Part I
Limitation
Chapter 1
KhĂ´ra or The Great Bifurcation
Jacques Derrida
âPascal had his chasm . . . / Alas! Everything is an abyss.â 1 Baudelaireâs famous words touch the bottomless depths of what a meaningless chaos would meanâor rather could not mean. However, more original than chaos, deeper than the chasm, and even more meaningless than the abyss, there lies the âamorphousâ or, even better, the âthe receptacleâ and, as it were, the wet-nurse of all becoming: KhĂ´ra. It is âan impenetrable and obscure state of beingâ, Plato says in a precursory way in Timaeus, that âdemands careful elucidationâ (49a). âThis is a difficult matterâ (49a), the philosopher goes on to insist, such that only âa godâ acting as our âsaviorâ could âtake us safely ashoreâ by some âunexpected and unsolicited expositionâ, and thereby âlead us to a reasonable comprehension [of KhĂ´ra]â (48d). Moreover, this âinvisible and formless sort of being . . . partakes of the intelligible in a baffling wayâ and âresists the grasp of thoughtâ (51a). We will speak of it therefore only by âa sort of spurious reasoningâ (52b), allowing ourselves to enter âinto the realm of a dream from which we cannot awakenâ (52b). We shall see it as a kind of âfleeting shadowâ, âclinging to existence as best it mayâ, on the verge of being ânothing at allâ (52c). 2
Such limitsâor better, such a discourse on limitsâhave seldom been reached in the history of philosophy. These Platonic words could make us smile, either, at best, because it is a question of âmythâ, or, at worst, because the philosopher would have opened the door to âmarginsâ which contemporary thought would later strive to adopt. However, the discourse on the âlimitâ is to be articulated in an extreme manner, and at the extremities of thought, in that it has nothing to do with âlimitationâ. Whereas the discourse on the limit reaches the threshold of a finitude without opposition (either finite or infinite), limitation receives its restriction, on the contrary, as the abstraction of a plenitude that it fails to fulfil (the limitation of the infinite by the finite). The determination of the modern human being as a âfigure of finitudeâ, in Michel Foucault or Gilles Deleuze (who were close to Jacques Derrida in this regard) deals with the âlimitâ rather than âlimitationâ, the âimmanent frameâ rather than âthe terraced fountainâ. 3
Thus, when considering the âlimitâ and Derridaâs desire to navigate the extremities of discourseâânegative theologyâ, of course, but also KhĂ´raâ, it is no surprise that we must engage in a dialogue, be it only a transitory one, with his mode of philosophizing. In effect, I will show that KhĂ´ra marks a âgreat bifurcationâ between two modes or pathways for philosophy in general: either the âhigher wayâ of negative theology (On the Name), or the âlower wayâ sought by a non-reflexive philosophy (KhĂ´ra).
At this crossroads, much attention has been paid, and rightly so, to the former (On the Name), at least in France, but the latter (KhĂ´ra) has been quite neglected. Current discourse takes place as if this crucial dialogue on the excess of negation (negative theology, beginning with On the Name) has somewhat eclipsed the one about limitation (positive limit, beginning with KhĂ´ra). However, the famous and remarkable public discussion between Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion at Villanova University on 27 September 1997 displayed even then the divergence between these two ways of thinking and thereby already opened us onto an alternative to the higher way of negative theology. âJacques seems to go towards KhĂ´ra and you seem to go towards revelationâ, notes Richard Kearney, turning towards Jean-Luc Marion, âhow do we know that we have been visited by a supereminent excess and not just simply invaded by khĂ´ra?â asks John Caputo to close the debate. 4 Derridaâs text (âHow to Avoid Speaking: Denialsâ), to which the debate refers, nevertheless articulates the one and the other, negative theology and KhĂ´ra, or rather, opposes the one to the other, the hyperbole of the agaton to KhĂ´raâs parabola. 5 Marionâs âIn the Name, or How to Avoid Speaking of Itâ responds to it point by point, but by abandoning or almost abandoning KhĂ´ra altogether, pointing to a perplexity that I would be remiss not to share, if only in a preliminary way. At the end of âDerrida and the Impossibility of the Giftâ, we read: âAllow me to repeat [Derridaâs] own words (âI am not convincedâ) to express my reluctance before the privilege he grants to khĂ´raâand my persistence in recognizing the larger, because weaker, empire of givenness.â 6
6. The Emergence of KhĂ´ra
Another Logic?
Why should we, along with Derrida, turn now towards KhĂ´ra? It is not motivated (far from it) out of any excessive deference to the philosopher, nor due to a particular taste for discourses playing at and with the limits of philosophy, nor for defying all logic. Many French philosophers, probably quite rightly, thought that in going thusly towards the margins of philosophy, Derrida was risking going beyond the limits of thought. Though wrongly in this regard, he was often and still is subject to a certain ostracism in France. Under the pretext of a so-called phenomenological orthodoxy, Derridaâthe unclassifiableâhas remained, for some time at least, non-classified. Referring to this ââlogic other than the logic of the logosââ, KhĂ´ra would not only be outside metaphysics but also outside philosophy itself. 7 In thinking the unthinkable, one would therefore not think at all, and any dialogue on this particular point would close before opening in the first place. While a certain theological reading of Derrida prioritizes the apophatic over the âchoreticâ, or Dionysiusâ Mystical Theology over Platoâs Timaeus, it is still the case that the Greek word khĂ´ra itself refers to something negative that Christian apophasis does not reach, but to which God himself, in his kenosis, could not remain indifferent. We must ask, then, how to speak of KhĂ´ra, or better, how not to speak of KhĂ´ra, since it appears to have been inevitable for Derrida, and likewise for negative theology itself; hence, the Christian cannot ignore KhĂ´ra. 8
KhĂ´ra is neither a place nor a god, neither a thing nor no-thing, neither an order nor a dis-order, neither a gift nor a withdrawal, as specified in the second commentary which Derrida devotes to it (KhĂ´ra, 1987). Instead, it is âsome-thing that is not a thingâ; a ââthere isâ that gives nothing in giving the âthereââ (without, however, being identified with the âes gibtâ); a word without any definite article that makes definite all articles (we say KhĂ´ra rather than âtheâ KhĂ´ra); a simple mode of being that escapes all beings and nevertheless underpins the ground of being: âThere is KhĂ´ra but KhĂ´ra does not exist.â 9 One could certainly object, once again, that such talk is mere wordplay. However, thanks precisely to Plato, the philosopher reaches in this limit a discursive mode of seeking the infra of discourse, a place of being weaving together all our modes of being, a descent downwards (KhĂ´ra) rather than a flight upwards (negative theology), a path like the Timaeus through the essential formlessness of the world and of the human rather than the Dionysian ascension of Moses to the divine (mystical theology). âThis silence, from the depths of which khĂ´ra seems to call her nameâ, Derrida specifies in the âPrière dâinsĂŠrerâ to KhĂ´ra, âis perhaps no longer even a modality or a reserve of speech. No more than this bottomless depth promises the night of a day. On the subject of KhĂ´ra, there is neither negative theology nor any thought of the Good, the One, or of God beyond Being.â 10
On this Side of Meaning
Without directly adapting Derridaâs path here, at least in terms of his flight to the âmarginsâ of philosophy, which remain to be found, we will nevertheless recognize in an exemplary way that KhĂ´ra contains something of the very limit which I am striving to reach both in the âchaotic depthsâ of the unattainable, or almost unattainable, within phenomenologyâs framework of significance (as I explored in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb) and in the infra-linguistic, which the orientation towards pure expressivity would never be able to tap into (as I attend to in Crossing the Rubicon).
In order to make clear the urgency of this question, it serves us here to recall a parallel point in my previous work, Crossing the Rubicon:
Nevertheless another step forward must be taken. There is, or there was, the time of âpure experienceâ, and one might say, mute still, that, like Husserl tells us, âmust be brought to express its own meaningâ. But now, it is time to let the dumb speak for himself in other ways than speech, or perhaps even in the unique mode of corporality. More accurately, the âpre-reflexiveâ will perhaps no longer find its end or goal in the reflexive alone (including in the context of phenomenology) as if it were only preparing for it or establishing its foundation as in Husserlâs phenomenology, any more than the unconscious will orient itself towar...