Post by cjm on May 20, 2017 18:36:56 GMT
Treinritnotas oor die voorafgaande fragment deur Breyten
Hierdie is een van die aantal titellose gedigte wat gevind word onder die opskrif
“Klein reis as stippelkoei van ‘n jaar se weggaan-
fragmente en hoe die pampoen vrot geword het”
Die “stippelkoei” is miskien ‘n verwysing na Opperman se gedig:
Sprokie van die spikkelkoei
Uit holtes van ’n boom
het kuddes vee gekom,
toe kies my broer
die spikkelkoei vir hom.
Ek stoot hom oor ’n krans,
hy val in ’n mik,
toe het ’n kraai
op die spikkelkoei gaan sit.
Smeer vet aan ’n klip,
korrel fyn, moenie kwes,
toe sak ’n duisend vere
noord, suid, oos, wes —
sak ’n duisend kraaie
oor die bloed, oor die klip . . .
O waar sal ek skuil
teen die stippels wat pik?
DJ Opperman
Uit holtes van ’n boom
het kuddes vee gekom,
toe kies my broer
die spikkelkoei vir hom.
Ek stoot hom oor ’n krans,
hy val in ’n mik,
toe het ’n kraai
op die spikkelkoei gaan sit.
Smeer vet aan ’n klip,
korrel fyn, moenie kwes,
toe sak ’n duisend vere
noord, suid, oos, wes —
sak ’n duisend kraaie
oor die bloed, oor die klip . . .
O waar sal ek skuil
teen die stippels wat pik?
DJ Opperman
Die reis waaroor Breyten skryf, word in die titel vergelyk met ‘n gesogte spikkelkoei. Die reis is moontlik ‘n afgelope lewensjaar want die datum aan die einde val op Breyten se verjaarsdag. Ek spekuleer: Sy tipe lewe is iets wat hy self gekies het, maar daarvoor boet hy op velerlei wyses (word oor die krans gestoot). Alles maar net tersyde en oppervlakkig want ek fokus baie eng slegs op die aangehaalde onderafdeling.
Die spesifieke fragment (gedig) wat my interesseer, beeld ‘n treinreis uit. Dit is dikwels ‘n gesogte agtergrond vir gedigte, stories en films. Miskien omdat dit ‘n soort glaskas skep waarin mense geplaas en hulle soos insekte in ‘n bottel beloer kan word terwyl ‘n deel van hule lewe verbygaan. Die lewe en die reis kom baie naby aanmekaar sonder dat die lewe metafories as ‘n reis beskryf hoef te word. In die onderstaande gedig van Eybers is die busrit ‘n soortgelyke kapsule.
Busrit in die aand
Elk langs sy yl weerkaatsing in die ruit
sit hulle suf, met monde moeg gesluit,
die werkers van die stad wat huis toe gaan.
Skaduwee-skimme gly verby . . . Dis laat
en lang ligvaandels wapper oor die straat
soos oor "n dam die blinkpad na die maan.
Ons ploeg deur stormsee met ons kaperskuit:
die stuurman aan die wiel, die passasiers die bult
wat ons as slawe huis toe bring vanaand . . .
Die vaartuig waggel afdraand, om die draai,
met skril gekners en skommelende swaai,
en hyg en skok en snork en swoeg opdraand
terwyl ons, soos twee kinders opgetoë,
mekaar toelag met glinsterende oë . . .
Asof hul jammerlik hul lot kan raai
sit hulle suf, met monde moeg gesluit,
elk langs sy yl weerkaatsing in die ruit,
die werkers van die stad wat huis toe gaan.
Elisabeth Eybers
Elk langs sy yl weerkaatsing in die ruit
sit hulle suf, met monde moeg gesluit,
die werkers van die stad wat huis toe gaan.
Skaduwee-skimme gly verby . . . Dis laat
en lang ligvaandels wapper oor die straat
soos oor "n dam die blinkpad na die maan.
Ons ploeg deur stormsee met ons kaperskuit:
die stuurman aan die wiel, die passasiers die bult
wat ons as slawe huis toe bring vanaand . . .
Die vaartuig waggel afdraand, om die draai,
met skril gekners en skommelende swaai,
en hyg en skok en snork en swoeg opdraand
terwyl ons, soos twee kinders opgetoë,
mekaar toelag met glinsterende oë . . .
Asof hul jammerlik hul lot kan raai
sit hulle suf, met monde moeg gesluit,
elk langs sy yl weerkaatsing in die ruit,
die werkers van die stad wat huis toe gaan.
Elisabeth Eybers
Nog een:
SOMERREIS
Die Baai se trein gly platform dertien binne.
Die bedjong draf vir laas met kussings, linne
en blou komberse in ’n bondel. Die remme steun.
Ek wink, terwyl ek uit die venster leun,
’n kruier nader wat met sy waentjie wag
en sien ’n Basoeto-klong met strooihoed lag
oor die fluitjie wat hy met sy lippe kielie.
Die ander trein wag al, en een-twee-drie
word koffers, kaste en tasse oorgedra
en skuiwe ons verder na Pretoria.
Ek sien die wyster oorkant spring na kwart oor ses.
’n Skooldogter repeteer haar les,
puntsgewys, met vingers een vir een,
en vorm woorde: ‘beton, graniet en steen’. ..
Vrypostig, los van been — kompleet ’n slet —
in wynrooi springjurk, hemp en swart baret.
Bliktrommeltjie tussen sy knieë geklem, in die verste
hoek, peusel ’n boertjie aan ’n ryp geelperske,
krap daarna met sy knipmes aan sy naels
en neurie ’n deuntjie in ’n vreemde koeterwaals.
As hy sien ek luister, lag hy met wit tande
en kyk verleë na die mielielande. . .
In reguit rye staan dit met saad en pluim-
vuurpyle wat bars, water wat kolk en skuim.
En êrens langs die spoor vang die eerste goud
van ’n vlamrooi son ’n kaffer, skraal en oud,
wat rondom sy vervalle goiingkroek
na houtjies vir die koffiewater soek.
Ek sien hoe name flits en weer verdwyn:
Isando, Kemptonpark en Kaalfontein. ..
Ek gaap - die koffie was vanmôre flou
en kon nie wakker maak - en vra my nou:
Wat bind my tog aan al dié vreemde mense,
elkeen verstrik in eie werk en wense -
dié ‘bedding’, bekfluit, kruier, dogter, boer,
dié outa wat so koulikrig sy rietjies roer?
Wat het ons met mekaar gemeen? Ek hoor
die wiele eentonig klop oor staaf en spoor
en met dié ritme kom die woorde los
en breek soos borrels in ’n kuip vol mos:
Ons het één land; ons praat dieselfde taal;
dieselfde dood sal my en hulle haal.
WEG Louw
Die Baai se trein gly platform dertien binne.
Die bedjong draf vir laas met kussings, linne
en blou komberse in ’n bondel. Die remme steun.
Ek wink, terwyl ek uit die venster leun,
’n kruier nader wat met sy waentjie wag
en sien ’n Basoeto-klong met strooihoed lag
oor die fluitjie wat hy met sy lippe kielie.
Die ander trein wag al, en een-twee-drie
word koffers, kaste en tasse oorgedra
en skuiwe ons verder na Pretoria.
Ek sien die wyster oorkant spring na kwart oor ses.
’n Skooldogter repeteer haar les,
puntsgewys, met vingers een vir een,
en vorm woorde: ‘beton, graniet en steen’. ..
Vrypostig, los van been — kompleet ’n slet —
in wynrooi springjurk, hemp en swart baret.
Bliktrommeltjie tussen sy knieë geklem, in die verste
hoek, peusel ’n boertjie aan ’n ryp geelperske,
krap daarna met sy knipmes aan sy naels
en neurie ’n deuntjie in ’n vreemde koeterwaals.
As hy sien ek luister, lag hy met wit tande
en kyk verleë na die mielielande. . .
In reguit rye staan dit met saad en pluim-
vuurpyle wat bars, water wat kolk en skuim.
En êrens langs die spoor vang die eerste goud
van ’n vlamrooi son ’n kaffer, skraal en oud,
wat rondom sy vervalle goiingkroek
na houtjies vir die koffiewater soek.
Ek sien hoe name flits en weer verdwyn:
Isando, Kemptonpark en Kaalfontein. ..
Ek gaap - die koffie was vanmôre flou
en kon nie wakker maak - en vra my nou:
Wat bind my tog aan al dié vreemde mense,
elkeen verstrik in eie werk en wense -
dié ‘bedding’, bekfluit, kruier, dogter, boer,
dié outa wat so koulikrig sy rietjies roer?
Wat het ons met mekaar gemeen? Ek hoor
die wiele eentonig klop oor staaf en spoor
en met dié ritme kom die woorde los
en breek soos borrels in ’n kuip vol mos:
Ons het één land; ons praat dieselfde taal;
dieselfde dood sal my en hulle haal.
WEG Louw
In Breyten se treinrit probeer ‘n vrypostige Breyten ‘n onbekende meisie beïndruk, fassineer en hipnotiseer met ‘n lang storie. Op die ou end bestaan die moontlikheid dat geen formele klankgedrewe kommunikasie tussen hulle plaasvind nie. Die meisie is of te oorbluf deur die aggresiewe toenadering of verstaan nie Afrikaans nie of gee voor dat sy dit nie verstaan nie. Kommunikasie is daar wel, maar op ‘n ander oer, sensuele vlak: die hand op die knie en die stortvloed betekenlose klanke.
Die meisie se reaksie is ietwat geveinsd. Totaal onbewus van sy primêre oogmerk kan sy tog nie wees nie. Na die vurige betoog moet haar aangesitte onkunde hom soos ‘n skoot koue water tref. Sy kon tog heelwat vroeër aangedui het dat sy nie ‘n woord verstaan nie. Hoe herhaal ‘n mens buitendien so iets met dieselfde presisie inhoud en emosie? Sy is waarskynlik ook gevlei deur sy toenadering, want sy lyk nie onwillig om die hele relaas weer aan te hoor nie. Miskien is dit bloot ‘n verskoning om langer sy aandag langer te geniet. Haar motiewe is ‘n geheim, behalwe vir haar en dalk ook die vryer. As agtergrond tot die toneel, is die verbyswiepende nagtelike landskap met ‘n dramatiese teenwoordigheid wat die hofmakery in intensiteit ewenaar. Die woorde “onsamehangende onverbiddelikheid” word by wyse van beklemtoning herhaal ten aansien van die doek waarteen die toneel hom afspeel. Die deurmekaar, vlietende landskappe, lig- en klankpulse, ewenaar die stortvloed woorde wat net leë klanke sonder direkte betekenis is. Ten beste is groot dele daarvan fiksie. Alles deel van hierdie tydlose ritueel van hofmaking. Die stortvloed betekenlose klanke beweeg in parallel met die onverbiddelike paringsdrange wat soos ‘n trein voortdonder. Die seksuele ondertoon van die gedigte vind ook uiting in die meisie se “ You’ll have to come again” - wat natuurlik op die seksuele vlak (soos op die vertellingsvlak) problematies vir die man kan wees.
Die meisie se houding verander soos sy “wegdraai van haar afbeelding in die ruit”. Tot op daardie stadium luister gedwee sy na die ontboeseming
met die hand op haar knie. Haar metamorfose is ewe skielik die van ‘n vrome engel en ‘n blinde uil wat kastig onkundig is oor wat daar aangaan, maar wat beheer van die situasie neem. Sy reageer met meerdere emosies op die aanlê by haar, maar bly blind vir die teenstellings daarvan.
Na my mening speel Breyten hier met ‘n aantal gedagtes. Eerstens is daar kommunikasie sonder formele taal. Tweedens is daar die verdeelde gedagtewêreld van die meisie, wie se werklikheid ‘n onwillekeurige vermenging van verskillende emosies en waarnemings is. Selfs die vryer se werklikheid bestaan uit ‘n onsamehangende sameflansing van diepliggende flertse geheue, drange en doelwitte. Hy is bewus van ‘n ander “ek” in die uitstorting van sy gedagtes. Derdens word die problematiek verbonde aan herhaling onderstreep: Dit is onmoontlik om ‘n oomblik presies en suiwer te herhaal – die oomblik self bestaan alreeds uit verskillende dele en is alles behalwe suiwer. ‘n Laaste gedagte behels die moontlikheid dat die meisie bloot voorgee dat sy Afrikaans nie verstaan nie. Indien sy wel veins, misbruik sy Afrikaans om haar greep op die vryer te versterk, net soos Afrikaans tans misbruik word om die ANC se greep op die land te behou.
My meer abstrakte opmerkings word geïnspireer deur Derrida se werke waarvan die volgende aanhaling ‘n kriptiese en onvolledige beeld bied, maar tog met sleutelwoorde wat Breyten direk gebruik:
Jacques Derrida
...
3. Basic Argumentation and its Implications: Time, Hearing-Oneself-Speak, the Secret, and Sovereignty
...
Already we are very close to Derrida's basic argumentation. The basic argumentation always attempts to show that no one is able to separate irreplaceable singularity and machine-like repeatability (or “iterability,” as Derrida frequently says) into two substances that stand outside of one another; nor is anyone able to reduce one to the other so that we would have one pure substance (with attributes or modifications). Machine-like repeatability and irreplaceable singularity, for Derrida, are like two forces that attract one another across a limit that is indeterminate and divisible.
...
So, let us start with the simplest argument that we can formulate. If we reflect on experience in general, what we cannot deny is that experience is conditioned by time. Every experience, necessarily, takes place in the present. In the present experience, there is the kernel or point of the now. What is happening right now is a kind of event, different from every other now I have ever experienced. Yet, also in the present, I remember the recent past and I anticipate what is about to happen. The memory and the anticipation consist in repeatability. Because what I experience now can be immediately recalled, it is repeatable and that repeatability therefore motivates me to anticipate the same thing happening again. Therefore, what is happening right now is also not different from every other now I have ever experienced. At the same time, the present experience is an event and it is not an event because it is repeatable. This “at the same time” is the crux of the matter for Derrida. The conclusion is that we can have no experience that does not essentially and inseparably contain these two agencies of event and repeatability.
This basic argument contains four important implications. First, experience as the experience of the present is never a simple experience of something present over and against me, right before my eyes as in an intuition; there is always another agency there. Repeatability contains what has passed away and is no longer present and what is about to come and is not yet present. The present therefore is always complicated by non-presence. Derrida calls this minimal repeatability found in every experience “the trace.” Indeed, the trace is a kind of proto-linguisticality (Derrida also calls it “arche-writing”), since language in its most minimal determination consists in repeatable forms. Second, the argument has disturbed the traditional structure of transcendental philosophy, which consists in a linear relation between foundational conditions and founded experience. In traditional transcendental philosophy (as in Kant for example), an empirical event such as what is happening right now is supposed to be derivative from or founded upon conditions which are not empirical. Yet, Derrida's basis argument demonstrates that the empirical event is a non-separable part of the structural or foundational conditions. Or, in traditional transcendental philosophy, the empirical event is supposed to be an accident that overcomes an essential structure. But with Derrida's argument, we see that this accident cannot be removed or eliminated. We can describe this second implication in still another way. In traditional philosophy we always speak of a kind of first principle or origin and that origin is always conceived as self-identical (again something like a Garden of Eden principle). Yet, here we see that the origin is immediately divided, as if the “fall” into division, accidents, and empirical events has always already taken place. In Of Spirit, Derrida calls this kind of origin “origin-heterogeneous”: the origin is heterogeneous immediately (Of Spirit, pp. 107-108). Third, if the origin is always heterogeneous, then nothing is ever given as such in certainty. Whatever is given is given as other than itself, as already past or as still to come. What becomes foundational therefore in Derrida is this “as”: origin as the heterogeneous “as.” The “as” means that there is no knowledge as such, there is no truth as such, there is no perception as such. Faith, perjury, and language are already there in the origin. Fourth, if something like a fall has always already taken place, has taken place essentially or necessarily, then every experience contains an aspect of lateness. It seems as though I am always late for the origin since it seems to have always already disappeared. Every experience then is always not quite on time or, as Derrida quotes Hamlet, time is “out of joint.” Late in his career, Derrida will call this time being out of joint “anachronism” (see for instance On the Name, p. 94). As we shall see in a moment, anachronism for Derrida is the flip side of what he calls “spacing” (espacement); space is out of place. But we should also keep in mind, as we move forward that the phrase “out of joint” alludes to justice: being out of joint, time is necessarily unjust or violent.
So far, we can say that the argument is quite simple although it has wide-ranging implications. It is based on an analysis of experience, but it is also based in the experience of what Derrida has called “auto-affection.” We find the idea of auto-affection (or self-affection) in ancient Greek philosophy, for example in Aristotle's definition of God as “thought thinking itself.” Auto-affection occurs when I affect myself, when the affecting is the same as the affected. As we said above, Derrida will frequently write about autobiography as a form of auto-affection or self-relation. In the very late The Animal that Therefore I am, Derrida tells us what he is trying to do with auto-affection: “if the auto-position, the automonstrative autotely of the ‘I,’ even in the human, implies the ‘I’ to be an other that must welcome within itself some irreducible hetero-affection (as I [that is, Derrida] have tried to demonstrate elsewhere [my emphasis]), then this autonomy of the ‘I’ can be neither pure nor rigorous; it would not be able to form the basis for a simple and linear differentiation of the human from the animal” (The Animal that Therefore I am, p. 95). Always, Derrida tries to show that auto-affection is hetero-affection; the experience of the same (I am thinking about myself) is the experience of the other (insofar as I think about myself I am thinking of someone or something else at the same time). But, in order to understand more fully the basic argumentation, let us look at three of these “other places” where Derrida has “attempted” to show that an irreducible hetero-affection infects auto-affection.
The first occurs in Voice and Phenomenon, Derrida's 1967 study of Husserl. Here, Derrida argues that, when Husserl describes lived-experience (Erlebnis), even absolute subjectivity, he is speaking of an interior monologue, auto-affection as hearing-oneself-speak. According to Derrida, hearing-oneself-speak is, for Husserl, “an auto-affection of an absolutely unique type” (Voice and Phenomenon, p. 67). It is unique because there seems to be no external detour from the hearing to the speaking; in hearing-oneself-speak there is self-proximity. It seems therefore that I hear myself speak immediately in the very moment that I am speaking. According to Derrida, Husserl's own description of temporalization however undermines the idea that I hear myself speak immediately. On the one hand, Husserl describes what he calls the “living present,” the present that I am experiencing right now, as being perception, and yet Husserl also says that the living present is thick. The living present is thick because it includes phases other than the now, in particular, what Husserl calls “protention,” the anticipation (or “awaiting,” we might say) of the approaching future and “retention,” the memory of the recent past. As is well known, Derrida focuses on the status of retention in Voice and Phenomenon. Retention in Husserl has a strange status since Husserl wants to include it in the present as a kind of perception and at the same time he recognizes that it is different from the present as a kind of non-perception. For Derrida, Husserl's descriptions imply that the living present, by always folding the recent past back into itself, by always folding memory into perception, involves a difference in the very middle of it (Voice and Phenomenon, p. 56). In other words, in the very moment, when silently I speak to myself, it must be the case that there is a miniscule hiatus differentiating me into the speaker and into the hearer. There must be a hiatus that differentiates me from myself, a hiatus or gap without which I would not be a hearer as well as a speaker. This hiatus also defines the trace, a minimal repeatability. And this hiatus, this fold of repetition, is found in the very moment of hearing-myself-speak. Derrida stresses that “moment” or “instant” translates the German “Augenblick,” which literally means “blink of the eye.” When Derrida stresses the literal meaning of “Augenblick,” he is in effect “deconstructing” auditory auto-affection into visual auto-affection. When I look in the mirror, for example, it is necessary that I am “distanced” or “spaced” from the mirror. I must be distanced from myself so that I am able to be both seer and seen. The space between, however, remains obstinately invisible. Remaining invisible, the space gouges out the eye, blinds it. I see myself over there in the mirror and yet, that self over there is other than me; so, I am not able to see myself as such. What Derrida is trying to demonstrate here is that this “spacing” (espacement) or blindness is essentially necessary for all forms of auto-affection, even tactile auto-affection which seems to be immediate.
Now, let us go to another “other place,” which can be found in “How to Avoid Speaking.” Here Derrida discusses negative theology by means of the idea of “dénégation,” “denegation” or “denial.” The French word “dénégation” translates Freud's term “Verneinung.” Both words' prefixes imply an emphasis of negation (although the French prefix also implies a negation of a negation). Yet, within psychoanalysis and in particular in Freud, the term ,“Verneinung” implies that when the patient denies a desire or wish, he or she has indicated to the analyst precisely what he or she unconsciously desires or wishes. The denial then functions as a sort of disguised confirmation of the analyst's interpretation of the patient's symptoms or problem. In short, and this is what Derrida is most interested in, psychoanalysis has isolated a negation which is in fact an affirmation. The fundamental question then for negative theology, but also for psychoanalysis, and for Derrida is how to deny and yet also not deny. This duality between not telling and telling is why Derrida takes up the idea of the secret. In “How to Avoid Speaking,” Derrida says, and this is an important comment for understanding the secret in Derrida: “There is a secret of denial [dénégation] and a denial [dénégation] of the secret. The secret as such, as secret, separates and already institutes a negativity; it is a negation that denies itself. It de-negates itself” (Languages of the Unsayable, p. 25, my emphasis). Here Derrida speaks of a secret as such. A secret as such is something that must not be spoken; we then have the first negation: “I promise not to give the secret away.” And yet, in order to possess a secret really, to have it really, I must tell it to myself. Here we can see the relation of hearing-oneself-speak that we just saw in Voice and Phenomenon. Keeping a secret includes necessarily auto-affection: I must speak to myself of the secret. We might however say more, we might even say that I am too weak for this speaking of the secret to myself not to happen. I must have a conceptual grasp of it; I have to frame a representation of the secret. With the idea of a re-presentation (I must present the secret to myself again in order to possess it really), we also see retention, repetition, and the trace or a name. A trace of the secret must be formed, in which case, the secret is in principle shareable. If the secret must be necessarily shareable, it is always already shared. In other words, in order to frame the representation of the secret, I must negate the first negation, in which I promised not to tell the secret: I must tell the secret to myself as if I were someone else. I thereby make a second negation, a so to speak “de-” or ”un-negation,” which means I must break the promise not to tell the secret. In order to keep the secret (or the promise), I must necessarily not keep the secret (I must violate the promise). So, I possess the secret and do not possess it. This structure has the consequence of there being no secret as such. A secret is necessarily shared. As Derrida says in “How to Avoid Speaking,
This denial [dénégation] does not happen [to the secret] by accident; it is essential and originary. … The enigma … is the sharing of the secret, and not only shared to my partner in the society but the secret shared within itself, its ‘own’ partition, which divides the essence of a secret that cannot even appear to one alone except in starting to be lost, to divulge itself, hence to dissimulate itself, as secret, in showing itself: dissimulating its dissimulation. There is no secret as such; I deny it. And this is what I confide in secret to whomever allies himself to me. This is the secret of the alliance. (Languages of the Unsayable, p. 25)
...
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3. Basic Argumentation and its Implications: Time, Hearing-Oneself-Speak, the Secret, and Sovereignty
...
Already we are very close to Derrida's basic argumentation. The basic argumentation always attempts to show that no one is able to separate irreplaceable singularity and machine-like repeatability (or “iterability,” as Derrida frequently says) into two substances that stand outside of one another; nor is anyone able to reduce one to the other so that we would have one pure substance (with attributes or modifications). Machine-like repeatability and irreplaceable singularity, for Derrida, are like two forces that attract one another across a limit that is indeterminate and divisible.
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So, let us start with the simplest argument that we can formulate. If we reflect on experience in general, what we cannot deny is that experience is conditioned by time. Every experience, necessarily, takes place in the present. In the present experience, there is the kernel or point of the now. What is happening right now is a kind of event, different from every other now I have ever experienced. Yet, also in the present, I remember the recent past and I anticipate what is about to happen. The memory and the anticipation consist in repeatability. Because what I experience now can be immediately recalled, it is repeatable and that repeatability therefore motivates me to anticipate the same thing happening again. Therefore, what is happening right now is also not different from every other now I have ever experienced. At the same time, the present experience is an event and it is not an event because it is repeatable. This “at the same time” is the crux of the matter for Derrida. The conclusion is that we can have no experience that does not essentially and inseparably contain these two agencies of event and repeatability.
This basic argument contains four important implications. First, experience as the experience of the present is never a simple experience of something present over and against me, right before my eyes as in an intuition; there is always another agency there. Repeatability contains what has passed away and is no longer present and what is about to come and is not yet present. The present therefore is always complicated by non-presence. Derrida calls this minimal repeatability found in every experience “the trace.” Indeed, the trace is a kind of proto-linguisticality (Derrida also calls it “arche-writing”), since language in its most minimal determination consists in repeatable forms. Second, the argument has disturbed the traditional structure of transcendental philosophy, which consists in a linear relation between foundational conditions and founded experience. In traditional transcendental philosophy (as in Kant for example), an empirical event such as what is happening right now is supposed to be derivative from or founded upon conditions which are not empirical. Yet, Derrida's basis argument demonstrates that the empirical event is a non-separable part of the structural or foundational conditions. Or, in traditional transcendental philosophy, the empirical event is supposed to be an accident that overcomes an essential structure. But with Derrida's argument, we see that this accident cannot be removed or eliminated. We can describe this second implication in still another way. In traditional philosophy we always speak of a kind of first principle or origin and that origin is always conceived as self-identical (again something like a Garden of Eden principle). Yet, here we see that the origin is immediately divided, as if the “fall” into division, accidents, and empirical events has always already taken place. In Of Spirit, Derrida calls this kind of origin “origin-heterogeneous”: the origin is heterogeneous immediately (Of Spirit, pp. 107-108). Third, if the origin is always heterogeneous, then nothing is ever given as such in certainty. Whatever is given is given as other than itself, as already past or as still to come. What becomes foundational therefore in Derrida is this “as”: origin as the heterogeneous “as.” The “as” means that there is no knowledge as such, there is no truth as such, there is no perception as such. Faith, perjury, and language are already there in the origin. Fourth, if something like a fall has always already taken place, has taken place essentially or necessarily, then every experience contains an aspect of lateness. It seems as though I am always late for the origin since it seems to have always already disappeared. Every experience then is always not quite on time or, as Derrida quotes Hamlet, time is “out of joint.” Late in his career, Derrida will call this time being out of joint “anachronism” (see for instance On the Name, p. 94). As we shall see in a moment, anachronism for Derrida is the flip side of what he calls “spacing” (espacement); space is out of place. But we should also keep in mind, as we move forward that the phrase “out of joint” alludes to justice: being out of joint, time is necessarily unjust or violent.
So far, we can say that the argument is quite simple although it has wide-ranging implications. It is based on an analysis of experience, but it is also based in the experience of what Derrida has called “auto-affection.” We find the idea of auto-affection (or self-affection) in ancient Greek philosophy, for example in Aristotle's definition of God as “thought thinking itself.” Auto-affection occurs when I affect myself, when the affecting is the same as the affected. As we said above, Derrida will frequently write about autobiography as a form of auto-affection or self-relation. In the very late The Animal that Therefore I am, Derrida tells us what he is trying to do with auto-affection: “if the auto-position, the automonstrative autotely of the ‘I,’ even in the human, implies the ‘I’ to be an other that must welcome within itself some irreducible hetero-affection (as I [that is, Derrida] have tried to demonstrate elsewhere [my emphasis]), then this autonomy of the ‘I’ can be neither pure nor rigorous; it would not be able to form the basis for a simple and linear differentiation of the human from the animal” (The Animal that Therefore I am, p. 95). Always, Derrida tries to show that auto-affection is hetero-affection; the experience of the same (I am thinking about myself) is the experience of the other (insofar as I think about myself I am thinking of someone or something else at the same time). But, in order to understand more fully the basic argumentation, let us look at three of these “other places” where Derrida has “attempted” to show that an irreducible hetero-affection infects auto-affection.
The first occurs in Voice and Phenomenon, Derrida's 1967 study of Husserl. Here, Derrida argues that, when Husserl describes lived-experience (Erlebnis), even absolute subjectivity, he is speaking of an interior monologue, auto-affection as hearing-oneself-speak. According to Derrida, hearing-oneself-speak is, for Husserl, “an auto-affection of an absolutely unique type” (Voice and Phenomenon, p. 67). It is unique because there seems to be no external detour from the hearing to the speaking; in hearing-oneself-speak there is self-proximity. It seems therefore that I hear myself speak immediately in the very moment that I am speaking. According to Derrida, Husserl's own description of temporalization however undermines the idea that I hear myself speak immediately. On the one hand, Husserl describes what he calls the “living present,” the present that I am experiencing right now, as being perception, and yet Husserl also says that the living present is thick. The living present is thick because it includes phases other than the now, in particular, what Husserl calls “protention,” the anticipation (or “awaiting,” we might say) of the approaching future and “retention,” the memory of the recent past. As is well known, Derrida focuses on the status of retention in Voice and Phenomenon. Retention in Husserl has a strange status since Husserl wants to include it in the present as a kind of perception and at the same time he recognizes that it is different from the present as a kind of non-perception. For Derrida, Husserl's descriptions imply that the living present, by always folding the recent past back into itself, by always folding memory into perception, involves a difference in the very middle of it (Voice and Phenomenon, p. 56). In other words, in the very moment, when silently I speak to myself, it must be the case that there is a miniscule hiatus differentiating me into the speaker and into the hearer. There must be a hiatus that differentiates me from myself, a hiatus or gap without which I would not be a hearer as well as a speaker. This hiatus also defines the trace, a minimal repeatability. And this hiatus, this fold of repetition, is found in the very moment of hearing-myself-speak. Derrida stresses that “moment” or “instant” translates the German “Augenblick,” which literally means “blink of the eye.” When Derrida stresses the literal meaning of “Augenblick,” he is in effect “deconstructing” auditory auto-affection into visual auto-affection. When I look in the mirror, for example, it is necessary that I am “distanced” or “spaced” from the mirror. I must be distanced from myself so that I am able to be both seer and seen. The space between, however, remains obstinately invisible. Remaining invisible, the space gouges out the eye, blinds it. I see myself over there in the mirror and yet, that self over there is other than me; so, I am not able to see myself as such. What Derrida is trying to demonstrate here is that this “spacing” (espacement) or blindness is essentially necessary for all forms of auto-affection, even tactile auto-affection which seems to be immediate.
Now, let us go to another “other place,” which can be found in “How to Avoid Speaking.” Here Derrida discusses negative theology by means of the idea of “dénégation,” “denegation” or “denial.” The French word “dénégation” translates Freud's term “Verneinung.” Both words' prefixes imply an emphasis of negation (although the French prefix also implies a negation of a negation). Yet, within psychoanalysis and in particular in Freud, the term ,“Verneinung” implies that when the patient denies a desire or wish, he or she has indicated to the analyst precisely what he or she unconsciously desires or wishes. The denial then functions as a sort of disguised confirmation of the analyst's interpretation of the patient's symptoms or problem. In short, and this is what Derrida is most interested in, psychoanalysis has isolated a negation which is in fact an affirmation. The fundamental question then for negative theology, but also for psychoanalysis, and for Derrida is how to deny and yet also not deny. This duality between not telling and telling is why Derrida takes up the idea of the secret. In “How to Avoid Speaking,” Derrida says, and this is an important comment for understanding the secret in Derrida: “There is a secret of denial [dénégation] and a denial [dénégation] of the secret. The secret as such, as secret, separates and already institutes a negativity; it is a negation that denies itself. It de-negates itself” (Languages of the Unsayable, p. 25, my emphasis). Here Derrida speaks of a secret as such. A secret as such is something that must not be spoken; we then have the first negation: “I promise not to give the secret away.” And yet, in order to possess a secret really, to have it really, I must tell it to myself. Here we can see the relation of hearing-oneself-speak that we just saw in Voice and Phenomenon. Keeping a secret includes necessarily auto-affection: I must speak to myself of the secret. We might however say more, we might even say that I am too weak for this speaking of the secret to myself not to happen. I must have a conceptual grasp of it; I have to frame a representation of the secret. With the idea of a re-presentation (I must present the secret to myself again in order to possess it really), we also see retention, repetition, and the trace or a name. A trace of the secret must be formed, in which case, the secret is in principle shareable. If the secret must be necessarily shareable, it is always already shared. In other words, in order to frame the representation of the secret, I must negate the first negation, in which I promised not to tell the secret: I must tell the secret to myself as if I were someone else. I thereby make a second negation, a so to speak “de-” or ”un-negation,” which means I must break the promise not to tell the secret. In order to keep the secret (or the promise), I must necessarily not keep the secret (I must violate the promise). So, I possess the secret and do not possess it. This structure has the consequence of there being no secret as such. A secret is necessarily shared. As Derrida says in “How to Avoid Speaking,
This denial [dénégation] does not happen [to the secret] by accident; it is essential and originary. … The enigma … is the sharing of the secret, and not only shared to my partner in the society but the secret shared within itself, its ‘own’ partition, which divides the essence of a secret that cannot even appear to one alone except in starting to be lost, to divulge itself, hence to dissimulate itself, as secret, in showing itself: dissimulating its dissimulation. There is no secret as such; I deny it. And this is what I confide in secret to whomever allies himself to me. This is the secret of the alliance. (Languages of the Unsayable, p. 25)
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Die beweging van die trein en die spoed waarmee die landskap verby swiep, laat my wonder of Breyten ‘n poging aanwend om die buitewêreld
irrelevant te maak deur die realiteit daarvan te laat vervaag en tyd buite die trein te laat verdwyn. Die effek sal waarskynlik wees om die fokus op die twee persone te verskerp en hul interaksie meer intens te maak. Volgens Einstein laat spoed tyd stadiger beweeg (en teoreties self stil staan teen die spoed van lig). Miskien gebeur so iets op hierdie treinrit vir die twee passasiers. Die volgende video-greep illustreer hopelik meer konkreet die gevoel wat Breyten by my in hierdie verband oproep: