A "t" too many
Dryad
Once upon a time, there was a nymph living in a tree, in the womb [sein] of a tree; a beech tree [hêtre] I guess. Some say it was an apple tree; because of the call [appel] of being.
There were three, Yesterday, spading [bêche] on the beach [bêcha]; working [bûcher] very hard. They did not find the fruit; only her forbidden lips: the godlike bark of the beech [text -discourse = dius cortex]; not yet dry. XeroX. X, or maybe I, will be [ero] X; as for the forthcoming "t" standing for "I". From Eros, x=x: copy; but no source, no target; no first hand, no secondary sources: copy of a "t" still alive; curriculum not yet dry.
Id
I am writing at Saussure's dictation (Strarobinski, 1971, 1979); but as if it was at Roussel's, (Roussel, 1963, 1975; Foucault, 1963, 1986) inside out. I am trying to save the difference itself, the passage from anagrams to semiotics: the passage itself; Roussel before he died. In order to write, Roussel used a very special method made of two or three major mechanisms. We could not count all of those, men and women, who also used -- and still use -- such a method: analogous or even most identical. Actually Saussure comes before Roussel and yet translates him; Serres (1977, 1983) could explain it; Saussure translates Roussel inside out; Foucault probably knew that. I am translating Serres the translator; maybe am I writing at his dictation: matters of rhythms; this should be heard by those who have read Serres, even just a few. I am writing at the dictation of a soul three times drunk with writing. I also read Rousseau [Roussel - Saussure - Rousseau = soûla/a soul].
Three hundred pages of those mechanisms. Most of all unreadable; will I even have, one day, the patience to read those pages? A soul, drunk three times, with writing. Confused. At Foucault's dictation, Deleuze (1986, 1988) could explain it. I translate the interpreter: the diversity is a pure inside without any dialectical or analytical relationship to the inside; rather a translationship. I'm but the effect of a folding, a suture that will not resist for long the passages' forces; impossible to bridge the soul; the infarction is severe. I am even forgetting my name. An unfolded wave carries out the letters, all the letters of my name; throw of the dice [dé/D]. Jactus linguae ad 10__18__. Throw of the dice of language; Q times the letters fall. I was right, it is impossible to count up to one quadrillon. The signature is the same; but I forgot myself at the very edge of my last name. Only letters remain, tracing the twofold edge of it: D and T. What remains of my name: a lamb, between T and D, strays to a mispelling [aignaul instead of agneau]. To extract from the D a written dictionary. I have already begun, I will pursue ad infinitum. Still the T remains. I, a "t". Here is a shortened story of It.
It
February 1985. Pour une esthétique de la pédagogie is at last on the market; printed out, it strengthens my soul. A thousand times my name on a cover page! The suture is resistant; one could think of Narcissus. The printing form gives rise to the public expression of I. A book as a proof of an existing self. At least some pages that have defeated confusion; a public acknowledgment. Diffusion at last. The soul happy to recognize him-herself. I was that one; for one or two hours. Only. Once more, a force was coming to unfold my certainty: an error; the most boring type someone could imagine. A misprint. Seven years after many efforts to master the understanding of the expression médiation de pertinence [mediation of relevance], a "t" too many -- on the back cover, behind the back of my signature -- was transforming the médiation into a méditation. It could not be worst; I almost believed it. However I tried to convince myself that the concept was safely preserved inside the book; the exhibition of such an error, behind the back of my own signature, imposed itself as the symbol of a failure. So I put my book under a microscope. I was upset. I had paid for a perfect proofreading; I was naive; I did not really understand what proofreading was about. A close reading of the text itself could only reveal the difference between a word and a non-word, between a word correctly spelled -- lexically and grammatically -- and the same word misspelled. Méditation was not the right word but it was written rightly. No one to blame. The anagram of my name -- even though I was not aware of it at that time -- clearly celebrates what happened: a throw of the dice of language. To pay attention to such a number 1018 is to realize my troubles are far from over. The happiness I thought I wanted could not be found in a Narcissistic suture of the soul. Errors? There were many. I no longer count them according to species and genres: letters, the publisher and even the thesis itself. I was born to be confused. I am writing at the dictation of errors.
The "t" too many is not isolated; I could rewrite it under Foucault's dictation: a statement (Foucault, 1969, 1972). Four other misprints have been spotted so far: était/étant [was/being], en/ne [in/not], monadisation/nomadisation and Lapassage/Lapassade [a proper name that sounds like "the passage"]. Those four errors have in common a balance, either by inversion or substitution of letters; a pure material exchange of letters among themselves: no deficit, no profit. A pure circulation of change neither related to exchange value nor to usage value; old money for new: the Saturnian verse, Saussure's anagrams. Transliteration of signs. Can they be exchanged for something else? The question is difficult. This text is betting every word it is made of, on that question. Can the "t" too many be free from the labor I paid for it (exchange value), without falling back to the fiction of a political economy based on usage value? Baudrillard (1976) could explain it. I am writing at the dictation of flashes. One flash after the other. I know the value of detours: the passage value. To possess one's soul in patience. The flash is so fragile, in spite of its power.
I said four more errors: i/n, e/n-n/e, m/n-n/m, g/d. The sign "/" means "instead of". I did not take that sign by chance; it comes from another misprint. In the earlier work of Rousseau, in the original publishing of his very first essay in 1742: Project concerning new symbols for music (1982). The first time Rousseau uses the sign "/", he is but a sharp transliterator; almost a flat semiotician. "The sharp is expressed by a little stroke crossing the note obliquery from left to right. Sol sharp, for example, will appear as , fa sharp as ." The second time Rousseau uses the same sign, it takes the place of another sign "\". "The flat is indicated by a similar stroke drawn in the opposite direction, ." While everyone expects a backslash "\" on the "2", the publisher repeats the slash "/"; and for ever: even subsequent editions repeat the misprint (1979, 1982). Another substitution by inversion; the wrong sign: the risk of any transliteration. An anagrammatical error, not a semiotical one. The passage between both Saussure. The passage is difficult, particularly risky. Roussel killed himself; perhaps. Saussure killed a soul; maybe. I mean that running after rigourous demonstrations and after confirmations is a hunt: literally; the semiotician reason is not completly innocent. "From Plato and a tradition which lasted throughout the classical age, knowledge is a hunt. To know is to put to death -- to kill the lamb, deep in the woods, in order to eat it. [...] To know is to kill, to rely on death, as in the case of the master and the slave. [...] Today we live out the major results of these wolfish actions. For the "I," who played the role of the lamb by minimizing his powers and placing the declared powers upstream from himself, this "I" is the wolf. [...] It has taken the wolf's place, its true place. The reason of the srongest is reason by itself. Western man is a wolf of science." (Serres, 1983) Saussure, judge of Ferdinand, wanted proofs of his innocence; he found none. Maybe the poet had that proof but refused to give it to him. Then Saussure, Inquisitor of himself, condemned in a final judgment his own hypothesis on anagrams; he started semiotics. The poet kept silent, he probably knew the critical tribunal was calling for executions. To know is to kill. The poet's silence, perhaps confirming the wolf's critique, perhaps not, makes difficult the complete execution of the death penalty. Thinking is still alive. But the play is tight. More and more. Even the middle attracts new people committed to reducing it to a matter of knowledge, to a new epistemological stake: the wolf's place. Thinking happens only between suicide and murder, betweeen miscarried anagrams and applied semiotics; at the letter. Between nihilism and terrorism. The passage is really hazardous. We always invite the third, but only to exclude it. And the exclusion is all the more violent because the wolf is there. I am in danger. Read Le parasite (Serres 1980); Little Red Riding Hood would do as well.
Pour une esthétique de la pédagogie was about the passage between nihilism and terrorism. My rendez-vous with that "t" made the passage more narrow yet. My name's throw of the dice [D(é)] is partly responsible for what happened there: a frightning inmixture in my last name, just between the twofold edge of it, between the throw of the D(ice) and the "t" too many [de trop]. In aignauL, I can not not read a lamb [agneau/aignau] the wolf [Loup] has not yet eaten; the wolf [Loup] missing the louse [pou]: the parasite; i-e surrounding the "t" (ite) and echoing back i/e in aignau/agneau [what remains in my last name/lamb].
It is now possible to transcribe the central part of that transliteration. "i/e" repeated four times in my book; up to the "t". The anagram transcribed in the semiotics of my work; but neither the error of the latter, nor the application of the former: only the transliteration from one to the other, i.e. passages between death twice -- evaded. The "t" of Translation and of Tiers [either middle or third]: Included-Excluded [i/e]; to include, there, rather than to exclude [en/ne]; to understand the "t" is a monad, a non divisible sign running upon frontiers [monadisation/nomadisation]; an eternal passage between signifieds and signifiers. Mediation: the presence of a third, the signified says; an excluded middle, what the signifier does: no "t" too many. Meditation: the exclusion of any third party, the signified says; an included middle, what the signifier does: a "t" too many. That is what every dictionary says.
The "t" too many has a "meaning", finally; I provided one: X maybe stands for Dissemination and/or Logical square. Maybe. The soul can dress [panser] his wounds, benefit from a rest. But it will not last long; the soul is drunk, three times, with writing. Saussure has had enough, let us put his soul to rest. Everything is calm now; let us benefit from a rest. It will not last long. Let us go once again, without any fear, towards the "t".
There were four errors inside the book: all substitutions and one error on the back cover: a supplement. That makes three different series: the "t" alone, the series of included letters "ienmng" and the one of excluded letters "nnemnd". The translationship between included and excluded letters made sense of the "t". But there is more: a direct translationship between the "t" and the included letters, a missing letter for a letter too many, the missing "a" in the series of included letters: "ienmnga = meaning. One could even add the third series: two vertical crosswords: "name" and "ind" [index]; and a horizontal anagram: "end". I translate. In the end, the meaning of the "t" is nothing but the index of my name.
- n
- meaning
- m n end
I do not really know how to deal with such a result; I am afraid to be confused. I knew, somehow, the new sutures of my soul would not resist more; my double is still the work of Narcissus, just a mirror of an ego. It will not be long before I will have another soul attack. Translation is a passage; in many ways. Confusion is always at stake. The translation of the "t" is not ennded yet, and will not ever be. How many errors yet to be spotted in Pour une esthétique de la pédagogie? How many other transliterations in the neighborhood of those forthcoming errors? And even how many other transcriptions -- maybe better -- of the errors already spotted? The passage value offers no guarantee of success. About his special method, Roussel maybe writes at Kant's dictation. "Still, one needs to know how to use it. For just as one can use rhymes to compose good or bad verses, so one can use this method to produce good or bad works" (Roussel, 1975). Artistic productions do not rely on a method, stricto sensu, but on a manner (Kant, 1979). Method is singular and definite: THE way; manner is singular but indefinite: A way. Curriculum translation is always plural: WAYS; neither definite, nor indefinite. That is said by the transliterative difference itself between "transliteration" and "translation": ITER, what remains from a Saussurian difference between both words. In Latin, iter means "way" [hodos in Greek); as a prefix, it also means "repetition". I say it again: "I" = re-"t". In the work of Roussel, anagrams (anaphones, actually, as in the work of Saussure) were only A way: iter or hodos; a manner. Saussure maybe tried to embed anagrams in THE way of semiotics: trans-iter or meta-hodos [to go across the way]; a method. I am trying to conceive of passages in many ways: iter-iter [way & repetition]; WAYS. Not all the ways -- only some -- but always plural. I try to transcribe flashes that emerge from the play of transliteration; that makes perhaps a translation.
What kind of translation am I talking about? "Serres brings Descartes's Meditations out of a La Fontaine fable or a locomotive out of the work of a nineteenth-century thinker, a theorem out of a narrative, a legend out of a demonstration and a demonstration out of a legend. Here it is not all matter of hunting for more or less ingenious parallels, but of translating word for word" (Serres, 1983). As a translator, Serres would define science as the set of messages that last optimally invariant, through any strategy of translation. Deduction and induction [de/in-ducere] would be the most stable means of transportation; beneath that threshold of a maximum of stability, one would find other cultural areas: production, reproduction ... [pro/repro-ducere] would vary after their difference, that is nothing but the variation itself (Serres, 1974). For him, translation (in French traduire = tra-ducere) seems to be the passage itself from one point to another. Though there is more than this in his work; Serres is also an ethician of passages, his main concern is to criticize any wrong translation -- any distortion -- that would lead [ducere] to death. I am seduced [se-ducere] by his work, but I am wondering if his concept of passage is appropriate to education [ex-ducere].
What kind of passage am I trying to define? What does mean to pass? What is the relationship (translationship) between to translate and to pass? I have translated a "t" too many; what does it mean? I have tried to find passages between the variation and the invariable, between both: not from one to the other, but passages as their absolute difference, the differance between death, twice evaded. I have translated my own dissertation because of a "t" too many. Was it the same synthesis? Why that question? Two questions on line; I am trying to answer the second one. I know they will ask me why I am doing so. That is a third question: why to answer the question of the relevance of the first question, instead of answering the question itself? If I could answer the second question, they would not even ask either the first or the third one.
They might be disappointed, even angry with me; they might say I am confused.
The translation of a "t" too many is an answer to the second question. For translation is passages, here, between answers and questions, not the (or even a) passage from a question to an answer, but their absolute difference (differance); I could write at Deleuze's dictation (Deleuze, 1968) as well as Derrida's (1967, 1976). The poet did not answer the question of Saussure. For such a question always implies an answer the destiny of which is to close space, that kind of space the opening of which is called, sometimes, a problem. If not to kill it, either the problem was not a problem -- a difficulty maybe --, or the answer was not an answer -- a passage, maybe. Amazing, I am almost writing at Chomsky's dictation (1975). I insist. To translate the "t" too many is a problem: still alive. I am writing at Nietzsche's dictation: to translate life in joyful wisdom, gay knowledge. Thinking, maybe.
After It had been really disturbed by an error, the soul is now recovering health little by little; I am recovering my double on the side of object, in my relationship to object. The soul was alone with Itself: meditative. My challenge was to recover subjectivity in my translationship with the world as chaos. Unfolded by error, margin, chaos, chance -- the absolute diversity -- the soul has been finally refolded on Itself, happy again: meaningful for Itself. That, once again, will not last long. For behind Its back, while It was painfully recovering health -- after struggling with chaos -- other souls were protesting against Its originality. The "t" too many was not mine; it resulted from a mediation. The soul has now to deal with other souls; the "t" was a double "t": XeroX. Double "t"
February 1985; once again. In the French magazine Lire, B. Pivot (1985) has a great story untitled "Horreur! le "t" avait disparu" [What a shock! The "t" had disapeared]. Jacques Audiberti, a French Novelist, complains he lost a "t". In the sentence "tu est beau" you is beautiful, the pronoun is not the subject of a phrase but the subject of a proposition: as in "the pronoun you is beautiful". That was a kind of pun ("est" and "es" have the same sound in French), and it was predictable the proofreaders would make the following correction "tu es beau" you are beautiful. That happened. Several times. Each time Audiberti was adding the "t", proofreaders were taking it away. Upset, Audiberti gave himself the final manuscript, with the "t", to the printing press people; from hand to hand. His soul was completely reassured, no more proofreading that would chop the "t". And yet the book was printed out without the "t", it had disapeared. What happened? It seems the "t" crossed the Atlantic to find place in my own book!
Because of the "t", I have been involved in a long meditation, while Audiberti was a victim of mediation. The day his book was to be printed out, somebody working at the printing press saw the sentence "tu est beau" and edited the text, which became "tu es beau".
The "t" travels a lot. It is involved in many passages. Having crossed the Atlantic from France to Québec, the "t" has not been exchanged [échangé] for something (money, sense, etc.), it just moved from place to place [changé de place]. Lacan (1966) could explain it, Derrida could as well: the "t" as a hazardous supplement resulting from a trace. The "t" is more than a symbol there, it belongs to skin. Does it make a difference?
It would be difficult to reduce the value of the "t" to an exchange value, while the "t" is maybe an exchange, but for nothing else than itself; difficult either to reduce its value to an usage value, while its main usage is to be exchanged for itself. That must make a difference, all the difference. I am maybe writing at the dictation of a new political economy: the value of the "t" is a passage value. The absolute difference as passages. We already guess education is to cross frontiers. We are close, now, to curriculum: to run upon frontiers.
The soul disturbed by a "t" is no more alone; It must share Its chance with at least another "self"; maybe with every one. My soul does not only result from a "t" the translation of which would be, for Itself, the way to claim to be constitutive of Its meaning for me. It is also matter to be folded by another soul resulting from the same "t", and the translation of which could be constitutive as well of my self: my soul's image. Everything is in everything? When there are many connections, the absolute diversity -- chaos -- comes back to surface. The not yet differentiated stock of differences -- that chaotic bottom, without which differences could never emerge -- shows itself with the difference, when the difference is thought as an absolute difference: a unilateral distinction, Deleuze would say (1968). The "t" is maybe the same in both works, but only as it is not really differentiated from that stock of differences to which it still belongs; the "t" as a flash, a lightning in the dark sky. When I say confusion, I mean such a stock of differences that comes suddenly into view under the light of a flash. When I say frontier or absolute difference, I mean to think of the difference itself: flashes that make thinking possible. When I say passages, I mean the impulse that goes back and forth between chaos and flashes and that makes differentiation possible. And when I say translation, I mean to open such passages: everything is in everything, in many ways only.
Jacques Daignault « Traces at Work from different Places » W.F. Pinar &W.M. Reynolds Understanding Curriculum at Deconstructed Text, New York, Teachers College Press, 1992, 195-215.