The Saving Lie: Harold Bloom and Deconstruction

Chapter Four: The Davharocentric Subject, or Narcissism Reconsidered: Bloom Versus Derrida

Chapter 4 The Davharocentric Subject, or Narcissism Reconsidered: Bloom Versus Derrida The moi, the ego, of modern man . . . has taken on its form in the dialectical impasse of the belle âme who does not recognize his very own raison d’être in the disorder that he denounces in the world. —Jacques Lacan, “Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis” We have examined the dangers the poetic self encounters in his potentially lethal confrontation with language, but only from the one side of this phenomenon; we showed how the deconstructive conception of writing as the “postmortal space” bars the self, as a concrete living entity, from entering the symbolic sphere. This time, however, we shall look at the other aspect of this aporetic relation: the deconstructive conception of the subject. It will, I hope, soon become clear that the aporia is, at least, partly caused by an obsolete and, in fact, very traditional notion of the subject the deconstruction wants to shake off but rather unsuccessfully: it always returns, under various disguises, as the only possible model of subjectivity. The eccentric term “davharocentric subject ” will soon find its explanation too. Bloom’s proposition to substitute the Hebrew name for “word,” davhar, for the Greek logos, which he formulated in his commentary on Derrida, will appear to have significant consequences in transforming our conception of the self, which—quite suprisingly—will suddenly emerge as a valid contender for the missing “deconstructive subjectivity.” The aim of this chapter is thus mainly critical: it intends to demonstrate that despite all the promises to give account of a “deconstructive subjectivity,” Derrida failed to do so, postponing the moment of positive 189 delivery and providing in the end only excuses. This charge relies on the thesis that Derrida—again, despite his overt declarations—proved unable to rethink critically the concept of narcissism which he himself saw as crucial for the future philosophical understanding of subjectivity . And although Derrida draws the concept of narcissism from the writings of Freud, it can be nonetheless easily shown that the meaning he attaches to this notion is much older: its true source appears to be Hegel’s famous critique of the beautiful soul. My purpose here will be to show that what Derrida calls the aporia of narcissism is, in fact, nothing more than the deconstructive version of the Hegelian dilemma of the beautiful soul—and, theoretically speaking, a rather “defunct” one, for it explicitly prohibits any dialectical procedure that could lead us out of this aporetic predicament. The Aporia Everything we thought of as a spirit, or meaning separable from the letter of the text, remains within an “intertextual” sphere; and it is commentary that reminds us of this curious and forgettable fact. —Geoffrey Hartman, Deconstruction and Criticism The whole discovery of Derridean deconstruction could be summed up in one sentence: “The referent is in the text.” Just like Heidegger’s Dasein “is-in-the-world,” the referent “is-in-the-text”; this phrase builds a uniform whole and cannot be dissociated into separate elements. In an interview, Derrida scolds those “naïve” followers of deconstruction, who think that it is a method allowing one to eliminate the question of reference, and insists that deconstruction has only wanted to reconsider “the effects of reference” as they appear in writing: “The referent is in the text,” he concludes (1985, 15). “Everything we thought of as a spirit, or meaning separable from the letter of the text, remains within an ‘intertextual’ sphere,” says Geoffrey Hartman (DC, xiii), adding that we constantly need a commentary which would remind us, as if from offstage, about this “curious and forgettable fact.” For we, the readers, seduced by the effect of writing, tend to forget about it, and, led by appearances to the contrary, imagine that spirit or subject can exist separately in its own kingdom of privileged self-presence. Just as we tend to forget about Being, which throws Dasein in the primordially alien Weltlichkeit (worldliness ) and thus never allows it to constitute itself in a full, monadic 190 agon with the deadly angels autonomy, we tend to forget about the nonsovereignty of the subject which, by analogy, can prove its reality only by entering the realm of the other in the scene of writing. After Lacan—who used an analogous phrase, en souffrance—Derrida would say that the subject always lives in a state of suspension, which means simultaneously...