Meaning, intentionality, and responsibility...
john v. omlor (omlor@packet.net)
Sun, 13 Sep 1998 13:03:44 -0500
Just a couple of general words on the question of intentionality that has
been discussed recently around here.
I think DeMan's late formulations are a bit helpful on this question: he
argues (in places like "The Intentional Structure of the Romantic Image" in
*The Rhetoric of Romanticism*, for instance) not that intention is
irrelevant or indecipherable but that meaning necessarily *exceeds*
intention and that this is in the nature of language and that this excess
occurs in decidably unnaccountable ways. Derrida, on the other hand, is
actually a bit more conservative about this than DeMan is (contrary to
popular belief) and I think at times even more useful. He speaks rather
sternly of the question of *responsibility* (particularly powerfully in his
work on Nietzsche in *The Ear of the Other* for instance) and of a doubled
responsiblity on the part of writer and on the part of those who hear the
words to say "yes" at least twice to the text they are reading (first to
its details, with great care, and then again to its "music" -- borrowing in
this case from N. actually) and that in this double affirmation a rigorous
responsiblity is shared.
In an essay that refuses to rest on one side or another as it reads
Nietzche's work and its ignominious fate, Derrida poses the problem --
remembering that such texts as Nietzsche's "The Future of Our Educational
Institutions" can always be read on and by and for the left and on and by
and for the right and by all the many middles as well -- that Hegel was and
that Nietzche was and that so many others have been (including Salinger, by
the way), that of course," An interpretive decision does not have to draw a
line between two intents or two political contents. The one can always be
the other, the double of the other (32)."
But, Derrida argues, this certainly cannot absolve the language and
strategies of those texts and those signature to pass into the future
without responsibility (this, in fact, would be the gesture of the
"politically naive"). Rather, the signature is begun at the moment of
writing but not finished each unique time until the moment it is heard.
The responsibility is doubled back onto us, into our ears, since the worst
sort of hearing in this case *is* afforded by the texts (of Nietzsche in
*Ecce Homo* for instance) -- we must have keen ears. He writes,
"It is rather paradoxical to think of an autobiography whose signature is
entrusted to the other, one who comes along so late and is so unknown. But
it is not Nietzsche's originality that has put us in this situation. Every
text answers to this structure. It is the structure of textuality in
general. A text is signed only much later by the other. And this
testamentary structure doesn't befall a text as if by accident, but
constructs it. This is how a text always comes about (51)."
And so it is a doubled structure -- it is the both-and logic of
intentionality -- that writes itself into the work and into the excessive
meaning of lanugage and into the ears of the readership and that makes
reading the engaging and lively and worthwhile and always frustrating and
challenging and terrifying and joyful activity it is.
This does not require the "death" of the author (indeed Derrida has argued
repeatedly that such an apocalyptic tone or choice of methaphors about such
things is highly suspicious and often participates in the very either/or
logic it pretends to critique) or of the individual or even of the
Enlightenment project (although clearly those constructions need to be and
are being rethought and reworked constantly) -- it simply requires care and
rigor and playfulness and respect and well practiced ears.
Of course, like any text, this little missive too will greatly exceed its
own intentions and give itself up to the excesses and the responsibilities
of its readers. "It is the ear of the other that signs." I wouldn't have
it any other way.
Thanks,
--John