Dialogicality and Being: A Fragment

Rustam Singh

Crossing the boundary between philosophy and literary theory, this essay redefines the notion of dialogicality and introduces a new notion, that of the nondialogical, a step that has serious implications for the subject and what is called being. It also makes a crucial distinction between subjectivity and what I call subjecthood, aligning the former with the redefined dialogical and the latter with the nondialogical. While doing all this, the essay dwells on the question as to why literature comes to be written. Finally, the essay adds some fresh ideas to what one may call the theory of love.

Dialogicality, Imagination and Literature

The phenomenon of imagination manifested in literature (as in other art forms) is one of the devices the human subject (in this case the writer) uses in order to confront and to possibly get rid of his (her) dialogical existence.[1] The possibility of getting rid of the dialogicality of existence by confronting it with an act of imagination lies essentially in the process through which works of literature are created. The crucial point for analysis, as such, is the process rather than works of literature.

What is it in this process that enables the imagining subject to confront and get rid of the dialogicality of his existence? It is the fact that the process comes to signify a re-creation of his world. Simultaneously, the process mediates the re-creation. Although the work is the end product of this process and is a world in itself, it is merely the coincidental adjunct of the process. The subject, thus, is not out to ‘produce’ a work; what interests him, whether he is aware of it or not, is the very fact of the existence of the process.

The existence of the process is analogous to a path that leads to the clearing, so to speak, in the woods. The clearance is the re-created or the no-longer-dialogical world where the subject is surrounded by the dialogical world but is not in confrontation with it.

One must note at this point the precariousness of the existence of the nondialogical world thus created, for this world exists only so long as the process that mediates it is progressing. The moment this process comes to an end and thus ceases to exist, it takes away with it the nondialogical or the re-created world. It is thus that the path that leads to the clearing assumes a likeness to the clearing itself, for it is the inching forward of the path in simultaneity with which the clearing exists.

This likeness, however, is not just an illusion. For in the process of re-creating his world the subject also re-creates himself – a re-creation that inheres in the path that seemingly leads to the nondialogical world but is actually itself the re-created world. This explains why the writing subject always wants to be in the midst of the process of writing and his unhappiness is the greatest when this process plays truant.

Why is it that this process does not last, thus throwing the subject back into the dialogicality of his existence? Why does the process come to an end, only to begin again later? The answer to these questions is rooted in the very nature of the being of the process; it is rooted in the fact that the process brings an end to, or at least reduces, the dialogicality of a potentially writing subject. Since this potential inheres in the very dialogicality of the subject’s life world, and gives birth to the process in the first place, the process cannot last once the potential has been realized and the dialogicality of the existence of the subject brought to an end.

The being of the process thus is of a very ephemeral nature. It inheres in the writing potential of the subject. It takes form and remains in existence when the potential is being realized, and it slips back into nonbeing when the potential is no longer there due to the transformation in the nature of the world of the subject.

There are times, nevertheless, when the process does not re-start at all; when it refuses, so to say, to come back into existence. This need not necessarily be an extinction of the dialogicality of the subject’s world through means other than or analogous to writing. Rather, it may signify a loss of will on the part of the subject to struggle against the received dialogicality of his world. Such loss of will puts an end to the writing potential of the subject and embodies an appropriation of his subjecthood by the world in which he lives.

This brings into view a hidden dimension of the nature of the subjecthood, or rather it imbues this subjecthood with an altogether different nature: namely that a being is a subject only when it possesses a will to fight and rid itself of the dialogicality of its being – dialogicality that is bestowed upon it by the world into which it is born. On this view, subjecthood is different from subjectivity, and a subject is other than a subjective being: while the latter has succumbed to the demands of the dialogical world and has become one with the being of this world, the former views his beinghood as an independent thing and struggles to preserve it.

It is this beinghood of this subject that becomes active in the process of writing and that chooses the movement of this process to preserve itself. A subject – as different from a subjective being – has thus two beings within him fighting to destroy each other: one is the being that is ‘born’ with the subject and that makes him what he essentially is; the other is the being of the dialogical world that enters into him, as it were, from without. The beginning and the continuing journey of the movement of the process thus symbolize the triumph of the ‘original’ being of the subject. It is also as this movement lasts that this being comes fully into its own, for this movement unleashes the hitherto suppressed potential of this being to continue to become all the greater what it already is.

This coming of the original being of the subject fully into its own, this ceaseless becoming in the movement of the process that symbolizes its triumph over the dialogical world, this concretization of the will of the subject to overcome the inherited dialogicality of his being, do not embody a fulfilment of the ‘will to power’ of the Nietzschean subject. For the trajectory of the being of the Nietzschean subject runs from powerlessness to power, as its vision remains imprisoned in and does not penetrate beyond the dialogicality of the world. The trajectory of the being of the subject discussed here, on the other hand, is willed to encompass a perpetual state of nonpowerness.

To the degree this trajectory is made to deviate from its original course, the subject experiences a diminishing of his being. The diminishing is caused by the compulsion of the subject to pass through the dialogical world and acquire, during the passing through, a measure of its dialogicality. Thus what imbues the Nietzschean subject with the ‘will to power’, impels the subject here to recapture his original state of nonpowerness. This is the state in which the subject is neither powerful nor powerless, nor does he wish, unlike the Nietzschean subject, to gather power. All he wants, as it were, is to be and to keep becoming. And in the case of the writing subject this be-ing and becoming occur in the process of writing.

Yet, if the subject has, in the process of writing, regained his original being; if he has gotten rid of the dialogicality of his inherited world which he had to pass through during the deviated trajectory of his being – why does the work which the subject brings into existence remain peopled with the images of the dialogical world? And even when the work houses a different, a nondialogical world, does it not constitute, still, a reverse reflection of, an upturned meditation, as it were, on this the dialogical world? Why should the now nondialogical subject venture into a world, even in imagination, the very make-up of which represented, a few moments earlier, a being contrary to the being of the subject? Does not this venturing, this coming back into this world, now in imagination, signify a lingering presence of this world in the re-created subject? Does it not embody a deep longing of the being of the subject for the world he has wilfully abandoned?

What these questions do not take into account is that the work of literature possesses a being of its own while being an incidental adjunct of the process, and that the work is at work through this being. What obtains within the realm of the work, therefore, is to a large extent, its own doing, quite independent of the doing of the subject who acts as the vehicle through which the work brings itself into being. This realm the subject can fully enter only as a reading subject after he has slipped back into the dialogicality of his inherited existence – a slipping back he repeatedly experiences and which represents the moments between the end and the beginning of the process of writing. It is the images the subject gathers during these ‘in-between’ moments that the work often chooses to house in its being. The work, therefore, is, in a sense, the author of its self. This part authorship of the work by the work, nevertheless, is not the same thing as the ‘death of the author’, for the being of the writing subject constantly hovers in the house which is the being of the work, in the form of the images plucked, as it were, from the world of his imagination.

This still does not answer the question: Why does the world of imagination, which is present in the work, carry within it so many images of the dialogical world? Needless to say, this question presumes that the images from the dialogical world, which one finds in the world of imagination, are dialogical images and this is how they constitute a lingering presence of the dialogical world in the re-created world of the subject. What this question fails to notice is that the images in the world of imagination cannot, by the very nature of that world, remain dialogical once they have entered into and become part of it. For, the world of imagination is brought into being for the very purpose of getting rid of the dialogicality of the world through its re-creation. The images of the dialogical world that we find in the world of imagination are, therefore, re-created images; they only resemble in appearance images of the dialogical world.

What is it, nevertheless, that makes these images essentially different from those in the dialogical world? What happens to these images in the world of imagination that they become nondialogical? One way to answer this is to talk of a world which is neither the world of imagination nor the re-created world of the subject. For, whereas the world of imagination houses these images, with their transformed essence they contribute to the making up of the re-created world without deriving their meaning from it. This meaning they derive from a world which may not actually exist but which has the power to imbue, even in its ‘nonexistence’, the images of the world of imagination with an element which gives them, so to speak, an aura of ‘nonworldliness’. It is this aura, this nonworldliness, which makes these images different from those in the dialogical world and which infuses them with a nondialogicality they did not own before.

Nondialogicality, then, is an element that comes from a world which the subject knows only through intuition or, what is more accurate, which he knows because he himself has invented it. The original being of the subject, too, in this sense, can be said to an invented being – invented to confront this the inherited world and to get rid of its dialogicality. The apparent contradiction between the ‘original’ and the ‘invented’ is thus dissolved, for the original becomes that which is not of this world, which is untainted of its dialogicality as a being which had to be invented.

The Original and the Invented Being

If there is no contradiction between the original and the invented being, and if the original being of the subject might also, simultaneously, be an invented being, then it is the ‘inventedness’ of this being rather than its nondialogicality that becomes significant. For, not only is the nondialogicality predicated on inventedness, due to this predicatedness ‘inventing’ becomes synonymous with this being; it becomes the very condition of its existence.

On the face of it, this synonymity of the original being of the subject with its own inventing does not turn it into a tragic being even in the ordinary, limited sense of that term. For, inventing is not something the subject is compelled to do; rather, it is a thing that he cannot help doing. And yet, neither is the inventing a thing the subject might want to do if the inherited being of the subject were also his original being. So that it is as if the subject is condemned to invent an original being for himself. This condemnation makes the existence of this being truly tragic, because from the moment it comes into existence, it becomes the only being that matters. The inherited being of the subject ceases to matter without actually ceasing to be and thereby putting an end to the very need for the invention of an original being.

What makes the existence of this being doubly tragic is that it must be invented from moment to moment in a way that the act of inventing replaces and itself becomes the invented being of the subject. It is thus that the original being disappears even before it has been brought into existence: it exists without existing, and its beingness materializes and is made manifest only in its nonbeing which is the act of inventing it. This act, performed anew at each moment of the existence of the inherited being of the subject, emerges in this process as a labyrinth, an endless circuitous corridor that keeps the subject apart from his original being. Thus this being, now in its nonbeingness, assumes a likeness to an alien being, one more ‘other’ facing the subject.

This shared otherness, however, fails to put the original being of the subject in the category of the inherited being. For, whereas the latter is oppressive in its immediacy and substantiality, the former is so because it is distant and cannot be grasped. But what makes the original being much more intolerable is that it does not appear to be what it is. On the contrary, it appears to be precisely what it is not: its ephemerality and insubstantiality – its very nonbeing – give it the illusion of being close and inviting. So that this alien acquires the form of an intimate; this other seems to be one’s very own.

The original being of the subject, thus, can neither be relinquished, nor appropriated. Nor can one escape its terrible ubiquity. Surrounded by its everywhereness, the subject struggles to possess it; tormented by its nowhereness, he merely manages to effect the act of inventing it. It is thus that this inventing lacks the character of possession, and this struggle deprives the subject of the pain, the bitterness of longing. Clutching an unwanted being of inheritance, in the throes of the nonbeing of a wanted being, the subject moves from the one to the other.

And yet one cannot say that this movement denotes nothing, the nothingness of a struggleful yet fruitless existence. What cancels out the nothingness is this very movement, and the fact that the subject is in the midst of this movement. This movement, because it is the movement of a perpetually moving subject (for whom all else is nothing and this movement has become everything), acquires a body, a thingness that replaces the once potential nothingness. It is in and through this movement that the act of inventing the original being of the subject stops short of confronting him as a dialogical phenomenon despite being an alien, an other. Thus the other is not in this case truly an other. Or, what is only a different way of putting it, the other is not in every case imbued with an otherness that makes it simultaneously a dialogical other.

Could it be, then, that in the act of inventing an original being for himself, the subject attempts to invent, too, a nondialogical, 'benign' other? And that – what only follows from this – the subject refuses to exist without a nondialogical other; that he accepts his existence only because there is the possibility of the existence of this particular other?

More than any other thing, this idea, if it is valid, illuminates an aspect of the behaviour of the subject which lies at the core of his existence as a dialogical being, namely, the desire to love and to be loved. For, it makes it possible to say that the desire to love stems from this basic need of the subject to invent a nondialogical, benign other. By targeting a particular other, whether it physically exists or does not any more, the subject attempts to imbue this other with a nondialogicality – a benignity – which is found missing in the dialogical world but is an attribute of his own original or invented being. It follows that the desire to be loved stems, in turn, from the need to nurture the nondialogicality of the original being of the subject.  

Love 1

Seen in this light, love appears, at first sight, as a paradox: it embodies a turning away from but into the subject. However, the turning away is from the dialogical other residing within the subject, while the turning in is towards the nondialogical (created or invented) other residing within the same. Far from being a paradox, love emerges in this double movement as a rejection of the inherited world, representing at the same moment a step towards the realization of that nondialogical existence which is the goal of the individual subject. To the degree this existence is concretized in love, love denotes a movement towards the closure of the dialogue. 

But this is not the only thing that love accomplishes. For while it initiates the closure of one, it opens up another, a different dialogue. Only, the tenor of this other dialogue is nondialogical, where the nondialogical stands for the original or the invented. It is as if love launches the beginning of a new, ‘true’, dialogue, the only kind of dialogue that there ever should have been. In this sense, love appears here as a subversive being that challenges the received dialogicality of the being of the world.

Is it any wonder, then, that love has existed in corners, in nooks and crannies, and the darker, the better? Some of these ‘crannies’ abound in literature, in the arts generally, and in philosophy – disciplines of a ‘suspicious’ kind – and the ‘lovers’ turn to these repeatedly. Some of these lovers, in turn, themselves create these corners, these ‘clearings’ on the periphery (this tract being one of them), to take shelter there.

Love 2

It turns out that there are not one but two kinds of dialogue. One is the dialogue that goes on in the inherited world (what we may call dialogical dialogue). The nature of the other dialogue is nondialogical and it takes place in the created or invented world. The former is never, even in most intimate of relationships, without an element of confrontation or, to be more precise, friction. The latter, because it is carried on with the nondialogical, benign other brought into existence by the subject himself, lacks this friction and is therefore the dialogue he desires.

The loved one, the object of loving attention, when and so long as it is so, is the creature of the invented world and is not to be found in the dialogical world: it is, as such, one of the subjects with whom the nondialogical dialogue comes into play.

So that we grasp this formulation well, there is a need for deliberation here. Speaking of the loved object, we said: ‘when and so long as it is so’. This qualification was intended to differentiate love from a ‘love relationship’ as it is known in the dialogical world. For, not a single love relationship remains suffused with love all the time, that is, is devoid of friction. Which means that in a love relationship love exists only at some of the moments. The ‘moments of love’ therefore are the only moments when the loved object is actually an object of love. These moments, because they are moments of love, lift themselves out of the dialogical world and settle in the nondialogical, leaving the rest of the love relationship (now no longer a relationship of love) into the dialogical world as a dialogical phenomenon. These are the moments when the other remains imbued with that nondialogicality, that benignity which is brought to it by the loving subject and which then makes it a fitting object for love. What we have called the nondialogical dialogue takes place here.

Love 3 (She picked up the rajai and went to the other room leaving me cold in the night air)

‘I thought she was ready for love, but she was not’. Let us ponder over this statement.

In essence, the statement says that not all objects of love may behave like one at a given moment. Which means that while the subject is ready (feels the necessity) to imbue them with that nondialogicality which would turn them into a loved subject, they are not yet ready to receive it, and house it, and then give it back in an equal measure. Implied here is a rejection of love and, in a larger canvas, of a nondialogical existence.

Where does this leave our contention that love is brought to the other by the subject himself, that the loved other is created or invented by the loving subject? For, the behaviour of the loved object shows an agency, a subjectivity that resists the ‘advances’ of the ‘anxious lover’.

We may get a clue to an answer in this statement: ‘The more I said “you are beautiful”, the more beautiful was your face. Also, the more vulnerable. Suddenly now I realize where that beauty came from: it came from your growing vulnerability. In those moments you wore you melting heart on your face.’

In other words, the object of love that does not accept or reflect back the attention of the loving subject is the ‘heart’ that has not yet fully ‘melted’, has not become fully ‘vulnerable’. In this sense, vulnerability becomes here another name for nondialogicality, for benignity, and the as-yet-invulnerable ‘loved other’ still lives partly in the dialogical world. To bring this other into the nondialogical should properly be called the ‘labour of love’. The creation or invention of the loved other is the ‘fruit’ of this labour over time.

Love 4 (She was liking it so much she had to stop it. The touch of the lover. Next day [or month or year] she wanted it again. And stopped it a little further up. Or down)

The ‘surrender’ to the nondialogical begins in a somewhat similar fashion. The ‘lover’ is an idea the object of love creates or invents (discovers) in search of its own subjecthood. It ‘touches’ the lover and wants to believe that the lover has ‘touched’ it. This reluctance to accept its own subjecthood-in-the-making is the pull of the dialogical world it is on the point of breaking. There are ‘pangs of conscience’. The now ‘object-subject’ gropes and fumbles. Moves forward. Steps back.

And ‘calls’ for the lover again.

Is the lover waiting for the ‘call’!

More than an idea, he is a presence. He was around. He never went away. Sitting in the heart of the object-subject, he was merely weaving his ‘mystique’. His patience has no limits. He has no patience. It is his destiny to create in his own image. His image breaks into many shapes. Including this here shape-in-the-making who has ‘called’.

Love 5 (‘You fill me with an emptiness only you can fill.’ ‘The emptiness is of your own making, you who have just made me’)

It would appear from this dialogue that the nondialogical comes into play – in this particular context – with the presence of the loved subject: presence which is present in this dialogue; dialogue which would not come to be without this presence. This, indeed, is true. But the presence of the loved subject in this dialogue also denotes an absence, its own absence, an absence that inheres in its very presence. Why is this so? This is so because this presence does not obviate the need for the continuous making, continuous weaving of the loved subject, the condition of the presence of the loved subject being this very making, this very weaving of its being.

The making of the loved subject, and therefore of love, is, thus, a continuous process, a process that never ceases to be, that can never come to a ceasing, without bringing love, too, to a ceasing, without its disappearance. The presence of love, then, is not just the presence of the loved subject; it is its continuous making, a making which is implied in the dialogue quoted above.

But what makes this making possible? Or what makes impossible the presence of the loved subject without its continuous making? This impossibility comes from the ever-present possibility of the nondialogical (loved) subject slipping back into its dialogical existence – an existence which hovers at, is never very far from the edges of the nondialogical. That is why being in love, being in moments when love has been realized, has been consummated, so to say; that is why the experience of love is such a formidable thing. And only the bravest of the subjects, who have tempered themselves in the ephemeral fire of nondialogicality, dare to stay there, having ventured.

That is why, too, love is tragic. What makes it tragic is not its ‘impossibility’. For, love is not impossible. What makes it tragic is the process of making it possible and then keeping it so; it is the condition of keeping this process continually in motion, or living without love.

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NOTES

[1] By ‘dialogical existence’ we mean that dimension of the existence of the human subject which is brought into being and finds expression in an essentially political interaction with the other human subjects where the interaction or, more appropriately, dialogue includes but is not confined to merely verbal communication. Thus the term ‘political’ is used here in a much broader and more deeply diffused sense than what is commonly understood by it. And this meaning of the term ‘political’, or what we will now call ‘dialogical’, stems from the belief of this author that the larger part of the struggle a subject wages for existence takes place at the level where he (she) has to encounter and confront the other human subjects including the ones with whom he is most intimate. It is at this level of his existence that the subject gets alienated from his world. The element in this world which is at the root of this alienation and which makes this world what it is is the dialogicality of this world.

A version of this paper first appeared in Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, a journal of Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India. It subsequently appeared in my book ‘Weeping’ and Other Essays on Being and Writing (Pratilipi Books, Jaipur, 2011), where it forms the first chapter. This book is available at www.bookspunch.com , www.flipkart.com and www.amazon.in

Gift, Passivity, Neuter

Gift, passivity, neuter

Rustam Singh

This paper offers a brief critique of some notions of Derrida and Blanchot, such as gift, passivity and neuter, and of poststructuralism in general as, what I call, "the thought of language".

1. I will send you the word 'neuter'[1] and I will send it in such a way that you don't send it back to me, that I don't receive it in turn.

Therefore I will not send it. The word 'neuter' cannot be sent. Nor received back.

That is why 'neuter' cannot be a 'gift'. It cannot be gifted away. For, a gift too is sent. It is packed off, even though as if it were not a gift[2].

2. A gift, even when it is not given, is still a gift. That is how it is still designated: as a 'gift', as something that is not given. To cease to be a gift, it must refuse to be designated as such. The word 'gift' must cease to be a word. It must cease to be. Even when gift is not there, even when it does not take place, language is what turns it into a gift, into something that still exists—as a negativity.

3. So far as gift is concerned, language is the culprit. It must cease to be, come to an end, so that gift too comes to an end, so that it becomes what it ought to be: not even a nothing.

I implore language to not give me this word called 'gift', so that I do not become its recipient. Language thrusts upon me this word: I do not receive it. It deprives me of a gift. It ought to be merciful.

4. So far as gift is concerned, language is Law. It lays down a Word, the word called 'gift'. Lays it down upon me: the word 'gift' crushes me. It closes in upon me, encircles me. It is a Rule. I must rebel against it. I must rebel against language in so far as it gives me this word, in so far as I must take this word from it to rebel against it, in so far as I must take it and then give back its absence, an absence which is the presence of a negativity, thus closing the circle.

5. In the context of gift language cannot break the closure; it lacks this potentiality. It must give (Law) and take back (Rebellion).

Thus the word 'gift' designates exchange. It leaves no space for escape. It refuses to let you slip into a mode other than rebellion. It has a telos and charts out a definite course.

6. The word 'gift' is philosophy. It is a thought. A thought in language and as language. I'm a passive recipient of this thought. I'm caught in a book.

* * *

7. To not rebel against 'gift' I must give and then also receive, and acknowledge the gift (in the most common sense of this word). Therefore, if I must give Law, I must willingly receive Rebellion. In the context of Law and Rebellion, however, this kind of giving and receiving is not possible. Neither Law nor Rebellion is a gift; if anything, they are the opposite of a gift and are seen as such by their recipients: in one case the Regime, in other the People. Law (as different from law) is held forth as suppression, and Rebellion (as different from opinion and its expression in milder forms) is received as a threat to power. Law, as such, might give in if Rebellion shows evidence of intractable force, and the consequence for the rebellious people might be a transformation in the structures of power. There is an acknowledgement here, by Law, of the force of Rebellion (in the only language it understands) but it is far from being the acknowledgement of a gift. Rebellion, in its turn, might not at all acknowledge the receiving of what it has achieved, precisely because it is an achievement and not a gift.

We should notice that in this refusal to acknowledge the 'receiving' of its achievement Rebellion refuses, too, the attempt to term its activity (the activity that makes it what it is, Rebellion) as 'passivity', in the special sense of that word[3]. In other words, Rebellion has a problem with being termed as 'passive', and, as such, when a rebellion is deemed necessary to change Law, then no form of passivity can breach the closure: it remains what it is commonly called, passivity, and so the closure remains in place.

Similarly, a passive acceptance of the meaning of the word 'gift' as something other than giving (in fact as its opposite, 'not giving') would keep in place the Law that language seems to have become; it would sanction the closure that the word 'gift' holds in front of us. This closure attempts to tame the Rebellion by making it a seemingly equal partner of the Law within its own circle.

This is how it is put: When Law is given, Rebellion is received. This is a closure.

Rebellion, however, is never equal to Law: it is either less or more.  The closure never occurs. This reveals the 'closure' as a strategy of the Law of language. But a strategy is a thought: it is a designation. It invites Rebellion, strengthens its resolve, fortifies it.

What, then, is 'passivity'? It is a refusal to block this designation. This refusal is a ruse, an activity in the garb of suspension. What is suspended here is actually the passivity (in the common sense of that term).

Rebellion takes its cue from here, from this suspension of a naught, this suspension of a zero.

8. Rebellion too is thought. But the thought of 'passivity' tells us to be passive in front of the Law. This thought is couched in language and is the thought of the thought of language, and is principally a thought.

But let us put it this way: In the thought of the thought of language, language is a thought but is presented as language and in language and in a language which makes us passive.

Rebellion breaks this passivity, as also the thought that leads to it. It thinks and is not ashamed of its thinking. It is not ashamed to think nor to think that it is a thought. It too thinks in language and with language. It too thinks of language, even thinks of it as a thought, but is not ashamed to admit this.

9. In the thinking of Rebellion shame has a place. But we have always known this, that Law is shameless. This is equally true of the Law (the Thought) of language.

10. The thought of language does not think. It is even afraid of thinking, and it says so. (How shameful!) It remains a thought without thinking, a thinking-less thought, a real case of passivity!

But haven't we always faced this: an impassive block of Thought? Rebellion has always had its job cut out.

This job puts at stake (puts at risk) what is most certainly and invariably in each and every case (each and every time) the fundament and the font of all thinking and all language (and let us state it firmly, courageously and with fortitude): This fundament is the subject. Or let us, rather, say it like this: The fundament is the subject. Or, even: The subject is the fundament. It is important to name this fundament and to state this naming. Every time human thought, human thinking, human capacity to generate language, metaphor and concept is put on the stake, what is put on the stake in fact is the subject. It is the subject (himself or herself, never itself) who dares, and may be murdered or sacrificed. S/he dares because it is s/he who suffers and is made to suffer the consequences of repeated deviations from thought. Let us not deny it: language too suffers and has suffered. There are moments when language gets terrified, stutters. Language gets distorted, ceases to be language, but only as a consequence of the suffering of the subject. (There are even moments when this suffering of language is a consequence precisely of the deviation from thought.) Therefore let us grant language the subjectivity it deserves and in fact asserts but the primary seat of subjectivity remains the subject, and will remain.

Let us also clarify here more fully what we have hinted at above: The subject is not merely a philosophical concept. The subject is also a person, the person who at times attempts to present and represent himself/herself through this concept, at times even in front of and for himself/herself. Too long has philosophy tried to eliminate the person in the name of eliminating (decentering, whatever) the subject. This debate has gone on too long. It has brought a bad name to philosophy and to thinking. Surely, philosophy cannot continue to perpetuate its existence at the cost of the existence of the human subject?

But the truth is this: the subject will remain. It is not given to philosophy to eliminate the font, the fundament of its own existence, even when this philosophy is the thought of language.

Language shares this trait with philosophy: it assembles thought, even gives it shape, but finally it remains the thought of someone. This 'someone' is the subject.

We have heard it said: the subject dies; language survives. But how many times have we not seen the 'dead' subject speak in the language which is still alive! What keeps it alive is precisely this subject whose passion has survived him. Without this passion, without this fire that smouldered in his soul (burned in his guts) language would be mere signs on paper or floating sounds in the air.

Let us not entertain any doubts in this connection: When the subject is really dead (and when I think of such a 'subject', one of the words that come to my mind is 'neuter'), language stays but loses its life.

This is not the only sense in which Blanchot has used the term 'neuter' but this is the only way one can talk about it: Neuter is a 'subject' to whom subjectivity has been denied. Here is an instance of a perfectly passionless murder, perpetrated, not surprisingly, by the thought of language. But Blanchot goes further and commits a double murder: he denies the neuter even the absence of a subject, so that it is reduced to being an entity that exists only in language. It refers neither to one nor to any other thing; it is neither a sign nor even a concept. Given this 'character' which refuses to be characterized, is it appropriate to, even, call the neuter as something that exists in language?

Yet the word 'neuter' is there for us to see, and it has a meaning which we can decipher. And this meaning, above all, is this: As an entity which is purely linguistic, and which even goes beyond and below the surface of language (without, however, in any way going towards life and towards that repository of life, namely the subject), neuter would escape the grasp of thought. Yet, on the other hand, and as we know, neuter is a thought: it is a thought of the thought of language but it is also the thought of the person called Maurice Blanchot, himself a subject.

Given this meaning, neuter is the most potent weapon yet deployed against the subject by the thought of language, and therefore the most dangerous.

But this danger need not be exaggerated.

Therefore let us look more closely at neuter.

11. Neuter is a thought—an idea—which goes beyond thinking. It is 'unthinkable' as it defies language in which and with which we think, but it is unthinkable also because even when we are able to think it (and both subject and language have this capacity to stretch themselves, and when they are able to do this what they end up thinking still remains a thought), it changes shape and slips out of our grasp. Given this propensity, neuter fails to become a thought. In this propensity, which is the central element of its make-up, neuter fails us and fails language, so that the thought of language itself which has given it birth (and which, despite its assertions to the contrary, remains the thought of a subject) stands failed at its portals. However, in this propensity (and this is a much more significant thing to say) neuter also fails itself as a concept.

It is crucial to note this failure which neuter inflicts upon itself. One basic feature of thought has always been this: it grounds itself, and thus nourishing itself on its ground, it branches out and spreads its branches. Neuter, on the contrary, is totally groundless. As such, it lacks that soil on which it can nourish itself. Without this nourishment it is bound to atrophy the subject, the language and the thinking which may treat it as their own ground.

Therefore, whatever the potentialities of neuter as a concept, it will be shunned by all of that thought which calls itself by the name of thought and wants to survive as such.

But this is not all that we can say about neuter at this moment.

If it is true (and Nietzsche said this long ago) that all concepts are metaphors in a different garb, then too neuter is not a concept. One need not fully stand with Nietzsche on this point, for what one can also say is that a metaphor too is a concept by a different route. But what is important is this: a subject thinks, and s/he also thinks through a metaphor, but neuter blocks this thinking. It neither lets you think, nor lets thinking think you, the subject. It strikes at the very roots of thinking, which again is the subject. It uproots those roots, unplugs them, without plugging in the plug that would feed the subject.

However, when the subject is spent, who will think? And who will, then, think even about neuter and in neuter? How will neuter itself, then, think?

But this is not all.

When one thinks about neuter, one also thinks about Blanchot: Blanchot who thinks, who thought of neuter. In the thought of neuter he gave us a thought. But given the way neuter is, how do we respond to this giving? For the truth is this: Blanchot gives with one hand and takes back with another. He gives us neuter.

And by giving us neuter he neither lays down Law nor exposes himself to Rebellion.

Should we interpret this (lack of) movement itself as Rebellion against Law? However, in that case, it is a rebellion which refuses to take Law, which rebels in not receiving it: it keeps to a side, lets Law slip by.

In the face of neuter, this is a course we cannot adopt. We cannot say: we will not take neuter.

For even when we don't take it, neuter is there.

It is there: if not as Law, then as a nagging anxiety about it.

Neuter haunts us, never lets us be. That perhaps is precisely its motive.

But we have to continue to be. In this wish to continue Law resembles us.

We will soon know how to fully deal with neuter.

So will Law.

But to deal with the latter we already know Rebellion.

However, this is not all.

* * *

Whenever I have thought of neuter (whenever I have imagined it), I have always thought of Death. Neuter makes me think of Death, makes me imagine it: I always see neuter as a Figure somewhere There, on the horizon of my consciousness. It is not a figure I can touch: I cannot extend my hand and feel its texture. Nor is it true that this figure is intangible like a shadow. It is not a shadowy figure, not a figure of shadows lurking in the darkness. In the clear light of day, and in the darkest of nights, neuter stands alone––without a shadow.

In its aloneness it resembles me (a subject), I who am utterly alone. I’m alone but I can be touched and I cast a shadow.

When I think of the figure of Death, a Consciousness envelops me: it does so like a shadow, it almost touches me.

Neuter too envelops me almost like a shadow (envelops my consciousness). When it cannot touch me, does it feel lonely?

Like a Consciousness that Death seems to be neuter does not touch me but almost touches me like a shadow. I, in turn, can never hope to almost touch neuter. But this is not all.

Death kills. Neuter is the result of killing. This killing takes place in thinking, in thought, and it kills a notion. Death goes beyond this. It kills a person. In this killing a life comes to a close. When a person dies, s/he leaves behind a consciousness, a thought. The very person who produced the notion of neuter will die like this, leaving behind this notion. Maurice Blanchot will die but neuter will remain, as his personality––his consciousness personified.[4] In this personification we will not see neuter: we will see Maurice Blanchot. And in this seeing, more than his thought, his thinking, we will look at his face, his figure. But since Blanchot is so elusive, we will conjure a face to look like his face, puff up a figure to fill the space he will leave empty. Thought is poor in front of this face, this figure. Thought is vacant if all it has to present is the vacancy of a face, a figure, if it does not conjure them to fill that vacancy. Thought is pathetic—my own thought—without all those faces, those figures I have lost, and which keep coming back to haunt it. Isn't this thought—this very thought, here––an attempt to bring back those faces, those figures, and only this attempt? There was a time those faces were there, and there was not yet any thought. In comparison with that time the present time is poor. Now there is thought but not those faces. I remember a face which never had a trace of thought on it, of thinking, and yet it was the dearest of all faces. In the thought of neuter Blanchot takes away faces and gives us a faceless thought. It is faceless and without a figure. We called it a figure, above, but that was our imposition: our desire to see it as a figure or see a figure in neuter. Neuter haunts us but not like those faces, those figures we talked about. Neuter is poor. A pathetic figure (?) condemned to be described as a figure even when it does not leave behind a shadow. In its aloneness too neuter is poor. It wanders about at lonely places and comes backs—or stays there—to places which are, again, lonely or are trying to escape aloneness. Some of these places are in the minds of faces, of figures, or right there on those faces—in the eyes especially or in the corners of the mouth. In the hair which is turning grey. Aloneness comes to meet—comes to find—aloneness and stays that way. Hair turning grey or eyes which are vacant. That is where you find neuter. But this discovery is useless. Neuter does not give you company. No companionship. No friendship. No love. (That demon.) All it gives you (or does not give you) is that it leaves you alone, and does not leave you. It clings to you like the lost love you do not want and which does not want you. Such love does not know what to do with you. You also do not know what to do with it. But it is there. Like a worm that does not suck your blood but crawls all over your body, and does not leave you. Crawls over your body or your mind. It is the same thing. Perhaps the mind rather than the body. That is more like neuter. Neuter is pure mind or mindlessness in such a way that you cannot distinguish between the two. It is a thing gone out of its mind or the mind is gone out of it to wander at lonely places. Yes, neuter is that. A mind wandering, or a thing wandering without a mind. Blindly. Neuter is blind, too. It has no limbs either. But it can travel faster than you think. Neuter gives you no time for thinking. Still, thinking is the only counter to neuter. Neuter itself is all about thinking but in such a way that if thinking thinks, then neuter thinks without thinking. It is thinking let loose and therefore does not think. But this is not all.

12. Blanchot says that neuter cannot be designated and it does not designate. But it is still designated: as neuter. And it still designates: a writing which erases itself already before it puts itself on paper.

Neuter itself does not want to be known as neuter. By seeking to refuse an identity it remains true to itself. However, it fails to refuse that identity: it continues to be neuter. If it retains nothing else, it retains at least that name—to the very end of the discourse that produces it.

At the source of this failure is language.

Language designates, even when the thought wielding it does not want to. This ‘not wanting’ too it designates.

That is why language is never bereft of thought.

Neuter is an intention not to designate and this intention is designated as ‘neuter’.

We utter the word ‘neuter’. Even if neuter disappears, gets killed as a result of this utterance; even if, at that moment, there is no such thing as neuter to refer to, the meaning of the word remains. The word ‘neuter’ remains a word even without there being a neuter anymore; even without there ever having been a neuter.

The word ‘neuter’ being a word––being a name, a thought (even when it is only a word)––becomes a presence.

I feel this presence incessantly whenever I read Maurice Blanchot. And I feel it even on the pages where the word neuter is not there.

The thought of neuter cannot eliminate this presence, even its own presence in the language it creates.

Elimination of presence is not given to thought, nor to language. In both these entities or events (and they occur together) presence is a given.

There is this presence even in writing.

Far from erasing itself writing tries precisely to concretise a face—even a face for itself––even when it does not let that face appear. There are times writing dares directly to name, to designate: by doing that it does not cease to be writing.

Thus what gets erased in writing is the distinction between concept and metaphor. This distinction is a nullity in the context of writing.

It is true: this distinction has been erased in the term ‘neuter’, but it is far from clear that it is the deployment of neuter that produces Blanchot’s writing. In the context of neuter there are three kinds of texts that we find in Blanchot. One is the texts that carry by name Blanchot’s thoughts on neuter. The second is the texts where we see neuter in operation but all that they do is produce thought and not writing.

The third is the texts called récits.

It’s only here that Blanchot succeeds in producing writing. But this writing––as writing, as writing as such––seems to have escaped neuter.

The peculiar character of Blanchot’s writing is this: it tries consistently not to name, not to designate, and to undo what it has managed to say or not say earlier. It is in this attempt that it hopes to erase itself as writing. However, it is not true that it succeeds in erasing itself. What it is able to achieve, in fact, is just the reverse: it inscribes itself, ineradicably, as writing.

Let us mark the words we have used here: ‘it is able to achieve’. This ability, this achievement is a failure of Blanchot’s notion of neuter in so far as it concerns writing, and it is a failure also in terms of its deployment in his own writing. In order for neuter to succeed, Blanchot’s writing should not leave a mark as writing and should still strike us, should still appear to us as writing.

No writing has ever been able to achieve this.

But this is not all. 

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NOTES

[1] A notion used and developed by Maurice Blanchot. We will get back to it later.

[2] For Jacques Derrida gift is something which is 'not given', for if we 'give' it, it ceases to be a gift. 'Giving' entails 'receiving' in turn. This is a 'closure' that occurs within the 'economy of exchange'. For Derrida gift stands outside this closure: it breaks it, precisely because it is 'not given'.

[3] By 'passivity' Blanchot does not mean suspension of activity but rather the suspension of the very mode in which both activity and passivity occur. As such, this notion comes very close to Blanchot's notion of 'neuter'. A term which, in turn, somewhat resembles 'neuter' is the term 'there is', used extensively by Emmanuel Levinas but also by Blanchot.

(Jean-Luc Nancy gives, in comparison, a restrictive sense to the term passivity. Passivity is not a state or form but ‘an individuality without identity’, ‘more passive than what is called passivity’. The main difference is that in Blanchot this ‘individuality’ is as if almost actively assumed [in the course of withdrawing from identity], and remains ‘active’, whereas in Nancy it appears to be a given and really passive. Therefore we are not concerned here with the latter.)

[4] This essay was written before Maurice Blanchot died in 2002.

Written in 2001, a version of this paper was presented in the three-day international conference on Beyond the Linguistic Turn: Literature, Culture and Philosophy at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, during 22-24 January 2002, organised by Franson Manjali. It subsequently appeared in the book Poststructuralism and Cultural Theory: The Linguistic Turn and Beyond, Allied Publishers, New Delhi, 2006, ed. by Franson Manjali. Even later, it appeared in my book of papers and essays ‘Weeping’ and Other Essays on Being and Writing, Pratilipi Books, Jaipur, 2011. This book is available at www.bookspunch.com , www.flipkart.com and www.amzon.in