I

•Im •Pri•Mat•Ur•

A Journal of Criticism & Theory

Volume I, Number i Winter 1995

I Editors

John Brannigan, John Moore, Ruth Robbins, Julian Wolfreys

Derek Attridge William Baker

Geoffrey Bennington Mark Currie Aris Fioretos Nancy Henry

PeggyKamuf James R. Kincaid

J. Hillis Miller K.M.Newton Alan Sinfield

Victor Skretkowicz

Editorial Board

Jill Barker Moyra Haslett Barbara Heins

Claire Jones Carlotta. Larrea Robin Melrose

Karen Sayer

Editorial Advisory Board

Jenny Bourne Taylor Virginia Mason-Vaughan

Geoff Ward Marion Wynne-Davies

Publisher

The University of Luton ISSN 1360--9017

Volume 1, No.1 (Winter 1995)

Fotmded 1995 by the Department of Literature and History at The University of Luton, under the editorship of Julian Wolfreys. Published twice yearly: Spring (April) and Winter (October). • First-time Subscriptions: Individuals: £12.00/$20.00; Libraries IUJd other institu~ons: £25.00/$40.00. Single copies and back issues (where available) £7.00/$11.00. Student Subscriptions £7.00/$11.00 All costs include postage. Make cheques payable to: Imprimatur. Advertising space in Imprimatur is available. For details, contact the editors. Fax: +4;4 1582 489014 • Copyright © 1995 The University of Luton. No part of this journal may be copied or repioduced without the express written consent of the editors . • Editorial correspondence, including materials for review should be sent to: The Editors, Imprimatur, Department of English, University of Dundee, Dundee DD14HN, Scotland ·

a journal of criticism and theory

JOHN BRANNIGAN 3 ' And moaning of the bar': Cultural Reading Dissidence in Tennyson

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CONTENTS

may there b e Ma te rialism

n o &

KAREN SAYER 11 Slaves & Infanticid e in the Heart of Darkest England: Repr es entations of Children in the Victorian Countrysid e

JILL BARKER 20 Wooed by a S nail : Testaceous Androgyny in Renaissance England

ADRIAN PAGE 3 1 Cultural Materiali s m Conservative Thought

'Th e &

Ancient Mariner' , Nineteenth-Century

LAWRENCE GOODMAN Wilde

37 Narcissism & 0 sc ar

DURBAN TUFAIL 46 Moholes & Metaphysics: Notes on Ratner's Star & A Brief History of Time

JULIAN WOLFREYS 55 Cannibalizing Culture: What's so Transgressive about Tran sgres sion Anyway?

HELMUT MULLER-SIEVERS 60 On Derrida's Terminology :

the Margins of D e construction,

Dissc5mination , Mise en Abtme

R E V I E W S 6 9 Geoffrey Bennington, Legislations; Andrew Ashfield, ed., Women Romantic Poets; Neil Nehring, Flowers in the Dustbin; Marc Robinson, The Other AmeticanDrama

CONTRIBUTOR S 73

Helmut Moller- Sievers • On the Margins ofDerrida's Terminology I

On the Margins of Derrida's Terminology: Deconstruction, Dissemination, Mise en abime.

Helmut Miiller-Sievers

'There is no heaven for concepts. They have to be invented, fabricated, or rather created, and they would be nothing without the signature of those who created them' .1 There is, however, a hell for concepts. It is called archive, and its ~es are stoked by the historians of concepts. Like so many disciplines born in the German nineteenth century, conceptual history, or his­tory of concepts, (Begriffsgeschichte) is a well-tempered version of Hegel's assumption that the end of philosophy is in the self-eluci­dation and transparency of its Concept. Charting the errancy of philosophical concepts, chastising those who use them improperly, and committing them to the archive of the history of concepts (for example to the venerable journal called Archiv ftir Begriffsgeschichte), conceptual historians seem to be frozen in an apocalyptic gesture of preparing for this end. No wonder, then, that methodologically they have benefitted from Protestant traditions of scriptural exegesis and its philological avatar, ' source criticism' (Quellenkunde) , which dominated the universities and its ideal sci­ence, classical philology, in the German nine­teenth century.

. But mor~ questionable than its allegiance wtth theologtcal and academic power is con­ceptual histot?'' s parasitic neutralism. Shying away_ ~om phdosophical interpretation and yet rem.ammg aloof from serious historical re­search is anything but an objective, negative posture. Put into the terms of the medieval problem of universals, conceptual history os­cillates at will between nominalist and realist po~itions._ Ag~nst the realism of genuine phllosophtcal discourse it points out that the concepts involved are historically contami­nated and as such always refer to a 'real' usage beyond the claims of self-sufficiency and self­refe~en~ity. Yet at the same time, this proof of histoncal contamination is undertaken in the name of the archive, i.e. as a critique of such ~it- un~tting or malicious- appropria­uons of philosophical concepts which there­fore must posses a historically inalienable, 'real' kernel.

. The ambivalence of this stance might ex­plam much of the exasperation that, in a rare alliance, has been expressed both by continen­tal and analytic philosophers, as well as by those who propose a deconstruction of philos­ophy. For all of them subscribe to the notion

60.

that concepts are not universal equivalents, but actually perform work within specific contexts, even if they radically disagree over whether this work is constructive or not: the mere 'proof of quotation' represents for them an ul­timately invalid ~d potentially destructive mode of argumentation, for it provokes unpro­ductive rearguard skirmishes about the propri­ety or impropriety of conceptual borrowings. Again, it is no accident that prominent texts from all three schools, - continental, analytic, deconstructive - are deeply concerned with the conditions of citationality and the practices of quotation.2

There is dissent, however, between 'traditional' philosophers and deconstruction­ists over the assessment of damage inflicted by conceptual history. True to their - in the widest sense - rational legacy the traditional­ists grudgingly have to acknowledge in the conceptual historians a band of legitimate, even if annoying, offspring whose obsessions may endlessly forestall, but never quite thwart their own ambitions. The discourses of decon­struction, on the other hand, deliberately fail to protect their conceptual margins so as to avoid ossification and closure; for them, the demon­stration of conceptual indebtedness is mean­ingless to the point of becoming a merely dis­ciplinary act.

This situation seems to conftrm the o.ften repeated charge that, down to its choice of con­cepts, Derridean discourse is, in a peculiarly passive-aggressive way, anti-historical. Justifications for and against such charges have been widely discussed and shall not be repeated here; but it i~ doubtless possible that they depend to a large extend on the archive's se':l~e of history, on the unwillingness, or in­ability, to grasp concepts as creations, to read and compare their signatures. Signatures, of course, are hard to read, and-to compare them requires the acceptance of a. certain taste and discrimination in the history of philosophy. Howe~er risky such OJM?nness might be, the guardtans of the archive) should be reminded that the lack of discrimination cannot be over­come by any amount of historical knowledge. It is, in Kant's unforgettable words, 'what is properly called stupidity, and this failure can in no way be remedied'. 3

Deconstruktion

The term 'deconstruction' is a point in case: its users have been very eager to show its shatter­ing newness and originality, and yet, the hard­nosed conceptual historian could say (but then again, they never know quite enotigh), the

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HelmutMilller-Sievers • On the Margins ofDeirida's Terminology I

concept is old and borrowed: Schelling already has used it. In his Darstellung meines Systems tier Philosophie he writes:

Nachdem also einmal diese Schranke [ sc. tier Coh/J.sion] gesetzt, d.h. nachdem die ab­solute Identitllt uberhaupt Licht ist, strebt sie innerhalb tier Sph/J.re, in welcher sie Licht ist, nothwendig auch die Cohllsion wieder aufzuheben. - Das Hauptproblem ihrer Deconstruktion ist also das Eisen, und dieses wird sonach nach entgegengesetzten Richtungen zerlegt werden. 4

This is by no means an obscure text.5

Published in 1801, it announces Schelling's rupture with Fichte of whom he was widely perceived to be the preferred disciple and ex­egete. So far, Schelling bad not abandoned, as the title of one of his early treatises pro­claimed, the 'I as Principle of Philosophy': even the majestic System of Transcendental Idealism of 1800, however much it exceeded in detail the limits of Fichte's teaching, was more concerned with bringing the results of Fichtean idealism into a badly needed system­atic form; and Schelling's writings on natural philosophy, even where they maintained the primacy of the philosophy of nature over the philosophy of the I, 6 were still understood, by both Fichte and Schelling, as a necessary for the completion of the Science of Knowledge.

What meaning could the term Deconstruktion - a hapax legomenon in Schelling's writings- have for the philosoph­ical opposition to Fichte's idealism? With the Darstellung Schelling leaves the confmes of the I and presents his system as an elucidation of the structure of the absolute - of which the scission into subjective and objective poles would represent nothing but a 'later', deriva­tive stage. No longer should the absolute be the unattainable origin accessible only by· means of a transcendental reflexion, nor should it be the end towards which the human being can only strive in obedience to absolute imperatives. After accomplishing its task of exploring and naming the unconditioned, phi­losophy must already be in the absolute and describe its successive unfolding. Criticising Fichtean dialectics of I and Not-I by exposing its antecedents, Schelling's absolute is no longer an absolutely fleeting, free, and uncon­ditioned act (Tathandlung), but is the identity of knowledge and being, of subject and object, the activity of intellectual intuition frozen, as it were, into being. As a consequence, reason, intellectual intuition, and all pre-reflective states are to be de-subjectified. Only then ide­alism can come into its own; only then will the

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power of reason have become ttuly inf'mite: something is only insofar as it is reasonable. 7

Until he formulates a ftrSt radical answer in the essay on the Essence of Human Freedom, the main philosophical problem for Schelling will be to account for the occurrence of difference and finitude within the absolute, to explain how the One is also All. In the sys­tems that Schelling publishes since the Darstellung, the elucidation- consciously modeled after Spinoza's mos geometricus­proceeds fust by explaining the implications of the principle of identity as the mode of being of the absolute, and then by showing how dif­ference is nothing but a gradual - or, as the Darstellung says, 'quantitative'- shift within the components of the absolute. From these presuppositions emanates a sort of inverted cosmogony - inverted, since its elements are no longer moments to be overcome and ex­posed in their nothingness, 8 as was the case in Fichte's 'productive' dialectics. The direction of construction tends no longer from the spe­cific to the universal; everything is a deploy­ment or discharge of the absolute, everything is only insofar as it is in the absolute. According to this schema, the lower, more specific stage reveals itself to be but a precipi­tate of the higher, more general level (or 'potency', as Schelling puts it).

Organisms, to give one example, are not the result of a higher specification and combi­nation of inorganic nature, possibly effectuated by some formative force (this would be Schelling's earlier position and that of most of the Kantian Naturphilosophen). By 1801, Schelling affums that there is no inorganic na­ture: the phenomena of magnetism, electricity, and chemistry show that the inorganic exhibits the same features as organic nature and is thus only a 'lower', or relative, component of a higher totality within the absolute. 9

There are many more distinctions and specifications in this process, none of which need to be addressed here. SuffiCe it to say that Schelling arranges the various discharges of the absolute according to their position on a spectrum ranging from the Real to the Ideal, and that the first sedimentation of the absolute, representing the extreme pole of the Real, is matter. Matter as such, formless and purely expansive, has its ideal principle in gravity (forces in general represent the ideal principle within the fust of three levels, or potencies, of concretion), and the interplay of matter and gravity results in various degrees of cohesion. Inscribed upon an imaginary line from A to B, the cohesion of bodies thus shows the ideal A (gravitational force) and the real B (expansive matter) to be in a state of relative identity. For

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Helmut Muller-Sievers • On the Margins of Derrida' s Terminology I

Schelling, the position on this line is correla­tive with the magnetic force of each body, providing a parameter according to which the stuff of the earth can be brought into reason­able order. The unwillingness of Newtonian physics to account for this stuff by reducing it to abstract mass has forced reason into accept­ing matter as merely given -an intolerable situation, according to Schelling.

Cohesion is only relative identity, for it is identity of A and B (rather than of A and A); but it is relative identity insofar as A and B are (exist); it is relative identity in the form of be­ing. When Schelling says 'Light is absolute identity itself' , 10 the emphasis is on absolute­ness as much as on being. Light is absolute identity, and as such it must be written as A = A; but it can hope to realize this identity only on the condition that there is something, under the form of A = B, i.e. in a state of cohesion. In order to maintain its absolute identity (and its distinctly Goethean and anti-Newtonian na­ture), light has to fight the night of cohesion, which is its real limit: 'Nachdem also einmal diese Schrank:e (sc. cohesion) gesetzt, d. h. nacbdem die absolute Identitiit iiberhaupt Licht ist, strebt sie innerhalb der Spbiire, in welcher sie Licht ist, nothwendig auch die Cobasion wieder aufzuheben -'. And in the inverted form of presentation, the fight of light with co­hesion is retroactively the reason for the differ­entiation within matter into opposite poles, first and foremost for the split of iron (for Schelling the matter of all matters) into two magnetic poles. Therefore: 'Das Hauptproblem ihrer Deconstruktion ist also das Eisen, und dieses wird also nach entgegengesetzten Richtungen zerlegt werden'. As soon as cohe­sive matter 'inverts' the exterior activity of light, it will become organic, and light in its turn - although Schelling's presentation breaks off before this step - will become 'Wirksamkeit', conscious activity. Unlike its counterpart on the lower potency, gravity, light is not force, but activity, Thlttigkeit, the term used by Fichte to characterize the essence of thel.11

Schelling's 'deconstruction' thus has sys­tematic meaning in this context: while it de­notes the specific activity of light as fight, as active elucidation of ' dark' matter, it also characterizes the progressive subversion and constant fission of the real at the hands of an activity that, as it turns out, always already precedes all solidification. Furthermore, Schelling takes care, here and in the ensuing polemics with Fichte, to show that this subver­sive activity is divested of all attributes of sub­jectivity. Light, not Fichte's I, fights (or, in its original language: Licht, nicht Fichtes Ich,

62

ficht) the stability of the real which thus loses its status of negativity and unassailable factic­ity. While Fichte's idealism consisted in the progressive subjectification (Verichlichung) of the Not-!, Schelling traces- and this is the only apt concept in this context- the clearing (Lichtung) of being. This clearing or becom­ing-transparent of being, Schelling speculates in one of his later texts on natural philosophy, is at the same time its destruction (Vernichtung).12

Methodologically, the deconstruction of light, its attempt to free itself from this particu­lar form of being, performs the same destruc­tive, or annihilating, movement assigned to construction in the discourse of absolute phi­losophy. Philosophical construction, Schelling contends, is 'presentation in the absolute' ; un­like those who think philosophy's task is the deduction of reality, or the exhaustive enu­meration of its formal aspects, the philosopher in the absolute must strive to destroy or, less combatively, to dissolve particular being by giving evidence for its ultimate identity with the absolute:

It is clear, therefore, how in every construc­tion, if it is true and genuine, the particular, as particular, is destroyed in the opposition to the universal. It is presented (dargestellt) in the absolute only insofar as it contains within itself an expression of the entire ab­solute, and differs from the absolute as uni­versal only ideally, like opposite from the model, while in itself, or really, it is perfec.tly identical with it. n

In this frame, deconstruction appears to be the real, or 'positive', double of construction. Its activity would preclude the identity system from concentrating solely on the development of the concept. Althoogb its necessary condi­tion, Schelling's deconstruction does not result in a Phenomenology of Spirit. In this, in further elaborations of the system of identity, and even in and beyond the Freiheitsschrift, Schelling will not abandon the demand for a rational cosmogony which must precede the develop­ment of the philosophy of the spirit or of logic, even if the latter claims to be the highest ab­straction of natural processes. Thus, the Darstellung of 1801, and more so the Fernere Darstellung of 1802 , both draw Hegel into the philosophy of the absolute and set the stage for Schelling's later break with him.

What merit can this remembrance of de­construction have to deconstruction, other than satisfying the rather murky appetites of the conceptual historians for disciplining and self­promotion? An obvious one is the plea tore-

Vol I, No. I

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Helmut Mtiller-Sievers • On the Margins ofDerrida's Terminology I

member Schelling's ceuvre in a debate where idealism, or Western Metaphysics, is all too of­ten reduced to a second-hand Koj~vian Hegel. Critical readings beyond the reconstructive and commemorative work to which Schelling's writings are generally subjected would reveal the foundational gestures of German Idealism in much greater relief than, say, an introduc­tion to the Phenomenology of Spirit could ever hope to do. Furthermore, it is apparent bow important Schelling's later opposition to Hegel was for the development of post- Hegelian phi­losophy; in this context the logic of Schelling's development, including the philosophy of na­ture and the identity system, is particularly in­structive.

Such critical readings could also lay the foundation for the integration of a philosophy of nature into serious contemporary philosoph­ical and literary discourse. For reasons that have as much to do with residual theological stakes in idealism scholarship as with philo­sophical disorientation of the ecology move­ment, Schelling's philosophy of nature has been hijacked by an unwholesome group of au­thors for whom any concern with the philo­sophical principles is superseded by the desire to claim Schelling as the inventor of such problematic scientific 'solutions' as autopoesis or chaos theory. 14 But other than that? Not much. It is quite evident that, despite the simi­larities addressed above, Schelling's light is an agent of identity whose ultimate goal is the re­duction (ZuruckfUhrung), or redemption of al­terity into the pure transparency of the A = A. For us, here, now, there cannot be a decon­struction in the service of identity.

Mise en abime, dissemination

The case is slightly different in Derrida's evo­cation of dissemination and mise en abtme. Both terms correspond to each other, although Derrida, for obvious reasons, avoids presenting them in the same context and as dialectical op­posites. With dissemination Derrida seeks to capture the tendency, as well as the impossibil­ity, of philosophical, literary, and pictorial arti­facts to gain definition outside themselves. This is not, first and foremosi, a question of realism. In order to constitute themselves as self- sufficient entities, such works have tore­fer to that which they are not and thus contam­inate their own integrity with an outside they have se.t out to exclude. Derrida develops this concept most coherently in a discussion of Hegel's peculiar ambivalence with regards to prefaces. Hegel's philosophy, the epitome of self-contained discourse, cannot but announce

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itself; even the necessity of beginning without presuppositions in philosophy needs to state it­self as such. This is why Hegel, in Derrida' s reading of his work from the Phenomenology onward, continually writes prefaces denounc­ing the usefulness of prefaces. The inability to ever sublate its presuppositions is the result of the disseminative effects of what Derrida calls writing: an inevitable leak in every closed system of reference that attempts to gather to­gether and account for all of its elements. Put into Hegelian language, Derrida denies that the other against which the self determines itself is its other; its identity is therefore forever de­ferred to what Schelling and Hegel had tried to capture with that strangely moral term, bad in­finity.

But to call this stance a denial of Hegel would, of course, be playing into the hands of the Hegelians for whom every negation is al­ready contained in the absolute from which they proceed. Derrida, therefore, refers to dis­semination not only as an activity (as a prac­tice of critical reading) with which to disrupt the closure of Hegelian forms of discourse, but also as a property of the texts under discussion: dissemination is both a work on the text and at work in the text Traversing the distinction be­tween activity and passivity, between critique and affirmation in favor of a more radical, or more superfluous, difftrance, Derrida seeks to evade the threat of closed and confined inter­pretations without - and this needs to be stressed- ending in arbitrariness.

Given Derrida's extended definition of writing, dissemination afflicts not only philos­ophy, but other texts as well - those of litera­ture, of course, which thematizc the dissemina­tive crack with increasing intensity in the course of modernity and, in addition, the 'texts' of painting which erode the closed frame of representation. Derrida' s analyses of these texts concentrate on dislodging a dissem­inative logic that would both show the peculiar necessity and the unsublateable alterity of the disseminative process. Hence his tendency to momentarily stabilize concepts for the purpose of certain analyses and later, much to the con­sternation of his disciples, drop them - hy­men, enjeu, dijferance, deconstruction, infras­tructure, and of course, dissemination and mise en abfme.

Mise en abime is the non-dialectical dou­ble of dissemination. In his seminars, Derrida would describe this concept very simply by evoking the package of that famous cheese, La vache qui rit: a laughing cow carrying around her neck a bell with the image of a laughing cow carrying around her neck ... Evidently, this mechanism is best exemplified with picto-

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HelmutMiiller-Sievers • On the Margins ofDerrida's Terminology I

rial material, but every instance of indirect speech or authorial interference in literature, every inclusive causal chain in philosophical reasoning exhibits the same structure. Again, the abysmal effect derives from the nature of writing as Derrida understands it: every act of signification is forever dissociated from its source and therefore infinitely repeatable, and every attempt to reclaim runaway statements leads to a - potentially infinite - series of encapsulations.

A somewhat more portentous example than the laughing cow is the memorable alter­cation between the priests and Pilate over the inscription on Jesus' cross:

Pilate wrote out a notice and had it fixed to the cross; it ran: 'Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews'. This note was read by many of the Jews, because the place where Jesus was crucified was not far from the city, and the writing was in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. So the Jewish chief priests said to Pilate, 'You should not write "King of the Jews", but "This man said: I am King of the Jews"'. Pilate answered, 'What I have written I have written'. (John 19:17 sqq.)

At ftrst sight, Pilate's stubborn ho gegrapha gegrapha seems to be a meaningless statement, intended only to end the infinite spiral of quo­tation with a sentence of pure power. But it must l\lso be understood as an acknowledg­ment of the peculiar nature of writing: what I have written, I have written and not spoken; it is subject to the laws of exteriority and there­fore corrigible only through another act of writing which is subject to the laws ... The in­ternal quotation demanded by the priest, if it is to escape all ambiguities, would have to con­front the problem of scriptural deixis which Pilate, rightly, understands to be unsolvable. This difference between the utterance of pure power and the acknowledgment of the medium of utterance cannot be expressed in the medium itself, albeit by means of clumsy graphical devices. Such instance of the tone (rather than of the letter) of utterance is, in Derrida's readings, a trace of the unsignifiable difference traversing all de-clarations (Er­klt.trungen).15

More significantly, however, the Auseinandersetzung over the inscription above the son of god is ended by a seeming parody of the formula of subjectivity, I= I. For this for­mula not to be a tautology - as Kant had still insisted - there must indeed be a difference in the identity of the poles, a difference, however, that in every act, or at the end of history, can be recovered and integrated into the fullness of

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subjectivity. As the history of idealist philoso­phy shows, its 'original' version is indeed 'I am the King of the Jews', the formula which the priests hope to expose in its preposterous­ness and which Pilate's graphic act both dis­seminates and conceals. But while the differ­ence between I and I can, at least in principle, be made intelligible - for example as the ut­most contraction of the statement 'I am the King of Jews, the means and end, i.e. the sub­ject of a meaningful history of salvation', the difference between gegrapha and gegrapha, as the condition of the possibility and impossibil­ity of its expression, cannot be marked or re­covered. The death sentence of the savior, which, in Hegel's history, announces the birth of subjectivity (his symbol, Ichtus, must have been reassuring), is thus crossed by the traces of mise en ablme and dissemination.16

In Derrida' s reading both· are but inverse sides of the same destabilizing tendency af­flicting every closed assemblage of signifying elements. The intimate relation between these terms is a further instance of Nietzsche's prin­ciple that two different interpretations of the 'same' phenomenon furnish two lineages of problems which defy traditional (negative) forms of coherence between terms without necessarily drifting off into incomprehensibil­ity. Roughly spoken, the demonstration of the disseminative character of utterances repre­sents the subversive, uncontrollable, schizoid, or 'positive' side of deconstruction, while the exposition of mise en abtme belongs to its crit­ical, meticulous, 'paranoid', negative side; in-. deed, Derrida privileges the ftrst mode of read­ing when concerned with literary texts while the second mode allows 'him to articulate the political and institutional implications of doc­uments.

Given thei.v historical provenance, insis­tence on the peculiar 'identity' of dissemina­tion and mise en abime, as well as the evoca­tion of the Christian background, is everything but gratuitou~. For in their 'original' context both terms appear as different ' scientific' an­swers to the seemingly narrow problem of or­ganic generation; but they do so within a phi­losophy of nature which is designed to lay the ground for a comprehensive scientific theod­icy. Charles Bonnet (1720-93), understood his massively influential studies in the philosophy of nature as an endeavor to bridge any possible rupture between the creator and his work: all beings, from the stones to the angels, constitute the famous chain, or ladder, of being by means of which the creator is linked to his creation. The task of such a science - Albrecht v. Haller and Lazzzaro Spallanzani were its other main proponents - was to describe and clas-

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Helmut Miiller-Sievers • On the Margins of Derrida' s Terminology I

sify the unfolding of nature within the horizon of creation. Refuting the idea of productive forces in nature, Bonnet could explain the nec­essary ftxity of the species only by assuming that each individual has been preformed since creation.

On the experimental level of the debate, preformationist scientists - the most influen­tial group in the second half of the eighteenth century - disagreed over the exact location of the preformed germ. Microscopic evidence since the end of the seventeenth century had suggested that the spermatozoon might be the perfect candidate for such a preformed germ - Leibniz had used it as proof for his mon­adology. But the economical difficulties with the hypothesis - can nature allow the waste of so many preformed germs? - would soon override its intuitive advantage. The other pos­sibility was to assign the preformed germ to the female ovum - postulated but not dis­covered until 1827 - and to proclaim a sort of strictly matrilinear form of heredity. In both cases, the germs were encapsulated within one another, and the opposite sex played a neces­sary, but by no means sufficient role in the process of generation.

The alternative to these two forms of en­capsulation could only be the hypothesis that preformed germs were disseminated through­out the universe and would - by means of in­gestion or inhalation - find their way into a cospecific matrix. Here is how Bonnet presents the ftrSt possibility:

Il est possible que taus les Germes d'une meme espece ayent ete originairment em­boites les uns dans les autres, & qu'ils ne fassent que se developper de generation suivant une progression que la Geometrie tented' assigner.11

Obviously, this hypothesis puts a massive strain on the imagination which has to cope with the idea of Eve containing all past, pre­sent, and future human beings in her ovaries. According to Bonnet, this difficulty was the motivation behind the 'invention' of dissemi­nation:

Des philosophes, tris-convaincus de la preexistence des germes, ont tene de soulager un peu I' Imagination, en inventant une autre hypothese. Ils ont suppose que les Germes etoient repandus universellement dans toute les Parties de notre Globe, dans l'Air, dans l'Eau, dans la Terre, dans le Corps des Plantes & des Animaux & c. mais qu'ils ne parvenoient a se developper que dans des Matrices appropries. Ainsi dans

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cette hypothese de la Dissemination, les Germes d'une espece donee ne peuvent se divelopper que dans des Touts organiques de meme espece: ils sont les seuls qui ren­ferment les conditions necessaires au Developpment.18

Since both possibilities are contained within his preformationist theory, Bonnet can afford to remain rather noncommittal in his presenta­tion. He makes it quite clear that the choice between mise en abime and dissemination is just as much a matter of aesthetic judgment: 'Cette hypothese de l'Emboitement est une des plus belle victoires que'l'Entendement ait remporte sur lesSens' .19Tbe same motivation is behind the choice of and appreciation for preformationism tout court:

Tout ce que je viens d'exposer sur la genera­tion, on ne la prendra si l'on veut, que pour un roman. Je suis moi-meme fort dispose a l'envisager sous le meme point de vue. Je sens que je n'ai satisfait qu'imparfaitment aux phenomenes. Mais je demanderai si l' on trouve que les autres hypothese y satis­fassent mieux. Je ferai lii-dessus deux rejlexions La premiere, qu je ne saurois me resoudre a abandonner une aussi belle thiorie que l'est celle des Germe preexis­tans, pour embrasser des explications pure­ment michaniques. La seconde, qu 'il me paroit qu 'on auroit du ttlcher d' approfondir davantage la maniere dont s'opere le developpment, avant que de chercher a penetrer ce lle dont s' opere Ia generation. 20

Bonnet's repeated attribution of beauty to the preformationist hypothesis is both reveal­ing and misleading. It shows disarmingly that the formation and acceptance of scientific the­ories within a prestabilized framework is moti­vated by other factors than is generally as­sumed in the history of scientific revolutions. But then again, Bonnet is not really speaking about beauty, for preformationism, and mise en abtme in particular, are examples of the sub­lime insofar as they represent

un des grand efforts de l' esprit sur les sens. Le differens ordres d'infiniment petits abtmes les uns dans les autres, que cette hy­pothese admet, accablent ['imagination sans ejfrayer la raison. 21

What spe3ks for mise en abtme as the prefer­able theory of generation is its sublimity, and specifically its practical impact as a ~eans to domesticate the senses. Like any expenence of the sublime, in which the panic resulting from

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sensory overload is checked by the awe of sheer unrepresentability, mise en abime builds up the self. It rewards the self for the pain of domesticating its senses - for the pain of its self-formation - with an explanation of the origin of this very sensory self. We have to contain - encapsulate - our senses within reason in order to (under)stand the origin of our natural self- and, vice versa, understand­ing, or rather: exposing ourselves to the sub­limity of our natural origin will bring forth a self strong enough to control the senses. A sub­lime theory for strong selves.

Any other theory of generation, apart from not satisfying B~mnet's scientific standards, would have the additional fault of not being able to guarantee this essential link between natural and moral phenomena. Dissemination, while equally preformed and sublime, always invokes the ghosts of pure chance and ran­domness and thus might lead, as the case of Buffon clearly showed, to moral dissolution and atheism. The theory of epigenesis - the self-formation of unformed organic material guided by a formative force - will emerge only after the destruction of the horizon within which Bonnet maintained the adequacy of the­ories and moral self and require a reformula­tion of the theory of the self and of the status of natural phenomena. Together with Haller, Bonnet spent the last years of his life combat­ing the rise of epigenetic theory.22

In light of these ramifications of preforma­tionist theory one would have hoped for Derrida to articulate the context of these terms. 23 One of the loci in which he most at­tentively follows the movement of mise en abime is his reading of Kant's Third Critique, and in particular of the chapters on the sub­lime.24 Here Derrida teases apart two diverg­ing traits in Kant's aesthetics: on the one hand, the pure instability of the beautiful object inso­far as its frame - or parergon - would al­ways undo its definitions and limitations; on the other hand, the sublime as the unframeable, colossal, object which forces the apprehending subject to suffer the concussion of its cognitive structures. As Derrida shows, the sublime is sustained by a sacrificial logic - the imagina­tion overloads and thus saaifices itself in order to experience the sublimity of the law; it ex­ceeds the adequate logic of exchange which characterizes, according to Derrida, the func­tion of the sublime in Hegel's aesthetics. Both in the experience of the beautiful and the sub­lime Derrida's deconstruction thus uncovers in Kant's text a pure loss that threatens to under­mine the role of the Third Critique as the cap­stone of the 'critical business' .

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But by disregarding the context of dissem­ination and mise en abime and, consequently, by confining the inquiry to the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, a strategy and range of argumentation is given up that would have al­lowed to foreground the affirmative and 'positive' work of deconstructive readings. For even if the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment shows signs of leakage, it is commonly argued -by all of Kant's idealist successors, for ex­ample - that it is the Critique of Teleological Judgment that manages to seal the edifice of critical philosophy. The second part or' the Third Critique derives its soothing effect from Kant's interpretation of organisms as manifes­tations of purpose and freedom in nature. But organisms can fulfill this function only if their generation is already characterized by freedom from purely mechanical causality. Mise en abime and dissemination, specifically designed

,)

to shield the process of generation from supranatural interferences, cannot satisfy the epigenetic demand for free origination. Therefore, Kant's defmition of organic 'natural products' is centered around their specifically 'free', epigenetic mode of origination.2s

Organisms and their epigenetic origin thus provide the perfect antidote to the terror of the sublime. The dissolution of the self faced with the incomprehensibility of sublime natural phenomena is dammed by the contemplation of organic phenomena in which the same in­comprehensible indices of reason are comfort­ing and hopeful. In the historical context of Derrida' s own terms, the self that is shattered in the experience of the sublime is the pre­formed self of Bonnet and his eighteenth cen­tury' whereas the self drawing comfort from the organic phenomena is the epigenetic self which Kaut and his idealist intetpreters ush­ered into the nineteenth century.

The context and ramifications of Bonnet's theory of generation, if it were integrated into Detrida' s {_eading of the Third Critique, might help to address a crucial problem of Kant in­tetpretation: the articulation of aesthetic and teleological judgment. While beauty in art and self-generation of organisms consolidate the mtiverse of a subject that is constitutively self­thinking (result of the First Critique) and free (result of the Second Critique), the chapters on the sublime might indeed present and conserve the traces of a past that Kant, unlike his suc­cessors, is unwilling to sacrifice to the illusion of total autogony of the subject. If indeed, as Derrida shows, the figure for the epigenetic, 'Hegelian' subjectJs the circle, his question 'Comment un cercle s'abymerait-il?' might find an answer in the history of his own terms, in the past of the sublime. But this would be a

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different past than the history over which the historians of concepts keep their vigil.

Notes

1G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie? (Paris: Minuit 1991), 11: 'll n'y a pas de ciel pour les concepts. lls doivent etre invents, fabriqu~s ou plutot crees, et ne seraient rien sans Ia signature de ceux qui les creent'.

2Cf. G.W.F. Hegel, Phtinomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1977), 82-92 ('Die sinnliche GewiBheit oder das Diese und das Meinen'); D. Davidson, 'Quotation', Inquiries into Truth and -Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986), 79-92; J. Derrida, 'Limited Inc abc .. .', Limited INC. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1988), esp. 55-107.

3I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vemunft , B173, note. Cf. also Deleuze I Guattari, 13: 'Le bap­teme du concept sollicite un gout proprement philosophique qui procMe avec violence ou avec insinuation, et qui constitue dans la langue une langue de la philosophie, non seulement un vocabulaire, mais une syntaxe atteignant au sublime ou a une grand beaute'.

4F. W. J. Schelling, Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie. Schellings Werke ed. M. Schroter (SW), (Miinchen: Beck 1927, vol. 3), 66: 'After this limitation (sc. of cohesion) has been posited, i.e. after absolute identity is light as such, it strives within the sphere in which it is light to sublate with necessity co­hesion again. The central problem of its decon­struction is therefore iron, and this is conse­quently divided into two opposite directions'.

5For a history of this text - and an astonish­ingly partisan interpretation - cf. R. Lauth, Die Entstehung von Schellings Identitatsphilosophie in der Auseinandersetzung mit Fichtes Wissenscha[tslehre (Miinchen: Alber 1975), 127- 204. Lauth's main charges against Schelling's identity philosophy are: 1) it dis­engages epistemology from metaphysics; 2) it objectifies intellectual intuition; and hence 3) sacrifices freedom as the principle of all knowledge. All of this threatens the originality (Ursprunglichkeit) of the moral law, which, according to Lauth, is already fully present in the Science of Knowledge.

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6E.g. Ueber den wahren Begriff der Naturphilosophie und die richtige Art ihre Probleme aufzultJs(m (SW vol. 2), 718: 'Es gibt einen Idealismus der Natur, und einen Idealismus des Ichs. Jener ist mir der ur­spr.ngliche, dieser der abgeleitete', [There is an idealism of nature, and an idealism of the I. The former is the more original for me, the lat­ter is derivative] and ibid., 726: "Mehrere haben, weil von Natur"' und Transcendental=Philosophie als entgegenge­setzten gleich moglichen Richtungen der Philosophie die Rede war, gefragt, welcher von heiden denn die Prioritat zukomme. -Ohne Zweifel der Naturphilosophie, weil diese den Standpunkt des ldealismus selbst erst entstehen lli.Bt und ibm damit eine sichere, rein theoretische Grundlage verschafft' [Many have asked, because there was talk about natural­and transcendental philosophy as opposite, yet equally possible directions of philosophy, which of the two has priority. - Without a doubt the philosophy of nature, because only it gives rise to the position of idealism and pro­vides a secure, purely theoretical foundation for it].

7Cf. Fernere Darstellungen aus dem System der Philosophie (SW vol. 1, suppl.), 442, evi­dently written in consultation with Hegel: 'Deswegen, indem wir zwar von sehr vielen Dingen, Handlungen u.s.w. nach dem gemeinen Schein urtheilen mogen, daB sie un­vernunftig seyen, setzen wir nichts­destoweniger voraus, und nehmen an, daB alles, was ist oder was geschieht, vemiinftig, und die Vemunft mit einem Wort der Urstoff und das Reale allen Seyns sey' [Although we might judge many things, actions, etc., accord­ing to their common appearance, to be unrea­sonable, we nonetheless presuppose that all that is or happens, is reasonable, and that rea­son, in one word, is the primary matter and the real of all Being].

8The proper German word would be Nichtichtigkeit.

9Darstellung, 102 (§148): 'Die unorganische Natur als solche existiert nicht. Denn das einzige An=sich dieser Potenz ist die Totalitat ( .. . ), d, h, der Organismus' [Unorganic nature as such does not exist. For the only in-itself of this~potency is totality( . . . ), i.e. the organism].

10Darstellung, 58 (§93): 'Im Licht ist die ab­solute Identitat selbst'.

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11Darstellung , 70 (§96): 'Die absolute Identitat, insofem sie a1s Licht ist, ist nicht Kraft, sondem Thatigkeit' . [Absolute identity, insofar as it is light, is not force, but activity].

12Ueber das Verhtl.ltnijJ des Realen und Idalen in der Natur oder Entwickelung der ersten Grundsatze der Naturphilosophie an den Principien der Schwere und des Lichts (1806) (SW 1), 435: 'Aile Verwirklichung in der Natur beruht auf eben dieser Vemichtung, diesem durchsichtig=Werden des Verbundenen, als des Vebundenen, fiir das Band' [All realization in nature is based on this annihilation, this becoming-transparent of the coiiDected, as the connect, for the bond].

13 Fernere Darstellungen, 445: 'Hiermit ist klar, wie in jeder Costruction, wenn sie wahr und licht ist, das Besondere, a1s Besonderes, in der Entgegensetzung gegen das Allgemeine, vemichtet wird. Nur insofem wird es selbst im Absoluten dargestellt, als es selbst das ganze Absolute in sich ausgedriickt enthalt und von dem Absoluten, als Allgemeinen, our ideell, namlich als Gegentheil vom Vorbild, unter­schieden, an sich aber oder reell ihm ganz gle­ich ist' . For the anti-Kantian thrust of this pro­cedure cf. also Ober die Konstruktion in der Philosophie (1803) (SW vol. 3), 545-571.

14For an emminently competent rejection of these claims cf. B.-0. Kuppers, Natur als Organismus. Schellings frUhe Natur­philosophie und ihre Bedeutung fUr die modeme Biologie (Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann 1992).

I5cf. P. Fenves, 'The topicality of tone', Raising the Tone of Philosophy: Late essays l1y Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1993), 1-48.

16The dialectics of written statements are by no means due to a secondary, supplementary nature; as the memorable exchange between Pilate and Jesus in John 18:33 sqq. shows, ver­bal comm.uncation of and on the principle of identity also ends in 'Truth? What is that' 7

17 Ch. Bonnet, Contemplation de Ia Nature, Tome premi~re. Seconde Edition (Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey MDCCLXIX), 159 sq.

18Contemplation, 160.

19Contemplation, 159.

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20considtmtions, 37.

2lconsidtrations, 37.

22Cf. my Epigenesis. Naturphilosophie im Sprachdenken Wilhelm von Humboldts (Paderbom: Schoeningh 1993); 30-52.

23There can be little doubt that Derrida knows what role dissemination and mise en abfme have played in Bonnet's, and other preforma­tionist theories. Bonnet's Contemplation is given as a source for the word dissemination in the Littre,- Derrida' s preferred texico logical source. In his introduction to Condillac - one of Bonnet's opponents - Derrida also shows his familiarity with the preformationism-epi­genesis debate (L'Archiologie du Frivole [Paris: Galil~e 1973], 44).

24J. Derrida, La Verite en peinture (Paris: Flammarion 1978); esp. 21-168 (parergon).

25cf. I. Kant, Kritik der Uneilskraft (§65) and Epigenesis, 55-68.

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