marius timmann mjaaland
My questions do not only concern this isolated definition, though,
but the conditional relationship between subjectivity and alterity.
Derrida points out that subjectivity cannot be defined by the subject
alone, neither by self-determination nor in terms of social position.
He sees the origin of subjectivity in a call from the Other, the Other
who as wholly Other is beyond my power of definition.^14 Hence,
alterity has become written into the structure of subjectivity as such;
i.e., one cannot know Oneself unless one can hear the call from the
Other. Analyzing the difference between Self and Other as an interior
distinction, however, is a critical undertaking, since the difference
between alterity and subjectivity seems to become less significant.
Derrida appears to have problems maintaining the distinction at all
when he introduces the question of God’s existence — based on the
production of “invisible sense”:
Once such a structure of conscience exists, of being-with-oneself, of
speaking, that is, of producing invisible sense, once I have within me,
thanks to the invisible word as such, a witness that others cannot see, and
who is therefore at the same time other than me and more intimate with me
than myself, once I can have a secret relationship with myself and not tell
everything, once there is secrecy and secret witnessing within me, then
what I call God exists, (there is) what I call God in me, (it happens that)
I call myself God [(il y a que) je m’appelle Dieu] — a phrase that is difficult
to distinguish from “God calls me” [“Dieu m’appelle”], for it is on that
condition that I can call myself or that I am called in secret. God is in
me, he is the absolute “me” or “self,” he is that structure of invisible
interiority that is called, in Kierkegaard’s sense, subjectivity.^15But the reference to Kierkegaard in the last sentence is rather strange.
It gives the impression that Kierkegaard should have argued for God
as the absolute “me” or “Self” and defined God as a “structure of
invisible interiority.” Such a position is not only criticized but even
ridiculed by Kierkegaard, in the Postscript as well as in The Sickness unto
Death. The absolute “Self” is thus called “subjectivity,” and it is called
so by Kierkegaard — but only when he is ironical or polemical (or
both). The very point of Kierkegaard’s discourse on subjectivity and
- Derrida, Gift of Death, 67.
- Derrida, Gift of Death, 108f.; Donner la mort, 147.