I see that Jacques Derrida has been omitted from ‘The Great Philosophers’, a series of pamphlets published in February by Arcturus and distributed by The Independent. Each pamphlet features three philosophers, beginning with Plato, Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, moving through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and finally to the twentieth century, where we meet Russell, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Popper, Sartre and Foucault. But not Derrida; he doesn’t even make the final supplementary issue, an eclectic crammer of all those other thinkers – Augustine, Aurelius, Ayer, De Beauvoir, Freud, Pythagoras, Singer, Adam Smith – deemed ‘great’ but not great enough for more comprehensive treatment.
I presume Derrida does warrant a mention in the actual book The Great Philosophers, from which this series is extracted. Although I’ve not had chance to consult that volume, I note that the cover (reproduced in the pamphlet I have before me), uses Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. As a representation of philosophical contemplation, the image is a reassuring one: the ‘great philosopher’ has risen above the clouds – above the nebula of common opinion – to lay down some esoteric shit; has put distance between himself and the world, the better to understand it. This distance, this mystical objectivity – this sense of extrication – is the image of philosophy that still endures in middlebrow circles, despite poststructuralists’ (mostly) adverse deconstruction of such concepts as objectivity and truth. Friedrich’s painting symbolises the logocentrism that Derrida’s work aims to expose: that philosophical language can aim at a priori truths ‘outside’ itself, provided sufficient perspective can be obtained – and what better way of getting perspective than by climbing mountains? In poststructuralist parlance, Friedrich’s wanderer – Arcturus’s seeker after knowledge – has successfully strayed ‘outside the text’, gaining an objective vantage point from which to speak.
Routledge or Athlone would never succumb to such giddy symbolism – but then again they’d never publish a book called The Great Philosophers. But let’s imagine that a certain publishing niche could accommodate a middlebrow survey of poststructuralist philosophy (i.e., one aimed at fans of Midsomer Murders). What would adorn the cover of such a book?
‘Perhaps something that places us in rather than above the fog?’ suggests the publisher to the panel of obscure academics he has assembled to advise him on the matter. The panel nod approvingly, and he is emboldened to continue. ‘How about Antony Gormley’s poster image for his Blind Light exhibition at the Hayward last year, in which we see a gallery-goer groping through a glass room filled with mist?’ There is silence. Whether it is the silence of intrigue or consternation he cannot tell. ‘Anyway, I was thinking that where, in Friedrich’s painting, the seeker after knowledge has successfully risen above the mist of common opinion and gained an overview, at least in this image he is surrounded by it. Incarcerated by discourse, if you will.’ The panellists seem to like this phrase, repeating it under their breath: ‘Incarcerated by discourse, incarcerated by discourse….’ ‘Yes,’ continues the hapless publisher, ‘incarcerated by discourse: his hand pressed against the glass wall of his own consciousness – a far more realistic representation of most people’s experience of philosophy, I’m sure you agree.’
‘I am sure we do not,’ says one of the panellists, rising to his feet and punching the table. ‘You are retailing yet another image of discourse as something we can “get perspective on”. Is it not plain? The glass wall is a membrane that separates us from the “exterior” knowledge at which we aim. This is anathema to poststructuralist thought. Sit down, you fool. I take it,’ he continues, composing himself, ‘that we all agree that what the poststructuralist needs, what the poststructuralist deserves, is nothing less than an image in which “the mist” is produced by discourse rather than being something that discourse aims to dispel? I take it that everyone here wants things to make less sense, not more? I assume also that no one sitting at this table – no one – desires the further promotion of Antony Gormley’s work? Good. Now, what is interesting about Friedrich’s and Gormley’s images, is that both conflate philosophical enlightenment and death: the former is pregnant with suicide, while the latter – well, it’s a transparent gas chamber. Gentlemen, I think we should run with this pathological theme.’
A second panellist rises, a Lecturer in Media Studies from Hatfield: ‘Might I suggest a still from Clive Barker’s 1987 film Hellraiser? I’m thinking of the scene at the end, in which Uncle Frank is flayed for a second time by the Cenobites, the sardonic arbiters of pain and pleasure who set about those unfortunate enough to solve the Lemarchand Configuration with sado-masochistic élan. This image – of Uncle Frank’s face stretched to widescreen capacity by an arsenal of telepathically controlled hooks, and him going ‘Jesus wept!’ in a moment of defiant avuncular levity – is the one I should like to see on the cover of a book aimed at middlebrow seekers after knowledge. Not just because philosophy hurts, not just because the seeker’s suffering shall be, er, “legendary”, but because this image places him at the centre of discourse rather than outside it…’
There is a murmur of assent among his colleagues, the most senior of whom, an ancient emeritus from Birkbeck, now struggles to his feet and holds forth with keynote authority: ‘If poststructuralism has taught us anything,’ he wheezes, ‘it is that the reader is both the object and subject of philosophical discourse. Likewise, Uncle Frank, it seems to me, is both cause and effect of the Cenobites’ hierophantic theology. Theirs is a taut antinomy of pleasure and pain, and Uncle Frank is its agonistic redeemer, continually escaping from Hell in order to be received once more into its fiery bosom (he enjoys, does he not, several eviscerative testimonials in the subsequent sequels?). He is therefore its chief exegitor: the eternally returning human prism through which Cenobian discourse (the ‘Theology of the Order of Gash’, if memory serves) is refracted. Why, he is the very incarnation of deconstruction: less a passive recipient to whom discourse is addressed than the active mechanism of its becoming! Our seeker after knowledge could not be more different from Friedrich’s wanderer, from Arcturus’s pious seer. Where the latter has broken the bonds of discourse and ascended, like Moses, to receive the True Word, the former – our Uncle Frank, so very avuncular, with his vague incestual menace – begs to be tied up and tortured in the basement of hermeneutic enquiry. The deconstructionist, I need hardly remind you, is not one who stands aloof from a text and presumes, qua deconstructionist, to solve its mysteries. Like Uncle Frank, he climbs into its cockpit and rides it to Hell. The problem is solved, gentlemen; we have our image, and it is a striking one, a veritable migraine in pictorial form. I bid you raise your glasses and drink a toast to density and abstruseness…’
All: ‘To density and abstruseness.’
I presume Derrida does warrant a mention in the actual book The Great Philosophers, from which this series is extracted. Although I’ve not had chance to consult that volume, I note that the cover (reproduced in the pamphlet I have before me), uses Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. As a representation of philosophical contemplation, the image is a reassuring one: the ‘great philosopher’ has risen above the clouds – above the nebula of common opinion – to lay down some esoteric shit; has put distance between himself and the world, the better to understand it. This distance, this mystical objectivity – this sense of extrication – is the image of philosophy that still endures in middlebrow circles, despite poststructuralists’ (mostly) adverse deconstruction of such concepts as objectivity and truth. Friedrich’s painting symbolises the logocentrism that Derrida’s work aims to expose: that philosophical language can aim at a priori truths ‘outside’ itself, provided sufficient perspective can be obtained – and what better way of getting perspective than by climbing mountains? In poststructuralist parlance, Friedrich’s wanderer – Arcturus’s seeker after knowledge – has successfully strayed ‘outside the text’, gaining an objective vantage point from which to speak.
Routledge or Athlone would never succumb to such giddy symbolism – but then again they’d never publish a book called The Great Philosophers. But let’s imagine that a certain publishing niche could accommodate a middlebrow survey of poststructuralist philosophy (i.e., one aimed at fans of Midsomer Murders). What would adorn the cover of such a book?
‘Perhaps something that places us in rather than above the fog?’ suggests the publisher to the panel of obscure academics he has assembled to advise him on the matter. The panel nod approvingly, and he is emboldened to continue. ‘How about Antony Gormley’s poster image for his Blind Light exhibition at the Hayward last year, in which we see a gallery-goer groping through a glass room filled with mist?’ There is silence. Whether it is the silence of intrigue or consternation he cannot tell. ‘Anyway, I was thinking that where, in Friedrich’s painting, the seeker after knowledge has successfully risen above the mist of common opinion and gained an overview, at least in this image he is surrounded by it. Incarcerated by discourse, if you will.’ The panellists seem to like this phrase, repeating it under their breath: ‘Incarcerated by discourse, incarcerated by discourse….’ ‘Yes,’ continues the hapless publisher, ‘incarcerated by discourse: his hand pressed against the glass wall of his own consciousness – a far more realistic representation of most people’s experience of philosophy, I’m sure you agree.’
‘I am sure we do not,’ says one of the panellists, rising to his feet and punching the table. ‘You are retailing yet another image of discourse as something we can “get perspective on”. Is it not plain? The glass wall is a membrane that separates us from the “exterior” knowledge at which we aim. This is anathema to poststructuralist thought. Sit down, you fool. I take it,’ he continues, composing himself, ‘that we all agree that what the poststructuralist needs, what the poststructuralist deserves, is nothing less than an image in which “the mist” is produced by discourse rather than being something that discourse aims to dispel? I take it that everyone here wants things to make less sense, not more? I assume also that no one sitting at this table – no one – desires the further promotion of Antony Gormley’s work? Good. Now, what is interesting about Friedrich’s and Gormley’s images, is that both conflate philosophical enlightenment and death: the former is pregnant with suicide, while the latter – well, it’s a transparent gas chamber. Gentlemen, I think we should run with this pathological theme.’
A second panellist rises, a Lecturer in Media Studies from Hatfield: ‘Might I suggest a still from Clive Barker’s 1987 film Hellraiser? I’m thinking of the scene at the end, in which Uncle Frank is flayed for a second time by the Cenobites, the sardonic arbiters of pain and pleasure who set about those unfortunate enough to solve the Lemarchand Configuration with sado-masochistic élan. This image – of Uncle Frank’s face stretched to widescreen capacity by an arsenal of telepathically controlled hooks, and him going ‘Jesus wept!’ in a moment of defiant avuncular levity – is the one I should like to see on the cover of a book aimed at middlebrow seekers after knowledge. Not just because philosophy hurts, not just because the seeker’s suffering shall be, er, “legendary”, but because this image places him at the centre of discourse rather than outside it…’
There is a murmur of assent among his colleagues, the most senior of whom, an ancient emeritus from Birkbeck, now struggles to his feet and holds forth with keynote authority: ‘If poststructuralism has taught us anything,’ he wheezes, ‘it is that the reader is both the object and subject of philosophical discourse. Likewise, Uncle Frank, it seems to me, is both cause and effect of the Cenobites’ hierophantic theology. Theirs is a taut antinomy of pleasure and pain, and Uncle Frank is its agonistic redeemer, continually escaping from Hell in order to be received once more into its fiery bosom (he enjoys, does he not, several eviscerative testimonials in the subsequent sequels?). He is therefore its chief exegitor: the eternally returning human prism through which Cenobian discourse (the ‘Theology of the Order of Gash’, if memory serves) is refracted. Why, he is the very incarnation of deconstruction: less a passive recipient to whom discourse is addressed than the active mechanism of its becoming! Our seeker after knowledge could not be more different from Friedrich’s wanderer, from Arcturus’s pious seer. Where the latter has broken the bonds of discourse and ascended, like Moses, to receive the True Word, the former – our Uncle Frank, so very avuncular, with his vague incestual menace – begs to be tied up and tortured in the basement of hermeneutic enquiry. The deconstructionist, I need hardly remind you, is not one who stands aloof from a text and presumes, qua deconstructionist, to solve its mysteries. Like Uncle Frank, he climbs into its cockpit and rides it to Hell. The problem is solved, gentlemen; we have our image, and it is a striking one, a veritable migraine in pictorial form. I bid you raise your glasses and drink a toast to density and abstruseness…’
All: ‘To density and abstruseness.’