The Karmic Text: A Buddhist Reading of Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man Reading Walter Benjamin's ‘The Task of the Translator’
- The Karmic Text: A Buddhist Reading of Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man Reading Walter Benjamin's ‘The Task of the Translator’
Jeff Humphries
Professor of French, English, and Comparative Literature Coeditor, The Future of Southern Letters (1996); The Red and the Black: Mimetic Desire and Iconoclasm in Stendhal's Novel (1991); editor, Southern Literature and Literary Theory (1990)
Footnotes
1. The Gelukba – or Gelukpa or Gelugpa, meaning ‘school of the virtuous’ in Tibetan – is one of the four great schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the last founded (by Tsong Khapa in the fourteenth century). The Dalai Lama is leader of the Gelukbas, who through him wield political as well as spiritual leadership. The Gelukbas are known for their emphasis on the rules of monastic order, and scholasticism, the study of Buddhist literature and philosophy.
2. Thurman wishes to conflate the Buddhist position with that of analytic philosophy. I part company with him on this, though it may be true in specific instances. 1 remain convinced that deconstruction is closer to Buddhist philosophy, despite its absolutist tendency (the tendency to become an absolutist anti-absolutism).
3. There can be several justifications for difficulty, according to Buddhist thought. In the first, if concepts are subtle and complex, even the clearest exposition may be difficult. In the second, a certain degree of opacity may be required to cloak esoteric teachings from those who are not ready to receive them, and to assure that the practitioner's progress is supervised by a qualified teacher (guru). In this case understanding requires that a text be ‘unlocked’ by a master, who integrates the root text with its commentary for the student. In the third, difficulty itself may accomplish a desired end, perhaps to help readers/practitioners ‘break free from the deadened dependency on literal language,’ or to ‘overcome their habitual addiction to ordinariness of conception and perception’ (Thurman 1988, 138–39). Particularly in tantric texts, which can be very poetic and beautiful, ‘literary’ in the Western sense, ‘clarity was not necessarily the main thing. ... Sometimes a disciple would need his clarity shattered, his intellectual control of reality shaken by the deliberate introduction of obscurity. And often the vajra guru spoke in riddles or symbolically, cultivating a special type of discourse known (controversially) as “twilight language” ..,’ (Thurman 1988, 126). These are the justified instances of difficulty. The last is a form of charlatanism: difficulty for its own sake, or for the purposes of intellectual self-aggrandizement. Unfortunately, all of the justifiable uses of difficulty involve significant risk of degenerating into the latter, by force of habit if nothing else.
Derrida's early writings (including Of Grnmmatology) were certainly a case of justifiable – inevitable – difficulty. I am not so sure that this is still true. In de Man's work, there is a strong sense of opacify (as well as the insistence on epistemological failure) deployed to a specific pedagogical end, though it is doubtful whether this is always the case. Unfortunately, difficulty connotes power in much of Western academic tradition.
4. My evocation of mantra here is somewhat idiosyncratic. Mantra – Sanskrit for ‘thinking instrument,’ instrument for thinking –sacred incantation, is a special case of language with its own theoretical basis in Buddhist thought. It reflects the idea prevalent in esoteric Buddhism, for instance in the Shingon (Japanese for ‘truth word’) sect of Japan, that ‘foundationally (that is, at the subperceptible level) every word is a true word (shingon) in that it is a surface (macrocosmic) manifestation of a microcosmic expression within Dainichi [Vairochana Buddha]'s enlightened activity. ...through mantric practice, one knows directly the truth words (shingon) inaudible to ordinary hearing,’ which invest all language (Kasulis 1988, 262–63).
Works Cited
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