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Post-Deconstructive Subjectivity and History: Phenomenology, Critical Theory, and Postcolonial Thought

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Post-Deconstructive Subjectivity and History: Phenomenology, Critical Theory, and Postcolonial Thought Post-deconstructive Subjectivity and History: Phenomenology, Critical Theory, and Postcolonial Thought By Aniruddha Chowdhury A Dissertation Submitted To The Faculty of Graduate Studies In Partial Satisfaction Of The Requirements For The Degree Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program In Social and Political Thought York University, Toronto, Ontario [September 2011] Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-88661-8 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-88661-8 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada II ABSTRACT The tradition of deconstruction, whose best-known proponents are Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, has offered the most rigorous critique of the metaphysics of the subject. It would not be wrong to say that in displacing Man from his status of being the ground, in decentring the subject as the ground, deconstruction is not only in the company of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud but also converges with the human science's famous proclamation of the death of Man. Yet, the aim of the dissertation is to argue that deconstruction is not only not a dissolution of the subject, as it is often opined, but a thinking of subject, or better, subjectivity otherwise than transcendental philosophy or even ontology. Within the tradition of deconstruction there are two apparently conflicting thoughts on the subject. On the one hand, there is the attempt to radically historicize, in the sense of genealogical unraveling, the subject (Heidegger and Derrida). It is in Levinas's work, on the other hand, that we find, perhaps for the first time, a theorization that defends what we may, borrowing from Derrida, call a post-deconstructive subjectivity, a subjectivity that is otherwise than ontology, a subjectivity that is non-self-identical, which Levinas would oppose to history. The first section of the dissertation thus turns to Heidegger and Levinas for the theorization of post-deconstructive subjectivity and its temporal structure. Yet, our problematic is twofold: to think the subjectivity and its temporal structure beyond ontology; and to think history, historiography and historical subject - history that requires what I would later call the host subject of history - in a way which is deconstructive, which refuses totalization. For the latter, I read, in the second section, critical theory of history in Benjamin, with Adorno. Ill In the third section, I turn to the writings of two seminal postcolonial thinkers; Wilson Harris and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. One of the fecund moments of their writings is the attempt to think the singularity of the postcolonial, subaltern, subject after the critique of the sovereign subject of the West. Harris's critical writings offer unique, postcolonial, phenomenology of temporal dwelling and space. Through a close reading of Harris as a phenomenologist, which I call ironic phenomenology, I develop a postcolonial ethical history and its host subject. I approach Spivak's work through her reading of Derrida as deconstructive nominalism. Through Derrida I read Spivak's thought on the subaltern host subject as singularity and history as an allegory of passage. IV Then came my tears. I wove the shawl. — Paul Celan V Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Part One Phenomenology/Post-Phenomenology, Time and Subject 17 Chapter I. Of the Line: Temporality, Ethical Repetition, and Subject 18 in Being and Time Chapter II. Beyond Being: Event, Time and Subject in Levinas 68 Part Two Critical Theory of History 121 Chapter III. Memory, Modernity, Repetition: Walter Benjamin's Ethico-Political History 122 Part Three Postcolonial Singular-Universal: Ethical Subject and History 171 Chapter IV. Postcolonial Irony: Time, Subject, and History in the Critical Writings of Wilson Harris 172 172 VI Chapter V. Fecundity of the Ethical: Deconstruction, History, and the Subaltern in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 205 Conclusion 248 Bibliography 256 VII Acknowledgements Terry Goldie, Ian Balfour, and Asher Horowitz have read and commented on the chapters of the dissertation. I am deeply indebted to each of them. It is thanks to their care, intellectual support, and encouragement that I was able to make progress in hard times and finally complete the dissertation. I am grateful to Brian Singer, and Robert Albritton for their encouragement in the early years of my Graduate Studies. I bear a debt of gratitude to Michael Marder. I shall never forget the inspiring conversation I had with him at York University, from which I benefitted immensely. Aubie Golombek's friendship is an invaluable gift, his singular presence an impetus to thinking. I take this opportunity to thank friends, conversation with whom was beautiful: Erica Cross, Colin Campbell, Shawn Thomson, Donald Burke, Sarah Dingle, Solange Luis, Anne-Marie Grant, and Paul Brienza, I am deeply grateful to Niladri Mukherjee, and Partha and Ajanta Dey for their friendship. The Conversation with Anjan Jena, at the beginning of my tryst with "Continental Thought," remains an unforgettable experience. VIII I thank my friend Arnab Chatterjee for his fine sense of humour, and Sanjeeb Mukherjee for his readiness for intellectual Adda in the Coffee House. My deepest thanks go to my parents, Nikhilesh and Chandralekha Chowdhury, for their love and affection, and for their support during the writing process. My grandmother Bani Mukherjee, who passed away in 2001, would have been the happiest person to see my dissertation finished. Her presence was deeply felt when I was writing on the post-deconstructive subjectivity. 1 Introduction I Deconstruction, best-known through the works of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, has offered the most rigorous critique of the metaphysics of the subject. According to both Heidegger and Derrida, the tradition of metaphysics has always been the metaphysics of the subject, as the concept of subjectum, whether conceived as the Greek hupokeimenon, or as the cogito, or as the "I think" of transcendental apperception, or as "spirit," has always been determined as the condition of possibility of the intelligibility of beings. In the modern tradition, it is in Man, the human subject, that the foundation is located. It would not be wrong to say that in displacing Man from his status of being the ground, in decentring the subject as the ground, deconstruction is not only in the company of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud but also converges with the human sciences' famous proclamation of the death of Man. Texts such as 'Letter on "Humanism"' (Heidegger) and 'Ends of Man' (Derrida) are the canons of philosophical anti-humanism.1 Deconstruction is distinct from nihilism in that it seeks to think the question of the ground more radically than what the modern tradition does through the subject (Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Husserl). The concepts such as ontological difference and difference cannot be thought under the category of the subject if the latter is conceived as the substantiality of self-presence, or, more broadly, the identity of the selfsame. Yet, the aim of the dissertation is to argue that deconstruction is not only not a dissolution of the subject, as it is often opined, but a thinking of the subject, or better, subjectivity otherwise than the transcendental philosophy or even ontology. Within 2 the tradition of deconstruction there are two apparently conflicting ways of thinking on the subject. On the one hand, there is the attempt to radically historicize, in the sense of genealogical unraveling, the subject. If deconstruction, in Heidegger and Derrida, puts in question transcendental subjectivity (Kant, Hegel, Husserl) it does so in order to think the historicity of the subject without referring to history as the synthetic activity of the subject, or without turning history itself
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