Taking into account these effects of the system, one has nothing, from the inside where “we are,” but a choice between two strategies: a. To attempt an exit and a deconstruction without changing terrain, by repeating what is implicit in the founding concepts and original problematic, by using against the edifice the instruments or stones available in the house, that is, equally, in language. Here, one risks ceaselessly confirming, consolidating, relifting (relever), at an always more certain depth, that which one allegedly deconstructs. The continuous process of making explicit, moving toward an opening risks sinking into the autism of the closure. b. To decide to change terrain, in a discontinuous and irruptive fashion, by brutally placing oneself outside, and by affirming an absolute break and difference. Without mentioning all the other forms of tromp-l’oeil perspective in which such a displacement can be caught, thereby inhabiting more naively and more strictly the inside one declares one has deserted, the simple practice of language ceaselessly reinstates the new terrain on the oldest ground. The effects of such a reinstatement or of such a blindness could be shown in numerous precise instances.”[1] (Jacques Derrida)
“The first philosophical act would appear to be to return to the world of actual experience which is prior to the objective world, since it is in it that we shall be able to grasp the theoretical basis no less that the limits of that objective world, restore to things their concrete physiognomy, to organisms their individual ways of dealing with the world, and to subjectivity its inherence in history. Our task will be, moreover, to rediscover phenomena, the layer of living experience through which other people and things are first given to us, the system ‘Self-others-things’ as it comes to into being; to reawaken perception and foil its trick of allowing us to forget it as a fact and as perception in the interest of the object which it presents to us and of the rational tradition to which it gives rise.”[2] (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”[3] (Freidrich Nietzsche)
How are we to proceed in the flesh, “here,” “now,” at the end of metaphysics? An end, which is not finality, nor a temporal end in the sense of a progression, or a moving toward, but rather an end in the sense of a pole, at the limit of a closure. We are, as it were, at the site of a gathering, the coming together of a tradition, in light of, or rather, in the light of the, perhaps playful, logos. We whose manner of being is linguistic, in the sense that we are at home in language as both how and where we are. What of this we? Who is this we? The form seems to dictate their status as question; does the possibility of answering reside in the metaphysics of the question? Who are we, or who is this we, which we seem to be? Do we have a choice, “here” and “now,” at this end of metaphysics? It certainly seems as if there is a battle afoot, a war, which seems to be, perhaps, as Nietzsche put it, “the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound.”[4] Does a war not presuppose the possibility of choice? Is it a matter of deciding, of making up ones mind, or rather is it a matter of having ones mind already made up?[5] “Here,” “now,” at the end of metaphysics are we forced to choose between Merleau-Ponty and Derrida? These names, which have come to stand for something like divergent institutions, perhaps, invocations, as rallying cries to ‘meaning,’ or ‘freedom.’ These names, which were, and are, nothing more than fluctuating modulations of speech and writing, perhaps in view of, or animated by, a similar problem; one which may, or may not, be denied to a questioning, or interrogative, glance. These names continue to fluctuate despite the marked absence of the specificities which they seemingly evoke. The following examination, beginning with its introduction, will attempt to reckon with this highly divergent, and highly contested, space. It seems inappropriate to speak of convergence, between Merleau-Ponty and Derrida, in light of the style of their thought. However, it would also, seemingly, be highly inappropriate to ignore the intertwining when it seems to impose itself upon me. A trajectory might be proffered, or offered, perhaps a telos, in order that we might anticipate where we will be at the end of our endeavor. We will take certain divergences as our guide to perhaps demonstrate the similarities and the differences, keeping in mind that we are not dealing in an order of ‘sameness,’ but rather of difference and ambiguity. We will work in the “wake” of particular thoughts, which seems to emerge upon the encounter of an abyss. We will engage with the ‘gaps,’ the ‘transgressions,’ differing and deferring the differences, and differance, the divergences, the body, habit and style, the visible and the invisible, speech and silence at the site of this abyss of self which is not nothing, but perhaps, “has its environs and its edges.”[6]We will engage with the possibility, or impossibility of perception; our home in a language, alive or dead, always intertwined with the sign of Saussure. Finally, through all this we will engage with the presence of metaphysics and/or the metaphysics of presence. A certain violence seems to be unavoidable, especially in the case of Derrida and Merleau-Ponty, in that we seem to treat them as unified selves. Do we possess, produce, or create a Derridean background[7] for a reading of Derrida? Do we read in its wake? Do we construct a whole, or live in an already unified whole from the parts that we possess? It seems necessary, in this introduction, to express a debt and a gratitude, perhaps a confession, that I have had the pleasure, and the good fortune, to dwell “here,” alongside Merleau-Ponty and Derrida, having them dwell inside me, these names, these thoughts, these institutions, as well as the thoughts of others who have dwelt here alongside me. For this opportunity I am indebted and grateful. Perhaps, most of this endeavor is undertaken in the interest of deciding whether we are to sing, or dance, if a certain simultaneity is impossible, “here” at the end of philosophy.
The Visible and the Invisible begins with a mute profession of faith, a faith beyond the order of the thematic, or the thematizable, a silent profession or affirmation. “We see the things themselves,”[8] does this statement not invoke, or conjure up the image of a return to a kind of naïve metaphysics? Does it not invoke an image similar to Nietzsche’s treatment of “the old Kant who had obtained the “thing in itself” by stealth”?[9] Or, perhaps, a certain Husserlian rallying cry, of a “return to the things themselves.” Shall we say, in argument, in response, “appearance,” or perhaps, “mere appearance”, or rather “representation?” Imagine the audacity of one who should claim to have obtained “the things in themselves” as in themselves they are. At a glance–if a glance is, indeed, all we are prepared to offer–would we not be correct in assuming that Derrida’ deconstruction of Husserl’s phenomenological project would find similar effectiveness in a critique of Merleau-Ponty. Is it as Derrida articulates it at the summation of Speech and Phenomena?
“And contrary to what phenomenology—which is always phenomenology of perception—has tried to make us believe contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always escapes.”[10]
Does Merleau-Ponty, merely, re-state the sedimentations of a logocentric tradition? Does Merleau-Ponty’s “seeing of the things themselves,” merely re-articulate the metaphysics of presence?
If one were to remain firmly within the tradition of phenomenology, as it found its articulation in Husserl, perhaps one could claim that Merleau-Ponty is indeed guilty of such a metaphysical transgression. But this thinking, blinded as it is by a certain proximity to Husserl, is unable to see, perhaps, in the phenomenological way found in Merleau-Ponty. We must, first of all, be clear that Merleau-Ponty speaks of a “pre-noetic” realm, which, precedes the vulgar subject object distinction, and precedes both thought and speech. Merleau-Ponty’s return to the “there-is,” to the world of pre-objective experience, perhaps, the gestalt background of any possible experience in general, is a movement beyond the reduction to the primordial ‘is’ of an essence, but rather, uncovers a primordial being-in-the-world of existing, which involves every essential ‘is.’ The field of experience is uncovered in this being-in, which is uncovered as a lived experience, and not the result of the eidetic reduction of a thing-in-general.
“The pure spectator in me, which elevates each thing to an essence, which produces its ideas, is assured that it touches Being with them only because it emerges within an actual experience surrounded by actual experiences, by the actual world, by the actual Being, which is the ground of the predicative Being.”[11]
Merleau-Ponty alludes to the pre-linguistic, pre-objective world of silence, a world of mute experience.[12] Across the abyss of the self, whose ‘environs’ or ‘edges’ we are trying to illuminate, we find the active pole. Is the active pole always already a response to the world to the experience of others? An active pole responding, as it were, to the imperative to speak the silence of the visible, or rather to have the silence speak through it. This movement, this “flesh[13]” of existence, is the body[14], my body, the movement of corporeal existence, which gives me a visible, because I am of it, I am one such visible amongst visibles. If we can speak of a “flesh” of the world and a “flesh” of the body, perhaps they are of a shared flesh, in the sense that both are a kind of perceptible. The flesh is not an object of thought, but a possibility of perception, giving me a kind of self-presence, which is at the same time an absence from self an intertwining of a visible and an invisible. For Merleau-Ponty it is but a matter of “situating” ourselves within the being we are dealing with, rather than attempting to posit some absolute outside, from some “gods eye view.” We must attend to the dehiscence of the body in the “fabric of our life”…”which opens it to itself and opens us upon it, and which, in the case of essence, is the dehiscence of the speaking and the thinking.”[15]
It seems relevant, at the current juncture, to point to the quote offered at the onset of the current examination; perhaps, offered as a kind of pointing to the projects of Derrida and Merleau-Ponty, from their own perspective. If we are attentive to them we can perhaps denote, in the case of Derrida’s professed strategy, or possible strategies, that Merleau-Ponty’s project seems to adopt a Derridean strategy. In what sense can Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology be characterized as deconstructive? Does it not address the problems of phenomenology from a certain inside, making use of its “concepts, and problematic, and at the same time going further, perhaps offering an exit? Even further, to perhaps follow in the vein of some of the “sagacious” spirits, the truly serious souls, is it possible that Merleau-Ponty is more deconstructive than Derrida? Perhaps, we should not overestimate the realm of possible discourse that can be had ‘here,’ within the limits of the current text. In the interest of not overstepping our limitations, we shall have to content ourselves with the possibility of living in view of this possible question. To be sure, Merleau-Ponty seems to avoid most of the problems Derrida had with the phenomenology of Husserl. The sign, which invaded the consciousness of Husserl’s eidetic ego, presupposed a pre-formulated thought, a self-given thought being given over to the detour of sign. For Merleau-Ponty there is no such pre-formulated thought, but rather a pre-noetic reckoning, perhaps a transparent coping, with the visible of the world of which I am a part. The visible becomes visible to itself in the folding back of the flesh. The visible must inhabit us in order to be seen, thought thinks itself through our speech, through the space of the abyss, where the present seems to emerge as an absence, somewhere between the idea and the thing itself. The present, as it is for Merleau-Ponty would not be a moment of self-evidence, but rather the crossing of a silent intention, a gap, albeit a determinate one wherein thought is expressed in an act of speech, making the subject-object distinction manifest itself as an abstraction. We shall now turn to the problem of language and meaning, which seems to be at the center of any dialogue we might proffer between Derrida and Merleau-Ponty.
Derrida correctly points out that “the problem of language has never been simply one problem amongst others.”
This inflation of the sign “language” is the inflation of the sign itself, absolute inflation, inflation itself. Yet, by one of its aspects or shadows, it is itself still a sign: this crisis is also a symptom. It indicates as if in spite of itself, that historico-metaphysical epoch must finally determine as language the totality of its problematic horizon.”[16]
It is Derrida’s conception of Saussurean diacritics[17], which allows him to embark upon a project of deconstruction. As a science of language semiotics attempted to deal with structure of the sign as a relation of signifier, phone, or sound image, to signified, or ideal concept. Derrida takes the view that the sign fills in, in the absence, or “anarchy of the noema,”[18]—in the transcendental ego—which is, furthermore, “the root and very possibility of objectivity and meaning. However, the content of the sign—based as it is upon the ideality of the signified, or the anarchic noema itself—is markedly absent, or rather, perhaps not absent but deferred, or delayed in its giveness to consciousness. These forms, theses signs without content, seem to impose themselves upon speech as intentions to mean, or to convey a sense, but the form “is but the emptiness and pure intention of intentionality.[19] This intentionality, which seeks the sense, as a relation to the object, is continually given over to another contentless form, another sign. “The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain of the play of signification infinitely.”[20] The subject, or non-subject in the thought of Derrida, is so, only insofar as he conforms his speech to the general law of linguistic differences.[21] Saussurean linguistics seems to borrow heavily from the possibility of a “transcendental ego” of Husserlian phenomenology. Derrida, in his reading of Saussure, is seemingly aware of the implications of this proximity and deconstructs Saussure employing a similar reduction to non-meaning. However, it is perhaps the case that Derrida remains too close to Husserl even in his engagements with the sign.
Perhaps, by turning to Merleau-Ponty’s account of language, our argument will gain some clarity. For Merleau-Ponty the sign is diacritical, in the Saussurean sense, however, that being said, Merleau-Ponty radicalizes the sign, as it was conceived of by Saussure himself. The sign, in itself is not meaningful it is nothing more than a kind of abstraction; rather the sign serves to mark a divergence of meaning between itself and another sign.[22] Meaning arises, rather, in the hollows, gaps, or intervals at the edges and in between signs. Merleau-Ponty locates the meaning in terms of the whole in terms of a totality, or a background of meaning. This background is historical and cultural it is the development, of the “pyramid of time” upon which I sit and protend.
“Signs are supposed to be no more than monitors which notify the hearer that he must consider such and such of his thoughts. But meaning does not actually dwell in the verbal chain or distinguish itself from the chain in this way. Since the sign has meaning only in so far as it is profiled against other signs, its meaning is entirely involved in language. Speech always comes into play against a background of speech; it is always only a fold in an immense fabric of language.”[23]
There is no such thing as a complete statement, there is always an excess of signified over signifier, which endows the speaker with new organs which allow him to venture further still onward in a new direction. Language transforms the “things-themselves” into their meaning where they are sedimented in the field of language. Merleau-Ponty makes a distinction between originating, or authentic, speech and secondary speech. Originating speech is an expression, both for ourselves and for others, which brings into existence a novel thought. Secondary speech is a mere repetition, or perhaps a re-presentation of a thought already ‘acquired.’[24] Language[25] opens a field of language, which gives us meaning in terms of itself. If we are attentive to this movement we notice the striking similarities between perceptual and linguistic existence in Merleau-Ponty’s account. It would seem that just as there is a phenomenal field, there is also a linguistic field in both cases there is something from which we ‘borrow’ in order to combine an ‘intentional’ ‘desire’ with a speech act in the constitution of an object for others; thereby accomplishing thought by conveying a certain ‘style’ into a community of speakers. Language, therefore, cannot be made to behave like any particular object; rather it becomes meaningful only when a speaking subject is engaged in it with others.
It has been the argument of the current paper that Derrida remained in the ‘grip’ of his close proximity to Husserl, while it seems that Merleau-Ponty, engaged in, and with, similar problems his break with Husserl seems more radical. It has not been my intention to dismiss a project, lay charges against, or to take an antagonistic approach; however, it would seem that in the eyes of certain “sagacious souls” a battle needs to be fought, perhaps out of some imperative to respond to a different trajectory of thought, a divergence from their own project which cannot go unchallenged. Perhaps this practice has become the exercise of a rite of passage, following in the wake of the institutionalized master whose honour must go unchallenged. Perhaps, the current engagement has attempted to trace the divergences merely in the interest of witnessing a certain dialogue which never took place. I have attempted to give a particular perspective, albeit a provisional one, which has probably changed in the process of its virtualization. I have had a wonderful time, ‘here,’ ‘now’ staring at the environs and edges of the abyss of I still call myself. Although I cannot help but feel de-centered, perhaps, a painful separation from the self I once was. If we are left with two non-concepts, two names which do not name, difference, or the flesh, I think both are ultimately fecund, having their own ways, perhaps it is not a matter of choosing between them but simply coming to terms with the divergences involved. Perhaps, ‘here,’ ‘now’ at the end of metaphysics some of us may sing, while others may dance.
[1] Jacques Derrida. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. p. 135.
[2] Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith (Routledge Classics: New York, 2002).
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books, 1975. p. 84.
[4] Freidrich Nietzsche. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1974. p. 21.
[5] It would seem that fronts have formed behind the names of Derrida and Merleau-Ponty. A battle continues, amongst the truly serious people, which seem to contain actual stakes, or perhaps rather, countless fictions. What are the stakes in this battle, inventions, truth, the possibility of going forward?
[6] Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Signs. Trans. Robert C. McCleary. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. p. 14.
[7] I use background, perhaps, in the sense of a Derridean gestalt, within which we situate our particular encounters with Derrida.
[8]Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and The Invisible, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. p. 3.
[9] .” Freidrich Nietzsche. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. p. 264.
[10]Jacques Derrida. Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. p. 104.
[11] Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and The Invisible. p. 110.
[12] “Yet there is a world of silence, the perceived world, at least, is an order where there are non-language significations—yes, non-language significations, but they are not accordingly positive. There is for example no absolute flux of singular Erlebnisse; there are fields and a field of fields, with a style and a typicality…” Merleau-Ponty. The Visible and the Invisible. p. 171.
[13] It is possible to speak of flesh, although we must be wary of treating it as a concept, or of the conceptual order given Merleau-Ponty expressed aversion to the conceptualization of the world. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence. Appearing in Phenomenology of Language & Sociology. Ed. John O’Neil. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974. p. 49.
[14] The body is a unique unity in that it is both “intentional,” that is toward things, and “sense-giving,” or constitutive of those things. The relationship between “constitution” and “acquisition,” and ‘being’ and ‘having’ is of paramount importance in Merleau-Ponty’s illumination of corporeal existence.
[15] Ibid., p 118.
[16] Jacques Derrida. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1976.p. 6.
[17] “It was Saussure who first set forth the arbitrariness of signs and the differential character of signs as principles of general semiology and particularly linguistics… Arbitrariness can occur only because the system of signs is constituted by the differences between the terms and not by their fullness.” Jacques Derrida. Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. p. 139.
[18] “Noema, which is the objectivity of the object, the meaning and the “as such” of the thing for consciousness, is neither the determined thing itself in its untamed existence (whose appearing the precisely is), nor is it a properly subjective moment, a “really” subjective moment since its is indubitably given as an object for consciousness. Jacques Derrida. Genesis and Structure. Appearing in Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. p. 163.
[19] Derrida. Speech and Phenomena. p. 98.
[20] Jacques Derrida. Structure, Sign, and Play. Appearing in Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. p. 280.
[21] “If, by hypothesis, we maintain the strict opposition between speech and language, the difference will be not only the play of differences within language but the relation of speech to language, the detour by which I must also pass in order to speak, the silent token I must give, which holds just as well for linguistics in the strict sense as it does for general semiology; it dictates all the relations between usage and the formal schema, between the message and particular code, etc.” Derrida. Speech and Phenomena. P. 146
[22] Merleau-Ponty. Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence. p. 36.
[23] Merleau-Ponty. Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence. p. 39.
[24] Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge Classics: New York, 2002. p. 453.
[25] “To make of language a means or a code for thought is to break it. When we do so we prohibit ourselves from understanding the depth to which words sound within us—from understanding that we have a need, a passion, for speaking and must (as soon as we think) speak to ourselves; that words have power to arouse thoughts and implant henceforth inalienable dimensions of thought; that they put responses on our lips we did not know we were capable of, teaching us, Sartre says our own thought.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Signs. Trans. Robert C. McCleary. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. p. 17.
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