Blanchot’s Infinite Conversation
by Beth Metcalf
Deleuze says (Difference & Repetition
274-5), “To ground is always to ground representation”.
But when a form of representation itself is taken to be the
ground for knowledge, it always forms a vicious circle of
‘proof’. How can the ground of representation
avoid being determined by the very form that it claims to ground?
Deleuze notices that determination must not be in terms of a
matter-form coupling of representational thought, because then
the form of matter is presumed to be already determined. Representational
thought thinks the condition in the image of the conditioned. However,
Deleuze tells us that determination cannot directly determine the
indeterminate. Something of the ground must rise to the
surface. There is a sub-representative domain that swarms
with pre-individual singularities of differentiating difference.
That domain is not determined by the form-matter coupling of
representational thought. Rather, it is a
sub-representative coupling of disparate intensity (DR 222).
Determination cannot immediately ground the indeterminate. Determination
of a ground must confront groundlessness. Determination of
a ground must first confront the pure empty form of time that
Deleuze calls ‘Aion’ before the form of the
determinable can rise to the surface.
Blanchot, like Deleuze, questions the
philosophical foundations of Western thought. Traditionally,
the philosopher has been afraid of a violent encounter that would
threaten the philosophical Image of Thought. Sometimes the
foundation of knowledge has been thought to be given by
our sense impressions. However, we have no ground for that
assumption. How can internal relations between our ideas
and our sense perception be assumed to be the ground for
representing reality? Deleuze tells us we need to reach the
form of the determinable – that by which the given is
given (DR 222). The given is diverse, but that
by which the given is given is that which reaches the
intensive external relations of sub-representative disparate
‘difference’. Therefore, empiricism cannot be the
ground of thought, because it is in need of grounding. Also,
transcendentalism needs grounding. As a priori condition of
possible experience in the forms of intuition, space and time;
transcendentalism is merely traced from the empirically given.
The transcendental resembles the empirical. The condition
is in the image of the conditioned. Traditional philosophy
looks for the foundation of our knowledge on the plane of Chronos
– the given form of already spatialized time. It
never reaches the sub-representative plane of Aion –
the plane of that by which the given is given as it
spatializes time disparately. Deleuze’s
‘transcendental empiricism’ is the intersection of the
two planes. The plane of Aion is a transcendental field of that
by which the given is given. The plane of Chronos is
the empirically given. The planes intersect as two
types of multiplicities – transcendental conditions of
disparate empirical forms of spatialized-time. We find a
more adequate ground for our knowledge only when we reach the
sub-representative plane of univocality – the plane of the
form of the determinable – the plane of the empty form of
time, Aion – the plane of that by which the given is
given. Each actualized empirical ‘use of
representation’ must find its own form of possibility
in a sub-representative transcendental field of disparate
intensity.
We have the habit of thinking in terms of
chronological time, Chronos. However, this time that is
assumed to be given in consciousness cannot be the ground
of consciousness. It is what needs grounding. Determination
of a ground must confront groundlessness of the pure empty form
of time before a form of the determinable can rise to the
surface. If we want to confront an unconscious
groundlessness of thought, we need to reach that by which the
given is given to consciousness. But how can we think
and speak about that which is unconscious? How can thought
reach its ground outside the vicious circle of
representation? How can we think the unthought? We
must grapple with this paradox. Thought must reach a
sub-representative transcendental field that cannot be thought.
Thought must be in the form of an unconscious dice game. If
thought is to reach unconscious groundlessness, it cannot be
mediated by conscious thought of a subject. Only a random
dice game can reach groundlessness. However, the dice game
of univocality is nothing like the dice games with which we are
acquainted. In the dice game of univocal being, events are
no longer related according to the time of Chronos and its
relations of already formed corporeal elements. The
transcendental field of this univocal dice game is on the plane
of the empty form of time, Aion. This groundlessness is not
an undifferentiated black nothingness where being and nothingness
are in a negative oppositional relation. That would still
assume a conscious ground in a vicious circle. Rather,
groundlessness is the differentiated nothingness which is the
being of the problematic. Ontology must be a dice game.
Being-itself is univocal. It is not an equivocal conscious
subjectivity.
Blanchot’s writings exemplify that
which Deleuze calls ‘univocal being’. Blanchot
explores the art of writing that has its source in the empty form
of time on the plane of artistic composition. What is this
empty form of time through which we see and say new forms without
identity, analogy, or resemblance? Although Maurice
Blanchot does not use Deleuze’s terms, in reviewing
Blanchot’s writing I will use a mixture of terms used by
Deleuze and Blanchot whenever I think they both express being as
univocal. In The Infinite Conversation*, Blanchot
writes about the void of the outside other. Between self
and the other is a void of the infinitely other. It is
neutral nonrelation unmediated by any common measure. In
his chapter, ‘Reflections on Hell’, Blanchot writes
about this absence of relation. It is the experience of the
groundlessness of the void. Orpheus can retrieve Eurydice
from the underworld only by way of his song that does not
represent or signify. It is the encounter that reveals
Eurydice as infinitely other outside conscious thought of a
subject. The speech of this encounter is the
intersection of two kinds of death. One death is the time
of ‘Chronos’. It is the present which causes
everything to pass. It is death by way of corporeal causes.
The other is on the incorporeal plane of ‘Aion’ where
death has no relation to me. It has no presence. It
is the waiting of that which is always coming but is never
present. It is the abyss of nonrelation. When Orpheus
encounters Eurydice, his choice is either ‘to speak’ or
‘to kill’. When Orpheus looks back at Eurydice,
his gaze brings death to her as other. His gaze is merely a
conscious ground that represents self and other in an image of
sameness. If thought is to reach unconscious
groundlessness, it cannot be mediated by conscious thought which
brings death by seeing the other as an object. Only when
Orpheus’s song reaches an empty form of groundlessness can
Eurydice be brought to the surface. That is, determination
must confront groundlessness of the pure empty form of time
before a form of the determinable can rise to the surface. The
sub-representative transcendental field of groundlessness is on
the plane of the empty form of time, Aion. Immanence of the
other must be an unmediated movement through which the infinite
inessential may be brought to the surface. But as soon as
conscious presence (Chronos) closes around Eurydice as an
essential property, Orpheus’s song of the inessential ceases
and Eurydice is lost. Otherness returns to sameness. Conscious
thought does not reach the speech (Deleuze’s
‘expression’) that is the ungrounding of sight
(Deleuze’s ‘content’). Orpheus’s song
must cross the abyss through which inessential expression becomes
possible. This speech is expression of nonrelation
that brings the other into inaccessible presence without common
measure. This speech across the void of Aion signifies no
essence. If there is to be a void of otherness, seeing and
speaking (content and expression) must be a heterogeneous
nonrelation of the void. It is Aion as present without
thickness that nomadically distributes disparate intensive
couplings of singularity. It is that play of inessential
difference across the void that Deleuze calls
‘vice-diction’.
Therefore, Blanchot says there are two
dimensions of the event that are coexisting and inseparable.
First is that which is fulfilled in the actualization of
corporeal bodies. According to this aspect, death is
actualized on the personal level of the corporeal body. The
second is the counter-actualized potentialities of the
incorporeal at the level of the empty form of time. According
to this aspect, death cannot be actualized. It is the
counter-actualization of the incorporeal. On this
incorporeal level, Aion is the abyss of time without present.
It is impersonal and pre-individual singularities. It is
the neutrality of the pure event. There is no particular or
general, individual or collective, affirmation or negation.
There is no opposition at all. ‘To die’ is
singular neutrality. All of being is said in this
infinitive sense of death. Orpheus can bring Eurydice to
the surface only if his gaze dissolves into the void of death.
Despite interpretations by Hegelian
commentators, Nietzsche takes a non-dialectical path that
violently ruptures the traditions of Western thought. Blanchot
reflects on Nietzsche’s nihilism and his experience of the
eternal return. According to both Deleuze and Blanchot,
Nietzsche’s experience of the eternal return has nothing to
do with philosophical tradition. This experience cannot be
measured by the chronological time of ‘Chronos’. The
eternal return is transformation of time and value. The
empty form of time, ‘Aion’, is this transvaluation.
Blanchot writes about Nietzsche’s overwhelming fear of his
experience of the eternal return. It is nothing like any
thought that came before. Whereas Nietzsche’s
‘higher man’ totalized a whole of logos in a continuity
of speech, the ‘overman’ is the becoming of the whole
of being that always changes in nature. The overman is no
longer limited by the time of Chronos. The overman has to
reach the eternal return as transformation of time outside the
possibilities of Chronos. Speech becomes a fragmentary new
language of waiting across the void for an already
that transmutes all value. It is Deleuze’s
transvaluation of disparate intensive difference. Being is
saying – the eternal repetition of singular difference.
But we reach this univocal event only when the sub-representative
plane of the empty form of time is included. The language
of the event is always out of place in relation to itself. It
is played as an unconscious dice game across the interval of the
void. The void is the empty form of time that flies in past
and future directions at once. It is the slowness of
“What is going to happen?” and the speed of “What
happened?” The empty form gives rise to fragmentary
speech of waiting across the void for the already
that transmutes value. It arises out of groundlessness that
conditions the intersection of two types of multiplicities.
The disparate transcendental ground intersects with its own
use of singular-universal perspective.
Nietzsche writes in aphorisms of
fragmentation, plurality, and dispersion. His fragmentary
speech consists of partial objects that are never part of a
totalizing unity, original or produced. Fragmentary
language does not judge, measure, or negate. It overcomes
any unifying or totalizing whole. There is, with each
repetition, constituent singular difference, never a
general-totalizing contradiction. With each actualization,
there is a temporary and fragile singular ‘use of
representation’. Each singular use is a world of
perspective. These multiplicities of perspective cannot be
totalized conceptually. Each actualized use dissolves into
the void, to return as a new singular perspective. The
intensive disparate difference of Nietzsche’s fragmentary
speech, in crossing the void, changes in nature. It never
maintains an origin. It never reaches a final form. It
has nothing to do with a dialectical system of thought.
Nietzsche uses fragmentary signs of
disparate intensity that, in separating, change nature. Yet
this fragmentary speech is always said univocally as the whole of
singular being, with each repetition. All difference is
affirmed as singular because all real difference is unique.
With each division or augmentation of intensive degree, there is
a new singularity of difference (Deleuze’s ‘inseparable
variation’). But all difference is said as same
because all difference is singular. In whatever degree,
difference in-itself is said as singularity of the whole
of being. But beyond actualized uses is the experience of
the eternal return as counter-actualization that resists all
intersection with the time of Chronos. The eternal return
is all difference said univocally as singularity of the whole
changing in nature with each repetition. Nihilism is
impossible. Affirmation refutes nihilism while affirming
it. This is not philosophy of logos that thinks the
identity of the whole and speaks in relations that return to
unity. The eternal return is said as same, but it is
not. It is not subjectivity of thought, but being-itself,
that is univocal.
Blanchot, like Deleuze, reads
Nietzsche’s nihilism to mean that the highest values are
dead. God is dead. There are no values other than
what man invents. However, nihilism is not humanism. Both
God and Man are dissolved. There is not even human truth as
a measure. Truth itself is at risk. This is a new
dialectic of the real. There is no value in-itself. Authoritarian
truth and value have dissolved. Nihilism opens the event to
new possibilities of value by crossing thresholds with each
repetition of singular use. Still man knows nothing of this
‘event’. Man is unaware of the power of that
sub-representative event that puts him already beyond
self. Nietzsche’s nihilism is not nothingness in
opposition to being. It is not negation of the negative.
Nihilism is without any oppositional relations at all. There
is not even opposition between affirmation and negation. All
is pure affirmation. There are multiplicities of actualized
uses that cannot be totalized. With the intersection of two
types of multiplicities, will-to-power is liberated. Man is
no longer limited by the time of Chronos.
In whatever degree of intensive difference,
the whole of being is always said as a new measure of
singularity. The whole of being is univocal. It is
said as really different singular-universal with each repetition.
I take this to be what Blanchot expresses in ‘The Most
Profound Question’. The movement of time is disparate
degrees of intensive coupling of new singularities. Every
division or augmentation fills the whole of being as new
singular-universal. Being-itself, not a subject, is
questioned and does the questioning. Between question and
answer (between content and expression) is a nonrelation – a
relation of otherness that is infinite waiting in the void of
Aion. The questioning that questions the being of the whole
and changes its nature cannot be an abstract dialectical movement
of generalized truth whose answer merely maintains its own
origin. A dialectical system of thought never reaches the
most profound question because it never reaches that void which
is the empty form of time, Aion. It never reaches the waiting
that is already a leap that transforms. The slowness
of waiting (“what is going to happen?”) is
coupled with the speed of already (“what
happened?”) that changes nature. The void does not
determine the generality of the particular but the universality
of each repetition of singular difference. There is eternal
repetition of difference in the void. Being-itself
eternally returns as all differentiation expressed as
singularity of one universal with each return. This
universal ‘whole’ must never be conceived as a
universal generality. It is not the many as unity of
one whole. Difference is said as the whole of
being, but it is ‘Entirely Other’ that never maintains
a same totalizing generality.
In traditional forms thought is the same as
its speech – content resembles its expression. However,
like Deleuze, Blanchot rejects that resemblance. There must
be relation through the abyss of nonrelation – a nonrelation
through the unknown and the incommensurable. Seeing and
speaking are heterogeneous. Thinking is the event of the
void in-between seeing and speaking, content and expression.
In crossing the void of the outside, thinking is the roll of the
dice. It is the intensive coupling that creates new
singularities. The void of Aion is the place or non-place
of changing forces. When seeing and speaking are no longer
homogeneous, then they may reach heterogeneous forms of
exteriority. Then thinking crosses the void of the outside
without form. There is no dialectical synthesis or
reconciliation. When contents (seeing) and expression
(speaking) are no longer homogeneous, forces are opened to an
outside. Thinking is the dice-throw in a dispersion of
singularities. The dice-throw is the nonrelation of being
and thought.
Whereas Blanchot writes that expressive
speech, rather than content mediated by light, is primary;
Deleuze writes that seeing (content) and speaking (expression)
are always already a singular coupling of inseparable variations.
However, Deleuze and Blanchot both agree that seeing (content)
and speaking (expression) are heterogeneous nonrelation. The
concept of one has nothing to do with the concept of the other.
Fragmentary speech does not double the same. It redoubles
the outside other. Speaking frees thinking from the
visibilities that traditionally subjugate thought. Writing
does not give seeing and speaking a common measure. We
never see one whole generality of everything. We see only
within the thresholds of a horizon of perception. But
speech can transgress these thresholds. Speech, when it is
fragmentary, is disorienting. Speech perverts sight. Perversion
frees sight from its limits.
Phenomenology, by showing a correlation
between the object and intentional consciousness, presupposes a
structured relation between the transcendental and the empirical,
thereby still maintaining an identity of the subject in terms of
light. Structuralism also still maintains identity that
equalizes relations between successive states of a subject.
However, what we see is deceptive. Light mediates through a
“dialectical illusion”. But fragmentary writing
is a refusal of the appearance of immediacy that light gives to
sight. It is refusal of the mediation of light. Being
is not revealed by light. Being is saying, and it is
univocal. With being as univocal, thinking can go outside
what has always been thought to be possible. The eternal
return is not doubling of the one. It is redoubling of the
outside other. Being has no common measure. There are
multiplicities of interpretation. There are no facts in
themselves. In Deleuze’s terms ‘sense’
precedes any “use of representation” (LoS 144-7).
Interpretation is neutral movement that has no prior object or
subject to which it is related. Fragmentary speech is
expression which disperses content.
Literature awaits a language where
expression is not internally related to a visible content. This
language does not conceal or reveal. It is the non-truth of
the thing. It is saying without the coming to light of
seeing – a manifestation without giving itself to sight.
Literature’s image is not the doubling of the object. It
is the folding or the intensive coupling that redoubles the
outside other. Time is the difference through which we
speak. But this time is not the time of presence. Just
as Deleuze distinguishes between Chronos and Aion, so also
Blanchot makes the distinction between the time of presence and
time of difference without presence. The void of Aion is
the absence or nonrelation of a work of literature. It is
the void that brings a ground for a ‘use of
representation’ to the surface arising out of the
groundlessness of the void.
Time has no common measure. There are
no facts in themselves. There are only multiplicities of
interpretation. Interpretation is a movement of the
neutrality of sense. Sense is same from the point of view
of quality, quantity, relation, and modality. The
neutrality of sense cannot mediate because it is outside all
relation. There are no negative relations of identity or
opposition, unity or presence. There can be no exclusive
disjunctions. But the negative may itself be affirmed
because there is no oppositional relation of
negation/affirmation. There is only what Deleuze calls
‘vice-diction’ that affirms everything as inessential.
The text is the expressive world of disparate intensive
fragmentation dispersed across the void that changes the nature
of forms with each repetition. Fragmentary language of
literature is expression which disperses content. Fragmentary
language has no meaning other than dispersal and rupture. There
may be temporary uses of metaphor. However, literary
text does not speak of being by way of metaphor. Text is
univocality of the real. It is the expression of being as
univocal.
Literature is the fragmentary play in a
void. It is a coupling of disparate fragments without cause
or purpose. It is the dice game as interweaving of signs as
they spatialize time into new uses of interpretation. A
temporary and fragile ground may rise to the surface because it
first confronts the groundlessness of the empty form of time.
This empty form is not an undifferentiated void. It
includes all differentiation of disparate difference said
as one. Intensive signs express the play of chance
across distances. There are new ruptures and fusions of
tears. Difference is nonrelation of all relation. The
Outside is more distant then the external world of corporeal
things. It is closer than an internal world of conscious
subjectivity. Every incorporeal difference of singularity
fills the whole of being to a new degree of intensity with each
repetition. Difference is not a doubling of the same.
It is redoubling (in-between content and expression) of the
outside other. It is the folding or redoubling that is
always already outside itself and always inside its outside.
Literary text is language that stammers and makes the image
tremble. The real is a whole without center – a body
without organs.
Blanchot says that traditional philosophy is
a refusal of the ‘outside’ due to the fear of death.
This refusal is the fear of the loss of relations that mediate a
transcendent image. It is the denial of death that leads to
an image of permanence and representational truth. We
construct an Image of Thought, an Image of Eternal Presence, by
which we deny that we are mortal. But in so doing, we enact
“the great refusal” – the refusal to encounter the
immediate immanence of singular death. This singular death
is closer than any interiority of consciousness and farther than
any exteriority of corporeal things. It is Blanchot’s
‘limit-experience’ as radical questioning of
‘self’. There is an excess of nothing that cannot
be put into actualization. It is counter-actualization.
Limit-experience is loss of meaning and value that frees us
toward new possibilities. There is no dualistic opposition
between reason and the absurd. Limit-experience reveals
nothing. It totalizes nothing. It is pure affirmation
free of all negation. It is thought that can’t be
given to a subject – the dice throw of radical change.
The eternal return is limit-experience not lived. It is the
disinterested indifference of desire. It is forgetting
beyond memory. It is freedom from the presence of Chronos.
The void is the eternal waiting attention of language suspended
between memory and absence of memory – forgetting and
absence of forgetting.
*The Infinite Conversation, by
Maurice Blanchot, University of Minnesota Press, translated by
Susan Hanson.