The Epochal Play of Time as Task

In Of Grammatology, Derrida writes...

To think play radically the ontological and transcendental problematics must first be seriously exhausted; the question of the meaning of being, the being of the entity and of the transcendental origin of the world – must be patiently and rigorously worked through, the critical movement of the Husserlian and Heideggerian questions must be effectively followed to the very end, and their effectiveness and legibility must be conserved. Even if it were crossed out, without it the concepts of play and writing to which I shall have recourse will remain caught within regional limits and an empiricist, positivist, or metaphysical discourse. The counter-move that the holders of such a discourse would oppose to the precritical tradition and to metaphysical speculation would be nothing but the worldly representation of their own operation. It is therefore the game of the world that must be first thought; before attempting to understand all the forms of play in the world (p.50).

In its very aim, does not the generality of a project that seeks to uncover "the game of the world," as opposed to "attempting to understand all the forms of play in the world," indicate, from the very beginning, a danger of conflation? Does this not implicate a form of violence that forces disparate elements into some overarching unity that is superimposed upon them? In general terms, would this not undermine Derrida's own call to 'rigour' – that the texts under examination be allowed to deconstruct themselves according to their own logics? Is there not also the possibility of interpreting this project as one that is 'essentialist' in

orientation? Is there not the suggestion that "all the forms of play in the world" should be tackled on the basis of "the game of the world"?

It is also a question of whether the central questions raised by Husserl and Heidegger have actually been 'followed to the very end' but, even more importantly, we need to continue to ask: what is meant by 'end'? There is no 'beyond' to philosophy, as Derrida himself makes quite clear. The end-limit recedes infinitely. 'Closure,' then? But, what would closure actually mean in regard to the limits of transcendental phenomenology?

Perhaps Derrida is primarily 'playing' with the issues of origin and telos – subjecting them to a subtle form of problematization, and thus submitting the course of his own project to a certain ironic orientation or self-epoché? The sense of play, 'as the absence of a goal,' finds its origins in Derrida's readings of both Husserl and Saussure on the questions of intentionality on the one hand, and the sign on the other. Derrida's notion of the ‘trace’ emerges out of a model of signification in which we are to speak of a 'play of signifiers without an original extra-significational referent.'

This mirrors one of Husserl's earliest moves – the phenomenological reduction. The manoeuvre, through which phenomenology initiates a radical yet responsible critical gesture, 'suspends' any position-taking with regard to the horizon of presuppositional being that is referred to as the 'natural attitude' – which is, in principle, the name of a non-reflexive and habituated orientation. It is not the phenomenon of being that is bracketed (and even less is it doubted),30 but a certain way of being: a Weltanshauung, a noesis, a thesis. The Welthesis of the natural attitude is suspended. It is not lost, but parenthesized. This radical displacement, this lateralization of orientation, constitutes an opening that restores a certain wonder. The methodological withdrawal from any continued participation, of a merely passive order, within its limits is motivated by a call to focus on the world as phenomenon (as the unity of the out-

standing – ekstatic – logics of appearing and appearance). No metaphysical decision is made about the actuality or inactuality of any extra-phenomenal substratum.

The familiar becomes strange and thus begins to stand-out. Familiarity is the site of a kind of recession of presence; it is undemanding, it asks nothing of us and so it shrouds itself in invisibility. The comfortable withdraws itself within the homeliness of habit (habitation / habituation – habitat / habitus) and only finds its voice when its strangeness is restored. That which is the most familiar, the closest in proximity, is for this very reason that which is farthest from us. The familiar is not at the focus of vision; it recedes into a bland undifferentiated horizon. Like the stand-point of vision, the place from which sight extends itself, it is a blind- spot.31

Within the brackets of the phenomenological reduction, the noetic-noematic correlation or intentional intertwining is the phenomenological-eidetic correlate to Saussure's radicalization of the signifier / signified relation as one which has no 'natural attachment' to an extra-linguistic reality – a 'naturalness' that is thereby permitted to open itself up to interrogation.

When it is a question of the appearing of meaning or sense, the so-called thing-in-itself does not do any of the real work. The logics at play here owe a great deal to Husserl's reading of Berkeley and Hume – both of whom subjected Locke's theoretical disjunction between primary and secondary qualities to the most critical of examinations. The distinction crumbles under their sceptical gaze. However, their sceptical orientation allowed the re-emergence of idealism through the backdoor. As far as Husserl was concerned, their attitudes were indicative of a drive that merely assumed the standpoint of a diametrical opposition – and thus trapped them within presuppositional limits that they had failed to recognize. If Husserl's procedure of reduction is 'sceptical' in character, it is only so in a methodological sense. Here it is a question

of style, critical vigilance, or strategy rather than doctrine in the form of a mere counter- theology.

Husserl's project is concerned with the phenomenality of meaning – the unfolding of sense as 'intentional relation.' Intentionality does not refer to a relation that holds between appearances and things-in-themselves, but to the structurality of appearing itself – the articulation of significance. This is the difference that sets phenomenology apart from a mere phenomenalism, naturalism, or psychologism. Similarly, Husserl escapes the naïveté of scepticism. It is the 'method' of phenomenology itself that prohibits the assumption of a standpoint on any type of referentiality or connectedness other than that of intentionality. The phenomenological reduction is not so much an exercise in 'systematic doubt' as one of 'systematic suspension.' That which is bracketed is still, in a certain sense, retained – but in parentheses. The noetic-noematic correlation (whose structure stands out by means of an eidetic reduction) is an 'intentional unity' of signifer and signified – but, within the dimension of this phenomenological orientation this is a matrix that has no necessary relation to any absolute or substantive signified outside itself.

What we have here is a referential interplay that has no need of absolute referents. This is not so much representative of a reduction that 'closes-off' as one which 'opens-up' its field – motivated by a concern that addresses itself to the structurality of intentional play rather than that of relations of cause and effect. The latter is parenthesized along with what Husserl calls the 'natural attitude.' The world as world-thesis is retained, but the very sense of the 'naturalness' of this thesis is itself put into question. In other words, it is subjected to a form of play. This procedure thematizes itself through the very movement of epoché – a movement that discloses sense precisely at the moment at which it is breached. It thematizes at the level of method that which is already operative in perception, language or the movement of signification; a trace of postponement, a detour that disrupts in order to disclose. For Derrida,

also, play is openness without specific spatial and causal limitation (thing-in-itself, absolute referent, centeredness, etc.), and without determinate temporal limitation (the present, origin, telos, etc.). Play is the opening through which he discourses on different kinds of trace structure – where trace is not a trace of any thing.

Derrida’s deconstructive play on the phenomenological epoché announces that…

The instituted trace...has no 'natural attachment' to the signified within reality. For us, the rupture of that 'natural attachment' puts in question the idea of naturalness rather than that of attachment. That is why the word 'institution' should not be too quickly interpreted within the classical system of oppositions.

The instituted trace cannot be thought without thinking the retention of difference within a structure of reference where difference appears as such and thus permits a certain liberty of variations among the full terms (OG. p.46-47).

Firstly, the phrase "...where difference appears as such" shows how even the functioning of difference with respect to the “instituted trace” cannot do without presence to some extent. However, such difference, here, is constituted (as we shall see) by means of a certain delay at work in retention – which is not present except as a trace of itself in the difference that appears. Of the two moments of différance, it is only really deferral that resists the language of presence. We say 'resist' – it is not 'beyond' it as that which is alien to presence. Their relation is in fact intimate – so intimate that it can no longer be 'seen.' Secondly, the all- too-casual use of the expression 'the retention of difference' reaffirms Derrida's indebtedness to Husserl's theory of intentionality and his studies on time-consciousness. This should not go unnoticed. Furthermore, it implicitly replays the 'structure' of Husserl's noetic-noematic correlation (intentional relation), which can be understood as a synthesis of the language of

appearances and the language of appearing without presupposing a 'connection' or 'natural attachment' to things-in-themselves. The call "to the things / matters themselves" announces a project that entirely re-situates itself with respect to the old ontological divide.

This brings us to a third and most vital point. As we have already seen, the opening-up of the noetic-noematic intentional space is facilitated by the procedure of epoché. In this case, it is a double movement of phenomenological reduction, which is a reorientation that concerns itself with the world as phenomenon, coupled with an eidetic reduction, which focuses on the essential structures of the experience of phenomena. In these terms, the epoché permits a turn to the essential configurations of experience in its pure generality while, at the same time, it allows us to concentrate on the 'phenomenality of meaning' by suspending any position-taking in regard to the question of an extra-phenomenal reality. We are left with an intentional synthesis of meaning and meant, where the noema of the noesis is the meaning of its meant. It is a shift that puts the questions of 'naturalness' and 'attachment' into question. Derrida may only be concerned with the former, but, for Husserl, it is also a question of re-considering the sense of 'attachment' or 'connectedness.' The peculiar form of epochal return to this question is that which literally opens up the horizon of intentionality – and thus the space of phenomenology itself. This is the opening that traces the tortuous paths of the many different moments of the epoché (phenomenological reduction, eidetic reduction, transcendental- phenomenological reduction, Abbau and Aufbau, etc.).

Derrida, himself, shows us that one of the most fundamental themes of the philosophies of Husserl and Saussure is that the signifer / signified relation (or sense and reference) does not depend on any substantive, extra-linguistic reality outside itself. However, he also seeks to go further. What he is interested in bringing to light is the very 'structurality' of signification as trace. Derrida maintains that…

…the trace affects the totality of the sign in both its faces. That the signified is originarily and essentially (and not only for a finite and created spirit) trace, that it is always already in the position of the signifier (Ibid, p.73).

Derrida arrives at this thought only after having worked through the logic of the Husserlian intentional correlation between 'appearance' and 'appearing.'

The unheard difference between the appearing and the appearance [l'apparaissant et l’apparaître] (between the 'world' and 'lived experience') is the condition of all other differences, of all other traces, and it is already trace. This last concept is thus absolutely and by rights 'anterior' to all physiological problematics concerning the nature of the engramme [the unit of engraving], or metaphysical problematics concerning the meaning of absolute presence whose trace is thus opened to deciphering. The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general. The trace is the différance which opens appearance [l’apparaître] and signification (Ibid, p.65).

What we have here is a radicalization of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction, which is fully cognizant of the profundity of the development of the theme of epoché in Husserl's work. It is a radicalization that brings together the epochal moves that lead to the transcendental orientation of Husserl's Crisis by taking them to their limits.32 The movement of primordial temporalization, as the unfolding of historicity for Husserl, is precisely archi-writing for Derrida – and archi-writing is another name for the structure of the trace. However, Derrida goes on to say that,

The concepts of present, past, and future, everything in the concepts of time and history which implies evidence of them – the metaphysical concept of time in general – cannot adequately describe the structure of the trace (Ibid, p.67).

Firstly, with what notion of 'evidence' is Derrida working? Secondly, can he really speak of a 'metaphysical concept of time in general'? And thirdly, is it legitimate of him to argue that the 'structure of the trace' cannot be adequately described in temporal terms? Is not 'delay' one of the principal aspects of différance? The neologism actually makes reference to both 'spatializing and temporalizing' in their intertwining, where temporizing is spacing and spacing is temporizing.

The phenomenological discourse on the interplay of retention and protention is vital to Derrida's thesis that there is no 'pure origin' – see Speech and Phenomena, for instance, with the (only apparently) startling claim that..."there never was any 'perception'" (The section entitled, "The Supplement of Origin," p.103). One of course, one has to ask about which sense of perception he is actually discussing. Husserl gives two definitions in The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness [PITC] – and Derrida refers to both in Speech and Phenomena.

At first, Husserl defines perception as an 'originary presentation,' but with a bias toward that which is given 'now' (see §16, PITC) – which means that provisionally, perception is contrasted with primary remembrance (retention). However, in continuing the thought of perception in terms of originary giving, Husserl later claims that retention, too, is an 'originary presentation' since it is that through which the past or no-longer-now is 'originally' given (see §17, Ibid) – and which is always already a background to the now.

Derrida plays with the movement here. His arguments revolve around seeing the former characterization of perception as the one that provides the foundation of the latter. In

fact, Husserl's movement unearths a deeper dimension to the former – digging beneath the foundation. Since the now can be nothing for itself, as far as Husserl is concerned, any now- presentation must necessarily have a past-horizon from which that which is given in the present moment can stand out in relief as that which is now. And, since the present moment is the fulfilment of a past protention, it necessarily contains reference to a futural horizon of further possible fulfilments in ever-flowing future present-perceptions.

Although Derrida, on many occasions, subjects Husserl's phenomenology to an a chronological and non-linear critique, his reading still treats the phenomenological enterprise as something that is linear in itself. However, Husserl's movement from perception as 'now- presentation' to perception in the broader sense as 'originary-presentation' – which includes retention and protention – does not follow a linear architecture. The former determination does not provide the foundation for the later. It is effectively superseded through a form of sublation. The latter is an overturning of the former – digging deeper rather than forging ahead. The principal logic at work in Derrida's claim that "there never was any 'perception'" is founded upon Husserl's own discourse on the temporalizing structures of return, which are produced by the interplay of retention and protention. This is a primordial intertwining, which constitutes presence, the present, present perception, remembrance and expectation – the Living Present (lebendige Gegenwart) of experience in general. Consciousness is always already extended. In other words, there never was any 'original' or 'non-extended' perception that started the sequence. Consciousness lives in the effect of its own repetition – and this is the necessary 'horizon' of all experience.33 However, from Husserl's point of view, this can also mean that 'there has always been perception' – in that perception is another name for what is essentially an extended / extending horizon. Extendedness is part of its essence – which is to say that the structure of the 'always already' is the constitutive horizon of that which he calls

perception: its timeliness. For Derrida, the horizon of the 'always already' is named by the expression: trace.

With Derrida's announcement that "there never was any perception,'" perception is being defined in the first sense – which is why he does not qualify the statement with the addition of 'original' or 'non-extended.' However, it is insufficient to characterize Husserl's meaning of perception in these terms as it denies his profound insights on the temporalization of consciousness – that which constitutes its horizons. His discourse on temporalization cannot be limited to Derrida's reduction of the themes of time and presence.

This reduction of all discourse on time to a mundane language of presence (an apparently naïve or unreflective metaphysic) is subjected to a careful critique in David Wood's Deconstruction of Time. He points out that the language of temporality is still operative in Derridian deconstruction – and for very good reasons (from a theoretical point of view, I am in sympathy with Wood's position when he criticizes Derrida on this point). However, at the same time, Derrida attempts to avoid adhering to the metaphysical foundations upon which his