Umbr(a): The Dark God (2005)

the dark God
umbr(a)
2005
U M B R (A)
EDITOR:
Andrew Skomra
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE:
Mike Baxter
Trisha Brady
Sorin Cucu
Peter DeGabriele
Alexei Di Orio
Moriah Hampton
Shane Herron
Alissa Lea Jones
Nicole Jowsey
Sean Kelly
Alan Lopez
Jonathan Murphy
Sol Pelaez
Andrew Skomra
Roland Végső
FACULTY ADVISORS:
Joan Copjec
Tim Dean
Ernesto Laclau
Steven Miller
ART DIRECTION:
Alissa Lea Jones
Andrew Skomra
DISTRIBUTION:
Alissa Lea Jones
A JOURNAL OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
2005
ISSN 1087-0830 ISBN 0-9666452-8-6
UMBR(a) is published with the help of grants from the
following organizations and individuals at the
State University of New York at Buffalo:
The Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture
The Graduate Student Association*
The Group for the Discussion of the Freudian Field
The English Department
The English Graduate Student Association
The David Gray Chair (Steve McCaffery)
The James H. McNulty Chair (Dennis Tedlock)
The Melodia E. Jones Chair (Gerard Bucher)
*The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of
the GSA.
Address for Editorial and Subscription Enquiries:
UMBR(a)
Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture
SUNY/Buffalo, North Campus
408 Clemens Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-4610
http://wings.buffalo.edu/student-life/graduate/gsa/lacan/lacan.html
Special thanks to Éditions de L’Herne for granting permission to publish
an excerpt from: Christian Jambet, Le Caché et l’Apparent
© Éditions de L’Herne, 2003
CONTENTS
4
EDITORIAL: THE OBJECT OF RELIGION
andrew skomra
9
ETHICS AND CAPITAL, EX NIHILO
lorenzo chiesa and alberto toscano
27
THE STRANGER AND THEOPHANY
christian jambet
43
UNIVERSALISM AND THE JEWISH EXCEPTION:
LACAN, BADIOU, ROZENZWEIG
kenneth reinhard
73
WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL
tracy mcnulty
87
PASOLINI, an improvisation
(OF A SAINTLINESS)
philippe lacoue-labarthe
95
BEING A SAINT
serge andré
105
WHEN LOVE IS THE LAW:
ON THE RAVISHING OF LOL V. STEIN
dominiek hoens
119
RELIGION AS CRITIQUE, CRITIQUE AS RELIGION
marc de kesel
138
REVIEWS
EDITORIAL:
THE OBJECT
OF RELIGION
andrew skomra
“There is something profoundly masked in the critique
of the history that we have experienced....Ignorance,
indifference, an averting of the eyes may explain
beneath what veil this mystery remains hidden. But
for whoever is capable of turning a courageous gaze
towards this phenomenon — and...there are certainly
few who do not succomb to the fascination of the
sacrifice in itself — the sacrifice signfies that, in the
object of our desires, we try to find evidence for the
presence of the desire of this Other that I call here
the dark God.”
— Jacques Lacan1
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4
How does one begin to make sense of religion
within the field of psychoanalytic thinking?
Such a question, despite appearances, is
more than a hapless ploy to avoid speaking
of such a nebulous matter. Amidst the disarming resurgence of religious fundamentalisms
and the cries of mortified secularists who
feel they are suffering from the return of
this offensive signifier, psychoanalysis maintains that the idea of religion possesses an
intensive, “crystallizing power.” What binds
these mortal enemies is the precise fact
that each looks upon religion as though it
were an object, coming later to distinguish
themselves only by the angle from which
they scrutinize its opacity. The hesitation
of recent psychoanalytic thinking amidst
the veneration and aversion that surrounds
religious phenomena can perhaps best be attributed to the widespread demand to know
what to do, or where to place “it.” Analytic
discourse refuses to ascribe value to the
question of whether the object of religion is
good or bad, living or dead. Pleas to make
such judgments, for analysis, are the very
mainspring of the problem.
any reasonable being cannot ignore — that is,
unless a certain barbarous repetition is what
these beings have chosen to pursue.
5
For Freud, as well as Lacan, the stakes
of religion are only of this world — only
pertinent after the establishment, and in
relation to, modern science and the subject
which it engendered. But, when the question
of religion is raised in analytic discourse it
is not inspected through the avatars of rational, positivist science. Such sciences, at
least on the surface, turn a blind eye to the
“archaism” of religion — basing their search
for knowledge on unquestioned evidential
models so as to accelerate and freely enjoy
the accumulation of information absent of
any first or final cause. If ever it appears
as an object of concern within these sciences, religion is deemed a mere obstacle
to humanity’s apparently inscrutable inclination toward progress. Lacan’s sagacity,
in this respect, is evident in his strategic
mobilization of religious thought for the
unsettling of apathetic precepts that scientific thinking supposedly constitutes itself
upon. The foremost recipient of his wrathful
wit, it seems, is the smug indifference that
science shows toward the problem of causality. What Lacan signals in his intervention is
that in a world dutifully constructed to be
the container for manufacturing and appropriating data, what inevitably transpires is
the flattening of our experience such that no
objective realm is left for desires or convictions of truth that go beyond predetermined
coordinates. The inane contradictions and
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Thus, for psychoanalysis there is nothing
novel in the interrogation of religion. Although Freud contends that religion is “the
universal obsessional neurosis of humanity,” 2
the socially-sedimented nature of belief is
not met with a strictly hostile, atheistic rejection. Instead, his encounters with the incredible non-sense of religion served a quite
pedagogic function. We can observe in the
long and sinuous line, traced from Totem and
Taboo to the point where “the pen fell from
Freud’s hands”3 at the climax of Moses and
Monotheism, that his encounters with devout
cultures marked a descending slope into the
vital recesses of our modern condition. Such
labor proved essential to the very formulation and endurance of the project of psychoanalysis. Although emerging in the form of a
“critique” of all religious sacralization, what
Freud unfurrowed was the grain of truth behind religion’s zealous repressions, isolating
their ultimate necessity for the genesis and
structure of discourse — which is to say, the
creation of a history irrevocably tied to the
birth of the modern subject, the foundation
of collectivities, and even the very possibility of history. Though his interest in the
cultural contours of religion, we will admit,
held Freud ever-too-slightly captivated by
the monothetic, his exploits demonstrated
that science (within definable limits) is not
confined to the mere cataloguing of its own
historical development. Rather, the real revelation that Freud unearthed was the obligatory reformulation of the margins of our past
and present conditions of existence, which
6
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delirium that inevitably ensues, it could be
argued, receives its complement in the form
of a culture of techno-gadgetry that hopelessly introduces products to temporarily
sustain these endeavors without cause. These
little bits of pleasure, in their objective disposability, point out the effects of scientific
agendas that unknowingly acknowledge the
need for attachments, and limits for its
pursuits, only to fall back on squandering all
of its resources. The realms of the religious
emerge in Lacan’s counter-attack against the
grave political and economic consequences
that stem from disavowing the passion for annihilation that fuels the solipsism of scientific
man. It is the contention of psychoanalysis
that the reckless enjoyment of knowledge initself, and the byproducts that we are necessarily left with, is carried out only through a
prior ignorance or hatred not toward religion
per se but to the infrangibility of a certain
religious function that absently structures
our relation to existence as such.
Analysis, by way of a formal, ontological
reduction, points to the necessity of experiencing an irremediable alienation that
religion historically bears witness. In spite of
its ever-present suspicion vis-à-vis science,
however, psychoanalysis most certainly does
not rally to the cause of religious fervor.
Instead, the real commitment of analysis
proves all-the-more adept at stymieing those
righteous few who speak in the name of God,
and claim to know something of his desires.
For the pious to speak from such a position
of knowledge amounts to nothing more than
the egregious attempt to conform its congregations, and patrol the border, to something
that does not exist. The theoretical labor of
psychoanalysis, then, with respect to religion, consistently turns around this point,
which is nothing more than a questioning of
the Other: how shall one preserve a position
for God despite its utter vacuity? If analysis
evokes religious figures and tropes, it is never
to find a way to fill in this gaping hole. Rather,
1. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan,
Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans.
Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1981), 275.
2. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, in The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James
Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth Press, 19531974), 2:43.
3. Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis, 259.
7
vocation of analytic thinking insists upon is the
occupation of an impossible, “in-between,”
site that promotes the dissolution of any position choosing either to transfigure or discard
the concealed truths of the religious. To be
allied with such a cause necessitates the very
rethinking of religion’s objective status, without giving in to its own tradition’s devotion
to a dark, mimetic desire. The task, then, is
to remain faithful to an immanent, impure
One. The question of creation, the ontological
status of One, the exception, sacrifice, saintliness, love — all are common figures culled
from the immense history of religion. But this
is no return, as the significance attributed to
such notions has been rigorously subtracted
from, on the one hand, any position hoping
to resolve the subject’s discord with divinity,
and on the other hand, from any logic seeking to forget the yawning gap that internally
divides this leering Other. We are thus left
with testimonies to an irrevocable, absolute,
difference — the convictions of which proliferate in infinitesimal acts of thought.
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they are employed for the servicing, and questioning, of desire — that is, to either deny or
compel one’s pursuit of an obscure element
that escapes all discursive appropriation. God
is only significant for analysis if it remains as
a guarantee of our own indefiniteness, as a
signifier that preserves a space for an absence
while at the same time foreclosing any possibility of our ever obtaining it. Religion is
placed within the reasonable limits and conditions necessary for sustaining the very opacity
of our jouissance. From this vantage, psychoanalysis does not feign the subject’s ability to
square accounts with its creator. Given the
structural impossibility of such balancing acts,
analysis goes well beyond the obliviousness of
moral dogmas, which persist only through a
faith in reconciliation that yields nothing more
than anxious and excessive prohibitions, and
ultimately desire’s putrefaction.
The difficulty of speaking about religion,
then, will only intensify when one’s imperative is to do so psychoanalytically. What this
lorenzo chiesa and alberto toscano
ETHICS AND CAPITAL, EX NIHILO
It is well known that, according to
Lacan, authentic creation can only be
symbolic creation ex nihilo. What is
principally at stake here is the issue
of the simultaneity between the initial
“fashioning of the signifier” and the
introduction of a void, a nihil (the
Thing) in the primordial real. With
the introduction of the first signifier,
Lacan says, “one has already the
entire notion of creation ex nihilo”
which is itself “coextensive with…the
Thing.” 1 The nihil must clearly be associated with the void of the Thing,
whose emergence is concomitant
with that of the signifier, and not with
the primordial real for which the notions of fullness and emptiness have
as yet no sense (120).
***
The notion of creation ex nihilo, as
the extraction of the symbolic signifier that concurrently annihilates the
primordial real, provides the most
conclusive explanation of Lacan’s
recurrent reference to the opening
line of St. John’s Gospel, “In the
beginning was the Word.” The word
that was in the beginning — the Holy
Spirit that created the unconscious
qua “power plant” in Seminar IV — is
Aside from its muted incorporation
into dogma, where it has lingered
in a peculiarly uneasy and inconsistent truce with ancient Greek
conceptions of physis, poiesis, and
techne, the doctrine of creation ex
nihilo — duly neutralized by the
historical emergence of a science of
being, and repudiated once again
in the formation of modern, or postKantian, philosophy — has insistently shadowed political modernity
in the twin figures of capital and
revolt. As Jean-François Courtine
and other contemporary scholars
have attested, despite accusations
of creationism, ever since Scotus
and Suarez ontology proper has
been fundamentally based on the
bracketing of any real reference
or proportion vis-à-vis an instance
of creation, divine or otherwise.
Ontology treats the being simply in
terms of its being, as ens, res, aliquid,
or mere object, but never really as
ens creatum — which is to say, never
as ex nihilo but as extra nihil. In this
respect, ontology is logically indifferent to the distinction of infinite and
finite, creator and created: it expels
the creatural, only deigning, in its
scientific zeal, to deal with entities.1
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9
10
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nothing but “the entrance of the signifier into
the world.” 2 Here one might well be tempted
to ask: is there any more need to confirm that
Lacan’s naïve “system” is marked by what
Derrida names the “ideality of the signifier”?3
Contrary to what Lacan’s provocative formulas often seem to suggest, his creationism
does not presuppose any transcendent principle. Indeed, “it is paradoxically only from a
creationist point of view that one can envisage
the elimination of the always recurring notion
of creative intention,” which is instead tacitly
“omnipresent” in evolutionism. Evolutionism
relies on a divine creative intention in that
“the ascending movement which reaches the
summit of consciousness and thought” is deduced from a “continuous process” (213; emphasis added). In other words, evolutionism
is teleological and theological by definition,
and derives human thought from an evolution of matter that ultimately depends on the
transcendent consciousness of God.
In contrast, for Lacan, the creation ex nihilo
of the signifier on which human thought depends is truly materialistic; Lacan’s creationism is a form of anti-humanist immanentism,
since it is grounded on the assumption that
the symbolic is un-natural and not supernatural, the contingent product of man’s
successful dis-adaptation to nature. Such an
unnatural dis-adaptation, which obviously
dominates and perverts nature, can nevertheless originate only immanently from what
we name “nature” and thus contradicts the
alleged continuity of any (transcendently)
“natural” process of evolution. Matter does
***
An inchoate, perhaps symptomatic, index of
the political persistence of the ex nihilo is to
be found in the reactionary modernism of
Ezra Pound. In his Cantos, Pound’s desire for
anti-capitalist economic reform is invested
in the obsessive figure of usury, the Dantean
Usura. Like latter-day partisans of a just,
adaptive equilibrium for the human oikos,
Pound is haunted by the perverse theological resonance not of the commodity per se,
but of the capitalist use of money — echoing
Aristotle’s concern with the unhinging effects
that money qua interest could have on the homeostatic functioning of the polis. Take these
emblematic lines, from Canto XLVI: “Hath
benefit of interest on all / the moneys which,
it, the bank, creates out of nothing.” 2 For
Pound, it is the creation of money ex nihilo by
the banks that lies behind the circumambient
cultural degeneration, the ravaging of any
natural balance and the sterilization of the
arts (“Came not by usura Angelico” [XLV,
230]). As Robert Casillo writes, “while
Pound is by no means hostile to all forms
of money, he obsessively attacks that form
of it — namely usury — which he thinks the
Jews created and which figures in economics as the virtual equivalent of the abstract
and monopolistic Jewish God, who creates
reality ex nihilo. At the same time, Pound is
certain that Jewish usurers exploit honest
labor and impede the forces of production.” 3
Incidentally, we encounter here a key theme
in the modern preoccupation with the ex
nihilo, the opposition of creatio to production
not evolve. As Lacan will explicitly recognize
in later years, matter is in fact only retroactively “materialized” by the contingent
appearance of the signifier ex nihilo. Nature
is per se not-One.
11
It is thus not surprising that Lacan explicitly
criticizes Darwin as early as 1938. Why is
Darwin completely wrong? a) Human evolution is not based on “natural” adaptation; b)
human dis-adapted evolution does not depend on a particularly successful “struggle for
life” — indeed, “everything tells against this
thesis of the survival of the fittest species.” 4
But the opposite is true: the struggle for life
is a consequence of man’s — particularly successful — dis-adapted evolution. In Lacan’s
own words, “aggressivity demonstrates itself
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***
or fabrication, and its rampant hostility to
any proper measure of what is made. Not
the least of the objects of the divisive work of
usury, the monetary figure of the ex nihilo,
is indeed coupling, reproduction, the sexual
relation: “It hath brought palsey to bed,
lyeth / between the young bride and her bridegroom / CONTRA NATURAM” (XLV, 230).
The organic community, which is also and
above all an aesthetic community marked by
the proper circulation of symbols and affects,
is thus undermined by the system of “Jewsury,” the phantasmatic clue to Pound’s fascist
proclivities. Thus he writes: “it is, of course,
useless to indulge in anti-Semitism, leaving
intact the Hebraic monetary system which is
a most tremendous instrument of usury.” 4 In
other words, Jewsury, driven throughout by
the abstract figure of the Hebraic God of the
ex nihilo, is precisely that which hinders the
community from being organically counted
as one. It is both a force of profane nihilation
and of uncontrollable proliferation: “The Evil
is Usury, neschek / the serpent /…The canker corrupting all things, Fafnir the worm /
Syphilis of the State, of all kingdoms / Wart
of the common-weal, / Wenn-maker, corrupter of all things / Darkness the defiler, /
Twin evil of envy, / Snake of the seven heads,
Hydra, entering all things” (Addendum for
Canto C, 798). Tellingly, for Pound it is this
Hebraic drive within capitalism that destroys
the symbolic stability of all religions, and
ultimately “the tradition of the undivided
light.” As Casillo perspicuously notes, “Pound
blames the process of desymbolization on
the usurers and ‘Iconoclasts,’ a ‘power of
to be secondary with respect to [the human
subject’s] identification,” which is to say that
aggressivity cannot be explained in terms
of a real vital rivalry (“the Darwinian idea
according to which struggle lies at the very
origins of life”).5 That Darwin’s “myth” has
been so popular “seems to derive from the
fact that he projected the predations of Victorian society…and to the fact that it justified
its predations by the image of a laissez-faire
of the strongest predators in competition for
their natural prey.” 6
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12
***
Certainly, Lacan believes that there must
logically be a “moment” of creation ex nihilo,
a point at which the symbolic emerges as an
immanent consequence of the primordial real
(213). Yet, the point of creation ex nihilo is
also the point of infinity: what precedes it can
be thought only as impossible (to think) — one
cannot think the primordial real or the point
of creation. As Lacan puts it, the symbolic
“has been functioning as far back in time
as [man’s unconscious] memory extends.
Literally, you cannot remember beyond it,
I’m talking about the history of mankind as
a whole.” 7 The symbolic started at a specific
moment that will have been its (immanent)
“absolute beginning” (214). This is also to say
that the symbolic should be regarded as an
asymptotic curve that is both limited in time
and equal to the infinity of man as being of
language; for the parlêtre there is nothing
beyond the parlêtre. Hence the calculation
of the duration or length of the asymptotic
putrefaction’ like ‘the bacilli of typhus or bubonic plague.’ Usury is a violent plague which
infects everything and reduces everything to
a state of undifferentiation.” 5
***
It is not without interest to note that another
reactionary modernist, Martin Heidegger,
based his far-reaching diagnosis of the epoch not on the roaming automatism of the
monetary ex nihilo — the Hydra of debt and
credit — but rather on the techno-scientific
foreclosure of the disclosing power of the
nothing:
But what is remarkable is that, precisely in the
way scientific man secures to himself what is most
properly his, he speaks, whether explicitly or not,
of something different. What should be examined
are beings only, and besides that — nothing;
beings alone, and further — nothing; solely beings,
and beyond that — nothing.…The nothing — what
else can it be for science but an outrage and a
phantasm? If science is right, then only one thing
is sure: science wishes to know nothing of the
nothing. Ultimately this is the scientifically rigorous conception of the nothing. We know it, the
nothing, in that we wish to know nothing about
it.…In the altogether unsettling experience of this
hovering where there is nothing to hold on to [i.e.
6
anxiety], pure Da-sein is all that is still there.
It is amusing to note that Heidegger — who
ominously refers to the human being in the
same text as “the lieutenant of the nothing” —
did not contemplate what for him might have
proved to be the most paralyzing thought, to
wit, that science, in the shape of mathematics,
***
***
The opposition between the organic cycles
of production and the irrational, divisive
force of creation is not simply the purview
of Pound’s fascist poetics. Indeed, the primary reference point or groundwork for any
modern philosophy of production, Hegel’s
dialectics, is founded in great part on the
expurgation of the very idea of the ex nihilo.
The modern image of production initially
appears not as a secularization, but as a
repudiation of the doctrine of the ex nihilo.
The foremost reason for such a repudiation is the fact that, as Gildas Richard has
recently noted, “the ex nihilo implies and
signifies what we could call a nihilum of ex
— the complete absence of any ‘coming out
of.’” 7 The ex nihilo is the denial of any real
engendering, production, or fabrication
(an argument already rehearsed by Saint
Augustine), of any relationality or dialectic
at work between creator and created. This
means that creationism as such is a doctrine
13
Lacan famously states that every drive should
ultimately be regarded as a death drive.9 What
does this mean? The death drive contains
the purest essence of the drive inasmuch as
it corresponds to a subtractive element that
emerges in concomitance with the mythical
birth of the symbolic ex nihilo, that is, with
the formulation of the first signifier that
transforms the primordial un-dead real into
the void of the Thing (or, more precisely, of
the object a).10 The ex nihilo is therefore nothing but the ex nihilo of the death drive. The
death drive is thus a name for the irrevocable
anti-synthetic trait that forever separates
the mythical un-dead (which is “killed” by
the signifier) from its symbolic designation.
As a consequence, the symbolic order as
such relies on the conservation of difference
really wishes to know everything about the
nothing. Or rather, as Badiou’s recent meditations on the empty set reveal, that there
is a profoundly unsettling and unworldly
operative use of the nothing. This nihil is not
just what desymbolizes a religious economy
of production, as in Pound, but that which
undermines the very possibility of a world,
of beings as a whole — the possibility which,
for Heidegger, was the guiding feature of
anxiety as an experience of the nothing borne
by “pure Da-sein.”
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curve of the symbolic does not make sense: no
parlêtre witnessed the passage from the ape
to the parlêtre, and no parlêtre will be able to
count the precise day, month, and year when
the last atomic bomb will explode. As Lacan
observes, the points of creation and destruction (of history) are a strict logical “necessity”
(213), but they can be posited only through
either retroactive or anticipatory mythical
speculations. This is how the finitude of man
qua parlêtre engendered by creation ex nihilo
opens a “limited” space of infinity — the “absoluteness of desire”8 — that must be opposed
to the eternal immortality of the un-dead,
which is to say, the primordial real, pre- or
post-symbolic “nature” as not-One.
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14
provided by the death drive qua subtractive
drive. For the sake of clarity we should logically distinguish:
a) the death drive as the subtraction from
the primordial “One” qua absolute zero
(and from its alleged jouissance). This first
and unrepeated movement corresponds
to the instauration of the symbolic and it
should be regarded as retroactive; in other
words, it is here possible to consider the
death drive as an “anti-synthetic” element
only after the (supposed) primitive “synthesis” of the primordial real has been broken
due to a contingent “material” change that
is immanent to it. This point must be made
clear in order to avoid the risk of surreptitiously identifying the death drive qua
initial anti-synthetic element with any sort
of transcendent “will” (212).
b) the death drive as the repetitive subtraction from that which has become a One sui
generis. More precisely, as Lacan specifies,
from the “distinctive unity,” 11 the “oneness
as pas-un” 12 of the symbolic qua differential
order, the order of the big Other. This is
the death drive stricto sensu. It is only on
the basis of such an abstract (and mainly
pedagogical) distinction between these two
movements or “phases” of the death drive
that one can account for the difficulty that
Lacan apparently experienced in deciding
whether to assign it to the symbolic (as he
did especially in the early to mid-fifties) or
to the real (a more common choice in his
later work). Indeed, the death drive is both
that which retroactively transforms the
of isolation or of singularity, constitutively
running the risk of obliterating the very act of
creation or creativity itself, of nihilating the
creator by not allowing any transitivity or
expression between it and the creature. That
is why Richard’s spirited, or rather spiritualist, defense of the creation ex nihilo is gnawed
from within by this doubt: Does the doctrine
of the ex nihilo really sustain a concept of the
creator? Is it not rather the harbinger of its
abandonment in the guise of a creature-effect
(rather than a creature-product) that must
turn itself into (the effect of) its own cause?
Only thus can a being “become what it is,”
become its own (irredeemably secondary)
origin. The created being is unbound and
abandoned by the nihil to itself in a manner
that the product (or the progeny, or even the
simple effect) is not. In this sense the ex nihilo
is also the decision, the cut or break from any
figure of religio, of the bond, or of a web of
meaning that would vouchsafe the being’s relation to others. It affirms and articulates the
being’s nonsense — precisely that materialist dimension which, in Badiou’s Manifesto
for Philosophy, opposes philosophy to any
figure of religion (“secular” hermeneutics
included). Creating ex nihilo is thus the
equivalent of originating an origin. Though
the subjectivity delineated in the Hegelian
dialectic is also marked by such a movement
of retroaction — or torsion, to use the language of the “Lacanian” Badiou of Theory of
the Subject — it is nevertheless a subjectivity
that, in establishing the structure of historicity and productivity, refuses both creation
One important point should be made completely unambiguous: during its second phase,
the subtractive anti-synthetic principle of the
death drive is necessarily, although paradoxically, turned into a conservative principle.
This is the reason why the drives tend toward
the Thing without reaching it — and what is
more, are forced to repeat this tension. The
death drive stricto sensu is a conservative
drive precisely in that it is anti-synthetic.
More specifically, if, on the one hand, the
subtraction from the primordial “One” as
***
15
***
and its void as abstractions. The ontological
autonomy or isolation of the created is in no
way produced, but rather posited by religious
representation: the created, and the nihil
from which it emerges, is an abstraction.
Creation is thus for Hegel a word belonging
to representation, or in Richard’s words,
“the radical separation is abstraction and
bears witness to a deficit of rationality.” 8 In
his critique of the religious representation
of creation out of nothing, Hegel ultimately
elides engendering (of the Son by the Father)
and creation (of the world) in favor of the
former, thereby undoing both the gratuity of
the act and the ontological difference between
creator and created: the world of production
as a world without grace.
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primordial un-dead real into the ex nihilo
of the symbolic as the order characterized
by death and, given its subtractive nature,
that which tends to transform the symbolic
into the un-dead “inorganic” real — it is only
in the latter sense that Lacan can claim that
the drives tend to the Thing (90).
In a long footnote to his maîtrise dissertation
on Hegel, Louis Althusser supplemented the
opposition of creation and production with a
treatment of the former as the mythic alienation of the latter. Here again, creation ex
nihilo appears as the foremost representative
of an irredeemable break with a supposed
circular economy. As Althusser writes, “On
the purest conception, God is the circularity
of Love; he is sufficient unto himself and has
no outside. The creation is literally a rupture
in this circularity; God does not need the
creation, so that it is, by definition, different
from him.” 9 But this break is also reconfigured in terms of a secondary alienation,
that is, as the alienation of the alienation of
work — the mystification of productive work
16
***
UMBR(a)
absolute zero causes the formation of a “distinctive unity” that is better understood as a
(big) Other, on the other hand, the subtraction
from this Other will obligatorily entail a tendency toward a return to the zero that cannot
be fulfilled. Indeed a complete subtraction
from the symbolic Other, which would mean
a (mythical) return to the un-dead “One” (as
zero), is impossible insofar as the subtractive
element is anti-synthetic (anti-One) by definition. Thus the primordial subtractivity of the
death drive turns into the repetitive conservation of this same subtractivity. 13
At this stage, we should be able to isolate four
basic consequences of symbolic creation ex
nihilo:
1) The death drive aims at the lost object
while, at the same time and for the same reason, it is forced to “circle around it” without
ever reaching it — the drive thus de-limits
the lack as some-thing (satisfying).14
2) This same movement opens up the field
for the “bad” infinity of a continuously
unsatisfied desire that, if dissociated from
the drive, would ultimately aim precisely
at plunging itself into this lack. As long as
the drive and desire remain associated in
their relation to the real lack, however, they
perpetuate the subject of the fantasy who
veils this lack.
3) In being an inherently thwarted tendency, which is as such compulsively repeated,
the jouissance of the drive qua partial
through the notion of a creation of nature:
This non-identity of the Creator and his creature
is the emergence of Nature. This product of the
God-who-works escapes his control (because
it is superfluous for him). The fall is nature, or
God’s outside. In the creation, then, men unwittingly repress the essence of work. But they do
still more: they try to eliminate the very origins
of work, which, in its daily exercise, appears
to them as a natural necessity…In the creation
myth this natural character of work disappears,
because the Creator is not subject to any law,
and creates the world ex nihilo. In God the Creator, men not only think the birth of nature, but
attempt to overcome the natural character of
this birth by demonstrating that creation has no
origin (since God creates without obligation or
need); that the fall has no nature; and that the
very nature which seems to dominate work is,
fundamentally, only as necessary as the (pro10
duced) nature which results from work.
It is important to note that in this same
passage, written long before Althusser’s
much-descried formulation of a theoretical anti-humanism, Marxism is conceived
explicitly in terms of the reestablishment of
a “human circularity” — this would indeed
be, for the young Althusser, something like
the emancipatory underside of the myth of
creation, as an image behind which revolutionaries can glimpse the attainment of a new
circularity and even the end of “natural alienation.” The task of the Marxist revolutionary
hermeneutist would thus be twofold: on the
one hand, the recovery of the product and
the workers’ metabolism with nature from
the mystifications of creation; on the other,
the practical passage from the mythical
satisfaction of desire through dissatisfaction should be related to a basic form of
psychic masochism of the subject.
4) The masochism of the drive is never
identifiable with a “death wish,” a will to
commit suicide. Although the latter corresponds to the radical possibility occasioned
by the paradoxical situation raised by the
former, it is nevertheless unable to return
to the absolute zero.
***
UMBR(a)
17
It should now be clear how Lacan’s recourse
to the “creationism” of the signifier solves
many of the impasses in Freud’s discussion
of the death instinct. It does so precisely by
problematizing Freud’s understanding of the
death instinct as that which is beyond the
pleasure principle. Freud initially formulated
the death instinct as a principle that was directly opposed to the pleasure principle (qua
life instinct that aims exclusively at avoiding
unpleasure) in order to explain phenomena
of masochistic repetition. This connection,
however, was blatantly contradicted by the
fact that the death instinct was concurrently
regarded as a mere tendency to return to
the stasis of the inorganic state, which was
deemed to be equally operative in all living
beings, from bacteria to humans. In addition, Freud surprisingly conceded that “the
pleasure principle seems actually to serve the
death instinct,” 15 and so the latter was inconsistently located beyond the former while, at
the same time, including it. As Jean Laplanche
and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis remark, the only
totality (love) of a self-satisfied God to the
real totality of a self-satisfying society qua
association of workers. Ronald Boer, in his
stimulating commentary on Althusser’s early
venture into Biblical scholarship, notes two
interesting and interrelated points having
to do with the Catholic “overdetermination”
of the biblical “myth” in Althusser’s reading.
The first is that the themes of self-sufficiency
and the ex nihilo, obviously necessary to
establish a link with the Hegelian and Marxist doctrines of alienation, are not a part of
the story of Genesis. The second is that two
millennia of convolutions over this matter
are prepared by the “ambiguity of the first
phrase of Genesis 1.1., which may be either
‘In the beginning God created’ or ‘When God
began to create the heavens and the earth, the
earth without form and void.’ The implication
of the second translation, based on the indeterminate first word in Hebrew, bereshith,
‘in a beginning’ is that there was indeed
something with which God began, rather
than the vast emptiness that the doctrine of
the creatio ex nihilo assumes.” 11 Ambiguity is
also redolent in Althusser’s text, especially in
what concerns nature. On the one hand, the
myth of the creatio qua Fall (which Althusser
intentionally superimposes) alienates men by
imposing a domain of natural necessity as
the effect of God’s “superfluous” act (natural
alienation); on the other, as Boer remarks,
“Nature is systematically excised: God is
beyond the law, creates ex nihilo, which
then becomes the absence of obligation and
need, the tautological absence of the origin of
creation, and the restriction of nature to the
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18
way out of this impasse was for Freud to
implicitly presuppose two kinds of pleasure
principle: the pleasure principle stricto sensu,
which would be in charge of maintaining a
constant level of libido qua “life instinct,” and
the so-called Nirvana principle, which would
instead work “towards the reduction of tensions to nil,”16 thus serving the death instinct
qua “essence of the instinctual.” 17
Despite the fact that he does not openly
confront Freud on this point, Lacan definitely
refuses to consider the Nirvana principle in
terms of the death drive.18 Adamant that they
must be distinguished, Lacan claims that there
is a fundamental “division between the Nirvana or annihilation principle, on the one hand,
and the death drive, on the other [insofar as]
the former concerns a relationship to a fundamental law which might be identified with that
which energetics theorizes as the tendency to
return to a state, if not of absolute rest, then at
least of universal equilibrium,” which is to say,
entropy (211; emphasis added). By contrast,
the death drive “has to be beyond the instinct
to return to the state of equilibrium of the
inanimate sphere,” and this for three strictly
interrelated reasons (212; emphasis added).
Firstly, it entails a historical dimension insofar as “it is articulated at a level that can be
defined only as a function of the signifying
chain” (211). Put differently, the death drive
can be applied only to human beings and not
to other living beings — the death drive is not
a death instinct. Secondly, such a historical
articulation of the death drive presents itself
in the guise of the repetitive “insistence” of
product of work which then falls into nature
at the moment of its production” — in other
words, we are dealing with the alienation of
nature.12 Of course, the ambiguity lies even
deeper, to the extent that in his “Catholic”
reading of the myth of Genesis, Althusser effectively fuses the very terms that Hegel, as
we have seen, sought to keep apart: production or work, on the one hand, and creatio ex
nihilo on the other.
We could hazard in this respect that
Althusser’s later work, so pregnant with
consequences for the likes of Badiou, hinges
instead on opting for the break with circularity, the break with a humanity that would
come to love and enjoy itself in its metabolic
exchange with nature. This entails the “creationist” and anti-productivist realization
that, when faced with the key problems of
Marxist thought — the problems of (communist) revolution and (socialist) transition — the
aleatory dimension cannot be circumvented.
As Balibar put it in his 1995 preface to Pour
Marx, it is a matter of grasping not just the
necessity of contingency, but the contingency
of contingency itself. Marxism is thereby
reinvented as the science of tracking the nihil and extracting it from the empirical and
ideological density of reproduction and its
apparatuses, in order to turn it against them
in revolutionary practice, in actions that are
invariably also retroactions upon the reality
of production itself.
***
the fundamental fantasy — in Lacan’s own
intricate words, “of something memorable because it was remembered.” 19 Thirdly, this insistence qua principle of conservation should
at the same time be linked with a subtractive
element that, for the reasons expounded
above, must be differentiated from any sort of
transcendent Schopenhauerian Wille: Lacan
defines it as a “will to destruction” and later
specifies that it should rather be understood
as a destructive “will for something Other [une
volonté de quelque chose d’Autre],” that is,
“a will to begin all over again,” ex nihilo (212;
trans. modified).
19
To cut a long story short, according to Lacan,
the death drive could thus be said to be beyond
the pleasure principle only insofar as we take
the latter to express the Nirvana principle qua
(alleged) tendency to return to an inorganic
state. On the contrary, if one considers the
pleasure principle as “nothing else than the
dominance of the signifier” (134), as Lacan
himself has it in Seminar VII, it is clearly
the case that the death drive — on which the
differentiality of the symbolic Other of the
signifiers ultimately relies — is not beyond
the pleasure principle despite the fact that it
involves a (domesticated) masochistic jouissance, which itself aims at the “inorganic”
un-dead. As a matter of fact, such a “beyond”
of the Lacanian death drive always remains
within the symbolic order (“should we find
anything else than the fundamental relationship between the subject and the signifying
UMBR(a)
***
The most intricate investigation of the vicissitudes of the nothing in the domain of
production, of the (eminently productive)
tension between productio and creatio, is
doubtless to be found in Marx. Yet another
of the theological niceties introduced by
capitalist accumulation is that it effectively
injects the “abstraction” and “representation”
of the ex nihilo, condemned by Hegel, into
the materiality of production, exploding any
restricted economy of the kind that haunted
Pound’s work. Rather than the ultimately
fallacious and anti-Semitic concern with the
banks, the problem of the ex nihilo is posed
for Marx in terms of the creation of value,
and more specifically, of surplus value. As
Enrique Dussel writes, “The constant irruption of surplus value ex nihilo (aus Nichts:
from the nothingness of capital) gives the
reproduction of capital a very special qualitative physiognomy.” 13 Starting from the
(very non-Althusserian) premise that the
treatment of the value-form in Capital is in
many respects a theoretical translation and
displacement of the categories of the Science of Logic, Dussel nevertheless wishes to
identify those moments when Marx’s “critical
attitude” vis-à-vis his dialectical precursor
determines crucial breaks, in which the ex
nihilo plays a key role. The first index of
Marx’s infidelity to Hegel is to be found, according to Dussel, in the lack of isomorphism
between the passing over from Being to Essence in the Logic and the transformation
from Money to Capital in Das Kapital. While
the passage in the Logic is a move that takes
place within the medium of a fundamental
chain in what Freud names the beyond of
the pleasure principle?”). 20 The real of jouissance — that of the object a — is indeed
always a real-of-the-symbolic. Moving from
these presuppositions, Lacan also deduces
that the death drive is precisely that which
makes it impossible for the subject to (tend
to) return to the pre-symbolic “inorganic”:
Freud’s Nirvana principle should indeed make
us “smile” insofar as “nothing is less sure than
returning to [the alleged] nothingness [of the
pre-symbolic].” 21
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20
***
In Seminar VII, Lacan enigmatically affirms
that the ethical figure of Antigone is attached
to the limit of the ex nihilo, which “is nothing
more than the break that the very presence
of language inaugurates in the life of man”
(279). Hegel interpreted Sophocles’ tragedy
as the struggle between the law of the family
(Antigone) and that of the state (Creon). In opposition to this reading, Lacan identifies three
different laws: the “transparent,” normative
nomos of Zeus; the unwritten laws of the “gods
below” which represent Zeus’ obscene side;
and a “certain legality” that is “not developed
in any signifying chain or in anything else…
an horizon determined by a structural relation
[that] exists only on the basis of [language],
but reveals [its] unsurpassable consequence.”
It goes without saying that both the first and
second laws are ultimately represented by
Creon; on the other hand, Antigone “denies
that it is Zeus who ordered her to [bury Polynices]” and equally “dissociates herself” from
identity and continuity (we could even speak
of a circularity, following Deleuze’s reading
of Hegel in Difference and Repetition), the
latter “is a jump to infinity: it is an absolute
change of nature.” 14 But the crucial shift takes
place when we are faced with the question of
the source of value. Here, in what is admittedly a philologically reckless move, for his
clue Dussel turns to the late Schelling, whose
lectures were well attended, if often derided,
by the left Hegelians and assorted intellectual
agitators. In a move reminiscent of Negri’s
recent attempt at a materialist recasting of
the ex nihilo in terms of living labor (in Time
for Revolution), Dussel claims that Schelling’s
positive philosophy (which argues that “even
before the Being, there is Reality, as a prius of
Thought and of Being,” such that there is “a
creative source of Being from nothingness”)
provides, with its doctrine of “the non-identity of Being and Reality,” the categorial
source for Marx’s overcoming of Hegel. This
Schellingian stance is for Dussel the only
way of accounting for Marx’s treatment of
surplus-value:
When a worker works, he “reproduces” the
value of salary in the necessary time. The reproduction of the value of salary is production
from the Foundation of capital (the value of
salary is from capital). But in the surplus-time
of the surplus-labour the worker creates from
nothingness capital, because he has no valuecapital Foundation (works without a salary).
This kind of “making” a product (commodity) without being founded in capital is what
Marx technically calls: “creation of value”
(Wertschoepfung)…The “living labour” is this
“Source” (Quelle) from which the “creation”
This turn thus involves the introduction
of the distinction between creation and
(re)production into the economy itself, with
the effect of revealing a subject (living labor)
that, in Marx’s words, does not produce
“reproduction (Reproduktion), but rather a
new creation (neue Schoepfung) and, more
specifically, the creation of new value (neue
Wertschoepfung).” 16 But what does it mean
for value to be produced ex nihilo by a subject? Is it not the case that the subject of living
labor qua source is also a substance — thus
its creation would turn out to be an other
pro-duction, not, in Marx’s Paulinian turn of
phrase, a new creation? If, as Dussel writes,
the “fetish claim of capital is to be the creative
Source of surplus value,” is discovering, in
something like the absolute poverty of living
labor, the alternative source of value, really
a manner of revitalizing the disruptive force
of the ex nihilo? Is it not, rather, by posing the
subject of living labor “in its Exteriority by
anteriority,” to say simply that living labor
is nothing for Capital, but is in itself open,
via a practice of appropriation, to a new
circularity? 17 Rather than resort to such an
underlying creative source (and sources are,
of course, never ex nihilo), perhaps it would
be more productive to consider the ex nihilo
not simply as a fetish behind which we can
locate our own laboring bodies, but as a real
feature of capital itself, of capital as subject.
In an elegant critique of Dussel’s Schellingian
21
The most important point to grasp here is
that Antigone deliberately embraces her “second death” — symbolic death — only in order to
resist the hubris of Creon’s law, his “excessive,”
unreasonable decision to condemn Polynices’
dead body to a second death. Antigone does
not cede on her suicidal demand to bury Polynices because this is the only way she can make
desire appear. In showing the void of pure
desire through her “splendour,” she “saves”
desire as such from Creon’s totalitarian attempt
to obliterate the real-of-the-symbolic (the lack
of the law), his imposition of an (impossible)
universal good turned into a “criminal” good
(240). Thus, we must conclude that Lacan’s
aesthetic ethics — aimed at temporarily disclosing the void of desire (the void in the symbolic
(Schoepfung) of value derives. It is the Schellingian subject to which we have made reference.
It is the creationist theory turned into critical
15
economy.
UMBR(a)
the gods below. Instead, Antigone “establishes
herself on the limit” of the symbolic — the
real-of-the-symbolic — which is to say, the
structural “horizon” of “legality” given by the
ex nihilo unveiled as such (278). Lacan also
affirms that Antigone acts exclusively in the
name of the following right: “What is, is.” This
mysterious affirmation becomes clearer if we
refer to a key lesson of Seminar VI, in which
the real-of-the-symbolic is associated with the
“elective point” of the relationship of the subject to his “pure being as subject.” 22 Not only
does Antigone’s positioning on the “radical
limit” of the ex nihilo affirm the “unique value”
of Polynices’ being independently of any reference to the specific content of his actions, but,
more generally, the heroine is also obliged to
“sacrifice her own being in order to maintain
that essential being” which is the limit as such
against Creon’s threat to obliterate it (283).
UMBR(a)
22
Other) beyond imaginary specularity — is, at
the same time, an ontological ethics, an ethics
of the preservation of being qua void of the
symbolic.
***
Lacan’s claim that the only right invoked by
Antigone’s temporary occupation of the ex
nihilo (the place of pure desire) is “what is,
is” should be read together with his other
claim, made in a different lesson of Seminar
VII, that Sadean suffering — to be understood
as the perverse reification of the “edge” or
Marxism, Chris Arthur makes the following
remarks:
By this act of constituting labour as wage-labour,
capital constitutes itself and embarks on its inherent dynamic of accumulation. This cannot be
explained on the basis that “labour is everything”
any more than the claim that I am “nothing but”
water and carbon explains my life-cycle. Once
a system has achieved sufficient complexity,
powers emerge that cannot be reduced to those
of its constituent elements. The capital system
exhibits precisely such emergent powers, regardless of whether or not it emerges from some such
original “ontological act” as Dussel maintains.
Successfully subsuming living labour, and consistently reproducing the capital relation, capital
has a fair claim to assert “I am everything”…albeit that capital is “nothing but” labour, it has
become autonomous, labour’s own other.18
While labor may indeed be a source, it is capital
that, according to Arthur, can claim to be the
(ex nihilo) creator of value (and thus of the very
conditions for production and reproduction).
Moreover, in its “becoming” autonomous,
Capital is both creator and created ex nihilo,
in the sense that it is an effect that claims its
autonomy and isolation from any other system, positing itself as its own cause.
***
If we cannot return to the circularity of a
humanized natural metabolism, or to the
heroic assumption of our own living labor,
what would it mean for a politics of the ex
“margin” of the symbolic — is a “stasis which
affirms that that which is cannot return to
the void from which it emerged” (239, 261;
emphasis added). In this case, the ex nihilo
is fully foreclosed: the “static” repudiation
of the void through reified pain finally risks
losing being and mythically returning to the
“un-dead” primordial real. On the contrary, in
the case of Antigone, the ex nihilo is affirmed
as such: being qua lack of being and desire as
its metonymy are thus reinstated.
UMBR(a)
23
The difficult task that Lacanian ethics faces
in later years involves resignifying the leitmotiv
of the ex nihilo in a way that goes beyond the
“suicidal” figure of Antigone. In other words,
Lacan needs to detach pure desire — the
momentary disclosure of the real or void of
the symbolic, the ex nihilo as such — from (the
failure of) tragic transgression, and indicate
instead how the subtractive moment of ethics
should be conceived as a precondition for a
radically new symbolization. As we have seen,
the death drive ultimately relies on the law of
the ex nihilo as the “will” to begin again. At the
risk of oversimplifying an intricate issue that
has only been introduced here, one could go
so far as to suggest that any possible political
appropriation of Lacan’s “extreme” ethics of
the ex nihilo should necessarily rely on the
equation between what is radically “new” and
what is “good.” 23
nihilo to really come to terms with the nihil
at the heart of capital itself, to match or
divert its creation? If “Capital names what
Deleuze and Guattari call the monstrous
‘ Thing,’ the cancerous, anti-social anomaly,
the catastrophic over-event through which
the inconsistent void underlying every consistent presentation becomes unbound and
the ontological fabric from which every social
bond is woven is exposed as constitutively
empty,” who is the subject — the “voided
animal,” as Badiou would put it — capable
of matching, with its own creation, its own
reinscriptions, the power of a symbolic system that is itself founded on, and reproduced
by, the ex nihilo? 19 What kind of new dialectic
would permit us to divide the nothing in two,
to think an ex nihilo insubordinate to the pitiless axiom of capitalist self-valorization? And
would such a communist use of the nothing,
as it were, mimic the fundamental (death)
drive of capital — creative destruction, accumulation by dispossession, crisis — or could
it indeed, leaving all transvaluations aside,
whether fanatical, reactionary, or messianic,
do away with the form of value altogether?
Finally, what collective acts and procedures,
ex nihilo, will be capable of matching the
new creations through which the Subject of
Capital constantly reproduces its planetary
hegemony?
1.
Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII:
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960, ed. Jacques-Alain
Miller, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1992), 122.
Subsequent references will appear parenthetically within
the text.
2. Lacan, Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, livre IV: La relation
d’objet, 1956-1957, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil,
1994), 48. See also The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 213.
3. Jacques Derrida, “Le facteur de la vérité,” in The Post Card:
From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 464.
UMBR(a)
24
4. Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book I:Freud’s
Papers on Technique, 1953-1954, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller,
trans. John Forrester (New York: Norton, 1988), 177.
5. Lacan, “Les complexes familiaux dans la formation de
l’individu,” in Autres écrits (Paris: Seuil, 2001), 39.
1.
See Jean-François Courtine, Suarez et le système de la
métaphysique (Paris: PUF, 1990).
2. Ezra Pound, The Cantos (New York: New Directions, 1970),
XLVI, 233. Subsequent references will appear parenthetically within the text.
3. Robert Casillo, The Genealogy of Demons: Anti-Semitism,
Fascism and the Myths of Ezra Pound (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 34.
4. Pound, Selected Prose of Ezra Pound: 1909-1965, ed. William Cookson (New York: New Directions, 1973), 351. See
also Casillo, The Genealogy of Demons, 34.
5. Casillo, The Genealogy of Demons, 246.
6. Martin Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” trans. David
Farrell Krell, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 84, 89.
6. Lacan, “Aggressivity in psychoanalysis,” in Écrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), 26.
7. Gildas Richard, “Examen critique du jugement de Hegel sur
la notion de création ex nihilo,” Les études philosophiques
3 (2004): 298. [My translation.]
7. Lacan, La relation d’objet, 50. All quotations from this text
are my translation. See also The Ethics of Psychoanalysis,
214.
8. Ibid., 302. [My translation.]
8. Lacan, “The signification of the phallus,” in Écrits, 287.
9. See Lacan, “Position de l’inconscient,” Écrits (Paris: Seuil,
1966), 848.
10. The signifier kills the mythical un-dead, thus necessarily
giving rise to the non-signified of death, to “that limit of
the signified which is not reached by any human being.” In
this sense, the death drive should also be understood as “the
fact that we realize that life is uncertain and ephemeral.”
La relation d’objet, 48, 50.
11. Lacan, L’identification (1961-1962), unpublished seminar,
28 February 1962. [My translation.]
12. Lacan, Le désir et son interprétation (1958-1959), unpublished seminar, 3 June 1959. [My translation.]
13. Massimo Recalcati points out that the conservative function
of the death drive problematizes Freud’s widely accepted
9. Louis Althusser, “On Content in the Thought of G.W.F.
Hegel” in The Spectre of Hegel: Early Writings, ed. François
Matheron, trans. G.M. Goshgarian (London: Verso, 1997),
168, n. 252.
10. Ibid.
11. Ronald Boer, “Althusser, Myth & Genesis 1-3,” Journal
of Philosophy & Scripture 1.2 (2004): 2. <http://www.
philosophyandscripture.org/Issue1-2/Roland_Boer/roland_boer.html> (1 May 2005).
12. Ibid., 3.
13. Enrique Dussel, “Hegel, Schelling and Surplus Value” (paper presented at “International Working Group on Value
Theory” conference, Eastern Economic Association, 4 April
1997): 1. <http://www.greenwich.ac.uk/~fa03/iwgvt/
files/97Dussel.rtf > (1 May 2005).
14. Ibid., 2.
not least by Lacan himself — libidinal dualism. See L’universale
e il singolare: Lacan e l’al di là del principio di piacere, (Milan:
Marcos y Marcos, 1995), 28. For our part, we are not completely
convinced that this conservative function of the death drive really
applies to Freud: too many issues remain indeterminate in Freud’s
own account of this notion...However, it is doubtless the case that
such a Lacanian interpretation of the death drive undermines
Lacan’s own alleged fidelity to Freud’s dualism and paves the
way for a form of monism that would distinguish itself from the
ingenuousness of Jung’s unitary life energy.
14. Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four
Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques-Alain
Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1981), 168.
17. Ibid., 103. See also Lacan, La relation d’objet, 47.
18. Nevertheless, Lacan acknowledges that Freud’s notion of the
death drive qua Nirvana principle is “very suspect in itself.” The
Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 212.
19. Lacan also makes the claim that “remembering, historicising,
is coextensive with the functioning of the drive in what we call
the human psyche.” Ibid., 209.
20. Lacan, Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, livre V: Les formations
de l’inconscient, 1957-1958, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris:
Seuil, 1998), 246. [My translation.]
21. Ibid.
22. Lacan, Le désir et son interprétation, 27 May 1959. [My translation].
23. As for this last point, one cannot wait for a detailed study of
the possible connections between Lacan’s ethical subject and
Badiou’s political subject, especially as expounded in Théorie
du sujet (Paris: Seuil, 1982).
17. Ibid., 5, 4.
18. Chris Arthur, review of Towards an Unknown Marx: A Commentary on the Manuscripts of 1861-63 by Enrique Dussel,
Historical Materialism 11.2 (2003): 258-259.
19. Ray Brassier, “Nihil Unbound: Remarks on Subtractive Ontology and Thinking Capitalism,” in Think Again: Alain Badiou
and the Future of Philosophy, ed. Peter Hallward (London:
Continuum, 2004), 53-54.
25
16. Jean Laplanche & Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, The Language of
Psychoanalysis, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York:
Norton, 1974), 102.
16. Quoted in ibid., 4.
UMBR(a)
15. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund
Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth
Press, 1953-1974), 18: 63.
15. Ibid., 3-4.
christian jambet
THE STRANGER AND THEOPHANY
Every existing thing is a manifestation of God. Such is the fundamental
proposition of speculative philosophy in the land of Islam. It posits the
radical transcendence of divine unity as the principle of instauration.
Intelligence cannot comprehend it; imagination cannot represent it; and
speech cannot express it. But theophany contradicts this divine evasion
through the revelation it unveils. The name responds to the veiled essence
as it hides and reveals it at the same time. Therefore, the name introduces
a split in God between the unnamed and the named, between the retreat
of the absolute one and the abundant gift of its various faces.
Unlike Christianity — which considers the unique event of the Word
made flesh the achievement of the history of theophanies and thus reconciles God with his creation through incarnation — speculative Islam
rejects the incarnation of the divine Word and insists that the Word manifest itself. Since no figure of the Word, of the revealed God, can exhaust
its activity, in the space opened by the denial of incarnation, theophanic
mediations multiply themselves to infinity in a time open to the void
of an always renewed future. I would like to see in this metaphysical
postulation something other than a cultural determination, namely the
very singularity of spiritual Islam. It is a way of perceiving what exists
and conferring on it, without delay, the strange power of reflecting divine
operations. The existing thing loses the status of simple extended substance in order to gain the authority of a visibility granted to the divine
in the purely sensible. Theophany is the determinate existing thing itself
when the absolute does not absent itself from it but offers itself in the
mode of a paradoxical presence.
Strangeness, if we understand it as a mode of being or, even more
profoundly, as a movement of perdition and effacement, an exile at work
in the depths of the existing, appears to designate the exact opposite of
theophany. The latter is about reconciliation, while strangeness is about
division, distance, obliteration and the suffering of bodies and souls
that have watched the shores of their homeland disappear. Theophany,
UMBR(a)
27
however, bears within itself the radical strangeness of its principle, which it struggles to vanquish
without ever being able to do so. In the Age of Theophanies, of which the speculative philosophy
of Islam expresses the truth, strangeness does not stop positing an elsewhere. This internal suffering, however, is abated in the heart of revelation. The One mirrors and contemplates itself in
the event of the sensible. But perhaps it is here that the Age of Theophanies reaches its twilight,
that manifestation is hollowed out and trembles, that the existing gently ceases to be the apparent in order to become nothing, the apparition of nothing.
UMBR(a)
28
1. THE EXILE OF DIVINE UNITY
Our starting point will be what Ismaili philosophy tells us of the original instauration of the
universe and its foundation in the one. How can we preserve divine unity while taking into account the multiplicity of existing things that come from God? The question of their primordial
instauration will be posed in arithmological terms. Thus, Nasir-e Khosraw adopts a Pythagorean
model: according to a remark attributed to the Greek sage, “the order of the world rests on an
arithmetic structure.” The one is the artisan of the world, “who made the multiplied world appear from out of his own unicity.”1 The world is the multiplication of the one, by virtue of the
generative power of this one. The apparition of the spatial and temporal universe manifests the
creative power of the one in what the Pythagoreans called the dyad. The latter is the product of an
arithmetic configuration that provides the law of theophany: each numerical series constitutive
of an instaurated existing thing [existant instauré] carries within itself the immanent presence
of the one that generates it.
At the same time, the manifestation of the divine one in the multiplicity of existing things is
preceded by the solitary affirmation of the one, which is excepted from the numerical series it
engenders, in order to function as the series’ paradoxical foundation. The multiplicity of the world
manifests itself out of the one. But the one, writes Nasir-e Khosraw, is not “lacking,” it is without
want, in such a way that it has absolutely no need for numbers. Even if no number existed, the
one would be no less real for that. Inversely, all the numbers need the one in order to exist. Such
is the paradox of the one: without it no multiplicity can effectively appear, but the one itself does
not have to manifest itself in any numeric instauration. By its very essence, the one is solitary,
detached, monadic. It is one and real by itself. The one is pure number, the absolute one.
There is thus a certain disequilibrium, an absence of reciprocity between the one and the chain
of numbers, which fundamentally disjoins the absolute one (which has no need whatsoever for the
sum of existing things) from instaurated existing things (whose essential characteristic is a lack in
being, or what philosophers, following al-Farabi, call the possibility of being). The Pythagorean
model allows us to conceive, on the one hand, the real that is beyond being [être] (the disjoined
one); and on the other beings [étant], summoned to manifest this disjoined unity through an
instauration in which an abyss opens between the manifested one (configured in the multiples
which are its apparitions) and the absolute one. The one Nasir-e Khosraw refers to here is the
very one that Plato introduces at the stage of the first hypothesis of Parmenides: it declares itself
only to withdraw immediately from being through a break with the dyad that it installs in being.
The existent and being are inaugurated with the dyad, which is the one instaurated in a number
with which the multiple begins. But they are not the primordial instaurator, which should rather
be thought as what we called the paradoxical one, since it is one by virtue of not being one, by
always being in retreat from all numeration that would capture it in a multiple numeric chain.
This withdrawal of the principle is the object of Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani’s long meditations
at the beginning of his Rahat al-‘aql.2 The principle is referred to through the third person pronoun “Him,” which indicates its strangeness. “Being (‘aysâ) exits him,” since “being” does not
attach itself to what is authentically first. Being is always in accord with the instaurated, while
to think the principle as the source of infinite instauration is to deliver it not only from beings
but also from being. Of course, in order to reach this radical thesis, Kirmani needs to think being
according to Aristotle’s ten categories.
The trauma of his dialectical reasoning is that being is either substance or accident. But if
the principle were substance, it would have to be either a body or a non-body. As a body, the
principle would possess a divisible essence. But if it were not a body, it would be a potentiality
(like the soul) or an actuality (like reason). As potentiality, it would necessitate an instaurating
29
Therefore, the source of the exile that affects all existing things, the source of the absence
that opens in the most radiant epiphany is the original disjunction of the one. As soon as the
one configures itself, it recognizes in advance of itself a principle that withdraws itself from its
own existence by absenting its unicity from all relation or connection with the instaurated. The
first stranger is the one itself, as stranger to its own real, if this real is withdrawn from the name
Allah, which is always a secondary affirmation. It is the one in contact with the multiple and
conquered by the multiplicity that emanates from it, even though it is pure of all multiplicity.
Wahdat, the paradoxical one, posits the divine one as a radical strangeness in relation to itself
in such a way that we cannot even speak of the unity of God, but only of the unity anterior to
God of which it is the unity.
UMBR(a)
We are presented with a first schism or, more precisely, a separation that is not posed in the
reciprocal terms of an opposition between the pure one and the multiple one, that is, between the
instaurating principle (which only receives the name of the one in that it is first and anterior to all
position or emanation) and the instaurated one immanent to the dyad. The one does not simply
precede the dyad, rather it divides itself into a pure and a multiple one, which Nasir-e Khosraw
designates respectively as wahdat (unity) and wâhid (one). Unity anticipates the one, which is
then the synonym for the multiple one: the instaurated one that is always the multiple one.
UMBR(a)
30
instance; but as an actuality, it would still not be fully delivered from all dependence. In fact,
if the principle were actualized in an other than itself, it would need this other to complete it,
therefore this other would be anterior to it. If it were actualized in its own essence, as a result
of the very capacity of this essence, the principle would have multiple relations with differentiated significations. There would be in its essence a minimal difference between actual being and
actualized being. The crux of the argument is the following: substance never fails to share in or
be shared, so it necessarily conjoins itself to the multiple. The principle, on the other hand, is
beyond all sharing, be it passively suffered or actively offered.
This is why we should understand the principle as that “which is elevated beyond what possesses
a specific nature (al-naw’iya).” The paradoxical one is in no sense a species or a substance, not
even a species consisting of one single individual. It does not coincide with any essence, since
it is itself not constituted by its own essence. Therefore, the principle is not accessible through
any attribution. It is impossible to confer on it even the most insignificant predicate. Nor is it a
subject, if by subject we mean the support of predication. The principle, the paradoxical one, is
the cause of instauration only to the degree that it is pure real, without predicate, preceding all
positing, even if we try to represent it as equal to itself, A=A. It is an A that retreats from equality with itself.
This fugitive outside of all predication confirms the given of Koranic revelation: the principle is
ineffable. This is why the most infinite perfection fails to name it. It is altogether beyond the opposition between deficiency and perfection: the principle is prior to both esse and ens perfectum.
We can therefore call it paradoxical, since it avoids all oppositions, situating itself there where
judgment does not expect it, where no doxa grasps it, if doxa judges in contradictory terms, either
choosing one or thinking the two together: opposed and similar, form and matter, and so on.3
The negative path leads to the paradoxical one by withdrawing being from it, but without supposing that it is not, if it is true that it is not — neither due to a thing, nor according to a thing,
nor in a thing, nor through a thing, nor for a thing, and neither with something. It is a matter of
a negativity that is situated beyond being and the negation of being. In order for the affirmation
of the one to succeed in its pure negativity, it must reach the degree of the instaurated, which
is the degree of stable being (wujûd thâbit). This, however, is the infinite instability of the instaurating principle.
The paradoxical one is the unstable one. Superior in this respect to zero, which will engender
for the Moderns, the sequence of numbers when it is counted for one by the one, the unstable
one is a stranger to all counting for one. We cannot pursue here all the consequences of such an
assumption of the paradoxical one by Ismaili thought. It will suffice to point out that the one
is not the term through which the existent affirms itself as a quiescent totality, but rather that
through which all that is instaured now carries in itself the trace of a negation and, therefore,
the frequency of a first instability which the existent reveals all the while negating it by its own
totalization. It is this disjunction, never reconciled, and never thought in terms of a contradiction, that incites a decisive strangeness in the real. The concept of instauration will be forged in
order to think the unthinkable: the passage, which is not a mediation, between the paradoxical
one and the one through which the possibility of the two and of the entire chain of numbers
inaugurates itself.
2. THE THEOPHANIC ORDER
We must now consider the effect of instauration, the first Intelligence, who in Ismaili thought
occupies the position of the first theophany, and who rules the whole regime of epiphanies that
emanate from it. We discover “the perfect in activity” (“al-kâmil fî’l-fi’l”), “that which is free in itself
with regard to the other than itself.” 4 The total existent expresses in its fundamental liberty the
disordered liberty of the principle under the integral face of order. This is how we understand the
power of theophany: in its perfectly harmonious beauty resides the trace of the infinite principle,
31
The double negation interprets tawhîd [unity of God] in the following terms: there is no divinity
if it is not God. The first negation can be isolated as “there is no divinity,” which corresponds to
the negation of being, to the ceaselessly renewed withdrawal of the principle. At the same time,
the infinite attestation of negativity is corrected by the second negation, “if it is not God,” in which
the instauration of the first instaurated affirms itself. But, in its turn, the second negation leads
us back to the first without the possibility of terminating the movement of rhythmic oscillation
between the two negations. There is no negation of negation, only a process of negativity in
which the principle withdraws itself and makes itself a stranger. Between the first and the second
negation the pure instance of instauration produces itself, since the second negation designates
the possibility of the affirmation of the first instaurated. In the medieval language of Kirmani, it
is the first Intelligence. Between the pure One and the total or multiple One arises the reign of
freedom, which is the instability and hyper-essential exile of the principle.
UMBR(a)
If it is possible to call theophany the total one that will be instaurated, followed by the whole
hierarchy of beings, we must agree that theophany manifests the instability of the principle
which shimmers at its heart, as if the figure or the intelligible could never master the excess of
instauration in the mirror of the instaurated. There is a radical strangeness at the heart of the
most ordered immanence. It is at this point that the double negation of the principle becomes
manifest not as a dialectical reconciliation, but rather as a negation by which the principle bars
and affects itself with a hyper-essential nothingness beyond being and nothingness, beyond affirmation and negation. We are dealing with an originary disorder similar to the one Schelling
attempted to grasp in the fundamental past to which he bears witness at the origin of the Ages
of the World.
UMBR(a)
32
but in such a way as if the mirror that the theophany holds up to the principle were the opposite
of what its beauty reflects. To the vibration of the principle, to its indefinite pulse of negativity,
corresponds in the instaurated an architecture without the blemish of affirmation.
This apogee of divine architectonics is the limit through which order constructs itself below the
ineffable disorder. Theophany offers to the soul who contemplates it a face that is always more
complete, from which emanates the beauty that takes hold of even the most distant sensible.
Still, this order exists as if it were threatened from the inside by infinity, to which it opposes its
limit that is not yet finitude, but the total infinity from which finitude springs. The dehiscence
which instaurates itself between the principle and the first instaurated, between the pure one and
its theophany, is the minimal distance, always effaced and changing, which subsists between a
savage infinite and an infinite that henceforth counts itself as one. The counting for one, against
which the principle rebelled, begins with the theophany. This counting itself is posterior to the
operation, to the instaurating activity. Theophany manifests itself in the posited world that corresponds to the universe of the prophecy and its work. It is on the level of the first Intelligence,
the harmony of the multiple One, that “the world of religion, from the point of view of the
composition of the Natiq” appears.
With the expression “al-natiq” Ismaili theosophy designates the “speaking” in an absolute sense,
the prophet as integral subject of the set of divine revelations carried by the vehicle of speech.
In prophetic speech we are dealing with the manifestation of the divine Word, making itself homologue to the first Intelligence as it descends, according to the successive cycles of the major
prophets, who are charged with the task of giving the Book and a law to the human community of
their times: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad. According to Fatimid Ismailism,
which reverses the doctrine of the Ismailism of Alamût, the eternal prophet (exemplifying itself
in the series of Major Prophets) is located at the level of the first Intelligence. He is the integral
theophany, in a symbolic relationship with the first Intelligence, the total existent or the multiple
One. It would be appropriate to resume this subsumption of the totality of divine figures under
the heading of prophecy. We must, however, insist on the ambivalence of its signification: while
the prophet resumes the creation, the Book gathers the totality of signs that otherwise manifest
God below him in his creations. The beauty of women, the splendor of the trees, the majesty of
mountains, the power of the animal kingdom, the lights of cities, the moderation of princes, the
obedience of men, the most insignificant leaf of grass, are all icons of the divine.
Everything expresses something intelligible and partakes of the Word. In this sense, beginning
with what incites love, everything is the sensible mirror of the one. In its controlled multiplicity, it
draws the limit where the unlimited makes itself seen. Every single thing is a good infinity. Each
body is a total fragment of the total architecture. If, according to Leibniz, every garden carries
within it an infinity of gardens, according to Kirmani every sensible thing carries in it the infinity
of collected expressions of Intelligence. Inversely, however, the prophet and his law distribute
themselves according to all the clarity of the sky and the earth, in the shadows of the rocks and
under every leaf or every being of flesh. Literal religion and its principles have no other truth
than their incessant reference to the sparkling colors of the real that spring forth even to the
weakest sensibilities. Nothing opposes here the world and the Book, nothing that would strike
the desirable multiplicities with nullity.5
The created world offers a schema in full accordance with what we have just summarized.
We know that the world of religion (sharî’a) — understood in a very general sense, since we are
dealing with the revealed Word, the Apparent in its integrality, and not only with divine commandments — corresponds to the first Intelligence, like the theophany corresponds to what it
epiphanizes. From this world of religion proceeds the Imam that subsists in potentiality, which
is the Holy Book itself, and which corresponds to the Intelligence in potentiality since the Book
in its apparent meaning is the manifestation in potentiality of its hidden meaning that is the
threshold of its effective reality. From the other side proceeds the Imam subsisting in actuality,
33
The imperative world unfolds itself in the following manner: the instauration gives rise, as an
act of pure freedom, to the first Intelligence. From this proceeds, on the one hand, the Intelligence that subsists in potentiality (matter and form); on the other hand, the second Intelligence
that subsists in actuality. From the Intelligence subsisting in potentiality proceeds the world
of nature with its stars and skies, as well as all the existing things that they contain. From the
second Intelligence proceed the Angels in charge of the world of nature. These two processions
converge in the emanative process from which man, understood as perfection, is born. Lastly,
the perfect man operates, on the one hand, the emanation of nature “with its skies, which contain the numerous things whose being comes from matter and form,” and on the other hand, the
angels in charge of these creations. Such is the hierarchy of the angelic world, as it moves from
the limit of the second Intelligence to the most profound depths of nature, centered on the pivot
or the pole which is the perfect man.
UMBR(a)
We are speaking here in terms of homologation or symbolization, but it would be more correct,
more faithful to Kirmani, to join as tightly as possible the two versions of the procession that
begins with the primordial instauration, with the liberty of the divine imperative, and which by
default translates this divine imperative into different degrees of matter and non-being. We do
not have, on the one hand, the procession of Intelligence, and on the other its translation into
the world of prophecy. The prophecy is the first theophany, because it is Intelligence itself as it
makes itself seen in the world of creation. At the same time the imperative world (’âlam al-amr)
has its revealing mirror in the created world (’âlam al-khalq). There is no succession between
the two apparitions, of the intelligible and of the human, and in the face of the perfect human,
the apparition of the totality of colors and bodies of beauty.
UMBR(a)
34
as the figure of Asâs, the “foundation” of the imamate, which makes itself visible at the decisive
moment of the Mohammedan revelation in the guise of Alî ibn Abî Tâlib. From the Book, or the
Imam in potentiality, proceeds the sharî’a, understood here in the strict sense of theoretical and
practical obedience. From Asâs proceed the heptades of Imams, the guardians and interpreters
of the sharî’a. It is clear that the Imam is in a second position, subordinate to that of the Prophet
(contrary to the theology of Alamût, which disposes the hierarchy according to the order: Resurrector, Imam, prophet). This theophany of the second Intelligence proceeds to the clarification of
the Book. It is the Book in actuality, fully elucidated. Man proceeds from the two dimensions of the
Imam, from the Book in its apparent meaning and the Book in its hidden meaning, corresponding
to its archetype in the world of the Imperative. Man gathers in himself the expressions of the
totality of the Book. He is the manifested Book, the apparent as well as the hidden, and he draws
his meaning from the Imam, the archetype of man. Finally, from man proceed the practice of
literal religion and the hermeneutics of the hidden meaning, which express the essence of the
fidelity to the primordial covenant between Adam and his Lord.
We have borrowed from the later vocabulary of Ismailism the notions of the imperative world
and the created world, since they shed light on the law of correspondence between the universe
of the Intelligences and the universe of manifestations or epiphanies. It may appear that the neat
order of hierarchies confers on the emanation a clarity impervious to all trembling. But this is not
the case at all. The whole edifice culminates in the first Intelligence that receives being from the
free instauration of the principle. Kirmani wants the act of instauration to be in itself an act of
veiling. The theophany veils what it reveals, in that it sees itself withdraw the clear perception of
the instaurating principle. The prophecy and the imamate can certainly make the Word descend
into human speech, and can elucidate its statements. But the Word, the imperative, completely
veils itself from what it instaurates. Comprehension does not pertain to the Intelligences. A
perplexing confusion (hayra) slides between the truth of the Word and the absolute knowledge
of the Intelligence.
Kirmani writes: “The Intelligence, when it is muted by the search for what is anterior to its
own essence, does not actualize itself except in perplexing confusion.” 6 Such is the effect of the
separation in which the Intelligence encounters the real of its own essence and the real of the
instaurating principle. When it steps outside itself as Intelligence and attempts to grasp the principle, it leads itself astray, losing its adequation to itself, and founders in an ignorance worse than
the ordinary lack of knowledge of limited beings: perplexity and confusion (hayra) characterize
the being-other of Intelligence, its radical estrangement. Furthermore, its eternal homologue,
the prophecy, which proceeds from it as the totality of epiphanies now vibrates to the rhythm
of hopeless disorientation. The ultimate pole of the quest is that which undoes the quest. The
pure one engenders divergence and blindness. As a consequence, each theophanic form simply
shows the real from a partial point of view. Doubtless, it is a pars totalis that makes the whole
of the existent visible, but the perplexity of theophany that comes to it from the distance of the
first Intelligence itself deepens in this manifestation.
This would be the moment for Kirmani to say that no knowledge exceeds the prophecy and
the imamate. It is to root the aim of human vision in the source of every valid gaze, the eye of the
Intelligence. In this sense, it is to affirm and to found absolute knowledge. Theophany renders
itself absolute in this acceptance of a primary limit, the limit of the multiple One. But, in another
sense, it is to turn the instaurating imperative into the principle of a disorder that reigns precisely
at the heart of order. This is the same disorder that only the later figure of the seventh prophet
(in the Qarmatian tradition) or the Resurrector (in the tradition of Alamût) is capable of reducing, thereby offering the absolute theophany, the manifestation of the pure One itself. The sacred
history of the heptads of the Imam opens to the future time of this absolute theophany, in the
awaiting of which all sensible revelations of the divine, like all souls or all intellects, inherit the
interior trembling of the hayra.
Therefore it appears that the ontology that is most appropriate to offer itself as the foundation
of a doctrine of theophanies radically excludes all estrangement. Ibn Arabî thinks theophany all
the better and he is capable of conceiving the universe as an infinite plurality of the epiphanies
of the divine Names, to the extent that he actually constructs the philosophy of Identity required
by Islam. We are not concerned here with the question of whether Ibn Arabî was ever really a
“philosopher” in the strict sense or if he was essentially a visionary theosophist. At the very least,
in his famous work, one of the most commented upon, Fosûs al-hikam,7 Ibn Arabî, even as he
engages in a permanent exegesis of the Koran, lays the foundations of a system. Everything we
will rather allusively suggest here relies on this work, which deserves to be placed within the
lineage of great philosophies of Identity, from Spinoza to Schelling. We interrogate him as a
philosopher, voluntarily leaving aside the otherwise essential dimensions of hermeneutics and
visionary revelations.
35
Ibn Arabî’s work presents us with an architectonics that obviously differs from Ismaili ontology,
in spite of all the similarities we might discover due to the common heritage of Neo-Platonism.
Certainly, there is a powerful feeling of perplexity, of an obscuring of intellection at the heart of the
theophanic vision, since the divine Essence never lets itself be seen entirely in the manifestation
of divine Names without a remainder. But this night of appearance immediately corrects itself in
its opposite. The apparition and the veil contradict each other in the form of the manifestation of
the one, but this contradiction is overcome, without negativity, by the identity of the effusion that
proceeds from the Essence in the movement that Ibn Arabî calls the breath of the Merciful.
UMBR(a)
3. THE BREATH OF THE MERCIFUL
UMBR(a)
36
The divine Essence is the absolute real. Revelation begins with its effusion on and in its own
names present in the holy Book as so many designations of God’s active properties, in as much as
he enters into a relation with his creation, which is to say, in as much as he epiphanizes himself,
reveals himself in the multiplicity of the kingdoms of the universe. The perfect identity of the one
with itself does not contradict the multiple epiphany, rather it envelopes it and unfolds itself in
it. Thus the real manifests itself in every created existent and in every idea corresponding to such
an existent, even as it hides and withdraws itself from the spontaneous comprehension that we
have of it. Acceding to the real is a matter of acceding to its identity, which is the being-identical
of the universe and divine identity, where identity presents itself under the heading of form. The
knot of the identity of the being-identical and the created is the form of the being-identical in the
created, by which the created reveals itself as the epiphany of the being-identical. But this identity, designated by the divine name the “Apparent,” supposes at the same time the divine name
of the “Hidden.” Identity is the ontological coincidence of apparition and veiling at the heart of
the epiphanic unity in which the unity of the real unfolds under a particular modality.
This is why it is impossible to define the real. It would require consciousness of the infinity of
forms of manifestation that populate the universe. Only the assumption in an absolute knowledge of the whole of the revealed God would offer a representation of the hidden real, but such
a knowledge only belongs to the divine science that knows itself on the level of divine names,
not far below Essence. Identity is not re-negated by this wedge between the plane of Essence
and the plane of its names. On the contrary, it carries it in itself as that which authorizes the
mirror play essential to its manifestation as identity. Therefore, as Ibn Arabî says, all things are
the languages of the real.
The model of the mirror suggests the identity of veiling and revelation: one who contemplates
a form in the mirror only perceives its form, but never the naked surface of the mirror itself. In
the form, he sees himself in the essential unity of the perceiving subject and the perceived object. Therefore, a double veiling occurs that reduces itself to the same: the Essence epiphanizes
itself in a form that reveals it all the better insofar as it occupies the whole field of the gaze that
contemplates this form. The more intense this contemplation becomes, the more the mirror is
ignored. Thus the intensification of the apparition is proportionate with the withdrawal of its
substratum, the mirror of Essence. To see in God means to see God. And the more one sees God,
the more the imaginal form unfolds in the creative imagination, exemplifying a divine name
beyond which Essence withdraws itself.
The intense form that the gaze of the soul created by its imagination, being first an effect of
the imagination of God himself, is certainly an epiphany of the divine. It is God who imagines
himself in the mirror. But he only imagines himself in the mode of a perceiving subject, from
its singular point of view, and slips away from the grasp that would objectivize him. Being the
whole of the Revealed, the Essence, as it manifests itself and not as it is “in itself,” coincides
with what it endows with perception and creative imagination, making itself into the subject
of perception. Essence “in itself,” as the real, is therefore not a separate “plane,” a disjointed
and first hypostasis, nor a principle floating independently over the names and epiphanies. The
in-itself is identical to that in which it veils itself, the personal lord devolved into the subject of
vision. In the simultaneity of vision and veiling, identity undergoes the experience of its own self
without passion. The in-itself is nothing other than the self, in the multiplicity of subjects who
perceive the theophany, which is ipso facto its own subject, the self manifesting itself as lord in
the unity of the gaze.
Negation intervenes only in the play of the mirror itself, between the Essence and its revelation,
in the mode of a reversal of perspective rather than the work of the negative: the Hidden says
“No” when the Apparent says “I” — and the Apparent says “No” when the Hidden says “I.” The
name “Hidden” designates Essence itself, as we can gain access to it in the negative way. The name
“Apparent” designates the whole of manifestation, which opens the field of theophanies through
the divine names. The disjunction that founds identity passes between the subject and its other:
if Essence is subject, its epiphany says “No,” in that it veils the Essence it reveals; on the other
hand, when the personal Lord of vision affirms itself as subject, the Essence withdraws itself.
37
The real epiphanizes itself in the singularity of the name and, by the same movement, in the
totality of the names. The epiphany will be all the more powerful insofar as the subject of vision
manages to grasp the interaction of divine names, the universal in the singular. The limit of vision
lies in this conjunction, which remains the horizon of the manifestation, just as the intelligible
place, for Plato, is the horizon of the upward dialectical movement. Let us note in the meantime
that, for Ibn Arabî, there is no dialectic of names, only an immediate coincidence of the singular
and the universal, of the distinction and the indistinct, since he does not situate the plane of
names on the level of the exercise of any negativity.
UMBR(a)
This identity is not contradicted by the multiplicity of divine names, which is a prelude to the
infinite multiplication of epiphanies. Ibn Arabî, in fact, conceives of the structure of the plane
of the divine names in a manner somewhat similar to the way Plato conceives, in the Sophist,
the structure of the intelligible place. On the one hand, the divine names are infinite in that they
engender an infinity of forms. On the other hand, they are connected through the play of the same
and the other, being and non-being. Every name, infinitely manifest, possesses its own reality
by which it distinguishes itself from the other names. Such is what Ibn Arabî calls the essence of
the name. But, in addition, what every name has in common with the others is being the name
of Essence. Every name is and is not the other names, as it is the same and the other of names.
This is why each name expresses Essence under the particular attribute that it designates, while
it also partakes of all the other names.
UMBR(a)
38
This oscillating structure is quite different from that which we have discovered in Ismailism,
in which negation leaves no gap open, but permits the integration of the manifestation in the
identity of Essence on the condition of the retreat of Essence: difference is the instrument of
identity. It remains that, from our point of view, from the point of expressive singularity, this
difference denoted by the “No” translates itself by perplexity and bewilderment. Perplexity is the
science whereby we can acquire the real, and the more we center ourselves around the pole of
Essence, the confluent of divine names, the more we lose ourselves, as in a sort of hyper-essential
decentering through which we arrive negatively to the one. The epiphany of the identity of the
names is certainly an experience of estrangement, but can only be proof the Stranger who is Essence on the condition of being immediately the experience of Identity.
Estrangement is the retreat of the “He” into “I.” “He” and “I” are identical, but “He” is not
“I” in the “I.” Identity is not that of the A=A, but that of the A=not-A. The “not” of the not-A
is not the negation of the A, in the sense of a passion in which it would annihilate itself while
awaiting a negation of the negation, but rather in the sense that not-A designates the place of
the manifestation of A, the affirmative theophany the condition of which is the identity of the
non-identical. This is why Ibn Arabî can write that in being there is neither resemblance nor
dissemblance, since the unity of the real dominates over these opposing terms: a thing, he says,
is not the opposite of itself, identity is first and last. Each name excludes Essence, but thereby it
also excludes its own reality, since it distinguishes itself, as a singular attribute, from the set of
names. This exclusion of Essence is crucial. It alone allows for the total effusion of Essence in each
point of the reality of the universe. The one named, expressed by the name and its epiphanies, is
the one entirely displayed under an attribute and according to precise and determined modes.
The identity of the finite and infinite in the doctrine of theophanies does not reserve for the finite
any status that would allow it to corrupt the infinite that it expresses. From a certain angle every
form is infinite, but the infinity of essence veils itself in the definite infinity of manifestation.
The essences of the created realities are so many eternal essences (a’yân thâbita) the ontological
status of which has to be carefully determined. In fact, before the divine existentiation would
operate in them (according to a simple priority of the real over the created) the essences are, in
a certain sense, pure non-beings. But, in another sense, they are beings, since they belong to the
plane or degree of being where the archetypes of the sensible existent constitute themselves. The
absence of the necessity of being weighs on the essences like a “divine shadow.” Therefore the
entire universe, in its essences, is a shadow and a veil.
Ibn Arabî writes that the essences of the existent are not luminous, since they lack in themselves the light of being. They need the act of the breath of the Merciful (nafas al-rahmân) to
convert them into the act of existing. The shadow does not obscure the divine Essence, only its
manifestations, and in its own way it bears witness to the power of time. It appears to me that
Ibn Arabî conceives of time as a successive movement of existentiations that correspond to the
actualization of the eternal essences by the breath of the Merciful. This actualization always leaves
to its own future an infinity of epiphanies waiting to appear in the sensible.
Creative imagination determines the infinite plurality of points of view taken in relation to
the real, which form so many acts of faith, so many configurations of God, not in his occultation, but in his revelation. The history of religions is the history of truths, and not the history
of ignorance and error, since each religion corresponds to a type of faith in which the revealed
God configures itself in the guise of a personal lord, drawn under the traits that typify the act of
faith. The universe of theophanies is ipso facto a multiple iconostasis. Ignorance and fanaticism
consist in reducing the hidden real to its own icon in one’s adopted faith.
39
Ibn Arabî can therefore say that all existence is imagination in an imagination. This, however,
is not a consent to the triumph of the image over the concept, but a conception of the generation
of the forms of perception. It is to offer to the essence of each existent its full epiphanic power
and, reciprocally, to decipher, see, and receive each sensible form as an apparition. Imagination is
that of the real itself, the names of which give themselves a figure and appearance in the sensible
which is not intelligible, if it is not the phenomenon of the imaginal. Without the schematism of the
absolute, through which the imaginal proceeds from the plane of divine names, it would be impossible to understand how the sensible apparition is real, and why it is not deprived of its roots in the
real. The beauty of forms or, contrarily, their tremendum bears witness to the imaginal. They are
not the mere plays of our subjective faculties, but substance itself conceived as the absolute real.
UMBR(a)
This is why, certainly, the real only reveals itself to the existent by manifesting itself through
its shadow thrown over the universe, which is the sum of the not yet existentiated existent.
Theophany is always light and shadow, full illumination of the form willed by the real, according
to its eternal imperative, the darkness of latent essence in the divine science. The essences do
not epiphanize themselves in the sensible without the mediation of the dimension of the creative
imagination, therefore each sensible form is the deposition, before the gaze, of a mirror that reflects the degree of imaginal being. We only insist on this epiphanic function of the imagination,
made explicit by Henry Corbin, in order to emphasize the fact that in all imaginal constitution
of form a production shows itself that has its source in the divine subject itself.8 The imaginal
is not the product of a conscious subject separated from the one, but the creative effectivity of
the absolute subject, the real, when it proceeds to the formation or configuration of epiphanies
where the archetypes and the essences pluralize themselves. This is why, as bearer of light and
shadow, the universe in its sensible forms is before all an imagination in actuality. Reality is
not imaginary but imaginal in that the imagination that is at work here is that of the real, and
therefore it is effectuating and realizing imagination as the immediate transition of the universal
essence and the sensible particular, as the very scheme of the divine science.
40
UMBR(a)
Idolatry is the restriction of Essence. If the faithful accepts the versatile plenitude of epiphanies, which can assume the eminent form of the election of the Beloved, he discloses the real of
the restricted universes, and he accedes to the truth of the multiple, the expression of the unity
of the divine names. This is why, in Ibn Arabî’s thought, love plays the major role of being the
epiphanic experience par excellence. Love is always singular, but it dissipates the darkness of
the apparent by concentrating on the face of the beloved the contemplation of the divine name
as it ties itself to all other names. Love is uniting, in that it makes the lover annihilate himself
in the real (Ibn Arabî is therefore the brother of Hallâj and is an inspiration for Rûmî), but he
annihilates by singularizing singularity as he consecrates the maximal intensity of unity and existence. Love wipes clean the mirror of imaginal forms. It is the maker not of the imaginary but
of reality, as it produces the apparition of the apparent God, and unveils it to the one who loves,
so that he no longer sees around the center of the beloved a chaos of appearances without the
underside of the real, but sees the real itself effusing in the universe. Love unites the perfect man,
the microcosm, to the world of the Book and to the book of the world, the world of perception
around the pole of creative imagination. And it is this perfect man that it carries to the threshold
of Essence through an annihilation that annihilates even the very annihilation.
Thus, theophany authorizes the proximity of the real, as it makes it possible to preserve the
transcendence of Essence in its multiplicity. Theophany is the immanence of the one in the
multiplicity of emanated unities, and it is the proof of the most distant, the ineffable, that only
shows itself by ceasing to name itself. The face of a mirror slides between the name and the named
real. It is here that the breath of the Merciful authorizes epiphany, and it is in the visible that
epiphany unveils by hiding, and manifests the identity of the near and the proof of the distant.
The philosophy of identity allows us to see multiplicity in the one, the essential unity enveloped
by divine names, even if their realities are multiple and varied. According to Ibn Arabî, the primary substance, the real, announces its presence enveloped in each form, while the variety of
forms refers to the singular Essence of God. From the inverse point of view, the same identity
preserves the alterity of the Essence in its heart, like an infinite source of production. Without
the identity of essence and manifestation, the productive alterity of essence and its epiphanies
would be ruined and the finite would revert back to the finite.
Translated by Roland Végső
The essay translated here originally appeared as “L’étranger
et la théophanie” in Le Caché et l’Apparent (Paris: Éditions de
L’Herne, 2003), 43-67.
1.
Nâsir-e Khosraw, La Livre réunissant les deux sagesses
(Teheran-Paris: Iranian Library 3, 1953), 145. Khosraw
(1004-1077) wrote all of his poetry, philosophy, and Ismaili
theology in Persian.
3. Kirmani, Râhat al-‘aql, 40-51.
5. Ibid., 67-68.
6. Ibid., 72.
7. Ibn’Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. R.W.J. Austin (New
York: Paulist Press, 1980). See also Osman Yahia, Histoire
et classification de l’oeuvre d’Ibn’Arabî, vol. 1 (Damascus:
Institut Francais de Damas, 1964), 240. Michel Chodkiewicz
is right to argue that the works of Ibn’Arabî “wholly embrace
the sciences that the ‘men of the Way’ could not ignore
without peril” in Un ocean sans ravage (Paris: Seuil, 1992).
It remains that the Fosûs exhibit, in a singular fashion, a
speculative tendency which certainly places them within the
horizon of prophetic philosophy and, consequently, within
that of philosophy in general.
8. Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn
Arabi, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
41
4. Ibid., 63.
UMBR(a)
2. Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, Râhat al-‘aql, ed. Kamil Husayn
and Mustafa Hilmi (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1952), 39. See also
D. de Smet, La quiétude de l’intellect (Leuven: Uitgeverij
Peeters and Dep. Oosterse Studies, 1995). For the sake of
exposition, de Smet separates the ontological hierarchy of
the world of prophecy from that of the world of the imamate. We, however, prefer to shed light on the constant
correspondence that Kirmani establishes between the two
orders.
kenneth reinhard
LACAN, BADIOU, ROSENZWEIG
UNIVERSALISM AND THE JEWISH EXCEPTION:
Who can count the dust of Jacob,
Number the dust-cloud of Israel?
— Numbers, 23:10
The question of universalism was a centrally divisive issue in epistemology and ontology from Plato through the Middle Ages. Since the
Enlightenment (if not already with Saint Paul), universalism became the
definitive problematic in theology, ethics, and political theory, where it
has remained a central issue, as exemplified in recent work by Ernesto
Laclau, Slavoj Žižek, Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, and many others. In
the Western political-theological imaginary, Judaism has often played the
role of “particular” to Christianity’s “universal” — a polemical conceptualization that has in turn spawned vigorous debate and response within
Jewish philosophy in the last two centuries, including major statements
by Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Michael Walzer. I want to
address the question of “Jewish Universalism” with special attention to
the psychoanalytic and philosophical insights elaborated by Badiou and
Jacques Lacan as they bear on the “new thinking” of Franz Rosenzweig.
Lacan’s thinking in the seventies revolved around a new definition of
the fundamental trauma that he had long called “the real” in terms of
what he called the “impossibility” of the sexual relationship. The nonrelationship between men and women, according to Lacan, involves
incommensurable modalities of universalism, and distinct structures of
subjectivity. Lacan’s thinking, as developed in parallel but by no means
identical ways by Laclau, Žižek, and Badiou, can help us approach the
paradoxical question of a particular, Jewish, universalism, and from
there, to return to the urgency of the universal today.
This project involves broaching three fundamental questions. First,
there is the general or abstract question, what is “universalism”? For
many critics and theorists today, “universalism” is synonymous with
Eurocentrism or Western imperialism, and as such is understood as
always existing at the expense of particular people and cultures, which
are absorbed into a “we” that ignores and ultimately eliminates their
specificity. But is this necessarily the case? Moreover, are universals
UMBR(a)
43
UMBR(a)
44
subject to empirical verification in particular examples, or are they purely theoretical assertions
or ideals, indifferent to actual situations and circumstances? Can such universal statements be
truly absolute, or do they necessarily involve tacit or explicit borders beyond which they do not
function, historically specific moments before and after which they might not hold, or exceptional
cases in which they do not apply? To extend this question, does a universal principle require at
least one exclusion, an exception that “proves the rule,” a constitutive exception without which
it cannot hold?
Secondly, I want to ask the particular question, what is Jewish universalism? Indeed, can there
be such a thing as a particular universal, a universalism that is defined in terms of a specific
group of people or body of texts? Jewish Universalism in turn poses the question of election:
does “election” simply contradict the ideal of universalism, or can a universalism be embodied
or exemplified by a particular “chosen” people? Does the idea that the Jews were chosen by God
as his special treasure vitiate the countervailing claim that election was not merely for the sake
of the redemption of the Jews, but the entire world? In the Star of Redemption, the GermanJewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig presents a model of Judaism and Christianity as dual
universalisms, with distinctive projects, sometimes at odds, and even hostile to one another,
but each with its own logic of the universal. Bringing Rosenzweig into dialogue with the very
different projects of Lacan and Badiou, we might call these modalities the Christian All and the
Jewish not-all. These are not so much complementary as supplementary projects, in the sense
that each one brings out something lacking in the other and each presents itself as excessive
to, or unthought by the other. This essay focuses not on the Jewish-Christian relationship, but
rather on the Jewish not-all as it takes shape between the distinctive projects of Lacan, Badiou,
and Rosenzweig.
I build this conception of the Jewish not-All from biblical and rabbinic texts read in conjunction with philosophical and psychoanalytic interventions; together they present the nodes of
what I would call a subtractive theology – not a “negative theology,” but one that strives to
articulate itself in positive terms as the decompletion of the All, as the fidelity to a liberating
event in which heaven and earth were, once and for all, rent asunder. Finally, I want to consider
the consequences of Jewish universalism for the idea of universalism as such. That is, what is
universalism after Jewish universalism? What does Jewish thinking or experience offer to the
notion of universalism? To continue in this Hegelian structure of thinking, is there an individual
or “concrete” universalism that is not specific to Jewish texts or ideas, but can only be thought by
passing through them? My hope is to show not only that Jewish thought includes a very strong
concept of universalism, but that this thought has much of value for non-religious thinking,
indeed, for thinking as such.
45
While the Platonic concept of universals involves the assumption of an essential continuity
between universal and particular, what Laclau calls the “Christian” model (although it involves
a complicated infusion of both Platonic and Aristotelian ideas) assumes their fundamental discontinuity. Such nominalists as Ockham break with the objective universalism of the realists by
arguing that universals only exist in the mind, as purely subjective constructs. By assuming that
God is fully free in his construction of the natural world, which need not reflect divine models,
nominalism opens up the possibility of empiricism and ultimately the development of secularized
universalist principles of reason. In the temporality of the mortal world, we have no access to the
truly universal perspective that is God’s alone; until the end of time, we will see only “through a
glass, darkly” — that is, only particulars, disconnected from their higher meaning. The eternal
UMBR(a)
UNIVERSALISM IN PSYCHOANALYSIS: LACLAU, LACAN, BADIOU
Although already active in various Pre-Socractic thinkers, universalism is given its “classical”
formulation in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. For Plato, the world of appearances we inhabit,
filled with particulars of perception, vagaries of opinion, and limited possibilities of knowledge,
is merely the shadow of a higher reality of universal ideas or forms, which remain unperturbed
in their eternal truth and essential goodness.
Whereas Plato is usually associated with the philosophical position that became known as
“Realism,” which argues that general or abstract ideas exist independently of particulars, Aristotle is frequently identified as the source of the opposed position, “Nominalism” (although his
thinking is complicated on this topic, and he cannot be said to fully endorse the ideas that come
to be associated with that name). Aristotle reframes Plato’s notion of an ontological spectrum of
universal reality and particular appearances in terms of modes of causality. For Aristotle, the universal is the “formal cause” or “substantial form” that gives rise to the particular objects gathered
together under its name. Moreover, the universal is primarily a mode of logical reasoning, as in
a proposition of the type “All x is y.” 1 The difference between Plato and Aristotle on universals
opens the way for the later debates among “realists,” “nominalists,” and “conceptualists” that
will remain the dominant philosophical issue through Scholasticism and beyond.2 In the NeoPlatonic theory of “emanations,” the essential reality of transcendental ideas communicates itself
to the multiplicity of individual things, which retain greater reality, truth, and goodness the closer
they remain to their source. Ernesto Laclau argues that the salient characteristic of the classical
paradigm is its lack of any notion of mediation: whether we understand universals as ontological or epistemological entities, a particular cannot transform or otherwise affect a universal, but
only reflects it, to a greater or lesser extent. Although the sphere between the universal and the
particular constitutes a continuum, it can only be traversed in one direction, descending into
increasing degrees of aberration and degeneration.
UMBR(a)
46
world of God is absolutely discontinuous with the temporal world of human beings, and it is
only through the miraculous act of incarnation that the divine and human worlds momentarily
come together.3
While the nominalist logic of Christianity constituted a break with classical and Neo-Platonic
realism, in which universals “emanated” or expressed themselves in the world of particulars, the
Christian model also involved the hypostatization of reason, leading to what Laclau describes as a
third model, the “modern” notion of the universal/particular relationship as a dialectic. For Hegel
and Marx, the particular is neither dependent nor independent of the universal, but potentially
embodies the universal in itself. For Hegel, the real of particulars is identical with the rationality
of universals; the apparent contradiction between them dissolves in the movement towards the
absolute Idea. Hegel’s notion of the “concrete universal” dialecticizes the opposition between
Nominalism and Realism, following the nominalist path in breaking with both Aristotelian notions
of predication and Neo-Platonic models of emanation. For Hegel, Scholastic Nominalism allows
the truth of Christian universalism to emerge: “The universal is the One, but not abstract; it is
conceived or thought of as comprehending all things in itself. With Aristotle the universal was, in
a judgment, the predicate of the subject in question....With Plotinus, and especially with Proclus,
the One is still incommunicable, and is known only by its subordinate forms. But because the
Christian religion is a revelation, God is no longer therein the unapproachable, incommunicable,
a hidden mystery.” 4 For Hegel, the universal includes the particular in itself: “thought (and the
universal) is not a mere opposite of sense: it lets nothing escape it, but outflanking its other, is
at once that other and itself.” 5 The dialectic of universal and particular presents the fundamental
operation of thinking, and lies at the heart of the project of philosophy itself. Hegel’s dialectic
of history exemplifies what Balibar calls “fictive universality,” by which he does not mean that
it is not real, but that it has to do with institutions and representation through which a version
of universalist reality is “constructed.” Fictive universality works by producing identities that
“transcend the limitations and qualifications of particular identities,” through the “internal
process of individualization: virtual deconstruction and reconstruction of primary identities.”
This is always at the cost, however, of the imposition of “normalization” that implies, for better
or worse, exclusions and limitations.6
Marx follows Hegel’s dialectical account of universalism in his notion of the Proletariat, which
is a particular social body that can itself constitute a universal class, without the need of any
divine miracle or special figure of incarnation. Laclau argues that the failure of history to play
out in the ways predicted by Marx has demonstrated the limitations of dialectical universalism.
The inadequacy of the dialectical conceptualization of the universal in terms of the totality of
the means of production and the projected liquidation of class structures has lead to a retreat
in political and cultural theory to new particularisms, and to post-modern skepticism about all
forms of universal assertions. As Laclau writes:
This whole story is apparently leading to an inevitable conclusion: the chasm between the universal
and the particular is unbridgeable — which is the same as saying that the universal is no more than a
particular that at some moment has become dominant.…However, I will argue that an appeal to pure
particularism is no solution to the problems that we are facing in contemporary societies. In the first
place, the assertion of pure particularism, independently of any content and of the appeal to a universality transcending it, is a self-defeating enterprise. For if it is the only accepted normative principle, it
confronts us with an unsolvable paradox. I can defend the right of sexual, racial and national minorities
in the name of particularism; but if particularism is the only valid principle, I have to also accept the
rights to self-determination of all kinds of reactionary groups involved in antisocial practices. 7
The universal is part of my identity as far as I am penetrated by a constitutive lack, that is as far as my
differential identity has failed in its process of constitution. The universal emerges out of the particular
not as some principle underlying and explaining the particular, but as an incomplete horizon suturing
a dislocated particular identity.…The universal is the symbol of a missing fullness and the particular
exists only in the contradictory movement of asserting at the same time a diffential identity and canceling it through subsumption in the non-differential medium…all political identity is internally split,
because no particularity can be constituted except by maintaining an internal reference to universality
as that which is missing.…The universal…does not have a concrete content of its own (which would
close in on itself), but is an always receding horizon resulting from the expansion of an indefinite chain
of equivalent demands. The conclusion seems to be that universality is incommensurable with any
particularity, but cannot, however, exist apart from the particular.8 (28; 31; 34)
47
Laclau insists that the competing rights or desires that make up the social world produce antagonisms that can neither be tolerated in their particularism nor resolved under one of the three
traditional modes of the universalist umbrella. Hence he presents a fourth model, by arguing
that the relationship of particular social agents is “impossible” as such; it cannot be guaranteed
or underwritten by any universal principle or entity. But it is precisely insofar as the subject is
not fully inscribed into a totalizing social sphere, insofar as its demands and desires are not fully
met, that another mode of the universal emerges:
UMBR(a)
The cultural critics who have eschewed universalism as such, choosing instead to embrace one
or another mode of particularism or globalism, have often found themselves in uncomfortable
situations, where the defense of the other’s right to his or her particularity (in Levinas’ terms,
the respect for the radical alterity of the other) comes up against another notion of the other’s
rights. Laclau argues that, whether we do so implicitly or explicitly, we always have recourse to
a universal principle or transcendental claim when faced with such dilemmas. At bottom, the
extreme particularism of, for example, some versions of multi-culturalism is merely another
version of classical universalism that fails to recognize itself as such. Radical particularism is
nothing more than the endorsement of the status quo as the ground that allows such “separate
but equal” cultural expressions of desire that are tantamount to, and come with the same consequences as, apartheid.
48
UMBR(a)
For Laclau, a certain “universalism” remains as the necessary horizon that sutures conflicting
particulars without conflating their real differences. His theory of antagonism, however, is not
merely “the war of all against all,” the struggle of individual wills for self-expression. Instead, he
proposes a notion of the social field in which particular subjects are radically divided from each
other and in themselves, by their conflicting demands articulated in relation to incompletely
realized universals. For instance, if my demands as a subject living in relation to an idea of democracy are defined by the concept of “equality,” they will conflict with my neighbor’s demands,
which are articulated in terms of a notion of democracy defined, for example, by “freedom.” In
each case, subjectivity is determined as a failed particularization of a universal that is itself experienced as lacking something, and in each case the universal is framed in different terms. It is
only by understanding myself in terms of universal principles that are not fully reflected in my
individuality (and hence that constitute me as a lacking subject) that my particularism can be
anything other than the foreclosure of alterity. The struggle for hegemony, for Laclau, involves
the attempt of various particular social agents to represent themselves as the embodiment of
the absent universal, but the success or failure of any subject is contingent, since there is no authentically universal social value or principle to be represented. Balibar’s notion of a “symbolic”
or “idealistic” universality that would go beyond both “real” universalism (i.e., globalization)
and “fictional” universalism (constructed Alls based on nation, religion, and so on) names this
ultimate horizon of the universal equaliberty. The symbolic or ideal universal arises from “the
infinite claims” which the individual makes against the institution that would normalize him or her
according to the protocols of “fictional” universalism. This is a model of universalism as an ideal
that produces the subject as infinite “insurrection,” that is, as resistance against any conditions
placed on universalism. The ultimate ideal, moreover, is that “equality” and “freedom” must be
thought together, as inseparable terms of a single universal principle — égaliberté, the impossible,
necessarily infinite question that motivates the struggle for universal liberation. Nevertheless,
there will always be multiple, and non-harmonious versions of such ideals. Thus, the question
of the universal remains a “permanent source of conflict,” that is necessarily multiple.9
These models of another universalism presented by Balibar and Laclau develop out of arguments Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have made in their groundbreaking Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy. There, the argument about the contingent relationship between divided subjective
particularities and the failed totalities that form their horizon leads to the deconstruction of
the notion of society itself: “The incomplete character of every totality necessarily leads us to
abandon, as a terrain of analysis, the premise of ‘society’ as a sutured and self-defined totality.” 10 Laclau and Mouffe use Lacan’s notion of the point de capiton, the primary signifier whose
articulation with the larger symbolic network constitutes the subject, to account for the partial
fixations or “nodal points” through which discursive hegemony is constructed in the absence of
any intrinsically unified social structure. The Lacanian notion of the real continues to serve as a
point of reference for both Laclau and Balibar in their accounts of the conditions of universalism.11
We will need to follow the Lacanian elements of Laclau and Mouffe’s argument concerning the
impossibility of the social, back to their source. The real, according to Lacan’s later formulations,
is most precisely defined by the impossibility of the sexual relationship, which in turn involves
two distinct modes of universality: “masculine” and “feminine.”
Lacan’s account of the exceptionality that defines the man’s universality goes back to Freud’s
revision of Darwin in the myth of the primal horde he presents in Totem and Taboo. The brothers
who form the members of the group “all men” are constituted as such by their common remorse
for having killed the Father who had limited their access to pleasure by keeping it all for himself:
all women, all resources, all freedom — the All, in its mythical plentitude, is what this figure of
49
According to Lacan, there are two modes of universalism corresponding to the “All” that delimits
the field of the masculine subject and the “Not All” that opens up the place of the woman. To use
Levinas’ famous opposition, if the universality of male speaking beings constitutes a totality, that of
women opens onto infinity. And between the two there is no commensurability nor complementarity, but indeed a supplementarity, as two tangled “halves” that together form no whole.
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For Lacan, men and women cannot come together in a relationship of intersubjectivity since each
is based on a radically different model of the universal, the particular, and the exception. Individual
men participate in a universal group of “all men” understood as a unified symbolic system that is
granted imaginary closure by the supposition of an exception, a mythical primal father who enforces
(but is not subject to) the law of the limited circulation of goods and pleasures that organizes the
group. A man is a particular example of the universal category of Men, which is defined as a closed
set whose members are equally subjected to this single exception. Women, on the other hand, are no
more free of the phallic law than men, but for them it functions without the principle of exception.
Women are thus radically singular, not examples of a class, or members of a closed set, but each
one an exception, or members of an open set— a metonymic series of particular women, into which
each woman enters “one by one.” Hence there is no common denominator for subjects who locate
themselves as women, nor any way of characterizing “women in general,” unlike the case for men,
who are determined by the assumption that there is a closed set Man.12 In his essay “L’Étourdit,”
Lacan suggests that mankind elaborates itself in its encounter with the impossibility of the sexual
relationship as “men” and “women” in two distinct modes of universalism: “It’s from there that we
must find two universals, two ‘alls’ sufficiently consistent to separate the speakers — who by virtue
of being that, believing themselves to be beings — into two halves such that they don’t entangle
themselves too much in their enmeshment, when all is said and done.”13
selfish enjoyment is imagined to have had to himself, while depriving his sons. Each man exists
as a part of the totality of Men insofar as after the Father’s death he is marked by “castration,”
the result of the internalization of the paternal prohibition as a symbolic agency whose rigorous
denial of satisfaction or wholeness continues to increases. The group of All Men binds itself together as a unified group enclosed as a homeostatic order with the imaginary integrity of mutual
love precisely in order to deny the castration that each individual man suffers. The father has
been expelled, but in the process he is transcendentalized, as a spectral projection of unavailable
pleasure, mythical lost plentitude; he is the great exception who proves the universal rule of the
phallic signifier. The group reenacts its originary constitution in new exclusions wherever symbolic
remnants of the Father’s body and its excessive, traumatic enjoyment can be located — scapegoats,
pariahs, or criminals who can serve as the focus for the persistent aggressivity they suffer.
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Freud suggests that this principle by which the patriarchal group defines itself as the universal
of “All (minus One)” has historically been based on one exclusion in particular, that of the Jews.
Recall his bitterly ironic comments in Civilization and Its Discontents:
It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are
other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness.…In this respect the Jewish
people, scattered everywhere, have rendered most useful services to the civilizations of the countries
that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the massacres of the Jews in the Middle Ages did
not suffice to make that period more peaceful and secure for their Christian fellows. When once the
Apostle Paul had posited universal love between men as the foundation of his Christian community,
extreme intolerance on the part of Christendom towards those who remained outside it became the
inevitable consequence.14
In Freud’s analysis of anti-semitism, the Jews constitute the impediment to imaginary totality for Christian civilization, preventing its closure, despite its thematization of “universal love
between men” as its founding principle. The Jews thus hold the ambivalent position of “Primal
Father” for Christian civilization, as the progenitor, the source and embodiment of the law that
has been killed, from whose heteronymous tyranny the Christian world has received dispensation,
but which nevertheless persists. Those unconverted, obstinate Jews who remain are disturbing
reminders of the expense of Christian universalism and its limitations, hence they provoke more
violence — not because Christian universalism is not as inclusive as it claims to be, but precisely
because it is universal, because it participates in the (particular) universalism of the All.
Lacan’s work on the notion of the “not-all” is the crucial opening for new models of universalism found in the work of Žižek, Badiou, Monique David-Ménard, Joan Copjec, Eric Santner, and
others. In the not-all, based on the logic of feminine sexuality, a new possibility of an infinite
universalism emerges, one that is open on all sides. The fundamental logic of inside/outside that
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Lacan’s logic of the woman’s not-all introduces the function of infinity into universalism, and
constitutes a key reference in Žižek’s and Badiou’s conceptions of the universal. For Žižek, the
exception does not so much “prove” the rule, in the sense of confirming its universality in the
very contingency of its manifestation, but is itself elevated to the status of universal. Žižek’s work
has been absolutely central to the elaboration of the political and philosophical consequences
of the not-all, as well as to the critique of the various weak modes of the “All” that underlie the
particularisms of much of current cultural studies. In The Ticklish Subject, Žižek emphasizes
that “the Lacanian notion of the Universal…involves a constitutive exception,” asserting that
“the basic premise of symptomal reading is thus that every ideological universality necessarily
gives rise to a particular ‘extimate’ element, to an element which — precisely as an inherent,
necessary product of the process designated by the universality — simultaneously undermines
it: the symptom is the example which subverts the Universal whose example it is.” 15 Žižek’s notion of “symptomal reading,” as the articulation of the universal in terms of the condensation
of the example and the exception, is a commentary on the Lacanian account of subjectivity as
determined by an internal exclusion of the objcet a, the fragment of jouissance that falls away
from the Other. The key point here is that what is most subjective in the subject is precisely
this bit of radical foreignness at its heart, which is universal condition of subjectivity. The only
link that fully connects one subject to another is that each is de-termined by such an object, the
“exception” at the heart of the universal.
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structures Man’s universalism makes the border the critical zone, and anything that appears in
that position is a source of anxiety, whether in the guise of the singular figure of the sovereign
who enforces and transgresses the paternal law from the outside, or in the multiple obscene materializations of the father’s lost jouissance, spectral objects that return from exile to haunt the
All from the inside. The antagonism, the failed subjectivization, and the struggle for hegemony
that define the conditions of political universalism for Laclau can thus be viewed as symptoms of
the problematic of the universalism of the All — and indeed, conditions of political universalism
as such. But the universalism of the not-all must also be thought, for we are “not-all political.”
This is not to suggest that there might be some reserve from politics, as some space of the ethical
or the aesthetic that could be bracketed or held in abeyance from the conditions of sovereignty
and the political universalism of the All. Without the infinitism of the not-all, however, we have
no way of thinking politics as anything but “war by other means,” or the narcissistic struggle
for closure that, no matter how much it might expand its sense of the “we,” still depends on
the logical exception for its total rule. The universalism of the All is intrinsically a homeostatic,
self-defensive system: like the dialectic of the pleasure and reality principles, its first imperative
above all else is the conservation of its own systematicity.
Žižek has pointed to a key difference between Laclau and Badiou’s notions of the function of
the subject and the meaning of truth in relation to universals:
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For Laclau, every hegemonic operation is ultimately ‘ideological.’ For Badiou, in contrast, a TruthEvent is that which cannot be ‘deconstructed,’ reduced to an effect of an intricate, overdetermined
texture of ‘traces’…So if, against the deconstructionist and/or postmodern politics of ‘undecideability’
and ‘semblance,’ Badiou…wants to (re)assert truth as a political factor, this does not mean that he
wants to return to the premodern grounding of politics in some eternal neutral order of Truth. For
Badiou, truth itself is a theologico-political notion: theological insofar as religious revelation is the
unavowed paradigm of his notion of the Truth-Event; political because Truth is not a state to be perceived by means of a neutral intuition, but a matter of (ultimately political) engagement. Consequently,
for Badiou, subjectivization designates the event of Truth that disrupts the closure of the hegemonic
ideological domain.16
As Žižek indicates, Laclau’s thinking on the question of universals is ultimately deconstructive,
insofar as their function in the end is ideological, or are at best the necessary but inauthentic props
for subjective transformation. The subject is the agent that hegemonizes a universal, effectively making it function as such, for its own interest. For Badiou, on the other hand, the subject is precisely
the interruption of a hegemonic ideological “situation,” the point where a new truth can emerge at
the point of ideological failure, and in the process produce a subjective universal — the subject as
universal. If the politics of the All define the world as it goes along in its daily course (the “situation,” in Badiou’s sense), the politics of the not-all presents the possibility of what Badiou calls
an event, something new that can irrupt from within a situation, and force it to fundamentally
reconfigure itself.
Badiou’s thinking is organized around the claim that mathematics is ontology, although it
rarely recognizes itself as such; hence the work of philosophy is not to talk about being (which
only mathematics can do with any specificity), but to articulate and explicate what it is that
mathematics is doing when it does ontology. On the other hand, it is up to philosophy to open
the question of what it is that is not ontology, that is, what subtracts itself from being, and
this is what Badiou calls an “event.” For Badiou the question of philosophy is not so much why
there is something rather than nothing (indeed, the only substance the he attributes to being is
the void), but how does something happen, how does something new occur in the structure of
being, in the situation in which we find ourselves. It is precisely in the event that, according to
Badiou, the universal punctually arises. If what we call “knowledge” is a function of the symbolic
economies of being, the event marks the possibility of what Badiou calls a truth, which is a hole
in knowledge, something subtracted from the certainties of our situation. The subject, for Badiou
is a function of the fidelity to an event that emerges as a truth in one of four discursive fields that
he describes: Science, Politics, Art, and Love. Each truth has its own mode of event (to use some
proper names: in science, Galileo; in politics, the French Revolution; in art, Schoenberg; in love,
Abelard and Heloise, or, closer to home, my beloved and me), and each has its own possibility
of universality in the fidelity to such an event.
Badiou has presented “Eight Theses on the Universal,” which we shall summarize: 1) The proper
medium of universalism is thought; there is no objective universalism, only subjective. 2) Every
universalism is singular; no sublation of particularity to universality is possible. Hence 3) a universal is not of the order of being, but is an event interrupting being. 4) A universal first emerges as a
decision about something undecideable; as an event disappears, it leaves behind it a statement. 5)
The universal singularity is presented as the consequences that emerge from an event. 6) The act
that expresses this universality is univocal (not equivocal); this act inaugurates a series of fidelities,
infinite consequences. 7) Every universal singularity remains open, incomplete, “not-all”; its trajectory is infinite. 8) Universalism is the faithful construction of an infinite generic multiplicity.17
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For Badiou, universalism is something that happens in thinking, it is a way of thinking that
involves decision, fidelity, and act. As such, it cannot be demonstrated objectively or determined
by its inclusiveness, but is manifested in the subject born in the decision to be faithful to it.
Moreover, universalism must be distinguished from any ideology of the particular and the general, however inflected. Something becomes universal not in its generalization, but precisely as
a rupture in a system of particulars and generalities, an “impossibility” that materializes in the
structure of necessity, possibility, and contingency. A universalism is the result of a truth process
that is never complete; it can never result in a closed set, such as a list of determinate “human
rights,” but always remains open, infinite. Badiou’s key theorist of the universal, of course, is
Saint Paul.18 Paul’s fidelity to the event pointed to by the declaration “Christ is resurrected” is
exemplary of the new subject of the universal, insofar as it demonstrates the real consequences
of the decision to be faithful, no matter how fictional the statement involved: “The claim ‘Christ is
resurrected’ is as though subtracted from the opposition between the universal and the particular,
because it is a narrative statement that we cannot assume to be historical.” 19 It is an undecideble
statement, and in its subtraction from dialectical universal/particular thinking, it breaks with the
entire social-conceptual conditions in which it arises, and declares them indifferent to the event.
Paul’s theorization of a sameness, the indifference of obeying the law or not, the irrelevance of
being a man or a woman, a Greek or a Jew, is not meant, according to Badiou, to eradicate differences, but to avoid the polarizing differences that breed absolute antagonism. 20 Difference is
obvious and ubiquitous; it does not require much, Badiou suggests, to encounter the otherness
of the other. The real challenge, however, is to find sameness in the universality of the subject
that arises in its fidelity to an event. Badiou writes, “Paul’s maxim, which is that of the dissolution of the universalizing subject’s identity in the universal, makes of the Same that which must
be achieved, even if it includes, when necessary, altering our own identity.” For Badiou, Paul is
the subject who aspires to think universalism, to live it and be faithful to the event not by exiting the world in which it emerged, but in being the exception within that world: “Only what is
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an immanent exception is universal.” 21 For Badiou, the history of Christianity is by and large a
betrayal of Paul’s universalism, but Paul remains the exception to its rule.
My project here is to articulate a notion of an intensive Jewish universalism that is supplementary to the extensive account of Christian universalism that develops from Paul’s thinking.
Badiou’s eighth thesis, that states universalism is constructed as a “generic multiplicity” or
“generic set” (a key idea that Badiou borrows from the mathematician Paul Cohen) is of central
importance. A “generic set” is a set that is included in a situation without belonging to it, that
is, without being proper to it or presented in it — without being discernable in the terms of the
situation. The process of a truth, according to Badiou, is the elaboration of a subset of elements
that, although invisible and insignificant from the perspective of the situation, remain faithful
to the event and testify to its truth. There are no positive predicates other than this fidelity that
unifies the elements of generic sets, keeping it open, as “sets made up of infinitely many members
that share no common characteristic and conform to no common rule.” 22 Badiou’s idiosyncratic
symbol for the generic set in Being and Event is ♀, suggesting that the paradigmatic instance of
such a set is the set of not-all women.
The principle of exception, in the logic of the universalism of the All, is one of sacrifice: the
primal sacrifice of the father for the sake of the jouissance that he is imagined to possess; the
sacrifice of their hopes for free jouissance that the group of brothers must accept as the condition of their ongoing co-existence after the murder of the father; and, the periodic sacrifice of the
remnants of expelled jouissance that remain and remind the brothers of their crime can provide
occasions for the satisfaction of their aggressivity in its re-enactment. Thus, the category of “All
men” is universalized by the sacrifice of the exception. The group of “not-all women,” however,
is not without limitation. Indeed, the principle of limitation that marks a woman is that there is
no exception to it. But if there is something nevertheless crucially “not-all” in feminine sexuality
that infinitizes its universalism, it functions not by means of sacrifice, but by decompletion or
subtraction. The All is decompleted in the case of a woman, insofar as the field of women has no
unity, no closure, no totality. There is no scene of primal sacrifice that constructs an imaginary
fullness that was lost, and which must be compensated for, as is the case in the sacrificial logic
that underwrites the notion of “All Men” and the concept of Being itself.
Badiou terms this decompletion of the All of Being the act of subtraction.23 Subtraction is not
part of an economy of restoration; it is not sublimated into a higher unity, it is not part of a balance sheet of “pluses” and “minuses.” Subtraction is a purely immanent act which opens the place
for a universal truth, and for the articulation of a subject in the space of its decompletion. 24 The
event that ruptures a situation does not occur through the addition of something new, a catalyst
or seed crystal dropped into it, but when something falls out and is no longer comprehensible
in the terms and principles that govern the world of the situation. A hole emerges in a system
of reality when we can no longer decide the meaning of some particular object, or no longer
discern the valence of some distinction, when we stumble on something that we cannot name.
Most importantly, “subtraction” is when a group (a multiplicity), emerges in the whole that is
determined by no predicates (no characteristics), other than its infinite fidelity to the event itself,
and in its coalescence it gives body to an impossibility that forces the reconstruction of the whole
in fundamentally new terms. Each of these points is sublimely relevant to the Jewish question,
to the question of Jewish universalism.
JEWISH UNIVERSALISM: THE CASE OF FRANZ ROSENZWEIG
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With Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption (1920), however, a new encounter between
“Judaism” and “philosophy” takes place, one that breaks with the defensive approach to Jewish universalism, competitive with Christian models, as well as the assimilationist attempt to
reconcile Judaism and with Enlightenment reason. Instead, Rosenzweig presents Judaism and
Christianity as parallel modes of existence, parts of a common universalist mission — though at
times uneasy neighbors, with separate, distinct agendas. Contrary to the common understanding of Christianity, as the religion that has already welcomed the Messiah, and Judaism as the
religion that remains tied to the quotidian world of minute legal observance, patiently waiting for
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Even if Jewish writers first came into contact with philosophical universalism directly from Greek
sources, it is probably Saint Paul who first compels the Rabbinic world to pick up the gauntlet of
political-theological universalism and respond to its challenge. Christian Neo-Platonisms and
Augustinian theology developed the universalist world-historical implications of Paul’s “mission
to the Gentiles” with philosophical arguments about nature, mind, and God, which Jewish authors
from Philo through the Kabbalists could borrow from as needed to justify their projects. Even
so, it is not until the Enlightenment that Jewish thinkers felt required to mount a systematic
defense of Judaism against accusations of “tribalism” and “exclusivism” in terms of universalist
principles retrieved from biblical, Rabbinic, and Kabbalistic texts with the intension of measureing
up to Greek and Christian concepts of the All. The most concerted of modern Jewish apologetic
efforts is that of the great Neo-Kantian philosopher, Hermann Cohen. Cohen not only strived
to reinvigorate Kantian principles of reason, but modeled his oeuvre after that of Kant, writing
three primary treatises (epistemological, aesthetic, and ethical) and a late text echoing Kant’s
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, in both its title and primary assumptions, Religion
of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism (1919). Cohen argued that Jewish thought and Kantian
practical reason share notions of transcendental origins and teleology, hence both operate under
the necessity of the structural presupposition of God, rather than particular metaphysical beliefs.
Cohen’s rationalized Judaism aspired to a kind of Protestant purity that would, he imagined with
tragic bad timing, be realized in a great German-Jewish synthesis.25
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the Messiah’s ever-deferred advent, Rosenzweig argues that it is the Jews who inhabit eternity
now, and the Christians who engage in world-historical expansionist struggle, unfolding their
universalist mission according to the logics of history and empire. In the Star, Judaism is the
“fire” of eternal life, and Christianity is the “rays” by which the fire’s light expands ever outward.
The essential truths of the two religions have less to do with credos, doctrines, and observances
than with ways of being in the world — modes of temporal existence and subjectivity that function
as component parts of a universalism that can be finally realized only by each religion following
its distinct agenda.
If the Christian drive to expand to the nations defines a universalism of the “All,” it only does
so insofar as there is an exception to its totality, the Jew, who cannot simply be included in the
Christian dispensation without giving up, precisely, his or her Judaism. Moreover, this exclusion is already part of the very structure of Jewish self-understanding as being “chosen” for a
priestly role, to be “a light onto the nations,” which is conceived more as an excessive burden
on an undeserving people than an exceptional favor or a sign of special merit. The Christian
understanding of universalism is based on a sacrificial logic — Christ must die so the world as
a whole can be saved; indeed, his very Jewishness must be eliminated, so that those who accept his sacrifice may show themselves to be the true “chosen” people, who are worthy because
of their faithfulness to faith itself. Jewish universalism, on the other hand, sacrifices sacrifice,
which it replaces with a logic of substitution (that is, the substitution of the ram for the child, in
Abraham’s “sacrifice” of Isaac, the Akeda) and subtraction (for a literal example, the removal
of the foreskin in circumcision). To the extent that it presents itself in these terms, the Jewish
exception introduces a universalism of the “not-all” hitherto unknown in the world.
In The Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig begins by framing his argument as a challenge to Idealism. He argues that the unicity attributed to the world by idealist philosophy is only a function
of the unity of the logos used to conceptualize it; both are demonstrably false, or at most their
relationship is contingent, and to deny the “totality of being” and “the unity of reasoning” as he
does is once again to “throw down the gauntlet to the whole honorable company of philosophers
from Ionia to Jena.” 26 But rather than retreating from Idealism to a particularist or culturalist
position, Rosenzweig presents a renewed account of universalism, one that takes its departure
from the thinking of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche rather than that of Kant and Hegel. In the Star,
Rosenzweig criticizes Idealism as a defensive formation against the reality of individual deaths,
which “give the lie, even before it has been conceived, to the basic idea of philosophy, the idea of
the one and universal cognition of the All” (5). In the encounter with the singularity of a life and the
particularity of its death, the illusory totality of the All fragments into three initially unrelated elements, God, World, and Man — three “not-alls,” we might say, that exist in self-reflexive isolation
from each other. Rosenzweig writes, “the hitherto fundamentally simple content of philosophy,
the All of reasoning and being, unintentionally split up for us into three discrete pieces which
repelled each other in different but as yet not clearly apprehensible fashion. These three pieces
are God, world, and man….We mean to restore them, not as objects of a rational science but,
quite the contrary, as ‘irrational’ objects” (19). These elements are “irrational” not conceptually,
but in the sense that a number (such as the square root of 2) can be irrational — real but infinite
in expression, without completion or periodicity. Rosenzweig is not arguing in a Kantian mode
for the limitation of the knowability of these three concepts, but that they are infinite in their
presentation of self-difference. Initially, there is nothing that links God, world, and man; indeed,
they “repel” each other, insofar as each implies modalities of thought that contradict or at the very
least completely ignore those of the others. Ultimately, they will enter into correlation with each
other by means of language and along the paths of interaction that Rosenzweig will call “creation,”
“revelation,” and “redemption.” But at the level of their initial descriptions via “metaphysics”
(God), “metalogic” (world), and “metaethics” (man), they remain isolated fragments, real but
irrational — neither “nothings” nor “everythings,” but three somethings.27
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The Star of Redemption is not a theological project, an attempt to know God or to justify his
ways to man; indeed, Rosenzweig insists that it is not even a “Jewish” book, but a work of philosophy, tout court. It is a systematic thought experiment that leads to some knowledge, or in
Badiou’s sense, to a truth that arises from the contradictions in knowledge, a truth that we cannot
presuppose from the beginning. The decision to take this path, Rosenzweig argues, is precisely
that: to make a choice, one that involves neither the presuppositions of Idealism, which moves
from death as “Nothing” to the thought of “Everything”; nor those of Negative Theology, as a
kind of proto-deconstruction which relentlessly criticizes the possibility of making any positive
statement whatsoever, refusing to choose, and reduces every “something” to a “nothing,” where
finally, Rosenzweig writes, “atheism and mysticism can shake hands” (23). Instead, what Rosenzweig calls “The New Thinking” will chose to begin with nothing and to move to “something,”
to say yes to “not nothing.” Unlike the dialectical logic of Idealism and the inductive method of
negative theology, Rosenzweig’s first guide for this journey or gesture of thought will be mathematics. Rosenzweig’s mathematical symbology, a sequence of equations of the sort “A=A,” will be
algebraic in structure, but will also require an element of the calculus — in particular, Hermann
Cohen’s account of the “infinitesimal,” which, in Rosenzweig’s elegant description, borrows “all
the characteristics of finite magnitude with the sole exception of finite magnitude itself” (20).28
For Rosenzweig, Cohen’s thesis on the infinitesimal method is the key text in his otherwise Kantian
(all too Kantian) thinking, a decisive break with the Idealist tradition: “in the place of the one and
universal nothing, which, like the zero, could really be nothing more than ‘nothing,’ that genuine
‘non-thing’ [Undings], [Cohen] set the particular nothing whose fruitfulness refracted into realities” (Galli trans., 29). For Rosenzweig, the infinitesimal is the “particular nothing” — more than
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Idealism’s reification of death as Nothing yet less than the lifeless somethings of empiricism,
hence the best starting point for a philosophy of origins that would presuppose neither no thing
nor Nothing. The notion of the infinitesimal will ultimately be criticized by mathematicians as a
theoretically incoherent entity and will yield to more productive forms of calculation; for Rosenzweig, however, it represents a powerful attempt to think outside of the dialectical relationship
of empirical particularism and idealist universalism.29
For Rosenzweig, the idea of the universe as created must be distinguished from classical ideas
of “generation” [Erzeugung] and Neo-Platonic notions of “emanation,” which, he argues, are the
direct antecedents of Hegelian Idealism. In both classical and Neo-Platonic thought, the world
is understood as a universal or set of universal categories made up of particulars that express it:
“The enduring essence of the structured world was the Universal, or more precisely the category
which, although itself universal, yet contains the individual within itself, indeed steadily brings it
forth from within itself” (120). This protocosmic world is a steady state universe without temporal
or spatial coordinates, characterized simply by its persistence in being. The world of creation,
however, implies not only something radically external to it, a creator, but also an instability that
Rosenzweig calls, in quasi-Heideggerian fashion, existence [Dasein] in opposition to being:
In the world which manifests itself as creature, this enduring essence is converted into a momentary
essence ‘ever renewed’ and yet universal. An unessential essence thus.…It is: existence. Existence, in
contrast to Being, means the universal which is full of the distinctive and which is not always and everywhere but, herein infected by the distinctive [Besonderen], must continually become new in order
to maintain itself. The world is a firm configuration out of which existence emerges and which it denies
in its constant need for renewal.…For what existence lacks is Being, unconditional and universal Being.
In its universality, overflowing with all the phenomena of the instant, existence longs for Being in order
to gain a stability and veracity which its own being cannot provide. (120-121)
The world of created Dasein in its very universality lacks the fullness of Sein, the “All” of the
protocosmic world of Greek thought. For Being to be created is for it to be decompleted, destabilized, thrown into the transience of existence, “infected” by the singularity of its existence, yet
precisely as such attaining an “overflowing” universality. Creation is both a punctual originary
intervention, from a hypothetical point outside of being, and the ongoing becoming of being, ever
repeated and renewed. Rosenzweig describes the differences between the world as understood
by Idealism and the metalogical world, leading ultimately to the notion of the created world of
Dasein:
In contrast to the all-filling world of Idealism, the metalogical world is the wholly fulfilled, the structured
world. It is the whole of its parts. These parts are not fulfilled by the whole, not borne by it: the whole
is simply not All [das Ganze ist eben nicht All], it is in fact only a whole. Accordingly many paths lead
from the parts to the whole. Indeed, to be quite precise, every part — insofar as it is really a part, really
individual — has its own path to the whole, its own trajectory. From the universe of the idealistic view,
on the other hand, which fills all its members and bears every single one of them, only one single path
leads to these members. (51-52; emphasis added)
Unlike the universal All of Idealism, according to Rosenzweig, the universalism already immanent in the metalogical notion of the world is not All; its wholeness is produced by its parts,
rather than presumed as a unifying template to which parts must conform. Each part relates to
the whole as a singular real thing, joining the universal along its own singular and idiosyncratic
path, as one in a series of heterogeneous parts; whereas for Idealism reality is attributed only to
the idea of an originary and ultimate universal, the truth which expresses itself or “emanates”
in relatively less-true particularities.
In the famous letter to his cousin Rudolf Ehrenberg of 1917 that became the Urzelle, the
germ-cell of the Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig connects his notion of the created world with
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The image of the universal as the “‘given’ vessels” is a reference to the key Lurianic Kabbalistic
doctrine of “the breaking of the vessels” [Shevirat HaKelim]: in this esoteric account of creation,
the “vessels” God fashioned as receptacles for his originary creative outpouring of light could not
hold the over-fullness of creation, and shattered, exploding in a “Big Bang” of vessel shards and
broken elements of light. The world we live in is made up of those fragments; and it is mankind’s
duty to “repair the world,” to complete God’s botched job of creation. This catastrophic account
of creation implies a fundamental disequilibrium of the universe, which is not one with itself,
not harmonious or fully planned, but chaotically plural, a multiplicity. In the ontology of the created world, in Jewish mysticism and in Rosenzweig’s conception, being is not homeostatic; it is
missing something or overfull, uneasy in itself, and the living experience of this fact constitutes
the very essence of Dasein.
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The “logic of the Idea” (which for Rosenzweig encompasses Platonism and Neo-Platonism,
and much of the history of philosophy through Fichte and Hegel) assumes the priority of the
universal and its “emanation” or expression in particular predicates, hence it can be symbolized
algebraically as “A = B.” In “the logic of creation,” the universality of creation is secondary, the
result of a transformation enacted on the multiplicity of being, which Rosenzweig symbolizes
as “B = A”: “the chaotic plentitude of the distinctive is the first thing created in the creation,
and…the universal consists of the ‘given’ vessels [‘gegebenen’ Gefäße] placed there by the creator,
into which the distinctive is funneled as it bubbles forth freely in creation” (139). This is only a
momentary containment, Rosenzweig suggests; we cannot simply reverse emanation in order
to conceptualize creation, which would be, so to speak, to put old wine in new jugs. It is the illusion of Idealism to imagine that the universalism of creation can be fully explained outside of
the perspective of revelation, which constitutes a linguistic intervention or interruption of the
whole. Logic must be supplemented by language, the word and its grammatical ordering and
rhetorical wandering.
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Schelling’s notion of God’s self-creation from the “dark ground” or abyss [Abgrund], and links
both to the Lurianic Kabbalistic concept of tsimtsum, God’s creation of the world through contraction into himself.30 The earliest reference to this concept is found in Sefer Yetzira (“Book of
Creation”), the oldest work of Jewish mysticism and the source of the system of sefirot (the ten
ideal numbers that stand for the ten aspects of God) that became central to Kabbalah.31 The book
begins, “With 32 mystical paths of Wisdom engraved [chakak] Yah, the Lord of Hosts, the God
of Israel … And He created His universe with three books, with text, with number, and with communication.” 32 Aryeh Kaplan glosses this passage by pointing out that the Hebrew word chakak,
meaning to engrave, cut, inscribe or write, “usually has the connotation of removing material,”
and is also the root for chok, meaning a ruling or decree, “since rules and laws serve to remove
some of the individual’s freedom of action.”33 Unlike the Biblical account of creation where God
speaks the world into existence, Sefer Yetzira presents the God of the Tetragrammaton (here
called by the abbreviation Yah) as writing the world into existence through a kind of pre-originary
legislative chiseling out that inscribes law into stone. The language of creation is the counting
of the real, or, as Rosenzweig writes, a “re-counting” [er-zählenden], a numerical procedure of
computation.34 This is creation by the removal of something: a hollowing out or limiting, that,
in the sixteenth-century teaching of Isaac Luria, compiled by his student Chayyim Vital as Etz
Chayyim (“Book of Life”), became known as the moment of creation called tsimtsum:
You should know that before the emanations were emanated and the creations created, a most supreme,
simple light filled the whole of existence. There was no vacant space, no aspect of empty space or void,
but everything was filled by the simple light of the Infinite [Ain Sof].…When it arose in His simple will
to create worlds and emanate emanations…then the Infinite contracted itself at midpoint, in the exact
center of its light, and after he contracted that light and withdrew away from that mid-point to the
sides surrounding it, it left a vacant place, — an empty space, and a void.35
From the account of the creation of the world as an act of engraving or inscription in Sefer Yetzira,
Luria expresses a radically new notion of creation by God’s self-contraction or decompletion.
Tsimtsum responds to the question of how something that is not God can come into being, if
God is ubiquitous and omnipotent. A space must be cleared for creation, if it is to be other than
merely an extension of God, his “emanation,” as the Neo-Platonists and Spinozists argued. Hence
prior to his emanation, God must create a nothing at his absolute center by contraction: rather
than creation ex nihilo, from out of nothing, tsimtsum implies that creation is first the creation
of a nothing, a void that will itself embody the essential being of the universe, insofar as it is
not-God.36 Although some Kabbalists implicitly see this as voluntary exile or self-banishment,
tsimtsum is not an act of self-sacrifice, as in the Christian account of God’s sacrifice of himself
on the cross. For in the process of contraction, God purges himself, eliminating the elements of
evil that were part of his original All. As Gershom Scholem writes, “the whole ensuing process,
in which these powers of [stern, ultimately evil] judgment are eliminated from, or ‘smelted out’
of, God is a gradual purification of the divine organism from the elements of evil.” It is a “free act
of love” on God’s part, but it is also a relief for him to create an area that is not-God, into which
he can expel being like a waste product.37
Now if you consider the vase from the point of view I first proposed, as an object made to represent
the existence of the emptiness at the center of the real that is called the Thing, this emptiness as represented in the representation presents itself as a nihil, as nothing. And that is why the potter, just like
you to whom I am speaking, creates the vase with his hand around this emptiness, creates it, just like
the mythical creator, ex nihilo, starting with a hole.39
The key element of the Judeo-Christian notion of creation is the production of a void, which opposes the Biblical tradition to the Aristotelian notion that matter is eternal. For Lacan the “introduction of a gap or a hole in the real” defines the distinctively human act of “the fashioning of a
signifier,” the originary rupture that allows for modern science and modernity as such to emerge:
“modern science, the kind that was born with Galileo, could only have developed out of biblical or
Judaic ideology, and not out of ancient philosophy or the Aristotelian tradition.” This is the beginning of the Nominalist break — not the origin of transcendental universalism, as multiculturalist
critics of the Judeo-Christian tradition have assumed, but its displacement: “In other words, the
vault of the heavens no longer exists, and all the celestial bodies, which are the best reference
point there, appear as if they could just as well not be there. Their reality, as existentialism puts
it, is essentially characterized by facticity; they are fundamentally contingent.” 40
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In The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan associates the notion of creation ex nihilo with Heidegger’s account of the potter’s fashioning of a thing around a void:
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The notion of tsimtsum became a controversial element of Kabbalah, often excluded insofar
as it seemed disturbingly contradictory of more canonical accounts of creation. Kabbalah, of
course, is itself a highly esoteric doctrine, only in recent years a part of New Age culture and
“Pop” Judaism. But there are elements of this notion of creation by decompletion or emptyingout in the Torah itself (which of course is the ultimate source for mystical writings), as well as
the more “orthodox” rabbinical interpretations of them. Recall the famous scene of creation in
the beginning of the Book of Genesis: “The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their
array. On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing, and he ceased on the
seventh day from all the work that He had done” (Gen. 2:1-2). The Rabbis ask, if the world was
finished on the sixth day, what did God still have to create on the seventh day in order to finish
the work that He had been doing? Why doesn’t it say that he finished his work on the sixth day
and then rested on the seventh, as most people probably misremember the text as saying? The
midrashic response is that it was rest itself that was created on the seventh day: “And what was
created therein? Tranquility, ease, peace, and quiet.” 38 Once again, rather than creation ex nihilo,
the Jewish universe is a function of the creation of a nothing.
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Rosenzweig concludes the section on creation in The Star of Redemption with a “grammatical
analysis” of the first book of Genesis, where the word “good” [tov] is used six times to characterize
creation. The Rabbis do not fail to notice this anomaly, and Rosenzweig picks up the exegetical
debate and draws it into philosophy. After having deemed the things of his creation “good” five
times, God concludes by creating man and woman, and now, looking at “all he had made,” he
finds it “very good” [tov ma’od]. The Rabbis do not make what might be the expected comment,
that human beings are the crown of creation, hence are especially singled out as “very good.”
Rather, they cannot help but follow the phonetic resonances of the passage by reading the phrase
tov ma’od as tov mot — hearing the intensifier “very” as its near homonym death, which would
make the line mean something like the Stoic thought that “it is good to die.” A series of midrashic
interpretations struggle to make sense of why “death” might appear as the culmination of creation, precisely in the place of the most good. In what sense is death involved in the “goodness”
of creation? Rosenzweig writes, in the last words of the section of the Star on creation:
Within the general Yea of creation, bearing everything individual on its broad back, an area is set apart
which is affirmed differently, which is ‘very’ affirmed. Unlike anything else in creation, it thus points
beyond creation. This ‘very’ heralds a supercreation within creation itself, something more than worldly
within the worldly, something other than life which yet belongs to life and only to life, which was created with life as its ultimate, and which yet first lets life surmise a fulfillment beyond life: this ‘very’ is
death. The created death of the creature portends the revelation of a life which is above the creaturely
level. For each created thing, death is the consummator of its entire materiality. It removes creation
imperceptibly into the past, and thus turns it into the tacit, permanent prediction of the miracle of its
renewal. That is why, on the sixth day, it was not said that it was ‘good,’ but rather ‘behold, very good!’
‘Very,’ so our sages teach, ‘very’ — that is death. (155)
In Rosenzweig’s interpretation, creation is completed by the addition of something beyond it or
other than it, “something more than worldly within the worldly,” and something that at the same
time takes something vital away from it, death as “something other than life which yet belongs
to life.” This is death, in Heidegger’s sense, as the uniquely human horizon of being, death itself
as created rather than natural or merely the absence of life. Death is not merely good too, as the
other side of life, but very good, and as such institutes the possibility of comparison, differentiation, and non-identity; death is what displaces humanity from creation, as a “supercreation”
[Überschöpfung] that decompletes the universe in which it lives and dies, and constellates its
multitude as the “not all” of creation. If to begin with, creation is the lack in the infinite field of
God, creation itself is now constituted as lacking, and humanity will be that part of creation that,
in Revelation, is called on to think its own lack, to take on the textual question of “the goodness
of death” as its question.
But, as Rosenzweig immediately goes on to write, beginning the section of the Star on Revelation, “Love is strong as death” — a quotation from the Song of Songs. If the work of genesis
involved the construction of the universe (and a universalist ontology) by subtraction, death was
the universal subtractive principle that de-completed creation. The generations of humanity that
issue from creation only become subjects insofar as they feel themselves to be loved by God, in
an absolute present. If the ontology of creation produced the multiplicity of the object world in a
radical past, revelation produces a subject, similarly through subtraction and limitation. Grammatically, according to Rosenzweig, the passage from Creation to Revelation is the shift from
the accusative to the nominative case: “As the object of experience, however, the noun ceases
to be thing. It no longer exhibits the basic character of the thing, that of a thing among things.
Now it is subject and hence something individual. On principle it occurs in the singular” (186).
The subject of revelation, the beloved of God, is radically singular, defined by a proper name
rather than a general interpellation into a group. Unlike creation, which presented an ontological
universalism, in which the world is imagined as radically lacking something, being incomplete,
but equally and indifferently so for the not-all of creation, the universalism of revelation is a
function of the particularism — even, the exclusivism — of election, and hence introduces a
political dimension.
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The story of Exodus is not only universalist in its affective history for those people who will
call themselves Jews as well as for those who will see themselves as like the Jews, but also in the
non-genealogical principle of inclusiveness that emerges in the narrative itself at that point in
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Judaism contains elements of a political or ethical universalism from the very beginning, so to
speak — in the narrative of creation that opens the Book of Genesis, culminating with the fashioning of man and woman in God’s image, the Bible purports to present an account of all mankind.
Moreover, the first person we can call a “Jew” in the Bible is Abraham, who will not only be the father
of all the “Children of Israel” through Isaac and Jacob, but of “many great nations” — Christian
and Muslim and otherwise — who will each have their destinies to fulfill, their own contributions to world history to make, and finally their own “blessing,” and place in a messianic era
to come. The narrative of liberation from bondage in Egypt in the Book of Exodus represents
an even more profound mode of political, or subjective universalism. If the Greek principle of
“democratic” universalism involved the extension of voting rights to the “demos,” including
those who had been without social or political power as symbolically equal to the traditional
ruling class, for the people constituted from the mixed multitude in the Exodus, the principle of
their gathering remains the collective memory of previous alienation. Whereas the generations
from Abraham to Moses had been defined according to a principle of genealogically continuity,
from this transitional moment the definition of the people, Ha Am, dramatically expands, and
they will thereafter be redefined by their common liberation from a bitter domination that will
continue to inform and qualify their sense of belonging as well as their ethical imperatives. In
Leviticus 19:34, for example, the Jews are commanded to love the stranger as themselves, “for
you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
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the narrative. The Bible describes the people constituted in the flight from Egypt as including a
“mixed multitude” or heterogeneous “riffraff” [erev rav] (Exodus 12:38), which, according to the
medieval French commentator Rashi, refers to “a mingling of various nations who had become
proselytes.” Moreover, beyond the principle of inclusiveness that emerges at this moment in the
narrative and allows anyone, forever after, to see themselves as aligned with the multitude that
bands together to escape from Egypt, the Bible constitutes here a new thought on the universal,
by essentially interconnecting or even equating universalism with freedom. “Freedom,” however,
is presented in ways that do not correspond to post-Enlightenment notions of individualistic
freedom, whether the abstract universality of enfranchisement or “freedom of choice,” or even
the negative definition of “freedom from” slavery. Recall that Moses repeatedly asks Pharaoh to
“let my people go,” not in the name of some abstract principle of freedom or Human Rights, nor
for the political freedom of a nation of their own, but so that they might serve the Lord (Ex. 7:18),
that is, exchange one type of servitude for another, voluntary, one. Freedom itself, the escape
from Egypt into the desert, is not the subjective event that produces a new universalism; rather,
it creates the necessary preconditions of subjectivization, in the constitution of the people as a
multitude, no longer defined exclusively by genealogical continuity.
If the story of oppression and liberation in Exodus provides Judaism with an element of political
inclusiveness, there is still something that appears to contradict this universalism in the principle
of election. Indeed, we might say that the constitutive contradiction of Jewish political identity,
between universalism and particularism, can be located in the relationship of exodus from Egypt
and revelation at Sinai. On the one hand, what could be more universal in Jewish political identity
than the cause of freedom, the flight from bondage in Egypt? On the other, what has defined the
Jewish people more precisely and divided them more decisively from the rest of the world than
their acceptance of the yoke of the commandments? For the Rabbis, the revelation and assumption of the Torah is not understood as the ratification of a political treaty or the construction of
a social contract between free, informed, and consenting agents, but more like a Kierkegaardian
leap of faith: a pledging of fidelity prior to understanding and in excess of free will.
Recall two famous midrashim cited by Bialik and Ravnitzsky in their collection The Book of
Legends. First, commenting on “‘And they stood under the mount’ (Exod. 19:17). R. Avdimi bar
Hama said: The verse implies that the Holy One overturned the mountain upon them, like an
inverted cask, and said to them: If you accept the Torah, it is well; if not, your grave will be right
here.” In another midrashic account, the Jews are the only people who (wisely or foolishly) choose
to accept the yoke of the law. Here, however, God makes them an offer that they can’t refuse. This
notion that the law is accepted without subjective choice, without consideration or reflection,
is presented as the proof that they merit the law: “R. Simai expounded: When Israel hastened
to say, ‘We will do,’ before saying, ‘We will hearken,’ sixty myriads of ministering angels came
down and fastened two crowns upon each and every one in Israel, one as a reward for saying,
‘We will do,’ and the other as a reward for saying, ‘We will hearken.’”
R. Isaac said: At Mount Sinai the prophets of each and every generation received what they were to
prophesy, for Moses told Israel, ‘But with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our
God, and also with him that is not here with us this day’ (Deut. 29:14). He did not say, ‘That is not
standing with us here this day,’ but ‘That is not here with us this day,’ a way of referring to souls that
are destined to be created. Because as yet these had no substance, Moses did not use the word ‘standing’
for them. Still even though they did not as yet exist, each one received his share of the Torah. 42
All people who respond to the call of the revelation will hear it directly; they will all retroactively
have been present at Sinai, to be equally shattered and subjectified by the divine roar. Moreover,
the revelation depends upon those future generations, its singularity requiring their infinite
multiplicity. As Levinas, one of Rosenzweig’s most conscientious (if often tendentious) readers,
writes, “It is as if a multiplicity of persons — and it is this multiplicity, surely, that give the notion
of ‘person’ its sense — were the condition for the plentitude of ‘absolute truth,’ as if each person,
by virtue of his own uniqueness, were able to guarantee the revelation of one unique aspect of
the truth, so that some of its facets would never have been revealed if certain people had been
absent from mankind.” 43 Although the revelation was an absolutely singular event whose laws
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Its universalism is also temporal, a present tense eternity, insofar as the Bible and the tradition
of its interpretations understands it as directly addressing all future generations, and including
in it the entire history, still unfolding, of its interpretations:
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This reference to Ex. 24:7 understands the fact that “do” [asah] comes before “obey” or “hear”
[shama] in the Israelites’ response to God’s revelation as an indication that they accepted the commandments before they fully understood or even really heard them. The revelation at Sinai is not
the presentation of the law as a positive body of prohibitions and requirements, but, first of all, and
essentially, the revelation of revelation itself, a pure act of articulation that is not made to a subject,
but that makes a subject. When the Bible introduces the revelation, writing “And God spoke all
these words, saying” (Ex. 20:1), the tradition understands this redoubling as suggesting an inhuman
density of God’s voice. The sound is incomprehensible, a thundering that kills and resurrects the
listener with each word, “something that is beyond the human mouth to articulate or the human
ear to absorb.” At the same time, God’s voice, according to the Rabbinic tradition, divides itself,
mutating “into seven voices, and the seven voices into seventy languages, so that all the nations
might hear it…Just as a hammer that strikes a rock causes sparks to fly off in all directions, so each
and every word that issued from the mouth of the Holy One divided itself into seventy languages.” 41
The moment of revelation is a punctual interruption that articulates a particular people at a precise
moment as a generic multiplicity, with no common traits other than pure subjectification. From
a point of singular density, the revelation translates itself for the entire world.
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are binding only for those to whom it was addressed, anyone can, so to speak, choose to have
been chosen. This Jewish notion of universality, moreover, does not depend on the possibility
of becoming a totality: the fact that anyone can enter the covenant and rightfully claim to have
been present at Sinai does not mean that everyone should or someday will, or that those who do
not will suffer on that account. The universality of the revelation is an ever-expanding horizon
of singularities, an enunciation that is both too full and infinitely regenerating.
I would suggest that the revelation at Sinai is the event, in Badiou’s sense, that interrupts the
ontological situation from creation to the Exodus and articulates the people as a generic multiplicity, with a new experience of subjectivity and universality. If the statement that man and woman
are created in God’s image in Genesis implies an abstract universalism, of the form “all people
are created equal,” this could be understood as contradicted by the notion of election in Exodus
where a particular people is selected for special favor and a promised land. However, as Levinas
and many others have argued, election is not particularism as much as exceptionalism: the Jews
are chosen, separated from the totality of the world, for the sake of the other’s equality, so that
what was abstract can be made a concrete universal. The event at Sinai launches a universality
of the not-All, which indexes a contracting divinity (Creation), enumerates the heterogeneity
of its social body (Revelation), and faithfully recalls the subject’s responsibility to the neighbor
(Redemption). Jewish universalism is fidelity to the Sinai event, in which the emergence of the
Law gave materiality to the antagonism of the social order, forever sundering heaven and earth,
God and Man, and repeating the originary decompletion of the cosmos in Creation, the subtractive ontology of tsimtsum. The Covenant is simultaneously an act of binding and unbinding: the
creation of a new law, a new legal order and a new situation of being, but at the same time, the
infinite continuation of the project of liberation, of unbinding, that the Exodus initiated —that
is, Jewish universalism is not thought despite the particularism of chosenness, but because and
through election. The Jews are chosen by God not for any good reason, not on account of any
characteristics or qualities, but arbitrarily, and contingently. If they follow the terms of the covenant, according to God’s criteria, they will be blessed, if not they will suffer; but their success
or failure is not based on anything intrinsic to them. If they emerge as a subset of humanity, it is
as a generic subset, without any principle to differentiate them from the whole of mankind other
than their fidelity itself to revelation. As Yeshayahu Leibowitz writes, “The Judaism of Moses
is arduous. It means knowing that we are not a holy people…The people of Israel were not the
chosen people but were commanded to be the chosen people.” 44
Near the end of the Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig explains the concept of “election” through
the familiar prophetic language of the “remnant,” those chosen few who remain true to the event
of their subjectification (whether at Sinai or Cavalry). Whereas the mission of Christianity and
its secular developments is to “spread over the world,” expanding the universalism of the “All,”
Judaism’s mission is to decomplete the All, to step out of the totality for the sake of infinity:
All secular history deals with expansion. Power is the basic concept of history because in Christianity
revelation began to spread over the world, and thus every expansionist urge, even that which was consciously purely secular, became the unconscious servant of this expansionist movement. But Judaism,
and it alone in all the world, maintains itself by subtraction, by contraction, by the formation of ever
new remnants.…In Judaism, man is always somehow a remnant. He is always somehow a survivor, an
inner something, whose exterior was seized by the current of the world and carried off while he himself,
what is left of him, remains standing on the shore. (404-405)
Rosenzweig certainly leads us in this direction. His “star of redemption” systematically constellates the three primal elements that replace the shattered All: the relationships of God and world
in creation, God and man in revelation, and man and world in redemption. These three moments,
organizing the Jewish experience of temporality, also institute three modes of universalism:
• The absolute past, in which the world originated or was created in its universal multiplicity
and heterogeneity.
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If we can agree that any universalism whose principle of inclusion is limited to a particular
people, nation, ethnicity or other marked class of individuals is no universal at all, can we define
Jewish universalism as a subjectivism? That is, is there a Jewish perspective or subjectivity from
which the universal can be thought, a Jewish way of thinking universalism that applies to all
people, Jew and gentile alike? A mode of utopianism, perhaps, a universalism of the mind, but
one that has consequences, that makes things happen or that expresses its fidelity to an event
that has happened, and in the process allows it to persist?
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Rosenzweig opposes the inclusiveness of Christianity to the exclusiveness of Judaism. As Eric
Santner indicates, however, Rosenzweig’s account of the Jew as “remnant” does not only indicate
the “stuckness” of the Jews, their stubborn persistence in their particular ethnic ways despite
universal world-historical progress, but the Jew as the materialization of “a certain rupture with
the time and space of ethnic and national histories.” 45 In addition, Slavoj Žižek suggests, in glossing this passage, that this rupture is both in and for the world and in and of themselves: “Thus
the Jews are a remainder in a double sense: not only the remainder with regard to the other set
of ‘normal’ nations, but also, in addition, a remainder with regard to themselves, a remainder
in and of themselves.” 46 Moreover, Rosenzweig’s account suggests that the exceptionalism of
“election” is itself made up of three modalities of decompletion, which are constitutive of the
very universality that they are exceptions to: contraction [Verengung], the mythical origination
of the world as the materialization of the void, as a hole in God where the multiplicity of creation
can emerge; subtraction [Subtraktion], in which a particular people is arbitrarily chosen as the
subject of revelation, thereby removed from the All and thereby constituting a new subjectivity
of the not-all; and the “ever new remnants” [immer neurer Reste] left over and left behind in the
world historical expansion of the All, as the promise of its redemption from its own expansionism, its own imperialism.
• The ever-renewed present initiated with the declaration of the law at Sinai and sustained by
fidelity to the law, when revelation’s punctual interruption into creation constitutes a subjective
universality from out of the situation of multiple peoples and nations.
• The indefinite future wherein lies the possibility of universal subjectivity — not in eschatological
time, but as a discontinuity within every present moment, the irruption dividing each moment
from itself as a “not yet,” and which bears the face of the neighbor.
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This final, “redemptive” aspect of Jewish universalism, for Rosenzweig, is realized in the love of
the neighbor. Neighbor-love grows according to the logic of the not-all, one by one, as each particular other enters into the universal position of neighbor, infinitely expanding, always open. For
Rosenzweig, this expansion must be distinguished from the natural-historical growth of the world,
and paradoxically, requires finally the dissolution, or at least the suspension, of election:
But facing this silent, automatic growth of Creation, the loving work of man on earth remains free; such
that he may perform it as if there were no Creator, as if Creation did not come to join in with his action:
‘The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth he gave to the children of men.’ To the children
of men and not to the community of Israel: in the received love and in the trust, it knows it is unique,
but in the act of loving, it knows it is a child of men, quite simply, it knows only the ‘anyone,’ just the
other and nothing more – the neighbor [in der Geliebtheit und im Vertrauen weiß sie sich nur als Menschenkinder schlechtweg, kennt sie nur den Irgendjemand, den andern schlechtweg, den – Nächsten].
(Galli translation, 270-271; emphasis added)
In the universalization of subjectivity that is the work of neighbor love, Israel steps out of the
status of election, knows itself simply as part of mankind, no longer, or at least not for that
particular moment of facing the other as neighbor, is Israel exceptional. Or perhaps better, at
that moment the universal is itself made up of nothing but exceptions, each other a neighbor,
the one we are enjoined to love as ourselves. In this final frame, Jewish universalism does not
designate the members of the covenant, but the possibility of a morality that, although enabled
by the covenant, extends beyond its limits, constituting an ever-expanding moral sphere that,
by definition, must not be exclusively Jewish. The subject who responds to the call of covenantal
election exceeds the very moral universe that he or she helps to build, by the fact of being held
responsible for its infinite expansion, for the rigorous generosity that should be extended to all
people. The covenant establishes a link between the world of symbolic values and something
that remains exterior or unassimilated to that world, a connection between the “moral” and the
“divine” that is predicated on the disjunction between the two — that they cannot be brought
together in a totality. In marking the gap left by this self-contraction, the event at Sinai not only
sets the laws and conditions of the human moral universe, but also prevents it from achieving
closure. The event at Sinai launches a universality of the not-All, which indexes a contracting
divinity (Creation), enumerates the heterogeneity of its social body (Revelation), and faithfully
recalls the subject’s responsibility to the neighbor (Redemption). 47
1.
Aristolte, The Metaphysics, trans. Hugh Lawson-Tancred (New
York: Penguin Books, 1998), 228.
2. For a helpful conceptual history of Universalism through the
Middle Ages, see Alain de Libera, La querelle des universaux:
de Platon à la fin du Moyen Age (Paris: Seuil, 1996).
3. Laclau argues that this model is the origin of later notions of the
“privileged agent of history,” the single individual who expresses
a universalism transcending his particular identity.
4. G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: The
Lectures of 1825-1826, vol. 3, ed. Robert F. Brown, trans. R.F.
Brown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 85.
5. Hegel, Logic, trans. William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1975), 31.
8. Ibid., 28, 31, 34.
9. Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene, 173.
10. Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy,
2d ed. (New York: Verso, 2001), 111.
11. See Laclau, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, (New York:
Verso, 2000), 64-73. “In a somewhat Lacanian way,” Balibar
distinguishes three meanings in universalism: “real,” “fictional,”
and “ideal.” Politics and the Other Scene, 170.
12. I discuss this material in greater detail in my essay, “Towards a
Political Theology of the Neighbor” in Slavoj Žižek, Eric Santner,
Kenneth Reinhard The Neighbor: Three Essays in Political
Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
13. “C’est à partir de là qu’il nous faut obtenir deux universels,
deux tous suffisamment consistants pour séparer chez des
parlants, — qui, d’être des, se croient des êtres — deux moitiés
15. Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject (New York: Verso, 1999), 181.
See also his contributions to the joint venture with Laclau and
Judith Butler, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, and his
forthcoming The Universal Exception (New York: Continuum,
2005).
16. Žižek, The Ticklish Subject, 182-183.
17. See Alain Badiou, “Eight Theses on the Universal,” in Theoretical Writings, ed. and trans. Ray Brassier and Alberto Toscano
(New York: Continuum, 2004), 143-152.
18. Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2003) 108. Badiou argues that Paul
did not himself produce a universal, but theorizes it around the
“fictitious” event of the resurrection. Even though religion is the
source of some of the first and best theories of universalism, for
Badiou, it cannot be universal, insofar as it does not participate
in the truth procedures of science, art, politics, or love.
19. Ibid., 107.
20. Badiou argues that the concentration camp is not, as some
have argued recently, the site of the elimination of all difference
in the sameness of Death, but the locus for delimitating the
“absolute difference” between Jew and Aryan. The aim of the
camps is to eliminate the universalism that Badiou associates
with the injunction to love the neighbor: “The address to the
69
7. Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (New York: Verso, 1996),
26.
14. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund
Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth
Press, 1953-1974), 21:114.
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6. See Étienne Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene (New York:
Verso, 2002), 157, 160.
telles qu’elles ne s’embrouillent pas trop dans la coïtération
quand ils y arrivent.” Jacques Lacan, “L’Étourdit,” in Scilicet 4
(1973): 12. Thanks to Frank Reinhard for assistance with this
translation. See Monique David-Ménard’s commentary on
this passage in her outstanding book on universalism in psychoanalysis and philosophy, Les Constructions de l’universel:
Psychanalyse, philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1997), 107-9. My thoughts here and throughout are
indebted to her work.
other of the ‘as oneself’ (love the other as yourself) was what
the Nazis wanted to abolish. The German Aryan’s ‘as oneself’
was precisely what could not be projected anywhere, a closed
substance, continuously driven to verify it own closure.” Ibid.,
110.
21. Ibid., 111.
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70
22. Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 132.
23. Badiou describes four aspects of its plurality: 1) the not-all
produces an undecidable statement that is subtracted from the
norm of the All; 2) an indiscernible difference emerges that is
subtracted from the Difference the All requires between inclusion and exclusion; 3) a generic subset of the All emerges, one
which cannot be constructed according to specifiable functions
or determinate predicates, and hence is subtracted from the
All, eliminating its possibility of self-identity according to a
unary trait or primary signifier; 4) the paradox of the singular
unnameability of a term that falls away from the All, which is
uniquely exemplified by the not-all itself, which names nothing,
merely indicates that not everything can be named. He writes:
“We have the undecideable as subtraction from the norms of
evaluation, or subtraction from the Law; the indiscernible as
subtraction from the marking of difference, or subtraction from
sex; the generic as infinite and excessive subtraction from the
concept, as pure multiple or subtraction from the One; and,
finally, the unnamable as subtraction from the proper name, or
as a singularity subtracted from singularization.” Badiou, “On
Subtraction” in Theoretical Writings, 109. See also Francois
Wahl, “Le soustractif,” the introduction to Badiou’s Conditions (Paris: Seuil, 1992), where “On Subtraction” originally
appeared. Compare Badiou’s notion of subtraction to Lacan’s
account of the emergence of a subject in the gap where a signifier falls out of the symbolic order of the Other.
24. If subtraction opens the place of the infinite, according to
Badiou, it is not itself infinite, nor an absolute principle of
reduction: “Subtracting lies at the source of every truth. But
subtraction is also what, in the guise of the unnamable, governs
and sets a limit to the subtractive trajectory. There is only one
maxim in the ethics of a truth: do not subtract the last subtraction.” Badiou, “On Subtraction,” 116.
25. See Jacques Derrida’s essay on Cohen and the Kantian/ Jewish
synthesis, “Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German,”
trans. Moshe Ron, Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (New York:
Routledge, 2002), 135-188.
26. Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. William
Hallo (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 12.
Subsequent references will appear parenthetically within the
text. I have also consulted the newer translation of The Star,
trans. Barbara Galli (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
2005) and cite it when it corrects the errors and mannerisms
that plague the Hallo translation.
27. In Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, Rosenzweig’s
simplified account of the Star, he distinguishes the project of
the New Thinking from those of Idealism, mysticism, and science, which all presuppose some “essence” beyond, within, or
in the possibility of perfect representation of the object: “Our
answer is, however, characterized by a lack of presumption,
quite unlike those answers which insisted on plumbing the
‘deeper regions’ in order to demonstrate ‘essence.’ The latter
pretended to ultimate profundity, while our does not desire to
be profound, but prefers to keep to the surface. It does not wish
to speak of an ultimate issue but of primary ones. It does not
wish a person to remain with it. It must be just a beginning. It
does not claim to be a truth – it does, however, aspire to become
truth.” The “somethings” of world, man, and God are superficial,
in the sense of topological surfaces rather than strata, infinitely
complex but exactly as they appear. The truths they imply are
not ontological or transcendental but immanent productions, or
events. Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, trans. Nahum
Glatzer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 70.
28. Originally published in 1883 as Das Prinzip der Infinitesimalmethode und seine Geschichte; reprinted in Hermann Cohens
Schriften zur Philosophie und Zeitgeschichte, vol. 2, ed. Albert
Görland and Ernst Cassirer (Berlin, Akademie-verlag, 1928).
For a very helpful commentary on Cohen’s notion of the infinitesimal see Lydia Patton’s dissertation “Hermann Cohen’s
History and Philosophy of Science,” available on her webpage
<http://home.uchicago.edu/~patton>.
29. We might suggest the notion of the empty set developed
in Cantorian set theory as another approach to the question of an element between “nothing” and “something” on
which coherent structures of mathematical thinking can be
established. We can only speculate what Rosenzweig might
have thought of Cantorian set theory (which he makes little
or no direct reference to), and the possibility it represents of
constructing a complete mathematics from out of the empty
set alone.
32. Sefer Yetzira, 5. The “32 mystical paths” refer to the ten sefirot
plus the 22 letters of the Hebrew Aleph Bet.
33. Ibid., 13.
34. See Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, Galli trans.,
200.
39. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The
Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller,
trans. Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1992), 121.
40. Ibid., 122.
41. The Book of Legends, ed. Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua
Hana Ravnitzky (New York: Schocken Books, 1992), 81.
42. Ibid., 81.
43. Emmanuel Levinas, “Revelation in the Jewish Tradition,” in
The Levinas Reader, ed. Seán Hand (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 195.
44. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 86.
45. Eric Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 114.
35. Hayyim ben Joseph Vital, The Tree of Life: Chayyim Vital’s
Introduction to the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, trans. Donald
Wilder Menzi and Zwe Padeh (Northvale: Jason Aronson,
1999), 12-13.
46. Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2003), 131.
36. This notion of the essential void of being has interesting parallels in Badiou’s arguments in his fourth meditation, “The Void:
Proper Name of Being,” in L’être et l’événement (Paris: Seuil,
1988), 65-72.
47. This paper is the first part of a longer discussion of this third
element of Jewish universalism, keyed to Rosenzweig’s notion of Redemption and based on the universalization of the
subject.
71
31. See Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, ed. and commentary
Aryeh Kaplan (Boston: Weiser Books, 1997). The date of Sefer
Yetzira is uncertain, but it is referred to as early as the sixth
century C.E.
38. Midrash Rabbah: Genesis, vol. 1, ed. and trans. H. Freedman
(New York: Soncino Press, 1983), 78. See also Julia Reinhard
Lupton and Kenneth Reinhard, “Lacan and the Ten Commandments,” diacritics (in press).
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30. Rosenzweig, “‘Urzelle,’ to the Star of Redemption” in Philosophical and Theological Writings, trans. and ed. Paul W.
Franks and Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000),
57.
37. Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New
York: Schocken Books, 1965), 111. “The goal of all those processes
that began with tsimtsum – i.e., the concentration of these seeds,
the ‘roots of severity,’ in the center of ‘Ein-Sof – was to make
the light of the Infinite ever clearer, purer, and more harmonious. The very thought of Creation disturbed the harmony of
the potencies within the ‘Ein-Sof.” Scholem, On the Mystical
Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in Kabbalah (New
York: Schocken Books, 1991), 83.
tracy mcnulty
WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL
We have only the following account of Paul’s famous conversion on the
road to Damascus in the Acts of the Apostles:
Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light
from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice
saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are
you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But
get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’ The men
who were traveling with him stood speechless because they had heard the
voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes
were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought
him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate
nor drank. (Acts 9: 3-9)
Alain Badiou notes that after the event of Damascus, Paul turns away
from any authority other than the Voice that personally called upon him
to become a subject.1 But what exactly does that Voice say? Although it
speaks to him, it does not transmit specific directives or a particular interpretation of the gospel. Instead, it initiates an unscripted “conversion
experience” that follows its own course, one that differs from both Moses
and the Hebrew prophets, all of whom are conceived as mouthpieces for
the speech of God.
What is the significance in Paul’s writing of this fidelity to the Voice — the
Voice that interpellates Paul on the road to Damascus, but also the inner
voice of the Christian liberated from the law, the voice of freedom? In
Paul’s discourse, the Voice is opposed to Greek wisdom and to Jewish
signs and aligned with the mysterious “demonstration” of the spirit:
“For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim
Christ crucified, a stumbling block [skandalon] to Jews and foolishness
to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1: 22-24).
While the Voice has an authority that supercedes prophecy and reason,
it is itself strangely inarticulate. Consider this curious passage from the
second letter to the Corinthians, where Paul speaks in the third person
of his interpellation by the Voice: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen
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73
years ago was caught up to the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not
know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into Paradise…and he heard things
that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Cor. 12: 2-4). He does not hear — or at least
cannot convey — what the Voice says to him, but only the fact that it calls upon him. What I want
to consider here is the status of this authority of the Voice in Paul’s discourse and its relation to
the problem of faith. What is at stake in Paul’s insistence that the Jews open their ears to a Voice
beyond the Law? And why is the Jewish tradition unable or unwilling to hear this voice?
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Emmanuel Levinas, in an essay entitled “The Pact,” comments on a passage from the Babylonian
Talmud concerning the handing down of the Law to the people of Israel. In this passage, the rabbis note that in the scene of law-giving reported in Deuteronomy, the Israelites are commanded
not only to obey each individual interdiction of the Law, but also to uphold “all the words of this
Law” (Deut. 27: 26). The Law is to be taken in its entirety in its general spirit.2 But why, Levinas
asks, does the Law demand both a particular and a general form? He writes:
Can the adherence to the Law as a whole, to its general tenor, be distinguished from the ‘yes’ which is
said to the particular laws it spells out? Naturally, there has to be a general commitment. The spirit
in which a piece of legislation is made has to be understood.…For there to be true inner adherence,
this process of generalization is indispensable. But why is it necessary to distinguish between this
knowledge of the general spirit, and the knowledge of its particular forms of expression? Because we
cannot understand the spirit of any legislation without acknowledging the laws it contains. These are
two distinct procedures, and the distinction is justified from several particular points of view. Everyone
responds to the attempt to encapsulate Judaism in a few ‘spiritual’ principles. Everyone is seduced by
what might be called the angelic essence of the Torah, to which many verses and commandments can
be reduced. This ‘internalization’ of the Law enchants our liberal souls and we are inclined to reject
anything which seems to resist the ‘rationality’ or the ‘morality’ of the Torah. (219; emphasis added)
Although Paul’s name never appears here, the passage seems to engage with Paul’s polemic not
only in questioning the reduction of the law to its “spirit,” but also in its affirmation of the very
reasoning that Paul criticizes under the joint headings of “Greek wisdom” and “Jewish signs.” 3
Crucial to Levinas’ reading, however, is an inattention to anything like the Voice. He notes that
“Judaism has always been aware…of elements within it which can not be immediately internalized. Alongside the mishpatim, the laws we call [sic] all recognize as just, there are the hukkim,
those unjustifiable laws in which Satan delights when he mocks the Torah” (219). Despite the
absurdity of the ritual of the red heifer, the arcane alimentary prohibitions, and even the act
of circumcision, Levinas argues that we cannot dismiss these sometimes incomprehensible
adherences as unnecessary or irrelevant compared to the general adherence to the “spirit” of
the law. The letter of the law offers a necessary check to what he calls the “angelic essence” of
the Law, its purely spiritual dimension.
Jean-François Lyotard suggests that Paul interrupts this struggle in his appeal to the mystery
of the incarnation: “The Word was made flesh and came among us: is this not to announce that
the Voice voices itself by itself, and to say that it asks not so much to be scrupulously examined,
interpreted, understood and acted so as to make justice reign, but loved?” 4 The struggle that
defines Jewish ethics is thus inverted: it is no longer the “angelism” of the Voice that one must
struggle against, but the letter of the law that limits this euphoric insistence. The Voice demands
not to be examined and enacted, but “loved.”
What, then, is the meaning of the “freedom” Paul proclaims, the freedom revealed to him by
the Voice? On the one hand, it involves a freedom from the Law in its proscriptive formulations,
on the other, it implies an identification with a principle behind the law that both fulfills it and
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This threat is acknowledged in the rabbis’ creation of the oral law, or Talmud. According to
Levinas, the Talmud “is concerned with the passage from the principle embodied in the Law
to its possible execution, its concrete effects. If this passage were simply deducible, the Law, in
its particular form, would not have demanded a separate adherence.” Talmudic casuistry tries
“to identify the precise moment within it when the general principle is at risk of turning into its
opposite; it surveys the general from the standpoint of the particular.” In this way, says Levinas,
it “preserves us from ideology.” In short, “the Talmud is the struggle with the Angel” (ibid.). On
the one hand, it is the struggle not to “recognize” the angel or to presume that one is familiar
with its essence. On the other, it is also the admonition to struggle against a danger that presents
itself under the guise of generosity — and perhaps even love.
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Levinas then reads the biblical story of Jacob’s struggle with the Angel as a cautionary tale
about the dangers of succumbing too readily to the “angelism” of the Law. He writes: “There is
a constant struggle within us between our two adherences; to the spirit and to what is known as
the letter. Both are equally indispensable, which is why two separate acts are discerned in the acceptance of the Torah. Jacob’s struggle with the Angel has the same meaning: the overcoming, in
the existence of Israel, of the angelism or other-worldliness of pure interiority. Look at the effort
with which this victory is won! But is it really won? There is no victor. And when the Angel’s clasp
is released it is Jacob’s religion which remains, a little bruised.” The Angel represents “spirit,”
but also the lure of “pure interiority,” an identification with the Law in which it would cease to
be Other. Thus it is important to Levinas’ reading that the being with whom Jacob wrestles is
not God, as Jacob himself believes, but an Angel. As a “purely spiritual being,” the Angel is “a
principle of generosity, but no more than a principle. Of course, generosity demands an adherence. But the adherence to a principle is not enough; it brings temptation with it, and requires
us to be wary and on our guard.” What exactly is the temptation? That general principles, and
even generous principles, can be inverted in the course of their application, or, as Levinas puts
it, “All generous thought is threatened by its own Stalinism” (220).
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renders it obsolete. In this regard, Paul is very much an ancestor of Kant, since, as Hannah Arendt
observes, “Kant’s spirit is the demand that a man…go beyond the mere call of obedience and
identify his own will with the principle behind the law — the source from which the law sprang.” 5
But they are also radically different, in that for Kant this “principle behind the law” is practical
reason, whereas for Paul it is the authority of the Voice.
In making this distinction, I am borrowing from Juliet Flower MacCannell’s work on fascism
and the voice of conscience, which is a reading not of Paul, but of Adolf Eichmann. The architect of
Hitler’s Final Solution claimed to be guided in his moral conduct by Kant’s categorical imperative.
Following Arendt, MacCannell suggests that the “principle behind the law” with which Eichmann
identified was not practical reason, but the will of the Führer, incarnated in the Voice as object
a.6 MacCannell assimilates his position to the structure of perversion, which Lacan defines as “a
response…to the jouissance of the Other as voice, rather than to the Other as speech.” For him,
speech is defined as the field of the symbolic pact, “the social contract that divides us from each
other as mutual aggressors.” 7 By contrast, “Voice is already object a; the embodiment or bearer
of a ‘principle behind the law.’ It took shape in Lacan’s discourse as one of the four fundamental
objects a (gaze, voice, breast, feces) around which the fantasy that structures drive circulates.”
Speech, as the field of the signifier, works to limit the insistence of jouissance by erecting barriers against it, while the voice as object a is a bearer of the deadly jouissance that insists within
the fantasy. Thus, speech as pact protects against not only the aggression of others, but also the
aggression of the voice itself. In the structure of perversion, the pervert foregoes the protections
offered by the law, “identify[ing] himself with the object a in its role as agent of the Jouissance
of the Other.” 8 In Sade’s work, for instance, this identification is evident in the libertine’s attention to the maternal voice, which appears in the form of the uncastrated “voice of Nature” that
guides him in his systematic critique of symbolic authority.
In appealing to this argument, I do not mean to imply that Paul is a fascist or a pervert (although
I would not exclude the second possibility, which is arguably the upshot of Nietzsche’s notorious
psychological study of the apostle). What is striking is that for Paul, nothing comes to limit the
authority of the Voice. As Lyotard writes, “Neither Jewish signs nor Greek proofs will be offered.
Every intermediary is bypassed. You will hear the incarnation only if the incarnated Voice speaks
to you, speaks through you, in you.” 9 Or, as Paul himself puts it in First Corinthians, “‘What no
eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those
who love him,’ God has revealed to us through the Spirit…And we impart this in words not taught
by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truth to those who possess the
Spirit. The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to
him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual
man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one” (1 Cor. 2: 9-10, 13-15). In Paul’s
claim that the mystery can only be discerned spiritually, without ever passing through speech,
we see the insistence of what Levinas calls the “angelism” of the Law, which appeals to a spiritual
“principle behind the law” that underlies — but also supercedes — the Law’s authority.
In his provocative essay “The Sacrifice of Sacrifice,”14 Frank Vande Veire notes that one of
the core innovations of early Judaism was the shift from ritual human sacrifice to law-based
observance, the biblical proof text of which is God’s intercession on behalf of Isaac at the moment
77
Amazingly, Paul makes the exposure to this superegoic violence the very basis of ethics, and in
so doing identifies not simply a hermeneutic error or a lack of faith, but a severe ethical failing
or cowardice in the refusal to open oneself to the Voice — not just to its love, but to its violence.
Perhaps this is what Lacan means when he claims that “Christianity naturally ended up inventing
a God such that he is the one who gets off,” 11 a God of limitless jouissance. Israel, on the other
hand, is not always so eager to surrender to this enjoyment; she has reservations about exposing herself to the “love” of God without protection. In this respect, it is significant that Levinas’
reading of the angelism of the Law appears in a reading of a Talmudic passage concerning the
handing down of the law at Sinai, which implies a very different conception of the Voice. In his
commentary on the Hebrew decalogue, introduced by the verse “and God spoke all of these
words [all together]” (Exod. 20: 1), the medieval rabbi Rashi suggests that the voice of God took
the form of a single terrifying utterance, so unbearable that the people of Israel begged Moses to
shield them from God’s voice by speaking the commandments for them, mediating its awesome
force.12 This gloss contests the stock reading according to which Judaism is said to be marked
by the tragedy of God’s absence, his withdrawal from the “dead” letter that signals his retreat
from the human community. Rashi makes clear that the Israelites’ relation to God is marked
by a profound dread of the unmediated divine presence, an insight that casts the stakes of the
Jewish law in a different light. 13
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What does it mean to say, as it does in the final line of this citation, that the “spiritual man”
is “judged by no one”? Of course, the spiritual man is not subject to the judgment of the law,
wielded by those who are “jealous” of the Christian’s freedom. But this is not simply a question
of “getting off” without judgment because the cost of being judged by no one is to profoundly
deliver oneself over to the violence of the Other in the form of the absolute authority of the Voice.
As Paul says again and again, “I was freed to the law so that I might become a slave to Christ.”
And after the event of Damascus, the Acts of the Apostles attributes to Jesus the words: “I myself
will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9: 16). As Slavoj Žižek
has argued, the most horrifying, superegoic dimension of God is witnessed not in Judaism, as
is often maintained, but in Christian love itself.10 Levinas’ reading is insightful in that it locates
this superegoic quality in the spirit or “angelism” of the Law, which in its very generosity veers
in the direction of what he calls “Stalinism.”
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when Abraham prepares to slit his son’s throat. Vande Veire argues that the corollary of this shift
is the fact that it is no longer possible to manage divine terror: God can no longer be seduced
or appeased with gifts. The result is a “spiritualization” of sacrifice, which now takes the form
of unconditional respect for the Law. In this sense, the non-sacrifice of Isaac corresponds to a
demand for an entirely uneconomic, unconditional sacrifice, one that can be required at any moment, without advance warning. As an example, he cites the infamous episode from the Book of
Exodus, where God, after having called upon Moses to be his prophet, suddenly decides to kill
him. Moses is saved only by the ingenious ruse of Zipporah, who quickly circumcises their infant
son and touches the bloody foreskin to Moses’ feet, effectively circumcising him and so warding
off the demonic attack (Exod. 4: 24-26). Vande Veire interprets this impromptu circumcision to
be a reminder that God can at any time impose his insatiable demands. In this reading, the act
of circumcision is not so much a protection against divine terror as an extension of it, a mark of
the Israelites’ profound subjection to the destructive force of divine wrath.
I would interpret this episode differently, however. For me, this passage best expresses the
stakes of circumcision in the Jewish tradition, in which it appears as a barrier against the deity
that is intimately related to the function of speech as a limit against the Voice. The act of circumcision is not just a submission to the deity’s exhorbitant demands, but a talismanic protection
against them. It is a purely symbolic sacrifice — and ultimately a rather modest one — that serves
to ward off something much more radical. Having verified Moses’ circumcision, God is no longer
at liberty to strike against the mere mortal who stands helpless before him; he cannot further
demand an arm, a leg, and so on. As the act that seals the covenant with God, circumcision is
not only a demand imposed from without, but a pact. Most obviously, it is a mark of election
that identifies the subject of the covenant as under God’s protection, but more importantly, it is
an act that protects its subject against the unmediated wrath of God himself. 15 Israel’s covenant
with God is a mutually binding contract, one that commits both parties to certain obligations with
respect to one another (although there is no denying, as Vande Veire quite rightly observes, that
those obligations are asymmetrical, and that God has a fairly open-ended time frame in which to
make good on his promises). In this sense, the law limits the satisfaction not only of the subject
who submits to it, but also of the deity himself.
In the epistle to the Romans, Paul argues that to live under the law is to live with the impossibility
of ever fulfilling the Law, since one would have to fulfill its precepts in their entirety, something
the flesh can never achieve (Gal. 3: 10). It is true that the Jewish law cannot be “fulfilled,” but
to the extent that one lives within its confines, it nonetheless functions as a protective barrier
against something that is considerably more difficult to live with — the limitless jouissance of
the Other. Lacan says of the Ten Commandments that “whether or not we obey them, we still
cannot help hearing them — in their indestructible character they prove to be the very laws of
speech.” 16 This is because “the condition sine qua non of speech” is the “distance between the
subject and das Ding,” 17 the deadly jouissance that represents the ultimate “fulfillment” of the
subject, its annihilation or absorption by the superegoic Other. In contrast, consider the notion
of “sinning in the heart” elaborated in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5), which holds that
to think lustful thoughts about a woman other than one’s wife is already to commit adultery,
even in the absence of an adulterous act. By this logic, it is no longer possible to fulfill the Law
simply by not transgressing it or by avoiding the object it designates as abject. As a result, the
Law loses its function as a protective barrier.
79
According to Badiou, the message of Paul’s gospel is that “we can overcome our impotence,
and rediscover what the law has separated us from.” 20 This reading posits the Jewish law as one
in which the subject is impotent with respect to the all-powerful Other. But what it does not
acknowledge is that this impotence is itself a kind of potency in that it carves out a space in which
the subject can live by limiting the Other and thus rendering it impotent. In other words, what
the Jewish law has “separated us from” is not merely the object that would complete or fulfill us,
but the superegoic jouissance of the Other. Paul’s treatment of the law casts a new light on the
problem of the pact as a protection against this violence. In this sense he is very much the heir of
Jesus, who presents himself as the one who violently breaks apart all pacts, separating brother
from sister and father from son. As he says in the gospel of Matthew, “I have not come to bring
peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10: 34). The stakes of this position become clear in Paul’s reversal of
the attitude toward the law implied in Jacob’s struggle with the Angel, a reversal whose implications are far reaching and sometimes contradictory. This struggle seems to be already implied
or encrypted in the event of Damascus, as a heritage it both alludes to and displaces. On the
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The difference between the two ethics can best be illustrated by reference to the commandment against lying, or “bearing false witness.” Lacan suggests that this may be the cruelest
commandment of all because the subject is inseparable from the ability to lie.18 But if there is a
commandment against lying, it is because, in the context of Hebraic law, it is possible to lie; in
Judaism there is no supposition of divine omniscience. Conversely, when Jesus introduces the
notion of sinning in the heart, and thus the transparency of the heart to God, he suggests that
it is no longer even possible to lie. In the process, he lifts the barrier against the deity that is so
central to Judaism. In this vein, the gospel of John famously asserts that Christ “dwells in us”
(John 1: 14). While Christian doctrine tends to emphasize the positive side of this cohabitation
(the Christian is not alone, is redeemed from his fallen state, and so on), it also introduces an
ominous new possibility, one markedly absent in Judaism: the subject’s radical exposure to
invasion by the deity. In this sense, the psychotic Doctor Schreber’s fantasy of being anally raped
by God is not so much a delusional departure from the logic of Christianity as an intuition of the
superegoic violence implicit in the intimate relationship between God and man. 19
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road to Damascus, Paul, like Jacob, is waylaid by the Angel of the Lord. Both men are travelling
alone in anticipation of a possible confrontation: Jacob with his brother Esau, and Paul with the
Christian converts of Damascus. In both cases, the divine intervention results in a wound: Jacob
is made lame, and Paul is temporarily blinded. Both men are renamed, and both events result
in new covenants: the naming of Israel as the heir to Abraham’s promise and the “new alliance”
with the Gentiles that will become Paul’s special mission.
Yet, the two episodes are almost diametrically opposed in their subjective and hermeneutic
implications. In Jacob’s story, the renaming that follows the struggle gives birth to the nation of
Israel, a name that is traditionally interpreted as either “the one who strives with God” or “God
strives.” Their struggle results in a mutual wounding, in which each strives against and marks
the other without managing to prevail over him. Their parting at dawn is really a kind of “mutual
non-aggression treaty,” in which blessings are exchanged as part of a pact. But it is significant that
the story Levinas reads as an allegory of the transmission of the law also produces a law: one of
the hukkim, or “unjustifiable laws,” concerning the taboo against eating the sciatic muscle of the
hip, where Jacob is marked by his opponent. In this sense it also concerns the dangers inherent
in trying to “digest” the law, to presume to internalize its spirit. 21 What the story of Jacob tells
us is that the Other, and even the traces it leaves on the subject’s flesh, cannot be “digested” or
sublated. The taboo is a reminder that the encounter with the Other causes the subject to lose
some part of himself, the attribution of the name causing something of his being to fall under
erasure. But in delivering the wound, the Angel is also checked, and so made to confess its limitations. Although it is customary to read the Jacob story as an allegory of castration, what is not
always appreciated is that it is not only Jacob who is castrated, but God as well; the result of the
contest is a mutual checking, a mutual castration.
The scene of Paul’s conversion both recalls and displaces the Genesis story. Paul is stricken with
blindness only to be filled with “vision,” wounded only to be made whole again. If for Levinas it is
Jacob’s “religion” that emerges from the struggle a little bit wounded, here it is Paul’s faith that
emerges, whole and intact. Whereas Jacob struggles with an opponent who delivers his blessings
without revealing his name or his character, Paul’s revelation is complete. Jesus reveals himself
to Paul as the living word of God; the Voice speaks to him and to him alone, calling him into
being out of nothingness. As he tells the Corinthians, “by the grace of God I am what I am” (1
Cor. 15: 10). The vision on the road to Damascus is not the reaffirmation of an existing pact, but
a violent rupture. It marks Paul’s birth out of Saul’s ashes, but it also gives rise to Christianity as
a displacement and erasure of the Jewish tradition. It represents the overturning of the struggle
implied in Israel’s relation to the Law, in which that struggle is put to rest “once and for all” (Heb.
10: 10) by the advent of the Voice. In the words “why do you persecute me?” it seems that Paul
hears a call to end not only the persecution of the Voice, but also the struggle against it.
Paul’s polemic does not end there, however. His reading of faith invites not only the “Stalinism” inherent in listening only to the angelism of the Law, but also a turning of that angelism
against the Jews. This is why I find it interesting that the Voice that interpellates Paul on the
road to Damascus is credited only with one specific enunciation: “why are you persecuting me?”
It seems that Paul understands that question, at least initially, as follows: Why are you, Saul the
Jew, persecuting me, the living Voice, the resurrection, with the Law, the dead letter? But when
Paul the Christian invents figural reading, the Voice insists in a new way, in the form of a voice
not voiced, with a new question: Why aren’t you persecuting the Jews instead of me? Even as
it cries out against its own persecution, the Voice demands a sacrifice.
Augustine provides another account of the Jacob story in City of God. There the angel is
understood to be Christ himself, who wounds the Jews but spares the Christians. He writes:
This reference to Augustine is not as much of a digression as it may appear. Its proof text is
Paul’s typological reading of Hagar and Sarah as representative of the distinction between the
“Jerusalem of the flesh,” in slavery with her children, and the “Jerusalem above,” born free
through the promise (Gal. 4: 22-31). It is well known that Paul’s reading of the Abraham saga
is structured by two oppositions: between slavery and freedom, and between faith and works.
But perhaps more fundamental, and much less discussed, is the implied opposition between
faith and doubt. Consider Paul’s synopsis of Genesis 17, where God promises Abraham that he
and his barren wife will have a child through the covenant: “He did not weaken in faith when
he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred
years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver
concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully
81
For Augustine, the Christian is above all the one for whom “wounding” is no longer necessary
because Christ, “being the willing loser,” has assumed the wound himself and thus preempted
their wounds. For the Jews, however, the angel of God becomes an avenging angel, the angel of the
apocalypse. Those who lack faith will be wounded, disinherited, and condemned to slavery.
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This angel obviously presents a type of Christ. For the fact that Jacob ‘prevailed over’ him (the angel,
of course, being a willing loser to symbolize the hidden meaning) represents the passion of Christ, in
which the Jews seemed to prevail over him. And yet Jacob obtained a blessing from the very angel
whom he had defeated; thus the giving of the name was the blessing. Now ‘Israel’ means ‘seeing God’;
and the vision of God will be the reward of all the saints at the end of the world. Moreover, the angel
also touched the apparent victor on the broad part of his thigh, and thus made him lame. And so the
same man, Jacob, was at the same time blessed and lame — blessed in those who among this same
people of Israel have believed in Christ, and crippled in respect of those who do not believe. For the
broad part of the thigh represents the general mass of the race. For in fact it is to the majority of that
22
stock that the prophetic statement applies, ‘They have limped away from their paths.’
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convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was ‘reckoned to
him as righteousness’” (Rom. 4: 19-22; emphasis added). But in the text of Genesis, Abraham
greets God’s words very differently: “Abraham fell upon his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?’” (Gen. 17: 17). When the same
promise is made to Sarah in the following chapter, the same incredulous laughter erupts once
more. While this laughter has been interpreted in many ways, it would be difficult, I think, to
read it as an expression of simple faith.23 Certainly the God of Genesis does not read it that way.
Immediately following Sarah’s outburst, he says to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say,
‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old? Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?’” At
these words, “Sarah denied, saying ‘I did not laugh,’ for she was afraid.” To which God replies,
“Oh yes, you did laugh” (Gen. 18: 13-14).
Though God clearly reads the laughter as a sign of doubt or disbelief, it is important that he
doesn’t punish it. His rebuke of Sarah is more comical than truly stern, anticipating the patience
and even fondness with which he will later entertain Abraham’s doubts when he questions the
soundness of making the righteous few of Sodom and Gomorrah perish with the sinners. So why,
for Paul, must this doubting laughter be foreclosed? Because Abraham’s distrust of the word
of God introduces the possibility that the Voice itself might be castrated, that in having to pass
through the signifier it must necessarily lose something of his power. 24 In this sense, Augustine’s
characterization of the Jew’s lack of belief as a “wound” is a displacement designed to avoid
acknowledging doubt — the doubt that points to a wound in God himself.
We are all familiar with Paul’s rereading of circumcision as a “circumcision of the heart,” in
which the cutting of the flesh is replaced by the internal mark of faith (Rom. 2: 25-29). But how
does Paul have to “circumcise” the Hebrew Bible to arrive at his vision of faith? What has to be
“cut off” or trimmed away? In my view, it is not only the “letter” of the law, but also the doubt
it sustains, that is, whatever undercuts or disbelieves the authority of the Voice. In the Voice
that interpellates him on the road to Damascus, Paul hears another question: Why aren’t you
persecuting and prosecuting the doubt that stands in the way of love, that doubt that seeks to
castrate the Voice? Perhaps this is what Lyotard means when he writes that “Paul’s suffering,
his own passion, consists in having to kill the father of his own tradition, or at least in having to
pronounce him dead”25 — that is, in having to kill the doubt that defines Abraham in the Jewish
tradition.
1.
Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism,
trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2003), 17.
2. See Emmanuel Levinas, “The Pact,” in The Levinas Reader,
ed. Seán Hand (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 218. Subsequent references to this essay will appear parenthetically
within the text.
3. In the “attempt to encapsulate Judaism in a few ‘spiritual’ principles,” it is hard not to hear an allusion to Jesus’
celebrated reduction of the Ten Commandments to the
principle of love (Matt. 22: 37-40), the proof text for Paul’s
assault on the Jewish law.
6. See Juliet Flower MacCannell, “Facing Fascism: A Feminine
Politics of Jouissance,” in Willy Apollon and Richard Feldstein, eds., Lacan, Politics, Aesthetics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 73, 70. A revised version was
reprinted with somewhat different wording in MacCannell’s
The Hysteric’s Guide to the Future Female Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999): 127-152.
7. MacCannell, “Facing Fascism,” 69.
8. Ibid., 70.
9. Lyotard, “On a Hyphen,” 23.
10. See, in particular, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse
Core of Christianity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
11. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX:
Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and
Knowledge, 1972-1973, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans.
Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 1998), 76.
14. See Frank Vande Veire, “The Sacrifice of Sacrifice,” in Wieder
Religion? Christentum im zeitgenössischen kritischen Denken
(Lacan, Zizek, Badiou u.a.), ed. Marc De Kesel and Dominiek
Hoens, trans. Erik Vogt, forthcoming from Turia + Kant.
15. In a way, this demonic manifestation, which is conceived
as something that must be guarded against rather than
welcomed, is not unrelated to the appearance of the Voice
in Paul. The same notion of jouissance is at stake in each
case. Even in the blood sacrifice at the heart of the passover
ritual, it is striking that the lamb’s blood painted on the
lintel of the house serves not to exalt the Israelites over the
Egyptians or shield them from their might, but to protect
the members of the household from YHWH himself.
16. Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of
Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1992), 174; emphasis added.
83
5. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the
Banality of Evil (New York: Viking, 1963), 121.
13. “Rashi explains that first all the commandments were uttered by God in a single instant. Then, God repeated the
first two commandments word for word. Following that,
the people were afraid that they could no longer endure the
awesome holiness of God’s voice and they asked that Moses
repeat the remaining eight commandments to them.” Aseres
Hadibros / The Ten Commandments: A New Translation
with a Commentary Anthologized from Talmudic, Midrashic, and Rabbinic Sources, ed. Rabbis Nosson Scherman and Meir Zlotowitz, trans. Rabbi Avrohom Chaim Feuer
(Brooklyn: Artscroll Mesorah, 1981), 23. For an excellent
reading of both Rashi’s commentary and the stakes of the
voice within the logic of the decalogue as a whole, see Julia
Reinhard Lupton and Kenneth Reinhard, “Lacan and the
Ten Commandments,” diacritics (in press).
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4. Jean-François Lyotard, “On a Hyphen,” in Lyotard and
Eberhard Gruber, The Hyphen: Between Judaism and
Christianity, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas
(New York: Prometheus, 1999), 15.
12. Is it a coincidence that, having heard the terrible Voice, the
Israelites turn immediately to building the golden calf? It is
as if they need to limit this insistence by erecting a barrier
against it in the form of the idol’s concrete image. According
to this reading, the building of the golden calf and the acceptance of the law are not as opposed as they may appear,
since both function to limit the insistence of the Voice.
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84
17. Ibid., 69.
18. “‘Thou shalt not lie’ is the commandment in which the
intimate link between desire, in its structuring function,
with the law is felt most tangibly. In truth, this commandment exists to make us feel the true function of the
law.…‘Thou shalt not lie’ as a negative precept has as its
function to withdraw the subject of enunciation from that
which is enunciated.…It is there that I can say ‘Thou shalt
not lie’ — there where I lie, where I repress, where I, the
liar, speak. In ‘Thou shalt not lie’ as law is included the possibility of the lie as the most fundamental desire.…Another
proof is that of the cries of anguish lawyers emit whenever it
is a question, in some more or less grotesque and mythical
form, of using a lie detector. Must we conclude from this
that the respect of the human person involves the right to
lie?” Ibid., 81-82.
21. For Levinas’ own analysis of the problem of “digestion” as
a mode of relation to the other, see “Metaphysics and Transcendence,” the first chapter of Totality and Infinity: An
Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1969).
22. Saint Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 1984), 704.
23. For my own reading of Sarah’s laughter, see the chapter entitled “Israel, Divine Hostess” in The Hostess, My Neighbor:
Hospitality and the Expropriation of Identity, forthcoming
from University of Minnesota Press. A shorter version of this
chapter was published under the title “Israel as Host(ess):
Hospitality in the Bible and Beyond,” in Jouvert: A Journal
of Postcolonial Studies, 3.1-2 (1999): < http://social.chass.
ncsu.edu/jouvert/v3i12/mcnult.htm>.
19. See Freud’s discussion of Schreber’s autobiography in “Psycho-Analytic Notes On an Autobiographical Account of a
Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides),” in The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund
Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth Press, 1953-1974), 12: 3-82.
24. According to Lyotard, Abraham’s and Sarah’s laughter underscore the possible misrecognition that always presides
over the transmission of the divine signifier: “the pure
signifier, the tetragram…can always come to be lacking,
and to signify something other than what the one who was
called thought it did. It is this failure that makes one laugh.”
“Mainmase,” The Hyphen, 10.
20. Badiou, Saint Paul, 23.
25. Lyotard, “On a Hyphen,” 16.
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85
philippe lacoue-labarthe
PASOLINI, an improvisation
(OF A SAINTLINESS)
Of him I know only his act and only his death
The other to the one gives no authority
nor is it nevertheless inscribed in advance nor
the other the first (or perhaps the second)
where no epitaph to read no index
that he knew the storm of sanction near.
Isn’t this also what he had always said?
HYPOTHESIS I
“Perhaps saintliness, since the advent of the modern, has found
refuge (asylum) in art: in the act of art.”
Saintliness: the signification of this word must be extracted from
Christianity, even still latent. And from religion — it, probably,
indelible.
Modern is devastation, desolation: the one who enters into it and stays
there, thereby in solitude, but not in mourning, is atheistic, “deprived
of god” (Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 661). His melancholy is heroic; it
is a furor, wrath (“Menin aeide, Thea”).
The act, which is older than the work, is the enigma of its cessation: grace
without mercy. “I did say act. In any case, no question of creation. You
know?”
Solitude — desolation — is indeed the desert: ego vox clamantis in deserto, “the desert grows.” In ancient tragedy, where the god is “present
in the figure of death,” this can be said thus:
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It is a great resource of the secretly working soul that at the highest
state of consciousness it evades consciousness…Consciousness at its
highest, then, always compares itself to objects that do not have any
consciousness, yet which in their destiny assume the form of consciousness. One such object is the land that has become a desert, which in
originally abundant fertility increases the effects of sunlight too much
and therefore dries out.
— Hölderlin, Remarks on “Antigone,” §2.1
*
88
*
UMBR(a)
He follows the ancient to its traces: he tracks vestiges. He wanders “under the unthinkable”
(Hölderlin, but this time on Oedipus).
Left behind, abandoned — he has simply been dropped. If he strays, it is, consequently, governed
by what he lacks: the very one.
“What do you mean, exactly?”
*
Religion is peasant: here to stay. But it is unchained, now that the dissociation has taken place,
now that they have all been deported. It is even the “disappearance of the fireflies” 2: Mors stupebit
et natura…
*
The mother and child in the immemorial prairie (vaffanculo) and the anterior noise of the wind:
presentation by breath, the most acrid. The mother, a slowness; and child, the overturned gesture
of desire, with an absolute precision, more powerful than the innocence that troubles him.
Madame stands up too straight in the prairie
Nearby, where threads of work snow down…
— Rimbaud, Memory.3
*
A music, sacral and choral, common passion at a distance, there, unbreathable aura of the dry
banlieue. The faces are primitive, the smiles are those of bad violence and obscenity — of pure
goodness.
Filth. The gazes are fleeting, also, and sly, daring. Vain courage, but courage still, furtive,
halting: a frankness.
*
Religion is familial: the unchecked fall (of everyone: father and mother, brother and sister, or
son and daughter), and the improbable elevation of the peasant woman, the servant (au grand
coeur?).4
Blank is the instant.
— Hölderlin, Bread and Wine.
Other times, in terror, they are mute.
The heaven of the saints under their feet is the earth itself.
They, the Greeks, they fall and raise themselves up, they never stop crossing the distance that
never separates the highest from the lowest.
*
Depopulated peasantry:
Where do they presage, the wise peasant sentences?
— Hölderlin, Bread and Wine.
*
He has — they have — no age.
89
Behind the ones whom one could say were in a state of resemblance to the saints, the homeless
of Assisi and Siena, speechless but in dialogue with the beasts, the birds most of all, there are
the Greeks and their native oriental savagery: these are brutal and ferocious, not truly superstitious but restless, without respite, opening their ears (organs of fear: night and music), to listen
for another noise. They shiver at the murmur of what is, indiscernible, and they avow as much
(Hegel).
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*
HYPOTHESIS II
“Saintliness is a discipline of the thing. It engages the experience of the abject.”
The saint experiences the inhuman in man: the fact of man, that outstrips him inside, his most
intimate outside.
Interior intimo meo.
It is his ferocity.
*
He says:
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90
It is obvious that I have always been of an inferior race. I cannot understand revolt. My
race never rises up except to pillage: like wolves who go after the beast they did not kill.
Before that, he claimed the right to “idolatry and love of sacrilege; — oh! all the vices, wrath,
luxury — it’s magnificent, luxury; — but, most of all, deceit and sloth” (Rimbaud, A Season in
Hell).5
This is not false, he responds, but it is revolt: to consider this step already taken, all revolt is
logical, etc. Not the least effusion. Already said.
*
Religion: always archaic: the thing consumes us. Do not encircle it with precautions, nor single
it out. No luster. The most consequential among them dispense with objects.
*
He has nothing to do except with materialities: sounds, pigments; languages, light. Or with bodies
whose soul is their indecency.
A nothing will attract him.
*
No murder: one must elude figuration.
*
Saintliness, because it demands and responds, is rigorous, as exact as a calculation. It derives
from a theorem, that is, from pain. Such is the act.
*
This can be repeated thus:
It is a great resource of the secretly working soul that at the highest
state of consciousness it evades consciousness and that, before the
present god actually seizes it, the soul confronts him in a bold and
frequently even blasphematory manner, and thus keeps alive the holy
possibility of the spirit.
— Hölderlin, Remarks on “Antigone,” §2.6
*
(While he dies, falsely crucified, it is for real. Welles, if I remember correctly, missed the whole
thing.)
*
It is the animal that palpitates in him and strives, the ancient ferocious god, bristling. That’s why
his very history is natural, blue as a myth.
…I have been handed over to the ground, with a duty to seek, and coarse reality to embrace!
Peasant! — It has been said once and for all.
*
Whence his rage, his joy, his perfectly intransigent “one must.” Cazzo. He neither prays nor
supplicates, he sings torment. Superb atonal voice.
91
He experiences debasement; it is required by being defiled. The pigpen is not the world, but
reality: the dull blooming of things, barely lit: natural evil.
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*
Three remarks (for Armando Battiston).
No effusion: Monk and Dolphy — not Coltrane; Morandi, Bram van Velde — not Kandinsky.
No “spiritual in art.”
There are three of them, one for each of Western (hesperian) Europe’s three religions: Kafka,
Beckett, and him, Pasolini.
Practically, he was just.
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Translated by Steven Miller
The text translated here originally appeared as
Pasolini, une improvisation (D’une sainteté)
(Bordeaux: William Blake and Co.), 1995. [All citations are the translator’s.]
1.
Friedrich Hölderlin, “Remarks on ‘Antigone’”
in Essays and Letters on Theory, ed. and
trans. Thomas Pfau (Albany: State University
at New York Press, 1988), 111-112. [Translation
modified.]
2. Pier Paolo Pasolini, “1 febbraio 1975. L’articolo
delle lucciole,” in Scritti Cosari (Milan: Garzanti,
1975), 160-168.
3. Arthur Rimbaud, “Memory,” in Rimbaud Complete,
ed. and trans. Wyatt Mason (New York: Modern
Library, 2002), 351. [Translation modified.]
4. See Charles Baudelaire, “La servante au grand
coeur dont vous étiez jalouse,” rendered as “That
kind-heart you were jealous of...“ in Flowers of
Evil, trans. James McGowan (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 203.
5. See Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, Ibid., 196.
[Translation modified.]
6. Hölderlin, “Remarks on ‘Antigone,’” 111. [Translation modified.]
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93
serge andré
BEING A SAINT
While the current vogue always seems to demand that we participate in yet
another psychoanalysis of politics, or even of the politician, the time has
come perhaps to invert our point of view and to ask: is there a politics of the
psychoanalyst? To this question, my immediate answer is yes. Whether those
who occupy this function know it or not, to be a psychoanalyst is to take a
political position. That said, we then have to discover what kind of political
position it is and to understand how the specific act of the psychoanalyst — his
way of taking this position — defines the position itself.
Going where this question leads, I hope not to betray the wish that Lacan
let himself express in 1974 in Television, where he declares that the best
way to objectively situate the psychoanalyst would be in these terms: “being a saint.”
An exorbitant wish — one that should make us break out in cold sweats
rather than provoke the knowing glances into which we mutually take refuge. But we will sweat even harder if we link the formula, “being a saint,”
on the one hand, to its source in the work of Baltasar Gracián, and on the
other hand, to its aim, which Lacan explicitly avows a few lines after he first
cites it: “The more saints, the more laughter; that’s my principle, and it may
even be the way out of capitalist discourse.” 1
The way out of capitalist discourse! 1974 was already far from the carnival of May ’68, when the youth imagined that revolution meant occupying
a theater: today, we seem light-years further away. How should one now
understand the claim that there might be a way out of capitalist discourse,
and that it is us — we psychoanalysts, students and readers of Lacan — who
incarnate this way out, when it has never been more obvious that psychoanalysis has only ever been welcomed and fostered in the capitalist world?
Indeed, it has become superfluous to observe that, if certain alternatives
to capitalism once existed, or still exist, in some parts of the world, these
alternatives all have one remarkable point in common: refusing capitalism,
they also end up denying the unconscious and its effects.
Let us begin, then, with this statement: capitalism is not, in itself,
antagonistic to the unconscious. On the contrary, it would even be possible
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to affirm, following certain of the metaphors that Freud deploys in The Interpretation of Dreams,
that capitalism and the unconscious are a priori made for one another. The unconscious is
the capitalist par excellence; and capitalism, because it enciphers jouissance by computing
surplus-enjoyment in the form of surplus-value, needs psychoanalysis as an organized form of
decipherment — especially because, from the worker’s point of view, surplus-value accumulates
in the symptom.
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Whence the idea that I propose to open the rest of my discussion: there is a psychoanalysis
devoted to making sure that the subject of the unconscious lives in harmony with capitalist discourse; and there is perhaps (let’s be prudent) another psychoanalysis that would respond to
Lacan’s desire and that would seek to produce a rupture, at least a subjective rupture, between
the unconscious and the capitalist.
The criterion that separates these two versions of psychoanalysis is nothing other than the
position that the psychoanalyst adopts in the process of the cure, or rather the position whereby
he recognizes himself in the act. There is a distinction between an analyst who refuses the structure that Lacan calls “the discourse of the analyst,” and one who lets himself be guided by it,
allowing the subject in turn to situate himself within this same structure. The one analyst bases
his act upon a conception of the cure that considers analytic experience to be homogeneous
with unconscious process: this would be analysis for the unconscious as a Whole. But the other
analyst would base his act upon a concept that makes of analytic experience the occasion for a
fundamental overturning: analysis becomes analysis against the unconscious as a Whole. On the
horizon, this paradox: if the psychoanalyst succeeded in forging a way out of capitalist discourse,
wouldn’t he risk having to announce the end of psychoanalysis itself?
In his seminar from 1969-1970, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, Lacan elaborates what, to
his reading, forms the key to understanding contemporary capitalism, and thus why he calls upon
today’s psychoanalyst to take a position. The deviation from the ancient master to the capitalist
master turns upon a historical shift, the basis of which appears in Marx’s theory. Deliberately
castrating himself, abandoning his jouissance to the slave, the ancient master obscures the truth
of his position; this truth is masked through the production of a surplus-enjoyment that should
somehow return to him.2 The transition to capitalism was inaugurated by the computation of this
surplus-enjoyment. To compute does not mean to decipher: the concepts of surplus-value and
the accumulation of capital only express the new forms of misrecognition in which the modern
master harbors the surplus-enjoyment that returns to him. Lacan even emphasizes, as one of
the capitalist master’s characteristics, the fact that his position prevents him from recognizing
the fantasy as the motor of his action. 3
However, just as the repressed is destined to return, what has been purely and simply rejected
must reappear in the real. This is what we observe today in contemporary capitalism — that is, in
the system that increasingly grants to science the function of the master, even for the capitalist
himself. On May 20, 1970, Lacan points to the consequences of the collusion between presentday science and capitalism, and in the same vein, he warns the psychoanalyst about the impact
of this collusion upon his practice. Further, it is in this precise passage that he outlines what one
could call a politics of the psychoanalyst.
Unfortunately for him, he succeeded — and thus acquired irrefutable proof that the sexual
relation exists and that it is lodged deep inside the computer. From then on, he will feel that he
is himself programmed and operated by remote control. Of course, it would not be irrelevant to
mention that the computer with which he established this relation was the server for a network of
pedophiles, a perversion that my analysand has good reason to be interested in. And, of course,
you will tell me, one must admit that he is delusional. Of course, but…does he stray from the
truth more or less truthfully than another of my analysands, who is not delusional, but who has
for years been rehashing the claim that — so he alleges — the meager size of his penis prevents
him from reaching “the bottom of the woman” and, consequently, from knowing for sure that
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I mentioned the television screen. But I could equally have spoken of the computer that captivated
one of my analysands when he was about twelve years old, and literally captured him some years
later. He had the idea that sexual jouissance was found “at the heart of the computer.” In order to
get to this heart, he had to hack into one of these new-fangled parasites, to decrypt its language and
its program, and secretly reprogram the machine so that it would work entirely for his profit.
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The most remarkable effect of contemporary science has little to do with the way in which its
developments have improved and expanded our knowledge of the world. Lacan shows instead
that these developments have, in the first place, determined each of us as an object a. In other
words, we have all become objects of experimentation, the experiment having become synonymous
with the jouissance that the Other derives from the discourse of science. Beware! You are being
filmed…overheard, recorded, and so on. (I once permitted myself to remark that, even in recent
congresses organized by certain psychoanalysts, the television broadcast of the talks in an overflow
room gives them something extra, a surplus interest that unquestionably derives from the passionate
scrutiny triggered by the vision of the orator’s face filling the screen.) In the second place, science
today devises and peoples our world with a profusion of objects that did not exist before and that
give a renewed thrust to the expansion of capitalism. Lacan baptizes these objects, made to cause
desire, with the amusing name of lathouses4 — a word that, as he quips, rhymes in French with
ventouse, “suction cup.” Indeed, these “lathouses” inhale us more than they inspire us.
his partner has really and fully had an orgasm? What would happen to this man if, one day, he
did reach the bottom of this other that the limit always steals from him?
I only cite these two examples to underscore the connection between the “lathouses” and
jouissance, especially the jouissance of the Other. Whence the essential interest of the question
into which the elaboration of the lathouse leads Lacan on May 20, 1970: “What’s important is
to know what happens when one truly enters into relation with the lathouse as such. The ideal
psychoanalyst would be the one who commits this absolutely radical act — about which, the least
that one can say is that, watching him perform it causes anxiety.” 5
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In other words, the psychoanalyst whose function Lacan restitutes in the discourse of the
analyst is called to the place of the very object produced by scientific capitalism. The advent
of the analyst thus supposes the system of contemporary capitalism. How does he nonetheless
demarcate himself from it?
The lathouses governed by science and exploited by the capitalist seem to promise access to
surplus enjoyment. But, in reality, they only verify the axiom of contemporary capitalism: that
of “the extensive and therefore insatiable production of the lack of enjoyment.” 6 Every object
produced in this system is only ever an ephemeral model, outdated as soon as it is acquired, and
destined by its essence to be replaced by a new and more promising model, and so on.
The vocation of every new object placed on the market for consumption is to become refuse.
The surplus-value actualized by the capitalist is the exact measure of the minus-value inflicted
upon the consumer. The consumer is thus subjected to the relentless, ever more exigent pressure
of a compulsion to enjoy [un pousse-au-jouir], access to which withdraws to the precise extent
that it shows itself within easy reach. Such a system can only widen the field of consumption,
and thus magnify the demand to enjoy, precisely “because of its ineptitude at producing the
jouissance that would slow the process down.” 7
Whence the evolution of a society that, because it increases its wealth in the form of capital, becomes
increasingly deregulated by the manifestations of aggressivity, envy, hate, and racism — that is, the
desperate claims to jouissance that, because it cannot be appeased or tempered, is supposed to
have been stolen from us, not by the object itself, but by the Other. Segregation is the only precarious limit that remains in such a society: in its various forms, it tends to re-establish the borders
that cultures, nations, and social classes have lost the ability to maintain (since the extension of
consumption necessitates the universalization of the consumer).
Whence also, something else: the temperature of our increasing wealth is measured by the
height of the garbage dump — the overwhelming mountain of refuse and pollution, which are the
only tangible and uneliminable remainders that, if the horror of suffocating did not hold us back,
would allow us to decipher the inconsumable byproduct of this organized race for jouissance.
The more that capitalism develops, the more it globalizes upon a glob of filth [plus il tend à faire
monde sur un tapis d’immonde].
Faced with this morass, the politics of the psychoanalyst that Lacan glimpsed would consist in
assuming the place, in this capitalist universe, of an original kind of “lathouse”: the only lathouse
that — even as it is if not a product, then at least a consequence of capitalism — wills itself to
become a way out of its infernal cycle. The singular task of the psychoanalyst is to offer himself
as an erotic object, not in order to excite or to promise jouissance, but, on the contrary, to slow
it down, if not to evaporate it.
How does he accomplish this task? First, by fixating jouissance: as a general rule, one does not
exchange psychoanalysts like one exchanges televisions or cars, “for a better model.” Second, by
proceeding in such a way that the end of analysis makes it possible to unveil the non-being or,
more exactly, the appearing or para-being [paraître/parêtre] of the object cause of desire.
A colleague, whom I happened to see recently, left me with an involuntary witticism that will
allow me to illustrate the distinction that Lacan draws between good and true prudence. Just
to get the conversation going, I ask: “How are things?” And he responds: “Fine, fine… I am getting by! [je me defends].” Words of gold. The two forms of prudence for the analyst correspond
to two varieties of parade: the one takes the form of avoidance, self-effacement, or the simple
defense of the analyst, and the other is akin to what Gracián calls display. The first can lead to a
certain usage of meaning in the cure, a usage that does well with the rebuses of the unconscious,
but that, for this very reason, devotes itself to entertaining and consolidating the capitalism of
the subject. On the contrary, the second form of prudence aims to overturn the structure of the
discourse of the master in order to make this surplus-enjoyment emerge at the place of its cause,
and thereby to unveil its inanity and its essence as refuse.
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The risk is inherent to the structure of the analytic discourse; it is the risk of being taken for the
manifestation of the object cause of desire and thereby being identified with a being who would
feed off of the subject’s lack-of-being. It is not enough, therefore, for the analyst to recognize
that he has the status of an erotic object, of a lathouse, in the speech of his analysand. Beyond
that, he must have the prudence to parade this status.
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The psychoanalyst must make himself into the defective piece of the jouissance unleashed
by the capitalism that has been deregulated by science. It is at this point that I would make the
connection between the way out of capitalist discourse and Baltasar Gracián’s conception of the
saint. To get so close to the lathouse, in order to counter the dominant discourse, requires a very
special form of prudence: as Lacan warns us in Television, just before referring to Gracián, “they
[the analysts] are the ones at risk.” 8
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Why refer here to Baltasar Gracián? Although Lacan had been speaking of his work since 1950, 9
and despite the eminence of Gracián within Spanish literature, in the seventeenth-century debate
between Jesuits and Jansenists, and more generally in the tradition of the great moralist writers,
only in recent years has this Spanish Jesuit begun to receive recognition as a baroque genius equal
in stature to Pascal, who is his counterpoint, and to Nietzsche, whose disabused flamboyance he
outdoes in many ways. His three essays — Oraculo Manual y Arte de la Prudencia, El Heroe,
and El Discreto — interlace their witticisms and their maxims around a point of horror that the
man of quality is always expected to brush up against, but that he must also know how to ward
off. This central point is envy. Envy, monstrous and deadly, reigns over the world that Gracián
describes; it sends out an evil eye to track all the surplus-enjoyment that the other might have
garnered for himself.
How does one trump the scopic jouissance of the Other, present in every eye? This question
points to the secret of the art of prudence. Gracián wants to resolve a problem that goes well
beyond that of knowing how to become a perfect “courtier.” He is more concerned with how to
be a saint without having to become a martyr, how to make oneself a lathouse without letting
oneself be consumed. How does one acquire every possible virtue without offering an image of
perfection to the malicious eye of the Other that would excite his rage? How does one penetrate
into each person and grasp his truth while remaining impenetrable and preventing oneself from
seeming to be the keen listener that one in fact is? And, finally, how does one say what must be
said in the name of the truth, though it cannot be revealed as such — since, as Gracián writes,
the truth is “dangerous…because when it is used to give someone the lie, it is the quintessentially
bitter”? 10 Baltasar Gracián saw perfectly that, even if the elevation of the hero inheres in his
capacity to posit knowledge in the position of truth, he must still heed the manner in which he
does do, for manner is not only “the shell, the mark, the sign and, as it were, the annunciation
of the thing,” but is much rather “what endears the thing.” 11
The cardinal virtue of the hero, the key to his saintliness, must then be the art of prudence,
which implies mastery over the three primary artifices: silence, absence, and appearance. The
first, silence, is the contrary of muteness: it is veritably a matter of being able to half-say as the
condition for speaking well. It supposes an elaborated rhetoric. It is a “discretion,” a suspension
of speech that upholds the secret and the mystery, a way of “knowing how to play with truth”
that imitates “God’s way of keeping all men in suspense.” 12 Whence the laconic and oracular style
that makes punctuation into the very essence of speech.
The second, absence, is the art of rendering oneself even more present by playing with one’s
eclipse. The third, appearance, is the most subtle and also the most Spanish. Indeed, prudence
commands a certain disguise, a cult of form, which has the effect of ravishing envy of its own forces
at the very moment when one enters into the terrain where it exercises its ferocious voracity. Far
from effacing himself, withdrawing into invisibility, the Graciánesque hero somehow nourishes
envy with a new aliment; but this aliment must be so insubstantial that it does nothing but create
an envious desire to know. This aliment is precisely what Gracián calls “display.”
Display is the primary virtue that Lacan himself exemplified for his students, and it points to
the way out of capitalist discourse — that is, to the falling away of the lathouse. Far from opposing
itself to reality (that the circulation of envy makes consistent), the art of display proves that appearance is the veritable criterion of being.
Well before Nietzsche, who will affirm that “everything profound has need for a mask,” 13
Gracián, in chapter 8 of El Discreto, advances that “display is often more important than reality. Display is the most fitting supplement to fill a void.” It is “absolutely necessary and gives to
things, as it were, a second being.” This affirmation of appearance as such can even be pushed
to the point that it becomes ostentation, which would not be an affectation.
Translated by Steven Miller
101
“Half is better than the whole,” 14 writes Gracián in a quasi-Lacanian formula. The point in
common that links the three artifices — silence, absence, and appearance — can be articulated
in these terms: the hero should be not-all in order to provoke desire, rather than excite the
jouissance that animates envy. To provoke desire for a nothing, or an undefinable something
[un “je ne sais quoi”], there where envy drives unto the tormenting jouissance of a being in his
imaginary completion — this is the challenge that the hero assumes. It is also the challenge that
Lacan makes into the principle of our politics in the face of capitalism.
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Display, indeed, does not hide a being from the envy that tracks its substance; on the contrary,
it reveals what is fundamentally inessential and hollow about this being. It endears the thing and
thus produces a surplus-enjoyment detached from the materiality of the product; it manifests
the non-value of the thing that reveals itself in the price of the gaze.
The text translated here originally appeared as “Étre un saint,”
in Connaissez-vous Lacan? ed. Marie-Pierre de Cossé Brissac,
Françoise Giroud, Roland Dumas et al. (Paris: Seuil, 1992),
165-175.
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1.
Jacques Lacan, Television/A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, ed. Joan Copjec, trans. Denis Hollier,
Rosalind Krauss, and Annette Michelson (New York: Norton,
1990), 16.
7. Ibid.
8. Lacan, Television, 15.
9. See Lacan, “A Theoretical Introduction to the Function of Psychoanalysis in Criminology,” Mark Bracher, Russell Grigg, and
Robert Samuels in Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture
and Society, vol. 1, 2, (summer 1996): 13-26; “The Freudian
Thing,” in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 2002),
112; and L’envers de la psychanalyse, 212-213.
2. Lacan, Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, livre XVII: L’envers
de la psychanalyse, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil,
1991), 123.
10. Balthasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket
Oracle, trans. Christopher Maurer (New York: Doubleday,
1992), 119.
3. Ibid., 124.
11. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 188-89.
12. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 189.
13. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter
Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966), 50.
6. Jacques Lacan, “Radiophonie,” in Autres écrits, ed. JacquesAlain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 2001), 435.
14. Gracián, The Art of Wordly Wisdom, 96.
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dominiek hoens
ON THE RAVISHING OF LOL V. STEIN
WHEN LOVE IS THE LAW:
In this divine ravishing the centuries
pass by more quickly than the hours.
— François Fénelon, Télémaque (1699)
In the recent work of Slavoj Žižek, “love” has taken on a politically revolutionary meaning by coming to name the event that breaks with the normal
order predicated on a dialectic of Law and Sin (or desire).1 Though not
exclusively, the Christian notion of agape functions as the primary source
of inspiration for this renewed conceptualization of the unconditional
point that goes beyond a given state of affairs. Along similar lines, of
course, is the pivotal intervention of Alain Badiou, who argues in favor
of, on the one hand, an understanding of love as “evental” and, on the
other hand, Saint Paul as the model for any militant ethics. Extrapolating from these two lines of reasoning, it should not be surprising to find
agape again as the central point around which many other contemporary
critiques of ideology have begun to revolve.
Taking a Lacanian step back, however, might give us the opportunity to
ask whether the glad tidings of agape overlook one crucial “logical” moment. In order to address this question I will make use of one of Lacan’s
most important texts, “Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated
Certainty,” 2 which has proven to be most inspiring and useful for demonstrating the precise moment of rupture, or what Žižek has qualified as
“the act.” 3 Returning to this text will hopefully clarify that this moment
of love is not exclusively the moment of the act, nor simply the fidelity to
a truth, but also the possible moment of being reduced to waste.
In close connection to the problem of love and desire, this moment of
being reduced to waste — a certain falling out of the world — has been
explored by the twentieth-century mystic Marguerite Duras. While returning to Lacan’s article I will thus read it in conjunction with Duras’ The
Ravishing of Lol V. Stein. Lacan himself has focused on Duras’ novel in
another text, “Homage to Marguerite Duras, on Le ravissement de Lol
V. Stein,” where the informed reader can discern two allusions to his
commentary on Antigone: “splendor” [éclat] and “between-two-deaths”
[entre-deux-morts] .4 Indeed, is Lol V. Stein not as splendorous and apolis
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as Antigone? Is she not “this wounded figure, exiled from things, whom you dare not touch, but
who makes you her prey”? 5 Does she not take up the function of beauty, as the last protection
against the horror of jouissance? The two figures of Antigone and Lol share the distinction of being the main characters of their tragedies, but not without contaminating others with a “leprosy
of the heart.” 6 It is therefore possible to raise the question: who, in fact, is the tragic figure? If
pressed to answer, one might be tempted to argue that the tragic figure is not Lol, but Jacques
Hold (and not Antigone but Creon). 7 Perhaps this lack of clarity prevents the reader from identifying with Lol, and instead implicates one in the triangles that she organizes, whereby one
comes to occupy a position that she herself has set in place — her own. While caught within this
ambiguity, the reader is made attentive to the temporal unfolding of a structure, and the “place”
that a character takes within it. The effect of occupying such an awkward position, for the reader,
is not unlike the effects taking place on the narrative itself, most significantly during the crucial
scene at the Casino, where Lol loses her fiancé Michael Richardson to the mysterious femme
fatale Anne-Marie Stretter. It is at this precise point, the superficial or “impotent” changes of
the narrative itself, that the drama of Duras’ novel should be located. Lol, I would argue, is not
the passive subject of painful events, but rather someone who remains faithful to the place she
comes to occupy during the event at the Casino.
Being ravished means being taken away, being displaced, being raptured, being dispossessed.
The “of” in The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein is not without ambiguities. Is it an objective or subjective genitive? As objective, we could understand “of” as Lol being ravished by the scenes that she
witnesses, including both the passively observed encounter between Michael Richardson and
Anne-Marie Stretter, as well as the amorous meetings she actively does not see between Jacques
Hold and Tatiana Karl. If we read “of” as a subjective genitive, this implies that Lol is the one
who ravishes others, or is at least the cause of others’ ravishment. Quite clearly, at the level of the
narrative, it is Jacques Hold who has been ravished. From this second perspective, the relation
between Jacques Hold and Lol is similar in many respects to the relation between female mystics
and their confessors, in which the female subject is ravished and the male confessor, for his part,
is ravished by this ravishment, only to subsequently attempt to guide her in such ravishment. But
this guidance is ambiguous: while based on trust in the divine truth of the mystic inspirations,
the confessor often attempts to bring the inspirations into conformity with existing theology.
Or, as in the case of Fénelon and Madame Guyon, the male confessor struggles to formulate new
theological theses and defend them in relation to an existing tradition. 8
The title of Duras’ text is open to these possible readings, and with the title everything is
made present: one person causes/is overwhelmed by ravishment. In this respect Lol V. Stein is
a turning point in Duras’s oeuvre (which eventually leads her to construct one-scene works like
Agatha, The Malady of Death, and The Man Sitting in the Corridor). The scene Lol witnesses at
the Casino, which structures the entire novel, is not simply the starting point of a narrative, nor
simply its traumatic origin, but has within it the power to render any narrative impossible: like a
black hole it absorbs each of the characters and their histories. The scene has an implosive effect,
making any attempt at spatial or temporal expansion extremely precarious. It was Foucault who
compared the characters in Duras’ récits to the figures painted by Bacon9: rendering the space of
a void, or exposing an open mouth, both reveal the disappearing or dissolution of the body. 10
LOGICAL TIME
The warden proceeds to put a white disk on each prisoner’s back. How do they come to the right
solution? Let’s give the three prisoners names — A, B, and C — and let’s adopt A’s perspective. A
sees two whites, and knows there are five disks in play: three white and two black. If A saw two
blacks, then he would know right away that he is white. But A sees two whites. From this situation,
nothing can be concluded directly. So, he is forced to make a hypothesis. He supposes that he is
black, and then considers what B and C would see, and what kind of hypothesis they would make
in this case. If A is black, and if, for example, B supposes that he were black, then C, according
to B, would be able to leave immediately, because C would see two blacks. Now, because C does
not leave immediately, B should arrive at the conclusion that he is white (supposing A is black).
But B also does not leave, thus A is able to conclude that he is white.
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To demonstrate this retroactive differentiation of the three modes, Lacan analyses a logical
problem.11 A prison warden can free one of three prisoners, and decides to subject them to a test.
He shows them five disks — three white and two black — and tells them that he is going to put one
disk on each of their backs. They cannot see which one it is, and are not allowed to communicate
in any way with the other prisoners. The first to come to him and tell him what color disk he has
on his back will be freed. But the warden adds another condition. The conclusion must be based
on logical, and not simply probabilistic reasons. That is, the prisoners cannot just make a lucky
guess, but must give sound reasons for why they have come to their conclusion.
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One could use the expression “absence of time” to describe this eternal moment in which Lol is
caught. The narrative that follows the scene at the Casino is nothing but the description of this
timelessness. What do we mean, however, when we say “timelessness”? Positing an opposition
between the presence and absence of time would be much too easy, especially since it would take
for granted that we know what “time” is. Lacan, in “Logical Time,” describes three modalities
of time: the instant of the glance, the time for comprehending, and the moment of concluding.
It would be a mistake to think that one can “be” in one of these moments. As it becomes clear
in Lacan’s presentation, it is only retroactively, after one has concluded, that it makes sense to
differentiate between the three modalities.
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The “solution” of this problem, however, can only be qualified as “sophistic,” since, strictly
speaking, none of the prisoners can conclude anything concerning their identities (the color of the
disk each is wearing on their back) when confronted with two white disks. The logical reasoning is
only possible on the basis of an interpretation of the situation. What Lacan calls the instant of the
glance concerns what one sees at the beginning: two white disks. If the two other prisoners were
wearing black disks, then the time to come to a conclusion would indeed only last an instant, “a
lightening-flash time, so to speak, being equal to zero.” 12 Since one cannot come to an immediate
conclusion, one has to think and make a hypothesis about one’s own identity as it is perceived
by the others. Lacan’s major point is that this time for comprehending is, in itself, endless and
can only be put to an end by making a conclusion. This conclusion is based on a necessary but
insufficient logical reasoning. The active intervention by the prisoners consists in understanding
the other’s standing still as a hesitation. This addition to the initial hypothesis (and what can
be derived from it) is motivated by an anxiety which seizes the prisoner. This anxiety cannot be
attributed to the thought that one could possibly lose the game (and remain imprisoned), but
the realization that the entire process of reasoning is based on the other’s standing still. As a
consequence, as soon as they move, each one must not only stop thinking, but must understand
that a conclusion is no longer possible. 13
The importance of the analysis of this sophism resides in the specific way that time, identity,
and intersubjectivity are thought together. Lacan’s thesis is that one can only acquire an identity through a decisive subjective act based on the introduction of time into an intersubjective
dynamics. This action consists in “pulling a certitude out of anxiety.” 14 The dimension of time is
anticipatory: one anticipates a conclusion for which there are no sufficient reasons. It is only the
act of conclusion that will make it possible to investigate afterward whether or not the reasoning
was sound. The one who does not conclude has nothing to investigate. 15
LOL V. STEIN
The resemblances between the game the prisoners have to play and the scene at the Casino in
S. Thala are striking.16 Both situations involve three people, and the telos seems to reside in an
escape. In the “Logical Time” situation the prisoner supposes him/herself to be black, which is
different from the two others, who are white. As we have seen, this supposition is the first step of
a reasoning that will create the conditions within which a decisive act can be made (since if one
supposed him/herself to be white, like the others, nothing could be deduced). At the same time
this supposition brings about anxiety, since if one were really black the others have to make one
fewer suppositions. This is why Lacan gives the following account of the act: “I hasten to declare
myself white, so that these whites, whom I consider this way, do not precede me in recognizing
themselves for what they are. We have here the assertion about oneself through which the subject
concludes the logical movement in the making of a judgment. The very return of the movement
of comprehending, before which the temporal instance that objectively sustains it has vacillated,
continues on in the subject in reflection. This instance reemerges for him therein in the subjective
mode of a time of lagging behind the others in that very movement, logically presenting itself as
the urgency of the moment of concluding.” 17 The act (as the moment of concluding) comes down
to making a performative declaration: identifying oneself with a signifier. It is this act that puts
an end to the time for comprehending, effectively grounding sense and meaning. If one misses
the moment of concluding then the time for comprehending is reduced to its initial moment of
the hypothesis concerning how the others see me — a black object under their gaze. The initial
hypothesis links me qua object to the gaze of the others, but delinks me from them qua subject,
for I am what they are not.
109
Again it begins: the windows closed, sealed, the ball immured in its nocturnal light, would have contained
all three of them, and they alone. Lol is positive of that: together they would have been saved from the
advent of another day, of one more day at least. What would have happened? Lol does not probe very
deeply into the unknown into which this moment opens. She has no memory, not even an imaginary
one, she has not the faintest notion of this unknown. But what she does believe is that she must enter
it, that that was what she had to do, that it would always have meant, for her mind as well as her body,
both their greatest pain and their greatest joy, so commingled as to be undefinable, a single entity but
UMBR(a)
It is this moment of the initial hypothesis that Lol appears to be caught. From the moment that
Anne-Marie Stretter enters the Casino, Lol is ravished, and everything else loses significance — to
the extent that even in regard to Michael Richardson, her fiancé, Lol can state, “from the first
moment that woman walked into the room I ceased to love [him]” (126). We have seen how the
starting point, of finding oneself opposite two others, returns just before the last moment, the
moment of concluding. The anxiety evoked in being the object of two others, which is the anxiety
of being left behind 18 — like a “dead dog on the beach at high noon, this hole of flesh” — could
potentially propel one to make a decision.19 This decision requires the making of an anticipatory
identification with a signifier.20 One could say that this identification is an imagined identity
based on an intersubjective dynamics. Lol appears to be aware of this possibility but does not
know how to make use of it, as when she says: “I have plenty of time, oh, how long it is” (19). Or,
for instance, when Michael Richardson and Anne-Marie Stretter are about to leave, Lol tries to
convince them to stay longer, since “it wasn’t late it was only the early summer dawn that made
it seem later than it really was” (12). She has the infinite time of one who is convinced of the absence of the single word, the one signifier, which could represent her in a symbolic universe. She
never ceases to await the arrival of this signifier. What was effectively revealed in one moment
casts a shadow on Lol that is longer than life. As the narrator 21 describes it:
unnamable for lack of a word. I like to believe — since I love her — that if Lol is silent in her daily life
it is because, for a split second, she believed that this word might exist. Since it does not, she remains
silent. It would have been an absence-word, a hole-word, whose center would have been hollowed
out into a hole, the kind of hole in which all other words would have been buried. It would have been
impossible to utter it, but it would have been made to reverberate. (38)
This absence of the word, a signifier that would represent Lol in a symbolic universe, coincides
with a radical detachment from all others. As Lol says to Jacques Hold: “When I say that I no
longer loved him, I mean to say that you have no idea to what lengths one can go in the absence
of love” (126-127).
UMBR(a)
110
LOVE
Thus far analogies have been made between “Logical Time” and Lol V. Stein: an intersubjective
triangular scheme, time as a logical factor, and the event as a prior and necessary condition for
any subjectivity. This has allowed us to highlight an essential point in the logic of reasoning that
is presented in “Logical Time”: a subjectivity is only gained through “inventing” or “jumping to”
a subjective position from out of an object position. At the moment I presuppose a reasoning
in an other, and thus secretly identify myself with this other, I will be confronted with an initial
hypothesis — my difference from the other. This difference is not only factual, but is fully implied
in the logical process that unfolds, and it is on the basis of this difference that the others can come
to a decision and leave me behind. The drama does not consist in being left behind, then, but in
the fact that one is left behind as an object. Even further, this object in the drama is effectively a
non-object to the extent that in order for it to truly be an object one needs the gaze of others. 22
An exchange between Jacques Hold and Lol testifies to this: “‘For ten years I’ve been under the
impression that there were only three people left: the two of them, and me.’ I ask again: ‘What
is it you wanted?’ With precisely the same hesitation as before, the same interval of silence, she
replies: ‘To see them’” (96).
This triangular dynamic leads to an impossible position, which in its very impossibility is the
only way of arriving at a subjectivation. Lacan’s publication of “Logical Time,” and his frequent
return to it throughout his oeuvre, stems from the underlying question of how such a subjectivation is possible, and how it is possible for one to think, or conceptualize its occurrence. It was in
the 1950s that Lacan emphasized the necessary condition of a symbolic order. Briefly put, the
intervention of the symbolic castrates the object from itself, leaving the “itself” only to be found
in the interval between the elements that constitute this order. Despite this “solution” 23 the question still remains whether it is final, or even sufficient.
Readers familiar with Lacan’s Seminar VIII, Le transfert, will have noticed that what is at
stake in the subjectifying of an object position that is explicated both in “Logical Time” and Lol
V. Stein is similar to what Lacan calls the miracle of love. To explain love, Lacan makes use of
what he names “a metaphor of love.” Metaphor, in this instance, should be understood in the
loose sense as “the use of an image.” In a rare moment in Lacan’s teaching he tells us a “myth,”
as he calls it, in order to illustrate an aspect of his theory. This myth is as follows:
This hand — which extends its gesture of awaiting, attracting, and stirring toward the fruit, the rose,
and the bush suddenly enflamed — is closely tied to the maturation of the fruit, the beauty of the
flower, and the enflaming of the bush. But when the hand has gone far enough in this movement of
awaiting, attracting, and stirring, and a hand comes out of the fruit, the flower, and the bush, and
stretches itself toward your hand, at that moment it is your hand that freezes in the closed plenitude
of the fruit, the opening of the flower, and the explosion of a hand that enflames — well, what produces
itself there is love.24
111
Lacan constructs this short parable amidst his reading and analysis of Plato’s Symposium. In
order to explain love he adopts the Greek terminology of eromenos (the beloved) and erastes
(the lover), given that “love” is at the root of both words, which nicely parallels his double understanding of the term. The eromenos is the one confronted with the Other’s desire, who positions
himself and is positioned by another as a beautiful object. From this perspective, one could equate
eromenos with Lacan’s idea of narcissistic love. The beloved is the one who, in thinking of himself
as lovable, interprets the Other’s desire, thus reducing love to an infantile stage of wanting to be
loved. Things get more interesting, however, when we follow what Lacan has to say about the
UMBR(a)
Two moments are discernible. First, the hand that stretches out toward the object changes the
object in a surprising way, becoming mature, beautiful, or enflamed. In this moment the attractive qualities of the object become clearer, and one could even say they are created by the hand
that reaches — which, as one can imagine, makes the hand even more eager to hold the fruit in
its palm. The second moment is more difficult to discern. At first sight it looks as if one hand
stretches out for an object and, along its path, encounters another hand. This would suggest that
love consists of a desire for an object that humanizes itself. Love, if this were true, would be the
meeting of two hands. Lacan warns his audience, however, that he is not talking about what happens when two hands meet, rather he is describing when and where love takes place. The moment
of love, according to Lacan, is not in the meeting of the two hands, but the moment when out of
the fruit, the flower, the bush, a hand rises. As we will see, Lacan’s idea of love is contrary to any
idea that takes it as something that happens between “equal partners” for whom love would be,
simultaneously, the effect as well the cause that makes it possible for an amorous meeting to take
place. According to Lacan, in love there must be a fundamental disparity at work.25
erastes. Strictly speaking, the erastes is not this desiring Other (to whom I can position myself
as the beloved object) but the one who can emerge only after first being placed in the position of
the beloved. This is what Lacan calls the miracle of love: that someone who is positioned as the
object of desire for the Other is able to subjectify this object position and desire in return.
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112
TRINITY
The status of this object position can now be questioned. In Seminar XX, Lacan returns to his
argument in “Logical Time” during his discussion of the work of Richard de Saint Victor, a twelfthcentury mystic and theologian.26 In his De Trinitate, Richard de Saint-Victor asks the question
whether God needs to be thought as one or as a trinity. Starting from the thesis that love is an essential aspect of God and that love always concerns an other,27 he believes there must be a second
divine being who would be worthy of this divine love, namely the Son. The Son, insofar as he too
is a divine being, must love God in return. This relation sounds like a perfect dyad, but according
to Saint Victor this love can only be qualified as pleasing, but not as perfected. Perfect love — and,
it must be emphasized, divine love cannot be but perfect — implies that one wants to share the
love one receives from the other. If the Son receives divine love from God, his own love can be
pleasing when it loves God in return. His love, however, is perfected when the love that he receives
is shared. According to Saint Victor, one needs a third person, namely a condilectus (a co-loved),
that comes to be identified as the Holy Spirit. When Lacan refers to this passage in Saint Victor’s
work he emphasizes that this third term, the Holy Spirit, is not a subject but an object — more
precisely, an object a. This object a is necessary insofar as it is the one factor that functions as the
condition of possibility for the love relation between the One and the Other.
In the moment of falling in love, the fantasmatic support for the lack-of-being (the desire that
one effectively is) is temporarily suspended, as one is placed in the position of the object of desire
for the Other. The metaphor of love qua creative act is a response that pulls one out of that object
position — that is, through our very lack. One needs two operations for this to occur. First, it is
necessary to fantasize what that object position could, in fact, be. Second, one needs to castrate
(or bar) oneself from that position.28 Lol V. Stein, as we have seen, is caught in an endless inquiry
concerning this object position. After the eventful night at the Casino she slumbers for years, until
she meets her old friend Tatiana Karl and her secret lover, Jacques Hold. Whereas Lol was fascinated by Anne-Marie Stretter’s black dress, or more precisely what it envelopes, Lol later becomes
attached to watching the secret meetings between Tatiana and Jacques. What now intrigues her
is Tatiana’s nudity “under her black hair.” Parallel to the infinite quest to know what one is in
the desire of the Other, Lol is convinced that one word is missing. This lack, however, is not to be
understood as pointing toward a signifier that could name what it means to be desired. Rather, the
only effect the missing signifer would have is the separation of her from such an object position.
Lol’s investigation can now be understood as a quest for divinity and pure love. As soon as
Anne-Marie Stretter enters the scene with Michael Richardson, Lol is able to take up the position of the object a that is necessary to install a relation between the three of them. Just as in
the prisoner’s sophism, where one of the prisoners thinks of himself as radically different from
the others, he is still needed in order to allow the others to relate to one another. This position
leaves two options: either one remains in that object position, and is left behind, or one joins
the others by leaving the position behind. The first option remains within the (divine) infinity
of the time for comprehending, but comes upon an obstacle when encountering the finitude of
the others (the fact that they will leave, and act as if time is not infinite). In the second option,
one embraces finitude by subjectifying this infinity. To assume finitude requires the operations
of separation and castration: abandoning one’s position as object, one must subject oneself to
an order in which one can only persist as a lack-of-being.
I hope to have shown how an obscure, “third” position of objective waste is inherent to any “miracle
of love.” In order to do something with this object position one must perform an anticipatory
identification with an element, a signifier, from an existing symbolic order. In addition, what Lol
V. Stein shows us is that remaining faithful to this object position is possible. What we cannot
learn from Lol is her mystical dereliction, or her way of escaping the “hold” of Jacques Hold’s
understanding. Nor can we come to know how she was able to experiment with “love” in such a
way that she turned the notion of a “love relation” into a ridiculous oxymoron, effectively qualifying it as “true” in contradistinction to the normal, married, adulterous couples that surround
her. What we can learn from Lol is that her position is a logical and necessary moment in any
love-event. If we consider the formal structure of this love as equivalent to any “true” political
act, it is Lol who forces us to ask these final questions: Where is the object in the “act”? Is it to
be found as the militant who, in a tragic way, is exploited by an obscure desiring Other? Is it to
be found as “the Jew” (Rom. 11) who functions as the necessary exclusion to the positing of a
universal, Pauline truth? 29
113
CONCLUSION
UMBR(a)
Reading Lacan through Lol V. Stein demonstrates how the most problematic moment, the
moment of concluding, is made present in the logic of love. Love consists in the switching of
position, from the object to the subject of desire. This is why love cannot exist without a loss: in
order “to give what one does not have” one must invent what one could be in the desire of the
Other, and thus lose what one “really” is. To love is to desire with this loss. Lol reveals that in
order for this work of mourning to be possible there must be a basic, unjustifiable, belief in a
point of identification. To love is to question this point, realizing that one can only perform its
existence.
I wish to thank Marc De Kesel, Sigi Jöttkandt, and Andrew
Skomra for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this
text.
1.
See Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute — or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting for? (New York: Verso, 2000),
113-130; The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of
Christianity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 92-121.
UMBR(a)
114
2. Jacques Lacan, “Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty: A New Sophism,” trans. Bruce Fink and
M. Silver, Newsletter of the Freudian Field 2.2 (fall 1988):
4-22.
3. See Dominiek Hoens and Ed Pluth, “What if the Other is
Stupid? Badiou and Lacan on ‘Logical Time,’” in Think
Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy, ed.
Peter Hallward (London: Continuum, 2004), 182-190.
4. Lacan, “Homage to Marguerite Duras, on Le ravissement
de Lol V. Stein,” trans. Peter Connor, in Marguerite Duras,
Marguerite Duras (San Francisco: City Lights Books),
125, 129. [Translation modified.] This text is notorious
for Lacan’s remark that “Duras knows, without me, what
I teach” (124). It has been said that upon meeting Duras,
Lacan’s introductory exclamation was: “You do not know
what you are saying.” It was Michèle Montrelay who brought
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein to the attention of Lacan’s
group, giving a presentation on the novel in the last session
of Seminar XII. See Lacan, Problèmes cruciaux pour la
psychanalyse (1964-1965), unpublished seminar, 23 June
1965. This paper was revised for publication as the first
chapter of her L’ombre et le nom. Sur la féminité (Paris:
Minuit, 1977), 9-23. A very informative chapter on Lacan’s
reading of Lol V. Stein can be found in Jean-Michel Rabaté,
Jacques Lacan: Psychoanalysis and the Subject of Literature (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 115-134.
5. Lacan, “Homage to Marguerite Duras,” 125.
6. The others are Creon and Jacques Hold, but such leprosy
affects the reader as well. Julia Kristeva has warned that
“Duras’s books should not be put into the hands of oversensitive readers,” in Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia,
trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1989), 227. Recall Jacques Hold admitting that, Lol,
“has us in her hands.” Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing
of Lol Stein, trans. Richard Seaver (New York: Pantheon,
1966), 82. Subsequent references will appear parenthetically
within the text.
7. For an interpretation of Antigone in which it is argued that
Creon is the tragic figure, see Philippe Van Haute, “Antigone.
Heldin van de psychoanalyse?” in De God van denkers en
dichters, ed. G. Berns, Paul Moyaert and Paul Van Tongeren
(Meppel: Boom, 1997), 172-191.
8. Fénelon’s theses, for instance, where condemned by Pope
Innocent XII in his Cum alias, 12 March 1699. For the relation between Fénelon and Madame Guyon, see Jacques
Lebrun, Le pur amour de Platon à Lacan (Paris, Seuil,
2002), 131-160. One could perhaps argue that Lacan positions himself in a similar relation to Duras.
9. Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits. Tome II, 1970-1975 (Paris:
Gallimard, 1994), 765.
10. Another important shift for Duras are the films she made in
the 1970s, which are known for their disjunction of sound
and image. This shift was anticipated, in my opinion, by
Lol V. Stein, which is clearly marked by a preoccupation
with visuality – one could even argue that the gazes are the
agents of the novel. One should not overlook, however, the
importance of the aural. After her illness, Lol gets married.
Her highly structured, empty life takes a new turn the moment a couple passes her house, when she hears the woman
say, “Dead maybe.” At that moment, the reader is unclear
to whom or what this refers, but Lol seems to understand it
as a message concerning her own existence. Later on, when
12. Lacan, “Logical Time,” 11.
13. “Having surpassed the time for comprehending the moment
of concluding, it is the moment of concluding the time for
comprehending. Otherwise this time would lose its meaning. It is not, therefore, because of some dramatic contingency, the seriousness of the stakes, or the competitiveness
of the game, that time presses; it is owing to the urgency
of the logical movement that the subject precipitates both
his judgement and his departure (“precipitates” in the
etymological sense of the verb: headlong), establishing the
modulation in which temporal tension is reversed in a move
14. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, Livre X. L’angoisse (19621963), ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 2004), 93.
[My translation.]
15. After the moment of concluding in the prisoner’s sophism
(often erroneously referred to as “the prisoner’s dilemma”),
when the three of them go to the door, they immediately
have to stop again (because the conclusion was based on
the standing still of the others). It can be proven, however,
that with three prisoners there will be only two halts needed
for them to acquire absolute certainty about the color of the
disk on their respective backs. In these halts the subjective
interpretation of the other’s standing still as a hesitation
becomes objectified and is empirically verifiable.
16. This is not the first time Lol Stein has been compared with
the prisoner’s sophism. Erik Porge was the first to highlight
the expression “count oneself three” [se compter trios] in
“Homage to Marguerite Duras,” 122. See Porge, Se compter
trois. Le temps logique de Lacan (Toulous: Erès, 1989),
146-149. More recently, Eric Laurent has discussed Lol Stein
from a “logical time perspective” in “A Sophism of Courtly
Love,” Lacanian Ink 20 (2000): 45-61.
17. Lacan, “Logical Time,” 12.
18. “Among the many aspects of the Town Beach ball, what
fascinates Lol is the end. It is the precise moment when it
comes to an end, when dawn arrives with incredible cruelty
and separates her from the couple of Michael Richardson
and Anne-Marie Stretter, forever, forever.” Duras, The
Ravishing of Lol Stein, 36-37.
19. Ibid., 38. See also Ibid., 174. Asked about Lol, Duras replied
that she could show her on screen, but only as hidden, “as
when she is lying on the beach like a dead dog, covered in
sand.” Marguerite Duras and Michelle Porte, Les Lieux
115
11. The presentation and interpretation of Lacan’s article borrows from David Blomme and Dominiek Hoens, “Anticipation and Subject: A Commentary on an Early Text by Lacan,”
in Computing Anticipatory Systems: CASYS’99 – Third
International Conference, ed. Daniel Dubois (New York:
American Institute of Physics, 2000), 117-123.
to action [tendance à l’acte] manifesting to the others that
the subject has concluded.” Ibid., 12-13.
UMBR(a)
Lol is speaking of what happened at the Casino, she claims
that she heard Michael Richardson and Anne-Marie Stretter
saying, “‘maybe it will kill her.’” Duras, The Ravishing of Lol
Stein, 28, 95. At that moment, Lol’s friend Tatiana insists
that this is impossible, since she was with her the entire
night and is certain they were too far away to hear what
the couple was saying. But Lol, indeed, seems to hear what
others cannot, or do not want to hear. The scene “made”
by the visual contains an additional, auditive element that
opens it up and refers it to a future. The book version of
Duras’ India Song is also organized around a scene, between
the vice-consul and the same Anne-Marie Stretter, but this
scene appears amidst “rumours” (voices that tell the story
of their own love, the love stories of others, as well as the
comments made by other guests at the party). See India
Song, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Grove Press, 1976).
Finally, having watched the film version of India Song, there
is one element that cannot be forgotten: the vice-consul’s
cry.
de Marguerite Duras (Paris: Minuit, 1977), 100. [Editor’s
translation.] The absence of shame indicates that Lol does
not take a subjective distance from this sudden appearance
of herself qua object a, incarnated by Anne-Marie Stretter.
20. The identification is “anticipatory” because there is no
sufficient ground for it, since it must await the recognition
by the Other. Lol seems to be paralyzed by this moment of
jumping to a conclusion — her phrases are often unfinished
and left in suspension. See Duras, The Ravishing of Lol
Stein, 17, 85, 102, 127, 128, 141, 142, 146, 160, 161, 165.
UMBR(a)
116
21. One can later identify Jacques Hold as the narrator: “Tatiana introduces [Pierre] Beugner, her husband, to Lol,
and [Jacques] Hold, a friend of theirs — the distance is
covered — me.” Ibid., 65.
22. Lol, like prisoner (A), finds herself in the gaze of Michael
Richardson (C), which is mediated by Anne-Marie Stretter
(B), who was born, as we learn in India Song, under the
name Anne-Marie Guardi. “Guardi” (son nom de Venise)
means “to look” (many thanks to John Murphy for pointing
this out). When the two leave, Lol does not lose her lover,
Michael Richardson, but Michael Richardson and Anne
Marie Stretter, resulting in her long illness: “I wasn’t there
any longer. They took me with them.” Ibid., 127.
23. It is only a “solution,” since things become more complex,
foremost with respect to the construction of a fantasy.
24. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, Livre VIII. Le transfert
(1960-1961), ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 2001),
67. [Editor’s Translation.]
25. Whether such disparity — given Lacan’s repeated expression of his hope that in love one approaches the other as an
object — can be understood in Levinasian terms remains
an open question. On “disparity” see Emmanuel Levinas,
Otherwise than Being: or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso
Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), 90,
192-193.
26. See Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX:
Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and
Knowledge, 1972-1973, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans.
Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 1998), 40.
27. To keep this divine love for Himself would make God a miser, which should make Him ashamed in front of the “angels
and the other beings.” The other person involved should
engage in this ménage à trois, and even desire it, for if they
do not this would be considered a “lack of charity” [defectus
caritatis] and, again, would cause shame. See Richard de
Saint-Victor, La trinité, trans. Gaston Salet (Paris: Sources
Chretiennes, 1969), 176, 197. [My translation.]
28. Thus the metaphor of love repeats the formula of the fantasy:
S⁄ ◊ a.
29. This is not unrelated to the idea that someone must
necessarily take up this object position in order to make
something happen elsewhere. This is, I argue, the ethical
and socially relevant meaning of the analytic discourse. See
my “Towards a New Perversion,” in Reading Seminar Seventeen, ed. Justin Clemens and Russell Grigg forthcoming
from Duke University Press.
UMBR(a)
117
marc de kesel
SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE MONOTHEISTIC
WEAKNESS OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM
RELIGION AS CRITIQUE, CRITIQUE AS RELIGION:
If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.
— Anonymous
Critics persist in describing as “deeply religious”
anyone who admits to a sense of man’s insignificance or impotence in the face of the universe, although what constitutes the essence of the religious
attitude is not this feeling but only the next step after
it, the reaction to it which seeks a remedy for it. The
man who goes no further, but humbly acquiesces in
the small part which human beings play in the great
world — such a man is, on the contrary, irreligious
in the truest sense of the word.
— Sigmund Freud1
My position with respect to Religion has considerable
importance at the present moment, of which I have
begun to speak. Some of my students are religious
people, and there is no doubt that, in coming years,
I will have to enter into relation with the Church on
problems that the highest authorities would like to understand in order to make their decisions. Suffice it to
say that I am going to Rome this September to give the
report for our Congress this year, and that the subject
of this report is no accident: the role of language (by
which I mean: Logos) in psychoanalysis.
— Jacques Lacan2
THE COMTIAN PARADOX
In the work of Auguste Comte, we find the idea that eventually religion
will be definitively behind us, as it is only a fable fit for little children or
those in mankind’s infantile phase. During youth religion surely is edifying, but will inevitably be replaced by a less “fabulous,” more rational
approach to reality. We finally reach a level of maturity, which allows us
to face reality in a concrete and “positive” way — without religious fables
or metaphysical rationalizations. Such is what Comte thought in his day,
and is more or less still the opinion many claim today. Even those who
do not consider religion outdated have at least separated it from science
and public life, reducing it to a mere private matter.
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119
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120
Did Comte, however, not teach us that a positivist approach to reality is at the same time the
one and only true religion? Did he not consider himself the founder — the “Saint Paul” – of a new
universal “Religion of Humanity”? By changing the name of his “positive philosophy” (philosophie
positive) into a “positivist philosophy” (philosophie positiviste),3 he soon made it a doctrine and
religion, and anointed himself its “high priest,” writing his well-known “positivist catechism”
without any trace of irony.4 For Comte, a radical positivist approach to the world is effective only
when it is a “proved religion” (une religion démontrée).5 Positivist science thus cannot create a
new civilization without performing a new dogmatism. As one commentator notes, “the special
aim of [Comte’s] research is to definitively replace the supernatural bases of civilization ‘whose
decline can no longer be denied.’” 6 Yet, Comte’s reply to such a collapse is not issued with the
hope of destroying or overcoming religion, but in founding a new scientific religion freed from all
obscure fables and characterized by the clarity of positive science. Nevertheless, Comte’s critique
of religion ultimately ends up with religion again.
Comte’s “positivist religion” may seem naïve and even paranoid to us (as it did for his closest
disciples), and in his later years Comte did in fact suffer from paranoia. Nonetheless, as Lucian
Scubla has recently argued, he appears to have acknowledged in advance what other critiques of
religion are often forced to face afterward. Scubla notes, in particular, how Marxism vehemently
sought to unmask religion as a political weapon in the hands of the ruling power only to end up
functioning as, and even becoming, a religion.7 Unlike Comte, Marx (as well as many later revolutionary thinkers and political leaders) failed to foresee the eventual religious character that his
own doctrine would acquire. As naïve as his doctrine on religion might seem, Comte considered
his theory, as well as modern science or modernity in general, as religion. In light of recent history, it is worth questioning if such a position is as stupid as it might seem. What does it mean
for Comte both to criticize religion and acknowledge the religious status of his criticism?
As old fashioned as Comte’s religion and his critique of religion may appear, they raise the
question with which modern criticism is currently struggling. Although for centuries we have
fervently criticized religion, it has not only survived but has overtaken this very critique. Once
thought to be “the opiate of the masses,” religion led people away from politics and real life
through the manufacture of illusions, never becoming the kind of “proved religion,” for which
Comte hoped. Although it remains an opium-like illusion, religion today seems nonetheless
capable of bringing people back to politics. The battles of our globalized world are waged in the
name of religion, however false and superficial the references to religion might be. In a way, it
is religion that provides today’s non-western people the critical voice indispensable for taking
part in global democracy. Those fabulous opium-gods now offer a critical position and make it
possible for such groups to belong to the globalized (that is, western) world. If at one time religion was the prime object of ideological critique, it now has become the very condition, if not
the inspiration and guarantee, for such critique.
If we return to the Comtian paradox, we see it affecting not only science, but criticism as well.
A psychoanalytic critique of the religious fable can only result in the installation of a new fable. It
cannot remove a repression, but only replace it with a “better” one. What, then, is the difference
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We approach here the crucial point in psychoanalytic criticism. For psychoanalysis, criticizing
religion as an illusion cannot effectively present an alternative that would be entirely beyond
illusion. Religion is, of course, a fable that represses the unconscious trauma upon which civilization is built. But it is still necessary to emphasize, however, that the unconscious is not so much
the object of psychoanalysis as it is its very condition. Thus, psychoanalysis is not a science that
discovers the unconscious, but a science aware of the fact that all consciousness and knowledge,
including psychoanalytic knowledge, is built upon the unconscious (that is, upon that which escapes any consciousness). Psychoanalysis is not a science among other sciences; it is a critique of
the modern (Cartesian) premises of science. It deprives science of its basic certitude and radically
redefines both the condition of knowledge and critique. From a psychoanalytic perspective, criticism can no longer be based upon any insight into the real state of things. Critique can no longer
be “platonic,” distinguishing the real from unreal, essential from fictional. The world as such is
now to be considered a “fiction,” and truth is not to be found outside this fictional horizon (as
Plato taught), but lies entirely within it. Since Nietzsche and Freud, truth can no longer be the
alternative to fiction and fable. In other words, psychoanalysis can designate repressed wishes
and traumas, but it cannot completely eliminate repression and trauma. It can designate the
repressed traumatic structure lying underneath a religious “fable,” but it cannot overcome such
repression: psychoanalysis cannot make people live without a fable.
UMBR(a)
Do we not encounter here one of the reasons for current criticism’s positive interest in religion?
For contemporary political criticism, too, has made such a turn, especially toward Christianity.
Saint Paul has become a positive reference point for left-wing political thinkers like Badiou,
Agamben, and Žižek.8 Current criticism not only fights Christianity, but looks upon it as a mirror
image. It is as if, in Christianity’s vicissitudes, criticism recognizes its own. Christianity has failed
to answer the crucial questions of modernity — but has modern criticism not failed as well? Is
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 not a sign of its final incapacity to build up a viable alternative to the traditional (capitalist bourgeois) system, which it has criticized for so long? If this
long critical tradition is now under attack, is it not for the same reasons for which Christianity
was once attacked? Christianity, however, resisted such attacks, and moreover stood its ground
within a world of criticism. Perhaps modern criticism, incapable of performing an alternative to
the existing political system, turns to Christianity in an effort to deal with this incapacity. How
do we criticize the existing situation without having any alternative to propose? Such is the modern — or, what amounts to the same thing, postmodern — question we are facing. Does it not
come close to the question (post)modern Christianity must deal with: how to criticize existing
(post)modern illusions while having only an illusion to offer as an alternative?
between psychoanalysis and religion if both install and maintain repression? Is the aim of an
analytic cure not the installation of a better repression? Is psychoanalysis not also producing
its own religion? It might not be the scientific “religion” of Comte’s positivism, but it is a kind
of critical religion — a critique as religion, which, having no remedy for the illusion it fights
against, can only celebrate its own critical gesture. Having no real anchor for its critique, such
criticism relies upon its own critical move for foundation: its last support hinges on faith in its
own critical gesture. In this respect, critique comes very close to religion. As a fable it reminds us
that criticizing fables remains within an inherently “fabulous” horizon. Critique must then believe
in itself, and have faith in the fact that it has a sense of its own. It is a criticism that approaches
the Kantian notion of Vernunftglaube. Thus criticism ends up with religion, again.
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But why should we move so fast? Why should we run immediately to the end? Perhaps it
would not be a bad idea to turn first to the religion it all began with, not to avoid the problems
and questions we are currently facing but precisely to delve further into them, as questions and
problems.
RELIGION AS CRITIQUE
The religion it all began with, as well as the religion it perhaps ends with, is not simply one religion; it is monotheism. For centuries this has been the focus of modern criticism, and is quite
possibly what it will end in. If monotheism is a religion, it is certainly a special one. At the very
least, it is a religion that claims that religion is never simple, that we should never trust any
religion that claims to be simply a religion. “Simple,” “natural” religions trust themselves, and
trust the trust they have in their gods. Monotheism, by definition, is critical of this kind of trust.
Not so much faith in one God, it is a claim or an insight that only God is God: what we suppose
to be gods or God is, in fact, not God. God is never something or someone we spontaneously
believe and trust. Such a God would be a false one, an idol. Spontaneous or “natural” religion,
monotheism claims, is no religion at all. True religion is not based on a “basic trust,” but on a
permanent critical inquiry into what we trust. In God’s name, we should not trust our trust in
Him, we should distrust it.
Only a critical attitude makes us sensitive to revelation, which is the hallmark of the monotheistic God. Only by subverting the securities we have settled into can we open ourselves to what
comes from a radical outside. An unapproachable, inconceivable “outside”: this is the place from
which the monotheistic God breaks into our world, intervening in an unnatural, disturbing, and
subversive way. The god who gave Jacob the new name of Israel is a strange god. Preferring the
cunning youngest son over the rightful elder (Esau), this god fought unto death with him in order
to change his name to the one who has “struggled with God and with men and has overcome” (for
this is what Jacob’s new name literally means). As the well-known passage in Genesis tells:
That night Jacob…was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man
saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was
wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for it is daybreak.’ But Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ The man asked him, ‘What is your name?’
‘Jacob,’ he answered. Then the man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.’ Jacob said, ‘Please tell
me your name.’ But he replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ Then he blessed him there. So Jacob
called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.’
(Gen. 32: 22-31)
This passage touches the very core of the entire monotheistic tradition: religion has a strained
relation with the divine, and is a struggle or even an outright fight with it. If God is thought to
be graceful, such a belief never comes without first having fought with Him, and this only occurs
after having fought — and unmasked — other false gods.
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Certainly, monotheism must have once been a “simple” religion — that is, the religion of a
people having trust in their own god as guarantee of power and prosperity. This must have been
the case in early Israel, during the time of the Davidian kingdom. But the real origin of the kind
of monotheism that would lead to modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam should be located
in another period, during the time in which the Hebrew people, with their “simple” religion,
were on the verge of disappearing. It was during the Babylonian Captivity that this religion was
interpreted as false. In Babylon, they learned that true religion did not consist in the political
power and prosperity of a nation — such “false gods” were to be renounced. True religion was a
religion of the heart, involving a personal conversion, leading one to a spiritual and moral life,
a lifestyle respecting the “orphan and the widow,” the “poor and the needy.” 9 This is what the
“prophets” had foreseen in the centuries before the Exile. At that time they were considered to
be dissident prophets, refusing to yield to those in power. Now, sitting in tears “by the rivers of
Babylon” (Ps. 137), people remembered those dissident prophets, just as they remembered that
UMBR(a)
Indeed, monotheistic religion is first of all a fight against false gods: the Jewish and the Christian
Bible, as well as the Koran, repeatedly tell us of the never-ending battle against false gods. The
Jewish tradition starts with it — Moses destroying the golden calf — and the apocalyptic scenarios
of all three monotheistic books end with it, telling their own version of an ultimate war against a
false god. This is what monotheism is about: what people suppose to be god is not God, only God
is God. Natural, spontaneous ideas and feelings about God are illusory and empty. True religion
is there to fight such illusions. Monotheistic religion, however, is also a fight against its own
persistent inclination to slide back into a normal, natural religion that would have faith in what
or whom we think God is. In a way, monotheism is a religion that makes “religious distrust” the
very kernel of religion. It is, in other words, critical religion par excellence. This critical attitude
toward itself, as religion, is the very kernel of its religiosity.
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other traditional story about the exodus out of Egypt, in which they received the law that the
prophets told them was their religion’s kernel. Being “God’s people” could not be equated with
being owners of a powerful land, since it was first of all an “inner” category, defining those who
obey God’s law, wherever they are, and in whatever situation they are in. Even here, by Babylon’s
rivers, despite having lost everything, they could be what their God had commanded them to be:
faithful to the one and only God, obedient to a law that is not so much religious (which would
establish an economy between the mortal and the immortal) as it is human (which would establish
a just society). To serve God is at the same time to serve the “orphan and the widow,” “the outlaw
and rightless.” Those who only serve God serve an idol, and their religion is a false one; in fact,
it is not a religion at all. True religion is never purely religion, never purely an affair between
man and God. True religion is never religion alone.
From a monotheistic perspective, it is not easy to define exactly what “religion” means. On the
one hand, it is what monotheism is fighting against: a false belief, a celebration of idols, an obscure
traffic between men and gods, between mortals and immortals. Monotheism can only be extremely
suspicious of this kind of religion — a suspicion forms its very kernel. Hence, monotheism is itself a
genuine critique of religion. Its God is, by definition, the result of an unending critical attitude. No
one who we think is God can be God. Only God is God. Doing justice to God means nothing other
than doing justice to our neighbors, especially to “the poor and the weak” among them.
On the other hand, this critique of religion ends up being a religion. It functions as a cult, having
its own rituals, prayers, saints, sacred objects, and gestures. In short, monotheism establishes a
“holy economy”: it is critical of sacrifices, especially human sacrifices, which it explicitly forbids.10
In general, it criticizes the idea that life, which is given by the divine, should ever be given back
to it. The monotheistic God is supposed to be too sovereign for such “life/death traffic.” 11 He
does not require the gift of those he created in order to live, which is precisely why pagan gods
are false: to remain alive, they need food, which is given through human and other sacrifices.12 If
the monotheistic God is hungry, it is never because of a need for food. As an entirely “sovereign”
God he does not require anything. Yet the monotheistic God continues to ask for sacrifices (and
except the one of his son, this excludes all human sacrifices). Even Christianity, which explicitly
calls for the ultimate sacrifice (the sacrifice of sacrifice), remains a religion — a culture in which
man is asked to send gifts, offerings, and sacrifices to God in order to honor him. Monotheists
should be critical about that which people (including themselves) call God. They should not trust
the god they spontaneously trust, for only God is God. But this God must nonetheless be trusted,
and this trust must be expressed in a religious way: by praying to this God and celebrating him
through the offering of gifts and non-human sacrifices. This is the paradox of monotheistic religion: it is a critique of religion that manifests itself as religion.
CRITIQUE OF RELIGION...
Yet, other explicitly non-absolute philosophies transcend the difference between religion and
atheism. Gilles Deleuze, one of the most vehement anti-Hegelian philosophers of recent time,
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Many modern thinkers have made this claim. Recall Hegel’s assertion that the very kernel of
Christianity is nothing else but God’s death, a statement already present in a seventeenth-century
Lutheran hymn.13 With Christianity, according to Hegel, religion’s truth is both unmasked and
saved (aufgehoben), and with the Enlightenment’s atheism the same is done to Christianity.
In the end, we have the Aufhebung of the very difference between religion and its opposite, or
what amounts to the same thing, between atheism and its opposite, as it ends in what Hegel calls
“absolute knowledge.” Though this idea might be criticized, it expresses our common opinion of
religion more accurately than we are willing to admit. Indeed, the difference between religion
and its opposite (or between atheism and its opposite) seems to have lost importance. The fact
that both religion and atheism have become a matter of personal belief has neutralized their
former opposition. Those who are willing to fight for religion or for atheism and want to rearrange the existing world according to either’s respective principles are currently supposed to
be “fundamentalists,” a name that commonly implies that they are “wrong.” We suppose they
should know that beyond the opposition between religion and atheism there is the knowledge
that each is nothing more than a personal belief. Such knowledge operates, consciously or not,
as an “absolute” knowledge.
UMBR(a)
Monotheistic religion is only a paradox for those who do not accept the typically modern historical, evolutionary approach to this problem. For others, the monotheistic “religious critique of
religion” presents a necessary phase within the evolution of western civilization. Is this evolution not undoubtedly moving in the direction of a more and more purified atheism? Either way,
western culture — and, a fortiori, modern culture — results from a critique of, and a break with,
religion. But this break took time to be realized. In the beginning, a critique of religion could only
work from the inside, operating within an entirely religious theoretical framework. Unmasking
the religious fable with religious concepts, this is what monotheism did. Once monotheism had
become the ruling religion, however, its criticism did not end. Thus the apotheosis of Christianity during the High Middle Ages sowed the seed of its own critique (the Reformation), laying
the foundation for the Enlightenment critique of religion and paving the way for the a-religious
climate of post-French Revolution bourgeois society, which introduced today’s widespread
atheism. Atheism is thus not the opposite of Christian monotheism, as Enlightenment reasoning presumed, but its prolongation and even its realization. To realize what monotheism is, one
should not only do away with the gods, but with the monotheistic God as well. Ultimately, true
monotheism becomes atheism, just as atheism becomes the only true monotheism.
UMBR(a)
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claims that the most abstract and sophisticated speculations on God advanced by traditional
thinkers (Dun Scotus, Spinoza, Leibniz, and others) were, in fact, the most exquisite moments of
free thought.14 God’s infinity liberated finite man from his false and oppressive limits. Reflecting
on God and even taking Him as reflection’s starting point did not obstruct atheist thinking. On
the contrary, Deleuze stresses, such reflection stimulated free thought quite wonderfully. 15
Another modern approach to religion and atheism warrants attention: Freudian criticism and
its unexpected “christocentrism.” Undoubtedly, Freud acknowledges modernity’s atheist tradition and explicitly expresses the hope that in the future religion will be left behind, 16 yet this is
precisely why he appreciates Christianity. The Christian fable that represses the original trauma
underlying religion is so superficial and “thin” that it can easily be read as an unmasking story. It
is not a coincidence, Freud argues, that in Christianity the “son” has taken over the place of the
“father,” who occupied the central position in Judaism and most other religions. For the origin of
religion is not to be found with the father, but with his sons, and more precisely with their murder
of the father. In Freud’s modern “scientific” fable of the primal horde, a monstrous father forbade
his sons’ libidinal satisfaction in order to reserve all of the women for himself. Libido, as the very
principle of life, left the sons no other recourse than parricide for the removal of this obstacle. A
persistent feeling of guilt forced them to create a new father — first a totem, later a god — whom
they could express such remorse. Religion is thus an attempt to repay a debt to those imaginary
gods — murdered fathers — in order to relieve (in an equally imaginary way) the unbearable
feeling of guilt. In this way, the origin of society coincides with the origin of religion.
Christianity, however, modified the repression of the traumatic guilt that binds society. By sacrificing himself, the Christian “Son of God” confesses — and hardly in secret — to the murder of the
father: the only act capable of redeeming man’s original sin is suicide or self-sacrifice, to redeem
the sin it could only be carried out at the level of murder. This is how, in Christianity, repressed
guilt almost becomes conscious. In the celebration of God’s son, Christianity is overtly the “religion
of the sons,” and in this way it almost acknowledges the death (murder) of the father. Christ’s
sacrifice is the sacrifice of the son and is thus an adequate repetition of the sacrifice/murder of the
father — a repetition that is, in fact, a confession. Christianity takes a decisive step toward turning
the unconscious into consciousness, which is the very reason for Freud’s “christocentrism.”
...WITHIN THE LIMITS OF ILLUSION ALONE
In Christianity, the repressed almost becomes conscious. The word to notice here is “almost,”
indicating a hesitation on Freud’s part. On the one hand, he hopes that the hidden consciousness
of Christianity will become manifest and will take away not only Christianity’s raison d’être, but
also the raison d’être of all other religions, and more precisely of religion in general. This is the
Enlightenment side of Freud’s position, explicitly expressed in The Future of an Illusion, where
we can read his sincere hope that one day we will no longer need such illusions. On the other
hand, he realizes that Christianity, like any other religion, is an “illusion,” which he defines as
an entirely libidinal product. This implies, however, that it is far from certain that we could ever
live without illusions. Repression and illusion, although they can be analyzed and unmasked by
psychoanalysis, nevertheless remain basic, indispensable structures for the libidinal subject. Let
us, then, take a closer look at Freud’s theory of illusion.
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Even a cursory reading of the final four chapters of The Future of an Illusion would clarify how
the long review of objections and refutations that Freud lists are not only concerned with the religion
he criticizes, but also, and more importantly, with the status of his own critique. Does such psychological analysis really unmask people’s false belief? More precisely, do people stop believing in
God once they understand “rationally” that such belief is an illusion? Freud is very clear on this:
psychoanalysis will never convert the faithful to atheism.17 Faith is too much a “psychological”
thing, a matter of unconscious wishes and presuppositions. Although psychoanalysis can awaken
some of these wishes to consciousness, it cannot make the unconscious as such conscious again,
since the unconscious is the fundamental structure of consciousness itself.
UMBR(a)
Freud provides three main reasons for why our ancestors created religious illusions: 1) to
banish the terror of nature, for our libidinal constitution has made us maladjusted to nature; 2)
to be reconciled with our fate; and 3) to compensate for the frustrations caused by civilization.
Religion is a “store of ideas” protecting us “in two directions”: “against the dangers of nature
and Fate [the tragic conditions of life and death], and against the injuries that threaten [us] from
human society itself” (S.E. 21: 18). To address the problems of nature and fate, we no longer
need gods or other religious illusions, as we can now make use of science. As Freud continues,
however, science itself causes frustration; even civilization in general appeals to frustrating illusions. Although science and civilization shape our wishes and desires, on the most basic libidinal level they simultaneously limit desire, making frustration and discontent unavoidable. As
Freud famously elaborates, civilization is never without its “discontent,” and for that reason is
never without illusions. Civilization will never completely harmonize libidinal wishes with what
reality demands, so discontent and illusion will remain two sides of the same unavoidable coin.
Of course, in The Future of an Illusion, Freud does not explicitly state this. Rather, the strictly
“psychological” analysis he sets forth supposes it. As he clearly states, unmasking illusions is not
the same as analyzing their content: “To assess the truth-value of religious doctrines does not
lie within the scope of the present enquiry. It is enough for us that we have recognized them as
being, in their psychological nature, illusions” (S.E. 21: 33).
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Does this mean that psychoanalysis provides a new foundation for faith and religion? Freud
admits that psychoanalysis will surely be used for this, 18 although he repeats again and again
that one should pursue the opposite. Insofar as religion puts forth “prohibitions of thought” it
remains our “psychological ideal” to consolidate the “primacy of the intelligence” (S.E. 21: 48).
Freud is willing to “moderate [his] zeal and admit the possibility that [he], too, [is] chasing an
illusion,” 19 but this does not stop him from expressing his belief in the necessity of rational critique, and thus in criticizing religion. Is Freud’s theory not finally based upon belief — in this case
a belief in the value of rational thinking, of intelligence, and a critical attitude? Is his psychoanalytic theory not a version of the Kantian Vernunftglaube, a faithful belief in the supremacy
of intelligence and rational thought, supposed to be the only way to free us from the chains of
the unconscious? Is this not a belief and thus, in the last instance, an illusion? And does this not
discredit the entire critique of religion? Does a critique unmasking religion as an illusion make
any sense when this unmasking itself relies on an illusion? Is Freud’s religion critique not, in
the end, basically a religion?
ENJOYMENT
Although Lacan is unable to resolve this paradoxical problem, he at least pushes the analysis a
little further. His conceptual tools enable us to detect a weakness — a certain naïveté even — in
Freud’s Vernunftglaube, which does not imply, however, that it will be easier to avoid the same
aporia that Freud encountered. What, according to Lacan, is the weak point in Freud’s theory?
As we already know, Freud claims that civilization, although indispensable, necessarily creates
frustration and discontent. From a libidinal perspective, civilization is a “law” that restricts
unconscious drives and wishes. To assert its authority, this law turns to religion for support;
although based upon human rationality, civilization needs the support of an illusion to be respected. Traditionally, religion proved to be strong in this role. This, however, makes civilization
and its law dependent on a belief in God, which from a rational viewpoint has an unpredictable
status. What was supposed to be the law’s guarantee turns out to be a danger for both the law
and civilization more generally. It can only be a step in the right direction, Freud argues, when
we will be attached to society’s laws strictly because of their own authority, and not because of
the illusory authority of some God.20 Modern freedom compels us to speak in our own human
name. In Freud’s analysis, God’s singular role is to guarantee the human law, giving its prohibitive character extra imaginary strength. To this, Lacan — with Freud — replies that the law is
not only negative (that is, prohibitive), but also positive, as it structures desire. By clearly marking its final object, the law gives desire its basic orientation. Despite, or even on account of, its
forbidden character, this object keeps desire unfulfilled, and since we are unfulfilled desire, this
prohibition is constitutive for our very being.
Lacan takes Freud’s insight a step further, adding that the forbidden object is also the object of
enjoyment, for it is prohibition itself that makes enjoyment possible. In Seminar VII, he explains
that the object of enjoyment is located outside the symbolic order, which is to say, outside the
domain of the law. It is outside the realm of signifiers where someone, in order to be what he is,
must continuously refer to other signifiers, ceaselessly deferring the “object” he is longing for.21
Although this object is inaccessible, there is a way for the subject to “enjoy” it. This enjoyment,
however, does take a toll: it coincides with a fading of the subject. Enjoyment is only possible
when the subject loses the capacity to be present with it. You can long for it, you can remember it,
but the moment it occurs, you cannot be with it. This is the crucial point in Lacan’s definition of
jouissance: it is a libidinal satisfaction on the level of the subject, during which the subject fades
away, whereby the entire libidinal economy is in the end supported by a fundamental fantasy.
Religion has now been placed in a different light. It not only supports the authority of the law,
it also supports the human tendency to transgress the law and to enjoy the forbidden object. It
does not allow real transgression (for jouissance is phantasmatic), but it supports the desire for
transgression. By celebrating what is beyond the limits of the law, it keeps desire desiring. This
is what Lacan has in mind when he defines religion as sublimation. In Seminar VII, sublimation
is defined as the way to raise the object of desire to the level of “das Ding,” which is, at that time,
Lacan’s conceptual term for desire’s final object.22 In sublimation an arbitrary signifier is singled
out from the symbolic order and put in the inaccessible place of desire’s final object. All other
signifiers are then fashioned in such a way that they continuously circle around this object without
ever obtaining access to it. By celebrating this object it is in fact desire that is celebrated.
In this sense, religion is not simply that which represses desire. It can function as desire’s sublimation as well, and in this capacity it can give desire a certain freedom. It is true that religion
does not give desire what it ultimately wants, for this is enjoyment, which insofar as it is not a
signifier it cannot be given consciously. Religion, however, can affirm that we long for enjoyment,
thus it appreciates what we really are, since, once again, we are desire. Although sublimation
is not the ultimate solution for desire, it at least affirms rather than repress desire as the most
basic reality of our life.
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RELIGION AS SUBLIMATION
UMBR(a)
Whereas Freud stresses that the final object of our desire is illegal, Lacan adds that at the
same time the law directs our desire toward it, providing this object its constitutive status.
Although impossible and phantasmatic, the forbidden object is the ultimate support of our
libidinal economy. Even when the subject fades away, as in the case with jouissance, this object
will function as support.
UMBR(a)
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This Lacanian perspective, however, radically modifies both the notion of religion and the critique of religion, just as it changes the notion of truth and reality. According to Lacan, the truth
of psychic and social reality is not to be found in a real that is separate from the fictitious. Reality
itself, the reality constituting the world in which we live, is basically a fiction — an infinite set of
signifiers whose signification, in having no ground in the real, is entirely an effect of the signifiers.
This is what Lacan, referring to a basic notion in Lévi-Strauss, calls a symbolic universe: a world
that is materially made of signifiers radically separated from the real. Signification is no longer
supposed to refer to the real; it is caused by autonomously operating signifiers.
Where, then, is truth in the Lacanian universe? Contrary to flat postmodernist claims, Lacan
retains truth as a wholly valid concept; however, he does not define it as that which makes words
or thoughts correspond to real things. Truth, for Lacan, is within the horizon of the primacy
of desire — a discourse or an attitude is true only insofar as it acknowledges this primacy of
desire. More precisely, the question of the true and the untrue indicates only how the subject
acknowledges its position within the world of fiction (the symbolic order), how the human being recognizes himself not as his own subject but as the subject of the desire of the Other. This
is Lacan’s position: his subject is not the Cartesian subject, which functions as the support (the
platform, the hypokeimenon, the subjectum) of his own being. The Lacanian subject, rather, supports a desire for being, a desire that has been copied from the other’s desire. Since the libidinal
being can only repress its archi-trauma — its lack of being — by alienating itself in the order of
signifiers, it realizes itself as the subject of signifiers. As Lacan claims, we can only exist as the
individuals we think we are insofar as we are represented by signifiers. This makes each of us
coincide, at the most basic level of our identity, with what Lacan posits as the subject: that which
a signifier represents to another signifier.23 The subject is the signifier’s support; it makes the signifier occur, or take place — it gives “ground.” The subject that I am, however, is not the signifier
as such. Rather, in being the effect of the signifier, I am that which exists (and what is hidden)
beneath the signifier. Literally, I am its “supposition,” without any real or “ontological” ground.
For Lacan, this is how we must define the modern subject: it is literally a fictive “supposition”
made by an autonomous Einbildungskraf, which is not reducible to our own imagination, but
only to the imagination at work in the anonymous, alienating, symbolic order that we occupy. In
seeking the point where I can meet my true self (my truth), I will only witness this point escape
the materiality of the question. Truth comes to characterize that specific attitude — that “act,” as
Lacan ends up claiming — which affirms the point that escapes, thus affirming the desire I am,
that I am nothing but desire for being. This moment or act of truth, which is a radically singular
moment that cannot be given by another, can be located in the psychoanalytic cure. The social
form of such a moment, its cultural celebration, is sublimation.
Where, in this Lacanian approach to truth and the subject, should we locate religion and its
critique? Unlike the Enlightenment critique, Lacanian theory does not criticize religion as a fiction, since all of reality, made up of signifiers, is supposed to be fiction. Religion’s truth-value
is to be found in the way it places the subject in relation to reality, the way it gives freedom to
desire. Does religion help us recognize and “cultivate” the desire we are? Does it assist in the
recognition of our identity, not as substantial subjects supposed to be our own ground, but as
subjects that paradoxically support something of which we are, at the same time, the effect? Such
questions are the necessary guides for a critical approach to religion.
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Here, again, atheism is supposed to be the destination of man’s struggle with his gods, that
is, with the wishes he has readily accepted as real. This is at least one of the reasons Lacan, not
unlike Freud and his “christocentrism,” defines “roman religion” (Christianity) as the “true religion.” 26 This does not contradict his claim that atheism is the most difficult thing there is, and
this is precisely where psychoanalysis leads us: the truth of any desire for God is not God, but
godless desire. This does not mean, however, that monotheism is free of danger or that it could
spontaneously lead to an affirmation of desire’s primacy. Monotheism remains a religion — a
discourse that permits someone to speak in the name of a God — and thus does not so much
acknowledge desire (for God) as acknowledge God Himself. To allow someone to speak in His
name is to allow the appropriation of God’s inaccessible position, as well as His absolute power.
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We can now understand why Lacanian theory is not without a certain appreciation for religion.
In being fundamentally alienated in the symbolic order (the Other), it is not incomprehensible
that, in troubled times, people would address themselves to that order as such — that is, to an
instance to whom they can personally relate. Certainly, they are always lost in the Other, but only
in an unconscious way. Being in trouble, they feel lost in the Other, and by praying to the Other
not to abandon them they more or less express the structural condition that they are in. To pray
for the Other to save the single individual that I am reveals that my entire individuality depends
upon Him (that is, the symbolic order). Thus, there is a truth in praying, at least a hidden one:
it is an act that attempts to deny the fact that the Other I’m addressing as such does not exist. 24
He is nothing but the endless fiction I am living in (or on account of), and the only true salvation
left for me to acknowledge is that I am totally lost in the Other. My only escape from the Other
(an escape that I cannot handle or manipulate on my own accord) is a vain jouissance. It is not
incomprehensible that I would suppose the idea that jouissance is the haven that religion believes
in. Psychoanalysis, however, is there to deconstruct such an idea so as to gradually unmask and
face the fundamental truth that I am unfulfilled desire. It is only because of unfulfilled desire that
my enjoyment is possible; only enjoyment gives me the sovereignty I am longing for. As Georges
Bataille has said, “sovereignty is NOTHING.” 25
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One pretending to fulfill the desire of others, rather than give room to their desire, forces others
to accept him or his God as the ultimate answer for their desire — a procedure that in fact denies their desire. While he himself transgresses the limit separating desire from its final object,
occupying the locus of jouissance, he steals from others both their desire and their jouissance,
thus constraining everyone to act as if his or her desire has been fulfilled.
It is here that we come upon the “perverse core of Christianity.” By criticizing every appropriation of God (desire’s object), Christianity acknowledges the primacy of desire. But in making this
claim one can secretly bring about the exact opposite, which is precisely how Christianity, as
well as the two other monotheisms, generally operate. Referring to God as the point from which
everything can be criticized, Christianity appropriates this point and supposes itself to be immune
to all criticism. This is why Christianity, in both its exposed and its hidden forms, can always be
criticized. Here we encounter the inner danger of monotheistic criticism: its critical claim can
itself turn out to be an instrument that consolidates the repression of desire it seeks to attack.
But is this the danger only of monotheistic criticism? Although explicitly intending to avoid it,
Lacanian theory seems nevertheless to be affected by such a threat. We must then reflect, one
last time, on Lacan’s definition of sublimation and its relation to religion and its critique.
THE MONOTHEISTIC STATUS OF MODERN CRITICISM
According to Lacanian theory, sublimation names modernity’s modified relation to the real.
As object of desire, the real is inaccessible, although the human “desiring machine” is entirely
oriented toward it. Thus, Lacan argues, the real is linked to the unconscious. Contrary to what
the Enlightenment tradition claims, the real does not guarantee any solid, ontological ground for
human knowledge: the real, being the ultimate object of knowledge, can never be its subject, its
ground, its hypokeimenon. This insight defines the heart of modernity, as Lacan says again and
again over the course of his oeuvre: the real is not knowledge’s ground, but its unconscious kernel.
Knowledge, while being oriented toward this kernel, is concomitantly distanced from it.
This is why Lacan also interprets modern science as sublimation, as it gives freedom to human
desire (for knowledge) and allows it to endlessly encircle its final object without ever obtaining
it. Modern science “acknowledges” the unconscious (the unknowable real) as the very basis
for consciousness and knowledge, but only by paradoxically denying it. The unknowable (the
unconscious) is supposed to be, rather than function as its basis or kernel, something still must
be discovered. The moment of knowledge is now deferred to the future: we will know what
we still do not know. Science thus denies the inner limit upon which its own practice is built;
through the denial of the unconscious, or the unknown, as its ground, it denies any break with
the real — hence the limitlessness of modern science. Science chases after the real, while the real
constantly withdraws, turning this chase into a limitless and vain quest that is only satisfied in
an equally vain jouissance. Limitless science is certainly not without danger, evidenced in the
many catastrophes it precipitates. The twentieth century’s nuclear disasters, for instance, are
the result of an immeasurable scientific power that has been unable to face its own limits, the
result of a science that, in its jouissance, has lost itself. Capable of destroying everything, science
blinds itself from the fact that it is blowing away its own subject. In order to achieve such a goal,
it seems prepared to destroy mankind itself.
But Lacan admits that things are not so definitive. At a press conference in Rome on 29 October 1974 Lacan announced that he would soon speak about the relation of psychoanalysis to
religion, unambiguously asserting that it is either “psychoanalysis or religion,” literally claiming,
“if religion triumphs, psychoanalysis has failed.” 27 It is clear that, in Lacan’s eyes, psychoanalysis
should offer an alternative to religion, which brings him very close to Freud’s critique. A few
moments later, however, when asked how he would explain “the triumph of psychoanalysis over
religion,” Lacan retracts his statement, claiming that “psychoanalysis will never triumph over
religion. Religion is indestructible. Psychoanalysis will never triumph; it will survive or die.” 28
Contrary to Freud, Lacan seems to admit that religion has a future, or at the very least it will
remain the general horizon — even for psychoanalysis.
As Lacan later asserts at the press conference, religion will triumph over more than psychoanalysis. Since modernity has lost its foundation in the real, and now that the real no longer imposes
limits to science, sense has lost any ontological ground. It is no surprise that in our “scientific
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What is the status of Lacan’s own theory? Should it also be considered a sublimation that gives
room to desire? This is not what Lacan claims. Psychoanalysis is a science, though it is not the
kind of science that denies desire (by pretending to know its “nature” or “essence”). Psychoanalysis is, rather, the science of mapping desire, of constructing a topology of nodal points where
one can locate the subject hiding itself in the tricky games of the libidinal economy. Whereas
classical science still shares something in common with religion (functioning as a sublimation),
psychoanalytic science too rigidly maintains a “structural” way of analyzing desire. It seems,
therefore, that Lacanian theory is not ending up with religion.
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Religion, the second kind of sublimation that Lacan distinguishes, has a more accurate truthvalue. At the very least, it does not simply deny the unknowable kernel toward which human desire
points. Placing an unknowable God at the locus of this kernel, religion keeps desire consciously
unfulfilled and thus ongoing. It operates as a first recognition of the primacy of desire, but remains immature insofar as it lacks the clarity of an artistic sublimation, the third sublimation
that Lacan distinguishes. In his eyes, art is supposed to have the highest truth-value. Referring
to Greek tragedy, Lacan argues that art is the most explicit presentation of the impossibility of
desire gaining access to its final object, and is therefore to be considered the least luring kind
of sublimation.
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times,” religion continues to play the role of “giving sense,” as this is what religion has traditionally done: in guaranteeing the human being a foundation in the real, it gives him and his life a
real sense. The understanding of what “real sense” really is, however, can only come from critical
theories like psychoanalysis, which allow one to face the real as that which is beyond reality (that
is, beyond the symbolic order). Amongst the “sciences,” only psychoanalysis and certain other
critical theories are able to show the real as the sovereign senselessness that our desire is aiming
at. Is this not what Lacanian jouissance is all about? Perhaps this is the background for the next
question at Lacan’s press conference. After being asked, “will psychoanalysis become religion?”
Lacan replies, “I hope not, but perhaps it will become a religion, who knows, why not?” 29
Lacan knows that if psychoanalysis were to become a religion it then would cease being psychoanalysis. Considering the impossible real as a kind of hidden sense, and pretending to have
knowledge of the unconscious, coincides with denying it. For, psychoanalysis is not knowledge
of the unconscious, it is a knowledge that knows it begins from, and is based upon, that which is
impossible to know. In this respect, psychoanalysis is a symptom of history, or more precisely a
symptom of modernity’s discovery of the real as inaccessible and impossible. This is what Lacan
all-too-briefly explains in his response to the question at the press conference. Psychoanalysis
is indeed only a symptom, as modernity denies this discovery in believing that it will be able to
gain full knowledge of the real. That is why the impossible real only appears in the margin of
modernity’s ideologies and sciences; the real only appears in symptoms, just as symptoms are
the only way in which the real comes into our world. From this perspective, psychoanalysis is
one of the few sciences or critical theories to take symptoms seriously. It redefines science as
that which proceeds from the primacy of the symptom (that is, from the primacy of the abnormal
over the normal).
“A symptom taking symptoms seriously”: an accurate description of the paradoxical position
that psychoanalysis (and perhaps contemporary criticism, in general) is in. Such a characterization shows, at the same time, the inherent weakness of its critical gesture. For, what is the truthvalue of a critique taking symptoms — the real — seriously, if it is itself a symptom? How could
this kind of critique have any ground, any support at all? Could it ever be something more than
a symptomatic and transient moment that lasts merely as long as the symptom it “affirmatively”
criticizes? Lacan frankly acknowledges this: 30 as a “science of the real,” psychoanalytic criticism
cannot give sense to the symptom it analyzes, although this symptom is the only access we have
to the inaccessible real. Psychoanalytic criticism can only decenter the “normal” knowledge of
the real, without ever being able to come to a “real” knowledge of the real.
We thus face a weakness similar to the one at work in the heart of monotheistic religion. Insofar
as monotheism criticizes human belief in gods or God, but is itself unable to achieve any contact
with a real God or with the “real” for which God is a name, it criticizes all supposed knowledge.
But its critique lacks any real support, and has no real alternative to promote. This is, at least, the
aporia to which monotheism leads us. In the final analysis, this kind of critique only decenters
what it criticizes: it deprives knowledge of its supposed center, the locus where it presumes to
meet itself, the full (Cartesian) subject of its own knowledge. But monotheistic criticism offers
no other alternative than God. The real God, so they claim, is the one who asks only for the belief
that no existing idea of God or any idea of a non-existing God is God. This paradox is at the very
core of monotheistic criticism and is its weakness insofar as its criticism can easily be transformed
into an absolute power. In taking the position of this unknowable God, I could pretend to know
and control everything and everyone. Monotheism’s radical weakness can turn into a deceptive
way to claim an almighty position. This is the perverse core of monotheism, which has become
manifest over the course of its history. Perhaps this is why the real — the really critical — monotheism can be found only in the margins, or in the symptoms of its history.
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Lacanian criticism — indeed, any modern or postmodern criticism — should not confess to
be a “proven religion,” like Comte’s positivism once did. Nor should it simply act like a critical
religion — that is, like monotheism — though it should be aware that it is not simply beyond
monotheism. It shares monotheism’s weakness. To remain attentive to this weakness, such criticism should continue to reflect on its monotheistic background.
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Lacanian criticism explicitly aims to be weaker than monotheism’s weakness. Unlike monotheistic criticism, which still hopes that its weak position will turn out to be the strong messianic
position that God supports and allows to speak in His almighty name, Lacanian criticism refuses
both hope and non-hope. Speaking in the name of this weakness could turn it into a hidden
absolute power. If Lacanian criticism can only ever celebrate its own critical gesture, this would
serve to emphasize its decentering character. Inheriting the weakness of monotheistic critique,
psychoanalysis attempts to be truly weak, for it does not take over the “sublating” moment.
Nevertheless it supposes or “hopes” that such weakness is more “real,” more respectful of the
impossibility of the real. In this supposition its criticism has not surpassed monotheism, though
it resists falling into the typically monotheist traps that we have examined.
This essay was originally presented as a lecture at “Ending Up
With Religion Again? Christianity in Contemporary Political and
Psychoanalytical Theory,” conference organized by Heyendaal
Instituut K.U.Nijmegen and Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht,
10 May 2004.
1.
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
(hereafter S.E.), ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London:
Hogarth Press, 1953-1974), 21: 32-33. Subsequent references
will appear parenthetically within the text.
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136
2. Jacques Lacan to Marc Lacan, 7 April 1953. <http://www.
lutecium.org/Jacques_Lacan/transcriptiosn/scans_lacan/lettre_07_04_53/lettre_jacques_marc_07_04_53.htm> (1 May
2005). [Editor’s translation.]
3. The shift from “positive philosophy” to “positivism” occurred in
the revolutionary year of 1848, when Comte published Discours
sur l’ensemble du positivisme and created his International
Positivist Society. See Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism, trans. J.H. Bridges (New York: R. Speller, 1957).
4. Henri Gouhier, La vie d’Auguste Comte (Paris: Vrin, 1965),
245.
5. Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion, trans. Richard
Congreve (Clifton, N.J.: A.M. Kelley, 1973), 4. [Translation
modified.]
6. Patrick Tacussel, “Auguste Comte, l’oeuvre vécue,” in Comte,
Calendrier positiviste, ou système généralé de commémoration publique, ed. Tacussel (Paris: Éditions Fata Morgana,
1993), 49.
on the Letter to the Romans, trans. Patricia Dailey (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2005); and Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile
Absolute, or, Why is the Christian Legacy worth fighting for?
(London: Verso, 2000).
9. “Do not let the oppressed retreat in disgrace; may the poor and
needy praise your name” (Ps. 74: 21). See also Exod. 22: 22;
Deut. 10: 18; and Ps. 10: 14.
10. Here the interruption of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22)
is often mentioned. For a critique of the idea that monotheism,
particularly Christianity, is beyond the logic of human sacrifice
see Manuel de Diéguez, L’idole monothéiste (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1981).
11. Diéguez characterizes Catholicism and the Sacrifice of the
Mass as a “a practically tangible system of exchange with
divine power,” suggesting that the Christian idea of incarnation re-initiates a kind of life/death traffic. Ibid., 46. [Editor’s
translation.]
12. This is, for instance, why Zeus and the other gods could not
simply kill the original androgyne humans at the moment they
began to attack the gods. As Aristophanes explains in Plato’s
Symposium, “Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should
they kill them and annihilate the [androgyne] race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an
end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them;
but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence
to be unrestrained.” The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 521-522.
7. See Lucien Scubla, “Les hommes peuvent-ils se passer de toute
religion? Coup d’oeil sur les tribulations du religieux en Occident depuis trois siècles,” La Revue du MAUSS 22 (summer
2003): 90-117.
13. “O great woe! / God himself lies dead”: Hegel cites a hymn
written in 1641 by Johannes Rist in Lectures on the Philosophy
of Religion, vol. 3, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R.F. Brown,
P.C. Hodgson, and J.M. Stewart (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985), 125. See also Jean Wahl, Le malheur
de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1951), 73.
8. See Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism,
trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003);
Giorgio Agamben, The Time that Remains: A Commentary
14. Similarly, traditional Christian painting found in the dogmatic
idea of God not a restriction, but a real stimulus for free art.
“Deleuze suggests…[that] in the hands of great painters like
El Greco, Tintoretto and Giotto, this [theological] constraint
became the condition of a radical emancipation: in painting
the divine, one could take literally the idea that God must not
be represented, an idea that resulted in an extraordinary liberation of line, colour, form, and movement. With God, painting
found a freedom it would not have had otherwise — a properly
pictorial atheism.” Daniel W. Smith, “The doctrine of univocity:
Deleuze’s ontology of immanence,” in Deleuze and Religion,
ed. Mary Bryden (New York: Routledge, 2001), 167.
15. See also Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Deconstruction of Christianity,”
trans. Simon Sparks, in Religion and Media, ed. Hent de Vries
and Samuel Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001),
112-130.
18. “If the application of the psycho-analytic method makes is
possible to find a new argument against the truths of religion,
tant pis for religion; but defenders of religion will by the same
right make use of psycho-analysis in order to give full value to
the affective significance of religious doctrines.” Ibid., 37.
19. Freud continues, “Perhaps the effect of the religious prohibition
of thought may not be so bad as I suppose; perhaps it will turn
out that human nature remains the same even if education is
not abused in order to subject people to religion. I do not know
and you do not know it either. It is not only the great problems
of this live that seem insoluble at the present time; many lesser
questions too are difficult to answer.” Ibid., 48.
20. “But we do not publish this rational explanation of the prohibition against murder. We assert that the prohibition has been
issued by God. Thus we take it upon ourselves to guess His
intentions, and we find that He, too, is unwilling for men to
exterminate one another. In behaving in this way we are investing the cultural prohibition with a quite special solemnity, but
at the same time we risk making its observance dependent on
22. Ibid., 112.
23. See Lacan, “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of
Desire,” in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 2002),
304.
24. Or, as Žižek puts it in his analysis of the biblical figure of Job,
the Other (in this case, God) is “impotent.” See The Puppet and
the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2003), 125-127.
25. Georges Bataille, La souverainité, in Oeuvres complètes VIII
(Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 456. [My translation.] On Bataille’s
influence on Lacan, see Jean-François de Sauverzac, Le désir
sans foi ni loi: Lecture de Lacan (Paris: Aubien, 2000), 2160.
26. Lacan, “Conférence de presse du docteur Jacques Lacan au
Centre culturel français, Rome, le 29 octobre 1974,” Lettres de
l’École freudienne 16 (1975): 14. (All quotations from this text
are the editor’s translation.)
27. Psychoanalysis and religion “are not very amicable. In sum,
it is either the one or the other. If religion triumphs, the most
probable outcome, I mean the true religion, for there is only a
single true one, if religion triumphs, this will be the sign that
psychoanalysis has failed.” Ibid., 7.
28. Ibid., 13.
29. Ibid., 14.
30. “For a brief moment, one could perceive what the intrusion of
the real is. The analyst, he tarries there. He is there as a symptom, and he can only endure in the form of a symptom.” Ibid.,
15.
137
17. “I still maintain that what I have written is quite harmless in
one respect. No believer will let himself be led astray from his
faith by these or any similar arguments.” Ibid., 47.
21. See Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics
of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans.
Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1992), 191-204.
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16. Recall Freud’s plea for non-religious education in S.E. 21: 4748.
belief in God. If we retrace this step…then, it is true, we have
renounced the transfiguration of the cultural prohibition, but
we have also avoided the risk to it.” Ibid., 40-41.
REVIEWS
138
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THE POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF PAUL
Jacob Taubes
trans. Dana Hollander (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 166 pp.
In recent years, the apostle Paul has become
the subject of study by a number of European
philosophers, among them Badiou, Agamben,
and Žižek. Each has found in Paul a legacy too
precious to be left in the custody of Protestant theologians. Jacob Taubes (1923-1987),
in particular, managed to work through the
reception history of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, extracting entirely new contexts that
make readable the Jewish messianic features
obliterated by Christianity. An ordained rabbi,
philosopher, and historian of religion, Taubes
was also a professed “Paulinist” (88) interested in “religious psychology” (10). In this,
his closest allies were Freud and Benjamin,
though it was Carl Schmitt, his adversary, who
made him promise to publish on Paul.
From the start Taubes makes clear that
Paul must be understood in the horizon of a
“messianic logic” internal to Judaism, proof
of which he gives by a reference to Sabbatianism, a seventeenth-century movement of
Jewish messianism formed around Sabbatai
Zvi whose story Gershom Scholem, Taubes’
teacher, reconstructed in Major Trends in
Jewish Mysticism (1941). Outdoing the crucifixion of Jesus, Sabbatai Zvi’s unexpected
conversion to Islam “demanded a faith that
is paradoxical” (10) and a doctrine that was
promptly given by the cabbalistic prophet,
Nathan of Gaza. As a Jewish drama of messianism, it recalls the faith in the Resurrected
One which Paul’s Christology explains, bearing in mind that christos is Greek for Hebrew
meshiah. For Taubes, precisely this shared
“faith in which man converts” (6) is “the center of messianic logic” (7), transforming both
the Jewish faith in the covenant (emunah) and
the standard Greek notion of faith (pistis). By
appealing to an “inner logic of the messianic”
(10), Paul is seen to restore a particular Jewish
legacy later obscured by Christianity.
In the first part of the book, Taubes reads
the Epistle to the Romans as Paul’s founding
document for “legitimating a new people of
God” (28), surpassing Moses. From the address, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called
to be an apostle” (Rom. 1:1), he draws a reference to Jeremiah, showing that Paul invokes
a biblical tradition of prophetic calling. As “a
zealot and Diaspora Jew” (20), Paul is placed
in the context of that political messianism that
opposed the Roman occupation of Judea, and
Taubes elicits from the Epistle “a political
theology, a political declaration of war on the
Caesar” (16). Raising the crucial question as to
what law Paul’s critique is directed, he notes
that Paul’s concept of law “is a compromise
formula for the Imperium Romanum” (23),
incorporating under its imperial concept the
diversity of ethnic laws as religio licita, as
American imperialism is doing today. Paul’s
Pharisaic zeal is to suspend all claims to
political order by a messianic revolt of delegitimation, “a transvaluation of values” that
“turns Jewish-Roman-Hellenistic upper-class
theology on its head” (24).
In reading Romans 9, Paul is seen to repeat
the Mosaic gesture of including all of Israel in
In the book’s second part, Taubes measures
the effects of Paul on those authors who have
transformed the “force of pneumatics” in the
course of secularization. In tracing what he
calls the “transfigurations of the Messianic”
(55), Taubes reveals a secret reception history that has survived into modernity. First,
Paul’s emphasis on love is shown to stress a
need for communality, countering the rising
Gnostic tendency that “each is perfect for himself” (56). The historical crossroad was this:
if apocalypticism is the possible answer to a
situation “when prophecy fails,” then gnosis is
the answer to the situation “when apocalypticism fails.”2 In the second century, Marcion, a
disciple of Paul, offered an ingenious solution
139
In “outbidding Moses” (39), Paul became
“an apostle of the Jews to the Gentiles” (47),
whose universal project hinged on a notion of
spirit (pneuma) that differs as sharply from
the non-messianic, Greek sense of pneuma
as from the Church dogma of spiritus sanctus. Taubes’ interest in “pneumatics as life
experience” (44) is the “force that transforms
a people and that transforms a text” (45). The
Pauline notion of pneuma, “discredited” by
Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, was last taken
seriously by Hegel in the Phenomenology of
Spirit: “Spirit” is “the most sublime concept
and the one which belongs to the modern age
and its religion.” 1 In this, Taubes recognizes
Hegel’s “world-spirit” “as a positive, as hypostasis” (43) that consciously reverses the
values of Paul assigned to the “spirit of the
world” and the “Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:12).
“World-spirit,” in Hegel, “exists as a polemical
concept against Paul” — “it is in Napoleon on
horseback that history is concentrated” (43).
Calling those Jews who refuse to accept
the Gospel “enemies” (Rom. 11:28), Paul had
long been interpreted in a tradition of Church
anti-Semitism that found in Carl Schmitt
a modern political voice: “the distinction
between friend and enemy” is “the core of
the political,” as he states in Theory of the
Partisan. On this point, Taubes rejoins that
Paul’s continuation — “but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their
forefathers” (Rom. 11:28) — shows Israel not
to be abandoned but made “jealous” (Rom.
10:19) by the inclusion of the Gentiles into
“all Israel” (Rom. 9:6), a “union-covenant” or
social “body in Christ” that undermines the
Roman Empire by the single commandment
of loving one’s neighbor. “Enemy,” moreover,
is not the Latin hostis as Schmitt believed but
translated in the Vulgate as inimicus, which
refers to the “historical enemies of God” (51)
in regard to salvation.
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salvation: “For I could wish that I myself were
accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake
of my brethren, my kinsmen by race. They
are Israelites” (Rom. 9:3-4). Desiring to be
accursed for those who reject the Messiah is
modelled on Exodus 32, where Moses pleads
with God for mercy after the Israelites rejected
the Law: “And yet, if it pleased you to forgive
their sin — if not, please blot me out of the
book you have written” (Exod. 32:32). This
is “the primal scene” (47) that Taubes finds
reenacted in Paul’s drama of founding a new
people of God, a “pas Israel” (38) as well as in
the Yom Kippur liturgy, when God’s curse and
its suspension are ritually endured.
140
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to “a crisis of the concrete messianism that
reached its height in the Bar-Kochba revolt”
(181) against the Romans. The Father of Jesus, from whom redemption can be expected,
was conceived to be different from the Old
Testament God, responsible for the flaws of
creation. Although the tear, “emphasized by
Marcion in the ingenuity of error” (61), was
repaired by the Church Fathers, forming
an allegorical concordance between the Old
and the New Testament, Taubes shows its
significance for the Protestant attacks on the
Old Testament. Liberal Protestantism, from
Luther to Harnack, inherited a canon that it
continued to resent but did not dare to reject,
until in 1933 it “couldn’t pass the test” (61).
But the synthesis of “cultural Protestantism” (62) broke down already in World War
I when secularization was criticized by antiliberals such as Karl Barthes or Schmitt, who
transposed the Catholic model of sovereignty
into state law theory. In Political Theology,
Schmitt recognized that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of state are secularized theological concepts,” that “the state
of exception in jurisprudence is analogous to
the miracle in theology,” but he fills this lack
of legitimacy with a figure of charismatic sovereignty that decides on the state of exception:
the dictator.3 In an article on Schmitt, “An
Apocalyptician of Counterrevolution,” Taubes
explains that “Carl Schmitt thinks apocalyptically, but from above, from the powers; I think
from below.”4 It implies that Schmitt is on
the imperial side of apocalypticism, invoking
Paul’s figure of the katechon, “one who restrains” (2 Thess. 2:7), as confirmed by a diary
entry of December 19, 1947: “This position
has never been vacant; otherwise we would
no longer exist. Every great emperor of the
Christian Middle Ages believed himself to be
the katechon, and that’s what he was.” And in
1934, to advise Mussolini on how to “save the
state from the party” (70), Göring put Schmitt
and Heidegger on a night train to Rome.
In tracing the effects of Paul on Benjamin,
Taubes then shows that the Theologico-Political Fragment conceives the order of creation
(“the profane”) in relation to redemption
(“the messianic”), as Paul does in Romans 8.
For Benjamin, the Messiah ends history by
redeeming, completing, and creating its relation to the Messianic. A figure that has yet to
bring the two orders into a constellation, the
Messiah so denies the political significance of
a theocracy that seeks to found the profane
on the idea of the Divine Kingdom. It is why
Benjamin calls for a “world politics, whose
method must be called nihilism,” a conclusion
that Taubes traces to the Pauline hōs mē (“as
though not”) (1 Cor 7:29-31). Paul’s negative
political theology is compared to Benjamin’s
“idea of creation as decay” (72), as both insist
on transcendence as a “drawbridge” “from
the other side” (76): Paul in a struggle against
“Rome, where the aura is the cult of the emperors,” and Benjamin against the “ascendancies”
in the “aura of German Idealism” (73).
In Taubes’ genealogy of modernity, Spinoza,
Nietzsche, and Freud appear as proponents of
an immanent reality, in which metaphysical
notions such as God or soul are renegotiated.
First, Spinoza, whose Theologico-Political
Treatise (1670) is seen to secure the freedom
of philosophy from theology, canceling the
distinction of God and nature (deus sive
natura), while enlisting the service of Paul
as “chief witness from Scripture,” (77) so as
to develop a doctrine of predestination that
oscillates between a “Deus perspective” and
a “Nature perspective” (77).
1.
G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans.
A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1977), 14.
2. Jacob Taubes, Vom Kult zur Kultur: Bausteine zu einer Kritik der historischen Vernunft
(München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996),
180.
3. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Soverignty, trans.
George Schwab (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press,
1985), 36.
4. Taubes, “Carl Schmitt – ein Apokalptyker der
Gegenrevolution,” in Ad Carl Schmitt: Gegenstrebige Fügung (Berlin: Merve, 1987), 22.
5. Taubus, “Religion and the Future of Psychoanalysis,” in Psychoanalysis and the Future:
A Centenary Commemoration of the Birth
of Sigmund Freud, special double issue of
Psychoanalysis 4.4-5.1 (1957): 139.
6. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism
in The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works, ed. and trans. James
Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth Press, 19531974), 23: 135.
141
In closing, Taubes reads Freud’s Moses
and Monotheism as surpassing the doctrine
of “original sin”: “No one since Paul has so
clearly traced and so strongly emphasized the
urgent need to atone the act of original sin as
has Freud. It is by no means mere speculation to say that Freud conceived his theory
and therapy in analogy to the message Paul
preached to the gentiles.”5 Yet, as Paul traces
“sin” back to “Adam’s transgression” (Rom
6:14), Freud does so to the murder of Moses,
itself a powerful repetition of the events of the
primal horde. Paul’s “powerful distortion” of
“the unnameable crime” also implies a shift
in the possibility of redemption. 6 Taubes
recognizes that Paul “brings redemption
only phantasmatically, while Freud realizes
it through this new method of healing, which
— David Ratmoko
UMBR(a)
What Nietzsche then traces as a history of
décadence begins with Paul’s “slave morality”
that perpetuates a cycle of guilt, sacrifice, and
atonement. And though he seeks to step out
of the Pauline world, he offers his own “transvaluation of values” toward an “immanent
cosmos” (84), rid of the transcendental exception. His striving for human greatness, however, comes at the price of social hierarchy and
oppression that was natural in Greek antiquity.
“The question is,” Taubes insists, “whether you
think the exception is possible” (85).
is not only an individual method, but also
a theory of culture” (95). Agreeing with an
analytical reconstruction of history, Taubes
puts his own reception history of Paul fully
in the service of Freud: “In essence I have
done nothing more than to present to you
prolegomena to these passages in Freud,
under the yoke of philology” (94).
UMBR(a)
142
State of Exception
Giorgio Agamben
trans. Keven Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 95 pp.
At the outset of State of Exception, the sequel
to Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare
Life, Giorgio Agamben insists that the concept
of the state of exception must stand at the very
center of any consideration of law’s relation
to the political. If the state of exception represents a “no-man’s land between public law and
political fact, and between the juridical order
and life” (1), its paradoxical nature cannot be
grasped as a matter of the law temporarily
caving to “necessity.” Instead, the concept
seems to fracture the law from within, inscribing an essentially extra-legal moment into the
law itself. The state of exception thus bears a
family resemblance to other limit-concepts
in the field of law — for instance, the “right
of resistance” guaranteed under a draft of
the current Italian constitution (10), which
begs a similarly troublesome question: how
can a constitution legislate the terms of its
own abolition?
The stakes of theorizing the state of exception are at an all-time high, Agamben argues,
given the zeal with which contemporary
democratic states are voluntarily adopting a
“permanent state of emergency” as the paradigm of government (2). Guantánamo Bay
serves as Agamben’s concrete illustration of
this no-man’s land in which the law extends
its sway over subjects by suspending itself.
President Bush’s order of 13 November, 2001,
which instituted the nebulous legal category
of the “detainee” (who is neither a prisoner
of war with rights under the Geneva Convention, nor a suspect of a crime under American
law) “radically erases any legal status of the
individual, thus producing a legally unnamable and unclassifiable being” (3), creating a
situation whose closest analogy, the author
notes, would be the “legal situation of the
Jews in the Nazi Lager” (4). While Agamben’s
text restraints itself from making more than
a handful of explicit references to the contemporary (post-9/11) political context, the
author clearly intends for his remarks on the
state of exception to be read as a direct intervention in this context, a harrowing “situation
in which the emergency becomes the rule, and
the very distinction between peace and war
(and between foreign and civil war) becomes
impossible” (22).
The author proceeds to offer an abbreviated
but careful history of the state of exception’s
development as a legal concept in the modern
West, as well as a critique of how its inherent
contradictions have been ignored or hastily
smoothed over by previous legal scholars and
jurists (including Carl Friedrich, Clinton Rossiter, Herbert Tingsten, and Santi Romano).
The crucial period for Agamben’s analysis
lies between the two world wars, when an
“unprecedented generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal technique of
government” (14) led the legislative bodies of
Western democracies to grant ever-expanding
“special powers” to their respective executive branches. Given this context, the state
The state of exception involves, then, the
law’s constitution of a relation to the beyond
of law. The law is deactivated, whereby a “zone
of anomie” (50) is established, because the
“unthinkable” lawless other of the law “nevertheless has a decisive strategic relevance for
the juridical order and must not be allowed to
slip away at any cost” (51). The key problem
here is that this anomie that the law attempts
to master through the state of exception is
“life” itself. The state of exception attempts
to mediate two irreducible elements, life and
law, through the establishment of a fiction
(e.g., a fictional “state of siege”). As Agamben
suggests in his conclusion, life should not be
143
Agamben’s analysis of the state of exception brings him into nuanced dialogue with
familiar figures such as Carl Schmitt and
Walter Benjamin, but the real payoff of the
text is its “genealogical” investigation of less
familiar concepts drawn from Roman law,
especially, the iustitium. This provision of
Roman law, which the author cites as the
“archetype of the modern Ausnahmezustand
[state of exception]” (41), was both a temporary suspension of the law and an appeal to the
representatives of the people, or sometimes
even the people themselves, to save the state
in times of emergency — Agamben informs
us that the word itself means “when the law
stands still, just as [the sun does in] the solstice.” This institution is not to be confused
with dictatorship, where certain magistrates
are invested with extraordinary powers, but
is rather something like its opposite: a suspension of the laws that customarily limited
the powers of state authorities. The modern
state of exception, Agamben argues, has the
same structure as the Roman iustitium: the
former “is not defined as a fullness of powers,
a pleromatic state of law, as in the dictatorial
model, but as a kenomatic state, an emptiness
and standstill of the law” (48).
UMBR(a)
of exception should be understood not as an
alarming tendency of democratic regimes to
adopt “totalitarian” strategies to control their
populations in moments of crisis, but rather,
as the logical development of an aporia imbedded within the law itself. In an interesting
comparison of modern and medieval legal
theory, Agamben argues that “necessity” has
only recently become an all-purpose justification for positing the state of exception: “The
idea that a suspension of law may be necessary for the common good is foreign to the
medieval world” (26). Necessity becomes the
very ground of the law in modernity, but the
law seems to have forgotten that necessity itself
is a completely subjective notion, “something
undecidable in fact and law” (30). It is in the
nature of law to admit lacunae — a judge is traditionally obligated to render a decision even
if the law does not appear to cover a particular
case, and thus acts as if the juridical order
can answer all cases, even if the law cannot.
The state of exception, though, extends this
principle beyond the juridical order, inscribing a lacuna in the relation between the law
and all possible points of application in reality, thus “creating a zone in which application
is suspended, but the law [la legge], as such,
remains in force” (31).
Agamben’s new book accomplishes a great
deal in its few short chapters. He demonstrates convincingly that this strange fiction
of the state of exception has become the
predominant mode of power’s deployment
in our era, and suggests (via an especially
skillful reading of Benjamin) the conditions
for its dismantling. While the text draws only
implicit links to Agamben’s previous work on
the mechanisms of biopower, the author locates a basic topological structure in the state
of exception that can rather easily be placed
within a series of previous concepts he has
investigated (homo sacer, the camp, and so
on). The author’s analysis of Schmitt is also
quite dexterous, as the latter receives credit for
discovering the essential paradoxes embedded
in the concept of the state of exception, only to
be taken to task for resolving them too neatly.
The erudite history lesson on western democracies’ transformation into states of exception
itself makes the book valuable reading.
rather a disharmony between the historical
and the philosophical modes of discourse
that Agamben uses in the text. On the one
hand, from his analysis of historical and legal
materials, he seems to want to indicate with
horror how the state of exception has become a
permanent state of affairs in recent years. We
are meant to discern in the USA Patriot Act
and Guantánamo Bay a chilling new development in law’s regulation of life, or at least an
example of a western democracy orchestrating
a fictive emergency in a way that can only be
compared to the treatment of the Jews under
the Third Reich. On the other hand, in the
course of his structural analysis of the state
of exception (and its avatars, such as the Roman iustitium), he appears fascinated by a
topological arrangement (“the inclusion and
capture of a space that is neither outside nor
inside” [35]) that has, it seems, little relevance
to the political situation that so obviously fills
him with dread. In other words, the structural
problem (of the law as such attempting to
encompass life through the state of exception)
and the historical problem (of the arrival of a
permanent state of exception in western democracies) are treated in a way that leaves one
questioning whether the state of exception (in
its current, fully developed form) is the legacy
of Roman law, post-French Revolution law,
or perhaps, the very structure of law itself.
There is an abiding awkwardness in the text
as Agamben shifts between the two modes of
analysis, even if he individually handles each
with considerable skill and learnedness.
My only qualm about State of Exception
concerns not a theoretical blind spot, but
— Alexei Di Orio
UMBR(a)
144
understood as an original quantity existing
prior to the law, which comes to regulate it
through the state of exception, but rather, life
only becomes discernible through its relation
to law: “the very possibility of distinguishing
life and law, anomie and nomos, coincides
with their articulation in the biopolitical machine” (87). Politics, the author concludes, is
the name of that which previously kept the two
concepts distinct and allowed us to discern
their non-relation, but has now been lost, as
the state of exception has “today reached its
maximum worldwide deployment.”
UMBR(a)
145
CONTRIBUTORS
146
UMBR(a)
SERGE ANDRÉ (1948-2003) was a psychoanalyst, theorist, and lecturer. He published many
texts, including What Does a Woman Want? (Other Press, 1999 [Seuil, 1995]), Flac: A Narrative
(Other Press, 2001 [Que, 2000]), and Devenir Psychanalyste...et le rester (Que, 2003).
LORENZO CHIESA is a Researcher in the Theory Department at the Jan van Eyck Academie
and wrote his doctoral thesis on Lacan’s theory of the subject in the Philosophy Department
at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Antonin Artaud: Towards a Body without
Organs (Verona: Ombre Corte, 2001), and is co-editor, with Dany Nobus, of Reading Seminar
VII (forthcoming). He has published numerous articles on Lacanian theory and is the editor and
translator of the Italian version of several books by Slavoj Žižek.
MARC DE KESEL teaches philosophy at Arteveldehogeschool Gent (in Belgium) and is a senior
researcher affiliated with Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen and the Jan van Eyck Academy (in The
Netherlands). Most of his writings concern continental philosophy (including Bataille, Lefort,
Derrida, Lacan, and Žižek). Eros & Ethics: Reading Jacques Lacan’s Seminar VII, an English
translation of his work on Lacan’s seminar on ethics, is forthcoming.
DOMINIEK HOENS teaches philosophy and the psychology of art at Arteveldehogeschool
Gent. He has published articles on psychoanalysis (affect, logical time, and the sinthome), Badiou (the subject, and love), and literature (Musil, and Duras). He is currently writing a book
on “love” in Lacan’s work.
CHRISTIAN JAMBET teaches philosophy at the lycée Jules Ferry, at the Institut d’Études Iraniennes (University of Paris III) and the École Pratique des Hautes Études. His major philosophical
works include La Logique des Orientaux: Henry Corbin et la science des formes (Seuil, 1983),
La Grande Résurrection d’Alamût: les formes de la liberté dans le shî’isme ismaélien (Verdier,
1990), and L’Acte d’être: la philosophie de la révélation chez Mollâ Sadrâ (Fayard, 2002).
PHILIPPE LACOUE-LABARTHE is a philosopher, literary critic, and translator. He teaches
philosophy and aesthetics at the University of Strasbourg. His works translated into English
include Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics (Stanford University Press, 1989), and The
Subject of Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
TRACY MCNULTY is Assistant Professor of French Literature at Cornell University. She
has published essays on Jacques Lacan, Pierre Klossowski, Alain Badiou, Saint Paul, Friedrich
Nietzsche, and the Hebrew Bible. She recently completed a book manuscript entitled The Hostess, My Neighbor: Hospitality and the Expropriation of Identity, and is co-editing a volume of
essays by Pierre Klossowski for University of Minnesota Press.
KENNETH REINHARD is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at
UCLA. He is the author, with Slavoj Žižek and Eric Santner, of The Neighbor: Three Inquiries
in Political Theology (University of Chicago Press, 2005), and with Julia Reinhard Lupton, of
After Oedipus: Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis (Cornell University Press, 1993), as well as articles
on Freud, Lacan, Levinas, Henry James, Jewish Studies, and the Bible. Currently he is writing a
book on the political theology of the neighbor in religion (Torah, Talmud, and Patristic writings),
philosophy (Kant, Kierkegaard, Adorno, Rosenzweig, and Levinas), and psychoanalysis (Freud
and Lacan) for Princeton University Press.
ALBERTO TOSCANO is a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College, London. He is a member
of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process at Goldsmiths and sits on the editorial
board of Historical Materialism. He is the author of The Theatre of Production (Palgrave, 2005)
and the co-editor of Alain Badiou’s Theoretical Writings (Continuum, 2004) and On Beckett
(Clinamen, 2003). He is currently researching a book on communism and philosophy.
UMBR(a)
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CALL FOR PAPERS
UMBR (a) 2006
THE INCURABLE
Freud exhausted his faculties, in the end, over the dilemma of the “negative therapeutic reaction.” After ceaseless encounters with his patients’ “resistance against
the uncovering of resistances,” he effectively discovered the structural impasse of
castration, and ultimately exposed the limitations psychoanalysis encumbers when
approached as the means for a final cure. Following Freud’s deadlock, an extimate
point was isolated by Lacan as the “incurable truth” of the subject, forcing analysis to even further divulge the secret of its project: rather than seek the surgical
removal of analysands’ symptoms, knowledge of the incurable revealed that the
only end analysis could pursue was the establishment of conditions that insured its
own failure. Insisting on the impossibility of offering rehabilitation, undoubtedly,
provokes greater hostility and resistance toward analysis, insofar as our political
and economic devices seem to be constrained by a passion for recklessly employing
new “cures” for social ills. The question remains, however, whether the continual
affirmation of the incurable can provide psychoanalytic knowledge with a specificity
that separates it from other critical and political discourses.
To what extent does the incurable mark the point at which the clinical and the
political intersect? Can we speak of a politics of the incurable? Can the affectivity
of the incurable, evident in both the experience and logic underpinning psychoanalysis, provide a universal dimension capable of imagining political and social
acts that resist the metonymic play of differences that repeatedly keep us transfixed
to particular cultural symptoms? Does impossibility and impotence — as they are
conceptualized in Lacan’s later work — allow us to conceptualize a subject that
breaks with, or at least establishes a distance from, the repetition of the death drive
that is left unimpeded when social fantasies are built around autonomy? Can the
fundamental need for fantasy ever be truly surmounted, when what is at stake is
the construction of a discourse that seeks to preserve a space for encountering the
incurable? What are the necessary conditions for confronting the real status of the
incurable, today, when faced with such widespread attempts to forget it?
UMBR(a): A Journal of the Unconscious is currently seeking articles that address
such issues. Submissions should be 1,500-6,000 words in length, must be submitted
on disk (MSWord) and in hard copy, and must be received no later than December
31, 2005. Please send all submissions to:
UMBR(a)
c/o Andrew Skomra and Sorin Cucu
Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture
408 Clemens Hall
Buffalo, New York 14260-4610
UMBR(a)
148
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE
RELIGIOUS (RE)TURN
UPCOMING ISSUES
IV:2 2004
IMAGINARIES
IV:1 2004
JEANNE SCHROEDER &
DAVID GRAY CARLSON
DOES GOD EXIST?
HEGEL AND THINGS
V:1 2005
GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AUJOURD’HUI
MANYA STEINKOLER
TANGO TERMINABLE AND
INTERMINABLE
JESSICA DATEMA
THE TANGO LESSON AS
TRIPTYCH
Paul Gauguin • Vision After the Sermon: Jacob
Wrestling with the Angel • National Gallery of
Scotland 1888
(a)
©
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cultur
f
o
l
urna
cious
s
n
o
the jo
c
he un
and t
KIRSTEN HYLDGAARD
THE IMPASSE OF LOVE:
LACAN AND SARTRE
LILIAN MUNK RÖSING
THE PHANTOM OF THE
FATHER AND THE
SINTHOME OF LOVE
DANIEL S. MACCANNELL
‘FALSE NORTH’: MILTON,
RELIGION AND THE
SCOTS
JUSTIN CLEMENS
THE PURLOINED VEIL:
NOTES ON AN IMAGE
© 2000 Juliet Flower MacCannell for the California Psychoanalytic Circle $25/year (2 issues); institutions $39/year
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