“意指過程和差異的感受”特邀編輯概述

卓 悅

I

講座的第一部分對語言作為一個“不確定”的對象進行了思考。從英語中很少在“語言”一詞前加定冠詞這一現(xiàn)象出發(fā),韋伯引用了德國文學評論家和哲學家維爾納·哈馬赫(Werner Hamacher)的論述,談到了涉及所有語言的語言內(nèi)部的“不斷增殖”現(xiàn)象:“不存在一種語言,而是一種多樣性;不是一種穩(wěn)定的多樣性,而只是一種語言的不斷增殖?！?“95 Theses on Philology” 25)哈馬赫認為,這種增殖既存在于語言內(nèi)部,也存在于語言和語言之間。也許,語文學(philology)的新方法正是不把語言看作傳統(tǒng)的、固定的對象,而是關注其內(nèi)在的愉悅(德語:Genu?),即“不確定事物慢慢定義自己”的方式。這意味著,從語文學家的角度來看,研究者不僅要了解意義是如何通過過去的使用被關聯(lián)并獲得的,而且還要把能指從固定的意義中解放出來,使新的意義在未來能夠重新關聯(lián)和再生。

哈馬赫將這種不確定的語言本身慢慢地定義自己的過程稱為“多重語文學”(Archiphilologie)①。韋伯建議,理解這個概念的一種方式,是將其視為“回應”(response)和“呼吁”(appeal)之間的一種緊張關系:“回應先前已被固定使用的語義,并通過這種回應進一步呼吁將來的回應。”要理解這兩個詞的區(qū)別,我們首先要理解“回應”(response)和“回答”(answer)之間的區(qū)別,這兩個在英語中相鄰的詞,具有不同的內(nèi)涵?！盎貞比匀唤咏凇盎卮稹钡脑~源(中世紀英語中的answere或andsware的意思),即簡單的“回復”或“對應的話語”,而現(xiàn)代英語中“回答”(answer)承擔的含義已狹隘化,成了對最初的陳述或問題“提供一個明確答案”的意思。所以“回答”(answer)這個詞意味著一定程度的確定性,同時也表達了一種“明晰”的立場。

韋伯借助索緒爾在《普通語言學教程》中提出的語言內(nèi)部差異功能的觀點來強調(diào)兩個觀點:首先,在語言系統(tǒng)中,能指的意指過程是通過將自己與“周圍”其他的能指(與自己相似又不相似的能指)區(qū)分開來的方式完成的。前文提到的“回應”和“回答”之間的關系就是一個例子。其次,雖然比較(comparing)和對比(contrasting)的過程以符號的某種穩(wěn)定性為前提,但實際上所指并不是一個自理成章的概念,它本身就是一個過程和行為,需要時間才能實現(xiàn)“自身同一”和“意義獨立”。

韋伯說的第一點里隱藏著索緒爾《普通語言學教程》中的“價值”概念,這一概念比符號的概念更鮮為人知,這里有必要回顧一下。根據(jù)索緒爾的說法,語言是一個相互依存的表達系統(tǒng),其中每個符號的價值都是由與其他符號同時存在而產(chǎn)生的,如下圖所示:

這句話的意思是:價值(value)不應該與意義(signification)相混淆。如果說意義是由下圖中的垂直箭頭決定的,即概念和音響形象之間的關系,那么價值指的是每個能指通過與其“周圍”的音響形象“協(xié)商”而獲得其含義的水平關系,這種協(xié)商關系通過差異性和相似性來獲得。

回到回應(response)和呼吁(appeal)的問題,要理解語言和意指過程如何同時作為回應和呼吁發(fā)揮作用,我們需要了解回應(response)在多大程度上試著作為回答(answer)在運作,也就是說它怎樣一味地“消除不確定性”。因此,這里的任務是讓能指在意指過程中重新開始不確定的、多樣性的游戲,無論是在它與過去,還是與未來的關系中。這種與過去和未來的緊張關系,不僅存在于純粹的、形式的語言系統(tǒng)里,也存在于文學文本中。在第二部分,我們將以卡夫卡的短篇小說為例來說明這個問題。

II

如果在第一部分中,通過分析薄伽丘的《十日談》,我們看到被傳統(tǒng)約定的意義是如何在敘述行為中被重新定位、重構(gòu)和取代的,那么在這一部分里,我們將考察卡夫卡的幾個短篇小說以展示他的作品是對“一神論認同范式”(mono-theological identity paradigm)的一種防御性回應。這一范式(在此處可指奧匈帝國)似乎已不能維持自己,并表現(xiàn)出失控的癥狀,而這種防御性回應反過來又在文學文本中產(chǎn)生了一種緊張關系,需要仔細閱讀才能體會。

韋伯分析的第一個故事是《中國長城建造時》(德語名:“Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer”)?？ǚ蚩ǖ倪@部短篇小說寫于1917年,當時的奧匈帝國已明顯處于衰敗和消亡的階段,而第一次世界大戰(zhàn)使它更進一步地走向崩潰。作為一個主要生活在布拉格,講德語的捷克猶太人,卡夫卡在奧匈帝國的雙重外來性使他能夠?qū)⑹轮糜谒麑嶋H生活的地域之外,即遠離歐洲的中國。韋伯首先指出,小說標題中的“建造”一詞很重要,因為“Beim Bau”這個詞表明長城的“建造”仍處于正在進行時,就像故事本身一樣未完成。他接著指出,盡管對這個故事有許多可能的解釋,但我們在這里要討論的主要問題是這個故事中對語言的反思。讀者想知道的核心問題是中國長城是否已經(jīng)竣工,但小說中對這個問題的描述是不確定的,因為它既說長城“被宣告完成”,又說在兩端城墻合龍之后沒在“一千米城墻的末端再接著修下去”(《中國長城建造時》 248)。因此,我們不能相信故事中的任何一則“聲明”,事實上,這個故事被一種緊張關系支配著:它既有讀者對建造完成的愿望(以便理解整個故事),也有文本自身結(jié)局的不確定性。

卡夫卡的這個短篇小說可以被解讀為在不同的層面上的同時運作:一方面它是對世界帝國薄弱性的歷史寄喻,另一方面也是對更普遍的語言本身的寄寓。這兩個方面是如何共同發(fā)揮作用的?

故事中的敘述非常強調(diào)分工,也就是長城的模塊化建造。讀者被告知,即使長城竣工,也不足以克服它所使用的元素的零碎特性?！靶揲L城是為了防御誰呢?是為了防御北方民族。我的家鄉(xiāng)在中國的東南部。沒有北方民族能在那里威脅我們?！?《中國長城建造時》 252)因此,“我們”聽從來自高處的指令,但高處并不比我們知道得更多,甚至皇帝似乎也是一個懶惰的人(254)。漸漸地,隨機投射的“外來敵人”的形象侵蝕了“保護”的概念:“修長城是為了防御北方民族。一個不連貫的長城又怎么能起到防御作用呢?當然不能,一個這樣的長城非但不能防御,修城工程本身就處在不斷的危險之中?！?248)

小說也可被認為是挑戰(zhàn)語言作為一個聚合統(tǒng)一體的寄寓。試圖建造一堵城墻來阻止“游牧民族”——來自北方的無拘無束的流浪者——的嘗試可以被解讀為語言中傳統(tǒng)意義的固定性與持續(xù)的意指過程之間的緊張關系。換言之,城墻的未竣工與故事意義的不確定性有相似性。因此,韋伯寫道,“閱讀可以在復述文本中單詞和短語所命題的內(nèi)容,以及同時指出這些內(nèi)容可以以其他方式閱讀之間搖擺不定?！备唧w一點說,故事中的語言提出了一些說法,但隨后又將它們收回,從而挑逗了讀者的定位欲望。韋伯稱這種敘述為“漸進-漫談”式敘述(他從勞倫斯·斯特恩《項狄傳》的敘述者那里借用了這個術(shù)語),將這個過程稱為“無聲地召喚讀者欲望”的“呼吁”過程:正是因為小說沒有給出明確的答案,所以它吸引讀者不斷對文本意義進行追問。

《中國長城建造時》中的未完成感主要是由語言的不穩(wěn)定性造成的,但在某些時候,使敘述變得曲折難測的“代理人”也會以具體、可見的形式出現(xiàn)在卡夫卡的作品中?！都腋傅膽n慮》中的俄德拉代克就是一個例子——一個無生命的形狀線軸變成了一個有生命的、會跳躍、發(fā)笑的東西,并回應了敘述者的問題(《家父的憂慮》 74)。在另一部不太為人所知的微型小說《教堂里的“紫貂”》中,這個“代理人”更引人注目:這是一只奇怪的貂類動物,它只有在禱告者開始祈禱時才會出現(xiàn),除了聽猶太教堂里人們的吁求之外,似乎什么也不做。更重要的是,它在“兩指寬”的“突棱”(德語:Mauervorsprung)上大膽地前后蹦躍,這寓意著“漸進-漫談”式的敘述(《教堂里的“紫貂》 502)。這些“令人不安”的敘述所實現(xiàn)的是對根基的質(zhì)疑(無論是像不能環(huán)繞一整圈的城墻一樣正在崩塌的帝國,還是對以線性因果為基礎展開的傳統(tǒng)敘事模式的期待),它們打開了地基,使新的建造成為可能。它們是“防御性的”,因為它們沒有被封鎖在有缺陷的、自我滿足的傳統(tǒng)意義中;它們先發(fā)制人地打開將要崩潰的地基,尋找新的意義和解決方案。

III

在第三部分,韋伯以講解荷爾德林《對索?？死账埂窗蔡岣昴档淖⑨尅芬晃膩砻枋隽硪环N對慣例的“推翻”(overturning)。荷爾德林將《安提戈涅》中的“推翻”描述為采取了他所謂的“vaterl?ndische Umkehr”的形式。這個短語在英語中很難翻譯,因為“Umkehr”(反轉(zhuǎn))影響了“Vaterland”(父國、祖國)一詞②。今天,“祖國”(Fatherland)可能帶有完全不同的內(nèi)涵,比如殖民主義、帝國主義、旨在實現(xiàn)霸權(quán)的民族主義,包括世界各地的民族主義仇外心理。但是在荷爾德林寫作的時候,也就是19世紀初的德國,在法國大革命之后的幾年里,“vaterl?ndische Umkehr”指的是這種霸權(quán)的反面,它可以被視為“一種將地方社會和政治存在的獨異性與更普遍的愿望相結(jié)合的理想”(Weber,Singularity380)。韋伯強調(diào),荷爾德林的模式從卡夫卡的反方向提供了一種可能性,因為詩人強調(diào)的是反轉(zhuǎn)的局限性和堅持某些慣例的相對必要性。對荷爾德林來說,“vaterl?ndische Umkehr”是“對各種表象和形式的反轉(zhuǎn)”,它是一個永無止境的過程,沒有任何一方是絕對的贏家或絕對的輸家,因為每個“推翻”的一方,在努力爭取更好的同時,也受制于自己的歷史處境、他自己的“認知極限”。因此,“vaterl?ndische Umkehr”是一個充滿悖論、很難實現(xiàn)的計劃,在歷史的河流中,任何成功的反轉(zhuǎn)形式都有可能被下一個反轉(zhuǎn)所取消。

荷爾德林對索?？死账沟倪萑壳?尤其是《俄狄浦斯王》和《安提戈涅》,表現(xiàn)出特別的興趣,因為這兩部戲劇展示了“無限的統(tǒng)一如何從無限的分離中凈化出來”這一現(xiàn)象(Singularity12)。換一種說法,索?？死账沟谋瘎?尤其是《安提戈涅》,是體現(xiàn)“反轉(zhuǎn)祖國”的絕佳案例,因為它維持了“反轉(zhuǎn)祖國”形式中的一種緊張關系,而沒有為了找到答案,倉促地斷定誰是英雄、誰是惡棍。因此,荷爾德林在《安提戈涅》中看到了一種會被他的同代人所否定的東西,即一種“政治的、共和國的”理性形式(德語:Vernunftform)。

在荷爾德林寫作的那個年代,擁護共和政體是很危險的,足以讓一個人失去自由乃至生命,但荷爾德林卻認為索?？死账沟恼慰蚣苋匀皇怯行?甚至是有用的,即使在荷爾德林自己的歷史情境中它只是“勉強”可行。這應該如何理解?荷爾德林所說的理性的“共和”形式,在這里具體指的是克瑞翁和安提戈涅之間所維持的一種平衡。與許多評論家不同,荷爾德林并沒有簡單地譴責克瑞翁并贊美安提戈涅,他欣賞的正是索福克勒斯在普遍利益與個人利益之間保持了一種張力:前者以克瑞翁禁止埋葬波呂尼克斯(忒拜的叛國者)為代表,后者以安提戈涅違抗克瑞翁的法令和她為了表達對哥哥的感情犧牲自己為體現(xiàn)。安提戈涅和克瑞翁都蒙受恥辱,但他們受辱的方式截然不同:安提戈涅是因為不服從克瑞翁的法令以及法令下的民法,而克瑞翁則是因為他的古板和在體諒生命之脆弱與有限上表現(xiàn)出的無能?？巳鹞痰腻e誤在于,他將生者和死者相提并論,禁止一個妹妹為自己無可替代的胞兄之死而哀悼,這是不理解一個具有道德和政治行為的活人(叛國者)與一具不埋葬就將淪為牲畜的尸體之間存在區(qū)別的一種標志。

在《對索?？死账埂窗蔡岣昴档淖⑨尅返慕Y(jié)尾,荷爾德林得出結(jié)論:尊重傳統(tǒng)仍有其必要性。索?？死账沟膽騽√峁┝俗鎳Ｊ较胂蟮囊粋€絕佳范例,因為它在展示普遍性和獨異性“共存”(德語:zugleich)的同時,也指出了它們的不平等(德語:ungleich)。這種“共和”模式開啟了一個無窮的知識空間,“就像國家和世界的精神一樣”,這個知識空間只能從“傾斜”(德語:linkische)的角度,或者以“巧妙笨拙”(法語:adroitly gauche)的方式才能把握住。荷爾德林的意思是,我們對時代精神的理解總是有限的;真正的知識更多地取決于不能完全被理解的東西,而不是習慣上獲得的知識。然而,不能完全了解或以“巧妙笨拙”的方式了解的那部分,經(jīng)?？梢员晃覀兏惺艿?而詩人的作用恰恰是“保留和感受”未說出的部分,即“深不可測的差異關系”。這讓我們回到了城墻不能連接成一個完整圓圈的形象。所指本身也是一個能指,永遠指向無盡的循環(huán):“它指向自身,但同時(zu gleich)又指向不平等(ungleich),即與自身不同的東西?！表f伯認為,人類不僅是認知的存在,也是有感知的存在。真正的意義從來都不是簡單地通過文字來表達的,而是被“傾斜”地感知,或者在兩個手指之間的空間中被感知,這個空間,即是語文學(philology)的“對象”。

注釋[Notes]

① Archiphilologie一詞的前綴“archi-”既有“早期”“原始”“第一”“最重要”的意思,也有architecture (建筑)一詞中所包含的“構(gòu)造”和“累加”的含義。哈馬赫的Archiphilologie概念在強調(diào)語言本身的多重性和加建性的同時,也指出它的非本體性,即語言可以不受意義、對象、目的的限制,在其內(nèi)部無限地擴展自己自由游戲的空間。

② “Vaterl?ndische Umkehr”(德語)可譯為“愛國主義的反轉(zhuǎn)”,也可譯為“回歸自己的國家”。1959年,保羅·德曼在布蘭迪斯大學一次關于荷爾德林與浪漫主義傳統(tǒng)的講座中首次探討了這一說法的復雜性。參見De Man, Paul. “H?lderlin and the Romantic Tradition,” “H?lderlin and the Romantic Tradition.”Diacritics40.1(2012):115。

引用作品[Works Cited]

De Man, Paul. “H?lderlin and the Romantic Tradition.”Diacritics40.1(2012):100-129.

Hamacher, Werner. “95 Theses on Philology.” Trans. Catherine Diehl.Diacritics39.1(2009):25-44.

弗朗茲·卡夫卡:《中國長城建造時》,薛思亮譯,《卡夫卡小說全集Ⅲ》,韓瑞祥等譯。北京:人民文學出版社,2003年。248—257。

[Kafka, Franz. “Building the Great Wall of China.” Trans. Xue Siliang.TheCompleteFictionofKafka. Vol.3. Trans. Han Ruixiang, et al. Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 2003.248-257.]——:《家父的憂慮》,楊勁譯,《卡夫卡小說全集III》,韓瑞祥等譯。北京:人民文學出版社,2003年。74—75。

[---. “The Cares of a Family Man.” Trans. Yang Jing.TheCompleteFictionofKafka. Vol.3. Trans. Han Ruixiang, et al. Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 2003.74-75.]——:《教堂里的“紫貂”》,葉廷芳譯,《卡夫卡全集第一卷》,葉廷芳主編,葉廷芳、黎奇等譯。北京:中央編譯出版社,2015年。501—504。

[---. “In Our Synagogue.” Trans. Ye Tingfang.TheCompleteWorksofKafka. Vol.1. Ed. Ye Tingfang. Trans. Ye Tingfang and Li Qi, et al. Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press, 2015.501-504.]

Weber, Samuel.Singularity:PoliticsandPoetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021.

Overview of Lecture 2：SignifyingandtheFeelingofDifferences

I

The first part of the lecture is devoted to the reflection of language as an “indeterminate” object. Starting from the fact that in English, the word “l(fā)anguage” is rarely refered to with a definite article, Weber quotes the German critic and philosopher Werner Hamacher to speak of a “perpetual multiplication” within language that affects all languages: “There is noonelanguage but a multiplicity; not a stable multiplicity but only a perpetual multiplication of languages” (“95 Theses on Philology” 25). This multiplication, according to Hamacher, exists both at an intralinguistic and an interlinguistic level. Perhaps the new approach to philology is precisely not to view language as a traditional, stable object, but to focus on its inner enjoyment (Genu?), i.e., the way in which “the indefinite slowly defines itself” (43). This means, from the philologist’s point of view, one should not only see how meaning is associated and gained through past usage, but also free the signifier from fixed meanings for future associations.

Hamacher calls this process of the indefinite of language slowly defining itself “archiphilology”①.One way of understanding it, Weber suggests, is to see it as a tension between “response” and “appeal”: “responding to previous attempts at appropriation, and through such responses appealing for further responses.” In order to understand this distinction, however, one first has to understand the difference between “response” and “answer,” two neighboring words in English which have different connotations. While “response” remains close to the etymological roots of “answer” —answereorandswarein Middle English — meaning simply a “counter-affirmation” or “countering word,” the modern English word “answer” has taken on a more limited meaning of “providing a definite solution” to the initial statement or question. The word “answer” entails a degree of certainty, and together with it, a position of “knowing.”

Weber resorts to Saussure’s view of intra-linguistic, differential function in language, developed in the linguist’sCourseinGeneralLinguistics, to emphasize two points. First, in the linguistic system, signifiers signify by differentiating themselves from other signifiers that “surround” them, that is, those bear both a resemblance and dissemblance to the signifier in question. Such is the relation between “response” and “answer.” Second, although the process of comparing and contrasting presupposes a certain stability of the sign, in reality the signified is not a taken-for-granted idea, itself being a process and an action; i.e., it needs time to become “self-identical” and “self-contained.”

Implicit in the first point is Saussure’s concept of value in theCourseinGeneralLinguistics, which, lesser-known than the concept of the sign, needs to be reminded here. According to Saussure, language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each sign results solely from the simultaneous presence of others, as the following diagram shows:

What it means is that value should not be confused with signification. Whereas signification is defined by the vertical arrows in the drawing below, namely, the relation between sound image and concept, value refers to the horizontal relation in which each signifier acquires its meaning by “negotiating” with its “surround” sound image/signifiers, through dissemblance and similarity.

To come back to the question of response and appeal and to understand the how language and signifying process function both as response and appeal, we need to see how muchresponsetries to operate as ananswer, i.e., to always want to “eliminate uncertainty.” The task here is therefore to reinstall the play of indeterminate multiplicity of signifiers in the process of signifying, both in relation to the past and to the future. This tension in relation to the past and to the future is not limited to the purely formal linguistic system; it operates also in literary texts, as Kafka’s short stories illustrate in the second part.

II

If, in the first lecture, Boccaccio’sDecameronis analyzed to show how established conventions of meaning are resituated, reframed and displaced in the act of recounting, here, in this section, several of Kafka’s short stories are examined to show a defensive response to a “monotheological identity paradigm” (for instance the Austro-Hungarian Empire) that is no longer holding itself well and is displaying symptoms of losing control. This defensive response in turn produces a tension within the literary texts that require close reading.

The first story Weber analyses is “While Building the Wall of China” (German: “Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer”). Written in 1917, Kafka’s short story was written during the definite decline and demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was further diminished by the First World War. As a German-speaking Czech Jew living mainly in Prague, Kafka’s double foreignness to the Austro-Hungarian Empire allows him to situate the narrative outside where he actually lives, namely, far away from Europe — in China. Weber first points out the word “building” in the title is important, since the word “Beim Bau” suggests that the “building” of the wall is ongoing and is as unfinished as the story itself. He then points out that although there are many interpretations possible of this story, the main issue that will occupy us here is that the story involves a reflection on language. The central question that the reader wants to know is whether the Chinese Wall was completed or not. But the language that describes this fact is uncertain, since it says both that the wall “was declared to be completed” and that “the building was not continued at the end of the thousand meters” (BuildingtheGreatWall113, translation modified by Weber). We cannot therefore trust any of these “declarations” in the story, and indeed, the story is animated by a tension between the desire for completion (to understand the story) and the inconclusiveness of the text itself.

Kafka’s story can be read as operating at different levels simultaneously. On the one hand as an historical allegory of the vulnerability of global empires, and on the other as an allegory of a more general linguistic one. How do the two function together?

In the story, much emphasis is placed on the division of labor, which is the modular construction of the Great Wall. One is made to understand that even the completion of the Wall will not suffice to overcome the fragmentary character of the elements with which it is working. “From whom is the Great Wall supposed to protect us? From the people of the north. I come from Southeastern China. No northern people can threaten us there” (BuildingtheGreatWall117). We therefore listen to the command from a higher place, but the high command does not know more than we do, even the emperor seems to be a lazy person who does not do much (119). Little by little, the projection of a random enemy outside compromises the notion of protection: “The wall was conceived of as a defense against the people of the north, but how can a wall that is not a continuous structure offer protection? Indeed, not only can such a wall not protect, but the construction itself is in perpetual danger” (113).

The second allegory is the allegory of challenging language as a coherent unity. The attempt to construct a wall to keep out the “nomads” — the uncontrolled wanderers from the north — can be read as an allegory of tension between the fixity of traditional meaning of language and an ongoing signifying process. In other words, the incompletion of the construction of the Wall is similar to the inclusiveness of the meaning of the story. “Reading can thus oscillate between essentially reproducing the propositional content of words and phrase in the text,” writes Weber, “and indicating how such content can be read otherwise than as simply reproducing conventional meanings ....” More concretely, it means the language in the story proposes something, but then takes back, thus teasing the reader’s desire for orientation. Weber calls this type of narration “progressive-digressive” (a term he borrowed from the narrator of Laurence Sterne’sTristramShandy) and this silent calling for the reader’s desire the process “appealing.” It is precisely because it does not give a clear answer to the meaning that it appeals to you to keep asking questions.

While the sense of incompletion in “While Building the Wall of China” is largely created by the instability of language, occasionally the agent that makes the narration twist and turn appears in Kafka’s writing as a concrete, visible thing. Such is the case of Odradek in the story “The Cares of a Family Man,” in which an inanimate object — a star-shaped spool for thread — becomes an animate being that not only lurks and laughs, but also responds to the narrator’s questions. A more striking example is found in in a lesser-well-known story called “In Our Synagogue,” in which a strange marten-like animal seems to do nothing in the synagogue other than listening to our appeals: it appears only when the church attenders start to pray. More importantly, it is the “two-fingers wide” “protruding ledge” (Mauervorsprung) on which it makes the audacious leap, both forward and backward, that is allegorical of the “progressive-digressive” narration (“In our Synagogue” 141-142). What these “unsettling” narratives achieve is a questioning of the foundation (whether it is collapsing empire resembling the Wall that does not come full-circle or the conventional expectations of a linear-causal unfolding of meaning) while opening it up for new constructions. They are “defensive” in that they are not caught in the flawed self-sufficient conventions; they preemptively open the collapsing foundations in search for new meanings and solutions.

III

In the third part, Weber examines H?lderlin’s “Remarks on Sophocles’Antigone” to describe another kind of the “overturning” of conventions. H?lderlin describes the “overturning” inAntigoneas taking the form of what he callsvaterl?ndischeUmkehr— a phrase that is difficult to translate in English becauseUmkehr(reversal) has affected the wordVaterland(Fatherland)②. Today “fatherlandic” may mean something totally different, like colonial, imperial, nationalistic efforts aimed at hegemony, including nationalist xenophobia all over the world. But, at the time H?lderlin writes, that is to say Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century, during the years immediately following the French Revolution,vaterl?ndischeUmkehrrefers to the opposite of such hegemony; it could be seen as “an ideal combining the singularities of local social and political existence with more general aspirations” (Singularity, 380). Weber emphasizes that H?lderlin’s model offers an alternative to that of Kafka, for the poet stresses the limits of reversal and the relative need to hold on to certain conventions. For H?lderlin,vaterl?ndischeUmkehris “the overturning of all kinds of representation and of forms;” it is anunendingprocess that no party comes out as the absolute winner or absolute loser, because each “overturning” party, while striving for the better, is also at the same time conditioned by its own historical situation, his own “cognitive limit.” Therefore,vaterl?ndischeUmkehris an aporetic enterprise in which any successful form of reversal could always potentially be cancelled by the next one in the continuous flow of history.

H?lderlin shows a particular interest in Sophocles’ Theban tragedies, in particularOedipustyrannosandAntigone, because the two plays demonstrate how “l(fā)imitless unification purges itself through limitless separation” (Singularity12). To put it differently, Sophocles’ plays, especiallyAntigone, serve as good examples to show how the tension around “fatherlandic reversal” can be sustained instead of deciding hastily on the heroes and villains. H?lderlin thus sees inAntigonesomething that would be repudiated by his contemporaries, namely aformofreason(Vernunftform) that “is political, and namely republican.”

At the time when H?lderlin was writing, republican sympathies were dangerous, sufficient to cost one one’s liberty or even one’s life, yet H?lderlin argues that Sophocles’ political framework, although “barely” workable in H?lderlin’s own historical situation, is still valid, and even useful. How so? What H?lderlin calls the “republican” form of reason here refers more specifically to the maintaining of the equilibrium between Creon and Antigone. Unlike many commentators, H?lderlin does not write off Creon and extol Antigone; what he appreciates in Sophocles is precisely the maintaining of the tension between the interests of the general, represented by Creon’s interdiction of burying Polynices, Thebe’s traitor, and of the singular, incarnated by Antigone’s defiance to Creon’s decree and her feelings for her brother. Both Antigone and Creon suffer disgrace, but they suffer in very different ways: Antigone for not obeying Creon’s edict and by consequence the civil law, and Creon for his inflexibility and incapability of understanding the vulnerability and mortality of the living. Creon’s fault was that he treated “too equally” the living and the dead, since forbidding a sister to mourn the death of an irreplaceable brother, is a sign of not understanding the difference between a living being, with moral and political deeds, and a dead body, which, without burial, would be reduced to the finitude of other living animals.

Toward the end of “Remarks on (Sophocles’)Antigone,” H?lderlin concludes that respect for the tradition is still needed. Sophocles’ play offers a good example of the fatherlandic modes of imagining, by exposing the general and the singularatonce(zugleich), while pointing toward the unequal (ungleich). This “republican” mode opens onto anunendingspace of knowledge, which, “l(fā)ike the spirit of states and of the world,” can only be grasped only from a “skewed” (linkische) point of view, or an “adroitly gauche” manner. What H?lderlin means here is that our understanding of the spirit of the time is always limited; the true knowledge depends more on what cannot be fully understood, than on the traditional sense of knowledge. That part that cannot be entirely known, or known in an “adroitly gauche” (linkische) way, can, however, often be felt, and it is precisely the poet’s role to “retain and to feel” what remained unsaid, that “unfathomable relation of difference.” This brings us back to the image of the wall never completely come into a full circle. The signified, being always already itself a signifier, can never conclude the circle of pointing: “It points to itself, and yet always at once (zugleich), simultaneously towards theungleich: toward that which is not the same itself.” Human beings, Weber suggests, are not only cognitive beings, but also sentient beings; true meaning is never simply signified through words, but left to be perceived “skewedly,” or be felt in that two-finger, in-between space that is also the “object” of philology.

[Notes]

① The prefix “archi-” in the word “archiphilologie” means “earlier,” “original,” “first,” “chief,” as well as “building” or “assemblage” as contained in the word “architecture.” Hamacher’s concept of “Archiphilologie,” while emphasizing the multiplicity and constructiveness of language itself, also points out its non-ontological nature, that is, language can expand its own free play indefinitely without being limited by the concerns for meaning, addressee and purpose.

②Vaterl?ndischeUmkehrcan be translated as “patriotic reversal,” but also “the return toward one’s own nation.” Paul de Man was the first to explore the complexity of this term in a lecture he delivered at Brandeis university in 1959. See Paul de Man, “H?lderlin and the Romantic Tradition.”Diacritics40.1(2012):115.

[Works Cited]

De Man, Paul. “H?lderlin and the Romantic Tradition.”Diacritics40.1(2012):100-129.

Hamacher, Werner. “95 Theses on Philology.” Trans. Catherine Diehl.Diacritics39.1(2009):25-44.

Kafka, Franz. “Building the Great Wall of China.”Kafka’sSelectedStories. Tran. Stanley Conrgold. New York: Norton, 2007.113-123.

---. “In Our Synagogue.” Franz Kafka.InvestigationsofaDogandOtherCreatures. Trans. Michael Hofmann. New York: New Directions, 2017.140-143.

Weber, Samuel.Singularity:PoliticsandPoetics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021.