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This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTERVIEW
CHOREOG RAPH IES
......
JACQUESDERRIDA and CHRISTIEV. MCDONALD
MEE-5_-
44~-i~il"':?ii':iiiii ":-:---iii-i Question I'
MCDONALD:Emma Goldman, a maverickfeminist from the late nine- teenth century,once said of the feministmovement: "If I can'tdance I don't wantto be partof yourrevolution." Jacques Derrida, you havewritten about the question of woman and what it is that constitutes 'the feminine.' In Spurs/Eperons(Chicago and London:The Universityof ChicagoPress, 1978), a textdevoted to Nietzsche,style and woman,you wrotethat "that which will not be pinneddown by truth[truth?] is, in truth,feminine." And you warnedthat such a proposition"should not... be hastilymistaken for a woman'sfeminin- ity, for female sexuality,or for any other of those essentializingfetishes which . :-?i- .l ...... mightstill tantalize the dogmaticphilosopher, the impotentartist or the inexpe- riencedseducer who has not yet escaped his foolishhopes of capture." Whatseems to be at playas you take up Heidegger'sreading of Nietzsche is whether or not sexual differenceis a "regionalquestion in a largerorder which would subordinateit firstto the domain of general ontology, subse- ...... 'ig' quentlyto thatof a fundamentalontology and finally to the questionof the truth [whose?]of beingitself." You thereby question the statusof the argumentand at :I--::i::li~ii-'i?iiiiii~:~~ii-i~li:ia rBMW : the same time the questionitself. In this instance,if the questionof sexualdif- ference is not a regionalone (in the sense of subsidiary),if indeed "itmay no longereven be a question,"as you suggest,how would you describe'woman's place'? DERRIDA:Will I be ableto writeimprovising my responsesas I go along?It would be moreworthwhile, wouldn't it? Too premeditatedan interviewwould be withoutinterest here. I do not see the particularfinality of such an endeavor, its properend. Itwould be interminable,or, rather,with respectto these ques- tions- which are muchtoo difficult-I would neverhave even daredto begin. Thereare othertexts, other occasionsfor such verycalculated premeditation. Let us play surprise.It will be our tributeto the dance [in Frenchthe word dance, la danse, is a femininenoun requiringthe use of a femininepronoun, elle]:it shouldhappen only once, neithergrow heavy nor ever plungetoo deep; above all, it should not lag or trailbehind its time. We will thereforenot leave time to come backto what is behindus, nor to look attentively.We will only take a glimpse.[In French, to takea glimpseis to look intothe spacesbetween things,entrevoir, that is, inter-view.]
'The following text is the result of a written exchange carried on during the fall of 1981. Jacques Derrida wrote his responses in French, and I then translatedthem into Englishfor publication. It should be noted that I do not ask the following questions in the name of any specific feministgroup or ideology. I do nevertheless owe a debt to longstandingconversa- tions on the subject of "Woman"and "Women"with, among others, A. Jardine, C. Livesque, N. Miller, N. Schor and especially i. McDonald.
DIACRITICSVol. 12 Pp. 66-76 0300-7162/82/0122-0066 $01.00 ? 1982 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Itwas a good idea to begin with a quotation, one by a feminist from the end of the nine- teenth century maverick enough to ask of the feminist movement its questions and condi- tions. Already, already a sign of life, a sign of the dance. One can question the repetition. Was the matrix of what was to be the future of feminism already there at the end of the last century? You smile, no doubt, as I do, at the mention of this word. [The word matrix in English like matrice in French comes from the Latinmatrix meaning womb. In both languages it has taken on, among others, the following two meanings: 1) a situation or surrounding substance within which something originates, develops, or is contained; 2) in printingit means a metal plate used for casting typefaces.] Let us make use of this figure from anatomy or printinga bit longer to ask whether a program, or locus of begetting, was not already in place in the nineteenth century for all those configura- tions to which the feminist struggle of the second half of the twentieth century was to com- mit itself and then to develop. I refer here to their being in place at all levels - those of socio- political demands, alliances with other forces, the alternatives of compromise or various radicalisms, the strategies of discourses, various forms of writing, theory or literature, etc. One is often tempted to think of this program- and to arrive by way of conclusion at the stasis of a simple combinatory scheme - in terms of all that is interminable and exhausting in it. Yes, it is exhausting (because it always draws on the same fund of possibilities)and tedious because of the ensuing repetition. This is only one of the paradoxes. The development of the present struggle (or struggles) is extraordinarynot only in its quantitative extension within Europe- because of its progress and the masses that have been slowly aroused - but also, and this is a much more important phenomenon I believe, outside of Europe. And such progress brings with it new types of historical research, other forms of reading, the discovery of new bodies of materialthat have gone unrecognized or misunderstood up until now; that is to say, they have been exces- sively [violemment] concealed or marginalized. The history of different "feminisms"has often been, of course, a past "passed-over-in-silence."Now here is the paradox: having made possible the reawakening of this silent past, having reappropriateda history previously sti- fled, feminist movements will perhaps have to renounce an all too easy kind of progressivism in the evaluation of this history. Such progressivismis often taken as their axiomatic base: the inevitable or ratheressential presupposition (dans les luttes, as we say in French)of what one might call the ideological consensus of feminists, perhaps also their "dogmatics"or what your "maverickfeminist" suspects to be their sluggishness. It is the image of a continuously accel- erated "liberation"at once punctuated by determinable stages and commanded by an ultimately thinkable telos, a truth of sexual difference and femininity, etc. And if there is no doubt that this theatre, upon which the progress of feminist struggles is staged, exists, it is a relatively short and very recent sequence within "extreme-Western"history. Certainly, it is not timely politically, nor in any case is it possible, to neglect or renounce such a view of "liberation."However, to credit this representation of progress and entrust everything to it would be to surrenderto a sinister mystification:everything would collapse, flow, founder in this same homogenized, sterilized riverof the history of mankind [man's kind in the locution I'histoiredes hommes]. This history carries along with it the age-old dream of reappropria- tion, "liberation,"autonomy, mastery, in short the cortege of metaphysics and the tekhne. The indications of this repetition are more and more numerous. The specular reversal of masculine "subjectivity,"even in its most self-critical form -that is, where it is nervously jealous both of itself and of its "proper"objects- probably represents only one necessary phase. Yet it still belongs to the same program, a program whose exhaustion we were just talking about. It is true that this is valid for the whole of our culture, our scholastics, and the trouble may be found everywhere that this program is in command, or almost everywhere. I have not begun as yet to answer your question, but, if you will forgive me, I am going to try to approach it slowly. It was necessary to recall the fact that this "silent past"(as that which was passed-over-in-silence) could still reserve some surprises, like the dance of your "maverickfeminist." MCDONALD: Yes, and in that respect, recognition of the paradox suggests that while nineteenth century and late twentieth century feminism do resemble each other, it is less because of their historical matrix than because of those characteristics which define them. diacritics/ summer 1982 67
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions True, the program was in place.2 The resurgence in the United States during the nineteen sixties of anarchist-like attitudes, particularlywithin the feminist movement, attests to that. But Goldman was not before or behind the times. An admirer of Nietzsche as "rebel and innovator,"she proclaimed that "revolution is but thought carried into action." She was an activist unable to support those forms of organized feminism that focused on merely contest- ing the institutionalizingof inequalities for women. Her stance was more radical- one that called for the restructuringof society as a whole. If she refused the vote, for example, it was because she deemed that behind standardforms of political action there lay coercion. As an anarchist-feministshe had no truck with statism. DERRIDA:Perhaps woman does not have a history, not so much because of any notion of the "EternalFeminine" but because all alone she can resist and step back from a certain history (precisely in order to dance) in which revolution, or at least the "concept"of revolu- tion, is generally inscribed. That history is one of continuous progress, despite the revolu- tionary break- oriented in the case of the women's movement towards the reappropriation of woman's own essence, her own specific difference, oriented in short towards a notion of woman's "truth."Your "maverick feminist" showed herself ready to break with the most authorized, the most dogmatic form of consensus, one that claims (and this is the most serious aspect of it) to speak out in the name of revolution and history. Perhaps she was thinking of a completely other history: a history of paradoxical laws and non-dialectical discontinuities, a history of absolutely heterogeneous pockets, irreducible particularities,of unheard of and incalculable sexual differences; a history of women who have-centuries ago- "gone further"by stepping back with their lone dance, or who are today inventing sex- ual idioms at a distance from the main forum of feminist activity with a kind of reserve that does not necessarily prevent them from subscribing to the movement and even, occasion- ally, from becoming a militant for it. But I am speculating. It would be better to come back to your question. Having passed through several detours or stages you wonder how I would describe what is called "woman's place";the expression recalls, if I am not mistaken, "inthe home" or "inthe kitchen."Frankly, I do not know. I believe that I would not describe that place. In fact, I would be wary of such a description. Do you not fear that having once become committed to the path of this topography, we would inevitably find ourselves back "athome" or "inthe kitchen"?Or under house arrest, assignation a residence as they say in French penitentiary language, which would amount to the same thing? Why must there be a place for woman? And why only one, a single, completely essential place? This is a question that you could translate ironically by saying that in my view there is no one place for woman. That was indeed clearly set forth during the 1972 Cerisy Colloquium devoted to Nietzsche in the lecture to which you referred entitled Spurs/Eperons. It is without a doubt risky to say that there is no place for woman, but this idea is not anti- feminist, far from it; true, it is not feminist either. But it appears to me to be faithfulin its way both to a certain assertion of women and to what is most affirmativeand "dancing,"as the maverick feminist says, in the displacement of women. Can one not say, in Nietzsche's language, that there is a "reactive"feminism, and that a certain historical necessity often puts this form of feminism in power in today's organized struggles? It is this kind of "reactive" feminism that Nietzsche mocks, and not woman or women. Perhaps one should not so much combat it head on-other interests would be at stake in such a move-as prevent its occupying the entire terrain. And why for that matter should one rush into answering a topological question (what is the place of woman [quelle est la place de la femme])? Or an economical question (because it all comes back to I'oikos as home, maison, chez-soi [at home in this sense also means in French within the selfJ,the law of the proper place, etc. in the preoccupation with a woman's place)? Why should a new "idea"of woman or a new step taken by her necessarily be subjected to the urgency of this topo-economical concern (essential, it is true, and ineradicably philosophical)?This step only constitutes a step on the
20n August 26, 1970, a group of women calling themselves the Emma Goldman Brigade marched down FifthAvenue in New YorkCity with many other feminists, chanting: "Emmasaid it in 1910 / Now we're going to say it again."
68
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions conditionthat it challengea certainidea of the locus [lieu]and the place [place](the entire historyof the Westand of itsmetaphysics) and that it dance otherwise.This is veryrare, if it is not impossible,and presentsitself only in the formof the mostunforeseeable and most inno- cent of chances. The most innocent of dances would thwartthe assignationa residence, escape those residencesunder surveillance; the dance changesplace and aboveall changes places. In its wake they can no longer be recognized.The joyous disturbanceof certain women's movements,and of some women in particular,has actuallybrought with it the chance for a certainrisky turbulence in the assigningof placeswithin our small European space (I am not speakingof a moreample upheavalen routeto world-wideapplication). Is one then going to startall over again makingmaps, topographics, etc.? distributingsexual identitycards? The most seriouspart of the difficultyis the necessityto bringthe dance and its tempo into tune with the "revolution."The lack of place for [I'atopie]or the madness of the dance-this bit of luckcan also compromisethe politicalchances of feminismand serveas an alibi for desertingorganized, patient, laborious "feminist" struggles when broughtinto contactwith all the formsof resistancethat a dance movementcannot dispel, even though the dance is not synonymouswith either powerlessnessor fragility.I will not insiston this point, but you can surelysee the kindof impossibleand necessarycompromise that I am alludingto: an incessant,daily negotiation- individualor not-sometimes microscopic, sometimespunctuated by a poker-likegamble; always deprived of insurance,whether it be in privatelife or withininstitutions. Each man and each woman mustcommit his or herown singularity,the untranslatablefactor of his or her life and death. Nietzsche makesa scene beforewomen, feministsin particular-aspectacle which is overdetermined,divided, apparently contradictory. This is justwhat has interestedme; this scene has interestedme becauseof all the paradigmsthat it exhibitsand multiplies,and inso- faras it often struggles,sometimes dances, alwaystakes chances in a historicalspace whose essentialtraits, those of the matrix,have perhapsnot changedsince then in Europe(I mean specificallyin Europe,and that perhaps makes all the differencealthough we cannot separateworld-wide feminism from a certainfundamental europeanization of worldculture; this is an enormousproblem that I must leave aside here). In Spurs/EperonsI have triedto formalizethe movementsand typicalmoments of the scene that Nietzschecreates through- out a very broadand diversebody of texts. I have done this up to a certainlimit, one that I also indicate,where the decisionto formalizefails for reasonsthat are absolutelystructural. Since these typicalfeatures are and must be unstable,sometimes contradictory, and finally "undecidable,"any breakin the movementof the readingwould settle in a counter-meaning, in the meaningwhich becomescounter-meaning. This counter-meaning can be moreor less naive or complacent.One could cite countlessexamples of it. In the most perfunctoryof cases, the simplificationreverts to the isolation of Nietzsche'sviolently anti-feminist statements(directed first against reactive, specular feminism as a figureboth of the dogmatic philosopherand a certainrelationship of manto truth),pulling them out (andpossibly attrib- utingthem to me thoughthat is of littleimportance) of the movementand systemthat Itry to reconstitute.Some have reactedat timeseven moreperfunctorily, unable to see beyondthe end of phallicforms projecting into the text; beginningwith style,the spuror the umbrella, they take no accountof what I have said about the differencebetween styleand writingor the bisexualcomplication of those and otherforms. Generally speaking, this cannotbe con- sideredreading, and I will go so faras to say that it is to not readthe syntaxand punctuation of a given sentence when one arreststhe text in a certainposition, thus settlingon a thesis, meaningor truth.This mistakeof hermeneutics,this mistakingof hermeneutics-it is this thatthe finalmessage [envoi] of"l forgot my umbrella"should challenge. But let us leavethat. The truthvalue (thatis, Womanas the majorallegory of truthin Westerndiscourse) and its correlative, Femininity(the essence or truth of Woman), are there to assuage such hermeneuticanxiety. These are the places that one should acknowledge,at leastthat is if one is interestedin doing so; they are the foundationsor anchoringsof Westernrationality (of what I have called "phallogocentrism"[as the complicityof Westernmetaphysics with a notion of male firstness]).Such recognitionshould not make of either the truthvalue or femininityan object of knowledge(at stakeare the normsof knowledgeand knowledgeas diacritics / summer 1982 69
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions norm);still less shouldit makeof them a placeto inhabit,a home. Itshould rather permit the inventionof an other inscription,one veryold and very new, a displacementof bodiesand places that is quite different. You recalledthe expression"essentializing fetishes" (truth, femininity, the essentialityof woman or femininesexuality as fetishes).It is difficultto improvisebriefly here. But I will pointout thatone can avoida trapby being preciseabout the concept of fetishismand the context to which one refers,even if only to displaceit. (On this point, I take the libertyof alludingto the discussionsof fetishismand femininesexuality in Spurs,Glas or Lacarte postale,specifically in Lefacteur de la v6rite.)Another trap is morepolitical and can only be avoided by takingaccount of the realconditions in which women'sstruggles develop on all fronts (economic, ideological,political). These conditionsoften requirethe preservation (withinlonger or shorterphases) of metaphysicalpresuppositions that one must(and knows alreadythat one must)question in a laterphase - or an otherplace - becausethey belongto the dominantsystem that one is deconstructingon a practicallevel. This multiplicityof places, moments,forms and forcesdoes not alwaysmean giving way eitherto empiricismor to contradiction.How can one breathewithout such punctuationand withoutthe multi- plicitiesof rhythmand steps?How can one dance, your "maverickfeminist" might say? MCDONALD:This raises an importantquestion that should not be overlooked, althoughwe haven'tthe space to develop it to any extenthere: the complicatedrelationship of a practicalpolitics to the kindsof analysisthat we have been considering(specifically the "deconstructive"analysis implicit in yourdiscussion). That this relationshipcannot simply be translatedinto an opposition between the empiricaland the non-empiricalhas been touchedon in an entirelydifferent context.3 Just how one is to deal withthe interrelationship of these forces and necessitiesin the context of femininestruggles should be more fully exploredon some other occasion. But let'sgo on to Heidegger'sontology. DERRIDA:To answeryour question about Heidegger, and without being able to review here the itineraryof a readingin Spurs/Eperonsclearly divided into two moments,I must limitmyself to a piece of information,or ratherto an open question.The questionproceeds, so to speak,from the end; it proceedsfrom the pointwhere the thoughtof the gift[le don]4 and thatof "propriation"disturbs without simply reversing the orderof ontology,the author- ity of the question"what is it,"the subordinationof regionalontologies to one fundamental ontology.I am movingmuch too rapidly,but how can I do otherwisehere? From this point, which is not a point,one wonderswhether this extremelydifficult, perhaps impossible idea of the gift can still maintainan essential relationshipto sexual difference.One wonders whether sexual difference,femininity for example-however irreducibleit may be-does not remainderived from and subordinatedto either the question of destinationor the thoughtof the gift (I say "thought"because one cannot say philosophy,theory, logic, struc- ture, scene or anythingelse; when one can no longeruse any word of this sort,when one can say almost nothingelse, one says "thought,"but one could show thatthis too is exces- sive). I do not know. Mustone think "difference""before" sexual differenceor takingoff "from"it? Has this question,if not a meaning(we are at the originof meaninghere, and the origincannot "have meaning'l at leastsomething of a chance of openingup anythingat all, however im-pertinentit may appear?
Question II
MCDONALD:You put intoquestion the characteristicform of women'sprotest, namely the subordinationof woman to man. I shallattempt here to describethe directionof your argument,as I understandit, and then commenton it. The new sense of writing(6criture) with which one associatesthe termdeconstruction has emergedfrom the close readingsthat you have given to texts as divergentas those of Plato,Rousseau, Mallarm6 and others.It is one in which traditionalbinary pairing (as in the
3See Rodolphe Gasche, "Labordure interne," and the response by Jacques Derrida, in L'oreillede I'autre:textes et d6bats avec Jacques Derrida, ed. C. Levesque and C. McDonald, VLB,Montreal, 1982. 4The gift is a topic that occurs in a number of recent texts, among others: Glas, Eperons, La carte postale. TN. 70
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions oppositionof spiritto matteror manto woman)no longerfunctions by the privilegegiven to the firstterm over the second. In a seriesof interviewspublished under the title Positionsin 1972,you spokeof a two-phaseprogram (phase being understood as a structuralrather than a chronologicalterm) necessary for the act of deconstruction. In the firstphase a reversalwas to take place in which the opposed termswould be inverted.Thus woman, as a previouslysubordinate term, mightbecome the dominantone in relationto man. Yet because such a scheme of reversalcould only repeatthe traditional scheme (in which the hierarchyof dualityis alwaysreconstituted), it alone could not effect any significantchange. Changewould only occur throughthe 'second'and more radical phase of deconstructionin which a 'new' concept would be forgedsimultaneously. The motifof diffirance,as neithera simple'concept' nor a mere'word,' has broughtus the now familiarconstellation of attendantterms: trace, supplement, pharmakon and others.Among the others,two are markedsexually and in theirmost widely recognized sense pertainto the woman'sbody: hymen (the logic of which is developed in Ladouble seance) and double invagination (a leitmotif in LivingOn/Borderlines). Takeonly the term hymen in which there is a confusionor continuationof the term coitus,and fromwhich it gets its double meaning:1) "amembranous fold of tissuepartly or completelyoccluding the vaginalexternal orifice" [from the Greekfor membrane]and 2)
marriage[from Greek mythology; the god of marriage].In the firstsense the hymenis that which protectsvirginity, and is in frontof the uterus.That is, it lies betweenthe insideand the outsideof the woman, betweendesire and itsfulfillment. So thatalthough (male) desire dreamsof violentlypiercing or breakingthe hymen (consummationin the second sense of the term),if that happensthere is no hymen. It seems to me that while the extensive play on etymologies(in which unconscious motivationsare traced through the transformationsand historicalexcesses of usage)effects a displacementof these terms, it also poses a problemfor those who would seek to define what is specificallyfeminine. That comes about not so much becausethese termsare either underor over-valuedas partsbelonging to woman'sbody. Itis ratherthat, in the economyof a movementof writingthat is alwayselusive, one can never decide properlywhether the particularterm impliescomplicity with or a breakfrom existentideology. Perhapsthis is because,as Adamsays of Evein MarkTwain's satire, The Diaryof Adamand Eve,not only does the "newcreature name . . . everything"because "it looks like the thing,"but- andthis is the cruxof the matter-"hermind is disordered[or, if you like, Nietzschean]- everything shows it." Inthis regardthere comes to minda footnoteto p. 207 of Ladouble seance, concerning the displacementof writing,its transformation and generalization.The examplecited is that of a surgeonwho, upon learningof Freud'sown difficultyin admittingto the possibilityof masculinehysteria, exclaims to him:"But, my dearcolleague, how can you statesuch absur- dities?Hysteron means uterus.How thereforecould a man be a hysteric?" diacritics/ summer1982 71
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions How can we change the representationof woman?Can we move fromthe ribwhere woman is wife ("Shewas calledWoman because she was takenfrom man"- Genesis 2:23) to the womb where she is mother("man is bornof woman"-Job14:13) without essential loss? Do we have in your view the beginningof phasetwo, a 'new'concept of woman? DERRIDA:No, I do not believethat we have one, if indeedit is possibleto have such a thingor if such a thingcould existor show promiseof existing.Personally, I am notsure that I feel the lackof it. Beforehaving one thatis new, arewe certainof havinghad an old one? Itis the word "concept"or "conception"that I would in turnquestion in its relationshipto any essence which is rigorouslyor properlyidentifiable. This would bring us back to the precedingquestions. The concept of the concept, alongwith the entiresystem that attends it, belongsto a prescriptiveorder. It is thatorder that a problematicsof woman and a prob- lematicsof difference,as sexualdifference, should disrupt along the way. Moreover,I am not surethat "phase two" marks a splitwith "phaseone," a splitwhose formwould be a cut along an indivisibleline. The relationshipbetween these two phasesdoubtless has another structure.I spoke of two distinctphases for the sake of clarity,but the relationshipof one phaseto anotheris markedless by conceptualdeterminations (that is, where a new concept follows an archaicone) than by a transformationor generaldeformation of logic; such transformationsor deformationsmark the "logical"element or environmentitself by moving, for example, beyondthe "positional"(difference determined as opposition,whether or not dialectically).This movement is of greatconsequence for the discussionhere, even if myfor- mulationis apparentlyabstract and disembodied.One could, I think, demonstratethis: when sexualdifference is determinedby oppositionin the dialecticalsense (accordingto the Hegelian movement of speculativedialectics which remainsso powerfuleven beyond Hegel'stext), one appearsto set off"the war between the sexes";but one precipitatesthe end withvictory going to the masculinesex. Thedetermination of sexualdifference in opposition is destined,designed, in truth,for truth; it is so in orderto erasesexual difference. The dialec- tical oppositionneutralizes or supersedes[Hegel's term Aufhebung carries with it both the sense of conservingand negating.No adequatetranslation of the term in Englishhas yet been found]the difference.However, according to a surreptitiousoperation that must be flushedout, one insuresphallocentric mastery under the cover of neutralizationevery time. Theseare now well knownparadoxes. And such phallocentrismadorns itself now and then, here and there, with an appendix:a certain kind of feminism. In the same manner, phallocentrismand homosexualitycan go, so to speak,hand in hand,and I takethese terms, whetherit is a questionof feminineor masculinehomosexuality, in a verybroad and radical sense. And what if the "wife"or the "mother"-whomyou seem sure of being able to dissociate- were figuresfor this homosexualdialectics? I am referringnow to yourquestion on the "representation"of woman and such "loss"as mightoccur in the passagefrom man's ribto the womb of woman, the passagefrom the spouse, you say, to the mother.Why is it necessaryto choose, and why only these two possibilities,these two "places,"assuming that one can reallydissociate them? MCDONALD:The ironyof my initialuse of the cliche"woman's place" which in the old saw is followed by "inthe home"or "inthe kitchen"leaves the whole wide worldfor other placesfor the same intent.As forthe "place"of woman in Genesis,and Job, as rib(spouse) or womb (mother),these are more basicfunctional differences. Nevertheless, within these two traditionalroles, to choose one impliesloss of the other. You are correctin observingthat such a choice is not necessary;there could be juxtaposition,substitution or other possible combinations.But these biblicaltexts are not frivolousin seeing the functionaldistinction which also has distinguished"woman's place" in Westernculture. DERRIDA:Since you quote Genesis, I would liketo evoke the marvelousreading that Levinashas proposedof it withoutbeing clear as to whetherhe assumesit as hisown or what the actualstatus of the "commentary"that he devotes to it is.s Therewould, of course, be a
s5acques Derrida refershere to the text Ence moment meme dans cet ouvrage me voici in Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas (I. M. Place, Paris, 1980). Derrida interprets two texts in particular by Levinas (Le judaisme et le f6minin, in Difficile libertY,and Et Dieu cr'a la femme, in Du sacre au saint). In order to clarify this part of the discussion, I am translatingthe following passage from Derrida'stext in which he 72
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions certainsecondariness of woman, Ischa. The man, Isch, would come first;he would be numberone; he would be at the beginning.Secondariness, however, would not be that of woman or femininity,but the divisionbetween masculineand feminine.It is not feminine sexualitythat would be second but only the relationshipto sexualdifference. At the origin, on this side of and thereforebeyond any sexual mark,there was humanityin general,and this is what is important.Thus the possibilityof ethics could be saved, if one takesethics to mean that relationshipto the other as other which accountsfor no other determinationor sexualcharacteristic in particular.What kind of an ethicswould there be if belongingto one sex or another became its law or privilege?What if the universalityof moral laws were modelledon or limitedaccording to the sexes?What if theiruniversality were not uncondi- tional, withoutsexual condition in particular? Whateverthe force, seductivenessor necessityof this reading,does it not riskrestor- ing-in the name of ethics as that which is irreproachable-aclassical interpretation, and therebyenriching what I would call its panoplyin a mannersurely as subtleas it is sublime? Once again, the classical interpretationgives a masculine sexual markingto what is presentedeither as a neutraloriginariness or, at least,as priorand superiorto all sexualmark- ings. Levinasindeed senses the riskfactor involved in the erasureof sexualdifference. He thereforemaintains sexual difference: the humanin generalremains a sexualbeing. Buthe can only do so, it would seem, by placing(differentiated) sexuality beneath humanity which sustainsitself at the level of the Spirit.That is, he simultaneouslyplaces, and this is what is important,masculinity [le masculin]in commandand at the beginning(the arkhb), on a par with the Spirit.This gesture carries with it the most self-interestedof contradictions;it has repeated itself, let us say, since "Adamand Eve,"and persists- in analogousform - into "modernity,"despite all the differencesof style and treatment.Isn't that a featureof the "matrix,"as we were sayingbefore? or the "patrix"if you prefer,but it amountsto the same thing, does it not? Whateverthe complexityof the itineraryand whateverthe knots of rhetoric,don't you thinkthat the movementof Freudianthought repeats this "logic"? Is it not also the riskthat Heideggerruns? One should perhapssay, rather,the riskthat is avoided because phallogocentrismis insuranceagainst the returnof what certainlyhas been feared as the most agonizingrisk of all. Since I have named Heideggerin a context where the referenceis quite rareand may even appearstrange, I would like to dwell on this for a moment, if you don'tmind, concernedthat I will be both too lengthyand too brief.
quotes from and then comments upon Levinas'commentary: ". .. The meaning of the 'feminine'will be clarified in this manner by beginning with the human essence; the female Isha fla Isha] begins with ish: not that the feminine originates in the masculine, but rather the division into masculine and feminine - the dichotomy- starts with what is human. [. .] Beyond the personal relationship established between two beings, each born of a discrete creative act, the specificity of the feminine is a secondary matter. It is not woman who is secondary; it is the relationship with woman as woman, and that does not belong to the primordial level of the human element. The first level consists of those tasks that man and woman each accomplishes as a human being. [. . .] In each of the passages that we are commenting upon right now, the problem lies in the reconciliation of men's and women's humanity with the hypothesis of masculine spirituality; the feminine is not the correlative of the masculine but its corollary; feminine specificity, as the difference between the sexes that it indicates, is not situated straightawayat the level of those opposites which constitute the Spirit. An audacious question, this one: how can equality of the sexes come from masculine "ownership"[la propriktedu masculin]? [ . . A difference was necessary that would not compromise equity: a difference of sex; and from then on, a certain pre-eminence of man, a woman whose arrivalcomes later and who is, as woman, the appendix of the human element. Now we understand the lesson. The idea of humanity is not thinkable from two entirely differentprinciples. There must be a sameness [le meme] common to others: woman was taken from man, but came after him: the very feminity of woman is in this inaugural after-thought."(Et Dieu cr6a la femme, in Du sacr6 au saint). And Derrida follows up, commenting: "Itis a strange logic, this 'audacious question.'"One would have to comment each step of the way and verify that the secondariness of sexual difference signifies the second- ariness of the feminine in every case (but why indeed?). One would have to verify that the initialness of what is pre-differentialis always marked by the masculine; the masculine should come, like all sexual marks, only afterward. Such a commentary would be necessary, but I prefer to first underscore the following, in the name of protocol: he himself is commenting and says that he is commenting; one must bear in mind that this is not literallythe discourse of E.L.He says, as he is discoursing, that he is comment- ing on doctors, at this very moment ("thepassages upon which we are commenting at this moment," and furtheralong: "Iam not takingsides; today I am commenting").However, the distance of the commentary is not neuter. What he comments upon is consonant with a whole network of his own assertions,or those by him, "him"[pp. 53-4] TN. diacritics/ summer 1982 73
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Heideggerseems almost never to speak about sexualityor sexualdifference. And he seems almostnever to speakabout psychoanalysis, give or take an occasionalnegative allu- sion. Thisis neithernegligence nor omission.The pausescoming from his silence on these questions punctuateor create the spacing out of a powerfuldiscourse. And one of the strengthsof this discoursemay be stated(though I am going muchtoo quicklyand schema- tizingexcessively) like this: it begins by denyingitself all acceptedforms of security,all the sedimented presuppositionsof classical ontology, anthropology,the naturalor human sciences, untilit fallsback this side of such valuesas the oppositionbetween subject/object, conscious/unconscious,mind/body, and manyothers as well. The existentialanalytic of the Daseinopens the road,so to speak, leadingto the questionof being;the Daseinis neither the humanbeing (a thoughtrecalled earlier by Levinas)nor the subject,neither conscious- ness nor the self [le moi] (whetherconscious or unconscious).These are all determinations thatare derivedfrom and occur afterthe Dasein.Now-and here is what I wantedto get to afterthis inadmissibleacceleration - in a course given in 1928, Heideggerjustifies to some degree the silence of Sein und Zeit on the questionof sexuality[Gesamtausgabe, Band 26, No. 10, p. 171 ff.]. In a paragraphfrom the coursedevoted to the "Problemof the Sein und Zeit,"Heidegger reminds us that the analyticof the Daseinis neitheran anthropology,an ethics nor a metaphysics.With respectto any definition,position or evaluationof these fields,the Daseinis neuter.Heidegger insists upon and makesclear this original and essential "neutrality"of the Dasein:"This neutrality means also that the Daseinis neitherof the two sexes. Butthis a-sexuality (Geschlechtlosigkeit) is not the indifferenceof emptyinvalidity, the annulingnegativity of an indifferentontic nothingness.In its neutrality,the Daseinis not the indifferentperson-and-everyone (Niemand und Jeder),but it is originarypositivity and the power of being or of the essence, M~chtigkeitdes Wesen.One would have to read the analysisthat follows very closely; I will tryto do thatanother time in relationto some of his latertexts. The analysisemphasizes the positivecharacter, as it were, of this originaryand powerfula-sexual neutrality which is not the neither-nor(Weder-noch) of ontic abstraction.It is originaryand ontological.More precisely,the a-sexualitydoes not signifyin this instance the absence of sexuality-one could call it the instinct,desire or even the libido- but the absence of any markbelonging to one of the two sexes. Not thatthe Daseindoes not onti- cally or in fact belongto a sex; not that it is deprivedof sexuality;but the Daseinas Dasein does not carrywith it the markof this opposition(or alternative)between the two sexes. Insofaras these marksare opposableand binary,they are not existentialstructures. Nor do they allude in this respect to any primitiveor subsequentbi-sexuality. Such an allusion wouldfall once againinto anatomical, biological or anthropologicaldeterminations. And the Dasein, in the structuresand "power"that are originaryto it, would come "prior"to these determinations.I am puttingquotation marks around the word "prior"because it has no literal,chronological, historical or logical meaning. Now, as of 1928, the analyticof the Daseinwas the thoughtof ontologicaldifference and the repetitionof the questionof being; it opened up a problematicsthat subjected all the concepts of traditionalWestern philosophyto a radicalelucidation and interpretation.This gives an ideaof whatstakes were involvedin a neutralizationthat fell back this side of both sexualdifference and its binary marking,if not this side of sexualityitself. This would be the title of the enormousproblem that in this context I must limitmyself to merelynaming: ontological difference and sexual difference. Andsince yourquestion evoked the "motifof difference,"I would saythat it hasmoved, by displacement,in the vicinityof this very obscurearea. What is also being soughtin this zone is the passagebetween ontological difference and sexualdifference; it is a passagethat may no longerbe thought,punctuated or opened up accordingto those polaritiesto which we have been referringfor some time (originary/derived,ontological/ontic, ontology/ anthropology,the thoughtof being/metaphysicsor ethics, etc.). The constellationof terms that you have cited could perhapsbe considered(for nothingis ever takenfor grantedor guaranteedin these matters)a kind of transformationof deformationof space; such a transformationwould tend to extend beyond these poles and reinscribethem within it. Some of these terms, "hymen"or "invagination,"you were saying,"pertain in their most widely recognizedsense to the woman'sbody .. " Are you sure?I am gratefulfor your havingused such a carefulformulation. That these wordssignify "in their most widely recog- 74
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions nized sense"had, of course, not escaped me, and the emphasisthat I have put on re- sexualizinga philosophicalor theoreticaldiscourse, which has been too "neutralizing"in this respect,was dictatedby those veryreservations that I just mentioned concerning the strategy of neutralization(whether or not it is deliberate).Such re-sexualizingmust be done without facilenessof any kindand, above all, withoutregression in relationto what mightjustify, as we saw, the procedures-or necessarysteps-of Levinasor Heidegger,for example. That being said, "hymen"and "invagination,"at least in the context into which these words have been swept, no longersimply designate figures for the femininebody. They no longerdo so, that is, assumingthat one knows for certainwhat a feminine or masculinebody is, and assumingthat anatomy is in this instancethe finalrecourse. What remains undecidable con- cerns not only but also the line of cleavagebetween the two sexes. As you recalled,such a movementreverts neither to wordsnor to concepts.And what remainsof languagewithin it cannotbe abstractedfrom the "performativity"(which marks and is marked)that concerns us here, beginning-for the examplesthat you have chosen-with the texts of Mallarm6and Blanchot,and with the laborof readingor writingwhich evoked them and which they in turnevoked. One could say quite accuratelythat the hymendoes not exist.Anything con- stitutingthe valueof existenceis foreignto the "hymen."And if therewere hymen- I am not sayingif the hymenexisted - propertyvalue would be no moreappropriate to it for reasons that I have stressedin the textsto which you refer.How can one then attributethe existence of the hymenproperly to woman?Not that it is any morethe distinguishingfeature of man or, for that matter,of the humancreature. I would say the same for the term"invagination" which has, moreover,always been reinscribedin a chiasmus,one doublyfolded, redoubled and inversed,6etc. Fromthen on, is it not difficultto recognizein the movementof thisterm a "representationof woman"?Furthermore, I do not know if it is to a change in representa- tion thatwe shouldentrust the future.As with all the questionsthat we are presentlydiscus- sing,this one, and above all when it is putas a questionof representation,seems at once too old and as yet to be born:a kindof old parchmentcrossed every which way, overloaded with hieroglyphsand still as virginas the origin, like the early morningin the Eastfrom whence it comes. And you know that the word for parchmentdoes not come from any "road"leading from Pergamus in Asia.I do not knowhow you will translatethis last sentence. MCDONALD:It is a problem. In modern Englishusage the word for parchmentno longercarries with it the sense of the Frenchparchemin, on or by the road,as the Middle Englishperchement or parchemin did. The American Heritage Dictionarytraces the etymologythus: "Parthian(leather) from pergamina,parchment, from Greek pergamene, from Pergamenos, or Pergamun, from Pergamon, . . ." Lempriere'sClassical Dictionary says furtherthat the town of Pergamuswas founded by Philaeterus,a eunuch, and that parch- ment has been called the charta pergamena. DERRIDA:The Littr6Dictionary which gives the etymologyfor Frenchmakes war responsiblefor the appearanceof "pergamena"or "Pergamina."Itis therebya productof war: one began to write on bodies and animalskins because papyruswas becomingvery rare. They say too that parchmentwas occasionallyprepared from the skin of still-bornlambs. And accordingto Pliny,it was out of jealousythat Eumenes,king of Pergamus,turned to parchment.His rival,Ptolemies, the kingof Egypt,was so proudof his librarythat he had only books writtenon paper. It was necessaryto find new bodies of or for writing. MCDONALD:I would liketo come backto the writingof the dance, the choreography that you mentioneda while back. If we do not yet have a "new""concept" of woman, because the radicalizationof the problemgoes beyondthe "thought"or the concept, what are our chancesof "thinking'difference' not so much beforesexual difference, as you say, as takingoff 'from'"it? What would you say is our chance and "who"are we sexually? DERRIDA:At the approachof this shadowyarea it has alwaysseemed to me that the voice itselfhad to be dividedin orderto say that which is given to thoughtor speech. No
6This is an allusion to, among other things, all the passages on the so-called "argumentof the gaine" ["sheath,""girdle" cognate with "vagina'7,in particularpp. 232 ff. 250 ff. Furthermore,the word "invagina- tion"is always taken within the syntax of the expression "double invagination chiasmatique des bords,"in LivingOn (Deconstruction and Criticism, The Seabury Press, New York, 1979) and The Law of Genre (in Glyph 7). TN. diacritics/ summer1982 75
This content downloaded from 141.225.218.75 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:11:22 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions monological discourse-and by that I mean here mono-sexual discourse-can dominate with a single voice, a single tone, the space of this half-light,even if the "proffereddiscourse" is then signed by a sexually marked patronymic. Thus, to limit myself to one account, and not to propose an example, I have felt the necessity for a chorus, for a choreographic text with polysexual signatures.7I felt this every time that a legitimacy of the neuter, the appar- ently least suspect sexual neutralityof "phallocentricor gynocentric"mastery, threatened to immobilize (in silence), colonize, stop or unilateralize in a subtle or sublime manner what remains no doubt irreducibly dissymmetrical. More directly: a certain dissymmetry is no doubt the law both of sexual difference and the relationshipto the other in general (I say this in opposition to a certain kind of violence within the language of "democratic"platitudes, in any case in opposition to a certain democratic ideology), yet the dissymmetry to which I refer is still let us not say symmetrical in turn (which might seem absurd), but doubly, unilaterallyinordinate, like a kind of reciprocal, respective and respectful excessiveness. This double dissymmetry perhaps goes beyond known or coded marks, beyond the grammarand spelling, shall we say (metaphorically),of sexuality. This indeed revives the following ques- tion: what if we were to reach, what if we were to approach here (for one does not arrive at this as one would at a determined location) the area of a relationshipto the other where the code of sexual marks would no longer be discriminating?The relationship would not be a-sexual, far from it, but would be sexual otherwise: beyond the binary difference that governs the decorum of all codes, beyond the opposition feminine/masculine, beyond bi- sexuality as well, beyond homosexuality and heterosexuality which come to the same thing. As I dream of saving the chance that this question offers I would like to believe in the multiplicity of sexually marked voices. I would like to believe in the masses, this indeter- minable number of blended voices, this mobile of non-identified sexual marks whose choreography can carry, divide, multiply the body of each "individual,"whether he be classified as "man"or as "woman"according to the criteria of usage. Of course, it is not impossible that desire for a sexuality without number can still protect us, like a dream, from an implacable destiny which immures everything for life in the figure 2. And should this merciless closure arrestdesire at the wall of opposition, we would struggle in vain: there will never be but two sexes, neither one more nor one less. Tragedy would leave this strange sense, a contingent one finally, that we must affirmand learn to love instead of dreaming of the innumerable. Yes, perhaps; why not? But where would the "dream"of the innumerable come from, if it is indeed a dream? Does the dream itself not prove that what is dreamt of must be there in order for it to provide the dream?Then too, I ask you, what kind of a dance would there be, or would there be one at all, if the sexes were not exchanged according to rhythmsthat vary considerably? In a quite rigorous sense, the exchange alone could not suf- fice either, however, because the desire to escape the combinatory itself, to invent incal- culable choreographies, would remain.
7Thisis an allusion to Pas, in Gramma 3/4, 1976, La v6rite en peinture, 1978, En ce moment meme dans cet ouvrage me voici in Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas, 1980, Feu la cendre, to appear. TN.
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