Polylogue

Author(s): Julia Kristeva, Carl R. Lovitt, Ann Reilly

Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 19, No. 3, After the Nouveau Roman: Opinions and
Polemics (Summer, 1978), pp. 336-350
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208274
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POLYLOGUE
Julia Kristeva
"The
unveiling
is not reduction but
passion. Logi-
cally,
the reader of the
Comedy
is
Dante, in other
words no one-he is also situated in
'love,'
and
knowledge
here is
nothing
but a
metaphor
of a
much more radical
experience:
that of the
word,
where
life, death,
meaning
and
meaninglessness
become
inseparable.
Love is
meaning
and mean-
inglessness,
that which
perhaps, allowing meaning
to
emerge
from
meaninglessness,
makes the latter
evident and readable. . . .
Language emerges
as
the locus of
totality,
the
path
of
infinity:
who does
not know his
language
slaves for
idols,
who sees his
language
sees his
god."
-Philippe
Sollers,
"Dante and the
Experience
of
Writing" (1965), Logiques,
1968.
H: music with its own
reasoning writing
itself in
language, nonstop
and to the
point
of exhaustion of saturated
meaning, overflowing,
fulgurous.
H
requires nothing:
no
deciphering
in
any case,
no com-
mentary,
no
philosophical, theoretical,
or
political complement
that
has been
postponed, overlooked,
forgotten.
H carries
you away,
displacing you
from where
you
are
seated,
blowing
a
gust
of
vertigo
in
your face;
but
lucidity
returns
immediately
with the
music,
and
you
can follow the dissolution of
your opacity-in
the
sounds;
the
unraveling
of
your blind,
organic,
and
deadly sexuality-in
a
ges-
This article was
originally published
in French in Tel
Quel,
No. 57
(Spring
1974), pp.
19-55. Omissions from the
original
are indicated
by spaced ellipses;
closed
ellipses appear
in the
original.
Contemporary
Literature
XIX,
3
0010-7484/78/0003-0336 $1.00/0
? 1978
by
the Board of
Regents
of the
University
of Wisconsin
System
ture, unleashed,
flowing,
thrust from the
body
to
language:
the es-
cape
from
your
social resentments-in a vision of time where Dio-
nysus,
the old
country
of
Aquitaine,
Nerval, Holderlin,
Epicurus,
Chuang
Tzu,
the Arabian
poets,
Webern: "Das
Augenlicht,"
the
Apocalypse, Augustine,
Marx, Mao,
class
struggle,
the France of
Pompidou,
the cultural revolution all have their
place...
It is there-
fore
necessary
to
read, hear, plunge
into its
language,
recover its
music,
its
gestures,
its
dance,
to
bring
its
time,
its
history,
all of
history
to life.
Or
else,
you
discuss it: because H
places you
under
analysis; you
make the author the
object
of
your
transference,
a character in
your
Oedipal
scenario. There
you
find the
interminable,
the undecidable.
You
pass
from H to
Sollers,
from Sollers to H: which is which? Does
the text have a master? How am I to kill what I take for
"master,"
which
puts
me en abime and cuts out
my tongue:
H,
my performance:
H,
my history:
H? You have a
tendency
to take H for
someone,
to
construe its
negativity
as a
"case"-psychological
or
sociological-to
search for its threatened
identity-which
threatens
you.
How so? So
musical and active?
Impossible!
It's not
crazy enough,
not sexual
enough,
not
political enough.
Too
political,
too
sexual,
too
crazy
... The first instance of
protection against
H
(I
mean
against
the
process
which writes H
today, something
else
tomorrow):
"this is
problematic."
The second:
"you deny
that it is
problematic."
The
third:
"nevertheless,
you
let
yourself
be drawn
in, indirectly,
and
after the fact."
May uprising: summoning
of the
masses;
for those who had
known,
for
quite
some
time,
that the
imagination
is the absolute anti-
power,
the
novelty
was the concrete realization of this truth-the
general
strike
immobilizing
France. A mistake? Historical time re-
capitulates
histories of
subjects:
their
birth,
their
practice...
Collapse
of world revisionism, henceforth visible from its at-
tained
apogee.
Advance of the Cultural Revolution: socialism con-
firms its
transformation,
its
vitality,
its
rejection
of
dogmatism: poli-
tics-ideology-diplomacy, advancing, retreating, correcting
them-
selves,
confirm that an historical
turning point
has been
prepared,
perhaps.
We
here, now, concretely,
surrounded
by
an
enduring
bour-
geoisie,
in a culture weakened but
capable
of
integration,
at the
peak
of our
rationality
no
longer
Greek but made
dialectical,
material-
ized,
irrigated by
the unconscious and structured
by
the
reality prin-
ciple imposed by
social contradictions?
SOLLERS' H
1
337
A
language,
a
subject
in the
language
seeks
itself,
speaks
this
turning point,
this
turbulence,
this
returning,
this confrontation of
the old in the new.
The violence of Lois
(1972)
The
laughing,
chanted,
dark and
open logic
of H
(1973)
Is to discuss it a resistance to its flow?
One resistance as
opposed
to others?
Since these
questions
have been raised and discussed from the
beginning
of
time,
and in forms that
change according
to the
relations of
power,
I want to address them
myself.
In
fact,
to discuss
them,
and to the extent that I am entitled to the
pronoun
"I,"
is to
speak
of
my right
to
speak,
in French.
Obviously,
I shall not
say
everything.
To
put
it
brutally,
I
speak
in French and about literature because
of Yalta. I mean not
only
that because of Yalta I had to
marry
in
order to obtain a French
passport
and work in
France;
but because of
Yalta I
longed
to
"marry"
the violence which has
gnawed
at me
since,
dissolves
identity
and
cells,
longs
for
recognition
and
disrupts
my nights, my
rest,
fosters hatred beneath what is
habitually
taken
for love-in
short,
torpedoes
me to death: which
means,
as
you
have
no doubt
already
noticed,
that no "I" is left
me,
and that
everything
disappears
or reconstitutes itself in
theory,
in
politics,
or in activism
...
However,
that is not the
question.
You will
understand,
perhaps,
when I tell
you
that Yalta
created,
out of one
part
of the
world,
societies built
up
around the illusion that the
negative-death,
vi-
olence-does not concern them: that the
negative
is a
vestige
of the
past (of
the
nonliquidated bourgeois
classes,
of
parents)
or a threat
from without. But what we
propose
will be and even is
nothing
but
understanding, exchange,
and
sociality,
hence socialism. Or else
violence is a
fleeting
error
(Stalin's camps)-which
we tend to ac-
cept,
before
doing
a
complete
turnabout and
concluding
that this
violence is fatal, irremediable,
insurmountable,
but that it
is, alas,
our
lot,
whereas elsewhere it is done
without;
and this is called
civilization. We
may
well have read
Hegel,
the "self"
exposed
to the
negative just
closed its
eyes
and
emerged
more or less safe and
sound: the
accomplice,
if not the
foundation,
of Stalinism. This
begins
with the
dogmatization
of the
ideological struggle
followed
by
its surrender and
by
its final
crystallization
into little
protectionist
egos-convenient
narcissisms of the
lingering bourgeoisie.
"Sub-
338 I
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
jects,"
well
protected
in
fact,
but
by
a
protective
force
which-
generally
and
barring exceptions-preempts innovation,
analysis,
history. Nevertheless,
it seems that these
things
do occur: the
ques-
tioning
of
sexuality;
the
irregularity
of a
poem;
the sound of a
foreign
language; prohibited,
even
impossible, eroticism,
yet
for that all
the
more
experienced
and sustained. You become someone who
tells
herself that communal
euphoria lies,
and that the lie concerns
not
only
the enthusiasm of
harvesters,
but also
something
no one
men-
tions: the
oblique words,
the
dreams,
lumps
in the
throat,
the
de-
sires,
the murders
hoped for,
the lost
sentences,
the
rhythms. So,
when
you go
to
gather
information about the achievements of the
five-year plan, you
listen of course to the
figures,
but also to the
voice
of the
girl
who is
speaking,
and
you especially
look at the
orange-
violet-red-green carpets...
like
Matisse,
you'd say.
Then
you
no-
tice,
upon returning
to the
capital,
that the
"freaks,"
the
"madmen,"
the
"homosexuals,"
the
"poets,"
the rioters are
there,
more
and
more
numerous,
and that
nothing permits you
to think or not to
think
about them. Because there was the famous
slackening-the
"thaw"...
You will tell me that Freud makes it
possible
to be rid of
ques-
tions that are
puerile
or relevant
only
to
developing
societies-
which amounts to the same
thing.
This is
easy
to
say
but not at all
certain. Above
all,
do not
forget
that this all takes
place
within
language. Therefore,
it's not
possible
in
Bulgarian, again
because of
Yalta, and, indeed,
because of
preceding history.
This
explains
the
French:
language
of
Robespierre, Sade,
Mallarme...
Henceforth,
I am bound to a torrent. A desire to
understand,
of
course, but,
if
you like,
a
laboratory
of death. Because what
you
take
for the
explosion
of
language
is an
explosion
of
body,
and the
immediate environment
gets
it full in the face.
Besides,
there is no
reason for it to exist other than to take it on the chin and
resist,
if
possible.
Be sure not to mistake
yourself
for someone or for some-
thing: you
"are" in the
explosion; you
exist to
explode.
Misfortune to
those who think that
you
are-for better or for
worse,
it is inconse-
quential.
First of
all,
narcissism
crumbles,
and the
superego says:
all
the
better,
something
has been
liquidated;
but the
body appears
to
need some
identity
and
reacts-refines
itself, contracts,
pebble,
eb-
ony;
or
cracks, bleeds,
rots-depending upon
the
symbolic leap
that
is more or less
possible. Afterwards,
the
symbolic
shroud-the one
comprised
of
acquired knowledge,
the
speech
of
others,
communal
shelter-fissures,
and
something
which I call
(for
lack of a better
SOLLERS' H
| 339
word)
drive
springs up
to shatter all
assurance,
all
belief,
all
pro-
tection,
including
that
represented by
the father or
professor.
A
drifting
follows,
which
puts
me in tune with all that has broken
away:
all that
rejects
the
established,
and
opens
an infinite void where there
are no more
words,
provoking
a sensation of
shattering
that
dupes
the naive but
gives
me access to a
specific delight
that few
suspect.
Here
you
must take a
leap:
otherwise,
it is a
two-thousand-year-old
nun's
story.
Words
arrive,
but
blurred,
meaning
nothing,
throbbing
rather than
meaning,
and this current
sweeps up
breasts,
genitals,
and iridescent skin. We can
stop
there: an
"anonyme
blanc
conflit,"
as was said in the nineteenth
century.
But what for? Now the interest
is there: the
other,
the
heterogeneous, my negation given repre-
sentation,
but I also
decipher
its consummation. This
heterogeneous
is, indeed,
a
body
which invites me to
identify myself
with it
(woman,
child,
androgyne?),
and
immediately
forbids me
any
identification:
it is not
me,
it is the not-me in
me,
beside, outside,
where self is lost.
This
heterogeneous
is a
body
because it is a text: I write this sullied
word,
and I insist in order to make
you
understand how much a
text is
daring,
unidentical, inauthentic,
impossible,
corrosive for him
who wishes to see himself there. A
body,
a text that sends me echoes
of a
territory
I have lost and for which I search: in the darkness of
dreams in
Bulgarian-French-Russian-tones,
Chinese invocations
up-
lifting
the
sleeping,
dislocated
body. Territory
of the mother. This is
to tell
you
that if this
heterogeneous body
and this
daring
text bear
meaning, identity,
or
delight, they
do so other than as a "Name-of-
the-Father." Not that
they
are not
enveloped by
a
despotic
and
tyrannical
Name-of-the-Father: I realize
this,
and it could lead to
endless oratorical
jousting.
But this is
only
a
question
of
power,
and
the
important thing
is to be aware of what exceeds it. I
listen,
there-
fore,
to the dark
territory heterogeneous-body/text,
I
wrap my
de-
light
in
it,
I loosen
it,
I
pass
beside it in a cold fire where
murder is no
longer
a murder of the
other,
but of the other that took
itself for
me,
of me who took
myself
for the
other,
of
me,
you,
us,
mere
personal pronouns
that have little business here.
So,
the
body
now
liquid
dust,
the
shining mercury flowing
from
me,
never abolish
a
night
watchman:
paternal shadow,
being
of
language?
It even calls
upon
me to
represent
it: the "I" reconstructs
itself, repositions
itself,
the
removed,
symbolic
witness of the
explosion
in which
every entity
dissolved. The "I" returns
then,
and
expresses
this intrinsic torsion
wherein it had
folded,
provoked
at least four of us. "I"
say it,
therefore
"I" position
myself:
"I" socialize
myself.
An
imperative
and in-
340
|
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
dispensable
movement: a sudden reversal where the
heterogeneous
negativity
that made me
delight/die goes
to
work,
wants to know
itself,
to communicate
itself,
and
consequently,
loses itself. To com-
municate,
to know... All this is
perverted enough: language
feels
the
effects,
the
concept
is
twisted,
the murder is
disguised
as a
request
to others for more effort in their
thinking-no
scholar,
no
orthodox theoretician will find his
bearings
in
my
communicative
essays
if he has not
passed through
the four-sided duel I have
just
recalled.
And
yet,
this movement
already placed
me on the other side:
there,
where
society conspires
to
deny
the murder that it inflicts on
music-on
drive-by basing
itself on a
code,
that is to
say,
on a
language.
"I," returned,
feels
uneasy
there but not without
gratifica-
tion,
having
a
tendency
to
accept
the
ambiguous
and
ephemeral
praise
accorded the diver who has had the malice to
bring
home
several
trophies.
But
endlessly skidding, spinning, protesting: jeal-
ous of its
exploration,
fascinated
by
the loss to
reexperience...
All
the more so because the
other,
the
"poet,"
the "actor" is
there,
goes,
comes,
disappears, explodes,
and does not leave to
any
"I" the
possibility
of
settling
on the side where the id denies. ...
The other that will
guide you,
and will
guide
itself in this dissolu-
tion,
is a
rhythm,
a
music,
and in the
language,
a
text;
I will come
back to this. The relation which holds
you together?
Counter-desire,
the
negative
of
desire,
desire
reversed,
capable
of
challenging (of
causing)
its own
unending quest.
Romantic, filial, adolescent,
ex-
clusive, blind,
oedipal:
it
is,
but for others. To
your place,
common
to
both,
it returns
disappointed,
irritated, ambitious,
smitten with
history,
critical,
on the
verge
of a
breakdown,
and moreover
steeped
in the crisis of its own
identity,
of its
enunciation,
of the
continuity
of
its
movements,
a drive
blasting
to shreds the
symbolic
thesis
that,
before
you,
shatters and
reforms,
quiescent,
elsewhere. After the
mellifluous
whirling
of the Jocastas and
Antigones,
the
dispassionate
fascination with the unleashed whims of
hysterics,
the
negative
awakes in the
body
and in the
language
of the other to weave a fabric
where
your
role is tolerable
only
if related to that of
Sade's,
Joyce's,
and Bataille's women. But never confuse
yourself
with the
weaving
or
with the character
against
whom the threads are woven: it is im-
portant
to listen to
it,
at
your
own
discretion,
but
indefinitely,
and to
disappear
in the flow of this
listening
....
Since there is a man and a
woman,
but who are masculine and
feminine
only
at the
outset,
another "relation" is invented around
SOLLERS' H
341
this sexual differenciation and the
impossible
it induces from both
sides: an invention which has
barely begun,
with a certain nonuxori-
ous manner of
understanding
the Freudian
revolution;
with com-
munities
opening up
the
family;
with
pop
music;
H... A
painful
laboratory
that entails
erasures, setbacks,
victims. But in order to
talk about
it,
and this is the
only way
to
experience
its
process, you
are once
again
face to
face,
two
by
two,
bearing
the
familial, social,
and
linguistic
constellations of
yourself
and of the other.
I talk about this because it is
my problem-a
current
problem.
Men
captivated by
archaic mothers and
dreaming
that
they
are wom-
en or inaccessible
masters;
exasperated
and
frigid daughters,
en-
closed in
groups
where what
they
take for feminine
homosexuality
leads to their social
isolation; others,
classical
hysterics, seeking
the
impossible
maternal
fusion,
exhalted
by deception:
I see them
every
day,
more and more
clearly,
and it is
plainly
those
subjects
who enter
into class
struggle,
the
ideological struggle,
into scientific
experimen-
tation,
into
production...
This is
why,
where,
and how I
seek,
I
understand,
I
read,
I take H
....
I am
reading
H at the same time as Sollers' book On Materialism:
two sides of the same
process.
For the
mechanists,
materialism is a
question
of
substance, or,
at
best,
a
question
of
recognizing
the
primacy
of the exterior over the
interior,
of nature over
society,
of
economy
over
ideology,
etc.
Language,
that
practice
which
per-
mits
signification,
which makes this
signify-that-it-is,
is abandoned to
the
keepers
of the
logos setting up-concealing being-becoming-noth-
ingness.
There is neither a materialist
logic
nor a materialist
linguis-
tics. Both
logic
and
linguistics
rest
upon
a
gesture
that denies the
heterogeneity
of the
signifier,
and which derives from the truth of a
certain
positioning
of the
speaking subject:
the
position
of the tran-
scendental
ego,
whose
emergence
from a
game
of hide-and-seek with
the
object
was
exposed by
Husserl.
Moreover,
any
discourse that
obeys
the
postulates
of a
logic
or a
linguistics
of communication is
wholly,
and
by
its
very economy,
a discourse
foreign
to materialism.
Philosophy-logical, grammatical, pedagogical-could
never be
materialistic: within the
sphere
of its
enunciation,
which is also the
space
of
simple, phrastic
enunciation
(the
statement of demand
and
exchange),
matter can
only
be "transcendence": Husserl said
this.
Yet,
materialism has succeeded in
affirming
itself: in Heracli-
tean
ellipses,
in the
gesture
of
Epicurus
that
exposed
the customs
342
j
CONTEMPORARY
LITERATURE
of the
city,
in the
poetic language
of Lucretius. This
antique
material-
ism,
whose
ignorance,
naivete,
and
prescientific
limitations
may
be
discussed at
will,
contains a "truth" that modern mechanistic ma-
terialisms are
incapable
of
realizing; namely,
that materialism
is,
indeed,
a
knowledge
of the
world,
but that this
knowledge
is
insep-
arable from the attitude of the
speaking subject
in
language
and/or
in
the
world;
materialism is above all the
expression
of what
you
want,
but which
necessarily implies
that the
speaker
has an unconscious
which beats
upon
him as
rhythm-intonation-music,
before
dissolving
him in a
cellular,
biological explosion
which
is,
at the same
time,
subjective, symbolic,
and social. An "I" that has
undergone
this
process only
to return to its
original position,
and that
speaks
its
polylogic:
this is a materialist who
speaks.
Diderot
speaks
in material-
ist terms when he
performs
as a one-man band: Rameau's
Nephew.
Marx and Lenin
speak
in materialistic terms when
they
refuse
philo-
sophic
discourse and find in
polemics
and in
struggle
a multivalent
"discourse" beneath
apparent speech;
a discourse without words:
index of their
setting-in-process, implying
the
setting-in-process
of
the masses.
H
explores precisely
this moment which so
many philosophies
and
dogmatisms
aim to recover: the moment when materialism can
be
affirmed;
not the dissolution of the "self" in
speechless
matter-
oblique schizophrenia;
nor the
flight
of an
ego,
subsumed
by
the
predicative synthesis
outside of
any
zone
antedating
its
logical po-
sitioning;
rather,
the ordeal of the
attack,
of instinctual
separation,
or
immobilization,
or of
death,
at the same time as their reaffirma-
tion in a
logical, fragmented,
and
rhythmic polyvalence.
The
subject
loses itself
only
to
plunge
into the material and historical
process,
but
it reconstitutes
itself,
recovers its
unity,
and
rhythmically
articulates
its dissolution as well as its return. Materialist
discourse,
when
expressed
in
rhythm,
is
gaiety
torn
by pain.
The
rhythm
which mul-
tiplies language
and
exempts
it from its transcendental
position
is
propelled by pain:
the
rhythm expresses
the
pain
which fissures the
"self,"
the
body,
each
organ.
Pain
experienced
as such with the
positioning
of a
single
word
(signified, signifier); pain
which does not
abate until it has bombarded
every
word in
circulation, in, around,
before,
after the
enunciating subject.
Without this
agony
of
repeated
splitting,
there is no
possibility
of
speaking
of the
process
of the
subject,
of
matter,
of
history
as a dialectical
process,
that
is,
one and
heterogeneous.
Heraclitus the
"misanthrope": fragmenter,
divider,
separator.
Sade,
the director of
pain, space
of
disappearance
and of
SOLLERS' H
|
343
pleasure finally
articulated,
finally possible.
Lenin,
torn between the
Philosophical
Notebooks and What Is To Be
Done?,
who arrives
during
the
night
of
Smolnyi
with his
body crippled by
sickness,
and this
mysterious
death... The social code
changing, projecting,
com-
prised
of
opaque
unities which
permute
without
calling
themselves
into
question,
a
subject-object irreparably
lost to each other...
This code cannot be
lifted-delight-laugh-with impunity.
The moment of the attack: loss of
self,
of
knowledge, pain
of the
split,
nearness of
death,
absence of
meaning-"there
is a sudden
vertigo
when
you
extend
your
arm outside of absolute
knowledge
to
find the flower"
(p. 96)....
The
negativizing, splitting, painful, immobilizing,
and deaden-
ing
drive does not
stop
the
process:
the "I" resurfaces
speaking,
musicalizing,
to
expose
the material truth of the
process
which had
carried it to the brink of its
explosion
in a whirl of mute
particles....
It is
only
then that the
speaking subject
discovers it is the
subject
of a
body,
itself
pulverized,
dismembered,
and remade
by
the
pounding
of the drives-the
rhythms-of
the
polylogue....
Materi-
alist
language
is the
language
of a
body
never seen nor heard. No
Spinozan
substance,
no Cartesian
vortex,
not even Leibnizian mo-
nads in a tabular network: this
polylogical body
is a
permanent
contradiction between substance and
voice,
each
entering
into a
pro-
cess of endless fission from the first collision onward-vocalized
substance,
deadened
voice,
each made infinite in relation to the
other. But
finding,
at
last,
in the
unity
of the
speaking
consciousness
the
ability
to
signify
themselves ....
The "I"
speaks-sings
the indecisive movement of its birth. Its
geometry,
that
is,
the
text,
this "double of the
tongued
wind,"
gath-
ers
rhythm
and
meaning
in one formulated
sequence, presence
effaced and
reconstructed, mimed,
punctuating-and-signifying
the
truth of its
production
and death: a
passage
from
"subjective"
to
"objective,"
then back to
"subjective,"
without end. . . . But this
"I,"
affirmed,
hypostatized,
unshakeable in its twisted
multiplica-
tions,
and conscious of the truth of its
practice
does not
require
truth
in its
speech.
This is no
longer mysticism saying:
"I am the truth."
The
polylogue
states:
"I,
truth,
have the
right
to lie in the form that
sings
me"
(p. 35).
For this
polylogical
"I"
speaks
of a
before
which is
not even
unconscious;
a "before" all "before unconscious
-shock,
gush,
death, clash,
then-stasis of
sound,
then-heterogeneity
of the
"representamen,"
"other,"
"language,"
"I,"
"speech"...,
then-
eruption
of the
shock,
of the
gush,
of death. An "I" which moves
344 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
in this
"before,"
of which it cannot even be said that it "has been"
(because
"it has been" is because I
say
so,
without which this before,
in relation to
"I,"
creates a
"knot," "not,"
negativity),
has no
guar-
antee of
"being"
or of "truth" in its
statement,
excepting
the intona-
tion,
melody, song,
and the torsion which it
imposes
on the
language
by making
it
speak
in a future that threatens the fixed
present,
thus
"becoming" commemorating
a
"being"
that nonetheless remains
presentable.
In
H,
the
present
"I" is the crest of a melodious
before,
and of a
logically
immediate
future, dazzling
for him who has not
heard the echo of the before and who has not
knowingly
been there.
"I" present
just
to
open up
the
present
into a double
infinity:
imme-
morial
before,
and
ravaging,
historical
immediacy
. . .
The transfinite in
language-this "beyond
the sentence"-is no
doubt above all an
experience
of nomination:
namely,
the
experience
of the
sign,
of the
syntagm,
of
linguistic
finitude,
but it is also and at the
same time the
experience
of the
"proper
name": of an indexation that
identifies the
entity
if,
and
only
if,
it has caused this
entity
to
proceed
from a
symbolic origin harboring
the law of the social contract.
H
prosecutes
nomination and the
(proper)
Name
by setting
up
and
recognizing
their constraints.
Proper name-pseudonym-
H
destroys
both in one enormous
explosion
of
laughter
which attacks
the
identity
of the son as well as that of the "artist." Sentence-
sequence-narration-and exceeding
their localizable
significations
(which
ensnared
many
readers of
Lois)
in a
process
of centers indefi-
nitely
and
infinitely displaceable. Nothing proceeds
from
nothing:
infinity
invents itself
by
sudden, violent,
heterogeneous,
and contra-
dictory explosions
where "that which
proceeds" (nomination, Name)
is but an ensemble
having
no existence until
infinity
has been dis-
pelled; yet
here
infinity (logical
and
heterogeneous)
is no
longer
held
off,
but returns and menaces all nominal existence. ...
The time of the
polylogue
is not a
stoppage
of
time-something
beyond
time recovered
by
an "I"
during analysis, clearing
its
symbolic
screen to
plunge
into a
receptacle
where the unconscious
keeps
itself
in
reserve,
without time and without
negation,
but
returning
in the act
of
writing
to trace this division in the form of the contradiction
I/she-
he. This
achrony, staged by
Drame
and,
in
part, by Nombres,
is
invalidated
by
the
"springing
of the
subject"
in Lois and H. Here,
time
returns,
and with the
logical-symbolic
thesis,
the "I" recovers the
thread of
succession, deduction,
and evolution. The
rhythm
which
punctuates
it, however,
makes this thread a fractured
course,
with
SOLLERS' H
|
345
multiple edges,
thrusts to the
infinite,
returns to the same
shores,
departures
into other dimensions: an
improbable "topology,"
com-
prising every possible
and
imaginable
zone
(the history
of
thought,
the
history
of
art,
the
history
of
conquests,
the
history
of revo-
lutions,
the
history
of class
struggle),
and
making
them infinite
through
their interaction with the
others-Phenomenology of
the Mind whose
chapters
have been shuffled like
playing
cards,
the
overlaps
reveal-
ing
recursive
determinations,
transtemporal causalities,
achronic
dependencies
that
Hegel-teleologist
of
evolutionary perfection
proceeding by
the
completion
of
cycles-could
not have created. In
H: no
cycles-the cycles open up
and cut across one another.
This is not the Proustian "recovered time" where a
phrastic
concatenation reascends the
history
of its familial
genesis,
even if it
lets itself become
fragmented, rhythmic, by
a
panchronic
and uncon-
scious
pro-ject.
The time of H is a
polyphonic,
stratified time: the
familial
genesis
functions
merely
as one
category among
others,
literally jolted by
the
eruption
of other
trails,
brief
flashes,
condensed
echoes of otherwise interminable
chronologies.
Almost
every
se-
quence
is a recovered
time,
but one which lasts no
longer
than a
breath,
an
intonation,
the
juxtaposition
or
embedding
of a few sen-
tences. The
following sequence already
comes from another chrono-
logy, condensing quite
another time. The
rapidity
felt in H is
pro-
duced
by rapid temporal changes;
it contrasts with the
logical
mastery,
the calm
rigor
of
statement,
the
permanent
rationalism of the
speaking subject effortlessly moving
from one
sequence
to another.
What moves
quickly
is neither
linguistic
time nor the intonational
sequences
which,
though
brief,
appease
the text with their
repetition
to the
point
of
rendering
it as "monotonous" as Indian music. What
really
moves
quickly
is
history, perpetually
divisible. First of
all,
it is
drawn from different heteronomous
"domains,"
as is
apparent
from
the
proper
names evoked: Goethe's
Dichtung
und
Varheit,
Homer's
Iliad
(p. 11), Stalin-Lenin-Lassalle-Hegel-Heraclitus (p. 67),
sick
Freud
(p. 73),
the resistances to Freud
(p. 81),
Mozart and Neitzsche
(p. 87), Joyce (p. 90),
Mallarme
(p. 103),
Marx
(p. 107),
Nietzsche
and Socrates
(p. 113),
Stalin's
daughter (p. 114), Marx-Engels
and
Nietzsche,
with Vietnam
(p. 115), Lenin-Epicurus (p. 119), Hegel,
Plato
(p. 119), Aristotle,
Aeschylus,
Purcell
(p. 122), Copernicus
(p. 156),
Puld
(p. 172), Celine, Beckett,
Burroughs (p. 151)
... The
list is far from
being complete,
but it can
eventually give
an
approxi-
mate idea of the
paths
of H
through
what is called the
history
of
philosophy,
science,
religion,
and
art, which, by
means of H's circuits
346
I
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
and
short-circuits,
cease to be
scraps
of a
"specific history"
to be-
come the
heterogeneous
times of a
polylogical, polytemporal
sub-
ject;
the reader
being
then invited to reconstitute in his semiotic
process "specific temporalities" (art, science,
politics, economics)
and
exceptional
adventures of
"great
men"-instances,
among
others,
of the
"springing
of the
subject"
in and
through
its dissolution in the
masses;
instances which remain
disturbing
for the
neurotic,
complex-
ridden consciousness of a
dogmatic
and/or
revisionist "left"...
Through
this recreated
heterogeneous
time,
the
subject
that is sum-
moned,
the
subject
of the twentieth
century,
is the
subject
of more
than
twenty
centuries of
history
that never understood their relation
to the
prevailing
modes of
production.
Let us make
history rhythmic,
and let the
rhythm
of
history
enter our discourse so that we can
become the limitless
subject
of all
histories-individual, national,
class-that
nothing
from now on can
completely encompass.
Com-
pared
to the
practice
of
H,
all historical reconstruction that is linear
and concrete will
appear
narrow, strict,
punishing,
reductive of at
least one of the dimensions that are
found,
here,
to
interact,
comple-
menting
and
broadening
each
other,
preventing
closure.
Nevertheless,
there is an axis around which this
fragmentation
of recreated time takes
place:
the
political critique
of the historical
present.
With
regard
to
time,
a critical
practice
in the historical
present corresponds
to the
logical
thesis
pulverized by
the semiotic
rhythm
in an infinite sentence. . . . Class
conflicts,
displacement
of the historical
axis,
. . . the
ideological struggle
here and now: it is
in the historical
space
thus constituted that a
subject presents
itself to
re-create time-the time of
subjectivity,
and
through
it,
a new histor-
ical time. Without this
space,
no
polylogue
is
possible:
no
rhythm,
no
multiplied meaning,
no
totalized, stratified,
or infinitized time.
This means that H would not be
possible
were it not
political.
That there is no
polylogical subject possible
without this new
politi-
cal
topos-stratified, multiple,
recurrent-which has
nothing
to do
with the classical
political position,
which is
dogmatic
and
linear,
thriving
on traditional familial time and familial discourse. The in-
separability
of
politics
and the
polylogue
seems to be the
guarantee
of an encounter of the
subjective process
with the historical
process;
the failure of this encounter is madness or
dogmatism,
ever
solidary,
two faces of the same coin. The historical
bourgeoisie,
the
very
class
that
wrought
a
conception
of
history,
did not have
any poetry:
it
censored madness. The
petty bourgeoisie
which succeeds
it,
at
best,
rehabilitates madness but lacks
history
....
SOLLERS' H
| 347
The
upheaval
now called for is more than a transformation of
class
power.
The
requirement, here,
is monumental: transformation
of the
subject
in its relation to
language,
to the
symbolic realm,
to
unity,
to
history. Up
until this
point,
this
type
of revolution took on
the
aspect
of
religion
.... H listens to the time
of christianity
also,
perhaps
more than
anyone today,
to hear the truth of monotheism
which it
exposes: namely
that there is no
subject
or
history
without a
confrontation of the
process (semiotic, production,
class
struggle)
with
symbolic,
thetic,
phallic, paternal,
statist
unity...
And to lead
us,
through Christianity,
after it: "The new
subject
will come this is
messianism but not
simply
we advance in disorder on all fronts mille
feuilles" (p. 73).
H sets us in the wake of
uplifted
death: of
time,
H shatters and
re-creates our
language,
our
body,
our
time;
it introduces
struggle
in
our
identity
to make us desire social
struggle,
and no
longer separate
one from the other.
Today,
in
France,
"death lives a human life
which
you
can
verify
each
evening
while
watching
a T.V. announcer
absolute
knowledge
has taken
place period" (p. 41). Therefore,
"I
accept
until the bitter end the
beginning
of class
struggle
that does
not touch in me
any
interest
any
reservations no bank account no
subjective
obelisk to
polish
I am
looking
for the
points
of interven-
tion little
finger right
foot earlobes wrists shoulders I have
really
been on the
verge
for
many years" (p. 27).
Traditionally,
two
temporal
moods are
opposed,
irreducible,
split, symptom
and cause of the schism: on the one
hand,
the atem-
poral "backdrop"
from which
emerges
a sonorous
impulse
indefi-
nitely repeatable, cutting
an inaccessible
eternity
into uniform or
differentiated
instants;
on the other
hand, the,
shall we
say,
biblical
succession of
numbers,
the
development,
the evolution towards an
infinite
goal, generally
called historical time.
From the historical
continuum,
H isolates
eternally recurring
moments;
at the same time
yet inversely,
H
prevents
the constitution
of
any atemporal "backdrop"
once it situates each
rhythmic measure,
each
intonation,
each narrative
sequence,
each
sentence,
and each
eternal moment of a
personal experience
in historical
development.
Time-rhythmic
instance,
and
time-evolving
duration,
dialectical-
ly
encounter each other in H as
they
encounter each other in lan-
guage,
even if not
every linguistic performance
bears the trace of it.
Such
that,
if historical duration
operates
from
repression,
and binds
the
ego
and the
superego
in an indefinite race to
death,
imagined
as a
race to
paradise,
the
rhythmed,
moment-measured,
spatialized
time,
348
|
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
volume rather than
line,
recalls what labors beneath this
repression:
the cost at which
repression (duration,
in
short, history)
fulfills itself
as the realization of a socio-historical contract.
Explosive
encounter,
because once the
rhythm
blows
up repres-
sive
duration,
time can
stop
for the
subject
who has become the locus
of the intersection. A
stopping propelled by rhythm
to cut duration
short;
a
stopping projected by
duration to
prevent rhythmic pain.
Suicide . .
Suicide
represents
the accident of this dialectical encounter be-
tween
rhythm
and
duration,
of the
negativity
that
propels every
stasis towards "deferral" and
every repression
towards the
fringes
of
eclipsing sociality
and
life,
and of the
repression
that establishes the
symbolic
order, communication,
and social
meshing.
It is clear
why
the
scored,
rhythmed,
transfinite discourses do not become invested
in social
logic
until the moment of its
ruptures,
of its revolutions.
Furthermore,
suicide
(Mayakovsky)
marks the failure of the revolu-
tion: its
imposition
censors a
rhythm
that
thought
it had a
place
there.
But
apart
from revolutions?
Classically, traditionally,
it is transcen-
dence-when the revolution is
lacking-that
"saves" us from suicide:
divine, familial,
humanitarian transcendence...
(the
series is
open)
which
displaces
the
rhythmic
time of the
polylogical subject
into a
signifying
or
symbolic beyond
where it is sheltered in exile.
Where,
however,
the eternal
"backdrop,"
the
phobic homogeneity,
and
again
the
eternal-support
of the
eternal-phallic
mother are
surrepti-
tiously
reconstituted. A similar "rescue" is therefore
impossible
for
the
heterogeneous,
material,
polylogical experience
of the
subject
in
process.
Suicide,
then? In
fact,
the ultimate
gesture,
if there is
one,
and which
only
the
delight
of the
jolt
holds back: the
jolt
of the
"I,"
this
"springing
of the
subject" against
(as
we
say, "leaning against")
it,
the
other,
the
others,
the other in
itself, against
the
symbolic,
structurizing, legislating, protecting, historicizing
thesis-to
stagger,
to
cross,
to
exceed,
to
negate,
to
delight
in.
A
negativity subjacent
to historical duration: a
rejection
of the
other,
but also of the
"I,"
of the altered "I." The
history
that
pre-
cedes
us,
which is created
around,
which is invoked as ultimate
justification
and untouchable
sublimation,
this
history
is built
upon
negation-rejection-death;
and the locus for
applying negativity
is
first and foremost the
subject
itself:
put
to
death,
society's
suicide
victim
(as
Artaud once said of Van
Gogh)-this
is what H makes
clear
through
a series of
"personal
histories,"
certain "case histo-
ries"
(Nerval,
Holderlin, Artaud...)
that often remain invisible for
SOLLERS' H
|
349
"current"
history
even were it that of class
struggle.
To make durable
history
aware of the murder beneath its
advance;
to reason out/reso-
nate the
atemporal
moments where duration is
shattered,
in order to
extract what it
represses
and that
which,
at the same
time,
renews it
(new music,
new
poetry,
new
philosophy,
new
politics).
Overthrown
and
re-created,
the
fragmented
time of H leads us to understand a
new
history
....
Listening
to the time of
H,
I listen to the
globe spread
out at last:
Asia, Africa, America,
Europe, inextricably entangled
in econo-
mics,
politics,
radio, television,
and
satellites;
each
having
a chronol-
ogy
which,
instead of
obediently finding
its niche in the
succession,
interpellates
the other and
points
out its
lacks,
all the while
desiring
it
for a
partner;
each
comprised
of differentiated semiotic
practices
(myths, religions,
art,
poetry, politics)
whose
hierarchy
is never the
same,
each
system questioning
the
hierarchy
of the others. The
subject
who listens to this time
can,
in effect and at
least,
"treat itself
as a
sonata,"
as H writes.
H-a book? A text that exists
only
on the condition of
finding
a
subject
in its
rhythm: phrastic, biological, corporeal,
transfamilial,
infinitely pointing
in historical time.
Already
with
H,
"the
composi-
tion instead of
creating
itself in the brain of an author creates itself in
real nature and
space
with
consequently
an
immensely objective
wealth moreover
preventing
the
appropriation discretely requiring
the risk of execution"
(p. 104).
And
this,
because someone created
from his "I" and his
language
a music
adequate
for the time which
continues,
which
fragments.
But
also,
and at the same
time,
by
exceeding
the One to write
itself,
H calls
every
"one" to risk himself
in this
explosion
which surrounds
us,
crosses
through
us and re-cre-
ates
us,
and which we cannot
ignore
for
long:
"a form of life has
aged
it's cooked
bring
on the next one"
(p. 161) where,
if
you
take some
H,
"all flesh is like
grass
shadow the dew of time in the voices"
(p.
185).
Paris, France
Translated
by
Carl R. Lovitt and Ann
Reilly
350
i
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE