Abstract
This article provides an analysis of Louis Althusser’s essay “Le matérialisme de la rencontre” (included as a chapter “The underground current of the materialism of the encounter” in Philosophy of the encounter: Later writings, 1978–1987) and Jacques Derrida’s book Le Monolinguisme de l’autre (The monolingualism of the Other), two contemporaneous texts, respectively written in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The focus is on Althusser’s and Derrida’s use of “sensual” words (metaphors) in the communication of their (highly abstract) philosophical ideas. In this way the two texts are seen as interconnected, with Derrida’s reference to the sensual to some extent coming across as an “echo” of Althusser’s. Prior to an analysis of the two texts, the focus on a textual interconnectedness is presented, in the first part of the article, against the background of a consideration of the interconnectedness between the two philosophers at three levels: philosophy, language and life experience.
Although both were rooted in antihumanism – Althusser’s “structuralist Marxism” and Derrida’s (post-structuralist) “deconstructivism” – the two philosophers worked in largely distinct areas of thought: Althusser political revolution, Derrida writing and textuality. This is not to deny significant overlaps in their respective oeuvres with regard to, for example, a certain presence of psychoanalysis and the manifestation of political power, but actual philosophical exchanges between Althusser and Derrida were so rare as to be almost nonexistent. During the course of their careers neither would admit to reading the other, and there would be no mutual citations. Relating their work would be left to students and commentators. As Samuel Solomon puts it: “Derrida’s response to Althusser’s work remains subterranean in his written texts, although one can arguably read between the lines to find it” (Solomon 2012:6). A large part of Derrida’s reluctance to engage with Althusser goes to the latter’s powerful, guru-like, position at the École normale, and to the political sensitivities of the time: “I didn’t want my questions to be taken for crude and selfserving criticisms connected with the Right or Left,” states Derrida (Derrida and Sprinker 1993:187–8). Althusser, for his part, admits only late in his life, in 1984, to having “reread” Derrida (Montag 2013:181). “Le matérialisme de la rencontre”, which Althusser would have been writing at just about that time, turns out, in fact, to be the single text in which there is engagement of thought between the two philosophers, Althusser making several – highly laudatory – references to Derrida, and integrating the Derridian notions of deconstruction and dissemination into his argument.
With regard to language, the article highlights a certain parallelism: Derrida as “philosopher of writing” (écriture), Althusser of reading (lecture), at least as far as his major Reading capital is concerned, with its reflections on a “symptomatic reading” of Marx. (This view in no way suggests a metaphysical opposition between writing and reading, which would obviously be untenable, certainly with respect to Derrida.) The jeu des mots (pun) is furthermore highlighted as a shared characteristic. In Derrida’s case, the pun is, of course, frequently at the very root of his philosophical thought, différence → différance being the illustrative example. At least in his autobiographical L’avenir dure longtemps Althusser shows himself particularly adept at applying the pun to proper nouns, notably in the play Louis → Lui on his own name; of course, the pun on the individual name is also a well-known mechanism in Derrida’s writing, probably the best known being his ironic play on the surname of the philosopher of the speech act, John Searle: Searle → Sarl (as “close corporation”).
The article also considers the interconnectedness of Althusser and Derrida’s lives. Notwithstanding their relative aloofness towards each other in the exercising of their philosophy, Althusser and Derrida spent a long time as colleagues at the École normale de la rue d’Ulm (Derrida was initially Althusser’s student). In addition to their discovery of shared Algerian origins, they also became friends. This relationship takes on particular significance during the last decade of Althusser’s life, when Derrida, following Althusser’s “fall from grace” (after the death of his wife at his own hand, Althusser had vacated his position at the École), is among the few to maintain contact with him until his death in 1990. Interestingly, this period also overlaps with the time during which “Le matérialisme de la rencontre” was written; Le Monolinguisme de l’autre, first presented orally in 1992, may well also have had its origins during this time.
In the second part of the article the two texts are read for the prominence given to the sensual. In “Le matérialisme de la rencontre” the encounter is conceptualised primarily through the image of the Epicurean atoms. They are falling “like rain”, yet they can possibly encounter each other through an infinitesimally small movement or deviation, the Lucretian clinamen. The dominant metaphor for this – completely chance – encounter is “take place” (a lieu). The encounter is furthermore, at the level of the political, conceptualised in the figure of the Machiavellian Prince, who encounters “his territory”. Once again, the encounter has to “take place”, here conceptualised as the encounter between virtù, which is the virtù of the Prince, and fortuna, which takes on the form of a woman. In order to be durable, this encounter has to “take” (prend), but cannot exclude the possibility of violence, the virtù of the Prince consisting in his ability to either seduce his fortune or “do violence” (faire violence) to her.
In Derrida’s text there is a similar dominant metaphor in the “monolingual” who “arrives” (arrive) at the language, arrive also, crucially, taking on the meaning of “attach” (in the reflexive s’arrive). This attachment is, however, with something – the language – that is fundamentally other to the monolingual: the relation is one characterised by alterity, an alterity which Derrida describes in considerable detail with reference to his own “trouble d’identité” as a “Franco-Maghrebian” who has had to “attach” himself to a language – French – that has in many ways been imposed on him. Here, not unlike the image of Althusser’s Machiavellian virtù’s taking (hold of) fortuna, Derrida comes to describe the encounter in sexual – sexually violent – terms. But the description itself comes across as coincidental, almost fortuitous, in a footnote added belatedly: “At the time of re-reading page proofs, I see on television a Japanese film whose name I do not know, which tells the story of a tattoo artist. His masterpiece: an extraordinary tattoo with which he is covering the back of his wife while making love to her, from behind (...). He is seen pushing in his pin while his wife, who is lying flat on her belly, turns a suppliant and pained face toward him” (Derrida 1998:78. Incidentally, the film, whose title Derrida “[does] not know” – and most fortuitously didn’t feel the need to verify afterwards – would appear to be Yoichi Takabayashi’s 1981 La femme tatouée).
It would be preposterous to suggest that Althusser’s text, with its imagery of the coincidental, of chance – chance that could (also) be sexual, violent – would have been an influence on the Derridian one. What the article does argue, however, is that the intellectual and existential context of “interconnectedness” of the two philosophers, as considered, at the very least invites a reading of the two contemporaneous texts as echoes of each other, not necessarily at a philosophical level, but as literature, in Althusser’s and Derrida’s choice of particularly sensual words and images to convey ideas. Yet there is also a more immediate interconnection. An alternative name for “Le materialisme de la rencontre”, also used by Althusser himself, is “Le matérialisme de l’aléatoire”. In the repetition of the m (matérialisme → monolinguisme) and the l (l’autre → l’aléatoire), is “Le Monolinguisme de l’autre” not its echo?
Keywords: Louis Althusser; Jacques Derrida; metaphor; “The materialism of the encounter”; The monolinguism of the Other; the sensual
Kommentaar
In an enigmatic sense which will clarify itself perhaps (perhaps, because nothing should be sure here, for essential reasons), the question of the archive is not, we repeat, a question of the past. This is not the question of a concept dealing with the past which might already be at our disposal or not at our disposal, an archivable concept of the archive. It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow. The archive: if we want to know what this will have meant, we will only know in the times to come. Perhaps. Not tomorrow but in the times to come, later on or perhaps never. A spectral messianicity is at work in the concept of the archive and ties it, like religion, like history, like science itself, to a very singular experience of the promise. -- Derrida