DERRIDA, KANT, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF - Continental Philosophy II

PARERGONALITY Irene E.Harvey

I Introduction: the ornaments (parerga) of the third Critique

The parerga, ‘what we call ornaments,’ ‘i.e. those things which do not belong to the complete representation of the object internally as elements, but only externally as complements’,¹ in Kant’s third Cri- tique, in particular, have become the focus of one of Derrida’s more extensive essays and instances of deconstruction in his text of the same name.² His investigation of Kant’s usage of examples, as par- erga, and the parerga of the examples themselves offers itself as an example of the following themes and issues which we intend to focus on in this essay, namely: (i) deconstruction in general, (ii) parergonality as such, (iii) Derrida’s relation to Kant in general, and (iv) several possible theories of exemplarity. The question thus arises as to precisely how Derrida’s essay, ‘Parergon,’ forms and frames these themes, exemplifies them and perhaps above all performs the parergonality which his text ostensibly offers at the same time as its theme.

Our analysis here will aim to articulate, by way of example (tak- ing Derrida’s reading of Kant as our Exemplar) the notion of exemplarity as parergonality, in particular as this is itself exemplified in Kant’s third Critique (via Derrida’s framing/ deconstruction of this issue). We will also analyze the collection of scattered eruptions in Derrida’s text of the notions of exemplarity and parergonality, and the twin terms of example and Exemplar as they metonymically promote not only the inflation from a particular to a general or uni-

versal, but also an economy of mimesis³ which is characterized essentially by inversion and displacement over the time and space of textuality (différance). This economy of mimesis, as a parody of an economy of the same, of the proper (indeed, even as an inversion of these metaphysical notions) will be shown here not only to entail but to rely upon a number of theories of exemplarity as parergonal- ity. We will also attempt to articulate precisely what makes this inversion, via mimetic doubling and retracing (Derrida over Kant) possible and perhaps even necessary.

Our own reading here should not be pre-understood as an example of deconstruction, nor as one of critique, although it will be parallel to both in so far as our question fundamentally will be:

what makes Derrida’s relation to Kant possible?⁴ Or, what is at stake in the deconstruction of Kant such that the conditions of the possibility of deconstruction are themselves revealed within a framework of exemplarity, however generally this term is understood?

Derrida himself metonymically substitutes the following list of terms for that of “example” without apparent justification: analogy, illustra- tion, particular, and instance.⁵ Kant, also, does not thematize a theory of exemplarity despite his reliance on the same.⁶ It is this unthematized yet presupposed foundation that Kant and Derrida share, albeit by inversion (and hence only via the hinge term or example) that we seek to expose here.

II Derrida’s strategies

Such sharpening of the judgment is indeed one of the great benefits of examples. Correctness and precision of intellectual insight, on the other hand, they more usually somewhat impair. For only very seldom do they ade- quately fulfill the requirements of the rules (as casus in terminis).⁷

Derrida’s reading of Kant fundamentally asks the question as to whether or not the third Critique can be read, seen, or analyzed as an example of itself. That is to say, does Kant’s Critique of Judg- ment offer itself as the law of itself, the frame of itself, as both the particular and the general ‘of itself’? Is the third Critique an

instance of the sublime? of the beautiful? of aesthetic judgment? of reflective or determinant judgment? These questions are addressed by Derrida’s reading as itself an example of itself; namely, Derrida’s deconstructive analysis of Kant’s text, of Kant’s examples, in particular, is itself an example of exemplarity and a performance of parergonality. What a performative entails, according to speech act theo- rists,⁸ is that a speech/writing act does what it says, or that it performs an action by its very expression. In Heideggerian terms, this entails the thematizing of the unthematized at the very moment of expression of the unthematized. In other words, this degree of coherence in textuality is ontologically impossible. Kant’s note concerning the danger of using examples, their intrinsic tendency to be inadequate and even their capacity to impair good, appropriate, proper judgment suggests precisely this problem. Derrida notably does not cite this note in Kant’s first Critique, but does none the less exhibit precisely this issue in his reading of Kant.

Not only is the adequation of a particular example to its ‘rule’ at stake here, for Derrida, but also the choice, order, function, and structure of the examples Kant uses. We shall analyze Derrida’s strategies here in some detail in order to clarify precisely how the framework of exemplarity as parergonality is exemplified by this deconstruction.

In analyzing the third Critique via its examples, ostensibly thereby using reflective judgment, in Kant’s sense, Derrida invariably begins by faithfully representing what Kant claims his own examples exemplify. That is, what he ‘intends’ them to mean, to illus- trate, allegorize, demonstrate, or concretize. It is the declared⁹ statements of the text that thereby take first priority in the deconstructive initiative. But this is only the beginning. Indeed, Derrida belies his own claim that this is the beginning, ‘let us begin with examples,’¹⁰ in that he has already offered us a possible law, in the form of numerous hypotheses, quasi-laws concerning the abyss, the circle, the passe-partout, and the parergonality which he ‘may perhaps’ find in/through/ behind and beneath Kant’s text. Thus Derrida, in belying his own stated claim concerning what he is doing when he is doing it (that is, he claims to begin with examples—reflective judgment; yet in fact he has begun with a quasi-law—determinant judgment), is in fact performing by this very betrayal the parergonality that he will later thematize.

The initial question then for Derrida, once the explicit, intended,

sanctioned functions and limits of the examples used by Kant have been thematized, is precisely what else do these ‘same’ examples do, offer, suggest, betray? In more classical terms, Derrida asks:

why are they what they are? Why these particular examples? Why these here and now or those there and then? What does the order of the trilogies of examples selected several times by Kant signify?

What is behind his choice? What is the law here (of his desire)?

Derrida, in so framing his own analysis, has already offered explicitly and thematically the key to his strategy concerning the role of the question as ‘imposing massively’ on what can be found as a viable possible response. As he says, concerning questions themselves as frames: This questioning procedure is situated within a fundamental presupposition. It massively predetermines the system and the combination of responses.’¹¹

This ‘procedure’ he is referring to is notably that of Hegel, and the fundamental presupposition is notably metaphysical. The system and the combination of possible responses is notably rational, or Logos or that of Reason. Derrida’s strategy is thus analogous to that of Hegel, parallel to the discourse of Reason and yet separated from it. His strategy, as deconstruction, uses the discourse of Reason, uses the rhetoric of rationality, of philosophy, and of metaphysics, in order to pursue what will lead him outside of that same orbit. In this case, this is applied to Kant’s text, and via Kant’s examples.

The question of the surplus hidden within the examples entails a system however, for Derrida, and a system that entails what he calls, an-other logic. This is the logic of supplementarity,¹² in some cases, and in this, our example, it is the ‘logic’ of parergonality.

Namely, the condition of the possibility of reading examples other- wise hinges on a certain untamed (wild, like the tulip and the ocean of the poets—indeed, sublime, as we shall see) and untameable, non- masterable excess, that although susceptible of being framed and hence made visible, cannot thereby entirely (without remainder) be brought into the light of day, of reason. In order to reveal this limit within examples and exemplarity in general (the sublime structure of exemplarity and parergonality) Derrida focuses on the example of the frame itself in Kant’s text. From the frame of pictures,¹³ used by Kant as an example (the first of three) of parerga—that extrinsic addition to the beautiful—Derrida extends the sense of frame [cadre] to enframing, and hence returns to the parergon of parerga.

This extension is also an inflation—from the particular to its law,

potentially, if not in fact—from the example to the Exemplar. In asking what frames the example, Derrida asks what frames the frame, or what is it about the frame that escapes framing? Again the thematics of betrayal arise here, and Derrida turns to the question of intrinsic and extrinsic relations, to internal and external connections, to the arbitrary and essential connections. The move then from the frame in particular, as used by Kant, is what frames the frame, and in turn what frames the frame of the frame.

Derrida answers these questions in the following manner: the frame of the picture is framed as (seen as) a parergon; the notion of parergon is itself framed via another context in which Kant also uses the term; namely, in the text, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.¹⁴ In turn this text is shown in precise ways to frame (at times) the third Critique, despite Kant’s insistence upon a certain autonomy concerning the law of the law of the Critique of Judgment.

In this respect, then, as dependent on what is outside of itself for its law, the third Critique, in not giving itself its own law is not an example of itself, but rather forms an example within a schema that is outside of itself. This goes mutatis mutandis for the relation between the third Critique and the first, as Derrida also indicates at a later stage.¹⁵ Thus the frame₁ of the frame₂ of the frame₃ is (a) integral to the frame₃ (of the picture), (b) constitutive, and (c) indicates a certain necessity concerning the choice of the particular, seemingly arbitrary example—the frame of the picture. Hence, the parerga here are shown to be not simply, as Kant intended to show, extrinsic, external, detachable from the work of art, from the ergon, but rather play a central, albeit clandestine and disguised role in organizing the ergon itself. This duplicity as enacted by Kant’s text via his examples, will be shown to characterize parergonality in general, deconstruction in general, and the discourse of philosophy in general. Kant is not alone here, despite the apparent singularity of his role, the ‘good’ example of ‘bad’ examples.

Not only does Derrida invert via the discourse of metaphysics and reason what Kant sought to establish as extrinsic and external, but he also questions the order of the examples when presented in a series. This occurs twice in Derrida’s reading; namely concerning the trilogy of the examples of parerga: (i) the frame of pictures, (ii) the clothing of statues, (iii) the columns of buildings; and the trilogy of the examples of adherent (and hence impure, dependent) beauty:

(i) man, (ii) the horse, (iii) buildings. Derrida asks in each case, why

this order, why this sequence, what does the series indicate, and why is what is first first?¹⁶ The critical backward step is notably analogous to Kant’s own critical method concerning the conditions of the possibility of experience, metaphysics, science, and synthetic a priori judgments, to name a few examples. Derrida does not question what is given as given, but instead asks, how is this possible?

According to what (logic? rule? law?) is what is given given? Anal- ogous to Kant, but none the less not the same, as Derrida himself notes. What does the seemingly accidental priority of the first example actually signify? Is this a dependent or independent priority? Is it an accident? Is it instead significant with respect to some other agenda of priority and organization which the text exhibits but which is not thematized? Derrida’s answer is of course, yes, to this latter question. But then what else (once again the capital question of excess and surplus lurking within the examples) is prioritized here? Namely, the frame of the choice of examples themselves. That is, the frame in the first trilogy organizes the choices of clothing and columns, as frames, and in addition the notion of frame frames parerga, despite Kant’s intention to the contrary. In the second trilogy, we have man as the first example of a purposive subject/object.

The place of man, Derrida suggests is not insignificant in Kant’s text; it is the central theme of the third Critique, he argues, despite Kant’s apparent reduction of its status. The framing of the examples, as humanist, as based on humanism, is revealed by Derrida in his analysis of the second example here, the ‘horse.’ Why (for what end) is the ‘horse’ necessarily an example of teleology? For what (or for whom) is the ‘horse’ necessarily purposive? Only for man, by man in a cosmos where man is the measure; in a humanist orien- tation, in short. Thus Kant’s choice of ‘horse’ is framed not only by his explicit choice of ‘man’ as the first example, but by his implicit choice of man as the measure of his examples as a whole here; as the frame of the series, as the law of these examples.

Derrida’s parergonal strategy of analyzing the parerga, the apparent ornaments, the apparent extrinsic, external marginalia of the third Critique, is described by him as parergonal at the same time as he exhibits parergonality inside and through the examples. He asks the hypothetical objector’s question in this way:

One might think that I am being abusive by insisting on two or three examples, perhaps gratuitous, in a secondary subchap-

ter; and that it would be better to turn to those places less marginal in the work, closer to the center and the foundations.

Certainly. [But] the objection supposes that one already knows which is the center or the foundation of the third Critique, that one had already taken its frame into account and the limits of its field. Now, nothing appears to be more difficult to deter- mine. The Critique offers itself as a work [ergon] from many sides.¹⁷

Despite Derrida’s explicit admission of ‘not being certain where the center and where the margins are,’ what ‘the frame of the third Cri- tique is,’ and what the limits of its field are, he is articulating precisely these aspects of the third Critique, as ergon, and in turn setting up his own work as its frame, as the parergon. It is a short step to recognizing that the deconstruction of Kant’s text, in this context at least, itself takes on the form of parergonality. In other words, the issue in the relation between Kant and Derrida is analogous to, indeed exemplified by, the relation between ergon and parergon, between the frame and the enframed. And it is clear that deconstruction problematizes this distinction in order to reveal that which grounds both ergon and parergon and makes this relation possible, which is evidently neither term, but rather parergonality.

What parergonality entails includes the parasitic contamination of inside and outside, internal and external, interior and exterior distinc- tions. And this can be generalized from the merest example as an Exemplar of what cannot be exemplified.

In so far as Derrida’s analysis articulates, thematizes, and gives evidence for the connections between the so-called intrinsic and extrinsic, internal and external relations thematized by Kant, he is himself suggesting that the contamination is itself necessary; this is, intrinsic. Hence, the arbitrary relations, the chosen examples, which Kant intended as mere examples and hence substitutable, detachable from his central argument, are revealed as Exemplary, or as necessary, or as lawful within a larger context or a more general economy. Ironically, the logic of the parergon as explicitly detachable and arbitrary, yet implicitly essential and necessary, indeed constitutive (but working in effects) is indeed called a logic, called parerg- onality, called a law, called Exemplary, and called above all neces- sary. Derrida’s text, however, indicates the inverse. It inverts its own claim in that the logic is a so-called logic, it is like a logic, but

not identical to a logic, to Logos or to Reason. It is a rhetoric of logic here, not logic as such. It is somehow parallel to logic but not identical or subsumable within a logic.

What this so-called ‘logic of parergonality’ entails is the element of what Kant called the sublime. It is the inadequation of any form to content, of the frame to the framed, of framing at all, if taken strictly, that characterizes the nature or logic of parergonality.

Hence, Derrida’s claims deconstruct themselves and perform the circle and the abyss (which is his announced title),¹⁸ and above all the ‘satire of the abyss.’ The abyss is the distance between Kant and Derrida, it is the difference between a critique and a deconstruction, between metaphysics and non-metaphysics, between metaphysics and the rhetoric of metaphysics, between the parergon in Kant’s sense and the same in Derrida’s sense. To ask the question of truth is not without relevance here in the sense that one might well con- clude that Derrida has offered up the truth of Kant’s example;

indeed, the truth of exemplarity as parergonality could be the last word on the matter: framed. But of course, deconstruction does not claim to find truth, just as critique did not claim to find knowledge, but the condition of the possibility of the same. That one can locate critique and deconstruction within a metaphysical framework simply displaces the real issue here since what is at stake is prior, ontologically, to metaphysics and its claims; namely, truth.

What is the status of exemplarity here? This question must lead us into the conditions of the possibility of Derrida’s strategies as outlined above, and in addition, what other other logic is at work within this performance of parergonality via the thematics of exemplarity. The central question thus entails what Derrida himself has called the economy of mimesis, and hence his relation to the infla- tion of examples into Exemplars. What is entailed here relates directly to the question of inversion and its conditions of possibility such that Kant’s text, for example, can be inverted in order to show, expose, its ‘other’ logic. What allows for this inversion? What allows for Kant’s step back from the given to enframe it within a system of conditions that entail totality, completeness, and, above all, closure?

The sublime again arises here by its exclusion a priori and with it the logic of parergonality that can never be framed, and the structure of exemplarity which entails an intrinsic inadequation, surplus, excess, or as Kant called it, the sublime. Let us now turn to what

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