Re Marking the Re Marking

Following the logic of the non-Platonic simulacrum, the relationship between mark and re-mark is not a simple linear progression. The mark is possible only in that it is derived from the structurality of re-marking. The relationship is more complex than the traditional language of 'causal' chains (and successive and irreversible temporal sequences) in which the mark is said to come first. In Speech and Phenomena, Derrida's examination of Husserl's utilization of the terms retention and protention brings to light a form of dialectical play that points the way to a general theory on the structure of representation (see also Of Grammatology and the essay "Différance" [Margins]). It effectively transgresses the limits of the Platonic notion of mimesis – a notion that carries with it a strict distinction between original and copy and good and bad representation (despite the fact that the possibility of such a distinction is problematized at the very start by the limits of Plato's own language).

There is no clear and direct means of distinguishing between good (true) and bad (false) representation if we rigorously apply the basic principles of Plato's own system. The notion of a pure / non-representational access to the Forms maintains an insoluble tension

within Plato's conception of the true and its articulation since he cannot point out how to get beyond the circle of representation.

By means of a double-reading of that which Derrida calls 'the dialectic of retention and protention,' we can see that the re of re-presentation is not a simple modification of an original presentation. It rather speaks of the tracing out of a repetition that first makes such a presentation possible – a repetition that functions through a movement of delay. The re of re- presentation then, is an index to the condition of the possibility of any kind of presence and not merely a reference to an impoverished simulacrum that 'stands-in' for something originally extant. For Derrida, once again, re-presentation is not preceded by an original, unmediated, or primordial presence.

Gasché does not present a balanced account of Derrida's theoretical appropriation of the 'structure' of primordial temporalization, which was first presented by Husserl in The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness. This text plays 'the' pivotal role in Derrida’s construction of the central argument of Speech and Phenomena, even though he comments on not being able to discuss it in depth.5 If he had actually engaged with this series of lectures in greater detail, it would have been counter-productive to the whole of his 'strong' thesis – but then there is a world of difference between the style of a piece of writing (which says more about that which is demanded by a certain tradition of philosophical presentation, i.e., disputation) and the deep contexture of a writing. One has to excavate Derrida's texts and uproot the often superficial polemical tone, in order to uncover that which is really significant in his thinking – a writing within the written, whose subtle lessons are often concealed by the foreground spur that more immediately inscribes itself in the form of sensational slogans on the imagination of the superficial and inattentive reader. Not that Gasché ever falls into the latter category, but he does have a tendency to merely incorporate the negative sloganizing into his overall account of Derrida's deconstruction without criticism.

The structurality of the interplay between retention and protention, in the opening up of the Living Present, gives us, with very little modification, the tracing of re-presentation or re- marking in a theoretical matrix that is far deeper and quite other to the mundane / objectivist thesis of perception that Gasché (perhaps on the basis of a less than critical reading of Derrida's 'strong' thesis in Speech and Phenomena) implicitly assigns to Husserl's phenomenological concept of intentionality. It is to be granted that, for Husserl, something must first be given in accordance with the phenomenological concept of evidence / fulfilment (which involves the concept of primary impression – which is not a self-sufficient perception), but once again this is built upon the retentional / protentional flux of originary temporal articulation. The flux is an extending of continua of continua. This retentional and protentional interplay, when these intentionalities are thought with the addition of their respective parallels in the presentificational dimension of secondary remembrance and expectation, is the precise correlate to the structurality of the movement / tracing of re-marking or supplementarity, as described by Derrida: a primordial writing – an archi-writing.

In sum, although one ordinarily assumes that a mark is a reference to some extant thing, according to the logics of re-marking, if referral takes place it is between mark and mark. Meaning, according to this orientation, is merely like foam on the wave. It emerges through the intrinsic interplay of a network of marks – a syntactical matrix that, in re-marking (upon) itself, permits the crystallization of meaning. If we suspend all interest in the ontological status of the mark, or the meaning it delivers up, then we are referred, as Gasché puts it, to an a semic space. With this, we finally arrive at the point at which we may bring the question of supplementarity into sharp focus.