of excess, plurality, and a metaphorics beyond two-dimensionality—in all of its forms—can lead us beyond this foreclosure of traditional and essentially

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patriarchal metaphysics. Irigaray speaks of the three realms: that of the One or the same, that of the other, and that of the other of the other. Rejecting traditional readings of Plato, among others, she allows us to reconsider the maternal place that all Western metaphysics occludes. The matricide involved must be thought as such, for the first time, and the role of motherdaughter relations in both the male and the yet to be formulated female Imaginary and Symbolic must be thought, articulated, and inscribed from and by women’s experience. Women, except from the male imaginary’s point of view, are not the other but the other of the other—contrary to both Lacan’s and Derrida’s points of view. Far from representing ruse, falsity, mere appearance, violence, death, and castration, as we do in the Western male imaginary, as women we must begin to write our own genealogies, our own “hystories,” and our future as other than the other. This is not a third term in a dialectic of oppositions and synthesis, nor is it a repetition of the male imaginary’s other. The other of the other is other. Radically and irreducibly plural and multiple, women’s experience cannot be reduced to any binary system of oppositions, except within the male imaginary, where we have become “objects,” representatives of the irrational, the emotional, the family, property, and so forth. Thus when Irigaray speaks of excess, she speaks not of shifting the play of presence and absence, darkness and light, nor of reversing the hierarchy simply, but of a reevaluation of the entire duplicity inherent in both metaphysics and deconstruction. Moving from a circle to an ellipse, then, still leaves us with two dimensions—a mirroring of the mirror, a doubling of the double—and thus forecloses the place of women as again “the other.” In speaking of this reevaluation and creative production of a female imaginary, Irigaray does speak of an amalgam from Western metaphysics, which she calls the “sensible transcendental.” This term transgresses both the “sensible” and the “transcendental” and their relation as understood within metaphysics (or Western male philosophy, as she calls it). Akin to the female imaginary, this defiant term produces a space for the other of the other, whereby a new sort of ground can be explored, a new sort of voice and voicing, a new sort of writing, articulation and, indeed, power. Coming up from the ethos of time and place, this sensible transcendental could overturn the phallocentric status of the male transcendental, since it is never cut off from its own genealogy; it bears the mark of its source, its mother, and carries her forward enshrined as (if ) sacred. This mark would thus allow for a discourse that would not reproduce, repeat, or double the male metaphysical one; it would not be the discourse of woman (or merely portray the female) but of women and, hence, it would involve discourses, and that by design, if not by necessity. Far from producing an-other law, or an-other logic, as Derrida claims, for the work of deconstruction and differance as a means and an end interchangeably, philosophy in the feminine would take its beginning from an other than other


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place/space/time/“prehystory.” Women’s work in this sense has always already been there and has yet to begin, but the matricide produced by phallocentric Western metaphysics must be resurrected in order to open the way for this new feminine voice. The task here is to show that Irigaray moves away from Derrida and deconstruction in a way that is both consistant and incompatible with his work. She takes him to task for “speaking as a woman” insofar as this is from the position of the “male imaginary’s construction of woman.” He never moves beyond this, even in the criticism of this location. Despite a reevaluation of the other, the duality, duplicity, and violence are sustained. Concerning the issue of exemplarity, we find a parallel to Irigaray’s stance concerning multiplicity and duality. The meaning of excess in Derrida’s work is, in short, not excessive enough; it does not reach to the place of the other of the other, but only, at best, to the other. Indeed, with respect to exemplarity, we have an unthematized reinstatement and reinforcement of the most traditional of metaphysics’ patriarchal motifs. The Exemplar, which stands above and gives the Law, and the Phallus, to the particular yet to come. That Rousseau is exemplary for Derrida is part of the issue here, but beyond this exemplarity is left within metaphysics unquestioned, unexamined, and all the more powerfully framing his work and his discourse in this regard. He finds generality (the unlimited scope of deconstruction, despite its proclaimed finitude), and he finds application and illustration (each particular text addressed, each particular location always already more than itself, an example-of-something else). And it could not be otherwise. Not at all. But that by being-anexample one represents or remarks or betrays a law (read a phallic origin), this is the issue here. Being-an-example for Derrida is tantamount to being-a-son of, carrying on the proper name, despite his overt thematics of deconstructing the proper. It is here that the most poignant irony surfaces in the case of the deconstuction of Rousseau. The proper, propriety, the law of the proper, and the proper of the law are set up as the targets of deconstruction’s work here. To dislodge this phallic, univocal, hierarchical positioning of inside/outside, inclusion/exculsion with all of the inherent privileges and lack of same concerned is his stated, indeed, thematized, task here. And if Derrida is correct, he should unthematically do the reverse, if not the opposite. The question is, if we follow within his theory here, how is the proper reinstated, and in which contexts? Of what consequence is this to “the entire project of deconstruction,” one might well ask in the metaphysical philosophical mode? Is the father at risk here? Is paternity at risk? We have shown that exemplarity opens the way to a break from the legitimacy of the doubleness of the metaphysical matrix of general/particular, indeed, the founding paradigm of Western philosophy—in all of its forms. We have shown that examples function in Rousseau’s discourse in a multiplicity of ways, none of which are reducible to the double vision, or

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elliptical view of differance, or supplementarity. Exemplarity, as marking and framing the text via a genuine multiplicity of structures, has and carries no concept of itself. Nor is it amorphous, fuzzy, or inarticulate confusion—the other of the same—irrationality or pure emotion or tone. Rather, exemplarity functions in this zone of plurality that Irigaray speaks of as the “feminine in philosophy,” of the sensible transcendental, of the maternal voice(s). Exemplarity does not, however, “represent” “woman” and even less “women,” nor the female imaginary as such. None of these terms is substitutable. Yet there is a morphological, perhaps a hysterical, relationship here, so that exemplarity in its multiplicity does indeed embody the female imaginary in one of its forms, or possibilities. It is one opening out into this other’s other realm; it is one way of beginning this new articulation of the female imaginary. Beyond binary oppositions, exemplarity must not be seen here as a new concept, nor as an other of metaphysics, nor of deconstruction, though the latter is close, if one were to rename that place the other of the other. But according to Derrida, deconstruction is not to be seen as the other of metaphysics. Not according to him, it does, we suggest, indeed function or perform itself in this way and, hence, it is self-castrating, self-controlled, self-willed, and self-constrained. It gives the law to itself and is free, as one might say. But free to do, say, produce, explode, or explain what? Its other: metaphysics. The obsession with Western metaphysics itself locks deconstruction into its role and place as otherness, indeed, as Derrida calls it, as rupture. But rupture remains a negative term and only reproduces and does not break free of or from the male imaginary. “Becoming woman” is the mirror image of becoming man and does nothing to question “woman” as such as such, nor the double. It must be said that Irigaray wishes to sustain what she calls “sexual difference,” and to allow room in this era of the creation of the female imaginary for the development rather than preemptive deconstruction of women as subjects. One might thereby argue that she too reinstates the double, the dualities, if not the oppositions of Western (male) metaphysics. But she does distinguish between “woman” as man’s concept—a nonexistent fiction according to which women are judged, expectations are set by others and by themselves for them—and women as speaking rather than spoken subjects. This other place—of nonreducible plurality: women—is not that designated by Western philosophy for women as objects. Far from becoming men, women have the task of charting unknown and uncharted territory, thoroughly mapped and marched upon by the minds of men, in order to find the unmarked graves of their mothers and their mothers’ mothers. Named by men, named for men, and named after men, women as chattel can no longer accept this place in men’s economy of their being. What Irigaray seeks here for women, past and future, and surely present, we cannot but endorse, accept, and rally behind. We sought to begin this jour-


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ney from within the male imaginary—even that of the other of this dominant discourse—in order to articulate an opening out onto this field of inquiry and rearticulation. Exemplarity can thus serve as a signpost—a necessarily ironic one—that marks the place of its failure and its limit. It is the place where men no longer provide the Exemplar for women, are no longer both the Exemplar and the example, but they become, as they truly always have been, one example among others. The others are what we must further explore, and this beyond the realm of exemplarity, though this can serve as, shall we say, one instance or marker along the route to this end. This route is plural and nonlinear and in that sense is not a route or a path but an opening out, the rippling of waters away from the drop that landed in the middle. As raindrops producing interlacing circles within, between, and among circles in a pond, so too the female imaginary is producing itself, being produced, and echoing ahead of itself within multiple voices, in multiple directions. With this here now—we move on.


PART

4

The Rhetorics of Exemplarity


7

Theories of Rhetorics and the Places of Example

INTRODUCTION Aristotle has the most explicit theory of exemplarity in the history of philosophy, yet his own usage exhibits a phenomenon for which his theory has no account, namely, that the functioning of examples has not been and perhaps of necessity cannot be saturated by theory. Something escapes, something more is always done than can be said, or has been said. This phenomenon of slippage is what deconstruction has pointed toward in the opening up of textuality as differance. The closure that is always promised and never takes place is done and described by much of Derrida’s work, but this phenomenon within the functioning and thematical articulation of exemplarity has yet to be addressed. Such is the framework and focal point here: to redress and readdress overtly for the first time this lack and this excess, indeed, the functioning that has no name, no theory within the history of philosophy as a whole and, more specifically for this chapter, within Aristotle’s very theory of exemplarity, as we shall see. We shall address this section, then, to Aristotle and readdress Aristotle to the later twentieth-century so-called “postmodernist” thinkers, those on the track of this slippage revealed first by Heidegger as the withdrawal of Being and by Derrida as that opening that opens openings, differance. We shall not reproduce their respective criticisms and analyses of the history of metaphysics but will focus on this “same” tradition, as a tradition of the same, from an angle somewhat askew or in appearance tangential, in relation to their orbs of operation. Focusing on exemplarity as theory and function, exhibiting multiple structures, we will pose the question of the history of metaphysics itself as a 209

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structure in a somewhat different way than has hitherto been accomplished. Focusing on exemplarity, we will aim toward that which we consider makes the discourse of metaphysics (read philosophy) itself possible. This is not only the promise of presence but the functioning of exemplarity as it organizes all relations of general/particular and beyond this, as it is foreclosed by this very matrix of binary oppositions. That the whole/part matrix itself must be rethought is our contention here. Though Aristotle insisted that the example functions fundamentally as one part to another, as parallel cases, his articulation therein still remains within the assumptions of the meaning of “part” as “part of a whole,” though the latter is unsaid as such. Thus the example, even as “part to part” (which is the most radical point that his theory of exemplarity reaches), nonetheless remains imprisoned within the metaphysical determinations of general and particular. We aim to show the reasons for this and, further, to articulate the grounds of the said foreclosure, as well as, and more importantly, what has been therein foreclosed. What other structures and functions are operative in the usage of exemplarity? This is our ultimate question here, though what results from this analysis must place philosophical thinking, inasmuch as it relies on and operates within the matrix of general and particular (or exemplifier/exemplified), on a radically different plane of operations. More precisely, that plane of philosophical speculation where philosophy has always been and continues to be will be articulated here. In this sense, the project is descriptive rather than constitutive or speculative, empirical and structural rather than metaphysical per se. Yet the level of this functioning, as hitherto exhibited by philosophical discourse though concealed there as well, has been unconscious to date. That philosophy is always already tropical—governed by tropes—would not be a new or radical claim if understood still within the general/particular matrix, but that tropes organize that same matrix is our claim here. Tropes ground and unground the realm of the general/particular, allow for its articulation, and are concealed from view therein and thereby. This is what is at stake in focusing on the issue of exemplarity. Yet far from claiming to establish a ground herein and hereby, we aim only to show that this is the “ground” that is already operative within what is taken to be nontropical. In addition, we will focus here on the role of the Exemplar as well as the example. The Exemplar or model is not a type of example, nor is it another name for a General or Species, however, it partakes of elements of both of these functions. Just as the Greeks tended in philosophical work to focus on the examples (seemingly as particulars, actual representations of nonactual Forms, participating in the general) in their nonphilosophical, literary work, the notion of the Exemplar, as model, often becomes the focus. This motif governs much of Homer’s endeavors and that of Sophocles and Aeschylus, one might argue, to name a few. As we move to the medieval philosophical period, the motif is held in place and the Divine and/or Christ takes on


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the mantle of the Exemplar most often. In appearance, the general/particular framework still seems to apply here, but the foreclosure and the tropical unground are firmly in place and unconcealed at the same time. We shall investigate this as well. In more modern times the use of the term example and the rhetorical marks of the same serve again to bring them to the secular world of particulars and relate them in new and novel ways, at times, to the generals, via induction as opposed to deduction for the empiricists, and via deduction down to the world of particulars for the idealists. With Hegel, one finds what we termed a holographic connection between particular and general, so that the whole is to be found, or can be found, within each part—potentially, if not in fact. But again, the foreclosing vision of example as mere particular, even with the whole within it, still does not reach the actual functioning of examples within philosophical discourse. This functioning organizes the discourse, we claim, and this is crucial in the undertanding of what is being said and unsaid but included within the text. With the contemporary works of philosophy in the twentieth century, exemplarity still remains in the penumbra of “more central” issues, for the most part. Derrida’s works, as we have said at the outset, come closest to actually thinking exemplarity as an issue, if not the issue within the analysis of what makes the tradition of Western philosophy itself more of a structure than a history. Still, he relies on the notion of presence, Being as Presence, or the promise of the same as the focus much more than the matrix of general/particular as itself a mythico-poetic function that conceals its origin as exemplarity. It should thus be no surprise that Western thought has not thematized exemplarity. It has not become an issue, because it has been made “redundant,” seemingly by the matrix that governs—general/particular. This has been known of course as the problem of the one and the many, the problem of induction versus deduction, the quest for foundations, and so forth. But as the assumption within the tradition, it conceals what allows it to function as an articulation, an elaboration, an opening up and synthetic function of interpretation, understanding, reasoning and, ultimately, meaning itself. Meaning is structured via exemplarity in this tradition, that is, by relational connections being established or articulated. All relationships are bound by the part/whole consideration from Plato to Husserl and beyond. The crucial question is, what makes a part a part, or a whole a whole, and how do they relate? This matrix is the matrix of Western philosophy, and in this all metaphysical questions have been asked and assumed, as well, one might add, as all theological ones in the West. If we reconsider the matrix as actually exemplifier/exemplified and then ask the question of the relation of exemplifier to part, and the same for the exemplified, the matrix itself begins to open onto a field that cannot sustain the closure of general and particular. Not only does

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one reach the particular/particular relations but that examples (containing exemplifier/exemplified) and particulars as traditionally defined are not synonymous becomes clear. So on what grounds does one equate them? On the grounds of what philosophical discourse has always done—to foreclose what else is taking place when something is made into an example. We need, therefore, to consider the processes at work in the making of an example. What transformations are introduced in the vision of the thing, and how is the framework of our attitude (vision toward the thing) altered by this? Within metaphysics, what seems to occur is both a raising and lowering of the estimation of the thing: it is no longer identical to itself. It is given a proper name, a family name, a future—it becomes an example of “X.” Henceforth, it is a part of “X,” a sign of “X,” a representative of “x,” and a bad copy of “X.” That fatherhood, patriarchy, and the traditions of propriety, closure, and exclusion have their beginnings here is no accident, as we shall see. The foreclosure is an act of exclusion and a denial of the same, by establishing the same as self-same and excluding all “others.” That this act is the defining act of patriarchy is no accident. In thus turning to structures of exemplarity, we seek to open up the philosophical discourse hitherto produced and accepted as such with its most grandiose assumptions concerning exemplarity as general/particular relations, no matter what stripe, to its other side. Rather than simply reversing the tradition, however, we seek to understand how its violence (of exclusions) became possible. What had to be accepted and understood and acceptable and understandable for this tradition to be not only produced but to thrive and sustain itself over the past 2,000 years? What kind of violence is this? And what else is there? Is violence violation (read the foreclosure of exclusion), essential, necessary, and unavoidable in order to have anything at all, including science, religion, proper names, institutions, and life itself? The Western metaphysical tradition affirms this necessity. Exclusion and violence are considered therein essential and unavoidable. All of these terms, however, have the absolute, authoritarian stamp of the patriarchy that they sustain. They are themselves exclusions, exclusionary, and the tools of property. It is not surprising, then, that the metaphysics of patriarchy is self-sustaining and self-justifying. That foreclosure is announced as such, as the structure of the “as such” and hence not as foreclosure but necessity, not as construction, which has social and political origins but as essential (read natural) and basic foundational (read unchanging and unchangeable). What is being asked here, therefore, is what made and is making this foreclosure (read violence) possible? Vaclav Havel insists that participation in the violence and oppression is what not only sustains it—as when the Czechoslovakians participated in and to some degree cooperated with the Soviet occupation—but makes the original violence possible. That there is something


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appealing about violence, about war, about privilege, and about exclusion are the issues here as well as what has been excluded, misunderstood, and foreclosed. We focus thus on the issue of exemplarity in order to open up this traditional Western “philosophical” issue within the very “heart” and soul of philosophy itself. Within patriarchy, then, we find its suppressed, compromised, and violated others—and nowhere else. Ironically, these “others” are sometimes the best representatives of what has violated, suppressed, and oppressed them. In such cases we find the foreclosure of the violence itself. Concerning the issue of exemplarity, this is precisely what has taken place. Hence, it should not be surprising that examples appear to be particulars, that women who succeed appear to be men, and that blacks who succeed appear to be white. There are no other terms once one is within the matrix here that we are calling the general/particular. Thus cracking open the legitimacy of this matrix is essential in order to move beyond a simple reversal of binary oppositions that ultimately changes nothing. Beyond the binarity, the doubleness of law and an other law, the same and the other, and so forth also will lead us to take Derrida to task, in part due to his own insights concerning the need to reform duplicity as plurality. Dissemination has no duplicity that can hold or contain it, but differance is ingrained with doubleness, as are “other” alterations that Derrida offers. Setting up an ellipse rather than a circle sustains the closure of the latter in the former and in some sense changes nothing. Troubling patriarchy is not enough. Shattering its supposed legitimacy is essential. We use “patriarchy” here as a blanket term for the violence effected by Western metaphysics by all of its exclusionary gestures that pertain evidently to most categories of persons, places, and things. But “patriarchy,” as the suppression of half the human race by the other half, believes itself to be right, superior, and legitimate in this violence, sufficing here to mark the violations of which we speak. One should only and always remember that “patriarchy” is a symbol here, not only a literal function, though it evidently is also that. Our aim in this final chapter is somewhat more narrowly defined and determined in that we seek to analyze the rhetoric of the Rhetorica of Aristotle in light of these implications concerning exemplarity. We shall analyze and explicate Aristotle’s theory of exemplarity, as he describes it, and in addition consider his usage of examples and the functioning of exemplarity within his discourse. Further, we seek to open this discussion with an articulation of the duplicity exhibited between Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric and his own usage of the same. This is not a deconstruction of Aristotle, though we borrow some of our tools no doubt from that work. We will focus instead on exemplarity rather than on the play of differance and its tracing economy. The relationships made evident by this analysis between differance and exemplarity also must be clarified, however. Ultimately, we aim to portray the structures of exemplarity, which we claim will operate within Aristotle’s discourse and are not simply

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accountable to nor accounted for by his explicit theory. The question will not only be why not but also to develop a new, more wide-ranging, pluralist notion of the functioning of exemplarity as beyond a single concept, in particular, resistant to the matrix of general and particular within which all notions of exemplarity to date have been foreclosed, even and especially that of Aristotle.

THEORIES OF RHETORICS AND THE PLACES OF EXAMPLE Aristotle has several theories of rhetoric and several rhetorics thereby articulated. Within some, “example” as a movement, a relation, a function, and/or a structure have a place, whereas for others it would be impossible or counterproductive if used. Effectiveness is the hallmark of the Rhetoric, and insofar as this criterion is in effect, “example,” for the most part, takes second place to Enthymemes. We shall lay out these theories of rhetorics to locate the topoi of example, and in turn to show what examples are thought to be and how they are created. We also shall trace Aristotle’s own discourse in light of this articulation in order to analyze it on its “own terms,” or from within its own theory. From a deconstructive point of view, this would involve the duality of what Aristotle declares (explicitly thematizes) and describes (or implicitly exhibits by what he/his discourse does). But our procedure here will not be limited to this duality or doubleness in structure. We aim to open up the pluralities of Aristotle’s text and test the proposed rhetorical theories by the proposed rhetorical discourse. In a traditional format, one might frame the issue in the following way: Is Aristotle’s text an example of itself? If so, what does this tell us about exemplarity, about the relation between philosophical discourse and its spirit, and about Aristotle’s and rhetoric in particular? If not, if the discourse of rhetoric does not conform to or situate itself within the discourse on rhetoric, then what other rhetorical devices, structures, and functions are operative here yet unthematized, and why have they not or can they not be made explicit at the same time? What kind of temporal/discursive lag or disjunction is operative here, and what status can it be said to have? What does this tell us about exemplarity and simultaneity? Can anything be simultaneously itself and an example of itself? Can anything not be? What does this mean, and what are the implications of such a split in identity? What sort of economy is in place when and if a thing can be both exemplifier and exemplified of and for itself? We seek to clarify these issues via an analysis of Aristotle’s theory and practice of rhetoric and exemplarity. Rhetoric, in general, is defined by Aristotle in the following way: “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”1 Further, there are “three modes of persuasion strictly belonging to rhetoric:


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(i) the speaker’s power of evincing a personal character which will make his speech credible; (ii) his power of stirring the emotions of his hearers; (iii) his power of proving a truth, or an apparent truth, by means of persuasive arguments.”2 Thus rhetoric in general can be understood as effectively persuasive speech and, indeed, Aristotle’s theory is thoroughly phonocentric. Rhetoric is oratory, not script, and it involves a live audience, not a potential hearer. Effectiveness of persuasion involves convincing a hearer to act, judge, or feel in a certain way intended by the speaker. Thus the interlocutors are, by implication, “present” to each other, in a way that readers and writers never can be. That rhetorical theory can be applied to writing is not addressed by Aristotle in any direct way. He does say, however, that addressing someone as an opponent is the same, or ought to take the same, format as opposing a statement or an argument. In this sense, the other is textual and potentially of the same structure as the text, or the written. In addition, Aristotle relates speech to writing, as he does the original idea to speech, as a form of copying. The format may be altered by the context—the substance remains the same.3 Yet concerning the issue of rhetoric, format is everything, and substance weighs in the balance, but in the end fact or invented facts are equally acceptable if the end to be reached by such means is just, true, honorable, and noble. In short, there is no authorization explicitly warranting a leap from the rules of effective, persuasive speech to that of writing, but his own notion of the mimetic relation between speech and writing would seem to authorize some overlap, if not a homology. For the moment we will lean in the direction of writing-as-a-copy of speech, and later we will lean in the direction of the resultant difference. We will thus follow the spirit of Aristotle initially and later turn to the corpus, corps, body, or letter of the issue at hand here. Of persuasive argument types, Aristotle tells us, there are two: the example, corresponding to induction in dialectic, and the enthymeme, corresponding to the syllogism. Further, he claims, “the Enthymeme is a rhetorical syllogism, and the example is a rhetorical induction.”4 The move from correspondence to identity is not without some significance here. Examples are defined by Aristotle as the movement from part to part, from like to like. Here we have a twofold usage of this structure of exemplarity insofar as the example is like an induction, and the enthymeme is like a syllogism. What order or status does this likeness have? How similar and on what grounds? What whole do these parts share by implication since not by explication? What do example and induction have in common? What genus do these species share? One could answer simply that they are both types of argument—one suitable for rhetoric, the other for dialectic. Yet if the end of dialectic is knowledge from opinion, and that of rhetoric is action from deliberation over possibilities, it would seem

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that dialectic could be subsumed within rhetoric. In turn, induction can be seen as a type of example rather than the reverse, or the collapse of the differences into example as induction is inductive. We shall see, however, that Aristotle’s theory at least moves in the opposite direction at precisely this point, and indeed it collapses the differences between induction and example at the same moment that he seems to hold it open and apart. The foreclosure of example is at hand within this gesture, as we shall see. Rhetoric, Aristotle cautions, is generally addressed to an audience of untrained thinkers who cannot follow long chains of reasoning. In addition, the focus of the oratory “has regard to classes of men, not to individual men; its subjects, and the premises from which it argues, are in the main such as present alternative possibilities in the sphere of human action.”5 This presentation is not simply one of alternatives but of which alteratives ought to be chosen. The essence of rhetoric is not to rest with undecidability or equally plausible possibilites but rather to load the argument for one as distinctly better than the others. It is also worthy of note that the persuasivity is unidirectional and nonreciprocal—the audience only is to be persuaded, and the orator does not change. The block of marble is to be molded thus according to the idea of the good or the better alternative already formed in the mind of the orator. The orator thus performs, ideally, a kind of writing or engraving in the soul of the auditor, so that the latter will choose, freely, to act in the prescribed manner. We shall see that examples play a central role here insofar as they are thought to be “simpler” for the untrained audience of poor reasoners, and they are more persuasively effective, since they can be drawn from the realm of experience familiar to the auditor. The focus as “classes of men” as opposed to individuals here already signals the generality that must be reached via exemplarity, if not within it. The use of example must lead up from or away from individuals to generals in order to induce the auditor to appropriate action in a particular circumstance. Thus the example will serve to bridge the particularity of the audience and the action desired (by the speaker) via a more general level of interpretation: “classes of men.” This appeal to a place beyond individual men, though examples are always taken from this sphere (by Aristotle), becomes paradoxical, as we shall see. The movement of examples, as like to like, as part to part, overcomes itself, destroys itself by its own effectiveness. The shift to classes from individuals has always already taken place, as Hegel was later to point out. Let us return to the theory of rhetoric as the framework within which the theory of exemplarity itself surfaces as submerged. There are three kinds of rhetoric, Aristotle insists, and these are: political (focusing on the future), forensic (focusing on the past), and ceremonial (focusing on the present). The place of example here is political insofar as the past is used or cited as an example directed toward the future. One can under-


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stand, and ought to understand (by implication), the future (possibilites) in terms of the past (as examples). Time is essentially circular, and events essentially are repeatable, from this perspective. Thus examples can serve as warnings of things to come, as prophetic, and also as ideals toward which one ought to strive. How the past is transformed into examples we shall address later, but for now we must locate the irony of this claim. In seeking to distinguish the three rhetorical types with reference to these three moments of temporality, Aristotle’s linear notion of time could not be clearer. Yet for each type, the three moments themselves are intertwined in anything but a linear pattern. For instance, if we consider political rhetoric designed to promote a particular action in the future, using the past as exemplary concerning this argument, we find that the time of the agent itself is threefold. It “takes place” in the now—ceremonially, insofar as some act is being honored, by being cited as an example (or dishonored, as the case may be). Further, the future is seen as an instance of the past, which is forever present—a constant Now, or a constant possibility. The past is forever now and, hence, also the future. The past is the future’s possibility. Thus what sort of future is this? It is the future perfect—what will have been, and not a radical opening to new possibilities. The script and range of possibilities are given, and the consequences of each direction in the future can be seen via the mirror of the past, and all of this in the now. The protensions are mindful of the retentions that make of these the now moment. But none of this collapses into a single point, as there would be no need for the oratory of decisiveness and closure in the first place. Choosing the appropriate examples thus becomes crucial here in showing which future is not only possible but necessary, given the past (invented or factual) and present situation as seen via the past. This hermeneutical design orients temporality for Aristotle and forms no single path from past to present to future. On the contrary, all three are open, though once a particular “past” is cited in and by the present a certain future becomes inevitable. It is this transformation of the undecidable (read open) future to a “logic” of apparent necessity that makes examples into persuasive tools of argument. What they do is instantiate necessity within contingency, yet they are drawn, Aristotle insists, always from contingent situations and events. Ultimately, what they exhibit are laws beyond themselves, and supposedly prior to themselves, laws of nature, not laws of thought. But this is questionable, as we shall see. Aristotle distinguishes these three types of oratory according to the following additional critieria: political seeks to produce action, forensic seeks a judgment, and ceremonial seeks to honor or dishonor. Yet all three can be seen as ultimately political, according to his own definition. All three are concerned with a knowledge of the good, of the happiness of the hearers, and of the type of state and constitution within which one lives. In short, the political form,

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as the first in the series of three, includes the others in essential ways. This primary inclusion is a mode of all lists, all series as examples (of examples), as we shall see. The first in the series is always more than just one member of the series. The first provides the law of the series, in just the way that the past (once designated as an example) sets up the necessities of the present and the future as necessities. Interestingly enough, Aristotle claims that examples are particularly appropriate for political rhetoric, amplification for epideictic or ceremonial, and enthymemes (which produce the loudest applause) for forensic. Yet again, one can see that examples form the structure of each of the other “methods” of oratory. Amplification is another name for example, insofar as the transformation of something into an example is in essence an amplification—making it more than itself or less than itself. In addition, the enthymeme itself, though privileged by Aristotle in theory, involves and presupposes the use of example (as induction), insofar as the enthymeme is an incomplete syllogism. With the conclusion omitted, the enthymeme provides the opportunity for the pleasure of completion of the whole by the audience, Aristotle claims. And in what does this completion consist but the movement through a particular to a general. Inasmuch as this movment is to be applied to a particular case, we have again the “like to like” structure that Aristotle claims characterizes examples. Thus the forensic format of oratory also partakes of exemplarity. In turn, the political—action-oriented oratory—includes the other two types, both in terms of ends and means, or spirit and body, or letter and law. Of the nontechnical means of persuasion (“which do not strictly belong the art of rhetoric”) there are five, which include: (1) laws, (2) witnesses, (3) contracts, (4) tortures, and (5) oaths. “Witnesses,” Aristotle claims, “may be either ancient (such as poets and other notable persons, soothsayers, or proverbs) or recent (such as well-known contemporaries).” Further, “ancient witnesses are more trustworthy than contemporary.”6 “Witnesses” are nothing other than examples for Aristotle, and he says as much later when he speaks of illustrative parallels (drawn from history) that serve to exemplify a past as a future possibility via a credible source. Hence, “ancient witnesses” are more trustworthy and thereby more persuasive than contemporaries. Thus examples range from being the most effective tool and best type of rhetoric to the very structure of all methods of rhetoric to being one type of nonessential method, namely, witnessing the witness. What allows for the differences here between essential and nonessential is distance, one might argue, from the source. Yet exemplarity itself is only possible and effective because of this same distance. It is the distance between past and future, visible in the moment of the now, that allows for the connection and ultimately the rhetorical effectiveness of collapsing the difference into a structure of all time: the eternal present visible in the past as a possible, if not a neces-


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sary, future. That exemplarity allows for this collapsing of temporality also will be explored in what follows, but for the moment we wish only to point out that “example” surfaces within Aristotle’s theories of rhetorics in a multiplicity of ways, both acknowledged as such by him and unacknowledged. At this juncture, we still have to explore in detail this theory of exemplarity itself but have sought here simply to open up this possibility.

ARISTOTLE’S RHETORICAL DISCOURSE In turning to Aristotle’s rhetorics we seek to focus on two aspects in particular. First we will use his own theory as a guiding thread to pursue the format that his own rhetorical practice takes in general. Second, we will pursue this issue with respect to exemplarity in particular; that is, we will address Aristotle’s articulation of the proper use and functioning of examples and then turn to his “own” use and the functioning of the same within his “own” discourse. What we seek to reveal here is the process of foreclosure that takes place in his theory, and yet the inability of his discourse—for necessary, nonaccidental reasons—to conform to this same foreclosure. Limits, constraints, and suppressions of the will or spirit here are not carried over to the body of his own text. Rather, the unruly body or corpus, the letters of the work, will reveal the plurality that his theory seeks to suppress. Why and how this is the case will be our focus later in our analysis. For the moment, we will turn to the more general framework at hand here to show the relation between rhetorical theory and rhetorical practice, as exhibited and concealed by Aristotle’s text— both spirit and letter. The letter of the law here might begin with the initial distinction that Aristotle makes between the three types of rhetoric: political, forensic, and epideictic or ceremonial. We have already begun an analysis above of the theoretical problems with such a division and have shown where and how it breaks down and all becomes political, in a certain sense. Let us now examine Aristotle’s “own” discourse as a rhetorical expression—aiming to persuade an audience—with an eye to a judgment or decision as to whether his discourse itself is an articulation of political, forensic, or ceremonial rhetoric. The political, one should recall, focuses on the transformation of possibilities into choices, and choices into a particular decision concerning a future action; forensic rhetoric aims toward the making of a judgment concerning the justice or injustice of a past action; and ceremonial treats the present situation as to its honor or dishonor, its nobility or ignominiousness. Aristotle’s work here is clearly seeking to persuade his audience to act in a certain way, namely, to adopt his theory of rhetorics and to use whichever one is appropriate in a given situation. To choose his theory of oration over others, and

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to act accordingly, is surely his aim for his audience’s future actions, thus his discourse would seem to be political. Yet, in turn, the decision concerning just and unjust prior actions will set the stage for future actions insofar as the future can be understood via examples from the past. Previous instances are thus invoked as good or bad standards by which to judge future actions. Hence, political rhetoric seems to stand upon forensic and, in turn, Aristotle’s discourse tells us which methods are appropriate or inappropriate for specific situations. What we ought to do, and which previous methods have been effective via examples from Homer, Sophocles, and others, serves Aristotle’s purpose here to persuade the reader of the appropriate future action, but the proof of the justness of such an act itself is not proven or demonstrated. Aristotle relies on the status of his witnesses cited—Homer said or Sophocles said, via their characters, and these instances are used to illustrate what is already assumed. When historical instances are cited this is not done for the sake of the goodness of the past actions but only for the fact that “X” led to “Y” in the past and in all probability will do so in the future. Aristotle speaks of this impartiality that is needed when he says: The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case. Further: It is not right to pervert the judge [reader] by moving him to anger or envy or pity—one might as well warp a carpenter’s rule before using it.7 Yet Aristotle himself admits (by inversion of the above, as well as explicitly) that emotion is one of the modes of rhetoric essential to the persuasive process. As he says: Thus are there, then, three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of these must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions—that is, to name them and describe them, and to know their causes and the way in which they are executed.8 Aristotle cites himself here, since he goes on to do precisely that which he says qualifies one as being in command of the three means of persuasion. He lists the emotions, starting with anger, describes each, and shows the causes and


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the ways in which each is excited in the audience. Without saying that he is a good orator, thereby, Aristotle says he is a good orator thereby, and this too is a formulation he speaks of when he says the orator must not only try to make the argument of his speech demonstrative and worthy of belief; he must also make his own character look right, and put his hearers, who are to decide, into the right frame of mind. Particularly, in political oratory, but also in lawsuits, it adds much to an orator’s influence that his own character should look right.9 Let us examine how Aristotle does this for himself, since we have already established a link between what he says and does or between the spirit and letter of the law. The stakes are high here, since he also states: “his character [the speaker’s] may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses.”10 Yet an orator cannot speak of his own character; he must show it, illustrate it, and perform it by the way he speaks or persuades. Good character here will be equated with just actions, just intentions. In addition, the impression of the speaker’s character will be produced at the outset; from the moment speaker and auditor make contact, judgments are being framed concerning this element, which will in turn determine the credibility of what follows as content of the oration. Aristotle makes this point when he says: “Bring yourself on stage from the first in the right character.”11 To make the hearer receptive from the beginning, Aristotle contends, one must give a good impression of one’s character. The question for us is, does Aristotle do this as well in his own speech to us on rhetoric? At the outset of his discourse, he says the following: “Now the framers of the current treatises on rhetoric have constructed but a small portion of that art.”12 Aristotle thus sets up a frame for his own work as addressing the whole art of rhetoric, not simply a small portion or part. Rather than partiality or incompleteness, Aristotle promises completeness and wholeness here, and it is no accident that he will claim later that completing something left as incomplete produces pleasure for the actor and the audience, and even more if left to the audience. Such is the reason the enthymeme (the socalled incomplete syllogism) produces “louder applause” (greater pleasure) than examples. Ironically, however, Aristotle has framed his relation to his “opponents” or predecessors as parallel to that between the syllogism and the enthymeme. Thus in arguing for incompleteness and the active participation of the audience to fill in the missing portions of the whole to make the whole, he withdraws this participation by himself filling in the gaps—completing the whole—for us. Thus he produces an example rather than an enthymeme, or a syllogism rather than an incomplete syllogism, and in turn he supposes that this is the way to create a receptive audience. It would seem, however, either

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that completeness in advance (even as promised) and completeness to come as an invocation for the other are not synonymous, and that Aristotle violates his own premises here by producing such a promise. Let us read on to further contextualize the above citation concerning parts and wholes: These writers, however, say nothing about Enthymemes, which are the substances of rhetorical persuasion, but deal mainly with nonessentials.13 Thus what is at issue has changed from part or partiality versus wholeness or completion to that between substance or essence and the nonessential. Aristotle presumably will treat the substance of the issue, not merely repeat the nonessential analyses that have come before of the nonessential. And it is thus that Aristotle makes Enthymemes the essential means of persuasion (with the louder applause) and examples as secondary (merely nonessential and insubstantial). But this too remains to be seen via his actual discursive practice concerning the use of examples. What is at issue here in the distinction is a question of value, not simply the focus of analysis. The substantial is more important, more significant, and more valuable, better than its opposition. If we connect the speaker to the speech, the implication here is clearly a display of character on Aristotle’s part. He is better than his opponents or predecessors inasmuch as he is able to find and treat the substance of the matter. He is thus a man of substance (read goodness, justice). His theory continually confirms this distinction as more one between substance and accident when he says “to discern the real and apparent means of persuasion, just as it is. The future of dialectic to discern the real and apparent syllogism.”14 In such a frame of reference, Aristotle then turns to the problematic of sophistry as addressed to the rhetorician. How can one distinguish between the sophist and the rhetorician? The difference he says, is not in persuasive techniques, since these are morally neutral, but in the ends, toward which those means are directed. It is the moral purpose behind the argument that makes a “man” a sophist or not. With a good moral purpose, the orator cannot be reduced to a mere sophist—persuading anyone of anything for the sake of personal gain. Rather, when the end is goodness, justice, happiness of the auditor, and “the wellbeing of the polis,” the speaker is truly a rhetorician and not merely a sophist. Again, appearances and reality are distinguished here, and the real is the good, the morally defensible, and the promotion of well-being. The true rhetorician is thus the man of substance with respect to personal character, and to the object and means of his discourse. Substance here means completeness, goodness, and justice, yet substance earlier meant enthymeme or incompleteness, and no distinction is needed but that between real or apparent concerning the facts of the case. We have perhaps two substances here or, better, a funda-


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mental rupture within the notion of substance itself where in use concerning the art of sophistry and its limits. Aristotle insists that truth and falsity are ultimately not equally persuasive. The true is easier to prove and easier to believe in, he says: No other of the arts draws opposite conclusions: dialectic and rhetoric alone do this. Both these arts draw opposite conclusions impartially. Nevertheless, the underlying facts do not lend themselves equally well to the contrary views. No; things that are true and things that are better, are by their nature practically always easier to prove and easier to believe in.15 Yet he allows for the invention of facts to play an equally powerful and at times the most powerful role as the means to his end when he says: Examples are either (a) historical parallels or (b) inverted parallels viz. either (i) illustrations or (ii) fables such as those of Aesop. Fables are suitable for popular audiences; and they have this advantage, that they are comparatively easy to invent, whereas it is hard to find parallels among actual past events.16 One should note with some intrigue the criterion of facility—it is more facile to invent rather than to find actual true parallels; yet it is more facile to prove and more facile to believe in the truth. Thus the question here is, who is expected to do the less facile hard work? It is for popular audiences, Aristotle claims, that fables (invented parallels) are most suitable. Why? Because presumably the historical facts are not familiar to them anyway, hence, they can be more easily (effectively) persuaded by a fictional story (an invented example) than one drawn from actual history that they are unaware of. Familiarity makes examples effective, Aristotle also will claim, and thus with popular audiences this cannot be assumed. The fiction is as familiar or unfamiliar as the truth. Yet the truth is easier to believe in and indeed easier to prove. Facility here has crossed over to its opposite—once on the side of truth, it has switched over to that of fantasy. Indeed, Aristotle places actual historical parallels (true parallels) first on his list of types of examples. One, it would seem, resorts to fiction and fantasy when truth is not effective. In turn, if we were to write the apparently nonsynthesizable claims here, we might conclude that oratory based on truth is more effective for the educated audience (which presumably knows the difference between truth and fiction), and that oratory based on invention is more effective for the hoi polloi, which is presumably not aware of the difference between truth and its contrary. This might seem consonant with Aristotle’s own views concerning the natural

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order of human beings as hierarchical and differential rather than homogeneous and democratic. Yet what does his own discourse rely on here and elsewhere? Which side does he take in addressing his Athenian audience? Clearly he uses historical parallels as depicted by Homer, but he also cites characters invented by Sophocles, for instance, among others. What are we to make of this? Are we to think of ourselves as the educated Athenian elite, or as a popular audience which, through its ignorance of historical fact, will be more easily persuaded by fiction? Yet the use of the fiction is itself truthful inasmuch as Aristotle is not inventing Sophocles, nor Antigone, nor what she is purported to have said in the play. Thus the fiction is true, from this perspective, in several respects. It is a true account of a fiction that itself depicts a truth. In addition, the historical cases cited (most of which are offered via Homer’s poetic account) do not totally cross over the purely unadorned factual side of this duplicity. Thus “facts” are chosen to illustrate by analogy, as we shall see in the theory of exemplarity to come, with what of necessity (if like is like itself, as Aristotle assumes) takes place in the future, which will be like the past if an action is either done or not done, depending on whether the orator intends to send an incitement to act likewise or a warning to avoid the same. At issue here is the use of facts and the truth purported therein and thereby. Aristotle seems to maintain the difference between fact and fantasy when it comes to effectiveness of rhetorical practice, but in his actual practice he continually crosses the line. The future of the historical fact is not its facticity but its applicability—its generality—its substance. What it shows is that “X” took place. In short, the meaning of the fact is quite other than its facticity, and without this it could not be used as an example of anything, it would simply have been. The facts must be read, interpreted, and made into examples of something other than themselves. If facts are equated with truths, then they are made into fictions, in turn to be applicable to other potential facts. But if fact and truth are distinguished, then the fact is not true or false, it simply is, and our judgment of its relation to another potential “fact” is the place of truth. In short, this would make truth a matter of statements about the world not concerning the world itself, and Aristotle certainly claims that truth reaches the reality of the world. His world is not that of hermeneutical foundatons for truth but quite the reverse. Indeed, truth is easier than falsity in many respects, as we saw above. At issue here is the opposition laid out theoretically between truth and fiction at the same time it is betrayed via the slippage within the notion of facility. The “ease” has become dis-ease, uneasiness, and the terms invented and factual have become perspectival rather than fixed. This is the discursive foundation of the nondiscursive, and that in two ways, we suggest. Aristotle’s own discourse shows this, though his articulation seems to rely on assumptions to the contrary. A final consideration of the letter/spirit relation seems in order here to conclude our analysis, and this involves the pleasure and pain of the text that


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Aristotle invokes. He begins with the privileging of enthymemes as giving the “louder applause,” as compared to examples, and this indicates the greater pleasure afforded the audience by completing the incomplete. Making whole gives the hearer a pleasure that simply hearing a ready-made one (passively) does not, he claims. Thus a certain involvement in making the speech fulfill itself in the auditor’s mind is key to producing pleasure, and pleasure is key to sustaining interest and receptivity and ultimately rhetorical effectiveness. If the rhetor is able to please his or her audience, it is much more likely that the audience will be more predisposed toward what has been said. Making one’s listeners angry, of course, does just the reverse, as Aristotle says: [Emotions are] “feelings that so change men as to affect their judgments, and that are so attended by pain and pleasure.”17 A good orator, we should recall, should use emotion to produce a receptive frame of mind for what is being said. In line with this claim, Aristotle makes his list of emotions, his description of each, and the causes or means of inciting each in one’s auditors. What makes a person angry, hateful, pity someone, and so forth are the issues he turns to here. But his list begins with anger; it is the example that heads the series of examples of emotions. And it is clear that he spends more time and space addressing this emotion than the others. We need to examine why this might be the case. The feelings associated with anger include both pain and pleasure, and they appear in that order, according to Aristotle. Pain is aroused as the impulse for revenge against an injustice to oneself or to a friend. Such injustice was the original incitement to anger. But pain gives way to pleasure, Aristotle claims, since by thinking of revenge in anger and pain, one thinks in turn of the expectation of its fulfillment—thus restoring the situation, going full circle, righting the injustice, and turning it into a just result: revenge revenges itself and inverts the pain of anger, making it pleasurable. Where are we in hearing of this, one might well ask? Are we made angry by hearing of anger, or pitiful and hateful by hearing of them? Not by the concepts, one might argue, but perhaps and more likely by the examples used to illustrate them. Thus Aristotle invokes particulars: the anger of Achilles and the wrath of Zeus. These are mighty instances of anger used in the name of good, of righteousness, of restoring a harmony and wholeness to a situation ruptured and disrupted by injustice. It is again the pleasure of wholeness or completion—circularity—that is assumed to give pleasure here by Aristotle. It is the ecstasy of the loss of ek-stacy—the returing home of Odysseus after the journey or loss. It is the second loss that is a gain, a retraction, a righting of the wrong. The inversion of expectation is the source of pleasure here. It is that two wrongs do make a right, from this point of view. From pain, pleasure is produced by more pain. From loss, or venturing forth, further loss leads to return, the loss of the venture itself. The irony of pleasure is thus

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described here by Aristotle, not pleasure itself, and it is a bittersweet notion—a restoration of what cannot be restored, a repetition of the crime in the name of justice—which ironically makes both Zeus and Achilles into criminals by their deeds. Killing is not unjust if it is in the name of vengeance upon a murdered friend or compatriot. This must tell us something of Aristotle’s discourse itself as his deed; it is the further loss, the distancing from the spirit, which is spirit’s only mode of manifestation, which in turn inverts by its form the whatness of the spiritual. It makes it embodied; it makes itself other and the other to be true to itself and spirit must make itself other: invisible, suppressed, given over to the other it manifests. Yet the remainder exists; the remains of what is not spirit remains present, presented in the very absenting of itself. In short, the completeness of pleasure and the pleasure of completeness Aristotle describes can only come as a promise. It is the promise that is both painful and pleasurable here—not the vengeance or the original injustice. The promise comes first and never comes from this point of view; or put more logically, the syllogism is always an enthymeme, and the examples can be neither, as we shall see.

ARTICULATIONS OF EXEMPLARITY: THEMATICS Aristotle thematizes his notion of example via four predominant themes that include: (1) their relations to enthymemes; (2) the two main categories of examples; (3) their appropriate and most effective use; and (4) the general structures operative when examples are in place. We will address each of these themes individually and synthesize the implications and consequences for each in order to examine the theory behind the theory here. There are perhaps multiple theories of exemplarity at play here, and we will not a priori assume that all differences can be reduced to a simple unity of form or content. Although thematized more explicitly here in the Rhetoric than elsewhere in Aristotle’s corpus, and that of Western philosophy in general, it remains the case that “examples” and by implication, their foundation, “exemplarity,” are not the central focus. The three forms of rhetoric and their concomitant essential aspects frame his discourse and, hence, example is mentioned here and becomes relevant only when it serves as a means to this end. Needless to say, this indicates a certain incompleteness in Aristotle’s approach insofar as examples may be used for other purposes than effective oratory, whether political, forensic, or ceremonial. One could argue that all is rhetorical for Aristotle and, hence, his theory is complete concerning the proper use, function, and structure of examples, since they can only be used rhetorically, yet this would violate Aristotle’s own intentions and theoretical matrix. Commonly, one could accept the limited time/place of rhetoric within Aristotle’s corpus, but


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the examples would require futher articulation outside and beyond this particular telos in which they are most clearly articulated here. We suggest neither alternative is sufficient to accommodate the issue of exemplarity. Rather, one needs to affirm both and, hence, to stand outside of the orb of Aristotle’s universe and his binary oppositions. That all discourse is rhetorical, we accept, and that Aristotle’s articulation, binding examples to his limited notion of rhetoric, needs expansion and further articulation to account for the actual functioning of examples. We intend to demonstrate these claims but wish here only to suggest the direction of the analysis that follows. The situation is yet more complicated once one takes into account the functioning of examples within Aristotle’s own discourse on examples. In addition, his own theory reveals without saying (explicitly) the foreclosure that has narrowed the sense of example to mere part—µεροσ—from its earlier (used also by Aristotle, as if synonymous with µεροσ) usage as paradigm, model or pattern—παραδειγµα. This reduction will be addressed with its concomitant implications for Aristotle’s thematization of the issue of exemplarity. What we aim to show here, still at the level of thematics, is that even his thematization betrays itself and extends beyond the boundaries of the mere “part” that he allows example to be and to play.

EXAMPLES AND ENTHYMEMES Aristotle is concerned initially to mark the differences between enthymemes and examples, though he admits that they perform similar functions, albeit in different contexts. The common ground takes the form of oratory itself, and he claims that both example and enthymeme can be used across the range of the three types of rhetoric. But example is more effective for political oratory, whereas enthymeme ought to be saved for forensic situations. The distinction extends to structure, however, and it is not only a matter of usage. As he says: “I call the Enthymeme a rhetorical syllogism, and the Example a rhetorical induction.”18 The difference between a syllogism and an induction would thus seem to be parallel, if not identical, to that between an enthymeme and an example, respectively. And what is this difference? The syllogism forms the basis of all reasoning, which can have validity or true conclusions; it can lead us from what is known to an extension of our knowledge to a new region, with validity and necessity. Syllogisms require universals in order to be valid and necessary, and they can be deductive or inductive. An induction, then, would seem to be a part of the syllogism, the movement from particular to general. But if we consider Aristotle’s definition of the enthymeme, we find that it is understood as a partial, incomplete syllogism. The enthymeme omits its conclusion and thus must be based on facts

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familiar to the audience so that the latter can fill in and complete (with the pleasure associated thereby) the missing part. The enthymeme thus has the structure of an induction, not of a syllogism, or a syllogism with a suppressed moment. Yet Aristotle defines the example as an induction: Argument by example . . . has the nature of induction, which is the foundation of reasoning. This form of argument has two varieties; one consisting in the mention of actual past facts; the other in the invention of facts by the speaker.19 Further, he says: The Example is an induction, the Enthymeme is a syllogism.20 And again: The Enthymeme and the Example, must then, deal with what is in the main contingent, the Example being an induction, and the Enthymeme a syllogism, about such matters.21 The enthymeme, it would seem, is granted greater power here—both in terms of audience pleasure and the desire for completion in which they participate— as well as the power of certainty, necessity, and the force of reason. In this, the Enthymeme is essentially, if not manifest as such, a syllogism. The example is weaker in this regard and is only partial, yet complete, in its own way, hence it also is less pleasurable to its auditors. The example, as induction, leads from the contingent to the contingent and provides no certainty or necessity. It offers from actual facts or invented ones (used as synonymously effective by Aristotle) a parallel case, a ratio of events from the past to events in the possible future, and it produces a possibility. Hence, example is thought to be politically effective but not to be used extensively in forensic or legal cases. More on usage will be addressed in the following section. It is clear at this juncture, in terms of the relations between enthymeme and example, that an example performs the function of the enthymeme in relation to a syllogism, though it is other than both. In contrast to an enthymeme, an example is essentially incomplete (merely an induction and a contingent), and the enthymeme in relation to a syllogism is the same. Both “deal with what is in the main contingent,”22 Aristotle says explicitly. Hence, in a sense, the example is an enthymeme for the enthymeme, and if this is the case, what would be an example for the example? Aristotle will name this µεροσ, as we shall see, and in so doing he omits the very whole from which and by which it derives its identity. What is clear here is that both enthymeme and example


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are operative in Aristotle’s thematization in at least two ways—one is functional or structural, and the other is fixed and identical to itself. The question is: How do these two modes of identification, articulation, and thematization relate to each other? One can say at the very least that they are not examples of each other, otherwise examples and enthymemes would collapse into the same, and this they are not. But they are not simply different but differential. Separable as functionally distinct, they nonetheless have the same form, and this form is neither enthymematic nor exemplarity per se, at least not within Aristotle’s definitions to this point. There is another instance whereby enthymeme and example are related, and this is perhaps more intimate than the above. The one should follow the other and reinforce the other in certain cases. But first Aristotle relegates the use of example to a secondary and resortful dependence, when it is simply not possible to use enthymemes. When would this not be possible? When an audience cannot (or will not) follow a chain of reasoning nor wish (nor perhaps be able) to complete the missing link in order to “get” the point. Such audiences, then, where examples must be used instead, are the less educated ones when people are not trained in reasoning syllogistically. Again, this is the political forum, so Aristotle claims. As he says: When we are unable to argue by Enthymeme, we must try to demonstrate our point by this method of Example, and to convince our hearers thereby. If we can argue by Enthymeme, we should use our examples as subsequent supplementary evidence.23 Examples thus should either be used to stand on their own, or to follow and support enthymemes, as “supplementary evidence.” Aristotle warns: “They should not precede Enthymemes: that will give the argument an inductive air, which only rarely suits the conditions of speech making.”24 So we are advised to steer clear of inductive structures that “only rarely suit the conditions of speech making.” Yet examples earlier were defined as a type of induction, indeed, the structure of rhetorical inductions. Furthermore, enthymematic incompleteness was to be left as such in order to ensure the audiences’ participation in establishing closure and completeness. “Supplementary evidence” was to be left, it would seem, to the audience to supply from their own experience. Now examples are to be added in order to provide further evidence, as “witnesses” in a court of law. He warns against placing examples ahead of enthymemes since then one will “require a large number of them” in order to be convincing. Whereas if one sets up the enthymeme (a general and a particular), then a single example following will be sufficient. “Even a single witness will serve if he is a good one.”25 It is ultimately not the witness as substantively

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convincing that is at issue here but the witnessing of the witness (i.e., what is witnessed when, or the place/time of the testimony). The same witness is more effective after the framework of what has been seen has been set up, otherwise many witnesses testifying to “the same event” are required, in order to indirectly, though eventually, point toward “what” has been seen by all. Thus example takes the form of testimony, and its function or rhetorical effectiveness is determined by this relation to the enthymematic structure. Yet examples can and often do operate without the assistance of enthymemes, either preceding or following them. In short, examples can function enthymematically—bearing witness to themselves, offering testimony that returns to itself via something unsaid—undoubtedly the enthymeme. In this sense, then, the enthymeme structures exemplarity so that it can function effectively, seemingly without enthymemes. Thus what distinguishes enthymemes from examples? It is not at all clear, but one could say with reason that enthymemes form a part of the complex functioning that we will now call exemplarity. The enthymematic structure is inherent within the example and its rhetorical impact or, better, its capacity for rhetorical effectiveness, and not vice versa. That enthymemes also can use examples only reinforces this point by doubling the use of exemplarity itself. We shall return to this. Aristotle explicitly claims the dependency and reliance in contrast to this, however. As he says: “Enthymemes are based upon one or other of these kinds of alleged fact: (1) probabilities; (2) Examples, (3) infallible signs, (4) ordinary signs.” Further: “Enthymemes based on Examples are those which proceed by induction from one or more similar cases, arrive at a general proposition, and thus argue deductively to a particular inference.”26 Yet we have already heard him claim that the better use of the combination of enthymeme and example is to have one good example as witness testifying to the previously stated claim of the enthymeme. Here we have enthymeme using examples to reach induction, and in turn to provide a basis deductively for application to another instance. It would seem that enthymemes from this standpoint aim toward becoming examples—rhetorical inductions—and not rhetorical syllogisms, as Aristotle argued earlier. Rather, in order to sustain the determining quality of incompleteness, enthymemes must remain at the stage of induction prior to the deductive application, which ought to remain merely, though obviously, implied. The above structure would map that of the syllogism with example playing the role of the particular cases. Suffice it to say here that example and enthymemes trouble each other’s respective essences and functionings and in numerous ways, not equivalent if the ordering of their appearance is altered. Furthermore, one negative instance or example is enough to refute or undermine the legitimacy of an argument established by the enthymeme. Many positive examples can be negated by one negative instance, and thus the enthymeme is inherently unstable.


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Dependent on examples, yet rising above their contingency, it remains vulnerable to the one case, always possible, which would refute it. Not being a syllogism, enthymemes partake of a categorizing that limits them and also allows for their effectiveness beyond that possible by syllogistic naming alone. Examples, too, in this framework, extend beyond mere particulars, and they paradoxically take the form of enthymemes and at the same time explicitly function quite otherwise, and in a more limited fashion.

TYPES OF EXAMPLES There is perhaps no single concept of example used by Aristotle, though he does suggest a singular structure in the functioning, as we shall see. The diversity within what might initially appear as a concept is manifest in his articulation of the multiplicity of types of examples. The first division is between actual past events and invented ones, actual fact and invented fact, as he says. “Actual facts” have little analysis or further explication to supplement them in his theory, as he seems to assume, self-evidently, that they are self-evident. What has actually, literally, as opposed to figuratively or imaginatively, truly as opposed to fictively, taken place has the status for him of a certain facticity. Indeed, it is the certainty of facticity that is assumed here. What makes a fact a fact is not raised as an issue here and particularly (suspiciously, from a modern viewpoint) not within a discourse of exemplarity. How can a fact be selfevident? This is a modern question, and one that Aristotle does not address per se and seems to find irrelevant particularly with respect to the “larger” issues of rhetoric, which is, after all, a language-embedded activity and not a reference-based one. What makes rhetoric effective is a use of language, yet for Aristotle, as with the ancients in general, what makes language useful, effective, and possible is ultimately its referential function. Language is thus most effective when it, seemingly, makes itself transparent, as opposed to opaque. When language becomes visible, what is being said becomes opaque, and the rhetorical power is diminished. In the case of “actual facts” as examples, they participate in this general theory of language that would harbor a certain impotence in the face of facticity (read referentiality). Actual facts speak their actuality (hence, facticity) for themselves. Yet in this context they are to be used as examples, that is, a certain measured transformation of the “facts” must take place for their usage as a means to some other end to be possible. In short, the facts must become signs in order to be example ready, or capable of being employed as examples (of something else). At this juncture, we find semiotics at the heart of the creation and manipulation of examples. Facts can become examples, but they are not a priori examples. They become examples once incorporated

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within a system as signs with a referentiality beyond themselves. No longer self-identical, or self-referential, therefore, facticity signifies once it is used in the service of exemplarity. As we know what is signified can be either true or false, facticity can equally well (if not equally, easily) be used in the service of “mere” (immoral) sophistry as well as rhetoric (with a moral purpose). The question might well be here: What has happened to the facticity of the facts, indeed, of actual facts? If true, actual events can be used in the service of a falsehood, or an immoral ends, and thus what status or power does truth have? Aristotle does not follow this thread, however, since he rapidly adds that the “actual facts” could equally well (for the purposes of exemplarity) be invented facts. Presumably, invented facts (falsehood, lies—perhaps noble, perhaps not, as no particular qualification is used by Aristotle here) also perform the signifying function attributed to actual facts. Thus examples can equally well be truths or falsehoods, and the functioning and effectiveness remains unchanged, if done appropriately. The structure of exemplarity thus would seem to transcend the epistemological arena to the ontological here. Yet we are at the juncture wherein truth and falsity are no longer distinguishable (functionally), and where facts and signs are interchangeable as well. It must be noted, however, that Aristotle does insist that the audience to be addressed ought to determine whether one uses actual or invented facts. An educated audience will be more impressed with actual historical events used to demonstrate a point, whereas the hoi polloi (not knowing their own history, he assumes) will be equally well, if not more, impressed by fictive but effective examples. Thus the truth should be reserved for the elite here, and the counterfeit can be used without peril before the many who will (it is assumed) not know the difference. Aristotle’s esoteric foundations are clearly in evidence here, embedded within his theory of exemplarity. Up until this point, we have no unifying concept of example here but a bifurcation between actual facts and invented ones. Usage, teleology, and functioning bring these together at various points, but this does not make the actual coincide with the invented, or truth and falsity identical. And in Aristotle’s own terms, this can never be the case, though he does this here in fact by the omission of the overarching common ground or concept of example. This bifurcation will split again, as we shall see, and the invented facts also will defy conceptuality as self-identical and unified, or simple: . . . of the latter, again, there are two varieties, the illustrative parallel and the fable (e.g., the fables of Aesop, or those of Libya).27 The illustrative parallel as distinct from the fable is the “sort of argument Socrates used,” Aristotle confides, and his explanation takes the form of examples of examples, as in the following instances:


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The illustrative parallel is the sort of argument Socrates used: e.g., “Public officials ought not to be selected by lot.” That is like using the lot to select athletes, instead of choosing those who are fit for the contest, or using the lot to select a steersman from among a ship’s crew, as if we ought to take the man on whom the lot falls and not the man who knows most about it.28 And with this demonstration (by example of the example in question), Aristotle’s discussion moves on to the next type: the fable. The explanation (by example) ought here to be self-evident. No account is given of the structures operative here or how the example(s) are working, but rather the illustrative parallel is left to speak for itself. Further, by using it and naming Socrates as having used it before him, Aristotle is certainly implying a parallel between himself and Socrates, though this relationship (in all of its complexity) also is left in the shadows of the text. Aristotle himself names the type of example and proceeds to offer examples of it, in Socrates’ name. Thus the illustrative parallel of the illustrative parallel is doubled—by another—and multiplied insofar as we are offered several instances of what one might assume to be the same, namely, the illustrative parallel. That this selection of examples is in quotation marks only reinforces the borrowing taking place here and the multiplicity used by Aristotle. Let us consider the structure here that evidently Aristotle considers selfevident. One also should recall, as we proceed, that this example (these examples) is/are under the heading of invented cases as opposed to actual facts. Indeed, the heading is “invention of facts by the speaker.” Yet we have two speakers here: Socrates and Aristotle. One might well ask: Who has invented what? But as we have shown, the truth or falsity of the example is of no consequence for Aristotle. The invented is often more effective rhetorically than the real, and especially, one might well assume, if the invention itself is posited as real and thus concealed in its truth as falsity from the audience. We shall return to this. The structures of “invented illustrative parallels” must be considered here, since these are anything but simple or self-evident. We have an initial claim that might be assumed to be the issue to be demonstrated, and this appears at the outset of the demonstration. In short, what is to be shown is known in advance; this is not an investigation or inquiry but a positing of a claim and an attempt to convince the other of his position. “Public officials,” we are told, “ought not to be selected by lot.”29 Thus “chance” is not a morally acceptable choice with regard to the proper, qualified position of a public official. We are not offered reasons by the examples that follow, we are offered what Aristotle calls illustrative parallels, “like” cases that would thus “light,” illuminate, or illustrate the first claim. Each succeeding example, then, should not be chosen

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by lot but as a deliberate reinforcement and supplement to support the initial position. There are two such parallels—each of which being parallel to each other as well—which introduces the athlete as parallel to a public official and the choice of the former resulting from a contest. Thus we have a relation of ratio embedded here that one could schematize in the following way: A is to B as C is to D. Or, in conceptual form, one might say, the choice of the athlete is to the contest as the choice of public official is to his or her office. Why an athlete and why a contest, one might well ask here? What governs this choice? An athlete is not a public official, and the contest is not a public office, yet the relations operative between these are parallel. Thus the parallel terms are parallel relations between terms, not the terms themselves. We have a diacritical relation here of a relation between relations rather than a relation between terms. Why does Aristotle not say this? He does, but not in so many words. In a sense, he says it enthymematically as opposed to the method of example or syllogism per se. He says it without completing the thought (by omitting this account) and simply offers the examples. Again, we find that example and enthymeme turn into each other, or function within the functioning of each other. The incompleteness of the example reveals its functioning as an enthymeme, and the enthymeme is thus produced by the example as self-evident and complete in itself. This ought to trouble Aristotle’s notions of completeness, totality, and closure, but this is not our focus here at the moment. Beyond the first illustrative invented parallel (which is not a parallel but a parallel of relations), we have a second example invoked: “Or,” Aristotle says, “using the lot to select a steersman from among a ship’s crew.”30 The steersman now is added to the signifying chain of elected official and athlete, and navigator of a ship (by implication) is added to public office and the contest. The ratio now appears as follows: A is to B as C is to D as E is to F, where A, C, and E are parallel in their respective relations, G (A to B), H (C to D), and I (E to F) are all parallel in form, though drifting in content. What does parallel mean here as it seemingly articulated the structure of exemplarity operative within this paragraph? Two lines are said to be parallel if they never meet but remain at the same distance from each other at every point to infinity. These illustrations, examples, seemingly do not meet either but remain at such a steady distance—neither moving closer nor more distant over time. In establishing parallels, Aristotle seeks to establish identities here, since the relations need to be identical so that the initial claim—to be made convincing—must be understood as the same type of case as the following parallels. In other words, the conceptual framework of genre/species is in play here so that the parallelism can take place as if a constant difference and spacing to eternity. The constancy reflects the whole of which all three cases now (including the original claim to be exemplified) have become examples. We shall see that it is precisely this implied whole that makes the system work for Aristotle, and


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he names it as such when he speaks of the example as µεροσ, or part. We shall return to this but for now seek only to reveal that the illustrative parallel (invented) here exhibits a conceptual framework in its very absence of its explicit appearance. Let us turn now to the final type of example that Aristotle cites, and this is the fable. The fable, following Aesop, might be seen as differing from the illustrative parallel in that a narration is given, in coded form (parallel, one might say), in order to reveal a moral or lesson from the story. The moral will then be used as a general principle from which to draw conclusions concerning the particular case at hand. Again, the invented facts—in this case, a story—will be used to persuade concerning the actual facts of a situation, falsity in the service of a truth or, better, in the service of a good, a moral good. At issue here is not proof that what is to be argued is good, but only that it is parallel to the case discussed in the fable and, hence, the moral of the fable equally well applies to the actual situation as to the fictive one. Aristotle says as much when he explains: You will in fact frame them just as you have illustrative parallels: all you require is the power of thinking out your analogy, a power developed by intellectual training. Further: But while it is easier to supply parallels by inventing fables, it is more valuable for the political speaker to supply them by quoting what has actually happened, since in most respects the future will be like what the past has been.31 Aristotle’s assumptions concerning temporality, human nature, and human/historical events are grounded by circularity and, hence, repetition will be addressed in our next section on the usage of examples. Let us thus focus here on fables, or the fabulous use of examples, as Aristotle understands and explicates it. One should recall that Aristotle frames this section on types of example by distiguishing examples from enthymemes and by locating maxims within enthymemes. This may appear paradoxical within fables, particularly those of Aesop’s (Aristotle’s first example of a fabulous author), since they invariably terminate and conclude with what can only be called a maxim. Aristotle defines maxims immediately following this section on fables, but he does not include them within the former type of example. His definition reads as follows: It [a maxim] is a statement, not about a particular fact, such as the character of Iphicrates, but of a general kind, nor is it about any and

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every subject—e.g., “straight is the contrary of curved” is not a maxim—but only about questions of practical conduct, courses of conduct to be chosen or avoided.32 Aristotle defines political rhetoric as that field of oratory that aims to encourage or discourage a particular course of action. It is, in short, conduct centered in essence or practical in aim. Maxims, then, would seem to be essential, or at least helpful, if not the general structure of political rhetoric. But returning to fables, we find that they contain maxims in precisely the sense that Aristotle defines the latter. What are we to make of this paradox, whereby maxims as such are thought to be outside of the realm of example—general statements, not particulars—yet fables that demand a maximal conclusion are considered a type of example. Clearly this is another point at which the distinction between example and enthymeme overlaps at least or is collapsed into the same at the limit. Insofar as examples do not include an interpretation of themselves, from Aristotle’s point of view, but are to be used to supplement some other claim—as parallels or as particulars—it would seem that fables are indeed a special case unlike all others we have touched upon here. Last in the list of types of examples, Aristotle invokes fables between examples and maxims in his discourse. Indeed, they are both, include both, and extend to both arenas. There is one qualification essential for the proper use of fables, and that is a mind capable of thinking through the analogical relation between the exemplifier/narrative and the exemplified/the moral. Aristotle situates the analogy seemingly between the example and the point to be made by using the example, yet this parallel would not be analogous as such. The addition of the maxim makes the relation anything but analogical. If it were, there would be no need to supplement the first claim with the example produced by the fable. The point of adding a fable is to illustrate more in the initial claim than has been said. For example, the claim one may seek to justify or illustrate by example might be situated as follows: If A does B, then C will happen. Insert the fable concerning a “parallel,” analogical state of affairs where some A does B, and some C occurs. If this were the totality of the picture, Aristotle would have omitted the special category of the fable and included this structure of exemplarity within what he calls “illustrative parallels,” as in the case of Socrates’ usage. What makes the fable a fable is its addition of the maxim— changing the level of abstraction to a meta-statement about the preceding narrative or story. The maxim, in a general way, says what the story should have said or meant, and in turn as an example it refers back to the case invoked prior to the fable, which the latter was supposed to illustrate, prove, or bear witness to. The maxim added to the story produces the form of induction, and this general is then shifted to become the rule for the first case, the parallel/analogy to the story. We have two parallels operative here: one between the


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story in the fable and its maxim, whereby the same thing is said in two ways— as a particular case and as a general rule, and the other exhibited by the story in the fable and the case it is meant to exemplify. Both parallels must be in place in order for the fable to function effectively as an example here. Aristotle speaks of the “power of thinking out one’s analogy” and of the fable as a type of parallel, but we have two parallels operating here, and they are not parallel but cumulative. They support each other, and the second depends on the first to be effective. In short, the “analogy” here is not simple but complex, that is, multiple. The analogies are in play here, and the functioning of exemplarity is a threefold process: particular A is an analogy with particular B; particular B is analogous with general B; general B is analogous with particular A. If the first analogy is not seen, then the second (within the fable itself ) will not be seen as applicable, and the structure of exemplarity will not be effective. The destination of the exemplifier will not reach the exemplified. Further, the “point” of the fable (its maxim) must be applied or returned back to the beginning particular to give it its sense, meaning, or interpretation. The work of the fable is thus a microcosm for this work of exemplarity, which uses the fable itself as a maxim. The one qualifier for the use of maxims, Aristotle cites, is the age of the speaker (and gender, we might add). The use of maxims is appropriate only to elderly men, and in handling subjects in which the speaker is experienced. For a young man to use them is—like telling stories—unbecoming; to use them in handling things in which one has no experience is silly and ill bred.33 But the use of fables has no such qualifier other than the intellectual dexterity necessary to use analogies (indeed, complex analogies) effectively. The difference here is that anyone can cite a maxim (used by an elderly man) and make it effective in one’s own oratory. The fables, insofar as they include maxims, ought to be cited (unless one is an elderly man), and in this case one has license to make them up. For a young man, it is “unbecoming” to tell stories. Thus examples in the form of fables can be qualified by the speaker’s age and sex concerning their credibility and hence rhetorical effectiveness. There are thus two types of fables—real and invented—or cited and created. It is for the youth to use real, true fables and for the elderly (assumed to be wiser) to invent them. License again is given to falsity in the usage of examples—false, invented fables are acceptable and effective when based on the experience and wisdom of an elderly male. This suffices to complete our enumeration of the types of examples that Aristotle describes. We have noted that the initial bifurcation between examples created by real facts versus those by invented facts again bifurcated within

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the term invented into illustrative parallels and fables—based on analogy. There is, we claim, no unifed concept of example operative here, since the structure functioning within each type is quite distinct from that of every other, though aspects of each overlap to some degree. The example as such, therefore, cannot be said to exist within Aristotle’s theory so far. But this is not his account of structure, it is our analysis of the structure of his typology. His account of structure insists on one fundamental underlying foundation for all examples, as we shall see. Before we turn to that problematic, let us first focus on the so-called “appropriate use of examples,” as Aristotle defines it. We shall be concerned with Aristotle’s assumptions again behind what he says to the level of the foundations for these same claims.

“APPROPRIATE” USE OF EXAMPLES We have already seen Aristotle privilege the use of enthymemes over examples insofar as the former is the more effective rhetorical device in most situations. When examples are used, they can support enthymemes as witnesses support an argument or a legal case. But there is one arena where examples in a sense come into their own and are more effective than enthymemes. This arena is that of political oratory or, as Aristotle calls it here, “deliberative speech.” “Examples” are most suitable to deliberative speeches; for we judge of future events by divination from past events.34 Deliberative speeches thus enact the deliberation process used in order to make a (rational) choice of action. To convince an audience that the choice of the speaker ought to be theirs also, past events are transformed into examples. Again, Aristotle claims: Political oratory deals with future events, of which it can do no more than quote past events as examples.35 In this mode, then, oratory takes on the mode of prophecy and the orator that of the soothsayer, though Aristotle does not invoke such terms here. The issue in political oratory is to foretell the future, to show what will happen and, hence, what one ought to do to either forestall this prognosis or assist at its inception. Examples here frame the prophecy and indeed foretell that the future will be like the past, if such and such conditions prevail. But how can the past be transformed into an example? It must be doubly transformed; on the one hand, the actual past event becomes an example of itself. That is, the


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event now signifies its own possiblity and, indeed, its necessity. Its very facticity is now signified once the event becomes an example. It is lifted out of its self-sameness, its simplicity, to be raised above itself, as a commentary on itself. It is a second-order reality that is invoked with exemplarity, and this is the meaning of the event. That the past can signify both itself and the future is crucial for Aristotle’s position here. The prerequisite for this function is that history is essentially limited, finite, and circular. Human events are governed by laws, just as human nature is, and once known, these laws can be seen in events. Indeed, events become examples of laws and laws examples of events. But more than this occurs in Aristolte’s theory of exemplarity as he links the future and the past via exemplarity of (presumably) the present. The “now” point of exemplarity entails this extension—protension and retention, as Husserl would later call it. Exemplarity thus doubles the example and opens up the field of exemplifier/exemplified, as well as reduces temporality to a structure of repetition. Events repeat, given the “same” circumstances; if X happened thus and then, it will happen again here and in a given and known future. There is no line of time here in Aristotle. There is a constant reduplication of the past in the future, as seen from the present standpoint. What allows for this vision, in political oratory at least, is exemplarity. At issue for us is the limitation thereby imposed on the temporal structure of exemplarity. If one does not assume that history is an interminable manifestation of repetitions of finite possibilities (not unlike Nietzsche’s notion of Eternal Recurrence), then what function can “past examples” have? Indeed, what function can the past have in relation to exemplarity? Or is exemplarity reducible to and dependent on this structure of repetition through time? For Aristotle, there is little doubt that this closed universe organizes the theory of exemplarity and circumscribes its effectiveness. Indeed, it is the condition of the possibility of the rhetoricity of exemplarity. Ironically, one might assume that this very structure would make examples most suitable for forensic use. The argumentation is based on precedence—that this case is like a previous case and, hence, the judgment ought to reflect this and be reproduced in the present. But Aristotle draws the opposite conclusion: Argument by “Example” is highly suitable for political oratory, argument by “Enthymeme” better suits forensic.36 The irony is heightened when Aristotle also says: We ought to be able to quote cases, familiar to the judges, in which this sort of thing [torture] has actually happened37 [to show that evidence obtained under torture is not reliable].

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To unravel this paradox of the place of example as precedent in forensic oratory, one should recall that enthymeme and example are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, examples can serve, Aristotle says explicitly, as witnesses, and one good witness is all that is required to make an enthymeme convincing. Thus he might have said that examples alone do not make a convincing case in a court of law. Precedents alone do not persuade. Yet this seems to be the case in political oratory. On what basis can this difference be accounted for? Political oratory, we should recall, aims toward the future, and action concerning that future, in particular, whereas forensic oratory focuses on past actions and judgments concerning those actions. Thus to invoke another past action to show that a particular past action actually happened would be immaterial with respect to the issue at hand, namely, judging the action. The judgment has to do with the rightness or wrongness of the act, and prior to this, one must determine whether the action took place. That determination is not an issue for the rhetorical side of forensic practice. The persuasive problematic has to do with convincing an audience (or a judge) of the moral value or offensiveness of the act. In political oratory, the moral value of the action to be taken is certainly presupposed by the speaker, but not proven. This is not the focus, but that one should act in a particular way to establish a particular outcome, which we will call the future actuality. The movement effected by exemplarity here is from actuality to potentiality to actuality again, if effectively used. In turn, the formula in place here is like to like, as the foundation of exemplarity itself is the assumption of likeness between two events or event complexes (involving cause and effect). This issue brings us to the central thematic within Aristotle’s theory of exemplarity, and this is not usage, function, or typology but structure. Here we find that exemplarity is thought to have one unified structure operative in all cases, in all uses, and for all functions. Let us now turn to this structure and the foreclosure produced by such a foundation.

THE STRUCTURES OF EXEMPLARITY Aristotle, we should recall, describes examples as inductions and enthymemes as syllogisms, on the one hand, and he also insists that within the rhetorical performance enthymemes function like syllogisms and examples function like inductions. We thus have an identification established as well as a certain distance. Indeed, it is the distance of interruption, of omission and lack, which will give the audience pleasure to provide and participate in. The opening for the audience is that of incompleteness, at least with regard to the enthymeme as it relates to the syllogism.


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Concerning examples, one might assume, following Aristotle that there is a concomitant omission functioning, established structurally, within the example. To this end we will direct our analysis here. We have already shown that Aristotle names examples rhetorical inductions, but in his articulation of the structure of exemplarity, there is no general that is participating, no universal and, as he says, no whole. Again, the structure is essentially incomplete, and here what is lacking is the whole that might appear, at least, to mediate between one part and another. The structure of example is in essence, for Aristotle, the relation of part to part, or like to like. The whole (of which they are the parts, or each is a part) is missing, omitted, or lacking. Before addressing this central issue, let us begin with the example’s relation to induction as somewhat problematic, in particular as it relates to this incompleteness, which will be shown, by Aristotle’s account, to structure exemplarity. The clearest identity claim that Aristotle makes might be seen in the following statement, where there is little doubt that if the genus is induction, example is a species of the same: With regard to the persuasion achieved by proof or apparent proof: just as in dialectic there is induction on the one hand and syllogism or apparent syllogism on the other, so it is with rhetoric. The Example is an induction, the Enthymeme is a syllogism, and the apparent Enthymeme is an apparent syllogism. Further: I call the Enthymeme a rhetorical syllogism and the example a rhetorical induction.38 Rhetorical here clearly is not synonymous with apparent, as opposed to actual or genuine, as it might appear from a modern perspective. Rather, this qualifier involves the focus on effective oratory, which must include the audience to complete both the theoretical wholeness as well as actual performance totality. At issue here, as elsewhere, are types of proof and the two essential means of effecting these in oratory: Example and Enthymeme. One aspect of this proof by example involves the series that also is a method used in dialectic. There Aristotle claims that this is called induction, and here in rhetorical theory it is called example. As he says: [W]hen we base the proof of a proposition on a number of similar cases, this is induction in dialectic, example in rhetoric;

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Yet again, he says: The “example” has already been described as one kind of induction;39 Dialectic begins in δοξα, as Aristotle says, and this distinguished it from other types of reasoning. Examples, as we have seen, can come purely from the imagination, never having passed through the doxical realm. Again, we are at the level of function here and need to move on to that of structure in order to unravel this seeming paradox. But first let us strengthen the paradoxical element, as it appears in Aristotle’s account. He also says: [I]f one can argue by Enthymeme, we should use our Examples as subsequent supplementary evidence, they should not precede the Enthymeme: that will give the argument an inductive air.40 Thus the appearance of induction, when using Enthymemes, is to be avoided. Why? Because the appearance of long chains of reasoning also is to be avoided in most oratory, according to Aristotle. In addition, if examples precede enthymemes, then the totality will be given to the audience in advance, as in induction—particulars to generals. Given this, the rhetorical power of the enthymeme—its incompleteness offered up to the audience to complete (with pleasure)—is withdrawn. The enthymeme itself is transformed into a syllogism—pure and simple. Thus induction, in this sense and case, is to be avoided, though the example—one of the two devices available to the orator for persuasion by “proof ”—also is considered a kind of induction. The issue is, just which kind? In what ways is an example an induction, and in what ways is it not? It is clearly this affirming/negating duplicity of the likeness of example to what it is not (namely, induction) that is at issue here. Let us turn now to this issue of likeness, which also will characterize the structure of exemplarity, according to Aristotle. Taking into account this possible confusion, Aristotle explains the qualifying element that marks examples as distinct from “other types” of inductions, or induction as such, in the following: The example [παραδειγµα] has already been described as one kind of induction [επαγογε]. Its relation to the proposition it supports is not that of part to whole, nor whole to part, nor whole to whole, but of part to part [µεροσ], or like to like [ηοµοιον προσ ηοµοιον]. When two statements are of the same order [το αυτο γενοσ], but one is more familiar than the other, the former is an example41 [of the latter]. (emphasis added)


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We must examine this formulation as minutely as possible, since it contains a foreclosure of exemplarity that has become implicit and assumed in Western philosophical discourse ever since. The striking claim of the part to part relation that structures exemplarity (in all cases) must be understood as a shift from some other notion with which Aristotle’s discourse at least begins. The term he uses for example is παραδειγµα, and the term he uses to describe example and to further articulate the structure operative within the same or concept is µεροσ. To begin, the definitions of παραδειγµα include the following: “I. (1) pattern or model of the thing to be executed, later—Exemplar; an architect’s plan (Herodotus), a scultor’s or painter’s model (Plato); (2) a precedent, example (Thucydides, Plato); (3) an example as lesson or warning; (4) an argument, proof from example (Thucydides); II. the model or copy of an existing thing (Herodotus).”42 Thus the term translated as Example [παραδειγµα] is infinitely richer than the mere notion of part [µεροσ] but includes a variety of structures and functions. The most glaring omission by Aristotle here is that aspect of παραδειγµα most focused upon by his predecessors, which is the notion of pattern, model, and exemplar. Example as model, or plan, is totally unaccounted for here. In addition, the bifurcation of the concept into both model and copy—transgressing Plato’s two worlds, or transcending them—also is avoided by Aristotle. Rather, he moves directly from παραδειγµα to µεροσ προσ µεροσ: the relation of part to part. Exemplarity is thus constricted to mean the relation between a proposition and its supporting example as one of part to part, distinguished thereby from part/whole, whole/part, and whole/whole. Only part to part adequately articulates this structure, Aristotle insists. Let us consider the Greek term µεροσ: “I. (1) part, share; (2) one’s portion, heritage, lot (Aeschylus); II. (1) one’s turn; and the phrase itself προσ µεροσ signifies “in proportion” (Thucydides).” Finally, the functional definition states: “a part, as opposed to the whole.”43 The implications here could not be much clearer or made more stark. Aristotle’s concern is to locate exemplarity [παραδειγµα] within the confines of the part [µεροσ] as distinct from the whole. One should recall that παραδειγµα also means “whole,” and that in a variety of ways, functions, and structures, though now it no longer does with Aristotle’s collapse or reduction of the term µεροσ. What happens to the “other” senses of example now foreclosed by this transition and redefinition in the name of description and articulation? They are at the very least suppressed here, systematically “forgotten,” excluded, and the exclusion itself is excluded or concealed. This is the nature of foreclosure, that its very operation is left unthematized. It is not denial but much more radical, and it is not simple negligence but a systematic exclusion, done within the confines of textuality—within its shadows, unthematized yet performed, as we see here in the shift in Greek terms. What clinches the foreclosure is Aristotle’s return from µεροσ to παραδειγµα, but now it has been framed by

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µεροσ and no longer can mean the same thing. The µεροσ has been selected out from the other parts of παραδειγµα and now returns here to dominate the usage of this latter term, much like the structure of exemplarity itself, which Aristotle ostensibly speaks of here. As he says: When two statements are of the same order, but one is more familiar than the other, the former is an example [παραδειγµα] of the latter.44 And further, following his own invocation of specific parts or examples, he concludes that . . . in the same way all other instances known to the speaker are made into examples [παραδειγµα] in order to show what is not yet known, that (in this case) Dionysius has the same purpose in making the same request: all these being instances [µεροσ] of the one general principle [το αυτο κατηολου] that a man who asks for a boy guard is seeking to make himself a despot.45 Thus Aristotle now uses παραδειγµα and µεροσ interchangeably, insofar as examples have now been reduced to relations of part to part. One could certainly say here that παραδειγµα now designates the structure of exemplarity, whereas µεροσ is a part of that structure, while also designating “part” itself, but this only reinforces the foreclosure and operates within its confines. Let us consider the meaning of “like to like” here in its implications and assumptions for Aristotle’s theory. Like to like and part to part (as like parts) are distinguished from inductions and deductions here by the exclusion of the whole from consideration. In addition, examples are not to be thought of as whole, having full identities in themselves. Rather, the part-object (Freud’s definition of fetish, we might recall, that stands in for some substituted satisfaction) is to be related to another part-object—one more familiar to the audience than the other in order to ensure that the point will be made. The foreign parts will not be seen as like, Aristotle seems to fear, thus the likeness that hinges part to part (the very structure of exemplarity) must be invoked, though for the one object that will (hopefully) bleed into the other. Thus one ought to “color”—foreconceive or frame—the other. The more familiar will be thought to be an example, Aristotle says, yet he also defines the example as this total relation of incompleteness: part to part (without wholes). Let us offer some clarification here with the addition of the terms exemplifier and exemplified. The more familiar term that functions as an “example” for Aristotle we will call the exemplifier, and the less familiar, made known in a particular way by this relation, we will designate the exemplified. Together they form what Aristotle also will call, and we shall sustain, the example. This structure


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we will name the structure of exemplarity, as Aristotle defines it. Now the question will be, what allows this relation or structure to function as such? What allows for or sets up the conditions of the possibility of the connection of part “A” (exemplifier) to part “B” (exemplified), so that the audience sees the example and is convinced thereby. Aristotle insists that the parts are related directly to each other, and earlier he suggested that the force of analogy is to be used in creating effective examples. Thus one might see the part-to-part relation here as one essentially of analogy. But what is an analogy? We have shown earlier that analogy always doubles itself to be an analogy of analogies: if A is to B as C is to D, then the relation A/B will be analogous to C/D, but so too will the relations A/C and B/D be analogous. But again this begs the question of how the similarity, likeness, or analogy is established in the first place. After all, not everything is like everything else, thus some limiting factors must be in place in order to establish the analogy. Let us return to the Greek term that Aristotle uses: µεροσ. In every sense of this term, it signifies its absent and defining other, which makes it what it is, namely, the whole of which and/or from which it is a part, share, portion, etc. In every case, µεροσ itself is essentially incomplete, and the addition of another part only magnifies the problem. Aristotle refuses to address this hidden mediation of the part by its whole and excludes this from consideration in defining example. The parts relate directly to each other, and this directness (read juxtaposition rather than presence) produces, one must say, diacritically, the leaping insight of example. In this aspect, example becomes a magical process that cannot be taught, not unlike metaphor, which only the gifted have the capacity to produce and see. Yet Aristotle concludes this section with what may seem to be a reversal of this avoidance. Lacking mediation in the like to like, part to part relation that he ascribes to example, the logic of the argument brings us back to induction and indeed to the generality that Aristotle sought to avoid. As he says, all these [παραδειγµα understood as µεροσ] being instances of the one general principle.46 This claim doubles over on itself insofar as one considers that example was initially thought to be a species of the genus induction, and if we consider that like to like is an essentially conceptual formulation, since it implies likeness, or more specifically some quality that is shared by both “likes,” which gives them their identity as both the same and different in different respects. The same process occurs with parts, the other side of Aristotle’s definition of example, insofar as parts to be parts imply the whole from which they have been taken or separated. The place of origin marks them as parts, and this legacy is what will allow examples to function seemingly without wholes. This “without” here has a curious form, especially since what is really without is left

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unmentioned, namely, the difference from παραδειγµα to µεροσ, while what is really within making the structure function as such is given to be without, other than the issue. Which general principle is it, one might well ask here, that Aristotle is directing our attention to? Again the foreclosure is reinforced by the simplicity of his claim—there is only one general principle. What has been omitted is omitted (the omission has been forgotten), and that in at least a double sense of these terms. At issue for us is this complication in Aristotle’s thematics that we have sought to exhibit here in its paradoxical appearances. The foreclosure is evidently not thematized by Aristotle but appears in his discourse, and in this sense we have violated our own mandate for this section, which had been to analyze Aristotle’s thematics on exemplarity. But the structure of exemplarity offered by Aristotle has led us to consider its conditions of possibility and to distinguish between the single part (one of Aristotle’s uses) and the part-topart relation (also Aristotle’s use) for the term example. This confusion we have sought to unravel via the introduction of the terms exemplifier and exemplified as two of the essential aspects in the structure and functioning of exemplarity. What we aim to show ultimately and what was clearly known prior to Aristotle, though forgotten since, are the multiple ways in which these two relate to each other to produce “examples.” The multiplicity overturns the simple part (to whole) to part, which Aristotle insists upon and which we shall proceed to show his own discourse does not obey. The functioning of examples, now in this broader sense of παραδειγµα (prior to µεροσ), will be analyzed in Aristotle’s discourse as we put him to the test, in a sense, concerning his own theory. As is already clear, his writing goes beyond or at least in another direction than this theory would have it.

THE RHETORICAL DISCOURSE OF EXEMPLARITY We have seen the simultaneous foreclosure and establishment of the concept of example and in turn the structure of exemplarity as assumed within the matrix of the relation between generals and particulars, genus and species, and whole and parts. Despite Aristotle’s contention that examples exhibit the relation of part to part and, hence, like to like, this claim nonetheless entails parts of wholes or, more precisely, the mediated demarcation and definition of parts via a whole from which they are partial. Not only as partobjects, Aristotle also designates examples via the term µεροσ as an articulation of παραδειγµα, as mentioned above, or part as the synonym of example. From this moment on, as we have shown, example comes to mean part or particular. This reduction is what we have designated the foreclosure


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of examples and, in turn, of the structures of exemplarity. Indeed, the simplicity or univocity of the latter is assumed by this reduction. Let us now turn to Aristotle’s discourse more explicitly as it weaves through multiple structures of exemplarity, despite the foreclosure in and by his theory of the same. The actual functioning of examples within his discourse concerning the same is quite distinct, at times, from his theory. Indeed, his theory is at a loss to account for the multidimensional character of examples and exemplarity, as we shall see. In addition, we will illustrate the topoi where the pressure of the foreclosure is in place, so that again, despite Aristotle’s explicit claims to the contrary, examples function as particulars for generals—as parts in relation to wholes—not simply as part-part relations, as he says. We begin with another look at the relation between enthymemes and examples, as shown in his discourse, and we then consider the choice of a particular example often used by Aristotle, and Plato and Socrates before him. Third, we will consider the “historical parallels” invoked by Aristotle’s discourse and examine precisely how they function in each case and, fourth, we will reconsider the part (whole) part relation again as manifest in and by his discourse. Our aim here, as we claimed at the outset, is not to deconstruct Aristotle but to show the foreclosure at work in his discourse, which his theory, in spite of itself, produces, and also to reveal the time and place where this foreclosure itself breaks down and Aristotle’s discourse reveals the multiplicity and diversity by which exemplarity—as essentially plural, we claim—operates and functions.

THE RULE AND THE SERIES Aristotle has insisted that one good example functions in the way of one good witness in a court of law, or as one good illustration; the one is more effective than many mediocre instances. In addition, the one ought to follow an enthymeme, he says, or if one uses a list, it must precede the enthymeme. He states: If they [examples] follow the Enthymeme, they have the effect of witnesses giving evidence, and this always tells. For the same reason, if you put your examples first you must give a larger number of them; if you put them last, a single one is sufficient; even a single witness will serve if he is a good one.47 Such is the theory at least of the appropriate and inappropriate use of lists of examples. Yet, in practice, in his discourse, Aristotle does quite the contrary. Repeatedly, he offers us first the enthymeme and follows it up not with one

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example but a list of them. Thus he violates his rule concerning the place of the list, the place of the one, and the effect one ought to create in using examples effectively. Consider the following instances of this usage: The special facts here needed are those that are true of Achilles alone. Such facts as that he slew Hector, the bravest of the Trojans, and Cynus the invulnerable who prevented all the Greeks from landing and again he was the youngest man who joined the expedition, and was not bound by oath to join it, and so on.48 One might presume that Aristotle needs several examples, since no one in particular would be sufficient to illustrate his point. But, then, according to his own position, he ought to place the list first and the rule to follow. Yet we have the rule first and not one example but several follow. No rule that he offers accounts for this. Furthermore, the structures of exemplarity operative above are not simple part-to-part relations but much more complex. Initially, one should notice that we have in appearance at least two examples here: that of Achilles and that of Cynus the invulnerable. That which is being exemplified here are the “special facts of the case” that one ought to “have at one’s command” to prove the case. By naming Achilles and Cynus, Aristotle names examples, but in themselves these two proper names can exemplify an infinite number of possibilities. Thus he specifies further that the special facts of the special facts are as follows . . . and we have several unique traits offered for each as examples. Structurally what is occurring here is what we call the example of an example, whereby the structure of exemplarity is itself doubled over onto itself, thereby multiplying the exemplifier/exemplified relations. The exemplifier, initially Achilles, itself becomes the exemplified, as the structure of exemplarity opens out onto another level of examples. The examples for which Achilles stands thus lead us back to that for which Achilles is an exemplifier, and not the exemplified. This alteration of function of “Achilles” happens simultaneously and temporally. That is, “Achilles” functions both as exemplifier and exemplified, leading ahead and back to the future and the past of the discursive articulation, at least in order to break down the initial claim and clarify its clarification. And this is just the first level of the functioning of exemplarity here. The second begins when we consider Cynus the invulnerable and the repetition of this first exemplifying complex in this usage. Thus Cynus functions to exemplify his unique traits as well, or vice versa, and at the same time these, more generally speaking, “special facts” of the case. Yet, in addition, a relation is established between Cynus and Achilles and the “special facts” of each. Thus we have a part-to-part relation—Cynus and Achilles—and also a part/part (when the former part becomes a whole) to part/part relation, where the spe-


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cific traits of Achilles are parallel to those of Cynus. Thus a ratio or an analogy is set up within each series of examples (special facts—Achilles—Trojan hero; special facts—Cynus—youngest man in expedition against the Greeks). These two series are offered as parallels and this, according to Aristotle’s theory, is the exemplifying function that one might describe here. Yet the second example exemplifies the first, and in a sense the Achilles series forms the rule for the Cynus series. The first part of a parallel, therefore, is not simply one of a pair but the rule for the “other” that follows. Thus between examples we have the exemplifier/exemplified relation set up as well as within each. How are we to account for this multidimensionality from within Aristotle’s linear part-topart description? Let us say for now that this complexity at the very least exceeds Aristotle’s circumscription of the topic, and this within the very discourse that articulates this circumscription. The body of the text here, one might say, betrays its spirit, yet this set of metaphors is too heavily laden with the very metaphorics that we seek to question. We have not selected this particular example of this multidimensionality for anything but its clarity. Other examples of this violation include the third and fourth in the series, which follow the rule also, and thus the foundation above could be multiplied to articulate this layering of example upon example. But we have sought here to clarify the multidimensionality in its most basic form, namely, that of “example of example,” whereby the functions of exemplifier/exemplified can be found in one term of the relation, but each pointing elsewhere, in different directions, establishing different relations to “itself.” The question of identity also must be raised given that once a “term” (in a discourse) is “made into” an example its identity is multiplied, not simply doubled but multiplied. We shall return to this and to the issue of what might be “prior” to exemplarity. It is our contention that exemplarity is always already operative in the very “perception” of what is. Thus exemplarity operates ontologically, indeed, organizing the ontological itself as “itself.” We shall return to this. Let us briefly note an ironic turn in Aristotle’s use of examples here beyond that of simply reversing his own theory. He argues that positive proof can take the form of consideration of the opposing position rather than defending oneself, attacking the other. As he says: One line of positive proof is based upon consideration of the opposite thing in question. Observe whether that opposite has the opposite quality. If it has not, you refute the original proposition; if it has, you establish it. E.g., “Temperance is beneficial; licentiousness is hurtful,” or, as in the Messian speech, “If war is the cause of our present troubles, peace is what we need to put things right again.” Or, “For if not even evil-doers should anger us if they meant not what

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they did, then can we owe no gratitude to such as were constrained to do the good they did us.” Or, “Since in this world liars may win belief, Be sure of the opposite likewise—that this world hears many a true word and believes it not.”49 Thus he invokes Euripides to clinch the series of examples, and in this case it is unclear whether the enthymeme above or the examples that follow form the original rule. One might make this claim for all examples, though their presentation in the text could clearly be in any order. The source of the claim being made would equally well be from the example to the rule (induction) rather than the reverse, even if, and perhaps especially if, the reverse is claimed to be the case. Aristotle’s focus on the use of examples as transcending the epistemological concerns of truth and falsity is mocked here as he cites Euripides admission that liars are often believed as opposed to truth tellers; in other words, their rhetoric is more effective than the truth. Earlier, one should recall that Aristotle distinguished between the sophist and the truth teller in being the moral purpose of the discourse, and in the end “truth is more believable,” “easier to believe,” than lies, he assured us. Now this assurance is denied, at least by Euripides, and Aristotle cites him in this regard. The claim here seems to reverse that made earlier, but one cannot be sure that Aristotle sides with Euripides, though he cites him. Furthermore, the caveat is added that even when the truth is told, oftentimes people “believe it not.” This example, Aristotle announced at the outset, was offered as an illustration of the claim that “one line of positive proof is based upon consideration of the opposite thing in question.” And here, seemingly, we have just that: the reversal of Aristotle’s position offered as proof of the above claim concerning reversal. But Aristotle does not offer us Euripides in this regard but as illustrative of the reversal itself within the citation. What occurs when examples betray the text that cites, invokes, and seeks to use them as a means to its own end? They deviate its sense from such a mission and, we might add, essentially and necessarily so. The origin of this necessity will be our focus in what follows, but for now let us continue to analyze the discursive performance of exemplarity within Aristotle’s text.

THE CHOICE OF MEDICINE In defining the range and proper extension of the field of rhetoric, Aristotle claims that this faculty has a foundation unlike any other art. It has no proper field or subject matter and thus can be used in “almost” any other, for almost any (credible), end, as we have shown. In making this extension, Aristotle


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relies on a method he described earlier, as focusing on the opposing claim in order to illustrate one’s positive claim. To this end he uses what can only be called examples here, and the first in his series is medicine. The reliance he has on medicine in its contrasting relation to rhetoric in this case will be undermined as he invokes medicine, for example, as illustrative of a common quality shared with rhetoric later on. We shall trace this complex relation of exemplarity as it is played out through the multiple relations instead between rhetoric and medicine. The question will be posed as to why medicine is used in this privileged way—in contrast—as well as the most illustrative parallel. What choice lies within this choice of example, and what does this tell us concerning the “choice” of examples in general, if anything? It is worthy of note that Aristotle says nothing concerning this issue in his theory, other than to note vaguely that the example chosen should be appropriate and effective for the given case, the given speaker, and the given audience. This economy of the proper, the appropriate, is, however, taken for granted by him. We shall raise this issue in order to examine in greater detail precisely how Aristotle’s discourse is functioning in relation to “choice,” exemplarity, and the specific case here of the simultaneously parallel and contrasting relations between rhetoric and medicine. Initially, Aristotle invokes medicine as a seemingly parallel case to rhetoric insofar as the teleological structure of each process can be seen as asymptomatically defined rather than actually defined. The function of rhetoric, Aristotle says, is “not simply to succeed in persuading but rather to discover the means of coming as near such success as the circumstances of each particular case allow.”50 Thus rhetorical success is defined here as nearness, proximity to the goal sought, and not the actual achievement of the same. In turn, failure to reach the goal can be seen as success, understood as a matter of degree rather than in absolute terms. Further, Aristotle says: In this it resembles all other arts. For example, it is not the function of medicine simply to make a man quite healthy, but to put him as far as may be on the road to health; it is possible to give excellent treatment even to those who can never enjoy sound health.51 Thus rhetoric is brought within the genus of all arts by its resemblance to their relation to teleology. Achieving the end sought does not define effectiveness of method but appropriate “treatment” of a given case toward that end. However, at issue are the means to an end, not the end itself, though the latter can be understood as an idea in the Kantian sense. The question is: Why is medicine thus introduced as the example of the arts? In addition, why is the general rule alluded to before these two particulars? What form does exemplarity itself take here as that which is organizing

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this matrix of resemblance, genus/species, and general/particular? Certainly it is not simply part to part, or rhetoric to medicine that Aristotle cites here to make his point. Rather “ all the arts,” as the whole from which rhetoric and medicine are parts, are named as such, as a concept, by which rhetoric and medicine can be related. But again, why is medicine chosen here? It is not, we suggest, one art among others, but it tells us something specific about Aristotle’s assumption concerning rhetoric, namely, that the rhetorician can be seen as a physician, treating the sick (the audience) with his art (oratory) and providing his cure (the persuasive end sought to convince his audience of ). The series of ratios instantiated here by the parallels established between medicine and rhetoric is far from accidental or chance allusions, we suggest. It is no accident that the professions of the rhetorician and the physician can be seen as parallels via their respective parallel arts, with parallel ends— namely, excellent means. The rhetorician/audience relation is precisely analogous to that of the physician/patient, since in both cases it is an essentially hierarchical relation, based on inequality, excellence, and expertise, privilege on one side being doled out to the ignorant, sick recipient. That rhetoric must be used in medicine is not addressed by Aristotle, but this also complicates the analogy. Our point here is that the apparently simple and interchangeable (with any of the other arts) example of medicine actually reveals an articulation of rhetoric that Aristotle refuses to name explicitly but alludes to by his discursive choice of example. Thus the choice is not only significant but lawful, and further, it can be seen as the foreconception of that which it exemplifies (which always appears to come first but is actually preunderstood by what follows). Thus the example should be seen as the frame in which to see (since it has been preunderstood this way) that which is supposedly exemplified thereby. In this case the medical model organizes Aristotle’s notion of rhetoric, the rhetorician, and the audience. The repetition of this invocation is significant in Aristotle’s text, though he never once thematizes this connection. The relation is more complicated yet, since Aristotle seeks next to distinguish rhetoric from medicine and to single out rhetoric as unique in its function compared to all of the other arts. Again, medicine is cited first on the list but now to emphasize difference rather than identity: Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular subject matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and unhealthy, geometry about the properties and magnitudes, arithmetic about numbers, and the same is true of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the means of


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persuasion on almost any subject matter presented to us; and that is why we say that, in its technical character, it is not concerned with any special or definite class of objects.52 Now rhetoric is singled out as not simply one species among others of the genus, arts, but unique in its extension, namely, it can apply to “almost any subject matter.” The “almost” is not specified further here, but one can only speculate concerning its reference. The former, however, is the extension of rhetoric here as separating it from all of the other arts, and the first example cited: medicine. Having classed them together above, Aristotle now differentiates not simply rhetoric and medicine but rhetoric and all of the other arts. Medicine here stands in for all of the others, as it did in our first citation. This mode of exemplarity we might call synedochal—that of a part standing for a whole—and it is clear that Aristotle uses it. However, he has openly denied that this structure (part/whole) characterizes examples. They are, he has explicitly said, part-topart relations, or like to like. Yet here we have the example cited—medicine— to be used by contrast; to show what rhetoric is not, rather than what it is. In turn, we might argue that it is not “like to like” that structures exemplarity here but like to unlike, revealing by contrast what rhetoric is by what it is not. This structure we have called exemplarity by contrast, which organizes much of Aristotle’s discourse and, indeed, is one of his stated modes of persuasion. One can argue against the opposite statement that one wishes to make in order to prove one’s point, but this is not necessarily by example, as Aristotle himself says. Thus he does not account for the usage whereby an example is cited precisely because it is not an example of “X,” but a misexample or an an-example of “non-X.” In short, the structure of like to nonlike, as illustrated above, can be seen as one of the key structures of exemplarity. How this relates to all other structures we shall pursue later, but for now it is crucial to realize that an example may or may not be a parallel case. But the nonparallelism must be organized or constrained so that a particular difference is brought out in order to make the example function as an example. Aristotle does this in this case by employing what seems to be a general claim concerning all other arts, of which in appearance medicine is only one such. Yet we have seen above that medicine functions quite differently for him and is a privileged example. In turn, this privileged proximity to rhetoric now is inverted, so that the best contrasting example is precisely medicine. The use of the “medicinal” example does not end here, nor is this the last complexity in the structures of exemplarity operative here between “medicine” and “rhetoric.” Despite the focus on the specificity of the particular case that effective rhetoric must always take into account, Aristotle admits the gap inherent in all theorizing, including that of the rhetorical field and practice. As he says, now bringing rhetoric back into the fold or game of all of the arts again (including medicine),

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A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so. In either case it is persuasive because there is somebody whom it persuades. But none of the arts theorize about individual cases. Medicine, for instance, does not theorize about what will help to cure Socrates or Callias, but only about what will help to cure any or all of a given class of patients; this alone is its business: individual cases are so infintely various that no systematic knowledge of them is possible. In the same way the theory of rhetoric is concerned not with what seems probable to a given individual like Socrates or Hippias, but what seems probable to a given type.53 With this caveat, which defines all theory in general, a focusing on the “in general” and not the “particular,” or at least not the uniqueness of the particular but of its generality, Aristotle delineates the limits of his own enterprise. He cannot reach the particularity of the particular, and in turn when a part is named, as above, it can only signify the part (of a whole), not the whole of the part. It is particular in multiple senses, and this limit both allows and disallows all theory, in particular the theory of rhetoric here before us. The same is true for medicine. Though in practice, one aims to cure a particular person of a particular illness, with particular symptoms, in a particular circumstance and situation, all medical theory treats of generalities for which each particular can be seen as an example. So too with rhetorics, and thus again we have a parallel established between the economy of the relation between rhetorical theory and practice and that of medicine. This admission by Aristotle forms the condition of the possibility of his discourse—both theoretically and practically. Yet it also, one must insist here, forms the condition of its impossibility. That is, as a particular instance of itself, as a unique rendition of itself, as well as a part of the whole, it is only partial, and especially partial. Thus as a theory of the totality of the functioning of rhetoric, the theory cannot in principle or in fact account for itself. Its discursive body is ultimately, radically particular as well as a part of the whole of which it speaks. Thus it should not surprise us that his discourse exceeds his theory. What may be surprising, and what is of essential import to us here, is that this excess can be articulated as if not a meta-theory at least an extension to and from the theory that Aristotle offers us to account for examples, and more specifically and more generally, exemplarity. What makes the functioning of examples possible still has not been answered by Aristotle, and his admission of the necessary omission of radical particularity only complicates the matter. It is not simply to claim that particularity as such or, more precisely, the true part, which is itself a whole but other than the whole of which the part is a part as partial, cannot be spoken of or named within a theoretical articulation that by definition treats classes


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of objects. The fact is that medicine always only operates on specific individuals—one does not treat man as such, or a liver condition as such, but this particular one here and now. Likewise with the rhetorical sphere, and it is this detail that is constitutive and not marginal in the very effectiveness of the process. One could say that phronesis steps in here to bridge the gap, but we suggest that the troubling absence of articulation of the structures of exemplarity based on the foreclosure named above contributes to the obfuscation of the issue. That description and articulation can take place at something other than the supra-individual level and can simply be an articulation of this case here, or become simply the proper name of the treated, is our contention here. That the whole is not a whole, nor is it a “part,” or parts but essentially multidimensional, is our claim, in particular with reference to exemplarity. This multidimensionality takes the form of multiple structures that function in a variety of ways toward different ends. That there is no ultimate single, simple, unifying concept (of example) is our contention and precisely what, among other things, we have sought to demonstrate here. Let us pursue the final two aspects of this analysis of Aristotle’s discourse with an eye to the articulation of the plurality, at once named by παραδειγµα, foreclosed by µεροσ, and mirrored by the excesses that we have sought to reveal that overflow the discourse (of theory) by the (theory of ) discourse.

HISTORICAL PARALLELS Among the types of examples, Aristotle names historical parallels as being particularly effective in the use of political oratory. Citing a similar instance from the past can help guide actions in the present concerning future consequences, he tells us. At issue here primarily is the capacity to think through analogy, as we mentioned earlier, or part for part, as well as relations of parts to relations of parts, or by ratio. This relation ought to be understood as an analogue of that relation, and in turn each relation can be seen as a part. In addition, invented facts, as we stressed, also can be cited as examples in order to illustrate or prove one’s point. Aristotle’s own use of history and invention is marked in his discourse on the same, and often he straddles this distance by invoking literary figures of his day and preceding him. These can be called historical examples, insofar as his audience was thought to be familiar with the tragedies and comedies cited, the events narrated, and the authors generally. But insofar as they are literary figures, the “facts” cited must be considered “invention.” What purpose does such a cross-referencing serve here for Aristotle? Let us consider the authors he cites: Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Emdpedocles, and Acidamas, to name a few. To be more specific, let us consider a particular instance such as the following:

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We must urge that the principles of equity are permanent and changeless, and that the universal law does not change either, for it is a law of nature, whereas written laws often do change. This is the becoming of the lives in Sophocle’s Antigone, where Antigone pleads that in burying her brother she had broken Creon’s law, but not the unwritten law: Not of today or yesterday they are, But live eternal (none can date their birth). Not I would fear the wrath of any man, (And brave God’s vengeance) for defying these.54 The example here, of Sophocle’s Antigone—her speech and what it represents—is invoked on this border between the historical and the invented. The framing of the example reads as commentary offering a reading of the play and at the same time suggesting a law which stands apart and separates but which the play embodies. Thus this format reproduces what it suggests, namely, the duality between the written and the unwritten nature of laws and the laws of nature so that though the written may change, the unwritten does not. The written would be this example in particular, and the unwritten would be what it exemplifies. To put it another way, the written is the body, the unwritten the spirit, and thus the former is the exemplifier and the latter the exemplified. Yet underlying this economy that forms the basis of both Aristotle’s and Plato’s metaphysics, the structures of exemplarity operate somewhat differently. The order of appearance or description betrays the user of the discourse or creation, we suggest. The exemplifier carries within itself the exemplified, though the latter may seem separable and independent. The law enacted by Antigone in Sophocle’s imagination—thoroughly fictive, invented, and ahistorical—is precisely what allows for a true understanding of history and, indeed, meta-history. Is Antigone, the character, productive or reproductive, an exemplifier or an examplified here? Can one distinguish? The example, in its definition from Aristotle, should be nothing more than reproductive, and this is in a neutral and neutered sense—purely repetitive it ought to be unnecessary, though useful for emphasis and clarification. It is, in short, not the example that produces the law, but the law that produces the example, and this is demonstrated in Aristotle’s citational uses of examples above. Yet is not an example defined also as a part that is illustrative of another part, as he says? At issue here is the embedded structure of part/whole, which allows this supposedly part-part “directness” to take place. We see here with Antigone that “she” doubly reproduces the law—the law of the unwritten, unscripted, and unlawful, and this within the text, by the scribe and the law. Thus Aristotle’s


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example illustrates precisely the reverse of that which he would have us believe it reveals. It inverts the law by its very reproduction of it; it opens out the structure of exemplarity to be more than a mere illustration, but to have its own laws. As for historical parallels, a similar leap takes place in Aristotle’s usage, so that the part to part is mediated again by a general behind the explicit scene. In fact, at times, Aristotle uses the same format as above to frame the examples, namely, he states the general rule and follows it not with proving examples but with illustrative examples. For instance: By “ancient” witnesses I mean the poets and all other notable persons whose judgments are known to all. Thus the Athenians appealed to Homer as a witness about Salamis; and the muse of Tenedos not long ago appealed to Periander of Corinth in their dispute with the people of Sigeur; and Cleophone.55 Thus far from simply naming one historical scene and showing its parallelism with another, Aristotle offers us the rule which, by implication, is illustrated as he says “thus” and follows it with three cases of the same. Here we have the deductive structure in place, though without explicit conclusions offered. The point is assumed to be self-evident, since we return to the previously stated rule for confirmation (if need be) following the examples. The use of analogy here is thus hinged to a universal that explicitly guides one’s interpretation. Again, his theory of examples offers no account of this but indeed suggests the contrary. How is one to understand such usage within such a theoretical portrayal of the reverse? We suggest that the foreclosure named above, by us, is in evidence here. Aristotle himself never makes this clear or explicit, but the reduction of an example to a part has made it dependent on a universal either prior, following, or within to give it its identity. The irony of this is that the part, once given such an identity, thus becomes at least doubled and cannot be considered self-same or identical to itself at that moment. At issue for us is to show here that Aristotle uses examples in a way that reveals both the excessive structures of exemplarity, which do not partake of his reductive theory, and also in a way that precisely reveals the foreclosure, but which is unstated by him. Thus there are a number of levels of functioning of exemplarity taking place here, not all at the same time and place, but all within Aristotle’s discourse, which seeks to articulate something quite other than this. Let us turn now to this final point as Aristotle himself makes it, though arguing concerning examples that the general is neither necessary nor essential in the use and functioning of examples. We, of course, agree with him but in a different sense and for different reasons than he gives.

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PARTS AND WHOLES We have stressed above Aristotle’s insistence that though “example is a kind of induction,” its relation to the proposition it supports is not that of part to whole, nor whole to part, nor whole to whole, but of part to part, or like to like”56 (emphasis added). We have also sought to show the foundations of this claim, which must lead to the albeit implicit invocation of a general or the whole which mediates between the parts, or the likeness by which like and like are defined. We have now to consider in Aristotle’s discourse the places where he seemingly invokes examples, even as part-to-part relations of analogy, but also states the general of which they are parts or participants. The question is how to reconcile or rearticulate these occurrences within his discourse. It is worthy of note that in the first case we shall discuss, Aristotle does use the parallelity of historical cases seemingly to make his point, yet he also states the general rule that his examples apparently describe. Consider the following case: The argument may, for instance, be that Dionysus, in asking as he does for a bodyguard, is scheming to make himself a despot. For in the past Peisistratus kept asking for a bodyguard in order to carry out such a scheme, and did make himself a despot as soon as he got it; and so did Theagenes at Megara.57 Up until this point in Aristotle’s clarification, he follows his own theory of exemplarity so that “part” reveals “part” by their relation of analogy. In addition, this is an instance of political rhetoric, since we have historical parallels used from the past to provide illumination concerning a possible, or perhaps a likely, future event, and by implication a call to act in a particular way to prevent such a future. The assumptions concerning the repetition of history and human nature are all in play and in place here, and Aristotle seems to follow his own law—of examples—to the letter. Yet in the next phrase, he offers us the rule, which violates his own rule for examples described above, and it reads as follows: . . . and in the same way all other instances known to the speaker are made into examples, in order to show what is not yet known, that Dionysus has the same purpose in making the same request: all these being instances of the one general principle, that a man who asks for a bodyguard is scheming to make himself a despot.58 The list of examples could thus be extended to reinforce this general rule, though two such cases seem to be sufficient here. The issue in the use of


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examples is to reveal the one general principle that underlies them all and brings them into the same genus for which they are seen as species or parts. Aristotle himself names this law of the law, the principle of principles here in this example of examples. Is this, then, an example, or is it simply an induction proper? Aristotle insists that “the example” is distinct from all other types of induction, and having given us the structure of exemplarity (as part to part), he now offers us an example of examples: from Dionysus to Peisistratus to Theogenes. Having described these parallels, he then offers the rule of the analogy—its general principle. But examples not only, by his definition above, are not in need of a general rule, are not part/whole relations, he says, but also ought not fall into a simple inductive structure. The effectiveness of examples depends on the absence of the whole, though Aristotle does not explicitly say as much, as it does for Enthymemes, insofar as the pleasure of the audience is obtained through their participation in the completion of the oratorical device. In this case, it would seem that Aristotle has taken the pleasure upon himself, has completed the Gestalt for us, has preempted the exemplarity function in the very act of completing it— offering us its law. Yet he has offered two laws: one of incompleteness (part to part) and the second—completeness—of the general principle to which the parts adhere. What, we must ask, is the relation between these laws? What is left as incomplete here? What remains to be said, or what conclusions are to be drawn for this double law? The performance that Aristotle offers us belies the theory he has just stated. Let us turn to the hinge phrase that connects and separates these two orders of his discourse: “When two statements are of the same order, but one is more familiar, then the other, the former, is an ‘example.’”59 We now have the example located within one of the two statements, not in the relation between them. However, if we consider again the rule Aristotle offers concerning examples we find a similar one-sidedness: “Its relation [the example’s] to the proposition it supports is not that of part to whole.”60 Thus the example is not the relation but one of the terms, indeed, the more familiar (known) that will lead to conclusions, assumptions, and/or judgments concerning the other terms (of the same order) about which one knows less. This transfer of the known to the unknown depends heavily on the bridge established by the terms same order, like, and parallel cases. At issue here is the distinction between the example—one of the two statements or cases used, the familiar one—and the structure of exemplarity that makes the example possible. We are concerned with the latter, whereas Aristotle’s discourse is articulated on the level of the former. “An example is . . .” is the level of his thematization, not what makes an example possible is. Thus it is not surprising that there is a discrepancy here, a difference, and these articulations are not of the same order. One is not an example of the other. In turn, it should not be surprising, perhaps,

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that Aristotle’s discourse does not form or produce an example of itself. Further, his usage leads to the place where one can begin to formulate an answer to the question: What makes examples possible? His theory conceals this question and its possible answers by seemingly making examples self-evident, based on “the familiar” and the obvious. One sees the connection, he says, or one does not, not unlike the genius in relation to metaphor, as we have shown. There is, according to his theory, no rule that would articulate the structures operative therein. Yet this is precisely the field of inquiry and endeavor that we have sought to explicate here. Neither phronesis nor selfevidence, from either perspective, is enough here as the basis of the possibility of examples. As we indicated, the structures of exemplarity can reveal the relations between exemplifier and exemplified, not simply the definition of example as a part. The discrepancy that we have revealed, however, within Aristotle’s discourse ultimately does not take this form. His usage of “the general principle” here to show explicitly what connects the examples is not consonant with his own general theory. But what it does reveal is the mark of the foreclosure of exemplarity as reduced to a part/portion/aspect of the whole, as µεροσ rather than παραδειγµα, though in the end the latter has been redefined as if synonymous with the former. Though Aristotle never says it explicitly, his own theory has locked exemplarity within the metaphysical matrix of general/particular, so that examples are for him always instances of instances and relate by self-evident similarity to other such instances. His own logic of reasoning articulates what makes this connection possible much better than his work on examples as “rhetorical inductions.” If we turn now to inductions generally, however, we find that his paradigm for examples is operative there also but with a supplement. We have sought to show that the structures of exemplarity are multiple, diverse, and do not fit simply within the metaphysical matrix of general/particular, nor of “part to part,” as Aristotle insists. We also have sought to reveal the place where Aristotle’s discourse betrays and exhibits this, despite his own powerful foreclosing of the issue. If one considers now that examples seen as “parts” are always already within the syllogisms of reasoning—as induction and deduction—it becomes clear that the structures of exemplarity also are operative therein. In turn, the simple movements from particular to general, or from general to particular, must be rethought, rearticulated, and redescribed as a result of the complex structures of exemplarity. The example is never simply or only a particular, and never simply or only exhibits the general. Likewise, the listing of examples is never simply arbitrary in its ordering, choices, and demarcation. Again, the application of a rule to a particular implies a reduction so that the example will be read a certain way and not others—a hermeneutical foreclosure that can never be saturated. There are many many


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ways, therefore, that the induction and deduction wheels of reasoning are troubled in their necessary moments by these structures of exemplarity, and it is not surprising that Aristotle sought to make example a univocal term. Our claim here is not that he did not succeed, but that he could not have, and this for essential reasons embedded within his own discourse.


Notes

INTRODUCTION 1. This essay, entitled “Passions: ‘An Oblique Offering,’” is included in the collection edited by David Wood, entitled Derrida: A Critical Reader (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992). It also has been reprinted in a separate collection of Jacques Derrida’s essays, entitled On the Name, edited by Thomas Dutoit and translated by David Wood, John P. Leavy Jr., and Ian McLeod (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995). 2. Derrida, On the Name, p. 18. 3. Even if Derrida is factually and even morally correct concerning the errors in translation and judgment in not obtaining his permission to publish this translation of his work, Derrida’s vehemence is striking and strident in his personal attacks on both Wolin and Sheehan. Derrida’s response to them is published as “The Work of Intellectuals and the Press (The Bad Example: How the New York Review of Books and Company Do Business),” in Points . Interviews, 1974–1994, edited by Elisabeth Weber and translated by Peggy Kamuf et al. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995). 4. Paul De Man, “Aesthetic Formalization: Kleist’s Uber das Marionettentheater,” in The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). 5. Ibid., p. 276. 6. Ibid. 7. Derrida, “Passions,” in On the Name, p. 17. 8. Alexander Gelley, Unruly Examples—On the Rhetoric of Exemplarity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995). 9. Gelley, in Unruly Examples, says that despite the loss of this transcendent function, the functioning of exemplarity (as defined inside of metaphysics) remains unchanged: “With the waning of this sort of authoritative support in the modern era, the forms of discourse and textuality that had earlier realized the principle functions of exemplarity may well have ceased to operate. But this should not lead us to conclude that the functions themselves disappeared” (p. 5). For us, this is evidence of the pow-

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erful nature of the foreclosure and difficulty in thinking exemplarity otherwise, but it is just this task that we have in mind here. 10. My essay, entitled “Exemplarity and the Origins of Legislation,” also focuses on Rousseau and this issue but primarily on texts other than Emile. We seek in this analysis of Rousseau’s usage of exemplarity in a political context to show the places in the discourse where this motif breaks down. We are not principally focused on the foreclosure but on the paradoxes latent in the structures of exemplarity that do not fit into the general/particular matrix. While not contradicting the argument of the work at hand, this earlier essay leads up to the issues handled here. 11. Derrida, On the Name, p. 29. 12. Ibid., p. 142. 13. Ibid., p. 143. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida—Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 51. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., pp. 51–52.

CHAPTER 1 1. Homer, The Odyssey, translated by E. V. Rieu (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980). 2. Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon, The Adventures of Telemachus, 2 vols., translated by Archbishop of Cambray (New York and London: Garland, 1979). 3. Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man took different sides on this issue in their respective texts on Rousseau, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri C. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), and “The Rhetoric of Blindness: Jacques Derrida’s Reading of Rousseau,” in Blindness and Insight (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983). Derrida’s claim, in brief, which predates de Man’s, entails a complex analysis of the “supplementary” structures in Rousseau’s corpus, exceeding “conscious intent” and control by the author. Yet he locates Rousseau’s desire as consistent with the “metaphysics of presence” inasmuch as the latter’s notion of “the self ” is one of a desired/lost presence. De Man’s response gives more credence to the structures themselves of language, on the one hand, and Rousseau’s control and play with the contradictions and excesses in things and our experiences of them, on the other hand. To both of these ends, the eruption of undecidability surfaces for de Man and articulates both the conscious control and the textual structures themselves.

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4. In The Post Card, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), Derrida suggests that writing, understood as differance, takes on the movement of Freud’s notion of fort/da (there/here) as the latter describes this same process. Ultimately, a notion of performativity is thematized here by Derrida, wherein writing is shown to display and exhibit the very thematics that it is thought to be about. It is this simultaneity and doubleness that we will be addressing in the text of Emile as it manifests something quite similar through its economies and structures of exemplarity. 5. The term iterability is discussed in detail in Derrida’s essay “Signature Event Context,” in Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). He characterizes writing as being by its very nature “iterable,” which entails its simultaneous repeatability and differing from itself. “Iterability” thus connects alterity with repetition within the very process of repetition itself. 6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966), p. 53. Translated by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 50. 7. Derrida speaks of the first example in a series as its possible law in his analysis of Kant’s use of examples in the Critique of Judgment. His analysis is in “Parergon,” The Truth in Painting, translated by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 8. Homer had described the scene as follows in The Illiad, translated by E. V. Rieu (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981), p. 129: “Hector held out his arms to take his boy. But the child shrank back with a cry to the bosom of his girdled nurse, alarmed by his father’s appearance. He was frightened by the bronze of the helmet and the horsehair plume that he saw nodding grimly down at him. His father and his lady mother had to laugh. But noble Hector quickly took his helmet off and put the dazzling thing to the ground. Then he kissed his son, dandled him in his arms, and prayed to Zeus and the other gods.” The key in Homer’s account is the role of the gods her in overcoming the fears of the boy and his potential cowardice later as a warrior, not the role of laughter, as it will be for Rousseau. 9. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 72, Eng., p. 63. 10. Homer, The Illiad, p. 129. 11. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 83, Eng., p. 74. 12. Ibid., Fr., p. 86, Eng., p. 78. 13. In Aristotle’s “On Interpretation,” The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKean (New York: Random House, 1941), he discusses the law of noncontradiction and states it as follows: “[I]t is impossible that contradictory propositions should both be true of the same subject” (p. 55). 14. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, translated by James M. Edie (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964). 15. Martin Heidegger, “The Turning,” in The Question Concerning Technology, translated by William Lovitt (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1977).

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16. For a good summary of the tradition of hermeneutics, including its diversity, see Josef Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980). 17. Derrida’s analysis of Kant’s examples in the Critique of Judgment shows precisely this in that Kant’s intended interpretation of the examples can be shown to be an unsaturated usage. The examples have an excess of meaning that can reveal other hidden frameworks of assumptions made by Kant, though not stated explicitly by him. 18. Paul De Man, Allegories of Reading (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979). De Man claims that this double structure that simultaneously produces blindness and insight and, hence, always necessarily partial views, is what characterizes textuality itself and in turn language use as such. No total presence or absolutely decidable, univocal meanings or writings are possible from this standpoint, according to de Man. 19. In Of Grammatology, op. cit., Derrida suggests that differance, as the timing and spacing of texts and writing and language use or discourse, should perhaps be termed arche-writing, as that nonorigin, nonsimple “source” that originates, constitutes, and ruptures what we call writing and texts in general. It is the simultaneity of the double structures that we are principally concerned with here as they relate to the education of Emile and are made possible via structures of exemplarity that promote vision, on the one hand, and concealment, on the other hand. 20. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). The structure of temporality that Heidegger articulates in Being and Time can be seen in situ with the staging of Emile’s experience “for him” and “for us.” 21. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). 22. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions, translated by J. M. Cohen (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985). Throughout this work, Rousseau laments this fact as it illustrates a certain excess within the subject that is of necessity beyond the control of conscious willing and intending. 23. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 90, Eng., p. 77. 24. Ibid. 25. Jacques Derrida, Glas, translated by John P. Leavey Jr. and Richard Rand (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986). A major theme of this work is the issue of being-without-example, as being without or outside the law. In an effort to demolish the Hegelian Aufhebung, Derrida analyzes the excess located within exemplarity here as traditionally understood within a syllogistic (particular/general) matrix. 26. In his Nicomachean Ethics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, op. cit., Aristotle argues that sound decisions, morally responsible decisions, can only be made and ought to be made on the basis of “rational deliberation.” In turn, good judgment and practical wisdom require the antecedent deliberation of possibilities in order to be manifest at all.

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27. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1955), pp. 184, 553, 562–64, 567, 573, 576, 589, 594–96, 598, 604–605. 28. G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). Hegel distinguishes between the said thing and the meant thing in his analysis of the difference between the true and the actual in the following: “When I say: ‘a single thing,’ I am really saying what it is from a wholly universal point of view for everything is a single thing; and likewise ‘this thing’ is anything you like. If we describe it more exactly as “this bit of paper,” then each and every bit of paper is ‘this bit of paper,’ and I have only uttered the universal all the time. But if I want to help out language—which has the divine nature of directly reversing the meaning of what is said, of making it into something else, and thus not letting what is meant get into words at all—by pointing out this bit of paper, experience teaches me what the truth of sense-certainty in fact is: I point it out as a ‘Here,’ which is a Here of other Heres, or is in its own self a ‘simple togetherness of many Heres’; i.e., it is a universal. I take it up then as it is in truth, and instead of knowing something immediate I take the truth of it, or perceive it” (p. 66; emphasis added). The translator then notes the following pertinent fact: “The German for “to perceive” is wahrnehmen, which means literally ‘to take truly.’” 29. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 114, Eng., p. 95. 30. Ibid., Fr., p. 113, Eng., p. 94. 31. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977), pp. 1–8. 32. Derrida, The Post Card. In his essay on Lacan and the issue of staging the truth of psychoanalysis via fiction or literature, “Le Facteur de la Vérité,” Derrida thematizes the issues that we are referring to here, namely, that the “act of staging” transforms an event, is productive and not simply reproductive, and thus we suggest that exemplarity as staging takes on this productive and not merely reproductive capacity as well. 33. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 117, Eng., p. 96. 34. Ibid. 35. Descartes and Husserl both discuss this notion as it orients and frames perception itself. In Descartes’ corpus, see Discourse on Method and the Meditations, translated by F. E. Sutcliffe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1988), and in Husserl’s corpus, see Cartesian Meditations, translated by Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), and Ideas, translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier Books, 1975). 36. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 117, Eng., p. 96. 37. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations. See in particular section 20, “The Peculiar Nature of Intentional Analysis.” 38. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 149, Eng., p. 119. 39. Ibid., Fr., p. 156, Eng., p. 124.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., Fr., p. 167, Eng., p. 132. 42. Ibid., Fr., p. 119, Eng., p. 98.

43. John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (New York and Scarborough: The New American Library, 1963), p. 328. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., p. 329. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 119, Eng., p. 98. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, translated by Maurice Cranston (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 66; Du Contrat Social (Paris: GarnierFlammarion, 1966), p. 57. 54. Ibid. 55. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 215, Eng., p. 168. 56. Ibid., Fr., p. 239, Eng., p. 184. Rousseau’s claims concerning public education and Plato’s Republic also appear much earlier in the text, in Book I, where he says the former is “the most beautiful [public] educational treatise ever written.” Further, “it is not at all a political work, as think those who judge books only by their titles” (Fr., p. 40, Eng., p. 40). 57. Ibid., Fr., p. 239, Eng., p. 184. 58. Ibid., Fr., p. 239, Eng., p. 185. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., Fr., p. 269, Eng., p. 207. 62. Ibid., Fr., p. 270, Eng., p. 207. 63. Ibid., Fr., p. 283, Eng., p. 218. 64. Rousseau’s claims in this regard rely on an unthematized assumption concerning an isomorphism between the problems of peers and those of the state. He assumes that the peer pressure telos of homogeneity is parallel to the teleological and archaeological structures of statehood, namely, homogeneity. Rousseau’s theory of the state, the ideal state, is one that entails precisely this same homogeneity as its very foundation.

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65. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 284, Eng., p. 219. 66. Ibid. 67. In addition, the strangeness of the supposed equality here is in need of a similar analysis to the one following. 68. Andrzej Warminski, “Pre-Positional By-Play,” in Glyph 3 (1978): 98–117. He argues that the term example, as Beispiel, entails a bypassing and a by-play in its very structure of approach and recession. We concur with this and aim to expand the discussion here to Rousseau. 69. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 215, Eng., p. 168. 70. This can be understood in Kafka’s sense of “before the law,” which he allegorizes in his short story of the same name in Wedding Preparations in the Country and Other Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 127–29. Being “before the law,” for Kafka, entails the place of one’s relation to and from the law, as before it in the sense of addressing it and yet also as distanced from it, as forever before it, waiting, opened to it yet denied access, and this denial being ontological. 71. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 287, Eng., p. 221. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid., Fr., p. 286, Eng., p. 221. 74. Ibid., Fr., p. 291, Eng., p. 224. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid., Fr., p. 291, Eng., p. 224, my translation. The term Rousseau uses which we translate as “human” here, is humain. Bloom translates the French as “humane,” one of its two meanings, but we feel that this distorts Rousseau’s text and its senses here. That his own term both indicates the relation and the difference between human and humane, as if both one and the same, and yet also distinguishable within the term humain itself is lost in Bloom’s decision to translate only one aspect of the French term. Whether Rousseau meant humane or merely human is not the issue here but rather to keep the duplicity operative in the reading of this text. Hence, our translation is not simple either, not merely the other alternative but, we insist, it sustains the ambiguity presented and permitted by Rousseau in his choice of term here: humain. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., Fr., p. 292, Eng., p. 225. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., Fr., p. 293, Eng., p. 226. 81. Ibid., Fr., p. 306, Eng., p. 235. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid., Fr., p. 308, Eng., p. 237. 84. Ibid., Fr., p. 309, Eng., p. 237.

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 85. Ibid., Fr., p. 310, Eng., p. 238. 86. Ibid., Fr., p. 311, Eng., p. 239. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid., Fr., p. 313, Eng., p. 240. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid., Fr., p. 314, Eng., p. 241. 91. Ibid., Fr., p. 316, Eng., p. 242. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid., Fr., p. 318, Eng., p. 244. 94. Ibid., Fr., p. 319, Eng., p. 245. 95. Ibid., Fr., p. 336, Eng., p. 258. 96. Ibid., Fr., p. 337, Eng., p. 259. 97. Ibid., Fr., p. 359, Eng., p. 276. 98. Ibid., Fr., p. 360, Eng., p. 277. 99. Ibid., Fr., pp. 430–31, Eng., p. 329.

100. Rousseau offers this transformation in Emile’s self-understanding from Homer’s Telemachus as his self-image to Fénelon’s Télémaque when he suggests that it is now time (once Emile has met Sophie, his future bride, who has read and dreamt of meeting Télémaque) for Emile to read about this idol of hers. It is time for him to “become” Télémaque rather than Telemachus. 101. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 423, Eng., p. 323. 102. Ibid., Fr., p. 431, Eng., p. 329. 103. Ibid. 104. At this juncture, the novel La Nouvelle Heloise and Emile seem to overlap in that the lover in the novel is instructed to leave his world and his lover (having seemingly lost her to another) in order to place the absoluteness of this loss in a larger context. The losses are of a different order, however, and it is only an apparent overlap between these two complex texts of Rousseau that is revealed here. 105. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 444, my translation. 106. Heidegger’s early and later works make this claim, though the choice of example changes significantly from the former to the latter. In the first case, the example (as the path toward the ontological meaning of Being) is to be Dasein; in the second, it is language. In both cases, however, the structures of exemplarity, though unthematized as such, are nonetheless operative. 107. Most of Michel Foucault’s work focuses on precisely the issue of the relations between discourse, power, and institutions in a way that both harkens back to and overturns Rousseau’s works on the same.

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CHAPTER 2 1. Rousseau, Emile, p. 471. Rousseau reinforces the point of destiny as a moral demand, though it may in fact be refused in the following: “Les femmes, dîtes-vous, ne font pas toujours des enfants! Non, mais leur destination propre est d’en faire” [Women, you say, do not always make children! No, but their proper destination is to do this] (my translation). 2. Ibid., Fr., p. 479, Eng., p. 367. 3. Ibid., Fr., p. 481, Eng., p. 369. 4. Ibid., Fr., p. 482, Eng., p. 370. 5. Ibid., Fr., p. 471, Eng., p. 361. 6. Ibid., Fr., p. 505, Eng., p. 385.

CHAPTER 3 1. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 36, Eng., p. 38. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. J. E. Mansion, Harrap’s New Shorter French and English Dictionary (London: Harrap and Bordas, 1967), p. F:2. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., pp. 37–38, Eng., p. 39. 8. Ibid., Fr., p. 37, Eng., p. 39. 9. Heidegger, Being and Time. As Heidegger says: “Dasein’s Being is care. It comprises in itself facticity (thrownness), existence (projection) and falling. As Being, it has taken the definite form of a potentiality-for-Being. This potentiality is manifest as lack, as nullity, as not being. In these senses then is Dasein considered ek-static or ahead of itself and in a sense outside of itself—not being what it is, and being what it is not (yet)” (p. 329; emphasis added). 10. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 56, Eng., p. 52. 11. Ibid., Fr., pp. 38–39, Eng., p. 39. 12. Ibid., Fr., p. 39, Eng., p. 40. 13. G. W. F. Hegel, Reason in History, translated by Robert S. Hartman (New York: Macmillan, 1953). Hegel claims: “World history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom—a progress whose necessity we have to investigate” (p. 24). He further insists that, “Orientals,” for instance, “do not yet know that Spirit—Man as

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such—is free. And because they do not know it, they are not free. They only know that one is free; but for this very reason such freedom is mere caprice, ferocity, dullness of passion, or, perhaps, softness and tameness of desire—which again is nothing but an accident of nature” (p. 23). In turn, he claims that “the Orientals” have not entered History as subjects but only as objects. 14. See Plato’s The Republic, translated by Allan Bloom (New York: HarperCollins, 1968), and see Aristotle’s Ethics, translated by J. A. K. Thomson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976). 15. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 197, Eng., p. 153. 16. Ibid., Fr., p. 60, Eng., p. 55. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., Fr., p. 95, Eng., p. 81. 19. Ibid., Fr., p. 96, Eng., p. 82. 20. Ibid., Fr., p. 97, Eng., p. 82. 21. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, translated by James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1961). This notion of the fort/da as a type of repetitive and controlled loss in order to gain mastery is drawn from Freud’s account of his young grandson’s game to this effect where the bobbin he throws (loses) and pulls back on a string represents and repeats the “loss” of his mother. 22. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 465, Eng., p. 357. 23. Ibid., Fr., p. 472, Eng., p. 363. 24. Ibid., Fr., p. 473, Eng., p. 363. 25. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956). For more on this issue in Kant, see pp. 81–85. 26. Hegel, Reason in History. Hegel speaks here of the hero as the “subject’of History. This is the leader who is in tune with the direction of events and the Spirit’s movement and follows this. The one who acts against these, in contrast, will be destroyed by them. As he says: “By fulfilling their own great purpose in accordance with the necessity of the universal Spirit, these world-historical men also satisfy themselves. These two things belong inseparably together: the cause and its hero” (p. 42). 27. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 512, Eng., p. 390. 28. Ibid., Fr., p. 467, Eng., p. 322. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Plato, The Republic. Plato discusses the role of women in his ideal state, specifically in Book V of The Republic. 33. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 477, Eng., p. 366.

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34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., Fr., pp. 477–78, Eng., p. 366. 36. Ibid., Fr., p. 515, Eng., p. 392–93. 37. Ibid., Fr., p. 470, Eng., p. 360–61. 38. Ibid. 39. The New English Bible, Oxford Study Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 269. 40. Ibid. 41. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 492, Eng., p. 377. 42. Ibid., Fr., p. 507, Eng., p. 387. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid.

CHAPTER 4 1. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 116, Eng., p. 96. 2. Ibid., Fr., p. 127, Eng., p. 104. 3. Ibid., Fr., p. 114, Eng., p. 95. 4. Ibid., Fr., p. 106, Eng., p. 89. 5. Ibid., Fr., p. 132, Eng., p. 197. 6. Ibid., Fr., p. 133, Eng., p. 107–108. 7. Ibid., Fr., p. 139, Eng., p. 112–13. 8. Ibid., Fr.,p. 143, Eng., p. 115. 9. Ibid., Fr., p. 144, Eng., p. 115. 10. Ibid., Fr., p. 217, Eng., p. 169. 11. Ibid., Fr., p. 218, Eng., p. 170. 12. Ibid., Fr., p. 215, Eng., p. 168. 13. Ibid., Fr., p. 333, Eng., p. 255. 14. Ibid., Fr., p. 355, Eng., p. 273–74. 15. Ibid., Fr., p. 360, Eng., p. 277. 16. Ibid. 17. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 520, Eng., p. 397. 18. Ibid., Fr., p. 174, Eng., p. 137. 19. For more on this distinction see Leo Strauss’ Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1952). See also my critique of this perspective in rela-

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tion to deconstruction in “The Rhetoric of Esotercism: The “Challenge” to Deconstruction,” in Law and Semiotic, vol . 1, edited by Roberta Kevelson (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1987), pp. 215–37. 20. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 136, Eng., p. 110. 21. Ibid., Fr., p. 331, Eng., p. 254. 22. Ibid., Fr., p. 200, Eng., p. 156. 23. Ibid., Fr., pp. 171–72, Eng., p. 135. 24. Ibid., Fr., p. 212, Eng., p. 166. 25. Ibid., Fr., p. 483, Eng., p. 371. 26. Ibid., Fr., p. 135, Eng., p. 109. 27. Ibid., Fr., p. 591, Eng., p. 451. 28. Ibid., Fr., p. 591, Eng., p. 451–52. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 68, Eng., p. 60. 32. Ibid., Fr., p. 596, Eng., p. 455. 33. Ibid., Fr., p. 35, Eng., p. 37. 34. Derrida speaks of this notion in relation to Rousseau in Of Grammatology, pp. 269–316. 35. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 409–10, Eng., p. 313. 36. Ibid., Fr., p. 443, Eng., p. 338–39. 37. Ibid., Fr., p. 440, Eng., p. 336. 38. Ibid., Fr., p. 319, Eng., p. 245. 39. Ibid., Fr., p. 243, Eng., p. 187–88. 40. Ibid., Fr., p. 54, Eng., p. 50. 41. Ibid. 42. Rousseau, Emile, Fr., p. 230, Eng., p. 178. 43. Ibid., Fr., p. 267, Eng., p. 205. 44. Ibid., Fr., p. 545, Eng., p. 416. 45. Ibid., Fr., p. 249, Eng., p. 192.

CHAPTER 5 1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), p. 59. 2. Ibid.

Notes to Chapter 5

275

3. Ibid. 4. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 45. 5. For more on this, see Heidegger’s Being and Time, pp. 41–49. 6. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 61. 7. Derrida, Glas. 8. Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 329–33. 9. For more on this distinction as used in Speech Act Theory, see John Searle’s Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). Concerning the transformed usage within the field of American deconstruction, see De Man’s Allegories of Reading, op. cit. 10. Edmund Husserl, Ideas, translated by F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), pp. 73–75. 11. Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 141–64. 12. Wilhelm Dilthey, Pattern and Meaning in History, edited by H. P. Rickman (New York: Harper & Row, 1961). 13. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle. 14. Plato, The Republic. 15. Freud spoke of this in The Interpretation of Dreams, op. cit. Lacan speaks of empty and full speech in his The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977). 16. Albert Camus, The Stranger, translated by Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage Books, 1946). 17. Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 149–51, 154. 18. Ibid., pp. 26–27: “Which entity shall we take for our example and in what sense does it have priority?” is the question that opens the way to considering Dasein as the example through which the question of the meaning of Being will be addressed. 19. Heidegger, Being and Time. 20. Rousseau, Emile, p. 285. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., p. 286. 23. Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, translated by Alastair Hannay (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985). 24. Nicholas of Cusa, Vision of God, translated by Emma Gurney Salter (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1960). 25. Jacques Derrida, “Differance,” in Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 1–27.

276

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 26. Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 141–64.

27. This is true in all of Plato’s works, we suggest, but for a specific instance of this repeated usage, see The Republic, op. cit.

CHAPTER 6 1. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 101. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., p. 102. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 103. 7. Ibid. 8. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1968), p. 178. Kant says of examples: “Examples are thus the go-cart of judgment; and those who are lacking in the natural talent can never dispense with them.” 9. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 109. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., p. 142. 12. Ibid., p. 149. 13. Ibid., p. 141. 14. Ibid. 15. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 142. 16. Ibid., pp. 142–43. 17. Ibid. 18. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 143. 19. Ibid., p. 158. 20. Ibid., p. 106. 21. Rodolphe Gasché, The Taine of the Mirror (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1986).

CHAPTER 7 1. Aristotle, “On Interpretation,” The Basic Works of Aristotle, op. cit., “Rhetorica,” translated by W. Rhys Roberts, p. 1318. 2. Ibid.

Notes to Chapter 7 3. Ibid., “On Interpretation,” p. 40. 4. Ibid., “Rhetorica,” p. 1318. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 1320. 7. Ibid., p. 1325. 8. Ibid., p. 1330. 9. Ibid., p. 1379. 10. Ibid., p. 1329. 11. Ibid., p. 1444. 12. Ibid., p. 1324. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., p. 1328. 15. Ibid., p. 1328. 16. Ibid., p. 1413. 17. Ibid., p. 1380. 18. Ibid., p. 1330. 19. Ibid., p. 1412. 20. Ibid., p. 1330. 21. Ibid., p. 1332. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., p. 1413. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., p. 1432. 27. Ibid., p. 1412. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., p. 1413. 32. Ibid., p. 1414. 33. Ibid., p. 1415. 34. Ibid., p. 1358. 35. Ibid., p. 1445. 36. Ibid.

277

278

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 37. Ibid., p. 1377. 38. Ibid., p. 1330. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., p. 1413. 41. Ibid., p. 1333.

42. An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, founded upon the 7th ed. of Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 595. 43. Ibid., p. 499. 44. Ibid., p. 1333 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., p. 1413. 48. Ibid., p. 1419. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., p. 1328. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., p. 1329. 53. Ibid., p. 1331. 54. Ibid., p. 1374. 55. Ibid., p. 1375. 56. Ibid., p. 1333. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid.

Index

economy, 103, 201 ek-static, 154, 155 enthymemes, 227–230, 234, 236, 241, 242, 247 evidence, 136 Exemplar, viii exemplifier, and exemplified, 64, 139, 244, 246 excess, 129

Abraham, 176 Achilles, 248 amour-propre, 59 analogy, 63, 86, 87, 259 animals 95, 96, 102 Antigone, 256 apperception, 168 Aristotle, 209–235, 238–260 as-structure, 81, 85 autobiography, 133, 134 “Caputo, John, 8, 9 Christ, 9 conscience, 77 contagion, 140 Crusoe, Robinson, 41–44, 47 deconstruction, x, 179, 180, 201, 204 Delilah, and Samson, 110–114 DeMan, Paul, ix, 2, 3, 7 denial, 91 Derrida, Jacques, 159, 173, 179–203 Descartes, Rene, 169 desire, 67, 82, 102, 191 dialectic, 153, 154, 242 differance, 189–191, 193, 196, 198–201 Dionysus, 258 disciples, I doll, 74 doubleness, 197

facts, 224 fables, 126, 143, 144, 168, 223, 233–237 fear, 17–20 Fenelon, Francois, 13, 68, 82 foreclosure, 4, 5 8, 200, 202, 211, 243 fort/da, 14, 21–23, 90 Foucault, Michel, 69 frame, 42, 45, 128, 221 framing, 23, 67, 165 Gasché, Rodolphe, 201 God, 61, 63, 130, 131, 169, 170 Havel, 212 Heidegger, Martin, vii, viii, 147, 150, 151, 162, 164 Hegel, Georg, 83, 84, 132 Hercules, 108, 109 Herodotus, 57

279

280

hermeneutics, 165–167 historiography, 56, 58 history, 128, 255–257 Homer, 13, 19, 20, 82, 94, 224 hunting, 65, 66, 158, 159 incarnation, 160 induction, 242 intentionality, 31. 157 idiom, 8 imagination, 26, 29 Imaginary, 64, 65 Irigaray, Luce, 201–203, 205 iterability, 17 Jesus, 1 Job, 66 Judas, I judgment, 77 Kant, vii, 148–151 Kierkegaard, Søren, 171 language, 231 law, 172, 173 leap of faith, 175 legislator, 102 literature, 5, 7 Locke, John, 36–38 machine, 97–99 masks, 18 matricide, 202, 203 medicine, 251–255 metaphysics, 195, 196, 260 model, 157 mutilation, 79, 115, 117 mythos, 162 nature, 75 necessity, 32 Nicholas, of Cusa, 171

INDEX

ontology, 163, 164 oratory, 217, 239, 240, 255 other, 15 3 otherness, 41 parergonality, viii partiality, 222 patriarchy, 212, 213 pedagogy, 13, 76, 121, 122, 124, 125, 132, 143, 152 performative, 156–158 phallus, 203 pity, 48, 49, 51–53 Plato, vii, 42, 46, 92, 99, 100 Plutarch, 57, 58 Priest, Savoyard, 131, 169, 170 property, 34–40 prophecy, 238 propriety, 25, 117 practical reason, 76 religion, 60 repeatability, 174 repetition, 138, 139 rhetoric, 155, 158, 214–216, 219, 220, 226, 231, 232, 250–253 rhetorician, 222 Romans, 92 ruse, 78 secret, 6 signature, 137 Sparta, 103–105, 107 Spartans, 91 Synechdoche, 18, 25, 137, 141 Tacitus, 57 theatricality, 6, 7, 10 transference, 28 translatability, viii tropes, 210

Index

true, 27 truth, 125, 223 undecidability, 5–7, 48

281

voyeur, 63 woman, 73, 78 women, 74, 100, 101, 106, 107, 110

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