-
Allegories of Reading
---Figural Language / I
inc R~ietzsche, Rilke, and Proust \ ( 9 \ . {,--- : l -~ ~ (.
'-( n l ;. I ",, \_A,
,_.,./ ~ ' f ....
Paul de Mal)j C"',-..._ .} . ' . I (1 l J '' cAQ/--- ' ''
'U-iv.J-:> ~--\ ~ '~~t- 20 J,--~
I~ l /) .... I New Hav~n and London Yale Umversity Press
') .._1
c - --,
-
Published with assistance from the Kingsley Trust As-sociation
Publication Fund established by the Scroll and Key Society of Yale
College.
Copyright 1979 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This
book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted in Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) ,
without written permission from the P.ublishers.
Set in Zapf International type. Printed in the United States of
America by The Murray Printing Company, Westford,
Massachusetts.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
De Man, Paul. Allegories of reading.
Includes index. 1. French literature-History and criticism.
2. Rousseau, jean jacques, 1712-1778-Style. 3. German
literature--History and criticism. 4. Figures of speech. 5.
Allegory. I. Title. PQ145.D45 809 79-64075 ISBN 0--300--02322-7
ISBN 0--300--02845-8 (pbk.)
11 10
Quand on lit trap vite ou trap doucement on n'entend rien.
Pascal
-
~ f
I
1.~
~-:r 12 Excuses
\
(Corwessions)
l./e ;v~) '\2.-C.-
-
t\
"' ,.,
'\ \
. ._/
"
c ~ou
__.,-' . < to the fullness of a self-accusatiOn whose candor
we are never sup-posed to suspect: "I have been very thorough in
the confession I have illaae,aild iteould certainly never be said
that I tried to conceal the blackness of my crime" (86). But it
does not suffice to tell all. It is not
IJ enough to conftss, one also h~s to exc"Use: ''But (would not
fulfill the purpose ofthis booK. ifi did not reveal my inner
sentiments as well, and ifi did not fear to excuse myself by
me~p~what confo.2:...11}.S.to-
( the truth" ("que je [ne] craignisse de m'excuser en ce qui est
con-forme ~ la verite" [86, my italics]). This al~o happens, it
should be noted, m the nam_s: of truth and, at first sight, there
should be no
I - -- - . "' - -con~i~ween conf~ssion a~d ex:_use. Y~~he
1a-ng~~- rev~-~~ ~nswn m thmpresswn~ cramdre ae m 'excuser. The
only thmg one
hasta-fea1 fi om t~atifWTI1-i!llieea exculpate the confes-sor,
thus making the confession (and the confessional text) redun-dant
as it originates. Qui s'accuse s'excusf!i this sounds
convincing
\ and convenient enough, but, in terms of absolute truth, it
ruins the seriousness of any confessional discourse by making it
.rl.Gdgs.t.m&-.. thre . Since confes~i;;n is not a rep:;-wtion
in tnGa~ of pract~ justice but exists only as a verbal utterance,
how then are we to knowthatwe are!ndeeo"Clealing-with- a true
confession, since the reGogniti6i1 Of guilt implie~ i ts
exonerati;n in the name of the same transcendental principle of
truth that allowed for the certitude of
1 guilt in th_e first place? --- - T;fact, a far-; eaching
modification of th~ or~izing _principle
of truth occurs between the two sections of the narrative. The
truth in whose name the excuse has to be stated, even at Rousseau's
as-
1\, sumed "corps defendant," is not structured like the truth
principle that governs the confession. It does not unv~~-oLh~t
,-. states a suspicion, a possible discrepancy that might lead
to an im-possi0ili1y to know. The discrepancy, of course, is
between the "sen-timent interieur" that accompanied (or prompted?)
the act and the
I act itself. But the spatial inside/outsid. e metaphor is
misleading, for it articulates a
gifferent!tio.u..thaLiSJlQ.!_J,Eatial at all.
Th"'e"disfffic-tieR---bctween the confession stated in the
mode-ofreveaied truth and the
'( confessi?n stated .i~1 th~ ~od:J:f exeusejs_ that t~~
evid~ns;~_fu!:.Jh.e.___....-1 former IS referentiai-(ihe nbbon),
whereas the eVIdence for the latter
1 carrOnly be verbal. Rousseau ~om-;ey'hi~ "in-;;;feel:Ing' ...
ttn1soruy
/ i~, his word for ~whereas t~e for his ~ft is, at least in
t~_le2...Whether we bel1evef1im
L c.
J 3. '"Ql.~ is so even within the immediate situation, when no
actual text is . t r.c-l lur~._,____
that was somehow (and this "how" remains open)
-;;nnecteerwrrmr.-Moreover, it believes that the-fact :ma tlie
leelfng are- nor the -same. (j 1 Thus to complicate a .Q.tct
certainly is: to act. The difference between ,. ~ the verbal excuse
and the referential crime is not a simple opposition between
~_9ction and a mere utterance about an action. To steal is to ~d
include's nonecessa ry Verbal ere'inerits.~ To confess is dis- C
ciir'sWe.,-but- the discourse -1s.governea by a rinciple of
referential
verificatio~ that includes an extraverb~Y mo~;;;-t: eve n 1f we
c~ tfiat wesard something (as4~posedt;did): t'il'everificaflon
oltnis verbal event, the d"E"Cision -about .the.Jr:vih or falsehood
of its occur- 1
~nee, i~ot ve.:_~al b~t ~actual, the knowl;{jge
th;ti'he-Utterance , < actually too"Kplace. No such lJns-s-ibili
ty of verification exists for the
~, excuse, which is verbal in its utterance, in its effect and
ih its author-ity: its purpose is not to state but to convince,
it'~lf an "inner" process to which only words can l?~aJ_witness. As
is well knowrrat-l-east..s-inc~l '!rrlstitV--excuses--an:-a'complex
instance of what he termed perform-
present. Someone's sentiments are accessible only through the
medium ofmiU:i_siY\ of gestures that require deciphering and
function as a language. That this deci-phering is not necessarily
reliable is clear from the fact that the facial expression of; say,
a thief at the moment he is caught red-handed is not likely to
weigh heavily as evidence in a court oflaw. Our own sentiments are
available to us only in the same manner.
4 . See, for example,.). L. Austin, "Performative Utterances"
and "A Plea for
-
282 KUU~~I:ri\.U
ati;ve utterances, a variety of speech act. The interest of
Rousseau's
( text is that it explicitly functions performatively as well as
cogm-~tively, ana thus gives indications about the structure
ofperformative etoric; this is already established in this text
when the confession ls to close off a discourse which feels
compelled to modulate from e confessional into the apologetic mode.
5 Neither does the performance of the excuse allow for a closing
(
off of the apologetic text, despite Rousseau's plea at the end
of Book II: "This is what I had to say on this matter. May I be
allowed never to mention it again" (87). Yet, some ten years later,
in the Fourth Reverie~ tells ~e story all over again, in the
context of a meditation-ttmr11asto do~e possible"t"'excusability"
of lies. Clearly, the apology has not succeeded in becalming his
own guilt to the point whePe he would be allowed to forget it. It
doesn't matter much, for our purpose, whether the guilt truly
relates to this particu-lar act or if the act is merely made to
substitute for another, worse crime or humiliation. It may stand
for a whole series of crimes, a general mood of guilt, yet the
repetition is significant by itself: what-
Excuses," in Philosophical Papers, ed. ]. 0. Urmson and G. ].
Warnock (Oxford, 1961). .--.---- -
5. ~~lyvay_~fdealing with t~ recurreo~ttern in Rousseau's
writings is by stressing the bad faith of his commitment to a
morale de !'intention , fhe ethical stance for which he wa~ taken
severely to task by Sartre. In his commentary on the passage,
Marcel Raymond, though less severe, takes the same approach: "By
reveal-ing his 'inner feelings' ['dispositions interieures'] which
were good . . . it apR~a]]> that after having stigmatized his
misdeed he gratlually begins to justifY it. The same gliding-ana
swerving motion can be observed more than once . i~ the
Conftssions, especially when Rousseau accounts for the abandonment
of his children. He is always led to distinguish the intent
from-the-a.t'' (1273-74). It can, however, be shown that Rousseau's
ethics is muctl r ather a morale de pratifJue than a morale de
]'intention, and that this analysis therefore does not account for
the genuinely pre-Kantian interest of his ethica l language and
theory. 'The extensive possibilities of bad faith engendered by the
distinction between the actual event and the inner feeling are
abundantly present throughout Rousseau, but they don't govern the
mo~ puz-zling and interesting movements and coinages ofthe text.
Whether the link between
'- "inner" feeling and "outer" action can be called intentional
is precisely the burden of the interpretation and cannot be
asserted without further evidence. If we are right in saying that
"qui s'accuse s'excuse," then the relationship between confession
and excuse is rhetorical prior to being intentional. The same
assumption of inten-tional apologetics, controlled by the narrative
voice, underlies the recent readings of the Confessions by
Phillippe Lejeune in Le pacte autobiographifJue (Paris, 1976) and
"Le peigne casse," PoetUjue 25 (1976): 1-30.
ever the content of the criminal act may have been, the excuse
pre1 \ sen ted in the Conftssions was unable to satisfy Rousseau as
a judge 2fJ Jean-Jacques. This failure was already partly inscribed
within the excuse itself and it governs its further expansion and
repetition.
Rousseau excuses himself from his gratuitous viciousness bJ'
identifYing his inner feeling a_s shame about himself rather than
any hostility_ tQwards his. victim: " ... the presence of so many
people was stronger than my repentance. I hardly feared punishment,
my only fear was shame; but I feared shame more than death, more
than the crime, more than anything in the world. I wished I could
have sunk and stifled myself in the center of the earth:
unconquera-ble shame was stronger than anything else, shame alone
caused my impudence and the more guilty I became, the more the
terror of admitting my guilt made me fearless" (86).
It is easy enough to describe how "shame" functions in a context
that seems to offer a convincing answer to the question: what is
shame or, rath_eG_~hat is one ashamed of? Since the entire scene
.stands under the aegis of theft~ it hasto do with possession,
and
I desire must therefore be understood as functionini;'afleastat
times, as a desire to possess, in all the connotations of the term.
Once it is ~moved from its legitimate owner, the ribbon, being in
itself devoid of meaning and function, can circulate symbolically
as a pu~e _ sig-nifier and become the articulating hinge in ~chain
of exchanges and pCYssessions. As the ribbon changes-hands it
traces a circuit leading to the exposure of a hidden, censored
desire. Rousseau identifies the desire as nis desire for Marion:
"it was my intention to give her the ribbon" (86), i.e., to
"possess" her. At this point in the readrn suggested by Rousseau,
the proper meaning of the trope is clear enough: the ribbon "stands
for" Rousseau's desire for Marion or, what amounts to the same
thing, for Marion herself.
Or, rather, it stands for the free circulation "of the desire
b~tween Rousseau and Marion, for the reciprocity which, as we know
from ]J.Llie, is for Rousseau the. vecycondi_tion oflove; it stands
for the substitutability of Rousseau for Marion and vice versa.
Rousseau de-sires Marion as Marion desires Rousseau. But since,
within the at-mosphere of intrigue and suspicion that prevails in
the household of the Comtesse de Vercellis, the phantasy ofthis
symmetrical reciproc- \ 1 ity is experienced as an interdict, its
figure, the ribbon, has to be 1 : stolen, and the agent of this
transgression has to be susceptible of being substituted: if
Rousseau has to be willing to steal the ribbon,
1 '
-
G
\ '
\ "
\~ .li'
\
then Marion has to be willing to sul;?stitu_te for Rousseau in
perform-ing this act. 6 We have at least two levels of substitution
(or displace-
[' m~ faking plac~: t!:~ rii:>bon sub_sti~ting for
~sire.which i~ itself a desire for substitutiOn. Both are governed
by the same desire for specular symmetry wtrieh gives to the
symbolic object a detectable, univocal proper meaning. The
sysie.Ill-wor.ks: "I accused Marion of having done what I wanted to
do and of having given me the ribbon because it was my intention to
give it to her" (86). The substitutions (h--;;;e taken place
without destroying the cohesion of the system, l reflected in the
balanced syntax of the sentence and now under-standable exactly as
we comprehend the ribbon to signifY desire. \s~ular figures of this
kind are metaphors and it should be noted
that onthisstill elementary l~eTo:fjmderstanding, the introc!_u~
of the figural dimension in the text occurs first by ways of
metaphor.
f1e_~ll~~~~1is metaphor, revealed in- the ''confession" of
!ROusseau's desire for Manon, functions as an excuse if we are
willing I to take the desire at face value. If it is granted that
Marion is desir-
able, or Rousseau ardent to such an extent, then the motivation
for I the theft becomes understandable and easy to forgive. He did
it all out oflove for her, and who would be a dour enough
literalist to let a little property stand in the way of young love?
We would then be willing to grant Rousseau that "viciousness was
never further from me than at this cruel moment, and when I accused
the hapless girl, it is bizarre but it is true that my friendship
for her was the cause of my accusation" (86). Substitution is
indeed bizarre (it is odd to take
' , a ribbon for a pe;son) but since it reveals mofives, causes,
an desires, the odditY is quickly reduced back to sense. The story
may be a rebus or a riddle in which a ribbon Ts ""ill-ade t~
signifY a desire, but the riddle can be solved. The delivery of
meaning is delayed but by no means impossible. - - -
This is nof the only wa , h in which ~ Desii~i possession allows
for the al -important introduc-tion ffioural displacement: things
are not merely what they seem to be, a ribbon is not just a n on,
to steal can be an act oflove, an act performed by Rousseau can be
said to be performed by Marion and, in the proc~ss, it becomes more
rather than less comprehensible, etc. Yet the text does not stay
confine-d WiThl.n-Ulispattern of desire. For
:'! G. It is therefore consistent that, wh~ei ~k~vould say: ' je
ne voudrois pas etre a votre place" (85). -
_j
EXCUSES (CONFESSIONS) ..ooa
one thing, to excuse the crime of theft does not suffice to
excuse the worse crime of slander which, as both common sense and
Rousseau tell us, is much harder to accept. 7 Neither can the shame
be ac-counted for by the hidden nature of the desire, as would be
the case in an oedipal situation.8 The interdict does not weigh
very heavily and the revelation of Rousseau's desire, in a public
situation that does not allow for more intimate self-examination,
hardly warrants such an outburst of shame. More important than any
of these referential considerations, the text is not set up in such
a way as to court sympathy in the name of Marion's erotic charm, a
strategy which Rousseau uses with some skill in many other
instances including the first part of julie. Another form of desire
than the desire of possession is operative in the latter part ofthe
story, which also bears the main performative burden of the excuse
and in which the crime is no longer that of theft. ~--
The obvious satisfaction in the tone and the eloquence of the
passage quoted above, the easy flow of hyperboles (" ... je la
crai-gnois [la honte] plus que la mort, plus que le crime, plus que
tout au monde. j'aurois voulu m'enforcer, m'etouffer dans le centre
de la terre ... " [86]), the obvious delis!2.!_ with which the
desir~
to~j.Qg_!~vealed ,_~!Lp.o.tnt to an~ther s~ii~-= , I than mere
possessiOn and mdependent of the par:ticular target of 1 the
c.lesire. -One -is more ashamed ~fthe exposure of the desire to
expose oneself than of the desire to possess; like Freud's dreams
of ~kedness , shame is primarily exhibitionistic. What Rousseau
reglly wanted is neither the ribbon nor Marion, but the public
scene of ~~I11Cl1neactually gets. 'fhe faCt that he made no attempt
to \. eonceal the evidence confirms this. The more crime there is,
the ! more theft, lie, slander, and stubborn persistence in each of
them,
e better. The m ore there is to expose, the more there is to be
a~hamedOf;-the--~exposure, the mor~ satisfYing the scene, and,
especially, the more satisfYing and eloquent the belated
revelation, in the la ter narrative, of the inability to reveal.
This desire
7. "To lie for one's own adva ntage is deceit, to lie for the
benefit of another is fraudulent, to lie in order to harm is
slander ; it is the worst kind of lie" (Fourth Reverie, 1029).
8. The embarrassing story of Rousseau's rejection by Mme. de
Vercellis, who is dying of a cancer of the breast, immedia tely
precedes the story of Marion , but nothing in the text suggests a
concatenation that would a llow one to substitute Marion for Mme.
de Vercellis in a scene of rejection.
-
I:'
......
7 J
"uti .,., - ,f(!} vl f' 9 ,1. 1 ::o-rJ KUUI;I;.t;Au --- , :: . /
r-0") ..
[ is 1ruly shameful, for it suggests that ~~rion was destroyed,
not for the sake of RousseaU's saving face, nor for the sake of his
desire for her, but merely in order to provi9e him with a stage on
which to
jparade his disgrace or, what amounts to the same thing, to
furnish l.---hJm with a good ending for Book II of his Confessions.
The structure
, ' ~-s self-perpetu~tmg, en CiEfme,- a_s- is implied in its
description as exposure of the desire to expose, for each new stage
in the unveiling
suggest~?._ a deeper shame, a greater impossibility to reveal,
and a ;.r~facti~!1 in outwitting this jmposibillty. -- \. , The
structure of desire as exposure ratherthan as possession \ explains
why shame functions indeed, as it does in this text, as the
most effective excuse, much more effectively than greed, or
lust, or .., love. ~omie )s .:Oleptic, J:>u.!._ excuse is
bela!ed and always occurs 'J after the C!:_ime; s.ince the_5.~ime
is expos~re, the ~xcuse co~ists in ' .'\ recapitulating the
exposure intli:e gmse of concealment. The excuse is a ruse which
permits exposure inthe name of hiding, not unlike-Being, in the
later Reidegger, reveals itselfby hiding. Or, put differ- ,
,..,.
1 ently, shame used as excuse permits repression to function as
revela-l tion and thus to make pleasure and guilt interchangeable.
Guilj_is r{fOrgl\ren because it allows for the pleasure of
revealing its repn~S';;ion.
It follows that re2ressi~m is in fact an excuse, one speech ~ct
among 1 others. - -- ~
"+--.,. ~@f'&-fur-t-her-pessibi-Hties...Ibe analysis of
shame as ~ excuse makes evident the strong link between the
performance of '-j excuses and the act of understanding. It has Ted
to the problema tics ", Qf hiding and revealing, which are
g~J'_P-f.9b~~.~~ Excuse occurs within an _e.pistern0logical
twilight-..zane......be_tween Q)
1 ~~ng:f_~ot-~wingikthis is also why it has to be centered on
the crime of lying and why Rousseau can excuse himself for
every-thing provided he can be excused for lying. When this turns
out not
1 to have been the case, when his claim to have lived for the
sake of truth (vitam impendere vera) is being contested from the
outside, the closure of excuse C"qu'il me soit permis de n'en
reparler jamais") becomes a delusion and the Fourth Reverie has to
be written.
The passage also stakes out the -l~ofhow ffiis understcrfiding ~
of understanding then is to be understood. For the distinction
be-tween desire as possession and desire as exposure, although it
unde-
\ niably is at work within the text, does not .tructure its
maiQ..JJJ.Q.Ve-\~t2t could not be s~id,_f~r i!:lsfanC! , that the
lat~r q~Qns.tructs . ' t,!1e former. Both converge towards a
unified signification, and the
1 shame experienced at the desire to possess dovetails with the
deeper
.. ~..) ~ {'>)~ ~ ~(;'!~ \
EX\CUSES (CONFESSIONS) , ,, jl.' ) \'~ , , ,r I' " '
'v "1$7
-
shame felt at self-exposure, just as the excuse for the one
conspired ~the exc~or the otl1er'inmutua!__:e_i1_2_forcement. This
implies --J
t~at the mode of cognition as_hidingb:_e~~~:_~ fundamentally
akin ~o th~ mode of cognitiQn as posses~ioE_ and t~at, at
leasf!Jp"fill this
, poi~ t_Q.}>now and to own are structured in the same way.
Truth is a-J)rOperty of entities, and to lie is to ~I, like
Prometheus, this truth
a~om its owner. Int.Fi'ede~sness ofthe excuse pattern, the lie
is made kgftimate, but this occurs within a system of truth and ,
fa.lsehood th~!-~~g~_:I_2.ts ~alorization but not in its \'
~e.1T also implies that the terminology of repression and \'
exposure encountered in the passage on shame is entirely compatible
with the system of symbolic substitutions (based on encoded
sig-nifications arbitrarily attributed to a free signifier, the
ribbon) that govern the passage on possessive desire (''je
l'accusai d'avoir fait ce que je voulois faire ... " [86]). The
~~rhetoric of the passage; whose ungerlying metaphor, encomp.ssing
both possession and ex-~-is....that of unveiling, combines with a
generalized pattern of
(
t~opoiC2g!c;al substitution to reach a convincing meaning. What
seemed at first like irrational .behavior bordering on insanity
has, by the end of the passage, become comprehensible enough to be
ins:Q!:-p_grated within a generaL
ec.QQQillJLDf1lllrnau._aifr.lli;ity, in a theory of desire,
repression, and self-analyzing discourse in...wllich excus~
and_lg10wledge converge. Desire, now expanded far enough to in-~
elude the }}iding(re_veaTing movem~ of the u_Dconscious ~-well as
}
possession, functions as t he cause of the_~ntire scene (" ...
it is bizarre but ~ fnendship f~r her was the cause of my
. accusations" [86]), and once this ?esi~~ has bee1;._made
t~2.ear i!Y\ 1/\\\ ali_its complexity, the action is understood
and, consequently, , II\ e~~for itwas primarily its incongruity
that ~~.2:_givable.
Knowledge-;-morality, possession, exposure, affectivity (shame
as the \ ~ synthesis of pleasure and pain), and the performative
excuse are all ~ ultimately part of one system that is
epistemologically as well as i l ethically grounded and therefore
available as meaning, in th~g1.900 I - --\ of ~d~sta_nding. just as
in a somewhat earlier passage of the Con-
fessions the particular injustice of which Rousseau had been a
victim becomes, by metaphorical synecdoche, the paradigm for the
univer-sal experience of injustice,9 the episode ends up in a
generalized economy of rewards and punishments. The i1~jury done to
Marion is
9. See the episode of Mile Lambercier's broken comb i!l Book I
of the Confes-sions, especially p. 20.
-
~- (l...lL\ KUU~I::')I::.t-t.U {j(}Y''/;
~ompensated for b~ the subsequent suffering inflicted on
Rousseau y nameless avengers acting in her stead. 10 The
restoration of justice aturally follows the disclosure of meaning.
~e&-the_e~j ,, . u~e fail and why does Rousseau have to return
to an enig.~t has ~ een so- well resolved? -we~have, of course,
omitted from the reading the other sentence in which the verb
"excuser" is explicitly being used, again in a some-what unusual
construction; the oddity of "que je craignisse de m'ex-cuser" is
repeated in the even more unusual locution: ' ~Je m'excusai sur le
premier objet qui s'offrif' ("I excused mysplf upon the first thing
that offered itself' [86]), as one would say ' ~je me VE'ngeai" or
'je m'acharnai sur le premier objet qui s'offrit."'' The sentence
is
(inserted, it is true, within a context that may seem to confirm
the coherence ofthe causal chain:" ... it is bizarre but it is true
that my friendship for her was the cause of my accusation. She was
present to my mind, I excused myself on the first thing that
offered itself. I accused her of having done what I wanted to do
and ofhaving given me the ribbon because it was my intention to
give it to her ... " (86). Because Rousseau desires Marion, she
haunts his mind and her nam~ i~-prono.2;1Eced almosLun_IUN:SJ \..-'
.:;o"
part she is made to play in the subs~~l}t system efi!}~
dl'f1eren::tsys'te~-in~wliic1i sucn"rerms as desrre;Shame, guilt, ,
' I exposure, ,aQd repressiOn no longer have any place. >-
;- _}1 _!h;;~JDLuUhtiext,. QJ]eshould resist all temptation to
gi~~ .( any significance whatever to the sound "Marion." For it is
only ifthe
(
b act that initiated th~ntire chain, the utterance o. f the
sound "Ma.r-ion," is truly without any conceivable motive that the
total arbitra.ci;-~ ~ .. -- '""'' _ _,_.... ness of the action
becomes the most effective, the- most efficacious!~ ~----- -
-
':) \. V'>' \ ' ~
the meaning, the readability of the apologetic discourse, and
reopens ---rafthe excuse seemed to_ hav~~losed offJ!-Iow are we to
under_..D stand-the-implications of this sentence and what does it
do to the very idea of understanding which we found to be so
intimately b~und up with and dep_:~dent upon _!he perfQr_mative
fupctjon i~elf? \
Tbe question takes us to the Fourth Reverie and its imlicit
shlti
\1
~. from repo_:ted guilt to the_ guilt_o(repo.r:tmg,~~nce here
the lie is no --;-lj iiri"ger connOCt~e former misdeed but
specifically with the \I act o~iting the Confossions and, l;>y
extens!g[J.,~hvri:tiftg+-QL
- course, we always were 1i1the realm- of writing, in the
riarraf!ve of the Confessions as wen
as-irrthe-.Ri!7erte,t5lift'h~iwtion .. o:f..thi fact is now
explicit: what can be said al5Ci'i:i'tthe interference of the
cognitive with theperformative function of_ excuses i~ the Fourt.
-Reverie will disseminate what existed as a localized disruption in
the
_vyith t~e complicity of the casual,
ambli~g,_andfr~e-associating _ J \.f Confossions. - ---..__,_ - --
_.._..r ~-~~ess. Cast in the tone of a pietistic self-examination,
it sounds 1 '\i I mode of the Reverie, the text atl
-
. "'>
lY I
I'
\
,.-./'
\'\ ,(
4'
U" and to call them lies would be, in Rousseau's words, " to
have a
'ConscienceTiiat is more delicate than' mine" (1030). The same
para-- --...
graph call..s~these weightless, airy non-substances fictions:
'\-vhatever, albeit contrary to truth, fails to concern justice in
any way, is mere
{ ~0on , and I c_o~fess that ~omeone who_ reproach~s himself ~or
a L~fiction as If It were a he has a consCience that_I more
delicate
~mine" (1030). Wharmakesancflcir1a -fi~tic";"n is not some
polar-ity of fact and representation . Fiction has nothing to do
with repre-~entation but iS" the abse~ce of any link between
utterance and a j referent, regardless of whether this link be
causal, encoded, or gov-
v erned py any ot~er conceivable relatio_g~hip that could leRd"
itself t9--s.ystema tization. In fiction fhli'SCOnceived
the-conecessary link" of the metaphor has been metonymized beyond
the point of catachresis, . _ and the fiction becomes the
disruption of the narrative's referential \
1,' illusion. This is precisely how the name of Marion came to
be uttered
in the key sentence in the Confessions: ']e m 'excusai sur le
premier 1
oqjet qui s'offrit," a sentence in which aQJ-_authropomorphic
conn~. ]_ation of seduction implied by the verb "s'offrir" has to
be resisted if
I the effectiveness of the excuse is not to be undone and
replaced by the banality of mere bad faith and suspicion. Rousseau
was making whatever r~jseJ:!?ppened to com e into his head; he was
saying no-
_).bing at all, leas_t_of_alLsomeone's name. Because this is the
case the I . statement can function as excuse, just as fiction
functions as a~ 'f._ excuse for the disfigura tions of the
Conftssions. . __:__ It will be objected tha t ficti"on in the
Reverie and the denunh !/ ciation of Marion~ miles apart in that
the_ former is without ~ ~ consequence whereas tEe 1atter results-
in considerable damage to
1 ' others: Rousseau himself stresses this: "whateveris
cor-1trary to truth 1 \' a~hurts justice in an conceivable way is a
lie" (1030), and also ...._. \
"the absence of a purposefully ar ntent -dues not suffice to "
... .1 make a lie innocent; one must a lso be assured that the
error one ""'
' inflicts upon one's interlocutor can in no conceivable way
harm him ~ or anyone else" (1029). But the fiction , in the
Confessions, becomes"-. j liar~mfu l only because i ~ . is
not~~n~~rstood for wha~is~b~c~use the-\ fictional statement, ""ITS
It generates tbe syste!11'"'Uf"Shame, desrre, and
): repression we described earlier, is a t gnce caugh!_ ;~md
enm~ in a
':eb_ of c~uses, significations , and substitutions.~[ the_
essen ti_Ql J10i1::-srgmficatwn of the statement had been properly
mterpreted, rf Rous-se;m's accusersh"ad realized that Marion's name
was "le premier
H oqjet qui s'offrit," they would have understood his lack of
guilt as well as Marion's innocence. And the excuse would have
extended_
'-
\ "'"""'
"'"'
' r ) \ f'{!V.r
..._,11
from the slander back to the theft itself, which was equally
unmoti- 1 .. .., vated: he took the ribbon out of an unstated and
anarchic fact of
Jl ~ pl'bximity, without awaren~iili pf 9ny l~w of ownership,
Not the 11 f\ ' \ fiction itself is to blame for the consequences
but its falsely referen-
''- 1 tial reading. As a fiction, the statt:;_ment
js_inn~C}l.QYS and the error ) harmless; it is the misguidedreading
ofthe error as theft or slander,
t) t~fliSal to 'cldmit that fiction IS ficfion, the SfUOOOrnr
esistance -fO /l the "fact," obvwus 6y rfSe1f;lnaf1anguage is
entirely free with regard y ct.
to referential meaning and can po-sifwhatever its grammar
allm~i?_it to r-~ sa~f;;~;tg_ the transformation of random error
into inju~ti~e> ", The radical irresponsibility of fiction is,
in a way, so obviol:!_S, that it 0 seems hardly necessary to
caution aga-inst its misreading. Yet its
( assertion, within the story of the--eonfessions, appears
paradoxical ~End far-fetched to the point of absurdity, so much so
that Rousseau's / vf . own text , against its author'~ interests,
p~e~ers being suspected of!~ ~ 1 , and slander rather than of
mnocently lacking sense. It seems to be --:-o ' esBiblrtorsolate
the moment in whicn the fiCtion stands free of ., ''; my
si_g::~cation; in the ve~o:r:_e&a"C~]iich it is positea! as
w~ll as '.;) ) in the contexf fhat it generates, it gets at once
misinterp~eted into a \) determination which is, ipso factO,
overdetermined. Yet w1t1iout this l) 11 ,. moment, never allowed-to
e xrs! a~-su~,n9 su]:Ii llllng as a text is c~ \conceivable . We
know this to be the case from empirical experience " - as weT!:
iTis always possible to face up to any experience (to excuse) ) any
guilt), becaus-e the experience always exi~ts sim_!-!ltan~c:_msly
as
:(ic.ti.ouaLdis.c~ and as emRirical _~~en~nd it i~ never
possible t?_.j Q-ecide which m_:e _?f the two_possibilities ~the
~ight one. 'fhe indeci-siarr-m.akes 1tpossible to excuse the
bleakest of crimes because, as a fiction, it escapes from the
constraints of guilt and innocence. On the j other hand, it makes
it equally possible to accuse fiction-making which, in Holder lin's
words;Is-'~1he mo~t innoc~~t of all a_ctivities," of Ill-being the
most cruel. The-Kilowledge_ of radicaLinn.o.c.ence also per-~e
harsiiesl ""1nutilations. Excus~s not only accuse but they c;rry
out t he ~ictimplicit-iH ~~he~usation.
This other aspect ~se i~l nveyed by the text of the Reverie,
though necessarily in a mo~lique nner. In telling / ar\,other
instance of a situation in which he lledouf of shame-a less ""'
interesting example than the ribbon, because ther s nothing
enig-
"' K\.._\ \mati
-
I ~
~
lr_))
- ..
...
)
-
lf )
.)
""' --.
\ 0(\1'
r \~
~lolb ;;; ;/'C' l ... n..vu.::t-3t . .r\.u
to be incurable an the protl1esls only serves .!_o...222_ark
this fact more \ strongly. The accus tion t ~over the
cntir;;:'"Fourth Reverie -m;-d against which the excuse tries to
defend itself seems to have to
I) d~-a fnrea} ofte;,:t_ualmu-ti~~.tJ_o.:_1,_ itselfl .. i~ke~
to the organic and totahzmg synechdoc.al language by means of wlll_
\1
c,
insanity iS ready tbsUfface- in any context of anxiety about
truth and falsehood_ -I
-
- ~ \
.f
298 J ~ J ?' ):\ wu"""'w
~uld be even easier to excuse him for not having included them
'~ ~ to :xcuse ~im fm _the superfl_uous ornaments he added to the
\' ... ~ ollectwn of his happier memones. --- ~~!\!elY are these
narratives t~r_ratenin_g;? As instanc24s of Rousseau's generosity
they are, as we alrea_ciy pointed out, more
i~ than con"!_ncing. They seem to exist ~25im _ ily for the_sake
of_ l~mutig!fcills they describe. But thes~ actual~ mutilations lw
m, tn theic iilln, to be there moc_e .or th.oE._gf a11ow;'l!l_
f!':e ~ '>', evocation of the machinethat causes them ih'l!l.for
their own shock ,...,_ .~ Rousseau lmgers complfcently~~T t~e
descri2tion of tl_::e 7{
' machine that sedu_ces_ ~im into dangerous~ose contact: "I
looked at the metal rolls, my eyes were attracted by their polish.
I was tempted to touch them with my fingers and I moved them with
~
f pleasure over the pohshedsllrface 6fthe-cylinder ... " (1036).
In the ~ 'general economy of the Reverie, the machine displaces all
other sig-
'v nifications and becomes the raison d't~tre of ~_!ext. Its
power of \ 1 ~~ suggestion reache.s far beyond its illustrative
puspose, especially if y /1 ~e bears in _m.i.nd the previous
chara~teriz_ation _?f ~nmotivated, ) 1
, fictiOnal language as "machi!:al." The underlying structural
patterns of addition a~pression as well as the figural system ofthe
text all converge trvards~) Barely conceal~d by it_s periphe~al
f~n~~o~he l
t~ here~g;s _!!}e _textual 1_31~c~I~e o_~s own ~Itutwn and _.._.
perrormance, Its o~ textual allegory. The threatening eleme !.hese
incidents then ~c~mes more apparent. The text as body, with all its
implications of substitutive tropes ultimately always retrace-=-
able to metaphor, is displaced by the text as machine and, in the
process, i~-the lc:ss ofthe illusion of meaning. The
deconstrue==
I tion of the figural dimension is a process that takes place
indepen-~ntly of any desire; ~s su::h it is not ~ncon;;-~io~s bu~
IT:echa~ical,\ f. systematic m itsperformance but arbitra m Its
Q.QnCIle, 1IRea grammar. T is threatens the autobiographical
subject not as the lo~s 'l'~ing that o.nce was present-and tha:t it
once possessed , ~as ..
a radical- estrangement between the meanmg and the performance
of any text.- -- - -- ----- -- 1
--=--In order to come into being as text, the referential
function had to be radically suspended. Without the scandal of
random denuncia- ,.,.
{tion of Maricm-, -without. the "faits oiseux"~f the
Confts~ions, ther~ \ f c~uld not have been a text; there would have
been nothing to~excuse \'~ 1 sm~e everything co~ld have !::_een_
~xplajned a~ay by the cognitive "
logic of understandmg. The cogmtwn would have been the
excuse,
-'
1 '\."SV """...J \) .
)
'\
\ (' ai~d this convergence is precisely what is no longer
conceivable as \ sdon-aslhe metaphorical integrity of the text is
put in question-;aS ' - -- - -
f~ seemg language as an instrume~ ii1Tiie service of a psychic
energy, the possibility now arises that the entire construction
of
\l soon a-s ihe text is said not to be a _flgural body but a
machine. Fa1
, 1 drives, substitutions, repressions, and
....:::=presenta~ions is _ _.!_he aber-~ 1 rlint, metaphorical
correlative of the absolute randomness Of1an-
\ guag~ to any figuration or meaning. It is no longer certain
that 'language, as excuse, exists beZa~se of~ prior guilt but just
as possible that since language, as a machine, perform$ anyw~y, we
have to p~t.im:!Q all its train of psychic consequences) in order
to make the excuse meaningful. Excuses generate the very
gullfli1ey
Axonerate, though always .in excess or by default . At the end
of the Reverie there is a lot more guilt around Than we !-lad at
the start: Rousseau's indulgence in what he calls, in another
bodily metaphor, "le plaisir cfecrire" (1038), leaves him guiltier
than ever, but we now have also the two companions of his youth,
Pleince and Fazy, guilty ~ault, brutality or, at the very best, of
carelessness. 19 Additional
\ guilt means additional excuse: Fazy and Pleince now both have
to \
\ apologize and Il_lay, for all '~e know, have written
m~vin?_!exts_?-bout_
~!.. qreadful thmgs they did to jearr-jacques who, m his turn,
now as to apologize for having possibly accused them arbitrarily,
as he ccused Marion, simply because their names may have happened
to occur to him for the least compelling ofreasons.20 No excuse can
ever hope to catch up with such a proliferation of guilt. On the
Other hai1d, any guilt, including the g~ilty pleasure of writing
the Fourth
I Reverie, can always be dismissed as the gratuitous product of
a text.ual grammar or a radical fiction: there can never be enough
guilt around to match the text-machine's infinite power to excuse.
Since ~il_h in this description, is a cognitive and excuse a
performative function oflanguage, we are restating the disjunction
of the perfor-
19.~escription of the .way in which Fazy i1~ured Rousseau
is-ambiguous, \ since the narrative is phrased in such a way that
he can be suspected of having done it with deliberation: " . .. le
jeune Fazv s'etant mis dans Ia roue lui donna un demiquart de 1our
si adroitement qu'il 1;'y prit que le bout de mes dem,: plus longs
doigts; mais e'en fut a~sez pour qu'ils fussent ecrascs ... "
(1036). ---\
20. For example, the f~ct that their names may have come to mind
because of the
