A question that's been asked repeatedly is whether or not postmodernists
have some kind of criterion for distinguishing acceptable from
unacceptable kinds of transgressive acts. Perhaps an element of the answer
can be found in the profound dependency transgression and limit have on
one another. In _language, counter-memory..._, the "Preface" essay, F puts
it like this:
The limit and transgression depend on each other for whatever density of
being they possess: a limit could not exist if it were absolutely
uncrossable and, reciprocally, transgression would be pointless if it
merely crossed a limit composed of illusions and shadows. But can the
limit have a life of its own outside of the [transgressive] act that
gloriously passes through it and negates it? What becomes of [the limit]
after this act and what might it have been before? For its part, does
transgression not exhaust its nature when it crosses the limit, knowing no
other life beyond this point in time? And this point, this curious
intersection of beings that have no other life beyond this moment where
they totally exchange their beings, is it not also everything which
overflows from it on all sides? It serves as a glorification of the nature
it excludes: the limit opens violently onto the limitless, finds itself
suddenly carried away by the content it had rejected and fulfilled by the
alien plenitude which invades it to the core of its being; transgression
forces the limit to face the fact of its imminent disappearance, to find
itself in what it excludes (perhaps, to be more exact, to recognize itself
for the first time), to experience its positive truth and its downward
fall? And yet, toward what is transgression unleashed in its movement of
pure violence, if not that which imprisons it, toward the limit and those
elements it contains? What bears the brunt of its aggression and to what
void does it owe the unrestrained fullness of its being, if not that which
it crosses in its violent act and which, as its destiny, it crosses out in
the line it effaces? [end Foucault quotation from "Preface" in
_language..._]
In other words, the limit and transgression both get their being from each
other. If that's the case, then it's a mistake to think of them as radical
opposites, or as mere excuses for each other. Instead, we create the kind
of being we are by the kind of limit we choose to transgress? So the
criterion we might bring to a transgressive act could be: what does the
interplay of this act with that limit say about and do with my being? Such
a decision would still be local, but not necessarily individual, nor again
arbitrary; but also not pushing us in the direction of "humanist"
conclusions? I hope it comes across how tentative I want to be about this
idea.
--John
have some kind of criterion for distinguishing acceptable from
unacceptable kinds of transgressive acts. Perhaps an element of the answer
can be found in the profound dependency transgression and limit have on
one another. In _language, counter-memory..._, the "Preface" essay, F puts
it like this:
The limit and transgression depend on each other for whatever density of
being they possess: a limit could not exist if it were absolutely
uncrossable and, reciprocally, transgression would be pointless if it
merely crossed a limit composed of illusions and shadows. But can the
limit have a life of its own outside of the [transgressive] act that
gloriously passes through it and negates it? What becomes of [the limit]
after this act and what might it have been before? For its part, does
transgression not exhaust its nature when it crosses the limit, knowing no
other life beyond this point in time? And this point, this curious
intersection of beings that have no other life beyond this moment where
they totally exchange their beings, is it not also everything which
overflows from it on all sides? It serves as a glorification of the nature
it excludes: the limit opens violently onto the limitless, finds itself
suddenly carried away by the content it had rejected and fulfilled by the
alien plenitude which invades it to the core of its being; transgression
forces the limit to face the fact of its imminent disappearance, to find
itself in what it excludes (perhaps, to be more exact, to recognize itself
for the first time), to experience its positive truth and its downward
fall? And yet, toward what is transgression unleashed in its movement of
pure violence, if not that which imprisons it, toward the limit and those
elements it contains? What bears the brunt of its aggression and to what
void does it owe the unrestrained fullness of its being, if not that which
it crosses in its violent act and which, as its destiny, it crosses out in
the line it effaces? [end Foucault quotation from "Preface" in
_language..._]
In other words, the limit and transgression both get their being from each
other. If that's the case, then it's a mistake to think of them as radical
opposites, or as mere excuses for each other. Instead, we create the kind
of being we are by the kind of limit we choose to transgress? So the
criterion we might bring to a transgressive act could be: what does the
interplay of this act with that limit say about and do with my being? Such
a decision would still be local, but not necessarily individual, nor again
arbitrary; but also not pushing us in the direction of "humanist"
conclusions? I hope it comes across how tentative I want to be about this
idea.
--John