Applied Grammatology: Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys

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Applied Grammatology

GREGORY L. ULMER

Joseph Beuys, "How to explain pictures to a dead hare." 1965. (Photograph by Ute Klophaus.)

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Baltimore and London

for Kathy

©1985 by The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ulmer, Gregory L., 1944Applied grammatology. Includes index. 1. Languages-Philosophy. 2. Humanities--Study and teaching. 3. Derrida, Jacques. 4. Philosophy, Modern20th century. l. Title. Pl06.U46 1984 401'.41 84-47941 ISBN 0-8018-32S6-X ISBN 0-8018-3257-8 (pbk.)

Contents

Preface PART I. Beyond Deconstruction: Derrida l. Grammatology

2. 3. 4. 5.

Theoria Mnemonics Models Speculation

ix

3 30

68 98 125

PART II. Post( e)-Pedagogy

6. The Scene of Teaching 7. Seminar: Jacques Lacan 8. Performance: Joseph 8euys 9. Film: Sergei Eisenstein

Notes Index

157 189 225 265 317 333

Preface

I

wmpo~

j.,

will not woH anthology, Bernard Pautrat explams the new onentation: "The discourse of the master IS lllseparable from the unconscious mlse en scene of the discourse, of its embodiment ["mlSe en corps'l m the body of the master" (GREPH, 271), Pautrat's response to the mSIght mto the Importance of the scene of teachmg IS to turn to a pedagogy of the body, of the matenal reality of the teacher and his settmg. Pautrat's mterest m the peculiarities and idiosyncraSIes of the professor's idiom that seduces the student mto diSCIpleship (the desne to Imitate) is tYPIcal of the poststructuralist concern for

THE SCENE OF TEACHING

173

the smgular and the anomalous, III contrast to the Hegelian focus on the universal. Truth, m Pautrat's VIew, IS an affaIr of the body, an effect or event that has its own character distinct from the definitIons of truth applicable to knowledge as discourse. If the teacher (man or woman) Ill-

eVItably tends toward the place of the father overseemg the logos (his son), the Oedipal sItuation (and with It the whole theoretlCal system of psychoanalysIS) will prove relevant to pedagogy. The paradox Bourdieu and Passeron note regarding the perpetuation of a pedagogIC commufi1ca~ hon that conveys no real mforrnation can \ be explamed, usmg psychoanalYSIS, m terms of the unconscIOUS lflvestments, the pleasures and perverslOns and dnves, that motivate all parties to the exchange (transference and countertransference). The model of diSCipleshIp encouraged under the Hegelian systemthe identificatIOn with and reproductIOn of the master's style (now understood as the gesture of a smgular body rather than as the representation of umversal ideas)-finaUy undermines the cntlcal goals of the philosophical message, Slllce the least thoughtful relationship to knOWledge IS disclple~ Ship. The new pedagogy, then, must attempt to do away with the Yfl~~ strable edagogical effect of diSCI Ie ShIP preCIsely because it enerates diSCIplines and authorities. - The new methodology of instruction, Pautrat suggests, will shift from an exclUSIve concern for the knowledge comprehended through verbal disCOUrse to mclude the "lived" relation to the "scene of instruction," Whose operatlons are submItted to the same deconstruction applied to the BOOk (the complicIty between the Book and pedagogIC commulllcatIOn). The new Imperative IS to replace the purely mtellectual, distanced, neutralized transmIssIOn of mformation (the ideOlogical Image of pedagogical COffirnunlcatlOn) with a paradOXICal techmque of affective knowledge. How IS this to be done? It will be necessary one day to begm to use fully these margins of the professor's discourse, the place, the SIze of the audience, the sexual diVISIOn, the diSPOSItion of the bodies, all that without whiCh there would not even be a philosophic discourse. It IS necessary to change scenes, if one thinks that the scene, by the COmplexity of its entreatres m which It plays, short of and beyond the gesture alone, the Voice alone, IS even to SIgnify elseWhere, otherWIse than m the mteneet alone, the truth to be commumcated. A gOOd scene IS always Worth more than [n iscourse 1ll order to reveal the reality of ex 101tatlOn, the reality of seXUal di erence. eeause it tends to take from behin t e m e ~c ila e enses e ve~y Ones which entrust truth to the mtel eet a one WI au rae lee an WI au oree. REPH. 276, my emphaSIS)

Pautrat calls thIS pedagogy paradOXIcal because it attempts to teach the

174

POST(E).l'EDAGOGY

THE SCENE OF TEACHING

175 "unteachable re/afton to truth," something that can only be approached. if at all, by an Illventive use of the scene of teaching, bnngmg mto play the mIse en scene of the classroom. The question Derrida poses III this context IS, "What IS a teaching body'?" (Polil/ques, 87), The pedagogICal effect of mastery, the maglstenal effect, occurs by means of the (illuslOn of) the teacher's excentnclty to the scene: "The excentnclty of the teaching body, in the traditlonal topOlogy, permits at once the synoptic surveillance covenng with Its glance tl1e field of taught bodies, , , and the withdrawal of the body which only offers Itself to SIght from one side" (88). In short, a body becomes magIstenal only by exercismg a "stratified effacement" of itself ("before or behmd [derriere 1 the global teaching corps, the student body, or the soclo-politlcal body"), adopting the neutrai tone and the plaIn style of "SCIence" whiCh "makes disappear by a sublime annihilation all that in the VIsage cannot be reduced to the speakable and the audible" (89). Agamst the traditIOnal topology of educational space, Derrida proposes to expose all exposition-the programs and strategIes of all questionIng which are by definition maccessible to mdividual and conscIOUS, representable control-placmg himself more than m the center: "A center, a body at the center of a space exposes Itself on all sides, uncovers its back, lets itself be seen by what it does not see" (99), which IS what Derrida was dOIng with his SIgnature m The Post Card (the two other bodies to be Included in the teaching body, he states at the conclUSIOn of "Un corps enseignant," are the words "Jaclues Derrida" with which he SIgns the artiCle). Reproduction and its dependence on transference and identificatIOn. then, may be countered by exerCIsmg the SIgnature effect. Derrida lOOkS not only to Freud and Marx (Pautrat's chOIce) for a model for an enactment of the signature effect m the classroom but also to avant-garde theater, espeCIally as couched in the theones of Mallarme and Artaud. The central problem for oststructuralist education-how to deconstruct the 'unctl 1m In the edago Ie e eet re modern artists in all media to find alternatjyes to "m1metologlSm." Artaud's theater of cruelty mterests Derrida because it "announces the very limIts of representation": It IS theater that IS not representation but "life Itself." EspeCIally unportant m this contp.xt IS Artaud's emphaSIS on the mIse en scene at the expense of verbal discourse. I will pay close attention to Derrida's descriptIon of Artaud's theater of cruelty because It constitutes an outline of a procedure available for the enactment of a poststructuralist teaching in whiCh, as Pautrat noted, a scene IS always better than a discourse. 11 may be, then, as Bourdieu and Passe ron said, that the classroom IS mevitably a theater. But the grammatologIcal classroom will at least be an avant-garde theater, which IS to say that the new pedagogy will benefit from the rec~nt history of avant-garde performance art, the general effect

~:p::!~~ ISa:~rer:~~ t~ed ~tage

and transform the neutrality and distance au Ience, master and pupil. The weaknes f

Ut~:: :~:~:t~~~:I~tgt:~:~oTbhreakjC'

i~Sti:~~

;i::nSt-;::::r cleanly with SOCia: 'th . ereLore It became a pedago WI out a school, a SItuatIOn that a lied ,gy bnngmg together Or mterlacmg sClenc~~nd a;;.ammatology wIll change by The essential feature of Artaud's theory 1 demotion f re evant to pedagogy IS the h 0 speeCh, reversmg the hIStOry of theater III the West wh' h as used mlse en scene (and all t f . ' IC to illustrate the verbal discourse a(sJ"~estc s sttagmg and spectacle) merely as wn mg has been categ . d

°

:~et~\~:~::~e~~;t;~:mo~:::~~~~~~ec~,

n~7~~sa;s

It IS stressed, will delimIted place will have a funct "t£: but WIll occupy a ngorously coo. rdinated" 239) T IOn WI m a system to which It w.ill be , aspects of Artaud's not f scene essential for an r "wo t IOn 0 mise en diSCUSSIOn: app lca IOn to pedagogy are made clear m Derrida's

(WritIng

1. RepresentatIOn as such t reJected, but only transforme~ :~ de~~~s~:~~e~a; IS speech, to be tot~ly released from servility to text and th 'th , 0 name a mise en scene says, "a play u on all e au or-god would requIre, Derrida the ulllque WO;d 'repre~een~:::~~,words that we mdistmctly translate with

fh:nS:~Ji't~~~~a;~~,~ ~~~::oi~l:e~::~~~:~t~ ~~:ctea~::~~n;:I~t~:rate ought. or SI t e . . , 1

~~~;:: ~~!r:~O;: ::~r:~;!t~~~~~Z~~:!'~:ts:ai~:~t::e ~~~ ::lY

a present that would eXIst elseWhere and t, WIll no longer re-present plemtude Would be oide _ pnor to It, a present Whose

g ~~.edlom Without It the ~!~:;~~~:::;-~~:;~e~ ~f ~~~ :~s~:~~~YL~ag~able IVIng present of Gad Nor w'U th s,

e representation means the'surface} of a stage be a ,representation if tors. It will not even offer the prese t s~ectac:e dIsplayed for spectaslgnifies that which IS mamtamed In ~r:~~n ~ a present, if present if representatIOn SIgnifies also the ~nfold'o m;_ Cruel representation, dimenSIOnal milieu ' . . mg 0 a VOlume, a multIIng, 237) , an expenence WhICh produces ItS own space, (WYlt-

Such too will be the mode of re room, III which the old model oFrese~t~tlOn III the grammatological classtradItIon as translatIOn IS understood to mean "transductIOn" or" _ "I ongmary translatIOn," L. The theater of cruelty d d Derrida describes It amounts ;;an s, a new theatrical writing that, when well. "And what of' th' a deflllltIon 0 grammatologlcal writmg as IS new theatncaI wnting? This latter w occupy the limited pOsitIOn of SImply bemg t'he notation 0: W~~dS~~~;

176

will cover the entire range of this new language: not only phonellc writmg and the transcnption of speech, but also hieroglyphic writing, the writing in which phonetIc elements are coordinated to vIsual, plctonal, and plastic elements" (Writmg, 240). With an analogy that he says "reqmres patIent

meditatIOn," Derrida compares Artaud's "hIeroglyphic" wntmg with Freud's descrIption of dreamwork. "Present In dreams, speech can only behave as an element among others, sometImes like u 'thing' which the pnmary process mampulates according to Its own economy. 'In thIS process thoughts are transformed into images, mamly of a vIsual sort; that IS to say, word presentatIons are taken back to the thmg-presentatlons which COfrespond to them, as if in general the process were dommated by considerallons of representability (Darstellbarkelt)," (Writzng, 241).

Mime. A usefuL text for determmmg the nature of the performance needed m the scene of teaching IS Derrida-'s disCUSSlOll of Mallarme's "Mimlque," the latter extracted from Sk-"!tched at the Theatre, an aesthetIcs of mIme based on PaUl Margueritte's solo performance, Pierrot Assassin of His Wife. 12 It IS worth noting, considenng Freud's use of popular culture (the toy slate, the rebusplcture~puzzles13 and thejokes, etc.), that Margueritte,s pIece was a new mterpretaHon of the popular comIC figure of the commedw dell'arte and that the publiCIty gIven to his performance contributed to the Pierrot reVIval that was an Important part of European ModernIsm (Gerould, 103-4). In short, Margueritte's Pierrot and "Mim1que" des1gnate an Important element in the history of performance art. Marguentte's innovatIOn was to create a modern Pierrot-trag1c and neurotic rather than comIcally sympathetlc. The extremIty of the character, '"horrible, mysterious and fatal," may also be compared with psychoanalysIs III that the drama he performs-the actmg out of the (possible?) murder of his wife by tickling her to death-has been related to the abreaction theater of psychotherapy. The most relevant part of Derrida's discussion (in "The Double SessIon") to pedagogy has to do with the theory of mimesis operative m Mallarmtfs mIme, keepmg III mmd that both hypomnesIs and the sImulacrum (sIgnificant strategIes for Derrida) Imply that one should only mime knowledge. Derrida's reading of "Mirruque" suggests some of the features of a mIme performance that mIght be adaptable to applied grammatology. In The Post Card Derrida remarked that the post-age, with its detour or return inquiry of truth, extends from Plato"s Philebus to Beyond tlu Pleasure PrmcllJLe (and beyond). The mterest of Mallarme, accounting for his status as an mitiator of theoretical grammatology, IS that his mImeSIS explicitly breaks with the paradigm of truth which has controlled representation and education from Socrates to the present. Even Freud never qUIte relinquished the Platolllc notion of "livmg memory," for example. In

THE SCENE OF TEACHING

177

anamneSIS the order of memory and of imItation are the same: the thing ImItated lS always hefore the nTIitation The ontologJC8 I potion Oll mhjeb .Q!i s order,s haSed is th,.t $I diSCQllTse on what IS the teal (a decidable logos) IS

ossible which distin uishes between the bern - resent and a

earance.

It goes without saymg m this ontology that the ImItated IS more real truer, supenor to the imItator because it IS pnor. However often this orde; may be reversed throughout history, the absolute discernibility between the 1mItated and the 1mitation, and the ~ntenonty of the former over the latter, have never been displaced. The Illterpretation of mImeSIS histoncally has preserved this order-the order of cause and effect, of truth-whether in the mode of alethew (revelatIon) or adaeQuatzo (correspondence). In both modes of truth, the representatIOn effaces Itself in brmgmg to appearance the phySlS (essence of life) of the Imitated: "It IS III the name of truth, ItS only reference-reference Itself-that mlmeSlS 1S Judged, proscribed or prescribed according to a regular alternatlOn" (Dissemmatzon, 193). Derrida argues that Mallarme's essay makes thinkable a different mlilleSIS, one that not only reverses the order of the relatlOn (anamnesIs itself does too with Its notion of "the future as a returnrng past present," as does teleologIcal return IllqUlry) but that displaces the distIllctlon altogether. "Mimlque," III effect, is an example of double mvagmation at work, m that It does what It says by the operation of a certam syntax glvmg words an undecidable status: "Reference is discreetly but absolutely displaced m the workings of a certain syntax, Whenever any wnting both marks and goes back over its mark with an undecidable stroke. This double mark escapes the pertinence or authority of truth: It does not overturn it but rather inscribes it within its playas one of ItS functions or parts" (Dissemmatzon, 193). Like speech, then, truth 1S not excluded but is put III ItS place, mscribed lfl a more general system whose pnncIple IS the quotatIOn mark. KnOWledge mimed IS SCIence III quotation marks, no longer IllSIght, but zn citation. The SIgnificance of the mIme's sUepee IS tl>Jat, aJthollgh hjS gestures are RO~ merely spo~taneous, they do not follow any prior verbal discourse: HIS gestures, hIS gestural writing (and Mallarme's inSistence on describing the regulated gesture of dance or pantomIme as a hieroglyphic Inscnption IS. le~endary), a~e not dictated by any verbal discourse or imposed by any dIctIon. The MIme maugurates; he breaks mto a white page" (Dissemmation, 195). Like dreams or e theater of cruelty, the Mime IS a meta hor for Writing, slgnifYIng not only the subordination of t the silent workin 0 1 erance'. Moreover, the body Itself becomes a kind of hieroglyph "The white page and the white pamt of the pale Pierrot who, by slmulacrum, wntes m the paste of his own make-up, upon the page he IS." Thus, the Mime "must himself inscribe himself through gestures and plays of faCIal expreSSIOns. At once page and quill, Pierrot IS both paSSive and

178

POST(E)-PEDAGOGY

THE SCENE OF TEACHING

179

active, matter and form, the author, the means, and the raw matenaJ of his mimodrama. The historian produces himself here" (DissemmatlOn, 198). In this performed autography, the identity of representer an~ rep.resented should not be mIstaken for the authentlcity of somethmg lIke Rousseau;s orator; "who represents only himself." as opposed to the actor, "who effaces himself and. IS lost ill his hero" (Grammato[ogy, 305), SlUce this IS the very oppositIon bemg deconstructed. Like Freud., whose speculatIOns were shown to perform tIle movement of the bobbin game. so too does Mallarme perform In his text an auto~ writmg that sImulates the Pierrot example. Pierrot's performance ImItates

an action that mayor may not have taken place in the past. It IS an action presented without taking place; that is, It IS a fictIOn. The relaho~ of the ~heory presented in "MimlQUe" to the actual performance of Plerrot IS SImilarly fictional (ana here IS the real interest of the pIece for Derrida), m that it IS based, as Derrida shows at length, on Mallarme's memory of a performance that he quite likely never even saw and that took place several years pnor to the wr.itlllg of the pIece. Mallarme's "reference," rather. was to a book wntten by Margueritte, which Itself has a complex. mtertextual history (such that finally It IS l1npossible to determme the exact nature of what Mallarme was working with when he produced his theory). The point of Derrida-'s analysIs, which follows the lOgIC of the supplement, IS to show that both Marguentte's performance and "Mimlque" are closed and open at once, that they both mvolve a (iouble writmg' -one that refers only to Itself. and one that refers ll1defimtely to other texts. The structure of this combination IS the graft (collage), whose pnnclPal effect. as a heterogeneous entity, IS the problernahzatlOn of all referenhality and al1lllside!outside oppositIOns. The effect of a double scene with undecjQable reference IS to escape the categonzatlOns of truth which histoncally have restncted the notion of rnrrneSIS. If the text Imitates notfilllg, It cannot be measured III terms of adequahon. Nor IS It a present unveiling of the "thing itself" in the "here and now." The new mimeSIS, rather, utilizes the lOgIC of the ersatz, the prosthesIs, the SImulacrum-an ongmary imitatlOn: There IS no SImple reference. It IS m this that the mnue 's operatIOn does allude, but allUdes to nothmg, allUdes without breaking the mIrror. ... This speculum reflects no reality; it produces mere "realityeffects." ... It IS a difference without reference, or rather a reference without a referent. , , . Mallarme thus preserves the differentlal structure of mImicry or mImeSIS, but without its Platolllc or metaphYSIcal mterpretation, which Implies that somewhere the bemg of somethmg that IS, IS being Imitated, Mallarme even mamtams (and mamtams himself in) the structure of the phantasma as It IS defined by Plato;

the SImulacrum as the copy of' a copy. With the exception that there IS no longer any mOdel, and hence, no copy. (DissemmatlOn, 206) The "Mallarmean" strategy for escapmg Platolllsm and the dialectiC, taken up III tUfn by Derrida. IS not an "impatient" reversal nor a "leap outside" (neither of which can succeed) but a patient, discrete displacement, by ~eans ?f the SImulacrum, of PlatonIsm and Hegelialllsm, a barely perceptIble dIfference of a veil (hymen) or leaf passmg between them (the diff~rence _noted elsewhere between the SIgnifier and the SIgnified, in the dlstmctIOn between sophistics and dialectics). Soacmg. It may be possible now to formulate a prelimmary, partial statement about the nature of a grammatoiogical pedagogy. To begin with, it takes up the problem of spacing-the reversal of the phoneticization process, gIvmg new Importance to the nonphonetic element of writing, putting speech back ill Its place (a prmcipal theme of the manifesto in Of Grammatotogy)-not at the mIcrO-level of differance or the gap of articulation, the level most frequently mvoked ill deconstructiolllsm, but at the macrolevel of mise en scene. An applicatIOn of grammatology to teaching, in other words, mvolves a rethinking of the "space" in which the discourse of ideas takes place. Given that grammatolOgiCal presentations are neither reproduchons of reality nor reyelations of the real It IS clear that gramma_ tology Involves a dis tacement 0 'educatIOn ransmissions rom the domain of truth to that of invention. And the space of invention is to be understoOd specifically in the rhetoncal sense as refernng to the tOPiCS laces loCI collected m m on lace boo scorn iled durm the RenaIssance. nvention m thls rhetoncal traditlOn-an extenSIOn of t tradition of artificI~l ,memory (discussed in chapter 3), with the hypontin , from menmnemlC reSOurce sh1ftm because of the mventio tal s ace to the a es of ammon 1 books 14 at a m of" emus" or or 't but of searchin through the places or to 01 to find matenals for one's own text. The grammatolog1cal classroom, then functions (metaphoncally) III the manner of hypOmnesis. We can lmagme it as a kind of livmg tableau, as if the "Pygmalion" story could be applied to the mnemomc example Frances Yates Cites from Peter of Ravenna (the prinCIples of grammar bemg memonzed by placmg Images assocIated with the lesson onto the allegoncal figure of Grammatica, an old woman with a knife); the ~Odels or examples discussed earlier (in this mnemonic scene brought to l~fe m the classroom), such as the MystiC Pad, the Shoe, and so forth. are like the hieroglyphic alphabet used to "wnte" on the "place"; and the performer-Mime is the allegoncal figure Itself. MemOria. ill other words ~s much as lnVentIO, IS an important aspect of the new ~edagogy (WhiCh: like the new rhetonc, does not SImply return to the old tradition but carnes some of its pnnciples mto a new dimenSIOn).

180

POST(E)-PEDAGOGY

THE SCENE OF TEACHING

181 The context Just referred to helps to clarify what Derrida means to say perhaps in his own descrIptions of the Mime's performance (or at least clarifies a possible extensIon of his descnptions to the classroom). 1 am thinking especIally of the statement at the conclusIOn of "The Double SesslOn" (remarking an idea that mforms a number of hIs essays) that "the crisis of literature takes place when nothing takes place but the place, In the mstance where no one 18 there to know" (DissemmatlOn, 285). Many other passages could be drawn on to fill out thIS nohon, such as the [ollowmg: "This 'materialism of the idea' is nothing other than the stagmg, the theater, the VIsibility of nothing or of the self. It IS a dramatIzatIon which illustrates nothing, which illustrates the nothing, lights up a space, fe-marks a spacmg as a nothing, a blank: white as a yet unwntten page" (Dissemmation, 208). My argument is that what we are meant to discern (able to discern) when nothing takes place but the place IS preCIsely the places and commonplaces (based on an analogy with the commonplace books, although we have other ways to generate matenals now, such as computers and all our hypomnemlc technOlogy) to be utilized for mvention, A major challenge to the teaching performance m a classroom space conceIved of as a metaphor of inventlO IS how to show the places taking place. I should note first, m approaching this question, that the solicItation of theona, eidos, and idea outlined m chapter 2 IS of fundamental importance to a new pedagogy, smce we normally think of pedagogy as a communication or transmIttal or transference of ideas. As Derrida pomts out, relevant to the effect of his new mImeSIS on the idea, "The stage thus illustates but the stage, the scene only the scene; there IS only the eqUlvalence between theater and idea, that IS (as these two names mdicate), the visiblity (which remams outside) of the VIsible that IS bemg effectuated" (Dissemmation, 209). Theory and theater are undergomg the same deconstruction, so that representation at either level is displaced from a "natural" to an "artificIal" mode of repetition: "'Re-presentatlOn-': theater does not show 'things 1ll themselves,' nor does It represent them; it shows a representation, shows itself to be a fiction: it IS less engaged m setting forth things or the image of things than it IS m settmg up a machine" (DissemInation, 238, my emphaSIS), As I stressed m part I, the machine of hypomnesis IS the repetition of slgnifiers rather than signifieds, operating on the pnnciple of the homophone and the homonym. The idea put to work hypomnemical1y IS not the SIgnified concept, then, but the letters/phonemes of the word itself. which are set free to generate (or may be read m this way) conceptual matenal mechamcally by gathenng mto a discourse terms (with all theIr baggage of Slgnifieds) possessmg these letters (SImilar to the + L and the + R effects). This artificIal techmque of inventIOn, to draw on another pun, relates to mimeSIS not as copy but as cOPlG-the love of abundance (apelron)

which charactenzed the RenaIssance. Pedagogically, the common 1

books were used preCIsely to teach the student how t pace dance of matter as D a acqUIre an abun, 10 e coma by Erasmus which taught h t ow 0 make themes "ample and verbose" and "delighted i~ el oquence and COpIOusness more for its own sake tha [. (Lechner, 178). n or persuading a judge ill forensIC causes"

Coma operates with the SIgn of the hi by the structuraltty of the 1 f' cross, c asmus or plUS, as IS indicated 0 as the folds of a fan (recall' ac~ mventlOn, which Derrida characterIZes The SI nifieds or themes of ~~ste~nl~!~~O~umnar spacmgs of mnemolllcs). are dissemmated likp so m"n r g t m all theIr t'olySernlC nchness es - -- ---J Images apont An tbt> , , ' f CJ.O ld S (_places): 1:'1" ... '" "iii .. _epes a '. The blank or the whiteness (is) the totality howey pOlysemlc sene.s, plus the carefully spaced-~ut SP1it~~~;~~I::~ of the Whale, the fanlIke form of the text This I 1 . lJ us IS not Just one extra va ence, a meanmg that mIght ennch the pOlysemlc series A d SInce It has no meanmg, It IS not The blank ro . n tal ongm of the se Th' . _ p per, the transcend enIS IS Why, whlle It cannot constitute a nes. rneanmg that IS SIgnified or represented one Would discourCDse .that It always has a delegate o'r representa:i~~ :~ ~~a:sical senes. lssemmatlOn, 252) All the themes of whiteness and blankness m Mallarme'S t then, this supplementary valence such that When a .~oe ry re-mark, the frame the taking place of the' places, w~at emer;ee :l"t~: ~~ put mto s ment and structure of the fan-as-text" _" 11 th _ _ ry move(Dissemination a IS m the movement of a fan" ,251), The openmgand/orclosmgof the fan("th 1 of 'blanks' and 'folds' both fans 0 t d e poysemy pared to the "waves" f th" u an snaps shut, ceaselessly") IS commethod but a "marchi:g or~er~~:er~ m~~~e patt~rn" (a silk prmt). Not a mg the mterlacmo • s ern a descnbes the machine of spacthe' mom} movem;n;~v:;:;;;:t of chance a~d ~ecessity brings mto contact tIOn of hypomnesis' "F emory, thus ~mkmg his places with the tradilwatered silk] and ~he or example, conSIder the duels among the mOIre mention he dd memolre [memory)" (DisseminatIOn, 277), not to O-i-r co~ le~ s, a whOle .senes or cham of other terms generated by the p or constellatIOn. SUch IS the operation of the + L ff,

~~~:~:

~~~=lu~~~~:e~:thhich

e~l~~~:

c;::a also elxPlams why an example cean , examp es and models t drawmgs aSSOCIated with the p