Derrida, Jabs, Levinas: Sign-Theory as Ethical Discourse Author(s): SHIRA WOLOSKY Source: Prooftexts, Vol. 2, No.

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SHIRA WOLOSKY
Derrida,

Sign-Theory

as Ethical Discourse

Jabes, Levinas:

The spirit is free in the letter. p. 102 Writing andDifference,

AS THE WRITINGS OF JACQUES DERRIDA have become central to

our thinking about language and literature, the question of Derrida's relation to Judaism has been repeatedly raised. Certain facts prompt the is an Algerian Jew by origin and passages in his works question: Derrida has written recall Jewish images from his upbringing. Also, Derrida Emman two Edmond and French about Jewish writers, Jabes admiringly in and the whose works uel Levinas, Judaic sources Judaic component

are paramount. The more substantive reason is less explicit. Derrida's work is a defense of writing against its subjugation to the spoken word. is fun The disparagement of writing and books, according to Derrida, to to Western seeks liberate the word, the culture. Derrida damental to demonstrate that writing pro sign, from this dependence, to establish a vides the structure of reality, and, programatically, a "science of writing before and in speech," that is, grammatology. Because Judaism has endowed writing and books with immense author of almost ity and has at times viewed the written word as possessed as a magical powers, the issue of Judaism and specifically the Kabbalah written thought has naturally arisen. is not an easy one to define. What Derrida writes concerning Levinas and Feuerbach applies no less to his own relationship to Judaism: "We are speaking of convergences and not of influences."1 The relation
vol. 2 PROOFTEXTS pp. 283-302 0272-9601/82/0023-0283 $01.00 ? 1982 byThe Johns Hopkins UniversityPress

source forDerrida's

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284

SHIRA WOLOSKY

Derrida's grammatological system seems to have been initially deve an out of loped independent desire to undertake a critique of certain a consciously Hebraic element does assumptions. When metaphysical enter Derrida's work it is through hints in Glas and the Grammatology and more expressly in the essays on Jabes and Levinas inWriting and Difference. But even Derrida's appeal to these authors comes, in a sense, after the fact. He turns to explicitly Jewish authors to confirm concep tions towards which he was himself already working. The convergence, are drawn to therefore, only goes so far. Both Levinas and Derrida Judaism as a system that posits the ultimacy of writing, the letter, the book. For Derrida, this is a point of departure for developing a position that views writing as liberated from its theological moorings. For Levi

nas, writing, as it ismodelled on Torah, becomes the basis for generating an ethics which orders the relations between the self and the other. Where Levinas adheres to rabbinical and kabbalistic traditions, Derrida diverges, and what Derrida thereby leaves behind can usefully serve to some the of and limitations of the Derridean claims help identify system. In this paper I shall first review the substance of Derrida's indictment of the Christian metaphysics ofWestern philosophy and his counterthesis of the trace, and then discuss the Judaic elements in Jabes and Levinas that were sought out by Derrida, and, finally, attempt a characterization work to a Judaic worldview.

of the true attitude of Derrida's

asserts, not only is derived signifies it. This structure, Derrida from, but reproduces, onto-theological i.e., the metaphys assumptions, ical assumptions of Greek ontology and Christian theology. Derrida describes this metaphysical of being and of system as a philosophy realm is posited as the locus of truth, with presence. An ontological in this realm. Such participation is meaning determined as participation which made as, logos. In terms of sign possible through, and is expressed Derrida demonstrates that the "signified" face of the sign cor theory, to in the which have access to a "transcenden mind, responds thoughts

Derrida's for signification different attempt to construct a model from the conventional one?which leads him towards Hebraism?begins with a critique of Saussure. Saussure had proposed the sign as a relation between a "signified" and a signifier," a meaning or idea, and the form

assumes

special proximity to the logos: "Within the logos, the original and essen tial link to the phone has never been broken."2 The logos itself is con ceived as ontological, and voice has a direct relation to it. Logocentrism "an absolute proximity between voice and being" (OG,

tal signified," the realm of being and of truth, through and as logos. The the signified to its "signifying" face, which gives to logos then mediates it concrete shape, and remains joined to it as the structure of the sign. In this structure, voice is given a privileged status. The voice has a

12).

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Derrida,

Jabes,

Levinas:

Sign-Theory

as Ethical

Discourse

285

Thus,

(OG, 29). The unity between sound always accidental and derivative" can voice exist theoretically without writing. and signified, and sense, a Writing here is "mere translation of a signified which would remain spoken in its integrity" (OG, 10). The integrity of the signified as spoken not only can dispense with writing; writing represents a breach of this integrity. It represents a "fall of the signified into the exteriority of a signifier of speech, while speech thus becomes meaning." Writing remains identified with the signified "sense" or idea, and thus with the a distinction between is based, Derrida speech and writing on is It derived from the distinction asserts, assumptions. metaphysical the sensible and the intelligible which onto-theology between posits. in the intelligible realm of being, while the The signified participates Such and sensible realm. These signifier remains confined to the mundane are in distinctions reflected sign-theory, where the sign is conceived as
logos.

the phonic signifier is considered to be immediately related to the in turn opens participation in the signified through the logos, which realm of truth. Writing, in this system, is redundant and secondary to speech. With regard to the "immediate and privileged unity of sound and sense, it is

sensible and the other intel "bipartite and involves both aspects?one the signifier and the signified" (OG, 13). ligible, or in other words, Derrida cites this Jakobsonian definition of the sign, and explicates:

The difference between signified and signifier?the very idea of the sign? cannot be retained without the difference between the sensible and the able to "take place" in its intelligibility, before its"fall," before any expulsion
into the exteriority of the sensible here below. (OG, 13) intelligible, but also not without retaining . . . the reference to a signified

the very structure of the sign is derived frommetaphysics, which the intelligible realm as logos and as being. Once such a realm is in it or exclusion from it is posited, the possibility of participation the former possibility. The phonic opened. The signified represents Thus, posits signifier, too, participates with the signified through the logos. The logos itself retains a mediating position: "The signified has an immediate relation with the logos, and a mediated one with the signifier" (OG, 15).

if the phonic signifier remains within this mediated structure, the as is it excluded from and external. separate signifier Derrida further relates the structure of the sign, and its underlying to Greek philosophy and to Christian theol assumptions, metaphysical as in rooted classical ogy ontology: written The difference between the signified and the signifier is rooted in the
in a more epoch the resources explicit of Christian of Greek and more creationism systematically and infinit (OG, 13) of metaphysics, and history to the narrower articulated way ism when these appropriate

But

conceptuality.

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286

SHIRA WOLOSKY

(OG, 15). In Glas, the relation of logos to Christ ismore fully developed: "God is the contents in the form of the logos."3 In this form, God is made present toman. The logos, as the son of God, serves as a "passage of the infinite to the finite, the finite to the infinite" (Glas, 39). The structure of filiation is one inwhich the finite is joined to the whole the infinite accessible and opening the possibility of infinite, making union with it.The sacrament of communion celebrates this possibility. in divinity as In sharing the body and blood of Christ, man participates presence and as being, "To think being as life in the mouth, this is the

The logos, within this structure, has a decided similarity to the Johan nine Word made flesh. In the Grammatology, Derrida describes it as the it began as the spoken/thought sense" "logos of a creator God where

logos" (Glas, 84). This is an ontological relation, for in it different enti asserts that it is the very form of the ties are joined. Indeed, Derrida relation: ontological The Father is the Son, the Son is the Father, and theWesen, the essence, the
essential Christian energy of this copulation, The spirit its unity. of Christianity . . .This is the essence of the communion. is, moreover, the revela

tion of the essentiality of the essence which permits ingeneral the possibil ityof copulating in the is. (Glas, 67) to man in Father as presence and as being becomes manifested Christ. And Christ, as logos, allows man access to the "spoken/thought The
sense" This of a "creator is, as Derrida God." demonstrates, the very structure of sign-theory.

The

"voice of being" (OG, 20). Thus, the signified thought is identified with the logos; the logos, with the transcendental signified. In the same way, man as an entity participates in the logos-as-Christ; the logos-as-Christ manifests God the Father. The logos serves as the copula or link uniting these separate entities. It,moreover, corresponds on the one hand to this Christ, and on the other hand, to the sign itself. Derrida makes correspondence
That which

signified thought in the mind is identified with the "signified con cept in the element of ideality," that is,with the "transcendental signi in the fied" (OG, 20). The transcendental signified itself ismanifested "The thought of being, as the thought of the transcen logos-as-voice: dental signified is manifested above all in voice," in the logos as the

explicit
man

in Glas:

discovers

in his own

ing relation, isGod as his father. Truth thus comes into theworld
of the filial rapport. designation . . . truth as filiation which the . . .The sign which this spirit constantly repeats,

proper

name,

in his most

appropriat

in this
of sign.

designation this is the

(Glas, 92) and man-as-entity, between God-as-entity "sign" here mediates man. same to In truth the sign mediates accessible the way, making The between the signified (transcendental

and finite) and the signifier, as

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Derrida,

Jabes,

Levinas:

Sign-Theory

as Ethical

Discourse

287

the avenue of meaning. And just as the logos is identified with voice, so the phonic sign. The phonic sign is joined with the sign is preeminently the signified, the intelligible face of the sign, and in turn refers to the logos (Son) of the transcendental signified (Father): As the face of pure intelligibility, it refers to an absolute logos towhich it is immediately united. This absolute logoswas an infinitecreative subjectivity in medieval theology. The intelligible face of the sign remains turned toward theword and the face of God. (OG, 13) This sign-as-logos only finally has a relation to the written signifier, the sensible and concrete, which remains after and outside its spoken unity. The structure of the sign is, then, theological, and specifically,

is then "wed indissolubly to the in the logos, the voice, which (OG, 11). This wedding of the mind to the voice corresponds to It is, in each case, an ontological of the soul in Christ. the wedding a derived from marriage, philosophy of being and of presence. Within being mind" to the intelligible this philosophy, speech is privileged as belonging an itself The realm, category. ontological phonic sign is the "non non-exterior, non-empirical mundane, signifier" (OG, 8), inwhich the is As transcendent realm made present. such, the phonic sign represents the world of spirit. Writing, on the other hand, remains excluded from this union with the intelligible realm. It is the sensible, mundane signi fier. In short, it is the flesh. The letter is then more than redundant, the sign of a sign. It represents the world of the flesh, of sin:

The union of the mind and the transcendental Christological. signified through the logos as phonic sign reproduces the structure of filiation and of communion. The transcendental signified is made present as

As the eruption of the outside within the inside, breaching into the inte riorityof the soul, the living self-presence of the soul within the true logos,
writing inscription, and matter is a sort of stain been and always to spirit, external has . . . the letter, Writing, considered tradition by Western sin to breath, to speech, and the as sensible the body (OG, 34)

to logos.

The disparagement of writing inmodern linguistics thus reflects what, in a theological sphere, is designated as the fallen, material world. The ontological relation between soul and logos in turn has ethical in the Grammatology, gives particular attention to implications. Derrida, the idea of the voice in the mind as conscience, as the presence of the divine voice to our inner sense." This is identified with the voice of God "carries in itself divine law" (OG, 17). Here, inscription is a metaphor "full and truthful inner voice which

not physical, sensible as divine law. Derrida

the inscription of for that which is voice but rather for the of conscience inscription, further: explicates

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288 There

SHIRA WOLOSKY is a good and a bad writing:

in the heart and the soul;

the good and natural

the perverse and artful

is the divine
is technique,

exiled in the exteriority of the body. (OG, 17) The

inscription

which

"good" writing is the voice of God which, speaking through the logos, enters into the hearts of men. Medieval theology referred to it as a "system of signified truth" (OG, 15). It is not inscription in a literal sense, but in a spiritual sense. The "bad" literal writing is excluded from this spiritual relation. It is the letter which killeth, rather than the spirit is essentially Pauline. The letter giveth life. The distinction written "writ while the the law, represents speech represents spiritual ing" of grace:

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faithwithout the deeds of law. (Romans 3: 27)
For ye are not under the law, but under grace. (Romans 6: 14)

Foreasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ minis tered by us, written not with ink,but with the Spirit of the livingGod; not in tables of stone, but in the fleshly tables of the heart. And such trust have
we

of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. (2 Corinthians 3: 3-6) the spirit of God inscribed in the heart is elevated above the law, faith above deeds, soul above body, spirit above letter. objective second terms; spirit, Writing remains a metaphor for all the unredeemed a metaphor for all the redeemed first terms, identified with the voice as assertion that the "problem of soul and body is no logos. Derrida's it seems? from which doubt derived from the problem of writing its borrow (OG, 35), strongly suggests a metaphors" conversely?to In Paul,

through

Christ

to God-ward

. . .who

also

hath made

us able ministers

Pauline context. The relationship between speech and writing accepted hierarchy in by modern linguistics finally reiterates an onto-theological a meaning is to concrete and which the excluded from secondary in determined the transmundane. As against conventional sign-theory, Derrida proposes a theory of eminent In this theory, not speech, but writing, becomes the pre linguistic sign. And this in turn implies a process of signification in terms of the phone of oral radically different from that posited trace not The of the does speech. theory deny a relation between signi into fied and signifier, seemingly freeing the sign from its "meaning" limitless ambiguity. Rather, itdenies that there is a "signified" separable the trace.

the interaction of concrete, inscribed "signifiers" or traces, each of which means only within this concrete system of interplay. Each means what it does, in fact, through its difference from all the concrete "signifiers"

from a "signifier." The "signifier" becomes instead an inscribed trace or in any way written sign, which does not merely convey a meaning as an its is "form." "idea" outside existing Meaning generated through

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Derrida,

Jabes,

Levinas;

Sign-Theory

as Ethical

Discourse

289

around

Y together constitute an articulated order. Insistence on the preeminence of writing entails an insistence on from the con the impossibility of separating any supposed "meaning" crete system of inscribed signs themselves. And the whole world of can thence be described as a written text, constituted of such meaning
concrete signs:

identity of each sign is determined by its distinction from from the all other signs?an identity which can never be separated system which the signs together constitute. These interlocking identi it is not Y; but X and ties together generate signification: X isX because it.The

. . . covers in general the entire field of linguistic In that writing signs. . . . ordered a sort of instituted then field a certain appear signifiers may by even are certain "written" if with other instituted?hence relationship they sign "phonic"?signifiers. outside The

Ifwriting signifies inscription and especially the durable institution of a

the possibility of writing and outside of itshorizon. Quite

. . . the world as a space of inscription, as the opening

very

idea

of

institution?is

unthinkable

before

simply, that is,

to the emis

sion and to the spatial distribution of signs, to the regulated play of their differences, even if they are "phonic." (OG, 44) is a "space of inscription:" any and all "signs" which signify in any way take their place in this space?and hence are "written," even are if uttered. Their inscribed, meaning as signs depends not they or on any "spiritual" "idea" which the breath of speech significance could embody. Rather, their meaning as signs depends on their interre The world

confusion. The trace suggests inscription. It suggests the identity of is inscribed as a relation to what it is "not"?to all the other what inscribed traces surrounding it, and to the whole system as one in which it is inscribed. The trace further suggests the source or derivation of this inscribed system, which, in this theory, is no longer posited as an ontological realm. Indeed, the derivation of this system cannot be con as "ideas" ceived as ontological, as a realm of "being" inwhich meanings reside separable from the signs which trace them, which themselves articulate meaning. Rather, that source is an ultimate Other, an Other

in its spatial field, and is defined as distinct from all other inscribed signs. Meaning from the mutual positing of each proceeds such signifier by every other, unfolding in an articulate system. is problematic in that Retention of the term "signifier," however, a a assumes distinction between itself and "signifier" "signified" which no longer has a place in this system. The term "trace" dispels this tributed

lation with all other signs?"the regulated play of their differences"?in a "spatial distribution." There is then no "signified" realm, but only "signifiers." These are significant, not in terms of any meaning beyond the system of inscription, but in terms of each other within it. Each itself as different from the other signifiers dis "signifier" articulates

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290

SHIRA WOLOSKY

than-all-being, standing in ultimate difference from the traces which is never itself similarly stand in otherness from each other. This Other signified. But from it all signification proceeds: The concept of the graphe implies the framework of the instituted trace, as the possibility common to all systems of signification. The trace,where the relationship with the other ismarked, articulates itspossibility on the field of the entity,which metaphysics has defined as the being-present starting from the occulted movement of the trace. The trace must be thought
the entity. But the movement of the trace as itself self-occultation. When the other produces before necessarily announces is occulted, itself as such, it

itpresents itself as the dissimulation of itself. (OG, 46) trace

a dialectic in which revelation and concealment each other. The movement of the trace "produces itself mutually posit as self-occultation," as itself the It dissimulation itself." of "presents remains concealed, but reveals itself as a trace, as a movement which institutes meaning-as-inscription. The other remains distinct from the it traces. is But the itself not present, other, although inscription attested by its traces. attempts to describe

entirely present. The trace indicates the other, but never reveals it fully. This relation of other to trace defies the logic of traditional meta other. It strains the physics, which cannot conceive of a non-ontological as is limits of philosophical in metaphysics, which rooted language, insists and as this passage Derrida demonstrates. But the passage

remains beyond the world of beings and which is not an entity itself, not a being or a presence. This other, indeed, remains hidden, occulted. But it is not merely absent, for it is felt through its trace. Nor is it

is the framework in which all meaning takes place. This is framework instituted "on the field of the entity," in the world of marks a relationship with "the other," which beings, of presence. But it The

Although conventional between

as system cannot be said to derive inHebraism in the resemblance sign-theory derives onto-theology, structures is his thematics of the trace and certain Hebraic Derrida's

two points of influence moves our world," states the and Derrida's "Violence essay on epigraph opening Metaphysics," in its difference from onto-theology, Levinas. Hebraism, Emmanuel provides a stance for a radical re-vision of Hellenic assumptions. And to this stance Derrida has an access not entirely coincidental: between these

startling. From his preoccupation with writing, through his notion of inscription as the trace left by the occultation of the other, Derrida's constructions evoke Judaic echoes and kabbalistic meditations. That this should be so has its own inner logic. "Hebraism and Hellenism?

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Derrick,

Jabes,

Levinas:

Sign-Theory

as Ethical

Discourse

291

InAlgeria, in themiddle of a mosque

synagogue, the Torah, once taken out

that the colonists had changed into a

from behind the curtains, is carried

in the arms of a man or child . . .The childrenwho have watched the pomp of this celebration, perhaps dream of it long after, of arranging there all the . am I doing here? Let us say that Iwork at the bits of their life . . What
origin of literature by miming it. (Glas, pp. 268-69)

hints at the sources of his own enterprise. The similarity between Glas, in which multiple discussions typographical appear simultaneously on each page in different scripts, and the Talmud, is clear. And the mimicry goes further. The origin of literature, and concern. Here he suggests that literature as originary, remain Derrida's serves as his model. Indeed, there ismuch in common between Torah In this Glas text, Derrida his own notions of the text and traditional notions of Torah. Writing, he asserts, precedes speech, language, and even reality. Jewish folklore to Torah. is replete with parables that ascribe such precedence In one two the Talmudic thousand before heaven and the earth, years legend, the Torah was created, "written with black fire on white fire;" God, when Such he resolved to create the world, first "took counsel with Torah."4 lore is far from esoteric. The Sayings of theFathers, too, declares: "The Lord possessed Torah as the beginning of his way, before his works, from of old." is not only named Scripture, in its preeminence, tions. It is also infinite, inexhaustible, immeasurable. cited in the Grammatology itself: the first of crea This concept is

Rabbi Eliezer said: If all the seas were of ink, and all ponds planted with reeds, if the sky and the earth were parchments, and if all human beings practised the art of writing?they would not exhaust the Torah I have the sea by thewater removed by a paint brush dipped in it. (OG, 16)
learned, just as the Torah itself would not be diminished any more than

is

which

In this parable, the Torah is presented not only as inexhaustible, but as to it. Derrida is subordinated that the world of such importance the difference between the status of the book as presented emphasizes here and itsmore common status as the "book of nature." The image of nature as God's book typically presents the book as a figure for nature, remains the subject of the metaphor. The book is the secondary and modifying term. Here, however, it is nature which modifies Torah, the subject and focus of the parable. The book does not describe nature, nature describes the book.

Within the parable, nevertheless, the precedence remains figurative. on the other hand, seems to grant to writing a literal prece Derrida, dence. This is given a particularly radical expression inWriting and Differ where he asserts ence,

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292

SHIRA WOLOSKY
is in all its parts a cryptogram is a Grammar; and that the world that Being or deciphering; or reconstituted to be constituted inscription poetic through

that the book is original, that everything belongs to the book before being and in order to come into theworld. (WD, 76) This assertion of the text as world (rather than the world as text) inDerrida's essay on the Book of Questions of Edmond Jabes. The is con is instructive. The work of Jabes, like that of Derrida, cerned above all with the written text. Jabes, too, makes of the text the "The book is my universe, my country, my roof and my universe: enigma."5 To live is to take one's place in a book; existence is "an inter rogation of signs," for Jabes as for Derrida. But for Jabes this world of and as the book is explicitly the world of Judaism, of "a race born of the book inwhich the past and continuity are merged with that of writing." Questions is, in great measure, a dialogue among Rabbis, Jabes' The Book of a reenactment of sacred texts?texts which are described as the Judaic patrimony: "The native land of Jews is a sacred text in the midst of the appears context commentaries

which it has inspired."6 Derrida accepts that for Jabes this "literality" situates the Jew. "In question is a certain Judaism as the birth and passion of writing" (WD, 64). But Jabes' concern does not stop with writing as primary. Itmoves as "negativity in God, into further themes which Derrida designates to be exile as writing, the life of the letter," and which he pronounces resonances "Jabes is conscious of the Cabalistic "already in the Cabala." consciousness which Derrida of his book" (WD, 74), writes Derrida?a shares, and which can be applied to his own work as well. Jabes' path, which Derrida also follows, leads into the kabbalistic world of linguistic claims for grammatological primacy open into an mysticism, where

extensive and radical system. Even within rabbinic Judaism the extreme centrality of Torah had in its assertion as the foremost creation and the ulti found expression mate source of wisdom. In rabbinic Judaism, as well, there appear certain a creative force. According mystical conceptions of the divine Name as name "it is this which brought about the creation, or to the Midrash, the creation is rather the creation is closely affixed to the Name?i.e., came in turn to be This Name contained within its limits by the name."7 as the the letters of associated with Torah text, and finally, as the states: "Bezalel of creation. The Talmud (the builder of the to the knew how letters, from which heaven Tabernacle) put together were this lettristic conception created."8 With Nahmanides, and earth a in In his introduction to his com received Judaism.9 prominent place on reiterates that the Torah "preceded Torah, Nahmanides mentary "letters" of the world." He continues: "We have yet another mystic tradition that the whole Torah is comprised of Names of the Holy One, and that the letters of thewords separate themselves intoDivine Names when divided in a different manner." The mystics whom Nahmanides creation

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Derrida,

Jabes,

Levinas:

Sign-Theory

as Ethical

Discourse

293

here cites had

in fact elaborated the early traditions, to become preoc as not with letters cupied only comprising Torah as/and Divine Names but also as constituting reality itself. The act of creation came to be described as a process of writing, and the created world, an inscription. In such terms, the biblical verse "And the earth was void and without form" is explicated
of the pen?in

in the Zohar:10 were the dregs of ink clinging to the it

no subsistence, until the world was

This describes the original state?as

point which there was

graven with forty two letters, all of which are the ornamentation of the Holy Name. When they are joined, letters ascend and descend and form crowns for themselves in all four quarters of theworld, so that theworld is established through them, and they through it. a certain analogy between such expressions, creation and Through is revelation established. As Gershom Scholem explains, "the process of in creation is not different from the process that finds its expression inwhich the divine divine words and in the documents of Revelation, language is thought to have been reflected."11 Jabes' Book of Questions similarly asserts a certain equivalence between the divine name, the book, and the world. "If God is," Jabes writes, "it is man and insects because He is in the book. If the sages, the saints, . . . exist, it is because their names are found in the book. The world exists because The

more

the Grammatology. "The book is not in the world, but the world in the book" (WD, 76), he writes in the former. In the latter, he asserts "There has never been anything but writing" (OG, 159). InWriting and Difference, the religious echoes are more overt. Thus, while Derrida however, in both works between his own book of nature and its distinguishes typical context: "To nature often it is because in Writing and Difference he names its theological usage, even if Being is not the created be is to-be-in-the-book, called the Book of God during theMiddle Ages. 'IfGod is, He is in the book'" (WD, 76). And within a kabbalistic seem less enigmatic. In terms of statements Derridean context, many the letters of the divine Name as constituting both Scripture and crea tion, it can indeed be said: "Everything enters into, transpires in the book. This iswhy the book is never finite" (WD, 75). Language, and

the book exists, because existence is growing with its name."12 equation between book and world, with its clearly kabbalistic over tones, is adopted in turn by Derrida, both inWriting and Difference, and in

especially writing, acquires an ontological status, such that "every act of ... at once an act of writing." For the letters are the "signs speaking is of the divine in all spheres and stages which the process of creation
passes

of creation as lettristic in turn comes to imply a particular conception of the relation between creation and its Creator, and finally, of the Creator Himself. This involves a notion of divine The conception

through."13

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294

SHIRA WOLOSKY

void of the circle."14 Jabes here undoubtedly invokes the Lurianic myth of creation, inwhich the projection of language as world is preceded by a withdrawal of God into himself, so that the divine essence becomes contracted and occulted. Without this contraction or self-limitation there "would be no cosmic process, for it is God's withdrawal into Himself that first creates a primordial space . . . and makes possible the existence of something other than God."15 This process was further in the infinite and described through lettristic imagery. The movement unnameable Godhead is
source movement. the original of all linguistic in which, in an extremely remarkable speech versa. from comes . . .The ... way, It is the actual the writing?the

In The Book of Questions, Jabes projects negativity, separation, occultation. an image of God as letters encircling a hidden or absent center: "At the sources, there is language. God is a round of luminous letters. He is each of the letters of His Name. He is equally the middle which is the

original hidden

Torah,

signature of God?precedes
and final analysis, not vice sequence

the act of speaking. With the result that, in the

of writing, in a deter

into being from the sound-evolution combination of letters was issued movement/716

mined

this original

like Jabes, suggests this Lurianic framework inwhich creation Derrida, is inscribed in the space opened by divine withdrawal, while the God head itself remains hidden beyond this space. He declares "a rupture within God as the origin of history," and continues: God separated himself from himself in order to let us speak, in order to astonish and to interrogate us. He did so not by speaking, but by keeping
his voice silence letting interrupt . . . starts with but already His, certainly, of his Face." dissimulation (WD, 67) still, by and the . . .Our signs stifling of his voice his writing, and the

The withdrawal

the "pathway of God" and the "trace of steps," Derrida's final term falls into place. The trace invokes the Godhead and asserts its hidden nature. The pathway of letters attests to the divine activity, but the Godhead from the work it created and posits it as also distinguishes that work. beyond

into itself as the original movement of of the Godhead an and still center from which unnameable creation, and the positing of in Jabes, and in the proceeds writing as world, concurs in Derrida, Lurianic Kabbalah. When Jabes adds, inwords which recall the Zohar (which opens: "At the outset the decision of the King made a tracing in that the letters leading to an empty center the supernal effulgence") constitute

essay on Jabes clearly projects a relation between Derrida's scheme and those found in kabbalistic writings. There grammatological the the problem of specifically defining Derrida's remains, however, Derrida's

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Derrida,

Jabes,

Levinas:

Sign-Theory

as Ethical

Discourse

295

matics

concerns himself with the meta like Derrida, Levinas, structures and articulates linguisitic presuppositions underlying physical as distinct from Christianity. these as they function within Hebraism Derrida's critique of Levinas, in turn, suggests distinctions between his and those of a more traditional Judaism. system nuel Levinas.

of the trace as against the conventional sign-theory he criticizes, and finally of defining it as against the kabbalistic structures it suggests. relation to Emma Both of these problems are illuminated by Derrida's

not by relation to some relative term."17 This other is, according to since it is totally other from all that Levinas, never directly knowable, can be known. It is experienced only indirectly, by its passage or trace. in beholding He derives the term "trace" from Exodus, where Moses, God's

is at the himself refers his "concept of the trace to what Derrida Levinas and his critique of center of the latest work of Emmanuel the work then cited, (OG, 70). "The Trace of the Other," ontology" as an is notion which the God other of "absolutely other, and develops

glory, could not sustain the sight of the divine face but only its back as the divine glory passed by. Of the biblical text, Levinas writes: . . . conserves all of the "The revealed God infinity of his absence. He does not show himself except by his trace, as in Exodus 33."18 Levinas further distinguishes between this notion of God, which he describes as Judaic, and philosophies which base a relation to the abso to the self:19 lute on its resemblance As opposed to the philosophy which makes of the self the entrance into the realm of the absolute and which announces, according to the word of Plotinus, that "the soul will not go towards anything other than itself,but
rather could towards not itself," . . .

tion with Him Whom

itself exist."

the soul can never contain and without Whom

Judaism

teaches

us a true

transcendence,

a rela

it

to the other is not based on identity, but on difference. It the recognition that the self and the other are unlike. Levinas that the concept of the other is not ontological. The other is emphasizes not an entity, and is "totally beyond being, totally other than being."20 The realm of being is instead the trace of the other which remains The relation demands beyond being. Derrida similarly insists that the thematics of the trace is not onto is not It is, rather, founded on a logical, posited in being or presence. movement of erasure, occultation, and absence, which he carefully dis tinguishes from classical ontology:
The

the logic of identity.The trace is not only the disappearance of origin, but means that the origin did not even disappear, that it was never constituted
except origin. by non-origin, From then on, the trace, which thus becomes trace the origin of the to wrench the concept of the from the classical

concept

of the arch-trace

...

is contradictory

and not

acceptable

within

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296
scheme, trace which would derive indeed

SHIRA WOLOSKY
it from speak a presence of an originary or from an originary non or arch-trace. Yet we

. . . one must

trace

know that that concept destroys its name and that if all begins with the trace there is above all no originary trace. (OG, 61) Whereas in the classical scheme, origin is seen as proceeding from pres This contradicts ence, from being, origin here is seen as a disappearance. the "logic of identity." But the origin of the trace cannot be expressed as an identity. The trace refers not to a being, but to an other, not to a presence, but to what can only be described as an absence, since to it at all would admits It is the unnameable. be to "destroy its name." the resemblance between his "other" and the Judaic in his essay on of a transcendent God beyond categories

name

Derrida
Levinas:

conception We
with

are in "the Trace of God." A proposition which risks incompatability

every allusion forever but . . .The to the "very of God." presence . . . in showing The itself face of Yahweh also: "Thou canst not see my face of God total is the

person and the total presence of "the Eternal speaking face to face with
Moses," saying to him face." (WD, 108)

disappears

constitute the central Western and especially Christian assumptions. is an entity, a spiritual being, made posits a God who Christianity in the Son and present through the Son. In Glas, Derrida manifest makes explict the distinction between the Judaic conception of God and one. In the former, "The infinite remains abstract, it is the Christian not incarnated, does not unite concretely to the forms of the under standing, of the imagination, or of the sensibility" (Glas, 57). In contrast, a concrete spirit which remains veiled "The Christian God manifests is not and abstract in Judaism. As the Son is infinite?Son of God?he in other than God. He gives to God his image" (Glas, 39). Whereas and quoted by Derrida, "God does Judaism, as stated by Mendelssohn not manifest Himself, He is not truth, total presence or parousia" (Glas, conceives and the filiation between Father of 62), Christian theology Son as one of being, of essence, and as image: "Jesus calls himself thus . . . and this filiation, which constitutes his Sein, his the Son of God attested to, declared except by the Father" one in

conception of the transcendent as other, as "absent" rather than present, as hidden rather than directly revealed, differs signifi cantly from the conceptions which, beginning with classical ontology, This

Wesen, cannot be revealed,

(Glas, 85). If, in terms of sign-theory, which

the ...

this structure of filiation became

such that if it came to relate to the speech of a finite being through the
intermediary of a signans, the signatum had an immediate relationship

as its referent, referred, signatum always in the eternal of the divine present logos

to a res, and

specifically

to an entity created in its breath,

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Derrick,

Jabes,

Levinas:

Sign-Theory

as Ethical

Discourse

297

within presence, and forwhich it is with the divine logos which thought it
not a trace,

the thematics of the trace posits,

the signified is originally and

in contrast,

that
that it is always already

in the position of the signifier. (OG, 73)

essentially

. . . trace,

a trace. Even more than the sign signifies, it is the passage of he who has delivered the sign."21 The sign-as-trace and the other thus remain distinct from each other. Their relation is never one of identity, but occurs across difference. As Derrida asserts, the form of their relation is not one of communion: "Without intermediary and without commun . . . within the proximity ion, absolute proximity and absolute distance with the other distance is integrally maintained" (WD, 90). The sign-as-trace and the other remain external to each other, and

The sign is the trace of an other that is neither being nor presence, but is beyond all ontological categories: "The trace does not establish a is less than being, but rather binds with regard relation with that which to the infinite, to the absolutely Other," writes Levinas. The sign, rather the other as being, registers its passage: "Every sign is than manifesting

separate interlocutors. represent the structure of discourse between a two. difference which is ever Across No logos mediates between the a trajectory: "If the other is other and respected, there is a dialogue and can is for the other, no logos as absolute knowledge if every word

the dialogue and the trajectory towards the other" (WD, comprehend 98). This is, forDerrida, the model for all discourse, but is itselfmodeled on discourse with God. "The word of man can rise up toward God," and this, by analogy, represents the model for discourse in general: "Analogy is discourse with God." The interlocu as dialogue with God: Discourse in each other, but rather, address each other: tors do not participate "Discourse with God and not inGod as participation" (WD, 108). The a transcendent and the between relation describes then, sign-as-trace, the human Derrida in which each remains separate, but linked through dis
course.

best representing
The thematics Isn't

focuses on writing in particular the thematics of the trace:

of in the the trace whom trace . . . should transcendence more absents readily himself lead the

as the form of discourse

to a certain and generous author that

rehabilitation absence

of

writing. announces speech?

the "He" writer

. . .The

better as other, addresses himself to the other more effectively than the man of speech. (WD, 102) the The written sign serves to describe the external relation which thematics of the trace posits. This is not a discourse which "imprudently the idea of the relationship between God and creation in considers

better,

of writing is expresses

uniquely than of himself

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298

SHIRA WOLOSKY

therefore, cannot be said to have a in this realm; nor has it a "signifying" "signified" participates face, exiled from this union into the sensible realm. Indeed, the very distinction between participation and exclusion, intelligible and sensible, which is the "unique theme of metaphysics" (OG, 71), does not operate intelligible realm. face which Its sign-as-trace,

other which it neither designates nor joins. All that is not the other is its inscription, beyond which the other remains intangibly and invisibly in its difference. The other is not a metaphysical concept and does not represent an

terms" (WD, 108). The sign, therefore, does not act as a ontological copula uniting entities. It, rather, "describes relations and not apella tions. The noun and the word, those unities of breath and concept, are effaced within pure writing" (OG, 26). The trace marks a relation to the

in the thematics of the trace. The trace abolishes this distinction. It is "not more ideal than real, not more intelligible than sensible" (OG, 65). The significance of the sign-as-trace, then, is not derived from partici a or of truth. Inmarking the relation pation in numinous realm of being to the other, however, the written sign has a significance integral to it. It is a signifier as its signified. The signifier is itself significant. This radical assertion of meaning as integral to the concrete "signi fier" or trace finally denies distinctions between internal and external,

signs in this inscribed order which generates not is meaning. Significance separable from the concrete signs them selves, but is a function of their order. lation between

spirit and flesh, which conventional sign-theory reproduces. The world becomes a system of signs whose meaning does not inhere in a "spirit ual" realm separate from phenomena, but rather inheres in the system of inscription itself. Signification proceeds from the relation of each to the whole order of inscribed other. It is the interre the sign signs by concrete

interlocutors who remain distinct from each other, and for is significant as the interchange that extends from materiality to ethics. Derrida quotes Levinas: "The faith to deed, from metaphysics spirit is free in the letter" (WD, 102). And Derrida himself states: "It were outside difference, or would no longer be the letter of the law if it to if it left its solitude, or put an end to interruption, to distance, between whom respect, and to its relation to the other" (WD, 72).

The thematics of the trace therefore overcomes the Nietzschean criticisms to which leaves conventional itself open by sign-theory an in is realm which uncertain, and which, situating meaning ontological to rise Nietzsche the devaluation of the world of pheno insists, gives mena. It further abolishes the Pauline distinction between spirit and An letter. internal, "spiritual," and therefore significant communion is excluded gives way to discourse from which a fallen materiality

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Derrida,

Jabes,

Levinas:

Sign-Theory

as Ethical

Discourse

299

the Yet, it iswith regard to the question of ethics that Derrida's matics of the trace can be seen to diverge from Levinas's, and from the Judaic tradition whether rabbinic or kabbalistic. Levinas is explicit about his ethical concern:22
The consciousness of self arises in the heart of a moral con

sciousness . . .But the fact that I do not question myself on the rights of the other indicates paradoxically that the other isnot a replica ofmyself. In his quality as other, he is situated in a dimension of height, of the ideal, of the divine, and, by my relation with others, I am in relation with God.

inevitably

distance and interrupt all totalities, this speech which both maintain . . . Levinas calls it as separation religion. It opens ethics" being-together And Derrida admits that for Levinas, this external discourse (WD, 95). "a the commandment: ultimately suggests only possible ethical impera in that it is respect for the other" tive, the only incarnated nonviolence (WD, 96). stance toward the other, however, ismuch less clear than Derrida's is Levinas's. Derrida, the too, can assert: "There is no ethics without

exteriority of discourse and of ethical action: "The true paradox of the . . . and perfect being consisted in his desiring equals outside himself action outside of himself. This iswhy God transcended consequently to talk to."23 Derrida creation ... He created someone acknowledges concern: "Face to face with the other within a glance and a Levinas's

For Levinas, the recognition of the other as outside the self and as different from the self guarantees respect and prohibits violence. Such respect is founded on God as other, and is represented above all by the

original archetypal writer, who impresses his word deep into his created or not conceived works."24 For Judaism, the created world, whether it is and coherent because lettristically, orderly proceeds from itsCrea tor and reflects Him. The Godhead remains a "trace" which, even if in negative terms as Nameless, retains a positive transcend addressed
ence and force.

But Derrida hesitates regarding the status and role of this other. For is finally significant and ethical because it issues Levinas, discourse from a Godhead who, as beyond categories, can only be addressed as certain mystical writers, forwhom "in the other. In this he approaches is the . . . continuous act of the language of the creation the Godhead

presence of the other, but also, consequently, without absence, dissimu (OG, 139). He can say with Jabes lation, detour, difference, writing" that writing ismore than self-reflexive, that it is a "tearing of the self toward the other within a confession of infinite separation" (WD, 75).

this positive transcendence. "Can one Derrida, however, questions . . . as the and from transcend Other Other, respect expel negativity seeks to do?" he asks (WD, 114). Derrida ence, as Levinas adopts a notion of the other which resembles, in its negative designation, an idea

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300

SHIRA WOLOSKY

as the infinitely transcendent and therefore in some of the Godhead sense unnameable divinity of rabbinic Judaism, and even more, its idea as radicalized as a mystical in the Kabbalah But this "Nothing/' is always felt, in Judaism or the Kab and this "Nothing" "Unnameable" it remains it shows itself in concealment, balah, as positive. Although an active and directive Godhead. criticizes Levinas Derrida, however, for rejecting an "indefinite, negative form of infinity" (WD, 119). For ... a himself, he considers the "trace of God proposition readily con verted into atheism" (WD, 108). In this way, Derrida opens the possibil character of the other in fact approximates ity that the non-ontological a true non-being, a "negative" nothing which can then no longer guar antee the inscribed trace as having a definite and positive order. This distinction remarked

between the Derridean system and the kabbalistic one is like the Kab by Harold Bloom, who points out that Derrida, balists, posits a writing before speech in ways which defy Western since in the Kabbalah "God is at once Ein-Sof and Ayin, metaphysics, total presence and total absence, all its interiors contain exteriors." But, Bloom since of Derrida's continues, "Kabbalah 'trace', stops the movement it has a point of the primordial, where and absence presence co-exist by continuous in the Kabbalah, inscription interplay."25 While of a positive Godhead of or as world traces the movement and reflects

trace of "nothing" may indeed constitute his hidden divinity, Derrida's no more than signs propagating over an irreducible void. Such a position would no longer be Hebraistic, but nihilistic. Yet, before such nihilism, Derrida hesitates. Having suggested that God is "nothing," Derrida at times hastens to add that this is so "because . . . and therefore is at once All and he is everything Nothing. Which means that God appears, is named, within the difference between All . . .This difference is what is called History. God is and Nothing in retreats it" (WD, 115). Derrida inscribed thus from the nihilistic, a retreat which is repeatedly enacted. Of the Jabesean book-as-world, can write: "The book can only be threatened by nothing, non Derrida (WD, 76). He can assure that "the radical illegibility Being, nonmeaning" of which we are speaking is not irrationality, is not despair provoking non-sense" assurances, (WD, 77). These however, again recede into seeming retractions: "Kafka said: 'we are nihilist thoughts in the brain . . .There can be no of God.' IfGod opens the question inGod simplicity . . . within the of God Proceeding duplicity of his own questionability, God does not act in the simplest ways; He is not truthful, he is not sincere" (WD, 68). In rejecting God as unitary totality and simplicity, Derrida posits Him as duplicitous and untruthful. Such assertions may finally, perhaps, be best described not as nihilistic, but as blasphemous. seems endlessly to move between affirmation and negation, such that his position falls between the two, where blasphemy resides.

Derrida

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Derrick,

Jabes,

Levinas:

Sign-Theory

as Ethical

Discourse

301

(WD, 73) inwhich he places Jabes and pneumatic and the grammatical," remains more Heideggerean Levinas. Nonetheless, Derrida than kab balistic. That a post-Nietzschean revolt against metaphysics should in its structures and terms affirms approach Hebraism and the Kabbalah these in their difference redefine

structure Derrick's critique of sign-theory as an onto-theological thus leads him into the "movement within the difference between the Socratic and the Hebraic, the poverty and the wealth of the letter, the

Derrida's this experience. Still, if system finally hovers between nihilism and affirmed meaning, his work also reminds us that a non-ontological model for signification need not be nihilistic.
of English Department Yale University

asserted as integral to and feltwithin the concrete world, can therefore as Derrida's work dramatically shows. But be illuminated by Hebraism, in his hesitation betwen atheism and faith, never finally enters Derrida, "this experience of the infinitely other" which, he writes, can be called "Judaism" (WD, 152). From the viewpoint of Judaism, his own stance remains tenuous, suggesting a blasphemy which both rejects and accepts

from Western ontology. The modern need to the relation between and immanence so that transcendence but rather, is significance no longer is relegated to the transmundane,

NOTES
1. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammaiology, G. C. Spivak, after cited as OG, followed by the page number. 2. Jacques Derrida, Hereafter cited as WD, 3. mine. Writing followed trans. (Baltimore, 1976), p. 20. Here p. 111. are

and Difference, A. Bass, by the page number.

trans.

(Chicago,

1978),

5. Edmond Jabes, Le livre des questions, (Paris, this essay are mine. 6. Jabes, Livre des questions, pp. 148, 26, 109.

Glas. (Paris, 1974), p. 90. English translations within this essay Jacques Derrida, Hereafter cited as Glas, followed by the page number. 4. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews. (Philadelphia, 1968), Vol. I, p. 3. 1963), p. 32. English translations

within

7. Gershom "The Name of God and the Linguistic Scholem, Diogenes 79/80 (1972): 69. 8. Scholem, "The Name of God," p. 71. (Berakhoth 55a). 9. Scholem, "The Name of God," p. 77. 10. The Zohar, H. 11. Gershom 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Theory

of the Kabbala,"

and M. Simon, trans. (London, 1949), Vol. I, p. 9. Speeding Scholem, On theKabbalah and itsSymbolism, (New York, 1965), p. 39. Jabes, Livre des questions, p. 32-33. "The Name of God," pp. 167, 166. Scholem, Jabes, Livre des questions, p. 85. On theKabbalah, p. 111. "The Name of God," p. 181. Scholem,

Scholem,

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302
17. Emmanuel translations Levinas, within

SHIRA WOLOSKY
de Lautre/' are mine. Tijdschrift voor Filsosfie 25 (3) (1963): 608.

"La Trace this essay de Lautre,"

English 18. Levinas, "La Trace 19. Emmanuel Levinas, this essay are mine. 20. 21. 22. Levinas, Levinas, Levinas, "La Trace "La Trace

p. 623. Difficile Liberte. (Paris, 1963), p. 608. p. 621.

p. 32. English

translations

within

de Lautre." de Lautre."

Difficile Liberte.

This content downloaded from 134.226.252.155 on Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:42:14 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions