CORTAZAR, DERRIDA AND RAYUELA AS A PARABLE-PARODY OF WRITING by LOIS MARIE JAECK B.A., University of British Columbia, 1968 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in The Department of Comparative Literature in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES We accept this thesis as conforming to the required'standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA February, 1980. Q) Lois Marie Jaeck, I98O In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of COMPARATIVE LITERATURE The University of British Columbia 2075 Wesbrook Place Vancouver, Canada V6T 1W5 Date FEBRUARY 1$, 1980 ABSTRACT Cortazar, Derrida and Rayuela as a Parable-Parody of Writing interprets the novel Rayuela as a metaphorical representation of the forces which engender the movement of signification in writing. As Julio Cortazar is not a philosopher hut a novelist, I have utilized some of Jacques Derrida's theories concerning the origin, force and movement of signification of writing (as outlined in De la Grammatologie, L'Ecriture et la Differance and "La Differance") in order to clarify the thesis that Rayuela is a metaphorical delineation of a philosophy of writing." The Introduction to the thesis explains how the hopscotch chart, whose graphic design serves as a pattern for Rayuela's structure, movement and plot, embraces the same counterpository tension between the outside and the inside, the physical and the metaphysical which writing entails. Chapter one analyzes changes in Rayuela's structure, character relationships and milieus as parallelisms of the changing perception of the sign of writing, as writing progressed from being understood within the logocentricism of the metaphysics of presence, to being comprehended as a non-centered totality whose movement of signification is one of infinite reflection on itself. Chapter two interprets Rayuela as a parable-parody of the rupture of writing with the concept of a center and the consequent opening of the freeplay of the text, which assumes the form of a movement of supplemen- tarity as a result of the need to supplant the lack of a center. Chapter three examines the possibility of the exit of sense from writing, comparing Derrida's postulates on the above subject with those of Cortazar expressed directly through Moreilli, or inferred by the ultimate ii outcome of Oliveira's futile attempt to reach a metaphysical center beyond language. The Conclusion of the thesis synthesizes the concepts explained in chapters one, two and three by interpreting the string labyrinth which Oliveira constructs in the mental asylum as a symbolic model of the accomplistic-antagonistic relationship of writing to speech or a full presence, which is responsible for engendering the labyrinth of signifi• cations whichi.the book or writing sketches as the novel unfolds itself. The Conclusion posits Rayuela as the incarnation of differences within which sense realizes itself as an inexpressible differing from itself. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank Dr. Carlo Chiarenza and Dr. Isaac Rubio- Delgado for having introduced me to^the works of Jacques Derrida and Julio Cortazar, respectively. iv. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction: Rayuela as a Parable-Parody of Writing , 1 II. Chapter one: Rayuela, the Sign and Writing. 10 III. Chapter two: Cortazar, Derrida and the Engendering of the Movement of Signification of Writing , ,. 50 IV. Chapter three: Cortazar, Derrida and the Exit from the Text....85 V. Conclusion 101 VI. Bibliography 109 v INTRODUCTION RAYUELA AS A PARABLE-PARODY OF WRITING Moreilli, Cortazar's double in Rayuela, likens writing to sketching his mandala at the same time that he goes through it, lowering himself into the volcano, approaching the mothers, connecting with the center: Asi por la escritura bajo al volcan, me acerco a las Madres, me conecto con el Centro - sea lo que sea. Escribir es dibujar mi mandala y a la vez recorrerlo, inventar la purificacion purificandose....1 In a similar vein, Jacques Derrida describes writing as the outlet of the descent of meaning outside of itself within itself.... the moment of the original valley of the other within being: L'ecriture est 1'issue comme descente hors de soi en soi du sens.... L'ecriture est le moment de cette Vallee originaire de 1'autre dans l'etre. Moment de la profondeur aussi comme decheance. Instance et insistance du grave.2 Both of the above definitions of writing imply the frication of subject and object, outside and inside, existence and essence, other and being inherent in writing, which is responsible for the movement of significa• tion of the text. The hopscotch chart, whose graphic design serves as a pattern for Rayuela's construction, movement and plot, embraces the same counterpository tension between the outside and the inside, the physical and the metaphysical which writing entails. Cortazar utilizes the rulesf.and movement of the game of hopscotch as a metaphor for the play of writing. In "Linguistique et Grammatologie", Derrida comments that certain American linguists, who refuse to bind lin• guistics to semantics and expell the problem of meaning outside of their 1 2 researches, refer constantly to the model of a game when describing writing. Derrida classifies play (or the game of writing) as the absence of a transcendental signified giving rise to the limitlessness of the movement of signification, which constitutes the destruction of onto- theology and the metaphysics of presence. In view of the undermining of metaphysics, Derrida explains that it is necessary to think of writing as a game within language: On pourrait appeler jeu 1'absence du signifie transcendental comme illimitation du jeu, c'est-a-dire, comme ebranlement de l'onto- theologie et de la metaphysique de la presence.... expulsant le probleme du meaning hors de leurs recherches, certains linguistes americains se referent sans cesse au modele du jeu. II faudra ici penser que l'ecriture est le jeu dans le langage. (Le Phedre (277e) condamnait precisement l'ecriture comme jeu - paidia - et opposait cet enfantillage a. la gravite serieuse et adulte (spoude) de la parole.)3 In the above quotation, Derrida comments that Plato in the Phaedrus opposes the childish play of writing to the adult gravity of speech. The game of writing is the child of, or a fall from, the seriousness of a speech that was immediately related to the logos of a creator or central presence. In like manner, the game of hopscotch is the child of a former mystic ceremony whose object was to effect a joining with a transcendental presence. In-an interview, Cortazar explains that the hopscotch chart was originally regarded as the graphic representation of a spiritual process: A mandala...is a sort of mystic labyrinth - "a design, like a hopscotch chart, divided into sections of compartments, on which the Buddhists concentrate their attention and in the course of which they perform a series of spiritual exercises. It's the graphic projection of a spiritual process. Hopscotch, as almost all children's games, is a ceremony with a mystic and religious origin. Its sacred value has been lost. But not entirely. Unconsciously 3 some of it remains. For instance, the hop• scotch played in Argentina - and in France - has compartments for Heaven and Earth at opposite ends of the chart."4 Hopscotch became-a game at the moment that it ceased to he the representation of a series of spiritual steps toward a transcendental presence, and became instead the indicator of a progression of physical jumps toward a heaven which has no reality other than its name sketched at the top of a chart drawn on the ground. In like manner, writing was born as a language or a pure functionning when it ceased being a sign signal indicating a presence outside of itself. Derrida comments: C'est quand l'ecrit est defunt comme signe- signal qu'il nait comme langage; alors il dit ce qui est, par la meme ne renvoyant qu'a soi, signe sans signification, jeu ou pure fonctionnement, car il cesse d'etre utilise comme information naturelle, biologique ou technique, comme passage d'un etant a l'autre ou d'un signifiant a un signifie.5 Derrida explains that in order to think play radically, the onto- logical and transcendental problematics must first be seriously exhausted: the critical movements of the Husserlian and Heideggerean question must be followed to the end, conserving their efficacity and legibility. Even under the erasure of the above movements, however, Derrida postulates that the concepts of play and writing will remain within regional limits, and within an empiric, positivistic or metaphysical discourse. From the very beginning of the game, writing is understood as the becoming-unmotivated of the symbol : Pour penser radicalement le jeu, il faut done d'abord epuiser serieusement la problematique ontologique et transcendentale, traverser patiemment et rigoureusement la question du sens de l'etre, de l'etre de 1'etant et de l'origine transcendentale du monde - de la mondanite du monde - suivre effectivement et k jusqu'au bout le mouvement critique des questions husserlienne et heideggerienne, leur conserver leur efficace. et leur lisibilite. Fut -ce sous rature, et faute de quoi les con• cepts du jeu et de l'ecriture auxquels on aura recours resteront pris dans des limites regionales et dans un discours empiriste, posi- tiviste ou metaphysique...