Abstract
“Du (renoncement au) renoncement à soi-même” – A Deconstructive Approach
Panel Abstract
There is always a contradiction at the heart of the injunction, “renounce thy Self.” For instance, the Seventeenth-century writer Fénélon’s “Du renoncement à soi-même” (“On the Renunciation of the[/One’s] Self”) already has inscribed within it an ad infinitum repetition where each renunciation marks the re-emergence of another self. While Fénélon suggests that altruism is a hidden form of self love, it is also possible that the very renunciation of this altruism would be indicative of another hidden egoism. The desire to renounce one’s self is always already “selfish,” demonstrative of an attempt to assert a type of mastery over one’s agency.
This aporia can help us to approach the problematic question of identity in deconstructive discourse in that its dynamic resembles, in surprising ways, the interpretive predicament faced by the critic who practices deconstruction. Deconstructive questions of responsibility, friendship and the gift operate to promote an awareness of positioning, and thus implicitly problematize the late modernist ethics of “dépersonnalisation” – whether it is of the Mallarmean, Eliotean or Structuralist kind – which insisted upon the “disappearance” of the author. Yet, the force of any “re-personalisation” in deconstructive discourse must always be tempered by a critical awareness that the very notion of “positioning” places the subject within a textual relationship that defies simple being or self-presence. So that while deconstruction may partake in a “renunciation of renunciation,” it does so only through exposing the impossibility of the self-mastery upon which any original renunciation would untenably be based.
It remains to be seen, however, whether deconstruction – even while it is conscious of the snares of a “renunciation” – can successfully approach this logic of the hidden egoism at the heart of self-renunciation without, paradoxically, falling prey to a hidden or unconscious renunciation of the self. For “already” within the discourse that highlights its own limitations coexists a renunciation, and a discourse that is unconscious of its positioning might paradoxically be the only “selfless” discourse. In this panel session, the presenters seek new discursive possibilities around the modalities conditioning this antinomy that exceed and rejoice in (the very excess of) its limitations.