REGIONAL STABILITY OF WORLDS: THE ENVELOPE Let us take up again, in line with our method of so-called objective

phenomenology, the example of disjunction (that is, the conjunction equal to the minimum of appearing). At the moment when I’m lost in the con-templation of the wall inundated by the autumnal red of the ivy, behind me, on the gravel of the path, a motorcycle is taking off. Its noise, whilst being there in the world, is conjoined to my vision only by the nil value of

appearing. To put it otherwise, in this world, the being-there noise-of-the-motorcycle has ‘nothing to do’ [rien à voir] with the being-there ‘unfurled-red’ of the ivy on the wall.

But I said that it’s a question of the nil value of a conjunction, and not of a dislocation of the world. The world deploys the inappearance in a world of some One of the two beings-there, and not the appearance of a being (the motorcycle) in a world other than the one which is already there. It’s now time to substantiate this point.

In truth, the orientation of the space—fixed by the path leading to the façade, the trees bordering it, the house as that which this path moves towards—envelops both the red of the ivy and my gaze (or body), as well as the entire invisible background which nevertheless leads towards it, and finally also the noise of the skidding motorcycle. So that if I turn around, it’s not because I imagine, between the world and the incongruous noise that disjoins itself from the red of autumn, a sort of abyss between two worlds. No, I simply situate my attention, until then polarized by the ivy, in a wider correlation, which includes the house, the path, the fundamental silence of the countryside, the crunch of the gravel, the motorcycle. . .

What’s more, it is in the very movement that extends this correlation that I situate the nil value of conjunction between the noise of the motor-cycle and the radiance of the ivy on the wall. This conjunction is nil, but it takes place in an infinite fragment of this world which dominates the two terms, as well as many others: this corner of the country in autumn, with the house, the path, the hills and the sky, which the disjunction between the motor and the pure red is powerless to separate from the clouds.

Ultimately, the value of appearance of the fragment of world set forth by the sky and its clouds, the path and the house, is superior to that of all the disjunctive ingredients: ivy, house, motorcycle, gravel. This is why the syn-thesis of these ingredients, as carried out by the being-there of the corner of the world in which the nil conjunction is signalled, prevents this nullity from amounting to a scission of the world, that is a decomposition of the world’s logic.

All of this can do without my gaze, without my consciousness, without my about turn, which registers the density of the earth under the liquidity of the sky. The regional stability of the world comes down to this: if you take a random fragment of a given world, the beings which are there in this fragment possess—both with respect to themselves and relative to one other—differential degrees of appearance indexed to the transcen-dental order of this world. The fact that nothing which appears within this

fragment, including its disjunctions (those conjunctions whose value is nil), can sunder the unity of the world means that the logic of the world guarantees the existence of a synthetic value subsuming all the degrees of appearance of the beings that co-appear in this fragment.

We call ‘envelope’ of a part of the world that being whose differential value of appearance is the synthetic value adequate to that part.

The systematic existence of the envelope presupposes that given any collection of degrees (those which measure the intensity of appearance of beings in a part of the world), the transcendental order contains a degree superior or equal to all the degrees in the collection (it subsumes them all), which is also the smallest degree to enjoy this property (it ‘grips’, as closely as possible, the collection of degrees assigned to the different beings-there of the part in question).

Such is the case for the elementary experience that has served us as our guide. When I turn around to check that the noise of the world is indeed

‘of this world’, that its site of appearance is there, despite it bearing no relation to the ivy on the wall, I am not obliged to summon the entire planet, or the sky all the way to the horizon, or even the curve of the hills on the edge of darkness. It is enough to integrate the dominant of a worldly fragment capable of absorbing the motor/ivy disjunction within the logical consistency of appearing. This fragment (the avenue, some trees, the façade. . .) possesses a value of appearance sufficient to guaran-tee the co-appearance of the disjoined terms within the same world.

About this fragment, we will say that its value is that of the envelope of the beings—rigorously speaking, of the degree of appearance of the beings—which constitute its completeness as being-there. This envelope refers to the smallest value of appearance capable of dominating the values of the beings in question (the house, the gravel of the path, the red of the ivy, the noise of the skidding motorcycle, the shade of the trees, etc.).

In the final scene of the opera that serves as our guide, Ariadne, having untied Bluebeard, who lies defeated and speechless, prepares to go ‘over there, where they still await me’. She asks the others if they wish to leave with her. They all refuse: Sélysette and Mélisande, after hesitating; Ygraine, without even turning her head; Bellangère, curtly; Alladine, sobbing. They all prefer their servitude to the man. Ariadne then calls on the entire open-ing of the world. She sopen-ings these magnificent lines:

The moon and the stars illuminate all paths. The forest and the sea call us

from afar and daybreak perches on the vaults of the azure, to show us a world awash with hope.

It is truly the power of the envelope that is enacted here, confronting the feeble values of conservatism in the castle which opens onto the unlimited night. The music swells, Ariadne’s voice glides on the treble, and all the other protagonists—the defeated Bluebeard, his five wives, the villagers—

are signified in a decisive and precise fashion by this lyrical transport which is addressed to them collectively. This is what guarantees the artistic con-sistency of this finale, even though in it no conflict is resolved, no drama unravelled, no destiny sealed. Ariadne’s visitation of Bluebeard’s castle will simply have served to establish, in the magnificence of song, that beyond every figure and every destiny, beyond things that persevere in their appearing, there is what envelops them and turns them, for all time, into a bound moment of artistic semblance, a fascinating operatic fragment.

8. THE CONJUNCTION BETWEEN A BEING-THERE AND