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Bad Company: On the Theory of Literary Modernity and Melancholy in Walter Benjamin andJulia KristevaAuthor(s): Marcus BullockReviewed work(s):Source: boundary 2, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 57-79Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/303723 .Accessed: 15/02/2012 09:08

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Bad Company: On the Theory of Literary Modernity andMelancholy in Walter Benjamin and Julia Kristeva

Marcus Bullock

John Lechte's ucid and enlightening ecent book on Julia Kristevadraws what has already become a longand rich record nher work s a con-tinuum f development. He describes a succession of books and essays,and a succession of ideas and polemical ositions o show her as an exem-plum of history nwhich he can turn back ayer on layer nthe sequence ofchanges. Butwhile he metaphor f movement hrough uccessive stages,of additions o a record of territory rossed and explored, s a convenientdevice in composing a scholarly work, he idea of progress and successimplicit nthat figure runs counter o the material e actually presents. Theimage of succeeding metamorphoses oes, indeed, create a vivid mpres-sion of an individual istory, ut t is part of the rhetoric we use to describethe heroic abors of writers rom ome other age, not our own.

The material uggests that the value of Kristeva's chievement iesat least as much nthe hesitation, etrenchment, nd unmaking f her posi-tions. Perhaps more han any of the other members of the Tel Quel group,she invites he reader o give up the pleasures ofcontemplating he upwardand outward weep of an unfolding ersona. She is less inclined han any-

boundary 222:3, 1995. Copyright 1995 by Duke University Press. CCC 0190-3659/95/$1.50.


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58 boundary / Fall1995

one to mistake he "success" of her distinctive ublicprofile or an answer

to the problem with which she began and which has only slowly comeinto clear focus through ts repeated reformulation. eferring o Kristeva'srepudiation f any single affirmative osition n the relations between thesemiotic and the symbolic,Lechte does agree that, "ofcourse, to win, n asituation where psychic equilibrium s needed, is to lose."1Yet, her concernoutlines something hat goes beyond he intellectual nderstanding f anopposition nwhich t is absurd o pursue privilege f one side over another.

In 1987, Kristeva published Black Sun, continuing he movementtoward

impler anguagen her more recent

work.And

here she writes of "abelief n stylisticperformance" hat betrays he essential desires of humanlife to the public powers of language. Such a belief abandons the livingchance that ies beyond what he discourse can "convey," ounting hat life"less important han the success of the text itself."2 eal importance n apublicly ransmitted iscourse, one that mightdeserve to be called "grandi-ose" language, s restricted nlyto "the royalway through which humanitytranscends he grief of being apart, he way of speech given to suffering,

includingcreams, music, silence, and

laughter" BlackSun,

100).Outside

the reality of desire, the reality f one person desiring another, he findsonly language that settles for something hat is really nothing, ts placeamong he powers of artifice.There, grandeur s merely he prize of its suc-cess, which means only its establishment t the central point of a worldthat has "dissolved" living ore "in he thousand and one ways of namingit" Black Sun, 68). This is a murderous r a suicidal diversion. "Outsidethe depressive space," he asks, "is he grandiose anything ut a game?"(Black Sun, 100).

The game that Kristeva erself now names suicidal s played out ona court of grand oppositions: reedom and fate, body and soul, the rawandthe cooked. These are clearly situated outside the unique desire for lovethat animates every tremor of her voice in Black Sun, but what she suc-ceeds in enunciating bove all is how the extraordinarily omplex route nand out of these alien kingdoms tilldistracts her from he "royalway" ofhumanity. erhaps he nature of that distraction s already explicit n therhetoric f grandeur nd royalty sed to express the value of what is lost.

1.John Lechte, Julia Kristeva NewYork:Routledge, 1990),209.2. Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, rans. Leon S. Roudiez NewYork:Columbia University ress, 1989), 68. Hereafter, his work s cited parenthetically nthe text as Black Sun.


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Bullock BadCompany 59

These oppositions re the fulcra n machinery bout which her own history

of citizenships urns, as well as that ineor fold at the heart of a culture hatrequires he appearance of the hero. But the hero is the enemy of desire,sacrificing he innerdomain f human happiness or he outer tructure hatholds a culture ogether.

The magnetic pullof such sacrifice cannot be resisted fthe choiceto be made identifies wo kingships, or the greater kingship lways over-rules and subsumes the lesser. To succeed, to triumph eroically,meansto be visible and acknowledged n a public phere, to achieve a distinction

of citizenship n the service of a reigning uthority. herefore, o look forthe joy of desire along a royalroad means always o go astray, orsigns ofregal distinction race a way o the forum, he central tage of authority, ndto the drama n which the game of powers is played out. Ifone can lookon Kristeva's hought as the adventure of an exploration, hen she doesacquire he look of the hero pressing onward. Yet she herself clearly eelsthe deceptive ambiguity n her own powers and the dubious distinction ithwhich hey reward er, even ifshe does not see another wayforward.

Kristeva'sarticipation

nthe TelQuelgroup ives

the frame nwhichto contemplate he stages of a heroic passion. What eems much ruer nher experience, however, s the coming o consciousness of her mistrust nher own role among that company. The role falls away from her, but onlypiecemeal, as the repeated olt of events undoes the dream of change thathad animated French ntellectual ifeat the moment of her first entrance. tis Walter Benjamin who gives the most succinct formula or a process ofthought nwhichaffect can come grinding o a halt, a process Kristeva riesto restrict nder he name "depression." he clinical orce of the term imitsit to a mere quality or coloration f experience rom which one recovers,that s, returns o the correctly alanced ight.But or Benjamin, o fallawayfrom a publicly anctioned order nto pain and melancholywas a first tepin liberating neself from he false majesty of things in the clarity of theircontinued progress: "Thinking nvolvesnot only the flow of thoughts, buttheir arrest as well. Where hinking uddenly tops in a configuration reg-nant with ensions, it gives that configuration shock."3Black Sun namesBenjamin uiteprominently orhis work n allegory s the function iteratureassumes under he condition f melancholy.Kristeva lludes o his work onthe baroque playof mourning, nd yet he also seems to haunt he text as an

3. Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy f History," n Illuminations, rans. HarryZohn, ed. Hannah Arendt NewYork: chocken, 1969), 262.


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unassimilated resence for he way he applied he concepts of melancholy

and allegory o the literature f modernity n the poetry of Charles Baude-laire.The extensive discussion nher bookseems to place Gerard e Nervalat the initial volutionarymoment of literary modernity hat Benjamin e-serves for Baudelaire, hose name is completely xcluded rom BlackSun.This place for Nerval s consistent withKristeva's iewof literarymodernityand that established by the Tel Quel group n general. Raymond ean, forexample, observes in his Poetique du desir of Nerval's writing: Onecansay of it quite egitimately hat Philippe ollers said of some other writers,

such as Sade, Mallarme,Artaud, r Bataille: In all the texts in question,the theory ofwriting s there, mmanent, eady o be demonstrated: ut t isgenerally perceived n the form of delirium, antasm, poetry, hermeticism,personal deviation, tc.' "4

The contrasting erspectives between Benjamin nd Kristeva, ndthe different lace ascribed o Baudelaire yone and to Nerval bythe other,help us understand he viewof modernity Kristeva ssimilated arly n herworkand the continuing ensions that emerge inthe later workas the majorcontradictions ithwhich she

struggles.In the

simplestand most

generalformulation, enjamin egards he hard allure of Baudelaire's erse as ahollowed-out orm designed to convey the arrest of time and the pene-tration f an illusory ontinuity f development n the human phere. Thisexperience of time at a standstill eaves the future open to a completelyheterogeneous order of change. Kristeva akes the breaking p of the sur-faces in representation, he fragmentation fthe image and the dissolutionof the coherent voice,to be indicative f a change and renewal lready on-tained in the literary rocess. The revolutionary xtension of that changerequires nly hat he work of critical nd philosophicalmediation e under-taken to expand he liberation chieved by writing o that it may enter anddetermine larger domain of experience.

Yet Kristeva, or whom this liberation f experience has an addeddimension furgency not present among he men, can never ree the prom-ise of change, and the enticements of success as the bond of that promise,from an underlying oubt. This doubt begins with he potential f our ownmodernity, ith ts contemporaneity, r its adequacy o a unique xperienceof the present in which he separation rom another person, the "grief fbeing apart," an be repaired. tbegins with he anxieties of finding lan-

4. Raymond ean, La Poetique du d6sir: Nerval, Lautr6amont, pollinaire, luard Paris:Seuil, 1974), 31; my translation. The quoted comment by Sollers is from "Ecriture tr6volution," n Theorie d'ensemble, ed. Philippe Sollers (Paris: d. du Seuil, 1968), 72.


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Bullock Bad Company 61

guage whose fullness s of the present and whose flow carries one person

toward nother. But he present s onlyours and only promises he joiningof life, f it contains he future. t s theirs, property f the dead, if it is onlythe recurrence f the past or the continuation f a game. The entire natureof activity nd identity t which he present grasps is thus open to doubtand loss.

Kristeva wrote in 1971 that "only one language grows more con-temporary: he equivalent, beyond a span of thirty ears, of the languageof Finnegan's Wake." he reason she gives is that such language, or its

equivalent, tands separate and free of "didacticism, hetoric, ogmatismof any kind." t also stands in contrast o others that, "in any field what-soever, no longer command attention," lthough hey "have urvived andperhaps willcontinue o survive, n modified orm, hroughout cademia."sMuchhas changed nthe meantime, ncludingwhat survives n, and somemight ay, of, academia, but not he central place of that particular anguagein Kristeva's oncerns.

In Black Sun, the medusa-like bility f literature nd art to fixthe

crumblingnd

collapsing meaningsof the world n a "nameable melancho-

lia" s a means to withstand atastrophe, otto turn hat catastrophe boutintoa chance fora life illedwith ts own recovered ignificance. Sublimationalone withstands eath," he writes, but t does so onlyas a displacementof despair, not a way to the real:

The beautiful bject hat can bewitch us into ts world eems to usmore worthy fadoption han any lovedor hated cause forwound orsorrow. Depression ecognizes his and agrees to livewithin nd for

that object, but such an adoption of the sublime s no longer ibidi-nal. It s already detached, dissociated, t has already ntegrated hetraces of death, which s signifiedas lack of concern, absentmind-edness, carelessness. Beauty s an artifice; t is imaginary. BlackSun, 100)

It is at this point hat Kristeva ntroduces Walter Benjamin's workon allegory n his book on the baroque drama of mourning, Ursprung esdeutschen Trauerspiels Black Sun, 101). The chastened view of what lit-

5. Julia Kristeva, HowDoes One Speak to Literature?" n Desire nLanguage, d. Leon S.Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Colum-bia University ress, 1980), 92. Hereafter, his work s cited parenthetically s How. Theessay first appeared n TelQue147 (fall1971): 7-49, and was subsequently reprinted nPolylogue Paris: Seuil, 1977), 23-24.


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erature has to offer has come closer to Benjamin's erception f a hollow

rigidity n poetic forms but s stillvery far rom inding n alternative man-cipatory potential ere, as he does. He finds a critical orce n the shock ofarrest hat hese cold structures irect against he ruling deologyoforganicchange. A cessation of happening hreatens a ruling rder hat preservesitself by its renewal n progress. Kristeva ad seen the unchained nergyby which Joyce's writing ismissed the narrative orms of the past as theimplicit iterary quivalent f revolution tself. In "HowDoes One Speak toLiterature?" nd the other essays she collected n Polylogue n 1977,she

emphasizes the "rhythmic" r "musical" uality f language, ts "semiotic"as opposed o "symbolic" uality, s a true presence ofvitality, here Joycehad, from he start, aken he libertine ontent of modern art n all its mani-festations o be merely he mockery f the rigidity hat art had discoveredand rejected nallthe forms of illusion, specially he illusion hat t pursuedin its own prior radition f representation.

Benjamin egards he incorporation f pure negativity s the fun-damental achievement n Baudelaire's oetry: "The glory of an allegoricalintention: estruction of the

organicand the

living--eliminationf sem-

blance." Benjamin rgues hat his marks he essential break of modernismwith he previous radition f literary esthetics, which used an idealizingdistance to hold the world of appearance at a point where representationcouldsecure these appearances as beauty. Baudelaire ses "spleen" s anintellectual isciplinewithin he composition f poetry o establish a quitenew aesthetic position. His viewpoint emains irmly ixed in the world ofcollapse and decay but chills he spectacle by givingup the natural esireto believe n a life he object no longer contains and can no longer promise.

Spleen, this deeply sobered perspective n emptiness and banality,withholds tself; t is a reservation n one's position. Benjamin writes thatspleen is a "barrage rected against pessimism," ecause it refuses to giveitselfover o hopes that can never iftus to fulfillment nd that herefore inkus down inally o despair. "Baudelaire s no pessimist. He is not, becausehe sets a taboo on the future. This is what distinguishes his heroism mostsharply rom hat of Nietzsche" Zentralpark, 57). This is the heroism ofthe dandy, who conquers he absence of lovebya devotional theism, cele-

brating is equanimity hilerepeating orms of a life hat he believes mostlikelynever was and certainly everwillbe.

6. Walter Benjamin, "Zentralpark," n Gesammelte Schriften, d. Hermann Schweppen-hauser and RolfTiedemann Frankfurt m Main: uhrkamp, 974),669-70; mytranslationhere and subsequently. Hereafter, his work s cited parenthetically s Zentralpark.


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Kristeva grees, in Polylogue, hat modernist exts do not givevoice

to the fantasy mage of an ideal, the "sch6ner Schein," r "beautiful em-blance,"whose pleasures n classical aesthetics displace he real, but sheargues fora quite different ind of negativity epletewithhope. The moderntext gives up the pleasure of closed forms, but nstead finds ouissance inbursting he bounds of explicit ommunicative xpression. What she calls"semiotic unctions" ain by the retreat of discredited deals, and throughtheir more material ualities,poetic anguage s able to expose an absenceregistered n the desiring body: "in o doing, it refers neither o a literary

convention .. nor even to the body tself,but rather, o a signifying ispo-sition, pre- or transsymbolic, hich ashions any judging onsciousness sothat any ego recognizes ts crisis within t. It s a jubilant ecognition hat, n'modern' iterature, eplaces petty aesthetic pleasure."7

Kristevawrote very ittle bout Baudelaire ora longtime. Inher His-toires d'amour 1983), he makes t quite clear hat she did not include himinthe canon of modernity ecause she considers him o be still stranded tthe outer margin fthe traditional mage and traditional anguage. The gazeof the flaneur remains ixated on the

spectacleof hollow aces because

only by transfixing imselfwith he delight n his own coldness can he holdany ground under he shock of their emptiness. This is the substitute of agame, because such a sensibility cannot ear being without ome formofsymbolic xistence in a fullyarticulated orm."8

Kristeva's ection on Baudelaire n Histoires d'amour laces criticalemphasis on the roleof perfumes orhis sensibility, s wellas on the distantshiver of sounds and the shimmer f lightplaying n jewels, because theseconvey the aesthetic Catholicism hat binds him o the authority f classi-cal French prosody over his verse, as wellas the unbroken uthority f theChurch over his senses. In a similar ein, she draws heavilyon GeorgesBlin's haracterization f Baudelaire s a sadist9 o support her argumentthat his verse subjects the human body, and the full rhythmic r musicalsubstance of its desires, to a process of destruction nd reduction o as toextract rom tthe refined d6lices of synaesthesia. Therefore, he can offerthe example of writers who destroy he integrity f closed literary orms asfigures who are implicitly ommitted o reversing hat process and to givingthe body ts fulldue.

Yet her comments n Black Sun throw he significance f the semi-

7. Julia Kristeva, "FromOne Identity o an Other," n Desire in Language, 141.8. Lechte, Julia Kristeva, 81.9. Georges Blin,Le Sadisme de Baudelaire Paris: Conti, 1948).


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otic functions n modernism irectlyup against the demand hey have not

met and raise the questions Kristeva annot answer: Why hould he textsshe privilegesbe any nearer he reality f love than Baudelaire's; nd Whyare they not games of a more (or perhaps ess) devious kind? fshe standscloser to Benjamin n her later work, t is still not possible o decide exactlyhow close, and ifshe has moved away from her more hopeful tand in thepast, it is still not possible to decide where she stood then. It might bemore accurate o say that her later work implybegins to acknowledge herown uncertainty bout where she stands in relation o hope and desire,

because time has exposed the desperate crag of loneliness on which shewas perched all along.IfKristeva s now beginning o approach Benjamin's osition n liter-

ary modernity, r ifher current osition s beginning o expose the difficultyofovercoming isviewofthe positionmodernist esthetics defines or tself,then this reflects back to the political nd historical nderstanding f liter-ary activity hat not only she, but Philippe Sollers and the Tel Quel groupgenerally, sserted as a way of affirming hat what they represented wasnot merely "a

game."John Lechte writes of this beginning: Through he

opaque pathos of writing, he shadow of death and the oblique politicalgesture become one and the same. With his gesture, he writer s an intel-lectual-not by being the vehicle of a moral or politicalmessage, but bybecoming a writer n the fullest ense possible: by becoming he opponentof all normalizations nd stereotypes, and the practitioner f his/her art." 0

But the rhetoric f the Tel Quel group about themselves and theirsituation s very different romanything ne finds nJames Joyce, insofar sthey feel the need to undertake his theoretical project of self-justificationin the context of politicsand history, nd they pursue his project by insist-ing that the writingneeds no justification. he idea of a jubilant ecogni-tion of crisis quoted rom "HowDoes One Speak to Literature?" uggestsKristeva's irst nvestment n literature as a straight bet on this direct me-diation f a revolutionary ffect.

Benjamin's iew is much closer to the idea of an interruption. heexplicit quickening f a promise Kristeva laims to feel in the stirring fcrises runs counter o what he considers he chance of a change namely,a shock delivered by bringing ontinuity o a standstill. That s the reasonhe worked o tenaciously o show a revolutionary otential n Baudelaire.The moment of a crisis, understood as a sudden acceleration of possi-

10. Lechte, Julia Kristeva, 1.


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bilities, s, for Benjamin, ikely o prove a utopian dea caught up with he

illusions of progress. As he illustrates hrough his much discussed imageof the Angelof History nthe ninth f the "Theses on the Philosophy f His-tory," his movement of progress defers change before he catastrophe fthings going on as before. Such a helpless pursuit f paradise n the futurefreezes and cracks under he gaze Baudelaire urns on the spectacle be-fore him: "Rigid isquiet s also the formula onveyingBaudelaire's mageof life,which knows no chance of development" Zentralpark, 68).

Most pecifically, his experience marks he undone promise of love.

"Woman orBaudelaire: he most precious object of plunder nthe 'Triumphof Allegory'-the life hat signifiesdeath" Zentralpark, 67). This embraceof death and deception urns against he illusion f any fruitful assage ofpurposeful ime.Therefore, t is impervious o any promises hat history, rwhat Benjamin alls historicism, an point o ina future f progress. Onlyatthat pointdoes Benjamin egin o set up his very complexhistorical ialec-tics and draw he negativity f literature nto a political ritique. His radicalnotion of a materialist istorical ptic closes out the empty expansivenessand

repetitionsf what he calls the

homogeneous pastof historicism nd

cancels the meaningless ontinuity fprogress hat historicism rojects ntothe future, hereby rendering ime open to a critical alternative n activepolitical nderstanding.

Kristeva otonly ooks o the recognition f a common tate of crisisas the mark of a singular anguage in modernist writing but also findsreason for "jubilation" n this disposition o exceed what she takes to bethe limited ymbolic unction of discourse. She looks to Philippe Sollers,to the achievements of a modern anon that includes

Mallarme, autrea-mont, and Artaud, or this precious urplus n poetic language. Though tis not yet knowledge, he site of that crisis gathers these authors withinsingle project, he argues, since the semiotic unction presents a singularchallenge to the traditional omination f symbolic unctions. The task ofreading nd understanding egins byacknowledging he failure f symbolicmeanings o absorb all experience of the subject as a material eingand adesiring body. The determinate ystem that articulates ymbolic anguageis inadequate o the materiality f life,and the texts of the resulting rti-fice are in that sense "empty." utshe does, at this early stage, regard hesemiotic side of the text, the side that gives fullemphasis to the rhythmicor musical qualities, s "full." nd he material ualities hat ill t in this wayare capable, through he process of revaluation y theoretical work, of adirect expansion ntoactive political nd historical ignificance.


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66 boundary / Fall 995

The lesson Kristeva as drawn rom Roland Barthes s to look to a

concept of "writing" ecriture) s a particular ractice of literary roductionwith new historical ubstance. Because it is not exhausted n the presen-tation of communicable meanings or the "petty esthetic pleasure" f itsreadership, writing" oes not reproduce he structures of a determinate,rule-bound ubject within ts language: "As nfra- and ultra-language, stranslanguage, writing s the ridge where the historical becoming of thesubject is affirmed; hat is, an a-psychological, -subjective ubject-anhistorical ubject" How, 97-98). But a ridge about which the crisscrosswinds of so

many neologismsblow s not a

placeto trust

anything eryfar.

Everything n her claims depends on the promise of something new thathas yet to appear, but only then, after hat coming o appearance, can somany new terms be considered ull speech and perform his new criticalmediation f semiotic anguage, rather han simplyrepeat heir negation ofthe symbolic. Until hen, there is a fundamental ifficultyn her invocationof "history," ithall its rich reverberations f redemption.

Desire maywellarise within, nd as a response o,history.Ofcourse:how could it possibly be otherwise? But history s the record of appear-ances, and Kristeva as already stablished hat what s most characteristicof this contemporary anguage of literarymodernity s that t refuses to pro-duce appearances as the material f petty aesthetic pleasure. Indeed, tsteps back rom ngagement nhistory s "didacticism, hetoric, ogmatismof any kind." his splits her argument uitedangerously, o that tseems tocontradict he very possibility fchange on which her revaluation f literarywriting t that time insists.

On the one hand, Kristeva ffirms hat "writing hus posits anothersubject, or the first ime a definitively ntipsychological ne, for what de-termines t ultimately sn't the problem of communication relationship oan other) but that of an excess of 'ego' withinan experience" How, 98).On the other hand, fthis "necessary practice," s she calls it, is not to beproduced s an appearance and thereby brought ntoa relationship o another), hen each work presents only he site of an internal eparation rom,and within,history, nd the practice f such writing nlymarks he generallocus to which such sites are restricted. That separation n no way implies

a power of change in the domain of historical ppearances. Recognizingthis, she has to posit another omplementary ractice hat willrealize hisotherwise mmobilized egativity s a different, nd truer, history: "Oncethis area has been determined, iterary ractices an be considered as theobject of a possible knowledge: he discursive possibility merges out of areality impossible for it although localizable by it" How, 98).


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This possibility, he always deferred promise of change and reality,

is the justifying tandard beneath which the long and intricate history ofKristeva's wn theoretical nd polemical abors began and has been pur-sued to the scene of depression and melancholia. Her enterprise, ookingforward o an as yet unrepresentable otential, emainsalways beyond hereach ofa definitive ritique. thas always not yet reached he pointat whichits claims could be subjected o any definitive est. Debate about Kristeva'slarger enterprise has been strangely raught with undecidable ifferencesbecause it is ultimately bout an object that has not made any ultimate

appearance."ut here should also be no doubt hat what makes he enter-

prise preeminently mportant s the clarity with which she acknowledgesthe afflicted tate, the permanent risis, of a consciousness imprisoned ydesire for his "Thing" hat s not even an object, hat cannot even be raisedto the substance of an absent object.

In he work he completed n1980,PowersofHorror, risteva ppliesthe word abject or abjection o this non-object. She thereby oosens theearlier deceptive emporal rientation f a future owardwhich he presentturns and from which he labors of the present derive heir meaning. f hepossibility f change implies hat the future holds another object towardwhich one can extend oneself to appropriate t, then the otherness of theobject has already been transformed ntoa promise, ntoa conviction. heobject s the correlative f a certain knowledge.The abject s not. She writes:"The abject has only one quality f the object-that of being opposed to/."12 In the case of an object, his relation f opposition lso supports otherqualities, qualities f connection nd the force of knowing: If he object ..settles me within he fragile exture of a desire for meaning, which, as amatter of fact, makes me ceaselessly and infinitely omologous o it,whatis abject, on the contrary, he jettisoned object, is radically xcluded anddraws me toward he place where meaning ollapses.13

The antinomy here is simple and obvious. Kristeva's ecriture s in-deed drawn oward he point where meaning collapses, but her meaningdoes not collapse. Her meaning s the gesture of approach, her own labor

11.There is an intriguing xample of this in the entirely ncommensurable eadings putforward y Calvin Bedient n "Kristeva nd Poetry as Shattered Signification," ritical n-quiry 16, no. 4: 807-29; Toril Moi's response to him, "Reading Kristeva: A Response toCalvin Bedient," Critical nquiry 7,no. 3: 639-43; and his response to her response inthat same issue, "How Slugged ItOut withTorilMoiand Stayed Awake," 44-49.12. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: n Essay on Abjection, rans. Leon S. Roudiez NewYork:Columbia University ress, 1982), 1.13. Kristeva, Powers of Horror, -2.


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of making and doing; he production f a text in which she inscribes he

track of this approach s an invitation o the reader o reenact he gesture,to participate n it, to reenact a homologous that participates nthe samecoherence as Kristeva's roduction.

The text creates a space and direction f movement hat substitutesfor he motion ntime toward graspable ransformation nthe future. Writ-ingexerts an attracting orce here that s not the appeal of a petty aestheticsbut s able to replace he enfeebled answer uch aesthetics offers n he faceof a crisis, because, in its owngesture, ttransfigures he unimaginable ime

ofthe future ntoa present igure, he trope of this "toward." risteva's ritinghas accomplished n approach within he language of criticism quivalentto that cited for poetic language n "HowDoes One Speak to Literature?"and capable, like it, of promoting "jubilant" ecognition.And the criticalresponse to Powers of Horror oes reflect howcompletely horror as beensublated n the elegance of her textual gesture. Guy Scarpetta noted thatwith his book, Kristeva ad enriched her "theoretical igor" ith"an effec-tive measure of seduction."14 This kindof appeal s enormously uccessfulin

expandinghe

spherein which she is

heard,and

yetit also

postponesthe change that lies at the basis of the enterprise tself: he emancipationof a silenced world. ubilation na moment of crisis does not arise from herecognition fthe savage and uncertain urn a course toward mancipationhas to take; tcomes either rom he relief t the end of a numbing mptinessor from he promise of what ies beyond he transformation o come.

But he essential condition fa real change, as opposed o a restora-tionor a pursuit f fantasies drawn rom n idealization fpast appearances,differs n that one cannot see past the place where a real turn comes intoview. Therefore, he first part or possibility f jubilation, hichdraws awayfrom he past at the approach of a future hat differs rom what s and hasbeen, also stands with a sharp reserve from he second, which maginesthe future. n he first,a historical onsciousness may sustain a preponder-ance of "theoretical igor" nthe process ofsobering up from he debilitatingfascinations of the past. This process is what Walter Benjamin efers oin his essay on surrealism s the "dialectics f intoxication." he impor-tance of the process, forhim, ies inthe equal critical orcea consciousness

schooled in the nature of intoxicationmay direct against he powers of fas-cination xercised by images of the future. Seduction preponderates vercritical igor f the future s dissolved nto rreality, ecause the dangers to

14. Quoted by Leon S. Roudiez n his translator's ote to Powers of Horror: n Essay inAbjection, ii,cited in Le Nouvel Observateur 19May1980).


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be negotiated are transfigured nto objects of delight or a renewed state

of intoxication. hat s precisely he fault Walter Benjamin uspects in thesurrealists, where hey "subordinate he methodical nd disciplinary repa-ration orrevolution .. to a praxis oscillating etween itness exercises andcelebration n advance."15 The equivalent ault n Kristeva may be locatedwith some precision: n her use of the word history. Just as the surreal-ists mixand confuse experiences of ecstasy and desires for emancipationto produce what Benjamin onsiders a "romantic," ather han dialectical,concept of intoxication, o Kristeva onfuses models of change in the past

and projects of change for the future. The path followedby history n theRenaissance s to be her map fora reversal f the past to make a rebirth nthe future, s though imewere as continuous nd coherent as this implicitreturn o the treasures of recollection.

The objectifying unction f literary epresentation n bourgeois his-tory rom he Renaissance on is carefully xplored n Kristeva's arly work.The beginnings f the novelare, forexample, analyzed hrough he case ofAntoine de la Sale's Jehan de la Saintre n the essay written n 1967,"LeTexte clos"

(includedin the collection

I7_bmEWTLX7,1968).The

qualitiesof a

more musical or rhythmicmedievalwriting ad, she argues, eft t stillopento a heterogeneity, nd thereby mplicitly o valorizing omen, but bythe fif-teenth century, hiswas givingway o literature hat represented he speechof the new man, he assertive anguage of a self-sufficient uthor nxious oestablish himselfas a voice of authority. he valorization f this power anddevalorization f writing s "a paradoxical henomenon hat dominates, ndifferent orms, he entire history f the novel."16 he historical weightgivenher confident dualism of speech and writing istinguishes he eager senseof imminent hange in these early essays most clearly rom he dark oneof Black Sun.

There s certainly venerable radition hat opposes speech as trueand immediate anguage and writing s mediated, ndirect, nd arbitrary.Nonetheless, he emphasis on this opposition s the ultimate eterminantof a metaphysics fauthority ooks rather xaggerated nd even dated now.We can show no natural r actual identity between that which has beensuppressed by the division of labor n the bourgeois era and the fate of"writing." onsequently, here is no reason why a politicalpolemic reval-orizing writing hould create a strategy hat could reverse he triumph f

15. Walter Benjamin, "Surrealism," n Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, AutobiographicalWritings, rans. Edmund ephcott, ed. Peter Demetz (NewYork: chocken, 1986), 189.16. Julia Kristeva, TheBounded Text," n Desire in Language, 58.


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bourgeois history. Kristeva writes that "for he phonetic consciousness-

from he Renaissance o our time-writing s an artificial imit, n arbitrarylaw, a subjective initude,"17ut he pathos of struggle s misleading fitsetsthese two ideas up as combatants ighting ut change to and fro betweenthem in the actualities f history.

The rhetoric f "HowDoes One Speak to Literature?" resents thelanguage of Finnegan's Wake as the modern redemption f writing romphonetic onsciousness. Byalienating iswork romcommunicative ormsof speech, the essay claims, Joyce not only ends the history of the novel

but starts the work of ending hat history t all levels and recovering llthatwas (supposedly) ost with this passing of the medieval world: "It ollowsthat he literary vant-garde xperience, byvirtue of its very characteristics,is slated to become the laboratory f a new discourse (and of a new sub-ject), thus bringing bout a mutation, perhaps as important, nd involvingthe same problem, s the one marking he passage from he MiddleAgesto the Renaissance'" (How, 92).18

To speak about the future s, for Benjamin, lways endangered byseduction and delusion.

Speechand

writingn

anyform can

displacethe

movement f time bythe substitution f mythology, r false knowledge, hatgives assurance where there is no knowledge. Despite the special disci-pline of "writing" hat refuses to participate n the beautiful emblances ofpleasure, he celebration f its own powers mplicit n a jubilant eading e-mains, nthe phrase Benjamin pplies o the surrealists, too mpetuous."19Benjamin loses his "Theses on the Philosophy f History" ithan approv-ing reference o the biblical an on divination: We know hat he Jews wereprohibited rom nvestigating he future. The Torah nd the prayers nstructthem in remembrance, owever. This stripped he future of its magic, towhich all those succumb who turn o the soothsayers orenlightenment."20Anunderstanding ftime and the laborofproducing hange does not comefrom a mythological each beyond he horizon of the present but from heactive application f a consciousness of the present to the appearancesof the past. He notes that the historian s "a prophet urned backward."21

17.Kristeva, "The Bounded Text," 8.

18. The quoted line she includes here is from Roland Barthes's Critique t Verit6 Paris:Seuil, 1966), 48.19. Benjamin, "Surrealism," 85.20. Benjamin, "Theses," 64.21. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften 1/3, 1235. This idea is borrowed rom FriedrichSchlegel.


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But in Black Sun, Kristeva vidently also acknowledges he effect of her

earlier desire to penetrate he future. The demonic gloom of melancholyfollows nevitably n the train of an enraptured r jubilant prophetic on-sciousness. Thus, she later turns, ike him, away from he deceptions ofmagical projection nto he future.

Today, he span of time since Finnegan's Wake o whichKristeva e-ferred n "HowDoes One Speak to Literature?" s almost sixtyyears. Thecontinued ontemporaneous resence of its language attests to a changein the meaning of its contemporaneity. n 1971,that language had been

directly ied to the active prospect of an end to the past in the general con-ditionof history: "Ascapitalist ociety is being economically nd politicallychoked to death, discourse is wearing hin and heading or collapse at amore rapid rate than ever before" How,92). But now that capitalism hasemerged nfullplanetary ossession of history, he aesthetic extrication fpoetic anguage rom he communicative orms of publicdiscourse revealsitselfas a cessation inthe process of literary istory,whileoutside hat spe-cial aesthetic domain, he arena of political, conomic, and moral iscoursecontinues ts self-assertion nd sustains tself

by providingts own

imageryand narrative epresentations hrough he consciousness industry.For this reason, Kristeva as to give up a concept of "history" hat

arises in the MiddleAges and arches over the ridge marked by ecriture opass from an old form of the subject o a new one that is to come. Whatnow becomes crucial bout he language of Finnegan's Wake s where hejourney hat falters on that high ridge does actually ome to an end. Theformsofnarrative hat, nBenjamin's mage rom he "Theses," o powerfullyorganize trings of facts "likebeads on a rosary"22 o so still n the politi-cal arena. Though ontemporary oeticprose has refused hose forms andconstructs an artful angle in the literary phere, its critical orce does notextend ar. Its primary esonance reaches, now, nto"academia," lbeit ntothose spaces in the institution hat are themselves politically solated. Thistangle appears where once an earlier academic historicism ad drawn aclear crossroads pointing nward o the future hrough homogeneous ime.The forms of argument hen still nhabiting hat older "academia" ow liveon in the consciousness industry.

The popular ersuasiveness of enchained acts rests on supposedlyscientificnecessities in the human domain, hough he unique realities ofhuman desire lie outside the sphere of causality. The split between the

22. Benjamin, "Theses," 63.


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"high" omain of poetic anguage and the "popular" omainof general dis-

course leaves a core of human ife and desire powerless o speak. Writingarticulates hat powerlessness, but only in the form of its own impotentexclusion. In Powers of Horror, Kristeva notes "how dazzling, unending,eternal and so weak, so insignificant, o sickly- is the rhetoric f Joyceanlanguage."'23

Where progress ontinues o rule he language ofsocial ransactions,and projects tself nto he same future, iterary anguage can only abstractitself from such abstraction. Yet his language becomes "more ontempo-

rary,"Kristeva nsists in

Polylogue,because it

pressestoward a

change.The direction, r substance, of this change lies in an element beyond helinguistic rocesses of "sense" hat constitute he symbolic ystem of lan-guage. This ranslinguistic xcess is present as rhythm. hus, she writes nPolylogue hat poetic anguage s "an undecidable rocess between senseand nonsense, between anguage and rhythm inthe sense of linkage hatthe word rhythm' ad for Aeschylus' Prometheus ccording o Heidegger'sreading), between he symbolicand the semiotic."24 hythm s a presenceof time set in the materiality nd corporeality f experience. It contrastswith discursive deas of temporality. he power and authority f ideas de-rive from a different orm of permanence or duration, which is preciselywhat establishes the domain of sense. Yet Kristeva annot show how therestricted xtension of rhythm hrough ime can challenge he authority frepresented deas in their own domain.

In rhythm, future s possessed in the body. As such, it may bejubilant. tmay be experienced as the ecstatic power of bodilyreality, uteven though there may be a lesser experience of reality n the realm ofideas, this is outweighed by the different nd greater power n the exten-sion of authority hrough he vastly greater duration vailable o "sense."Moreover, he larger he sphere to be occupied bythe economy of social orcultural ife,the more overwhelming he advantage of power hat accruesto the representation f ideas and to relations onstrued bytheir exchange.The abstraction hat akes hold nthe modernity ffully xtended ndustrialeconomies cannot be resisted as long as there is nothing else that canunfold nd expand o the limit f their ravenous horizons.

This presents Benjamin with he same problem hat confronts Kris-teva, which s, of course, also the problem hat runs through very critical

23. Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 2.24. Kristeva, FromOne Identity o an Other," 35.


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analysis of modernity. Howcan writing hat withdraws rom he domain of

an empty and mechanical process of history be brought ntocritical ppo-sition o its counterpart n the sphere of publicand explicit elations? BothBenjamin nd Kristeva esort o an element that is "too mpetuous" o re-main true to either the condition of modernist iterature r anything ob-servable n history.Though Benjamin alues the taboo that willnot relieveemptiness byopening he present up as a transition o the future, e insertsthe esoteric idea of a revolutionary essianism n the space left by thattaboo. Though Kristeva alues the sharply enclosed and uncompromising

language of Joyce that refuses to participate n institutionalized, uthori-tative, communicative iscourse, she nonetheless attempts o extend anexperience so specific and restricted n time as the semiotic o establishan equivalent universal dimension n that same space. It is the impera-tive of redemption hat reconciles hese alienated domains withan idea ofhistory. The element that is so impetuous n a desire for redemption eesthe present condition f the world as a rule of evil. Redemption equiresturning he world upside down and inside out, so that the unrepresentableis the real and the

marginals the source from which all

meaningslow.

But Baudelaire as identified he world of evil as a banality avingneithermargins nor center and finds the possibility f poetic language only in thecreation of an artificial margin, ike he artificial astidiousness f the dandythat he insinuates between himselfand the crowd.

Where Kristeva peaks of reality nd Benjamin ftruth, heyascribea value to the repressed hat is only accorded ts rights when it is restoredto a central position. Thus, the process of negation hat they pursue asthe political imension f modernist anguage actually everses he form ofnegation accomplished n modernist esthetics. Joyce's language s "daz-zling, unending, ternal" n halting he stream of everyday discourse andbreaking t up, just as the cubist painting f eighty years ago broke up theoptical representation f visual continuities n the world, but this does notimply any form of restoration. The freedom and strength of the work ofart vanish at once from any attempt o recuperate he work as publicdis-course, as didacticism. he productive ndowment f modernist orks indsits source in the negation of active worldly owerand derives a powerlessstrength by identifying ith he contraries f worldly ife.This correspondsexactly to what Benjamin bserves in Baudelaire: To nterrupt he earthin its course-that was Baudelaire's eepest wish. Joshua's wish. Not somuch he prophetic art of it, because he had no thought f turning tback.Out of this wish came his violence, his impatience, nd his anger; rom hat


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same source too came his constant efforts o stab the world o the heart, or

to sing it intoa sleep. By reason of this wish he also offers an encouragingcompanionship o death in the pursuit f its works" Zentralpark, 67).

The secular promise of salvation hrough progress s intimately on-nected with the history of art and literature rom the end of the MiddleAges to the beginning f modernity. hat history xtends an ever more ex-plicit epresentation f the individual, r human possessions, artifacts, ndsettings, in portraits nd narratives hat give substance to the assertiveexercise of an identity. nthe last stages of that extension, he mechanical

processes of reproduction, specially photography, ropel he work of art othe logicalconclusion of an exploration hat had its tentative beginnings nthe secularization fbeauty nthe Renaissance. The logicof representationpursued nthis history s to let the meaning fa physiognomy peak throughits appearance without iolating he optical characteristics f its presence.The image of a person in a portrait rom that tradition ubordinates herhythm fa painterly reedom of action o a discipline fappearances. Thatdiscipline willrender he mask and gesture, through which the portrayed

figure might peakas an individual

ubjectn

life,and lets the visible orm

of a face convey and enframe he nature of the speech and the acts withwhich he individual s identical.The connection between the presence ofthe image, a surface of appearances, and the originof a more permanentvalue, a depth of interiority n the psychological ubject, s what Benjamincalled "aura."

His definitions f aura are well known. He calls it "the experience ofa distance, however lose it may be,"and writes hat "to perceive he auraof an object means to invest t with he ability o lookat us in return." 5Thedisappearance faura certainly as a direct onnection withKristeva's on-cept of writing, fthis is taken as a general metaphor f a surface, a mask,that has lost the connection o a singular rue voice speaking hrough t.Benjamin uilds his idea up in the unstable persona of Baudelaire imself.He quotes Gustave Courbet's bservation hat "Baudelaire ookeddifferentevery day" and describes "Baudelaire's hysiognomy s that of a mime"(Zentralpark, 76, 672). The loss of the artist's raditional ositionas theman who mediates auratic onnections between surface and psychologicaldepth (as expressed in Baudelaire's Perte d'aurbole") an be accountedfor, in Benjamin's iew, by the overwhelming resence of mass-produced

25. Walter Benjamin, "The Art n the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," n Illuminations,222; and "On Some Motifs n Baudelaire," n Illuminations, 88.


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commodities hat have no individual haracteristics. heshock of this empti-

ness inappearances urns he artist away rommodes of meaning hat ookfor the life in the masks and leaves him the task of contemplating hemas death.

This is the "allegorical" unction of modernism n art, incapable ofholdingup a mirror o reflect he ideal ife of its society. Its material, nstead,becomes a mute world of ruins. Benjaminwrites, "The man sunk deep incontemplation ho is shocked with rightwhen his eye fallson the fragmentin his hand becomes an allegoricist" Zentralpark, 76). This art suddenly

begins to speak of its own shock, for it has discovered hat it cannot anylongergive itsvoice to the mask ofappearances. Therefore, tcan no longerclose the split between the distinctive uthor of the work and the banalauthority f the worldly bject bid or n the market.

The significance f the characteristic rtistic ctivity hat nowsuper-venes under conditions of modernity nd redefines the work of art asthe classical forms of beauty break up and are abandoned also dividesBenjamin nd Kristeva. Where the traditional isciplineof representationfalls

away,he freedom hat falls to the artist o

portrayhe arbitrariness f

formalproduction an bespeak that condition ntwo ways. For Benjamin, tturns backward n a disenchanted ook of shock at the futility f the beautythat went before. It exposes the game that had once masqueraded s thetrue voice of human ife by portraying he abstractness of all artifacts. nhisessay "TheAuthor s Producer," enjamin akes the example ofa dada "stilllife," n which discarded objects of everyday use are included withpaintedelements: "And hereby the public was shown: look, your picture rameruptures ime; the tiniest authentic ragment of daily life says more thanpainting." 6Alternatively, t can look orward s the site of a first reedom ofhuman ssence and a premonition fa revolution hat enables that reedomitself o rupture he frame and flood out into a historically ransformed orldfilledby that essence.

Though Kristeva nclines initially oward he second position, hefrailty of that power locked up within he frame puts it in question fromthe start. To Benjamin's ye, only the quite separate theological onceptof a messianic force can compensate for that frailty. n the black ight ofdepression, Kristeva ontemplates he counterillumination f atheism. Butthis, too, passes on the function of mediating between art and the socialworld o criticism,which arrives o throw ighton the text as soon as the

26. Walter Benjamin, "The Author s Producer," n Reflections, 229.


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76 boundary / Fall 995

author's aureole drops away into the street. Whereas once the effect of

framing stablished a privileged ie of aesthetics that might peak in larger,mythic erms or he audience, nowthe work of art stands coldly hadowedby a wall refusing he audience its seductive desires to possess the poetas their own more exalted reflection. Baudelaire's raternal eader sharesin the poet's reduced aspiration hat only knows an exalted role nthe formof hypocrisy.

Kristeva islikes what Baudelaire's lace in literary istory uggestsabout he importance f framing ffects that he achieved by strict orm,but

her own productive ctivitieshighlight he dependency of modern iteratureon the institutions f criticism hat also establish the special place of anartistic ext or artifact hat cannot operate hrough he luxurious means ofhigh formal order. This recognition f her own place brings her closer toBenjamin's iew, as her practice of critical eading ails to bring he vitalityof writing ny closer to real presence. Criticism oices the truth hat arisesout of the insignificance f art, acknowledging hat "beauty s an artifice; tis imaginary."

ThoughBenjamin

maybe correct o reprove he surrealists or con-

fusing the jubilation f aesthetic experience with the triumph et to bereached n a historical edemption, oth he and Kristeva iskprecisely hesame mistake rom he other ide, as critics. The role ofactivating rt npoli-tics and history by a theoretical mediation equires he work of transvalua-tion only,"thus pening he way orphilosophers r semioticians" How, 8).Yet philosophical r semiotic reading an onlydemonstrate hat under con-ditionsof modernity, he position fpoetic anguage outside communicativediscourse s its sole constitutive meaning.

What urned iterary modernity way from he model of authority naura was not onlythe evident ailure fone distinction, he artistic chieve-ment of an image that ruly aptured he deep autonomy f the subject, butalso its replacement y another, he image that now refuses to let distancemaintain he illusion f depth. And o this corresponds he shift n the ideaof what is "heroic" n the artist. Benjaminwrites of the "mark f heroism nBaudelaire: o live in the heart of the unreality of appearances)" Zentral-park, 73).The creative giant ofthe Renaissance, whose stature mpowershim o reach nto he distant origins of the autonomous pirit, ives way tothe figurewho endures he impoverishment f the spirit, nflicted hen truthgoes out of the world and leaves a ruin behind or a mere fragment n theartist's hand. This is what connects the different ituations of Baudelaireand Nietzsche, n Benjamin's erspective: Baudelaire's eroiccomposure


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could be closely related o that of Nietzsche. Even hough he held on to his

Catholicism, isexperience of the world emains precisely nstep with hatexperience whichNietzsche captured nthe formula: God is dead" Zentral-park, 676). The failure f the distinction hat raises up one class of imagesas the appearance hrough which ruth peaks leaves another measure ofartistic uccess in its stead, the truthfulness f an eye that can look on theworldwithout rawing istinctions n a universe of untruthful ppearances.

This does lifta boundary o let the discredited margins ostle andmock the dignified enter, but only in the aesthetic realm and not in the

space of discourse. Thus, Kristeva xaggerates the case when she saysestablished orms of communicative ower n the institutions f the publicdomain "no onger command attention" How, 2). There, he truth f factsand the truth of ruling nfluences continue o sustain both a political ndsocial mythology. hisappears nthe "low" omains of images marketed osustain that sphere, from which he "high" rt of heroic modernism wouldwithdraw ompletelywere it not also disseminated n the marketplace.

In Black Sun, Kristeva as recognized hat even when narrative r

pictorialllusion s

gonefrom he work of art, the semiotic unctions do not

fill t up with iving eality. orus, the experience mediated bythe work f artremains, as before, ied to the condition f the artifact. The active energythat produced t does not have the capacity o reach across the frame andlift either the maker or the contemplating erson from isolation. It is, inKristeva's ords rom BlackSun, "no onger ibidinal. t s already detached,dissociated," nd, likethe image of woman or Baudelaire, ithas alreadyintegrated he traces of death." With he last measure of distance gone,approach o artistic epresentations o longer offers alselywhispered nti-mations f love and survival.But,as before, he sounds we mighthear whenwe let them "bewitch s" in the momentary hrall f longingdo not speakfromany heart but are part of "an artifice" n the composed surface.

Here we come equally o the mature prose of Joyce and the verseof Baudelaire. Howcan one expect to transform he text and its paragramsinto a heartfelt all of erotic connections? Baudelaire an onlydraw on theimage of the harlot n order to cancel everything. Finnegan's Wake hascollected everybodywithin he equality fa destruction wrought n the lan-guage of literary radition. he whore becomes the representamen f allrelations nd appearances orBaudelaire ecause she stands allegoricallyfor all that need never be listened to. Since she is simultaneously om-modityand purveyor n one, what she says is not real speech but doublylost. Benjamin oints out that even though Baudelaire moves the figure of


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the whore o the center of his stage, he does not interferewith he conven-

tion of her speechlessness: "Baudelaire everwrote a poem about a whorefrom he point of view of a whore" Zentralpark, 72). But in this, he con-veys the point of view of modern aesthetics altogether. t s a point of viewthat knows dentification ith what it contemplates nlyas the collapse ofidentity nd is inseparable romBaudelaire's eroicheartlessness, iving tthe heartless heart of unreality.

The fear ofpleasure hat ies Benjamin o the messianic dea appearsina secular ormas Kristeva's ttachment o an idiom f general command,

appearing most recentlyn

the abstractionsfclinical iscourse.

As her an-guage becomes simpler, ess writerly, ts tremors do grow more seductive,and also more ike peech, but t returns o an older voice that stillargues orpleads for that most terrible onging-for the assent of others-that drawsus out into the marketplace. Her anguage still rembles with horror t theunruly akedness of a private hearing and the heterogeneous response ina tongue that escapes the discursive rame of public olidarity o open upa different ife ar rom hat heroic solitude of public greement we mistakefor ourselves.

Andwhat distinguishes ur ime as a hundred ears frozen n a soli-tude of unchanging modernity s that it cannot arrive at a renewal out ofitself and become the mother of its own redemption, hough t "seems tohave, for a century now, gone into unending abor pains."The dream of aRenaissance continues o be swept away into the future, ike Benjamin'sAngelof History, nd persists as longing nd fascination: The nchantmentwillhave to wait orsome other ime,always and forever."27

In Black Sun, however, he backward aze of the historian akes inthe spectacle of Benjamin nd Kristeva's wn earlier writing s well: "Toposit the existence of a primal bject, or even of a Thing, which s to beconveyed through and beyond a completed mourning-isn't hat the fan-tasy of a melancholy heoretician?" Black Sun, 66). The labor of writing,a productivity hat has no power of redemption, s discovered now to havedisplaced he absent maternal meaning. Desire has proved once again tohave transferred ts libidinal nergy to its own image: "The Western sub-ject, as potential melancholy eing, having become a relentless conveyor,ends up a confirmed ambler or potential theist."The game, the contest,is played compulsively, r without ope. "The nitial elief" na renewal hat

27. Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 3.


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writing was to have prophesied and brought o birth gives out. The text turns

"stylistic performance" nto the vehicle of its other side, what the game itselfconstructs as a substitute. The chance is lost because what is "primal" nd"other" n the text is accounted "less important han the success of the textitself" (Black Sun, 68). And thus, she leaves no doubt that, here, to win is tolose-even to lose the remembrance of what might have been ours to win.

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Bullock Kristeva