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