Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Censure against Certitude: Lyotard and Derrida


Postmodernism and poststructuralism can be taken as the theories that question modernism and structuralism respectively. Developed in the twentieth century, both of the theories try to undermine authority of what were considered central (establishment) before them. Postmodernism challenges modernism – search for purposes in whatever human beings do – and poststructuralism in the similar fashion poses an encounter against structuralism – the theory that believes words and languages do have meanings. Since it is language that human beings are able to experience anything through, questioning the power of language is also question against meanings of human activities too. In this regard, both 'post-' theories come together in questioning the presence and confidence of a central power or a central meaning. Such questions to certitude of the established authority can be seen very vocal in writings of Jean-François Lyotard, a pioneer of postmodernism and Jacques Derrida, who developed the theory of deconstruction, which is one of the inevitable ingredients of poststructuralism.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
            In his essay "Answer to the Question: What is the Postmodern?"(1982), Jean-François Lyotard explains how modernism is destined to fail in its purpose of finding a unity. According to Lyotard, modernism claims to present reality in art as it is - which is impossible because reality is unpresentable. Thus needed is postmodernism, for "the postmodern would be that which … invokes the unpresentable in presentation itself" (Lyotard 279). For Lyotard, then, modernism (or realism as a mode of artistic presentation) tries hard to do what is impossible and later weeps over the failure; whereas postmodernism gets success in presenting the unpresentable, what he calls the "sublime".
Failure of modernism is failure to establish unity of meaning. The foundation of modernism is the project of Enlightenment. And, as Lyotard has presented in his essay, modernists themselves have accepted that the Enlightenment project was a failure (273). But yet, some of the modernists still believe that a form of art (realism) can rescue the project from that failure. Lyotard quotes Jürgen Habermas, a modernist, who says that the remedy comes from a "change in the status of aesthetic experience when … it is used to illuminate a life-historical situation" (273). The change that Habermas seeks is essentially a modernist or a realist one. He wants that "they should form a bridge over the gap separating the discourses of knowledge, ethics and politics, thus opening the way for a unity of experience" (273).
Lyotard's central attack is in this very hope for unity as protected and promoted by modernism. He questions, "… what sort of unity Habermas has in mind. What is the end envisaged by the project of modernity?" (273). Lyotard finds it impossible to find a synthesis between heterogeneous language games of knowledge, ethics and politics in the postmodern time. The human experience today is not united, but it is fragmented, isolated and special. Thus, no one can find a unity, harmony, organisation, centrality in human experiences, according to Lyotard. In other words, truth, reality and truthful representation are impossible. If one tries to seek such centrality or essence of truthfulness, they are destined to fail.
Lyotard argues there is no any reality in its own: "There is no reality unless it is confirmed by a consensus between partners in questions of knowledge and commitment" (276). Thus, it is very apparent that presenting the reality in its own - which is not - is doomed to fail. This lack of reality thus finds modernism not only insufficient, but also inappropriate. Hence, the postmodernism comes into existence. The postmodernism, unlike modernist realism, believes that reality is unpresentable; thus it is free of nostalgia and pain that realism shares for incapability of presentation of reality.
Postmodernism too, of course, involves in experimentation in presentation and representation. But, the difference is that it does not nostalgically weeps over, for it has realised the reality is not simple as it can be presented as black or white in any art form. The reality rather is "sublime", which itself is against the notion of certitude. The 'sublime', the word originally borrowed from Immanuel Kant, means for Lyotard "a powerful and equivocal emotion: it brings both pleasure and pain…In it pleasure proceeds from pain" (277). Lyotard explains that the sublime emerges when there is gap or conflict between what is conceivable and what is presentable. The existence of this gap/conflict means that not everything that is conceivable can be presentable. This is what realism and modernism fail to recognise. For them anything that is conceived can be presented. Modernism does not accept presence of the unpresentable. Lyotard criticises, "Modern art … devotes its "trivial technique"…to presenting the existence of something unpresentable. Showing that there is something we can conceive of which we can neither see nor show: this is the stake of modern painting" (277).
Lyotard concludes his essay by calling people to enjoy the postmodernism that shatters the hopes of modernism for unity and reality. He clearly sums up his idea that no reality does exist in its own thus presenting reality is impossible for artists and writers. If one tries to present reality, that attempt only becomes an allusion to the sublime experience, "It is not up to us to provide reality but invent allusions to what is conceivable but not presentable" (280). Arguing that desire to reinstate the unity or centrality only leads to war on totality, Lyotard appeals, "Let us attest to the unpresentable" (280).
Courtesy: The Guardian
Jacques Derrida's arguments in his essay "Differance" (1968) are no less revolutionary that Lyotard's. In this essay, he questions the entire Western metaphysics and ontology by questioning the presence-absence stratification which the Western knowledge bases itself on. Derrida works within the discourse of Western philosophy itself, looking for hidden antagonisms that jeopardise it (Newman 5). Reinterpreting Ferdinand De Saussure's theory of meaning making (that is, signifiers signify to the referents arbitrarily out of differences), Derrida argues that meaning comes not only out of differences, but also with temporalisation. Using that model of differance – the term that Derrida himself coined to mean differences that operate in spacing and temporalisation during any meaning making activity – Derrida in the essay questions validity and certitude of any meaning, any centre, or any truth.
The differance – which Derrida calls "neither a word nor a concept" (126) – is behind each and every set up of signification, according to Derrida. He says, "It opens up the very space in which onto-theology – philosophy – produces its systems and its history. It thus encompasses and irrevocably surpasses onto-theology or philosophy" (129). And, the result of this complete pervasiveness is that every hierarchy is deconstructed, every centre is decentred and every establishment is de-established.  He says, "In this way we question the authority of presence or its simple symmetrical contrary, absence or lack" (132).
Operation of the differance and how it deconstructs the centrality can be most easily seen in presence – absence dichotomy. It is generally believed that present is privileged over what is absent. For example, speech is considered superior to writing because in speech the speaker is present whereas in writing the writer is absent. Saussure himself has written, "Language is necessary in order for speech to intelligible… but the latter is necessary in order for language to be established; historically, the fact of speech comes first" (qtd. in Derrida 134).  Derrida, based on Saussure's idea of signifiers signifying to referents, cleverly deconstructs the dichotomy.  He has said, "I have tried to suggest that this differance within language… forbids the essential dissociation between speech and writing that Saussure, in keeping with tradition, wanted to draw" (137).
For Derrida, there is nothing which is present in itself. There is nothing present because all linguistic signs – through which we refer everything – are absence in themselves. Derrida says, "Signs represent the present in its absence; they take the place of the present. When we cannot take hold of or show things, let us say the present…then we signify" (131). For him, thus, the sign itself is a "deferred presence". The substitution of the thing itself (the present) with the sign is secondary and provisional. Thus, every language is not primary, not present, but secondary and provisional. Hence, there is no way that once can claim speech to become primary. Both the speech and writing are processed by the play of differance. 
Also, speech cannot be primary than writing because its privileged position is based on existence of the other (writing) which is different – both in spacing and temporalisation – from itself. The same applies in other presence – absence dichotomies too. Derrida says, "…each element that is said to be "present," appearing on the stage of presence, is related to something other than itself" (134-35). Newman writes that "authority is continually jeopardised by the excluded supplement because it is essential to the formation of the identity of the dominant term" (6). In this way, centrality of any "present" element – truth over untruth, reality over fantasy, reason over unreason, activity over passivity – is questioned by Derrida because each element of the each pair here operates in the differance.
Derrida also questions the claimed self-presence of consciousness. It is claimed that consciousness is self-present before the play of signification, thus it is privileged as the "living preset". But Derrida claims, "Presence is a determination and effect within a system which is no longer that of presence but that of differance; it no more allows the opposition between activity and passivity…" (138). That is to say, the differance even proceeds consciousness and the consciousness is only an effect or determination of the differance.
He supports his claim with what other philosophers, Nietzsche and Freud in particular, said about self-assured certitude of the consciousness before him. Derrida quotes Nietzsche as saying "the important main activity is unconscious" (138) – not conscious. According to Derrida, Nietzsche questioned certitude of the unconscious by claiming that "consciousness is the effect of forces whose essence, ways, and modalities are not peculiar to it" (138). And, these forces, as Derrida interprets, exist because of play of the differance. What enabled Nietzsche to challenge the entire metaphysics of culture, science and philosophy, according to Derrida, is this very differance or something similar to it.
On the other hand, Freud's theory of unconscious too supports the incertitude of the consciousness. Derrida pinpoints that Freud also talked of differences in terms of spacing and temporalisation – thus making it a play of the differance - while he explained his theory of the unconscious.  For Freud, differing (in space) was discernibility, distinction, deviation and diastem; whereas deferring (in temporalisation) was detour, delay, relay and reverse (Derrida 139). As Derrida recalls from Freud, among traces of the unconscious "the one is only the other deferred, the one differing from the other" (139).   Also, Freud claims that the only difference between please principle and reality principle is of deferral (temporalisation). Freud writes, "This latter principle…demands and carries into effect the postponement of satisfaction…and the temporary toleration of unpleasure as a step on the long indirect road to pleasure" (qtd. in Derrida 140). This again strengthens Derrida's argument that the human psyche has completely been operated in the pattern of differance.
Yet, Derrida writes that the differance "commands nothing, rules over nothing… Not only is there no realm of differance, but differance is the subversion of every realm (140). This subversion itself is the censure against certitude and centrality; and the subversion has always been working for "differance is "older" than the ontological difference or the truth of Being" (142) though it cannot present itself for it questions every presence. Derrida interestingly justifies a lack of name for the word "differance" because it is "older" than Being and language (146).     
Both Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida in their respective essays present convincible arguments that no certitude can be established over existence of any centre, presence of truth. Advocating against existence of authority, the theorists have not only involved themselves in the stream of postmodernism, they also inspired for the rise of other postmodernist philosophies. Studying Derrida and Lyotard, though both are very complex for comprehension, hence provide a succinct understanding of the postmodernism because they present censure against the modernist certitude quite expressively, which is gist of all 'post-' philosophies.     
Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. "Differance." The Routledge Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. Neil Badmington and Julia Thomas. New York: Routledge. 2008. 126-148.
Lyotard, Jean-François. "Answer to the Question: What is the Postmodern?" The Routledge Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. Neil Badmington and Julia Thomas. New York: Routledge. 2008. 272-280.
Newman, Saul. "Derrida’s Deconstruction Of Authority." 21 May 2012. The Anarchist Library. 21 Jan. 2014. <http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/saul-newman-derrida-s-deconstruction-of-authority.pdf>


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