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White Mythology: * Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy Jacques Derrida Note from the translator: "Here is a parody o
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White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy Jacques Derrida; F. C. T. Moore New Literary History, Vol. 6, No. 1, On Metaphor. (Autumn, 1974), pp. 5-74. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-6087%28197423%296%3A1%3C5%3AWMMITT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4 New Literary History is currently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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White Mythology: * Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy Jacques Derrida Note from the translator: "Here is a parody of the translator," writes M. Derrida. I t is a truism that translation is impossible, or at least a treachery. Indeed, it is the piety of the translator to say so. In this case, however, the dilemma is more acute. I t is not merely that M. Derrida's style is peculiarly elaborate and difficult-it is that his topic (if we allow the distinction) itself raises difficulties of which translation provides an evident example. T h e question of metaphor, as M. Derrida shows, is at the heart of those very general questions concerning the relations of language, thought, and reality. Now the supposed task of the translator is to discern the thought of a text in one language (and the reality which it claims to put before us), and to express the same thought in another language. T h e deeply problematic nature of these notions is a chief concern of the present article. It is therefore with more than the usual insistence that I enter here the translator's conventional warning and apology. In particular, the reader should take note of the following points: I . Intelligible English renderings have generally been preferred to direct transfers into English of M. Derrida's suggestive exploitation of nuances of French vocabulary. This results inevitably in some loss of the force of the original. Here are some examples: -The heading of the introductory part of the article (here translated "On the Obverse") is "Exergue," a word which in English as in French has a technical numismatic meaning (the part of the coin where the date, the engraver's initials and so forth are inscribed), but in French also has an idiomatic use, as in the phrase "mettre en exergueV-"to display, bring to the fore." The effectiveness of the term for M. Derrida's purposes in the introductory section cannot be captured in English. -Among other examples of metonymy, M. Derrida gives the example of the French word robe used of the judiciary. This, and one or two similar examples, have simply been omitted. -The terms propre and proprie'te', a frequent and central topic of discussion, are problematic. The English word proper is importantly less versatile than propre: proper name is normal English for n o m propre, but une qualite' propre would more naturally be a distinctive quality, and u n sens propre would only with some strain be a proper rather than a This essay originally appeared as "La mythologie blanche," Poetique, 5 ( 1 9 7 1).
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literal sense. Strain has been preferred in this case, so that the strategic role of "the proper" in the argutlient may rernain manifest. -Similar considerations apply to the ternls figurr, valpur, prob1c:rnatiqu~: again. literal translations are often preferred, in spite of some strain. 2. Quotations and references are given according to English originals or English translations where conveniently available, though some rnodifications to these translations have been made in view of M. ljerrida's use of the texts in question. For instance, the expression "white 1nytho10,gy" itself frightened Anatole France's Eng-lish translator into a periphrasis.
I. On the Obverse HILOSOPHY . . . and from philosophy, rhetoric. From a bookroughly and more or less a book-to create a flower, and to create it here, to bring it forth, t o mount it, rather-to let it mount and find its dawning ( a n d it turns aside as though of itself, revoluted, some grave flower). Following the reckoning of a lapidary, we learn to cultivate patience. . . . Metaphor in the text of philosophy. We might be confident of understanding every word of this phrase; we might hasten to make out a figure ( o r to write it i n ) in the volume capable of philosophy; we might set ourselves to deal with a specific question: is there metaphor in the text of philosophy? in what form? to what extent? is it necessary or incidental? and so on. O u r confidence is quickly lost: metaphor seems to bring into play the use of philosophical language in its entirety, nothing less than the use of what is called ordinary language in philosophical discourse, that is to say, of ordinary language as philosophical language. I n short, a book is called for-on philosophy, on philosophical usage, or good philosophical usage. T h e interest lies in what this undertaking promises, rather than in what it yields, and we shall therefore content ourselves with a chapter. Moreover, t o "usage" we may append the subtitle "wear and tear," and it is with this that we shall concern ourselves. And first of all we shall direct interest upon a certain wear and tear of metaphorical force in philosophical intercourse. I t will become clear that this wear is not a supervenient factor modifying a kind of trope-energy which would otherwise remain intact; on the contrary, it constitutes the very history and structure of philosophical metaphor. But how can we make it discernible, except by metaphor? This is
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where the notion of wear and tear comes in. We can have no access to the wear and tear of a linguistic phenomenon without giving it some kind of figurative representation. What could be the wear and tear properly so-called of a word, a statement, a meaning, a text? We shall be bold and look to Anatole France: in The Garden of Epicurus we shall unearth an example (but n o more than an example in which a common type may be discerned) of this metaphor of the wear and tear of metaphor-of deterioration in this figure. Let it be noted that in the "obverse" of the present chapter, Anatole France's metaphor-the philosophical wear and tear of this figure-happens also to describe the active erosion of the obverse of a coin. Almost at the end of The Garden of Epicurus,' there is a short dialogue between Aristos and Polyphilos on "the language of metaphysics." The interlocutors are concerned precisely with that sensible figure which is sheltered, and worn out to the point of seeming to pass unnoticed, in every metaphysical concept. Abstract notions always conceal a sensible figure. I t seems that the history of metaphysical language is commingled with the erasing of what is effective in it, and the wearing out of its effigy. We may detect here the double bearing of the French word usure (though Anatole France does not actuallv use this word), of which we may offer the following accounts, although they remain inseparable: first, obviously, the word means that "wear" of which we have been speaking-erasure by rubbing, or exhaustion, or crumbling; but secondly, it has also the sense of "usury"-the additional product of a certain capital, the process of exchange which, far from losing the stake, would make that original wealth bear fruit, would increase the return from it in the form of income, of higher interest, of a kind of linguistic surplus value. POLYPHI1,OS: It was just a reverie. I was thinking how the Metaphysicians, when they make a language for themselves, are like [and here we have an image, a comparison, a figure to signify the figurative] knifegrinders, who instead of knives and scissors, should put medals and coins to the grindstone to efface the exergue, the value and the head. When they have worked away till nothing is visible in their crown-pieces, neither King Edward, the Emperor William, nor the Republic, they say: "These pieces have nothing either English, German or French about them: we have freed them from all limits of time and space: they are riot worth five shillings any more; they are of an inestimable value, and their exI Anatole France, T h e Garden of Epicurus, tr.-A. Allinson, T h e Works of Anatole France, ed. F . Chapman and J. L. May (London and New York, 1 g o 8 ) , 111, 205ff. The same work includes a sort of meditation on the figures of the alphabet, the original forms of certain of its letters ("How I discoursed one night with a n apparition on the first origins of the alphabet").
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change value is extended indefinitely." They are right in speaking thus. By this needy knife-grinder's activity words are changed from a physical to a metaphorical acceptation. It is obvious that they lose in the process; what they gain by it is riot so immediately apparent. It is not our task here to capitalize on this reverie, but to discern through its implicit logic a drawing of the outlines of our problem, of the theoretical and historical conditions under which it emerges. At least, we discern two limits : first, Polyphilos, it seems, wants to preserve the capital intact, or rather, to preserve the natural wealth which precedes the accumulation of capital, the original virtue of the sensible image which is deflowered and spoilt by the history of the concept. In this way he presupposes-and it is a classical motif, a commonplace of the eighteenth century-that at its origins language could have been purely sensory, and that the etymon of a primitive meaning, though hidden, can always be determined. Secondly, this etymologism interprets degradation as the passage from the physical to the metaphysical. Thus Polyphilos is making use of a distinction which is entirely philosophical, and which itself has its history and its metaphorical history, in order to pass judgment on what, as he alleges, the philosopher unknowingly does with metaphor. This is confirmed by what follows: what is now in question is precisely the possibility of restoring or reconstituting, beneath the metaphor which at once conceals and is concealed, what was "originally represented" on the coin that is worn and effaced, polished by the circulation of the philosophical concept. "Ef-face-ment" should always be spoken of as the effacement of an original figure, were it not that such effacement itself effaces itself. '411 these words, whether defaced by usage, or polished smooth, or even coined expressly in view of constructing some intellectual concept, yet allow us to frame some idea to ourselves of what they originally represented. So chemists have reagents whereby they can make the effaced writing of a papyrus or a parch~nentvisible again. It is by these means palimpsests are deciphered. If an analogous process were applied to the writings of the metaphysicians, if the primitive and concrete meaning that lurks invisible yet present under the abstract and new interpretation were brought to light, we should come upon some very curious and perhaps instructive ideas. T h e primitive meaning, the original figure, always sensible and material ("The vocabulary of mankind was framed from sensuous images, and this sensuousness is to be found . . . even in the technical terms concocted by metaphysicians . . . fatal materialism inherent in the vocubulary"), is not exactly a metaphor. I t is a kind of transparent
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figure, equivalent to a proper meaning. It becomes metaphor when put in circulation in philosophical discourse. At that point, the first meaning and the first displacement are simultaneously forgotten. The metaphor is no longer noticed, and it is taken for the proper meaning. This is a twwfold effacement. O n this view, philosophy would be a selfeliminating process of generating metaphor. It would be of the nature of philosophy that philosophical culture be a rude obliteration. This is a rule of economy: to reduce the work of abrasion, metaphysicians would by preference choose the most worn of words: "they go out of their way to choose for polishing such words as come to them a bit obliterated already. In this way, they save themselves a good half of the labor. Sometimes they are luckier still, and put their hands on words which, by long and universal use, have lost from time imnlemorial all trace whatever of an effigy." Conversely, we are unwitting metaphysicians in proportion to the wear and tear of our words. Without making a theme or a problem of it, Polyphilos cannot avoid proceeding to the logical conclusion-the case of absolute wear. But what is this? And does not the metaphysician systematically prefer such loss-which is to say such unlimited surplus value-in choosing, for example, concepts which are negative in form, ab-solute, in-finite, in-tangible, not-being? "In three pages of Hegel, taken at random, in his Phenomenology [a book very little referred to, it seems, in French universities in 19001, out of six and twenty words, the subjects of important sentences, I found nineteen negative terms as against seven affirmatives. . . . These abs and ins and nons are more effective than any grindstone in planing down. At a stroke they make the most rugged words smooth and characterless. Sometimes, it is true, they merely twist them round for you and turn them upside down." This is whimsical: but we may detect beyond it an outstanding question: what is the relation between the self-eliminating generation of metaphor and concepts of negative form? Such concepts cancel definiteness and determinacy, and it is their function to break the link with the sense of a particular being, that is, with the totality of what is. In this way, their obvious metaphorical quality is put in abeyance. (We shall define this problem of negativity more clearly below by drawing attention to the alliance between the Hegelian "sublation"-the Aufhebung, itself too a unity of gain and loss, and the philosophical concept of metaphor. ) Such is the general practice, so far as I have observed, of the metaphysicians-more correctly, the Metataphysicians; for it is another remarkable fact to add to the rest that your science itself has a negative nanie. one taken from the order in which the treatises of Aristotle were
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arranged, and that strictly speaking, you give yourselves the title: Those who come after the Physicians. I understand of course that you regard these, the physical books, as piled atop of each other, so that to conie after is really to take place above. All the same, you adrnit this much, that you are outside of natural phenomena. Although metaphysical metaphor has turned every tneaning upside down, although it has also effaced piles of ph>sical treatises, one ought always to be able to reconstitute the original inscription and restore the palimpsest. Polyphilos indulges in this game. From a work which "reviews all systems one by one from the old Eleatics down to the latest Eclectics, and . . . ends u p with M. Lachelier," he abstracts an extremely abstract and speculative sentence: " T h e spirit possesses G o d in proportion ar it participates i n the absolute." Then he undertakes an etymological or philological investigation aimed at bringing to life all the sleeping figures. T o d o this, he concerns himself not with "how much truth the sentence contained," but solely with "the verbal form." He first makes it clear that the words "God," "soul," "absolute," and so forth are symbols and not signs. T h e force of this distinction is that what is symbolized retains a bond of natural affinity with the symbol, and thus warrants etymological reconstitution (in this way, arbitrariness, as Nietzsche also suggests, would only be a degree of wear and tear of the symbolic). Polyphilos then gives u? the results of his chemical oper 21t'ion: Wherefore I was on the right road when I investigated the meanin