The Passion of the Sign: Revolution and Language in Kant, Goethe, and Kleist (review)

Andreas Gailus's book The Passion of the Sign begins with an examination of the revolutionary character of language by reflecting on Heinrich von Kleist's text "On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking." Kleist's observation that the utterance of thought comes about through an interruption in thinking serves as a model for Gailus's study of the effects that a historical event like the French Revolution has on language. The Passion of the Sign considers the French Revolution as an event that brings about an upheaval in traditional modes of thought and pre-established epistemological orders. Gailus analyzes the resonance of this single historical event on linguistic representation through a series of close readings informed by psychoanalytic theory. His chief concern is the shift in nineteenth-century German conceptions of communication, the symbolic order, and subjectivity.

Implicit in Gailus's study is an understanding of history as crisis, and it is through revolution—in Gailus's words, "a historical manifestation of a unique moral passion focused on the principles of human freedom and justice" (150)—that a productive notion of crisis can be theorized. Within this context, he discusses Kant's discourse on newly emerging passions, Goethe's treatment of revolution and civil exchange, and the dynamics of subjectivity in Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas. Central to his argument is the idea that the French Revolution breeds a crisis in epistemological foundations that turns the subject into the site of limitless or boundless passions. This crisis comes about through an unsettling of all symbolically orchestrated systems. Gailus refers to this unsettling as the "paradox of exteriority" (8). The consequence of such a paradox is the disruption of clearly defined conceptual borders that disrupts, in turn, the traditional relationship between signs and their meaning. Through an examination of the breakdown of this relationship, Gailus seeks to explore the restructuring of signs in relation to the individual subject, a restructuring that is informed by Kant's notion of a "passion for freedom."

Through an analysis of Kant's The Conflict of the Faculties Gailus considers the concept of a philosophy of history and how it pertains to an age of revolution in which previously established systems of thought are overturned. In Gailus's interpretation, Kant's philosophical account of history approaches the past not simply as a series of events but as an unfolding of the very principles involved in those events (35). The French Revolution in particular unfolds as a "passion for freedom" that is not bound by any psychological, moral, or political considerations and yet must still be restrained by law (29). Gailus employs the Kantian notion of "enthusiasm" or "passion for freedom" to claim that historical events have both an interior and exterior nature. They awaken forces within the individual opposed to all external constraints.

In Goethe's Conversation of German Refugees, the reader is confronted with a group of refugees seeking respite from the conflicts of the French Revolution. After having come to blows over their own differing political beliefs, the characters in the narrative resort to passing the time by telling stories devoid of any political content. According to Gailus, Goethe views the French Revolution as an expression of a passion that is both inside and outside history. This position enables Goethe to distinguish between a transformation of the social and political landscape and a manifestation of a "passion for freedom" independent of historical events (74). This same passion, however, releases forces that threaten everyday civility and communication (150). The collapse of a pre-established order awakens an uncontrollable desire that causes a fundamental crisis in communication. Gailus points to the restitution of the symbolic order in Goethe's text through the mechanism of transference, which he regards as the impulse to interpret: "The unruliness of desire is transformed into the inexhaustibility of interpretation, and the ethics of renunciation is complemented by the aesthetics of sublimation" (105).

Kleist's novella Michael...