The critical instance 'after' the critique of the subject

Law and Critique

Volumn 16, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 3-25

  Chryssostalis, Julia H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Critical analytics; Critical erotics; Critical ontologies; Critique of the subject; Derrida; Encounter; Foucault; Judgment; Lacan; Marin; Question

Indexed keywords

EID: 22644433662     PISSN: 09578536     EISSN: 15728617     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10978-005-4901-1     Document Type: Review

References (155)

1. Although critique and deconstruction are clearly not the same (on this point, see Derrida's comments in J. Derrida, "Letter to a Japanese Friend", in D. Wood and R. Bernasconi, eds., Derrida and Difference (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 3), the interrogation of subjectivity in contemporary French thought is often referred to in precisely those terms
2. (see for instance, J.-L. Nancy, "Introduction", in E. Cadava, P. Connor and J.-L. Nancy, eds., Who Comes After the Subject? (New York and London: Routledge, 1991), 1-8;
3. and J. Derrida, '"Eating Well': An Interview", in Cadava, Connor and Nancy, Who Comes after the Subject?, ibid., 96-119.
4. Derrida, "Eating Well", supra n. 1, at 98.
5. Derrida, "Eating Well", Ibid., at 103-104.
6. For the difficulties and the ambiguities involved in such a 'break' and more generally in attempts to 'exceed', move/step 'beyond' or 'outside' a certain horizon of meaning, see the exchange between Derrida and Nancy in Derrida, supra n. 1, at 98105 passim;
7. also J. Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, trans. D. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 127, n. 14.
8. On this point, cf. G. Bennington, Legislations. The Politics of Deconstruction (London: Verso, 1994), 52.
9. On this, see also Derrida, supra n. 1, at 98.
10. M. Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, trans. S. Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 103.
11. M. Heidegger quoted in J. Derrida, (1989), Of Spirit. Heidegger and the Question, trans. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby (Chicago: Chicago University Press), 130.
12. S. Agacinski, "Another Experience of the Question, or Experiencing the Question Otherwise", in Cadava, Connor and Nancy, supra n. 1, 9-23, at 12.
13. S. Agacinski, "Another Experience of the Question, or Experiencing the Question Otherwise", Ibid., at 15.
14. Cf. here M. Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology" when he says: "questioning builds a way...The way is a way of thinking", in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. trans. W. Lovitt, (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 4-35, at 3.
15. Also, Derrida, supra n. 8, at 9.
16. One could say here that the structure of such relating is one that starts with quest and ends with appropriation - or, should one say conquest, instead?
17. Agacinski, supra n. 9, at 9.
18. Despite this, speaking here of an 'idea' of 'liberated' questioning, seems appropriate for at least two reasons. First, because, we seem to find it again in the context of the notion of 'problematisation' (see below). And, second, because there seems to be a symmetry, and a certain continuity, between this idea of a 'liberated' questioning and the related ideas of 'liberated' writing and 'liberated' discourse that Foucault explores in the essay on the function of the author, see M. Foucault, "What Is An Author?", in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, D.F. Bouchard, ed., D.F. Bouchard and S. Simon, trans., (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 113-138; see esp. 115ff; and 136-138.
19. Foucault speaks of a 'liberation of the act of questioning' in an interview with Paul Rainow, conducted in May 1984, just before Foucault's death - the same interview, in fact, in which he discusses in some length the notion of 'problematisation'. See "Polemics, Politics, Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault", in M. Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984. Vol. 1), P. Rabinow, ed., R. Hurley et al., trans. (London and N.Y: Penguin Books, 1997), 111-119, at 115.
20. I b i d.
21. I b i d.
22. Ibid.,&i 115.
23. I b i d.
24. Foucault, supra n. 14, at 138.
25. Cf. Foucault, ibid., at 116; also, at 42.
26. For a brief excursus, see P. Rabinow and N. Rose, "The Essential Foucault: Introduction", at www.lse.ac.uk/collections/sociology/pdf/ RabinowandRose-Introto Essential Foucault 2003.pdf, at 12-14. On problematisation more generally
27. see further M. Foucault, supra n. 15, at 114-119;
28. and M. Foucault, Fearless Speech, J. Pearson, ed. (Los Angeles, Ca.: Semiotext(e), 2001), esp. 71-74.
29. Foucault, supra n. 15, at 118.
30. Foucault, supra n. 22, at 74.
31. Ibid.', my emphasis.
32. What follows, takes its cue from a section in the interview with Paul Rabinow already mentioned (supra n. 15), where Foucault discusses the notion of 'problematisation'. See Foucault, supra n. 15, at 114-115.
33. Ibid., 114; my emphasis.
34. Cf. here Agacinski, supra n. 9, at 19
35. who identifies this as a specifically Heideggerian theme. That is to say, insofar as Heidegger breaks with the idea that questions happen either as part of the activity of the self-questioning consciousness, or between already determined 'questioners', and introduces the problematic of the experience of the question (the question of Being and of the being of the entity that we are) as determining in the 'logic' of Dasein. On this, see further Agacinski, ibid., at 19-20.
36. But see also J. Derrida, supra n. 1, at 104-105, for the implications of this continued centrality of the question in the project of Being and Time and the existential analytic of Dasein.
37. Foucault, supra n. 15, at 114-115; my emphasis.
38. Supra n. 8.
39. Ibid., at 9.
40. Heidegger, supra n. 11, at 35.
41. On this see further Derrida, supra n. 8, at 131.
42. Ibid., at 8; emphasis in the original.
43. Ibid., at 9.
44. M. Heidegger, "The Nature of Language", in P.D. Hertz, trans., On the Way to Language (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).
45. Heidegger, supra n. 11, at 35.
46. Heidegger, supra n. 36, at 72. Cf. also the version cited in Derrida, supra n. 8, at 131.
47. See Derrida, supra n. 8, at n. 129-136;
48. and also briefly, J. Derrida, "...and pomegranates", in H. de Vries and S. Weber, eds., Violence, Identity, and SelfDetermination (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 326-344, at 338-339.
49. Derrida, "...and pomegranates", supra n. 39, at 338.
50. Derrida, supra n. 8, at 131.
51. Derrida, supra n. 1, at 100.
52. Derrida, supra n. 8, at 129.
53. I b i d.
54. Ibid., at 130. Or as Critchley has elegantly put it, "[p]rior to the putting of questions to language (i.e. what is the essence of language?), it is clear that language has already been granted"
55. S. Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), at 194.
56. Heidegger, supra n. 36, at 72.
57. Derrida, supra n. 8, at 134.
58. Derrida, '...and pomegranates', supra n. 39, at 338.
59. Derrida, supra n. 8, at 100.
60. Of course in this context the homophony between l' en-gage and langage is nothing but accidental.
61. This is not the place to consider these implications for Heidegger. Suffice it to say that according to Derrida they involve the re-reading of Heidegger's work in a way, which would re-mark the thought of responsibility within it. On this, see further Derrida, supra n. 8, at 131-135, where he sets out a number of markers for such a rereading;
62. and Derrida, '...and pomegranates', supra n. 39, at 338-340.
63. On this see also Critchley, supra n. 45, at 190-200, who argues that Of Spirit does not set out only an agenda for the re-reading of Heidegger but also of Derrida.
64. Critchley, supra n. 45, at 194.
65. Ibid., at 130.
66. Derrida, supra n. 8, at 132.
67. Critchley, supra n. 45, at 195.
68. J. Derrida, supra n. 1, at 109.
69. Ibid., at 100.
70. I b i d.
71. Ibid., at 109; my emphasis.
72. J. Lacan, Ecrits. A Selection, A. Sheridan, trans. (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1977), 86.
73. On the constitution of the "I who speaks" in the field of the Other, see J. Lacan, [Sem. III] The Psychoses (1955-1956), J.-A. Miller, ed., R. Grigg, trans. (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 272-283.
74. On the emergence of the subject in the field of the Other, and the subject's dependence on the signifier, see J. Lacan, [Sem. XI] The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, J.-A. Miller, ed., A. Sheridan, trans. (London: Penguin Books, 1979), 197-198 and 203-229;
75. and J. Lacan, "Position of the Unconscious", B. Fink, trans., in R. Feldstein, B. Fink, and M. Jaanus, eds., Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's 'Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis' (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), 259-282;
76. On this, see further C. Soler, "The Subject and the Other" (I); and (II); in R. Feldstein, B. Fink, and M. Jaanus, eds., supra at 39-44 and 45-53, respectively. Finally, on the division/ inversion that constitutes the subject in its relation to the signifying chain (represented in the graph given in four stages in the essay, "Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire)"
77. see Lacan, supra n. 53, at 303-324.
78. Lacan, [Sem III], supra n. 61, at 274.
79. Lacan, supra n. 60, at 310; and J. Lacan, [Sem. XI], supra n. 61, at 205.
80. D. Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1996), 132.
81. J. Lacan, [Sem. II] (1954-1955), The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, J.-A. Miller, ed., S. Tomaselli, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 23.
82. D. Evans, supra n. 64, at 132-133.
83. J. Lacan, [Sem III], supra n. 61, at 272.
84. J. Lacan, supra n. 60, at 253.
85. Ibid., at 285.
86. J. Lacan, [Sem III], supra n. 61, at 273.
87. J. S. Lee, Jacques Lacan (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 60.
88. See also, J. Lacan, supra n. 53, at 264 and 305.
89. J.-A. Miller, "The Analytic Experience: Means, Ends, Results", in E. Ragland-Sullivan and M. Bracher, eds., Lacan and the Subject of Language (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 83-99, 93.
90. J. Lacan, [Sem III], supra n. 61, at 179; my emphasis.
91. J. Lacan, [Sem XI], supra n. 61, at 67.
92. J. Lacan, "Position of the Unconscious", supra n. 61, at 264.
93. J. Lacan, supra n. 60, at 305.
94. Cf. here J. Lacan, "Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet", in S. Felman, ed., Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading Otherwise, Yale French Studies 55/56 (1977), 11-52, at 13, where he talks of '...the hook, the question mark, of the Che vuoi? of subjectivity constituted and articulated in the field of the Other'.
95. On this point, see also G. Pavlich, "Experiencing Critique", and C. Douzinas, "Oubliez Critique" Law and Critique 16 (2005), 95-112 (this issue).
96. On the way in which the imagery of the court and the vocabulary of law are central to Kantian critical philosophy, see further G. Rose, The Dialectics of Nihilism. Post-Structuralism and Law (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984).
97. M. Foucault, "What Is Enlightenment?", in Foucault, supra n. 15, 303-319, at 308.
98. See also I. Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, N. Kemp Smith, trans. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1929), 60 [B27].
99. I. Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, Ibid., (1929), at 315.
100. On this point, see also H. Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, R. Beiner, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 32.
101. Kant as cited in Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, ibid., at 42.
102. Cf. R. Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
103. Cf. Douzinas, supra n. 78; also Pavlich, supra n. 78. The Latin equivalent would be dijudicatio.
104. Here, one might recall Kant's definition of judgement as 'the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal', in I. Kant, The Critique of Judgement, J.C. Meredith, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), 18.
105. For a different reading of the critical activity in terms of judgement, see J.F. Lyotard, L' Enthousiasme: la critique Kantienne de l'histoire (Paris: Galilée, 1982).
106. T. Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society", in Prisms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), 30.
107. Which is why Deleuze urges us to "get done with judgement". On this, see G. Deleuze, 'Pour en finir avec le jugement', in Critique et Clinique (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1993), 158-169.
108. K.P. Geiman, trans., in J. Schmidt, ed., What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth Century Answers and Twentieth Century Questions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 382-398.
109. Foucault, supra n. 80.
110. Ibid., at 315.
111. E. Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1996), 26.
112. Foucault, supra n. 15, at 316.
113. Foucault, supra n. 90, at 383.
114. J. Butler, "What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue", in D. Ingram, ed., The Political: Readings in Continental Philosophy (London: Blackwell, 2002).
115. Y. Stavrakakis, "Re-activating the Democratic Revolution: The Politics of Transformation Beyond Reoccupation and Conformism', Parallax 9 (2003), 56-71, at 56.
116. I b i d.
117. I b i d.
118. Y. Stavrakakis, "Re-activating the Democratic Revolution: The Politics of Transformation Beyond Reoccupation and Conformism', Parallax 9 (2003), Ibid., at 69.
119. A. Badiou, in Stavrakakis, Parallax, ibid.
120. M. Foucault, "The Art of Telling the Truth", A. Sheridan, trans., in M. Kelly, ed., Critique and Power. Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 139-148, 148.
121. M. Foucault, "The Art of Telling the Truth", Critique and Power. Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate, Ibid., at 147-148; my emphasis.
122. Foucault, supra n. 80, at 315.
123. Cf. Rabinow, in Foucault, Ibid., at xxxii.
124. G. Deleuze, Foucault, S. Hand, trans. (London: The Athlone Press 1988).
125. Foucault, supra n.80, at 318; cf. also at 262. These questions also correspond to the three 'ontologies' Deleuze identifies in Foucault's work: that of knowledge, that of power, and that of the self. Deleuze, supra n. 106, at 114.
126. Foucault, supra n. 80, at 319.
127. Deleuze, supra n. 106, at 119.
128. As Derrida notes with respect to deconstruction - but which, I think, holds more generally - '[w]hat is put into question by its [this/] work is not only the possibility of recapturing the originary but also the desire to do so or the phantasm of doing so, the desire to rejoin the simple, whatever that may be, or the phantasm of such a reunion.' J. Derrida, Resistances of Psychoanalysis, P. Kamuf, P.-A. Brault, and M. Naas, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 27.
129. Cf. Derrida, "Letter to a Japanese Friend", supra n. l, at 4:
130. '...one of the principal things at stake in what is called in my texts "deconstruction" is precisely the delimiting of ontology' (my emphasis).
131. J. Derrida, "For the Love of Lacan", in Derrida, supra n. 110, at 54; my emphasis.
132. On the question of whether the unconscious lends itself to ontology, see further J. Lacan, [Sem XI], supra n. 61, at 29-33.
133. For an account on how deconstruction operates as a critical analytic, see Derrida, supra n. 110, 1-38, at 27-38.
134. I b i d.
135. Ibid., at 19.
136. Ibid., at 19-20.
137. Ibid., at 27; emphasis in the original.
138. Ibid., at 21.
139. I b i d.
140. I b i d.
141. Ibid, at 29.
142. Ibid., at 27-28.
143. For the analytics at work in Foucaultian genealogy (and which Dreyfus and Rabinow have called 'interpretive', see H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault. Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneulics, Afterword by M. Foucault (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982) 118-125, esp. 122 ff.)
144. see Foucault's essays, 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History', in Foucault, supra n. 14, at 139-164;
145. "What is Enlightenment?", supra n. 80, 315-319;
146. "What is Critique?", supra n. 90, at 382-398;
147. and "The Art of Telling the Truth', supra n. 102, at 139-148.
148. For a broader sense of the type of (critical) analytics found in Foucault's work, see also The History of Sexuality. Vol. I, R. Hurley, trans. (New York: Vintage, [1978] 1990), at 82;
149. and the interview with Paul Rabinow, "Polemics, Politics, Problematizations", supra n. 15, esp. at 117-119). On the type of analytics at work in psychoanalysis, see Lacan, [Sem XI], supra n. 61.
150. L. Marin, On Representation, C. Porter, trans. (California: Stanford University Press, 2001) 130-142.
151. L. Marin, On Representation, Ibid., (2001), at 140; emphasis in the original.
152. I b i d.
153. I have in mind here the work of G. Deleuze and of H. Cixous.
154. Ibid., at 141.
155. J. Derrida in R. Kearney, ed., Dialogues With Contemporary Philosophers: The Phenomenological Heritage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). 107-126, at 126.