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5 The. Posture of Textual Dissemination
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Published:July 1996
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Abstract
For many contemporary theorists and philosophers, introspection entails not the unmediated discovery of a unified and self transparent self, but the division of the introspective subject into reflecting subject (‘I’) and reflected object (‘me’). The’I’ which observes and the’me’ being observed can never cohere into a transcending self; they are always divided in the very act of self conscious observation. This is, of course, the familiar position of Benveniste, Lacan, and Derrida. So conceived, the self I imagine myself to be is always imaginary, a discursive construct fraught with hermeneutic uncertainty. It is subject to the radical temporality of differance which renders pure presence, true meaning, impossible of discovery. Selfhood is always less (and more) than the discovery of permanent presence; it is a textual process fragmented by gaps and omissions, riven by repressed drives and desires. I can only ever (mis)recognize the (mis)represented image of myself constituted in the symbolic realm of’reality’. I can never truly know the foundational presence which is my’real’ self. But why should I seek to know myself as a fixed, permanent presence? This is surely to look for the wrong thing entirely. The discovery of a transcendental self is hardly desirable, even if it were possible, for this must limit me to the given contours of the unchanging, permanent form I discover. In the lamentation of the loss of the permanent presence of an immanent self, discredited metaphysics and determinism are reconstituted with a vengeance, as unattainable desire.
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