Abstract
The essay on Husserl’s phenomenology of touch in Derrida’s recent On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy represents his only substantial re-engagement with Husserlian phenomenology to be published following the series of texts dating from the period marked by his Mémoire of 1955 through to the essay ‘Form and Meaning’ included in Margins (1972). The essay, devoted to some key sections of Husserl’s Ideas II, appears to break new ground in Derrida’s readings of Husserl, but in fact demonstrates a profound continuity with his earlier readings. In fact, I argue that this continuity is in a part an effect of Derrida’s ongoing commitment to the ‘methodology’ of deconstruction. I show how this commitment leads Derrida to conflate three separate distinctions within Husserl’s discussion, a conflation that obliges Derrida to misread the letter of Husserl’s text, and which, in turn, blinds him to a certain radical potentiality within Husserl’s phenomenology of sensibility.
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Notes
Amongst those who went on to publish significant works on Husserl were Merleau-Ponty, Cavaillès, Tran Duc Thao, Levinas, Suzanne Bachelard, Ricoeur, and Lyotard. Others who contributed to the debates at the time included Jean Hyppolite, Jean Wahl and Maurice de Gandillac.
Ideas II is discussed extensively by Merleau-Ponty in, for example, The Visible and the Invisible, (Merleau-Ponty 1968); ‘The Philosopher and His Shadow’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964); and in the lecture courses published as La Nature (Merleau-Ponty 1994). Merleau-Ponty’s readings of Ideas II were, of course, of crucial importance for the development of his own notion of ‘flesh’. These readings are in turn subjected to a surprisingly critical reading by Derrida, in the essay (‘Tangent III’) immediately following that which concerns us. Ricoeur’s study of Ideas II was part of a series of important essays on Husserl published between 1949 and 1957, in the wake of his landmark translation of Ideas I (Ricoeur 1951 & 2, 1967).
A tendency which is normatively consolidated by Heidegger in Being and Time, when he writes of the ‘Western tradition from Parmenides to Husserl that has privileged seeing as the unique “mode of access to beings and to being”’ (Heidegger 1996, p. 138).
This essay was originally published in Banham (2005).
The emphasis we are placing on this theme of continuity should not be taken as implying that Lawlor is insensitive to the developments that Derrida’s readings of Husserl undergo; quite the contrary—in Derrida and Husserl, Lawlor seeks to demonstrate that the deconstructions of Husserl chart a passage ‘from a philosophy of the question to a philosophy of the promise.’ See the lengthy response to Kates (Lawlor 2006, p. 150, fn 7).
In fact, Lawlor’s essay shares all of the virtues of his earlier Derrida and Husserl, advancing a compelling interpretation of Derrida.
There will not be space within the confines of the current essay to develop this alternative, radicalised, response to sensibility. I have shown how such a radicalised reading can be developed on the basis of some late texts by Levinas, and indicate how Husserl’s theory of sensibility contributes to a radical theory of temporality which is at odds with the ‘punctualist imperative’ that Derrida claims is operative in Husserlian phenomenology (Durie 1999).
Paralipsis, or preterition, are the rhetorical devices whereby one draws attention to something by appearing to overlook it or omit it. Typically, therefore, in an argument, one might say ‘not to mention…’ or ‘to say nothing of…’. To be sure, time does not figure in this passage quoted from Husserl—but it is a large step indeed—as large, one might think, as the step required to justify the translation of mit by en même temps—to claim that, by this omission, Husserl is in fact seeking to draw attention to temporality. At this point, it appears to us as if Derrida’s interpretation of Husserl’s text is significantly in advance of any meaning justified by the letter of the text. Moreover, this appears to us to be symptomatic of the general movement of Derrida’s text at this stage.
If there is a justification for Derrida’s emphasis on ‘direct immediacy’ throughout this part of the text, it stems from Husserl’s differentiation between seeing and touching. Whereas in the phenomenon of touching, the organ of perception (e.g. the touching fingers) can appear directly—one can touch oneself touching, so to speak—this is never the case for visual perception—one can never see oneself seeing directly (though one may do so indirectly, when one looks at oneself in a mirror). However, it is crucial to bear in mind that Derrida does not derive instantaneous temporal coincidence from this apparently direct immediacy. Rather, the cited passage makes clear that ‘the local coincidence which is important for Husserl in the touching–touched pair is grounded [se fonde] in a temporal coincidence meant to give it its intuitive plenitude, which is to say its dimension of direct immediacy.’ That is to say, the dimension of direct immediacy—and the purported value pertaining to this dimension—is derived from temporal coincidence, temporal coincidence which, as we have been emphasising, Derrida is compelled, by the imperatives of the deconstruction, to construe as punctual instantaneity.
The distinctively deconstructive tropes of this passage echo the tropes which resonate through the later pages of Voice and Phenomenon. Intriguingly, the sole mention of the relation between touching and touched within that earlier text already anticipates—almost to the letter—the analyses of ‘Tangent II’: ‘When I see myself…what is outside the sphere of ‘my own’ has already entered the field of this auto-affection, with the result that it is no longer pure. In the experience of touching and being touched, the same thing happens. In both cases, the surface of my body, as something external, must begin by being exposed in the world’ (Derrida 1973, p. 79; 1967, p. 88).
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Durie, R. At the same time. Cont Philos Rev 41, 73–88 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-007-9070-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-007-9070-5