Readings in Interpretation: Hlderlin, Hegel, Heidegger. by Andrzej Warminski Review by: Thomas Pfau MLN, Vol. 102, No.

5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1987), pp. 1212-1215 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2905323 . Accessed: 28/05/2012 11:31
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(together)is not systems theory.To articulatetwo discoursesor theoretical only to harness their otherwisedisparate purposes, but also to renovate and reconditionwhat is specificto each in the contextof a newconjuncRelations, Sprinker has succeeded, more cogentlythan ture. In Imaginary and theory,how and whycritical anyone else, in showing,both in history practices like those of De Man and Althusser are performingthe same kind of work with similar results. A more precise sense of where they mightactuallywork togetherremains to be seen, and, as such, marks the horizon of thisbook. Less germane to Sprinker'saims, but more crucial to the currentstateof is the fact that the term "culture" is one which rarely political criticism, Relations.It is arguably one of the more disabling appears in Imaginary features of the long traditionof marxistaesthetics,and Althusseris no of Art itself, preferexception,thatit has failed to question the institution of art which ring instead to accept classical (and high cultural) definitions and transcendent power denied to everyday endow it withan authenticity cultural productions. Having accepted those definitions, the task of terms,the marxistaestheticianshas largelybeen to explain, in materialist of this or that peculiar capacityto transcendthe everyday,hisspecificity todaywould have to tory,ideology etc. A thoroughgoingculturalcriticism say thatthisbegs the question of culture,or at least culturedefined in the larger sense in which Gramsci,alone among westernmarxists,sought to explain the workings of power. For the power to define what is "authentic"in culture,ideology and even science, is also the power to define To recogcertain social meanings as dominant,and othersas illegitimate. which power is exercised,and popnize thatculture is the medium through ular consent is won or lost, is to move toward a new level of immediate of culture,and to leave criticaland political struggleover the definitions of marxists and tranto the institutional behind the continuingattachment witha history scendent power of "art" and, by extension,theircomplicity of fixed textual objects throughwhich that power has maintaineditself.
Princeton University ANDREW ROSS

Hegel,Heidegger. H6lderlin, Andrzej Warminski,Readingsin Interpretation: of Minnesota Press, 1987. lxi + 225 pages. Minneapolis: University deserves our close readings-and continued paReadingsin Interpretation for its cogent and highlyconcentience-for a varietyof reasons: first, of what,throughthe work tratedexposition of the reach and significance of Paul de Man, has come to be known as "rhetorical or tropological readings." Furthermore,Warminski'sstudy can be called exemplary for critical"apits concise analyses of the relationbetween thiscontemporary proach" and its problematic theoreticalantecedents (H6lderlin, Hegel,

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book Nietzsche,Heidegger and Blanchot). At the same time,Warminski's problemsor blind-spots bringsto the fore some of the intrinsic invariably on an excluthat obtain when basing one's reading (of interpretations) of sivelytextual base. Comprised of four chapters on the interpretation Hdlderlin and another threeon Hegel, and withthe essaysdating fromas early as 1976, Warminski's study arrives at a comprehensive underin the more recent essays on standing of its theoreticalagenda primarily As the Postscript." Heidegger (chapter 6, esp. 150ff.)and in its "Prefatory lattertextmakes clear, Warminskimeans to focus on the "supplementary, Yet unlike some earlier deconstrucallegorical 'moment' of reinscription. tioniststudies of Holderlin and Hegel by Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida, Warminski's"rhetorical"approach proves considerablymore rigid in its procedure. textualor linguistic as a strictly understandingof reinscription any symmetrical Postscript," As Warminskipoints out in his "Prefatory opposition of the philosophical and literaryidiom remains only a first, of "merelystrategicmove" (xxxv), requiringas its next step the rewriting terms."Warminskilocates this the "philosophical negative . .. in linguistic "philosophical negative" almost exclusivelyin Hegel's concept of "deterof Holderlin), minate negation" (and in Szondi's Hegelian interpretation of the textof naturalconsciousness thatis, in the inevitable(self-)negation the other,the philosophical"we." For Warminski, foritsown, symmetrical rewritingof such a negative remains far from deliberate, for it merely had itself, in order to constitute "restoreswhat the text[of interpretation], to cover up, suppress or exclude in the firstplace" (xxxiv). Thus a third step in the procedure of reading suggests that "not only does literary (Auslegung, the textof the interpretation come before reading (and writing) but it also always goes afterthe as its condition of possibility, Erlduterung) (150). as its conditionof impossibility" textof the interpretation The most convincingdemonstrationof this thesis may well be the micrological and very compelling reading in the "Postscript"of a complex figural passage from Nietzsche's Geburtder Tragodie. Interpreters and alike construethe apparent analogy of Nietzsche'smetaphoras translators signichiasmicreversal,a remissionof figurative the basis fora legitimate, obscure "sense." Yet in doing so, theyinevitably ficationinto interpretive the originary,catachresticstatusof Nietzsche's figureswhich ("always alof thatwhich now is extrapolatedas (and ready") conditionthe possibility reduced to) their meaning. "Less a matterof the relation between literal senses" (lv), catachresisstands in proper and transferred and figurative, forthe relationto any attemptat recuperatingthe figurative asymmetrical of not a negation "is insight such out, Warminski points itself. As logos knowledge but rather outside, asymmetrical to, the opposition of knowing"(lvii). knowing/not thesisreceives thatWarminski's Clearly,it is fromHegel's Phenomenology its ultimate challenge, for the systematicforce of Hegel's speculation (texts)of "nathinges on the abilityto sublate the inadequate articulations

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of the absolute forthe "philoural consciousness"into the self-explication sophical we." Taking up some related considerationsof Maurice Blanchot (cf. "Epilogue"), Warminski'sreading of Hegel and of Heidegger's Hegel correctlyfocuses on the problematicstatus of this "we" in Hegel's text. Consistently erudite in both his scholarshipand in his simultaneoushanand reading, Warminski dling of matters of translation,interpretation a (textual)blindspotthatobtainsboth forHegel's philosseeks to highlight of and for Heidegger's reinscription ophy of reflexiveself-interpretation In the destinyof Seinsvergessenheit. Hegel's thesiswithinthe (metaphysical) course of rewritingthe general problematicof the philosophical stand(neitherspeculativenor ontological)but texpoint froman asymmetrical tual "nonplace" (Blanchot's phrase, 184), Warminskishows convincingly of the destined "forgetfulness substitutes how Heidegger surreptitiously for the reflexiveself-determination derSeinsvergessenheit) Being" (Geschick of Hegel's natural consciousness. To prevent this interpretationfrom Heidegger's reappearing as yet another stage in Hegel's Phenomenology, standpointas the "issue of Being itself" text dissimulatesits interpretive (die Sache des Seinsselbst). Still, some rather substantial problems arise with Warminski's own perhaps withhis claim thatHolderlin's text readings of Hdlderlin,starting 'self-reflexive' enough, 'aware' enough of its own textual is "linguistically whose negativewould reconditions,to ... give lie to any interpretation conditions"(xxxii). extratextual, duce Hdlderlin's textsto extralinguistic, of H6lderlin remain troublesomebecause While Szondi's interpretations of "the model of consciousness (i.e., in of their unreflected transference termsof self and other)" (33) onto Holderlin's dialecticsof the "proper" and the "foreign,"such a "reduction" of Holderlin's text to a reflective may not yet legitimateWarminski'ssubstitutionof "mirror-symmetry" forthe structure and figuration (Metapher) (Zeichen) "termsof signification continued to reflecton of consciousnessaltogether.For Holderlin himself afterrealizingthatthe constitution the phenomenon of self-consciousness of consciousness reaches beyond any theoryof reflection;for reflection cannot produce both a figure for a self and, si(qua self-representation) multaneously,a figure that would identifythe representingand represented self as the self-same(cf. Stuttgart Edition, IV, 1: 217, 253f.; VI,1: the phenomenon of (self-)consciousnesswith 155f.). Simply to substitute (33) remains "terms of signification (Zeichen)and figuration(Metapher)" conunwarranted as long as Hdlderlin's own, profoundlyasymmetrical ception of this phenomenon is not addressed. 'self-reThus the characterizationof Holderlin's textsas "linguistically reappearance of the phenomenon of flexive',"anticipatesthe involuntary in Warminski'sreadings of Holderlin. One instanceof self-consciousness such an involuntarily reappearance of a residual subject (no longer the nor the "forgetful" Heideggerian Dasein) "knowing" Hegelian subjectivity to say that"at the occurs in Warminski'sreading of Holderlin'sEmpedocles:

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momenthe reads himselfbest,he reads himselfneitheras a selfnor as his own other but as a text"(15) suggestswithitslast "as" thatthereremainsa This act, thus far and the act of interpretation. differencebetween the text an enigma both to philosophical thoughtand its linguisticreinscription, becomes yet more prominentas Warminskireflectson the catachrestic "what if the authority throughitsStoff: of Hdlderlin's Subjekt self-creation of our willto of such an analogy, such a metaphor,were onlythe authority power, which invents,which mustinvent .. ." (54). On such occasions, aiming Warminski'swork suggestsanother questioningof interpretation, text'sindisputableblindness than less at the exposure of the interpretive that itself, actof figuration behind the originary and motives at thefunctions remains catachrestic"impositionof sense" (lv) by whichall interpretation thatthe same parasitized. It remains a paradox of Readingsin Interpretation of the "philosophicalnegtextualfocus which permitsitscogent rewriting should prevent its auative" in Hegel's and Heidegger's interpretations of a more originary(text-prothor from inquiring into the constitution in. .. as text"and "must ducing) subject, the one which "representsitself vent." Still, any such inquiry would have to proceed from a careful (re)reading of Readingsin Interpretation.
at Buffalo ofNew York StateUniversity THOMAS PFAU

FicGenre,and Epistolary ofDesire: Gender, Linda S. Kauffman,Discourses tions. Press, 1986. 331 pages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Nineteenth-Century and Sciencein the Ruth Bernard Yeazell, ed. Sex,Politics, 1983-84, N.S., 10. PapersfromtheEnglishInstitute, Novel; Selected Press, 1986. xiv + Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University 195 pages. ideas, to difference-to different The defensive response of institutions desires-is readily evident in the two books under reviewhere, different each of which illustrates a number of widely employed strategies for taming the powerfulideas unleashed in the past two decades and usually of referredto as "theory."That tamingprocess,undertakenin the interest preserving the hegemony of the dominant ideology in intellectualand producing what one mightcall the "renopedagogical circles,is currently vated" academy, an academy that has been forced to acknowledge the ideas but wants to guarantee thattheydo not presence of those different relations (much as, in the wake of disturb established power/knowledge movements,our "renovated" societymakes a show of tolerating minority other desires). As instances in the profession at large of these current strategies-which give the appearance of something "new" and "dif-