[Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) 238–262] Postscripts (print) ISSN 1743–887X doi: 10.1558/post.v3i2-3.238 Postscripts (online) ISSN 1743–8888 © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010, 1 Chelsea Manor Studios, Flood Street, London SW3 5SR The Taste to Come: The Lick of Faith and the Other-Mouths of Messianism Virgil W. Brower Abstract This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipisisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of self-reflexivity that emerges in the sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh. Messe, ça n'est pas kasher... / Il s'agit d'un léchage. [Mass is not kosher... / It is a kind of licking.] -Cixous 2009, 12; 2006, 22-3 ...gets "good taste" mixed up with "taste good,"... -Pynchon 2009, 119 Und schmeck ich auch, wie ein Holzapfel, dir zuweilen, so keltre mich so lange, bis ich trinkbar bin. [And should I taste at times like a crabapple to you, press me for as long as it takes until I am drinkable.] -Hölderlin 1969, 319 Brower The Taste to Come 239 © Equinox Publishing 2010 A messy etymology: the "mess-" that derives from the Greek  has distinctly different etymological roots from the "mess" that derives from the Anglo-Norman messe and the Old French mes meaning a meal or a portion of food. Yet, by all indications, the "miss" of any messianic miss-ion comes from the past participle of the Indo-European mittere, from which also derives the "mess" eaten in a mess hall or with a mess kit. The Latin missio sends the son or the spirit sends as one sends the course of a meal (messo in Italian) to the mess table. The message of an evangelical mission proclaims the sending of a promise or a messiah in the way one sends for mess from the dining room. A messman (be it a cook, chef, waitress, or waiter) sends or delivers the mess as a missionary sends or delivers the promise of the messiah. Messianism delivers the promise as the messman serves up food. Je vous fais cette promesse: I'm not messing with you, but...the messiah will have messed with us. There are three steps down the ladder of writing this essay on taste and messianism; destined-credo!-to irt with the costs of a certain kind of discipleship; three steps down before it nds its footing in Luther. My "messmates" towards whom I lunge "in turn" (Joyce 1940, 14): the rst comes from the closing pages of Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx, the second, from a divergent note on Proust in a letter from Walter Benjamin to Theodor Adorno, and third, in a recent text from the great writer of theladder-of-writing, herself, Hélène Cixous. These come to bloom into oblique invitations to reread Luther as he teaches us to relick the other. In another tongue (or better, with another tongue) ...ici et maintenant, je relis Luther juste au moment où il m'enseigne comment relecher l'autre. And I relish the idea that I relèche as I relis. Once it gets its footing in Luther, the essay attempts three steps back up, through the gospel of Friedrich Nietzsche, a later essay by Jacques Derrida called "Justices," and the recent erotic phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion. Only then does it jump back into Luther to truly reread him in a different way; if not against himself. Fore starters: In his wrestling with messianism, Jacques Derrida distinguishes it from a certain kind of calculation. It is the incalculable dimensions of messianism that reckon for its despairing, uncanny, and curious aspects. One may deem strange, strangely familiar and inhospitable at the same time (unheimlich, uncanny), this gure of absolute hospitality whose promise one would choose to entrust to an experience that is so impossible, so unsure in its indigence, to a quasi-"messianism"...a despairing "messianism." But without this latter despair and if one could count on what is coming, hope would be but the calculation of a program. One would have the prospect but one would no longer wait for anything or anyone. Law without justice... Some, and I do not exclude myself, will nd that this despairing "messianism" has a curious taste, a taste of death. It is true that this taste is above all a taste, a foretaste, and in essence it is curious (Derrida 1994, 212 ; emphasis added). 240 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 On pourra juger étrange, étrangement familière et inhospitalière à la fois (unheimlich, uncanny) cette gure de l'hospitalité absolue dont on voudrait coner la promesse à une expérience aussi impossible, aussi peu assurée dans son indigence, à un quasi-« messianisme »...un « messianisme » désespérant. Mais sans ce désespoir-là, et si l'on pouvait compter sur ce qui vient, l'espérance ne serait que le calcul d'un programme. On aurait la prospective mais on n'attendrait plus rien ni personne. Le droit sans la justice... Ce « messianisme » qui désespère, certains, dont je ne m'exclus pas, lui trouveront peut-être un goût curieux, parfois un goût de mort. Il est vrai que ce goût est avant tout un goût, un avant-goût, et par essence il est curieux (Derrida 1993, 267-68; emphasis added). There is prior taste; a taste before. This foretaste-avant-goût-of the taste to come has the hint of justice beyond law; beyond counting, and calculation. The security of the countable and the calculable renders law without justice/le droit sans la justice. But one tastes an infelicity-an element of otherness or alteration-within this curious and desperate messianism. It cannot be counted on or calculated. It's on the tip of our tongues but we just can't place it. The strange, uncanny, and curious tasteof-justice is perhaps as close as one can get to justice. One can never achieve justice-swallow it or ingest it-but can ever only taste the foretaste of it; yet it has a tinge of the taste of death. The taste prior to the taste to come relates to justice and hope (perhaps, faith). The taste of messianism-which smacks of death-is not the aftertaste nor the last taste but a foretaste. The "taste of death" alludes-or can allude, at least-to a particular messianic tradition that promises to elude that very taste. A kind of "messiah" is said to say that "some will not taste of death [    ]"1 before the coming kingdom, basileia-eschaton-if not the coming of god. In the very words of the gospels, taste plays a role in the revelation of the messiah. The taste that most taste or will taste will not be tasted by all. Some [ 	], not all; the post-Pauline gospel of taste, here, makes humble particular and conditional claims rather than sweeping unconditional and universal ones. O, the  of it all: some shall not taste death-some S is not P-the Open mouth of O propositions. O, how self bites its tongue with particular negations. The taste of messianism is a negative non-universalist claim; harrowing; only to be heard, proclaimed, or tasted with fear and trembling; with a tinge (or tang) of despair. Yet there may be hope (Glaube or l'espérance)-not necessarily for all and everyone-but for "anyone" or "whoever" [	] in the gospel of John's version of the    (John 8:52). Or, better, the any/ of John-which is proclaimed to the Jews!-illuminates, possibly, the impossible hospitality of the some/  found in the rest of the gospels. No wonder Luther's most astute writings on taste come from his sermons on the gospel of John (even if he seems to 1. Matt 16:28; Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27. Brower The Taste to Come 241 © Equinox Publishing 2010 repress to whom it is proclaimed). Messianic taste tries to show us a some open to all; which would always have to be an understanding of life (living taste) that is never naively nor securely closed off from death but, rather, always tasting it; being towards it. When Derrida writes that "this taste [ce goût] is above all a taste [un goût]," the link between "this taste" and "a taste" may be a Francophonic attempt to say something that can perhaps be best said in German, which has two words for taste, Geschmack (or Schmecken) and Kosten. Ce goût can be to Geschmack as un goût (and maybe un avant-goût) can be to Kosten.2 This Geschmack is above all a Kosten. This taste is but a test. This taste just wants a taste, or perhaps a lick. The foretaste and the differing tastes that follow would seem a kind of itasterability; the enigma of repetition caught licking something other than itself. A curious kind of foretasting to be distinguished from "tasting again" is perhaps on Walter Benjamin's mind in his letter to Theodor Adorno on May 7, 1940 as he writes on the role of taste in Proust. Whereas a foretaste/rst taste would have to be conscious, the aftertaste that becomes familiar between the rst-taste and the tasting-again may be unconscious; a mémorie involuntaire. This plays well with Derrida's discussion of the unheimlich or "strangely familiar" nature of the foretaste of messianism; something known but not known; Bekannt but Unbekannt; tasted but somehow-curiously-not tasted; an un-kanny un-tasty. Benjamin's letter also discloses an issue of translation that may yield insight to the two different German words translated as "taste" (an issue on the tips of our tongues as we re-read Luther, below). Benjamin writes: The childhood experience of the taste [des Geschmacks] of the madeleine, which returns involuntarily to Proust's memory one day, was indeed unconscious [unbewusst]. But his rst bite [erste Bissen] of the madeleine would not have been. (Tasting is a conscious act.) [Kosten ist ein Bewusstseinakt.] Yet this act [of tasting; das Schmecken] no doubt does become unconscious [unbewusst] to the extent that a taste [der Geschmack] becomes more familiar [vertrauter]. The "tasting again" [Wiederschmecken] by the grown man is, of course, conscious [naturally: natürlich, bewusst] (Benjamin 2003, 413; 1966, 849; emphasis added). Das Schmecken becomes unbewusst as Geschmack becomes vertrauter! Tasting becomes unconscious as taste becomes familiar. The trauter of vertrauter is more about trust than familiarity. The taste becomes trusted; vertraut. A trust is unconscious; a trust that is not quite-or not yet-the Glaube of Luther or l'espérance of Derrida. It is unconscious as one continually tastes after the tasting of a "rst bite." But it is a specic kind of tasting that Benjamin gives to consciousness. It is Kosten-not 2. Although Susanne Lüdemann does not do so in her German translation. "Es ist wahr, dass dieser Geschmack vor allem ein Geschmack ist, ein Vorgeschmack" (Derrida 1996a, 265; emphasis added). 242 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 Schmecken-that is a conscious act. Kosten is perhaps better understood as taste-test; a sampling; a quick lick by which the tasted object (or other) remains. The tasted is not consumed, devoured, ingested, or eaten but merely tested. One swiftly checks the cost with one's tongue but refuses the consumerism of consumption with pursed lips. Benjamin's Wiederschmecken ("tasting-again") evokes the writing of Hélène Cixous as she invites us to re-read. There is a tasting-again to reading-again and this, for Cixous, is a springboard to revisiting Luther (or, at the very least, Luther's translation of the Bible). She sends us a passage of tongues and licks: Tout d'un coup, je relis toutes les bibles, je vais, je viens, je cherche, d'une langue à l'autre je relis de bible en bible, ma Luther, ta King James les petites vieilles les grandes jeunes, je relèche... Ta langue, je reviens toujours à elle, elle est bien gardée, j'essaie d'écarter tes lèvres avec ma langue ou bien c'est toi sur mes lèvres... (Cixous 2005, 15-16; emphasis added). All of a sudden I reread all the Bibles, I go, I come, I search, from one language to another I read from Bible to Bible, my Luther, your King James to the old little ones, the young big ones, I pass my tongue over them again... Your language-I always come back to it-is well guarded, I try to part your lips with my tongue or else it's you on my lips... (Cixous 2008, 6; emphasis added). Twice one reads relis in the French and langue, three times. As I reread HC in her-tongue (if indeed French is that, for her) I'm drawn into her game of mine and yours; between the your/ta King James and your/ta language and the my/ma Luther and the my tongue/ma langue. After rereading Luther, one may feel that my-tongue is my-Luther. Just as there is a difference between taste and a taste for Derrida, there is a difference between a tongue and my-tongue. No tongue can be a my-tongue without re-reading Luther. Any tongue can be part of a mouth that devours and schmeckt, but only a my-tongue can taste or kostet. There is certainly a profound insight in Peggy Kamuf's decision to translate the ma langue as my tongue rather than my language, as she does with the other two uses of langue in this passage. It is for this reason, perhaps, that Kamuf's poetic translation-which is not done justice, here, by simply citing a few lines!-de-emphasizes the second rein HC's second relis. She does not write je lis de bible en bible, but je relis de bible en bible. Translation is rereading and one must reread the relis to discover the almost lost relic of the relick. Kamuf perhaps allows herself the liberty of deemphasizing the reof HC's re-relis-ing because of the ourish soon to follow in which Kamuf gives us an again-one that plays Wieder to Benjamin's Schmecken-in her translation of relèche as "I pass my tongue over them again." Mentioning the tongue in this translation of relèche helps keep the spirit of the passage near to hand since Kamuf holds her tongue in her translation of the rst two uses of langue in this passage. Brower The Taste to Come 243 © Equinox Publishing 2010 However, the writing, through its repetition of relis, seems to be ashing3 and pointing to the phonemes of relèche which means to relick.4 I relick as I reread.5 The langue is more than language. The ma langue is a tongue accompanied by an unconscious and Wiederschmecken. The langue that rereads does so only insofar as it can lick; only insofar as it goes beyond merely speaking and reading. As such, the read/lick (again)-relis/relèche-of Cixous seems more efcacious than the pairings "to eat/to speak [manger/parler]," "to eat or to speak, to feed or to be presented [manger ou parler, se nourrir ou être présenté]," or "between to eat and to speak [entre manger et parler]" in Gilles Deleuze (1990, 24, 65, 85; 1969, 37, 82, 104); resisting the urge to devour and digest6 that so often accompanies the reduction of langue to speech or parole. In licking as it reads instead of eating when it speaks, the scope of relis/relèche moves beyond the mere edibility of denotable things since, for Deleuze, the "denotable thing is essentially something which is (or may be) eaten [ce qui se mange ou peut se manger]" (1990, 26; 1969, 39). Relis/relèche is less prone to diminishing the other to thinghood; to mere edibility on the level of fressen. Perhaps, the orality and licks of Cixous help avoid the danger of thingication which is an important concern for Jean-Luc Marion as he studies erotic phenomenality, discussed below. As such, rereading-i.e., reading as carefully as one can-works on the level of the lick and taste against a bestial devouring that merely ingests and feeds. Alongside the relèche of relis in Cixous, it is noteworthy that Heidegger describes supercial reading [Angelesenen] as something upon which to feed. "Gossiping...feeds on [speist] supercial reading" (Heidegger 1963, 169; 1996, 158).7 If there is a concern on the part of deconstruction to attempt to savor (or, attempt savoir)8 the taste of messianism, the roots of that deconstructive project do not end with Heidegger. As we reread our 3. Strobe like: see Gilles Deleuze on Cixous (2003, 230). 4. When there is no phonemic play-no enthymeme on which one wants to step, but can't-in a three-step writing; when there is no silent relishing to be had between relis and relèche, then Cixous leaves licking outside, as she does while writing "I reread it" in the past tense, "je l'ai relu" several chapters later (2005, 83). When an auxiliary verb, a direct object pronoun, and a hard "u" sound disrupt the ow of the phonemes, there is no lecher to be heard or read. 5. Cixous thinks reading and licking later in the chapter. This, again, shows that one cannot grasp the spirit of Kamuf's translation by reading a few lines but only by engaging and rereading the book as a whole. HC writes, "je venais de lire des poems... Je les avais léchés de la tête aux pieds" (2005, 23). Kamuf: "I had just read the poems... I had licked them from head to toe" (2008, 12; emphasis added). 6. Deleuze suggests pairing to speak with to shit; "chier/parler" (1990, 85; 1969, 104). 7. Cf. Luther's discussion of natural feeding and his use of speisen, below. 8. To know and to taste are closely related in French. The French word for knowledge-savoir-and the English words savor and savory all derive from the Latin sapere which means both to taste and to be wise. 244 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 Bibles "let us never forget the...Lutheran memory of Heideggerian deconstruction (Destruktion was rst destructio by Luther, anxious to reactivate the originary sense of the Gospels by deconstructing theological sediments)" (Derrida 2005b, 60). Beyond Heidegger, it is Martin Luther who perhaps begins a certain deconstructive legacy of reading texts; in this case the gospels. In his later years, Derrida confesses: "there are literally Lutheran origins in this Heideggerian deconstruction (Destuktion) that I have I spent my life questioning" (Derrida 2004, 165). All the more reason, je relis ma Luther. In Luther's treatment of the gospel of John, the "eatability" of the messiah is discussed at length. He considers the messiah as mess, with which he agrees to some extent but only after a certain revaluation or transvaluation of food; a transcomsumption of consuming, if not a transtransubstantiation of transubstantiation.9 For Luther, "to eat" does not mean introjection, to devour, to masticate, or to ingest in order to digest. Beyond the eating and speaking of Deleuze, Luther interprets eating as believing and nds a rift between a certain "taste" and "words spoken." For Luther, to eat is faith, itself. But this can be understood only after stripping the body of Christ from stereotypical associations with the messy meat of a meal. This is an attack on the institutionalized eucharist of the Catholic Church. He repeatedly states that his exegesis has nothing to do with the sacrament. There is an indigestible element to messianism. After Luther, the pro-mise is anti-mess: But we must advance beyond the position of beginners or novices, who never reach the point where they taste and experience that God is a Man...nor do they ever nd out [erkennen nicht] what God really is, or what a great comfort is available to them, or how this tastes [auch wie es schmecte]. Those are false Christians. They hear [horen] and learn much, yet they never come to a knowledge of the truth [erkentnis der warheit]. They do learn to speak the words [die wort reden], as a parrot or parakeet [Papagei oder Sittich] repeats words spoken by people [Menschen wort]. But their heart does not feel them; they remain unchanged and do not taste and perceive [sie schmecten und fühlen nicht] how faithful and true God is [warhasstigk Gott sei] (Luther 1959, 399-400; 1907, 651-52; emphasis added). The distinction between different kinds of eating is sometimes lost on the English reader of Luther's Works. The English Concordia edition of the sermons on John seems to draw from the two different drafts of them in the German Weimar edition to give one comprehensive translation. In the rst version one nds: "But it is better for us to eat our God than for the devil to eat us" (Luther 1959, 115). The German reads: "Aber es ist besser, 9. For there will always be a "contransmagnicandjewbangtantiality" between a "chewer of corpses" and a "toothless...superman," as there is in opening section of Ulysses (Joyce 1940, 39, 12, 51). Brower The Taste to Come 245 © Equinox Publishing 2010 das wir unsern herrgott essen, den das uns der teuffell esse." Here, Luther uses only one word-essen; to eat-to describe both ways of eating. However, in the revision Luther uses two different German words to distinguish "our" eating from the devil's. "Aber es ist besser, das wir unsern Herr Gott essen, denn das uns der Teufel fresse" (Luther 1907, 177). The nal version makes a distinction between fressen10 and essen;11 the former more akin to animalistic devouring (or, perhaps, feeding) than eating. Yet, perhaps, devouring is not so much animalistic as it is bestial, since "the beast is not exactly the animal" (Derrida 2009, 1). But even on the level of essen there are two types of eating. There is an eating that renders one not dying and an elevated eating that leads to living or remaining alive. For Luther, not dying  living. Life does something more than not die.12 In his response to John 6:49,13 he develops an understanding of eating that simply keeps one from dying until the time of inescapable death; it only "prolonged this temporal life but a little." Here, Luther begins his exercise of over-determining eating with faith [essen with Glaube] as he paraphrases critics of this claim made by Jesus in John 6:49. They mock Jesus' words: how dare he "claim that he who believes [glaubt / glaubet] in Him will not die [nicht sterben], and that he who eats [isset] His bread will live forever [leben ewig]." Luther proceeds to criticize the manna of the Hebrew Bible as still natural. The heavenly bread was as perishable as any other food... Wonderful bread though it was, it was still natural food [naturlich brodt / naturlich Speise und Brot]. If our God saw t to convert stones into bread (Matt. 4:3), it would still be bread. Or if He gives water from a rock (Ex. 17:6), it is still natural water. Or if He makes wine out of water...it is still natural wine and retains the properties of wine. Thus this manna was also our from heaven, and this bread merely preserved and nourished the body [nur den leib erhielt und erneeret]. It only fed [speisete nur], but it 10. Luther also makes use of fressen in his translation of Gal 5:15. The verse reads, "So ir euch aber unterander beisset und fresset / So sheet zu / das ir nicht unterander verzeret werdet / If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not destroyed/consumed by one another" (Luther 1974, 2352; emphasis added). This comment on biting and devouring has to do with ways of love, since Paul uses it immediately to follow his supposed reiteration of "Love your neighbor as yourself." It is perhaps the case that Luther's project to revaluate the actions of the mouth as something other than destructive consumption is indicative of his "reinterpretation of the letters of Saint Paul" which "forms the cornerstone of Reformation theology" (Taylor 2007, 44, 48; q.v., 65-66). 11. It is worth noting Hegel's ironic non-distinction of both fressen and essen in regards to thinking, as discussed in Clarke (2004, 126). 12. Though Luther does not make the following distinction, it is perhaps not unhelpful to think of the level of not dying as fressen and devouring and the level of living as that of essen. We will perhaps see that this may have something to do with the possibility that bestial fressen does not appreciate the taste of the mess whereas essen takes part in the phenomenon of taste. 13. "Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died." 246 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 produced no greater effect than other natural bread...he who eats [isset] of it will not die [nicht sterben] (Luther 1959, 114; 1907, 175). To eat naturally or to eat the merely natural is to feed like a beast. To feed [speisen; from speise: food] is merely [nur] to nourish [ernähren]. Perhaps, after Luther's revised description of the devil's devouring, feeding can be understood on the level of fressen rather than essen, (though he insists, here, on using essen-isset-in both drafts). On the other side of the eating of manna is the eating of Christ; which Luther insists has nothing whatsoever to do with sacrament or eucharist, given his resistance to Catholicism.14 " 'All your miracles, your manna, your Law [Gesetz], and your ceremonies will not help you.' The power to make alive [lebendig machten] and to abolish death was not given to Moses...but only to the Person who is called Christ... He who eats [isset] of this [Christ] will remain alive [lebendig bleiben]" (Luther 1959, 114; 1907, 176; emphasis added). One hears a Leib in the German that remains [bleibt] beyond the biological/natural Leib that only feeds. The Leib of the bleiben is beyond the Körper of the feed. The latter is meat; merely a esh that can only devour. A "esh" merely feeds, whereas what will come to be called "my esh" or "Mein eisch" is for more than feeding. I shall argue (after Nietzsche and Derrida) that it tastes. Note that mere feeding is placed alongside the law. It is the law that seems to be commanding one to feed only; what Derrida calls le droit sans la justice and ts well-after Luther's wolf goes across our stage (below)-into what Derrida calls "lyconomy" [the law (nomos) of the wolf] (2009, 96). Opposed to the bread from heaven (manna) that merely helps the feeder not die is Christ considered as "the true bread of heaven / das recht Brot vom Himel" (Luther 1959, 114; 1907, 176). But Luther does not use the word "true"-wahr; a word he makes use of often-to describe this bread, but rather recht; right, or perhaps even just [gerecht], as recht is part of the German word for justice: Gerechtigkeit. There is a justice beyond the law-(ge)recht beyond the Gesetz-in regards to ways of eating; justice as fareness. The law feeds, consumes, and devours whereas justice does something else. (We shall see that Luther distinguishes just-eating from legal-feeding by ascribing taste to the former.) In this way, a justice (to come) makes way for life [the Leben of lebendig] over and against the law that can only lead to death; though life (and death) is "prolonged a little" by way of the law in not dying (which is different than living). The curious taste of messianism has a despairing foretaste which is the taste of death; the taste of dead plants and dead animals that keep one from merely not dying. But let it be spoke: this is not the best taste. A Wiederschmecken is ever open to a justice that tastes something beyond the law the feeds. 14. Cf. Taylor 2007, 71. Brower The Taste to Come 247 © Equinox Publishing 2010 Luther then tries to explain the difference between the two ways of eating by giving one the status of faith: Therefore the Jews begin to murmur and ask: "How can one eat Your esh? To understand this we must realize that Christ is speaking of spiritual esh and of spiritual eating. It is faith which eats Him. Christ interprets Himself when He says: "He who believes in me has eternal life; such a one eats properly, for I am the bread of life." It is by faith that He is eaten; faith eats and believes in Christ. The soul and faith do not have a mouth, teeth, throat, and stomach, as the body has; they have a different kind of mouth... The soul does not eat like the body. It has its mind, its will, its mood, understanding, desire, or reason... (Luther 1957, 116; emphasis added). There is much to say about this passage.15 Fressen, merely to eat [nur essen], or feeding can now be opposed to what Luther calls spiritual eating; geistlichen essen-Geist-like eating-a Geist with an other-mouth16 that eats otherwise than merely-eating/nur-essen. Christ's response to the question, given as the second quotation, is longer in the translation than it is in Luther's text. Luther only attributes "He who believes in me has eternal life" to Christ: "da er spricht: 'wer da gleubet an mich, der hat das ewige leben.' " The two phrases that follow-such a one eats properly, for I am the bread of life-are not given in quotes. This "one" in "one eats properly" is the translator's grappling with Luther's word derselbige. Derselbe means "identical" or "same" and contains within it the German word for self: Selbst. So this "one" in "one eats properly" is perhaps a kind of oneself; the selfsame; a self that is in some way same only with itself is what will eat "properly." But this alleged propriety, once again, is a matter of justice (or right; recht) rather than the proper or eigen. Luther's phrase reads: "derselbige isset recht." It is only a certain understanding of a self that can do justice to eating and can attempt to avoid the injustice that might be associated with fressen. And, the sameness of the derselbige is not so simple once one reads of the otherness of its mouth [ander maul]. That which transforms a feeding/devouring mouth into an ander maul is nothing other than faith. Transformation may be the wrong word. Perhaps it is more a simultaneity; a kind of (ontic) maw capable always of feeding 15. It is worth noting, at least, that Luther does not mention "the Jews" in the opening sentence, but simply a "they/sie." This is not to say that he does not have Jews in mind. He writes (in only one of the versions): "Daher erhect sich den ein Murren, das sie fragen." Any detractors-including Greeks, goys, or gentiles-therefore raise a murmur and ask how one can eat Christ's esh. 16. Such spirit with a mouth that eats-as other as it may be from the mouth of a esh-might be considered less a Geist than a Gespenst or specter, since it is the Gespenst that always evokes a kind of corporeality; "a paradoxical incorporation" or "a return to the body." On this distinction, see Derrida (1994, 156-58). The other mouth [ander maul] of Luther is perhaps on the way to embodying a paradoxical incorporation rather than an incorporeal Platonic soul that one-even Luther himself, at times-may associate with the German Seele. 248 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 yet always already bears the supplement or trace of the incursion of otherness from which emerges a kind of (ontological) other-mouth. Openness to this andere is faith, itself. Faith eats. Faith is the eater; "der Glaub ist des Esser, der isset und gleubet an Christum." This paradoxical self-mouth on the way to otherness eats-as-it-has-faith and has faith only insofar as it eats in this other way. Spiritual eating doesn't merely eat. (It will be more about tasting than eating.) Faith will always have been in touch with the tongue. If one nds Luther's certain christocentrism distasteful here, then it is worth anticipating that the other mouth eats and has faith "in Christ" because, in the realm of this discussion, Christ is the one who says "my esh" and reformulates it in a way that allows Luther to understand the ander maul. It is Christ's proclamation of "my esh" that illuminates the role of taste in faith and the other-mouth. Luther describes the other-mouth (or, othered-mouth) as the mouth of a soul [Seele] that eats, but does not eat as the body eats. "Die Seele aber und der Galube haben nicht ein maul...sondern haben ein ander maul... isset auch anders den der leib" (Luther 1907, 178; emphasis added). There is an other other. The Seele and faith have no mouth but have an other-mouth and eat other than the body. They do not simply eat, consume, nor feed upon the matter or meat of the other, but encounter the other as more than mere body. The point is not that the other has no body. By way of the other-mouth-of-faith, the other is no longer come upon as a thing, object, or matter as any and all physical bodies in space on a phenomenal level perhaps comparable to what Heidegger might call ontic being or what Derrida might call presence. The other mouth [ein ander maul]-it is not so much about difference as otherness [andere]-is a mouth otherwise; a mouth on the way to the other. It has an impressive list of attributes. The other mouth functions on the level of sense [sinn], will [willen], mood [mut], understanding [verstand], desire [lust], and reason [vernunfft]. The inclusion of desire/lust (and perhaps sense/sinn), alongside that of the other-mouth, makes it impossible to distort this discussion into that of an incorporeal soul or an all too Platonic other-worldliness devoid of bodies. The other-mouth is not divorced from desire-if not lust-nor sensuality. This revaluation is not only about the move from merely-eating into spiritual-eating-nur essen into geistlichen essen-but also of mere-enjoyment into "Geistliche niessung" (Luther 1907, 178). The German verb, geniessen, when applied to food often means "to consume" but its broader meaning is "to enjoy." The other-mouth (that does something other than eat and consume) enjoys or relishes in a new way. "The word 'eat' need not be conned to the idea of eating with one's mouth / Man kan je noch etwas anders vom Essen redden den, das man mit dem maul allein isset" (Luther 1959, 116; 1907, 179). How can one say "to eat" other [anders] than that one can alone [allein] eat-can only eat-with the mouth [mit dem maul]? How can one use the Brower The Taste to Come 249 © Equinox Publishing 2010 mouth for something-other-than eating [etwas anders vom Essen]? What can the faithful do with-the-mouth other than eating, alone? Luther: "was ist dein dasselbig essen?" His answer is an altered recitation of the response Jesus gives to the same question. "Christ says: 'It is I. I am the food / antwort er: Ich bins, ich bin die Speise."17 When Christ says "I am" he says "I am dinner [Speise]." The pre-cogito of Luther: Ich bin...die Speise. The "I am" is "I am for the other-mouth." This new I-this other-I-is experienced only by the right [recht] tongues. Here, Luther evokes the overall project of this essay. A radical reformulation of the "I am / Ich bin" has something to do with the I's relation to other-mouths in which one can call oneself Speise or food intended for geistlich essen. This other-I is what Jesus calls "my esh." It is a corporeal "self" to be shared with other-mouths. The Ich and Ich bin of Luther are ever on their way to the "schmeck ich" ["I taste"] and "ich trinkbar bin" [I am drinkable] of Hyperion (Hölderlin 1969, 319; 2008, 42). Luther does his worst as he gets to the meat of the matter. Es geht um die Wurst. In a similar way to the distinctions he makes between fressen and essen, nur essen and geistlich essen, Luther distinguishes my esh from mere esh. We must incline our hearts to "distinguish between the word 'esh' and the words 'My esh.' " In the earlier draft, Luther isn't concerned so much with these eshes as words.18 Rather, we must simply "mache einen unterschiedt zwischen Fleische undt meinem eische." We must make a distinction between esh and my esh. He draws the distinction between esh and my-esh in two ways. The rst is alongside the difference between fressen and essen. Flesh is mere meat meant for fressen. There is no personhood or identity to esh considered as meat to be devoured. Mere esh remains in the sphere of thinghood or objecthood. Mere esh is "roast pork [Schweinen braten]." Flesh is something "purchased in a butcher shop or is devoured by wolves or dogs [wie es die Wolffe oder Hunde fressen]." Flesh is the level on which a wolf can "devour an old man, and a sow a child." "Ein Wolff kan einen alten Man fressen oder ein Saw ein Kind fressen" (Luther 1953, 119; 1907, 183; emphasis added). We must not forget that Luther "puts on stage one of those wolves" to be added to the "genelycology"-the genealogy of wolves-so persistent in Derrida's later works (Derrida 2009, 7, 64, 86, 96, 17. It is noteworthy that Luther, in his translation of John 6:51, does not use the word Speise but Brot-bread-which is a more faithful translation of the Greek artos [	]: "Ich bin das lebendige Brot." He will, however, use Speise in John 6:55 ("for my esh is true food") which he seems to be anticipating, here, in his commentary on v. 51. Once again he uses rechte [right or just] instead of wahr for the Greek alethes [	]: "Denn mein Fleish ist die recte Speise" (Luther 1974, 1251-52). 18. The later draft considers "my esh" as words: "mache einen unterscheid zwischen eisch und dem wort 'Meinem Fleisch.' " The point is not simply wordplay, but a play between eshes; again, between the word je lis and the esh je lèche. 250 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 passim; q.v. 2005c, 69). (Nor, before this devouring wolf stealthily ees our purview, should we overlook that the relation Luther nds between fressen and the law is also a relation to a certain kind of sovereignty.)19 My-esh is found on the level of a higher-geistlich-essen: But when Christ says "My esh," I take notice [da habe achtung drauff] of the identity of the speaker [wer der sei]. I ask: To whom does the little word "My" [worttlein 'mein'] pertain? Then these words will denote more [mehr] than mere esh... By virtue of the word "My" it is invested with greater strength [mehr krafft] than plain esh [schlecht eisch] and blood. It is "My esh." [Es ist Mein eisch.] You must take note of him who speaks these words. Then it will not be a sort of esh from which red sausages [rote Wurste] are made. My-esh is more than mere esh. It has more strength [Kraft] than schlecht eisch. The German schlecht says more than "plain." It insinuates bad or spoiled. It is meat gone bad; spoiled food. There is always an element of death and decay to schlecht eisch, but not so with Mein eisch. This is not to say that the Mein eisch is an idyllic biology or a life untouched by or beyond death. Luther will describe the my-esh as both living and dead; similar to what Derrida calls "life/death [la-vie-la-mort]" (Derrida 1985, 4; 1982, 15; 2003, 173; 2005c, 123)-an early version of what he will come to call autoimmunity-a bios or zoe always invested with or haunted by the otherness of thanatos or nekron. Thus is the Lutheran legacy of deconstruction of which Derrida speaks. Luther's Mein eisch embodies autoimmunity, itself. "It is a live and yet a dead esh." "Es ist ein lebendig eisch undt tod eisch" (Luther 1959, 123; 1907, 190). Meat and schlecht eisch, on the level of fressen, is merely the taste of death but the Mein eisch, on the level of geistlich essen, confronts the other-mouth with an other-taste [ein andern schmeckte] of the ceaseless clashing of life-death, inseparable from one another. One might call the latter the taste of resurrection; life always tasting-again the foretaste of death as much as an aftertaste of death ever tasted-again in one's living taste.20 This has everything to do with that "taste" of which Jesus is said to 19. "Might sovereignty be devouring? Might its force, its power, its greatest force, its absolute potency be, in essence and always in the last instance, a power of devourment (mouth, teeth, tongue, violent rush to bite, engulf, swallow the other, to take the other into oneself too, to kill it or mourn it)?" (Derrida 2009, 23). [I must say that the "tongue" seems a bit out of place in this ominous list and it should not go without saying why Derrida includes it.] 20. Cf. Cixous's response to Derrida's mention of "deathly taste / goût de mort" in Resistances (Derrida 1996b, 39; 1998, 24): "-The taste of death remains. Unnished. Unfamished. The endless attracts you. As long as there is taste there is life. / -Life has a taste of death. The taste of the death of life" (Cixous 2007, 124). Elsewhere, in a text published in French the same year, she writes, "to have the taste of life's dying between your teeth, on the tip of your tongue, the taste of death in life" (Cixous 2009, 14). Brower The Taste to Come 251 © Equinox Publishing 2010 speak in Matt 16:28, Mark 9:1, Luke 9:27, or John 8:52; a curious- uncanny-taste, indeed. The second way he distinguishes these two eshes is by emphasizing the little word my, which draws one's attention to the being of the person who speaks it. It is no longer just another physical body in the world. Luther's German does not mention the "identity of the speaker." Rather when one hears "my esh" one's attention [Achtung] is compelled to notice the being of the other: wer der sei-who he is-that says "my." The "my-esh" confronts us with the being [Sein] of the other beyond its mere physical existence or what Heidegger calls ständiger Vorhandenheit, "constant objective presence" (e.g. 1996, 89; 1963, 96; passim). If I may play messie, for a moment: as justice approaches-as more of the all rather than the some of living being(s) live from-hand-to-mouth-what gets translated in Derrida as Vorgeschmack (foretaste; avant-goût) may someday show itself as a radical alternative to Heidegger's Vorhandenheit. Si je relis...these two eshes of Luther alongside the more recent bifurcation of eshes in Edmund Husserl, one may consider the former's mere physical existence of esh on the level of Körper and the higher Kraft of the my-esh on the level of Leib. Husserl describes the journey to the Leib as follows: Among the bodies [Körpern] belonging to this "Nature"...I then nd my animate organism [Leib] as uniquely singled out-namely as the only one of them that is not just a body [Körper] but precisely an animate organism [Leib]... Touching kinesthetically, I perceive "with" my hands [mit den Händen]; seeing kinesthetically, I see "with" my eyes [mit den Augen]... As perceptively active, I experience (or can experience) all of Nature, including my own animate organism [eigene Leiblichkeit], which therefore in the process is reexively related to itself. That becomes possible because I "can" perceive one hand "by means of" the other hand ["mittels" der einen Hand die andere], and eye by means of a hand [mittels einer Hand ein Auge], and so forth-a procedure in which the functioning organ must become an Object and the Object a functioning organ (Husserl 1999, 97; 1973, 99). As my esh is different from all other physical esh, the Leib is an experience distinct from the experiences of all other corporeal bodies. Only a Leib can feel itself felt, feel itself feeling, or feel itself being felt. But he's all hands-that "preference for the hand in boys" indicative of the "impulse to mastery" (Freud 1953, 188)21-a proclivity that will survive into the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion and is at least as old as Lucretius.22 As 21. Essay II: "Infantile Sexuality" in the Three Essays or Three Contributions. 22. "We perceive avour in the mouth while we squeeze it out in / munching the food, as if one haply takes a sponge full of water / in hand and begins to press it dry. [sucum sentimus in ore, cibum cum / mandendo exprimimus, ceu plenam spongiam aqual / siquis forte manu premere ac siccare coëpit]" (Lucretius 1924, 292, Book IV, lines 617-19; emphasis added). 252 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 Luther will now shift his discussion of the my esh to the phenomenon of taste, we must supplement the hands of Husserl's Leib with lips, mouths, and tongues.23 To clear things up, Luther talks of taste. Taste is his refuge to make himself clear. He devotes an explanatory paragraph to the issue of taste in order to explain-as if, once and for all-the distinction between the fressen and the essen. It is followed by a further split of the concept of taste, itself, into schmecken and kosten. Let me give you a clear illustration which may prove helpful. If a physician takes pure water and makes sugar water or syrup of it, this is no longer called simple water, but sugar water. Nor do we then say that we are drinking water. To be sure, we are drinking water. Yet it does not taste like water [dennoch schmeckets nicht wie wasser]. It has a new avor [ein anderen schmack] and strength [krafft]; it tastes [schmecket] of sugar. It is water, yet not pure water, but sugar water [Es ist wasser, aber nicht eitel wasser, sondern Zuckerwasser]... I cannot properly consider [rechnen / rechen] it water...it has been transformed into a different essence [ein ander wesen] and now has a new quality and taste [ein ander krafft und schmack] (Luther 1959, 119; 1907, 184). With the ander maul comes an anderen schmack. It's not so much about newness as otherness or difference; nor so much about pureness, as vanity. It reads as a lesson in Derridean iterability in terms of something like Benjaminian Wiederschmecken. The itasterability which Luther teaches has to do with a tasting again that is always an alteration of a prior pure taste. It is a "foretaste" become "curious." Just as every citation is an alteration, the tasting again that follows a certain kind of tasting is always altered taste; an othered taste; ein anderen schmack. The other taste [anderen schmack] cannot be "properly considered." The German word is rechen. The other taste cannot be reckoned-cannot properly be calculated-just as Derrida's "curious taste" of messianism is beyond calculation and "cannot count" on what is to come. The anderen schmack is wholly ander and cannot be predicted. One cannot count on it; it is dangerous and precarious. So it is that a "despairing messianism has a curious taste" (Derrida 1994, 212). With this illustration Luther hopes to show that Christ is not to be "viewed like any other human being." The one who says "my esh" (and 23. In this way, Derrida progresses beyond Husserl if only in his inclusion of the lips and the mouth in the experience of the Leib. "The mouth touches, touches itself, is touched, not only because the lips touch...this auto-affection of a mouth, the contact interrupted and repeated between the lips, the tongue, the palate, and so forth [La bouche touche, elle se touche, et non seulement parce que les lèvres se touchent...cette auto-affection d'une bouche, ce contactinterrompu et répété entre les lèvres, la langue, le palais, etc.] (Derrida 2005b, 113-14; 2000, 131; emphasis added). Brower The Taste to Come 253 © Equinox Publishing 2010 understands it) is not like any other human. It is accessible to all humans yet an experience beyond ontic everydayness, everyday humanness, or everyday human being. It is here that Luther's German text is crucial since it is here that he moves from Geschmack to Kosten, which is lost in the translation. Such is the prescience of Cixous: je relis ma Luther. As Luther's last word on eating [essen] moves to taste [schmecken], his last word on taste moves to Kosten. The point is an other kind of "eating" that does not devour, nor does it simply taste, but tastes in a specic way. The taste of my esh is a taste that tests and licks without feeding and destroying the other taken into one's mouth. A sugar was added to Christ's esh, so that he who sees his esh and tastes and drinks his blood [kostet und trincket das blut] sees God and worships God... Thus one eats [isset] the Godhead in human nature. This resembles our experience with the sugar water...when I drink it, I also taste, drink, or lick [koste, tricke oder lecke] the sugar... "If you believe [gleubet] in the Son, accept Him, and taste the esh [kostet das eisch], then you have assuredly encountered Me," says God the Father (Luther 1959, 120; 1907, 184-85; emphasis added). The esh of Christ has an anderen schmack, like that of the sugar water. But now we are instructed not only to taste [schmecken] it but to refrain from consuming it with a taste by licking. With Kosten comes Lecken. The lick is there; tongue in cheek: Der Leck "isst" da.24 Such is the prescience of Cixous: je re-lèche ma Luther. The othered tongue can now taste without eating or chewing but by licking. Luther's entire exegesis, here, can be summed up in these words: kostet das eisch! Perhaps all the law can be summed up in this one commandment-taste the esh-that is, if one seeks a justice beyond law. And the second one is like it: lick your neighbor as yourself. There is a cost to Kosten; a fare to be paid on the way to fare [food or Speise].25 The taste of my esh is aneconomic and beyond prot. In devouring and simply eating, in which one perhaps tastes the devoured by way of Schmecken, a prot is made. The cost of the chewing and swallowing 24. See Samuel Weber's analysis of "the German words ist and isst: 'is' and 'eats' " and the play between the copula and the lawyer Coppelius in E. T. A Hoffmann. Luther's resistance to the law (of fressen) is perhaps a kind of resistance to what Weber calls "Coppelius' Law" which demands that one "only is insofar as he eats" (2002, 11-12). Beyond the law (of fressen) Luther posits an existent-beyond an ontic ist that merely isst-that only eksists (for lack of a better word) insofar as it tastes and licks; who "eats" otherwise; geistlich essen. 25. It may appear to English readers of Deleuze that he is on his way to appreciating the cost of Kosten when he pits to pay together with his understanding of to eat. "This duality between to eat and to speak may be even more violently expressed in the duality between to pay/to eat and to shit/to speak" (1990, 85). However, in the French, to eat never appears alongside to pay. Both the pairings are with to speak. The same sentence in the French: « Cette dualité entre manger et parler peut s'exprimer plus violemment: payer–parler, chier–parler » (1969, 104). 254 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 is paid off by a caloric gain extracted from the eaten. But merely to lick something in order to taste and not devour actually costs the taster. The very energy to ick the tongue is never recouped by an economic payback. Kosten will always be in a movement of decit. Every lick is hence a lick of faith; that is, every lick worthy of the name "lick" (if there is such a thing). This is another way by which the curious taste of messianism despairs. It refuses the calculability and accountancy of market-driven values. With each taste, Kosten moves further into the red. Almost a proletariatization of the tongue, such a taster lives-literally-from hand to mouth. And yet kosten is not fressen; it does not frisst. An affront to the conatus, the drive of Kosten is not self-preservation of its own. The maw of a mere esh becomes an othered mouth of a my esh that tastes by way of Kosten in its longing for love and justice. The gift of taste is a taste for the gift beyond the economy of reciprocation. The "esh and blood were given [gegeben] for me" (Luther 1959, 128; 1907, 199). He who is called "that remote and bastard descendent of Luther" (Milbank 1997, 225) and of whom it is said "in the end he wanted to be, a Lutheran" (Adorno 2005, 154) can perhaps illuminate the ways in which the "my esh" of Luther-understood in terms of taste-may develop into a new understanding of the self. The "my esh" of the gospel and the new taste of Luther have always been on the way to a new self; one that is perhaps only recently being glimpsed in the later jaws of deconstruction. On its way, the anderen schmack of the "Mein eisch" nds a radical expression in the mouth of Zarathustra. Zarathustra does not taste good and he nds distasteful all who nd satisfaction in tasting everything but themselves, for they know not the best taste. Such "swine" have forgotten their taste. Dionysus against the crucied: the Christ that proclaims Mein eisch in the gospel according to Luther becomes the Antichrist that proclaims Mein Geschmack in the new gospel. All-satisedness, which knoweth how to taste everything,-that is not the best taste! [das ist nicht der beste Geschmack!] I honour the refractory, fastidious tongues [widerspenstigen wählerischen Zungen]...which have learned to say "I" and "Yea" and "Nay."... / With mummies, some fall in love [verliebt]; others with phantoms: both alike hostile to all esh and blood [beide gleich feind allem Fleisch und Blute] oh, how repugnant are both to my taste! For I love [liebe] blood. / And there will I not reside and abide where every one spitteth and speweth [spuckt und speit]: that is now my taste [das ist nun mein Geschmack] ... By diverse ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth [meiner Wahrheit]... / Neither a good nor a bad taste, but my taste [kein gutter, kein schlechter, aber mein Geschmack], of which I have no longer either shame [Scham] or secrecy [Hehl] (Nietzsche 1999, 135-36; 1987, 15859; emphasis added).26 26. Third Part, "The Spirit of Gravity / Vom Geist der Schwere," §2. Brower The Taste to Come 255 © Equinox Publishing 2010 It reads a bit like a bastardized version of Luther's reformulation of the eucharist. My taste is a new appreciation of the esh. All esh is permitted, once one learns to love. Only this taste-the best taste-can love esh as it loves blood. Zarathustra is not ashamed of his taste and is ready to share the secret of it. The best avor is my-avor; the mein Geschmack, which is not satis- ed with tasting only other objects, as Freud believes the infant to be upon deciding on the "inferiority" of its own skin (Freud 1953, 182). There exist advanced palates and bold choosy tongues-wählerischen Zungen-that are not afraid of the beste Geshmack. This is a matter of love; Liebe. Any love devoid of the element of mein Geshmack is for that reason hostile to all esh and, therefore, life. It is otherwise than necrophilia with mummies and corpses. A love of the esh must include my taste. This is a new (perhaps Protestant) veritate pabulo,27 for my truth is my taste-meiner Wahrheit ist mein Geschmack-and is so beyond good and evil. Mein Geschmack with no secrecy is one to be shared. The radicality of the Mein Geshmack is not articulated as well by Zarathustra as it is by Derrida as he reads J. Hillis Miller reading the English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. What is taste?... I regret not reading this text of Hillis' when I was writing Touching, Jean-Luc Nancy, for I would have learned a lot about the mysterious relations among taste, taste of self, the auto-affection that constitutes selfhood through the sensed experience of self, this autoaffection consists of touching oneself in taste, of tasting oneself in that "selftaste" (Derrida 2005a, 698). One touches oneself in taste. Hopkins writes, "When I turn within I nd only my own inimitable taste of self." Derrida nds in this the beginnings of a sensual restatement of the cogito. "I am the only one, un je, an I is the only one able to say to himself, autoreferentially, autodeictally, that he is himself, in his selftaste." But more importantly, the insular one who is selved "long before thinking itself, long before the cogito, senses the taste of self." Derrida is aware that Descartes denes the cogito with a certain feeling or sentir. "But to feel or feel oneself, sentir or se sentir, is not speci- ed by Descartes as taste" (Derrida 2005a, 698-99). Nor, it may now be added, is it specied by Jean-Luc Marion, even in the mouth to mouth relation of the kiss as he formulates it in the erotic phenomenon. Savoring savoir: Je sais ce que je sais when I taste what I taste like. Selftaste precedes the cogito; it is the condition for the possibility of the cogito. One might say that it also precedes the Leib, but this misses the amazing fact- of which, Derrida does not speak!-that selftaste is always already the Leib as well. Selftaste is all of Leib, plus taste. Beyond the cogito and the Leib, only Mein Geschmack/Mein eisch is the true experience of the self. 27. Augustine: "thou feed Israel for ever with the food of truth [unde pascis Israel in aeternum veritate pabulo]" (1912, 48-49). 256 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 The closest Marion comes-and he does come very close-to the apperceptive, yet shareable, Leib-ness of selftaste is when he describes, wonderfully, the kiss that blurs the distinction between inner and outer. The word baiser,28 concerns rst of all the act of the mouth [l'act de la bouche], slightly open in order to touch another esh [toucher une autre chair]-in order to give the other his or her esh...by touching one another mouth to mouth, our two mouths set off a wave that traverses our two bodies, so as to transcribe them wholly into two eshes, without remainder [s'abouchant l'une l'autre, elles mettent en branle une onde qui traverse nos deux corps pour les transcrire entiers en deux chairs, sans rest]; the mouth begins the process, because already open, without distinction between exterior and interior [sans distinction de l'extérieur et de l'intérieur], it offers itself from the outset as esh, it incarnates rst the lack of distinction between touching and touching oneself, feeling and feeling (oneself) feeling (Marion 2006, 124; 2003, 210; emphasis added). The mouth can certainly touch but this does not mean that taste is touch for Marion. There is an important advance in Marion surpassing a certain corporeal solipsism of Husserl in that esh, after the former, is given not simply by feeling-oneself-felt-by-oneself but by feeling-oneself-felt-byanother. And if this irruption of the other into phenomenality had been accomplished by the seeing-oneself-seen in Levinas, Marion further corporealizes the face-to-face relation with bodies that don't just see each other but touch each other. Yet, in an eternal return of the mandendo manu, while giving the other her or his esh, the mouth still acts here in the mere capacity of a Husserlian hand. Mouths could be subtracted from this passage and the point would still be made. This same phenomenon could be described and experienced as two bodies touching one another with hands, insofar as one can make an opening with one's hand and can enter any opening of the body of the other with one's ngers. On this point, Marion overlooks the taste that is beyond mere touch that can be a sharing-of-Leiben rather than a proprietary giving-of-Leiben. The mouth may well "begin the process," but taste and tongue bring the process to fruition (which is not to say that the process is brought to an end; it is more a fruition that presses a crabapple until it is drinkable). As Derrida suggests with the "la bouche touche, elle se touche," the mouth can do everything that the Leib can. If the mouth "incarnates rst the lack of distinction between touching and touching oneself, feeling and feeling (oneself) feeling," as Marion believes, it can do so by taste and taste alone. Prior to the discussion of the kiss, Marion states that only the hand can touch as he gives his own explanation of the Leib. 28. As in the Violent Femmes song, "Kiss Off," the French verb to kiss [baiser] is also idiom for to fuck and means "in contemporary usage, more often the latter than the former." See Stephen E. Lewis's note in Marion (2007, 124). [And we should not be "shamefaced" over such "a serious matter" (Freud 1958, 20 n. 3).] Brower The Taste to Come 257 © Equinox Publishing 2010 My hand, which alone can touch another thing (and not merely enter into contact with it), only touches it precisely because it feels that it touches it; and it only feels that it touches it by feeling itself touch it, that is, by feeling itself at the same time as it feels what it feels (Marion 2006, 114; emphasis added). Is this a slip of the tongue? Is the kiss of Marion French at all? If taste teaches us anything it is that the tongue-precisely because it tastes-does more than "merely enter into contact." Although Marion wishes to disclose the insufciency of the caress (2006, 119), one can discern an all-too-male preference for the hand, described by Freud (1953, 188), lurking behind his fondness for the kiss that is always already a kiss with no tongue. The mouth of Marion is the hand of Lucretius. All mouth and no tongue; there is no taste in the erotic phenomenon, as Marion writes it. The account of the Leib given by Marion in terms of the hand and ngers can be described in terms of the tongue and the inside of the mouth. At once, my hand feels, with a single movement of thought, the thing and itself feeling that thing; and if it opposes one of its ngers to the others, it winds up feeling its esh feeling its esh feeling (Marion 2006, 114). may, now, be restated as: At once, my tongue tastes, with a single movement of thought, the thing and its self feeling-and-tasting that thing; and if it opposes its tongue to the inside of the mouth or lips, it winds up tasting its selftaste tasting its selftaste tasting. Selftaste takes the place of Leib. But whereas the Leib is insular and cannot be shared, one's selftaste is shareable. Derrida quickly insinuates love to be the sharing of selftaste. Love and friendship are born in the experience of this unspeakable selftaste: an unshareable experience and nevertheless shared... As concerns selving, the privilege of taste, among the ve senses, deserves a minute and patient analysis...taste is the only tactile sense to share, with the sense of touch in general, the privilege of auto-affection, of the touchingtouched for which the most frequently given example is the touchingtouched of the ngers [as it is in Marion]. But unlike the other surfaces of the skin, taste is at once contact with the outside and contact with self inside the mouth, lips, and tongue. And the mouth, lips, and tongue are places of passage for speech, voice, and ingested food, thus for interiorization in general-along with auto-affection...introjection, or incorporation, and so forth (Derrida 2005b, 699; emphasis added). In the kiss, Marion takes us to the contact with outside and inside. However, in this inside, Marion does not have a contact with self, and this has something to do with the strange fact that these things spoken of by Derrida "lips and tongue" are nowhere to be found in The Erotic Phenomenon. À savoir: taste must be added to the erotic phenomenon. Je relis/relèche. I, the taster, have this ability: itasterability is iterability. I, my selftaste, can taste an othertaste. This calls into question Marion's 258 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 claim that "I can only see another esh." Selftaste overcomes the hurdle, insurmountable up to this point, in phenomenology from Descartes to Kant to Marion which is the impossibility of experiencing the other's Leib. Selftaste is the answer to Marion's question, "How will I ever be able to feel not just something rendered sensible through my esh, but the feeling of this other esh, which is in no way a thing but instead a self experiencing itself?" (2006, 115). In radical distinction from every other worldly thing (and being) that is tastable-in that denotable, Deleuzian world of eatable things-in the kiss I taste (and feel), for the rst time, a thing tasting (and feeling) itself. I taste no thing but rather a esh that is not a thing at all; a canny sharing and giving-up its unas it simultaneously tastes another un-. Kissing encounters the unheimleck of the unheimlich. Not only do I taste my selftaste tasting another selftaste. In the vertigo of erotic phenomenality, I taste the other-selftaste tasting itself tasting my selftaste as I taste my selftaste tasting the selftaste of the other tasting me tasting her or him. Shifting tones from inquisitive to declarative, Marion continues, I will never be able to feel this feeling itself directly in my own esh; for, if I felt it through a fusion of some sort, I would immediately reduce this feeling to the rank of a simple sense datum among others, and thus of a thing of the world, and I would miss the esh as such (2006, 115; italics mine). Only a Cartesian cogito or a Husserlian Leib could reduce the taste of the other to the rank of thinghood. In this capacity, selftaste-the Mein Geschmack of the Mein eisch-is a new ontological category that exceeds even Dasein. The Selftaste of a my esh/Mein Geschmack tastes the taste of the other for the inimitable yet shareable experience of self that it is. Luther's understanding of eating/tasting as faith, once one is on the level of my esh, is the answer to Marion's concern against reducing the other to thinghood. The phenomenal orality of taste and tongues is what opens the world to the phenomena of the other, faith, love, and justice. The task, now, with Zarathustra, Derrida, and Marion fresh on our palates, is to open the Mein eisch of Luther with the selftaste that loves others. The others of which Luther speaks are the producers of food and drink. In Luther, these others are still forgotten and despite the radicality of the Mein eisch, the experience of the others-that make food but aren't food-yet eludes us. It is not enough to consider that the baker [Becker] baked bread and the brewer [Brawer] brewed beer. This does not bring bread and beer into your home [im Hause]. But when you take bread and beer into your mouth, then baker and brewer are forgotten [aber wenn du das Brot und Bier ins maul kriegest, so denckest du nicht mehr an Becker oder Bierbrawer.] Thus the Jews here were baker and brewer; they baked and brewed Christ when He was crucied. Now it is up to you to get Him into your mouth, to eat Him, to lay hold of Him, to take Him into Brower The Taste to Come 259 © Equinox Publishing 2010 yourself, and adhere to Him. That is faith; that is what He means [sie haben jn bebacken und Du must do gedencken, wie die jn ins maul kriegest, essest, sassest, und dich nemest, dich daran haltest, das ist der Glaube] (Luther 1959, 129; 1907, 200; emphasis added). It is not so much that we forget the Becker and the Brawer than that we think them no more; denckest nicht mehr.29 In his zealous mission to forget the Jew Luther forsakes all others. His ruthless critique of Judaism (as he understands it) obstructs his very thinking of faith and the one who says Mein eisch. He's so busy thinking a caricature of the Jews that it keeps him from thinking through his theory. It's uncanny; if not unheimlich, at least unhauslich. The passage is deliciously ambivalent: How Jewish be the messman! The Mein eisch of Christ, which up to now Luther has gone to great pains to develop beyond dead esh to be merely consumed, is yet described as cooked; baked and brewed. Luther's unquenchable thirst to think beyond Judaism results in his inability to carry out the rich experience of the other that should follow his understanding of kosten and Mein eisch. So scared is he to taste the Jewish other that he must condemn the Jew to a level forever beyond taste, as a meta-cook. All other cooks-our neighbors-the Becker and the Brawer-are lost by consequence. Mais si je relis/relèche ma Luther après je lis/lèche le phénomène érotique: the call to take Christ "into your mouth"-ins maul kriegest-could never simply follow the call to take beer and bread "into your mouth" while forgetting the brewer and the baker. The contrary is all that is the case. If one has faith, one drinks the Bierbrawer as much as one drinks the Bier. To experience love you must take the Brawer "into your mouth" and justice has no chance unless the Becker is tasted as much as the bread. "Das ist der Glaube. That is faith." That is what love, justice, and Mein eisch mean. The messianic is this experience. It rebels against the self-love of brewers and bakers ever quarantined to the kitchen. It was not long ago that a certain capitalist unconscious ordained its vile maxims by appealing particularly to the "self-love" of "the brewer, or the baker" (Smith 2003, 23-24). But even here the possibility of revaluation is rich; to rethink selflove as self-taste; to decolonize the capitalist appropriation of auto-affection as a kind of selshness and discover, rather, the possibility of a faithful and loving "shareability" of selftaste. (In fact, this nal section of Luther on the brewer and the baker, reread alongside Adam Smith, brings to mind how Freud at one time led us astray from the discovery of selftaste by explaining auto-affection with the inability to kiss oneself.)30 The messianic 29. Recall that after the erotic phenomenon, the tongue would taste the other and feel itself tasting and feeling that other, "with a single movement of thought" (Marion 2006, 114). 30. "It's a pity that I can't kiss myself / Schade, dass ich mich nicht küssen kann" (Freud 1953, 182; 1991, 84). So it is that psychoanalysis reinforces a certain 260 Postscripts 3.2-3 (2007) © Equinox Publishing 2010 is the call to taste the esh-kosten das eisch-and a messiah is that one who can say: Kiss me as I kiss myself; who proclaims: "I am Speise" and invites (any-	-and all) others to lick rather than feed and to love rather than consume. 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The Wealth of Nations. New York: Bantam Classic. Taylor, Mark C. 2007. After God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weber, Samuel. 2002. The Legend of Freud. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Virgil W. Brower is a Yarrington Fellow in the Paris Program in Critical Theory and the Full-Time Lecturer of Philosophy at Chicago State University. He is candidate for two PhDs in a dual program between the Theology, Ethics, and Human Sciences division of The Chicago Theological Seminary and the Program in Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University. Currently, he lives in Paris and attends seminars at the Sorbonne and the University of Paris-VIII. Email: virgil@u.northwestern.edu Mail: La Cité Internationale Universitaire, Fondation des États-Unis, 15 Boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, France. Program in Comparative Literary Studies, Crowe Hall 1-117, 1860 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. Chicago State University, History, Philosophy & Political Science, 9501 South King Drive, Chicago, IL 60628-1598, USA