De Man, Schiller, and the Politics of Reception

Author(s): Marc Redfield

Source: Diacritics, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 50-70
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465331
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DE
AND

MAN,
THE

SCHILLER,
POLITICS

OF

RECEPTION
MARCREDFIELD
Whatconfrontsfear in the characterof meaningfulnessis
somethingdetrimental,as Aristotle says, a kakon, malum,an
evil. In particular, this detrimentalthing is always something
definite. If we already had the concept here, we would say
something historical, somethingdefinitebreakinginto the
familiar world of concernedperception.
-Heidegger, History of the Conceptof Time286
Over the last ten years, the work of Paul de Man has not become any easier
to assimilate. FrankLentricchiacould not have been more wide of the mark
when in 1983 he predicted that the "war between traditionalists and
deconstructors"would "drawto a close by the end of this decade,"with de
Man"rediscoveredas themostbrilliantheroof traditionalism"[39]. Foreven
if de Man'sjuvenile contributionsto Le soir hadremainedhiddena few more
yearsin thearchive,it is clearthatLentricchiawould have lost his wager.The
furorover de Man's wartimejournalismhas at least had the virtueof making
manifest the extraordinaryviolence with which his maturework is resisted.
Doubtless,a measureof institutionalsuccess continuesto attend"deManian"
criticism. It would be astoundingif this were not the case, given the visible
rigorof the methodology,theprestigeandrelativepowerthatde Manhimself
was able to achieve, the cultural force of certain notions of comparative
literature,theory, Europeanphilosophy, and so on. As a rule, however,
contemporarycriticismquarantinesand ignoresde Maniantheoryby way of
various hegemonic strategiesof inclusive exclusion, supplementedby exand rejection. One could with
travagantgesturesof anthropomorphization
considerablejustice invertLentricchia'sformulationsandclaim thatthemost
significantrealignmentsof institutionalpower in literarystudies duringthe
1980s amountto wholeheartedapprovalof therhetoricof CriticismandSocial
Change. Nothing, it seems, is moreobvious thanthe political inadequacyof
de Man's texts. The task of pursuingsome form of "historicism"has taken
on the self-evident necessity of an ethical imperative. "It is a fact,"de Man
wrote in 1972, "thatthis sort of thing happens,again and again, in literary
studies"[AR4]. Whathappensperhapsa little morerarelyin literarystudies
is the event of an exemplaryfigure such as de Man, capable of inspiringthe
most lurid gestures of monumentalizationand ritualsacrifice.
The pages thatfollow seek to articulatede Man's theoreticaltextwith the
politics of his receptionand with the questionof politics. I shall be pursuing
the notions of historyand politics thatinformde Man's late texts, mounting

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an argumentfor theircredibilityand political usefulness. However, my purposeis also

to account, by way of the same vocabulary,for the resistancehis writing inspires. This
topic acquires interest when, like de Man, we understand"resistance"as a necessary
componentof any act of reading.Overtdisplaysof "resistanceto theory,"in otherwords,
shouldbe understoodas spectacularversionsof the subtlerproblematicposed by theory's
"resistance"to itself. Far from composing a frivolous exercise in self-reflexivity, this
problematicdefines the difficultnecessity of a politicalcriticism. Thecomplementof fear
and repressionis idealizationand identification: both are predicatedupon a monumentalizinggesturewithoutwhich no responseto de Manseems able to come into being. The
very act of commenting,favorablyor unfavorably,on his workdrawsone into a network
of effects characterizablein bothinstitutionalandlibidinalterms. Thepolitics of criticism
andthepolitics of charismaintersectwithintheeventof thisfortuitouslyanthropomorphic
proper name. One is thus led to pursue what might otherwise seem a needless
complication: the relationin de Man's textbetween history,politics, andpathos. Further
reasons for privileging this cluster of issues will unfold as we negotiate de Man's
theoreticalpropositions. But we can suggest the natureof this topic's interest,and open
the questionof de Man's "own"resistanceto ("deManian")theory,by considering,in the
most naive and literalisticfashion possible, the affective careerof the word "history"in
his writing over thirtyyears.
De Man's essays have tendedto addressthe questionof historyin an elevated tone.
With surprisingregularitytheyhave soughtclosurein dramatic,aphoristicinvocationsof
the historical. Occasionallythe mood is neutralor upbeat,as when, at the end of his early
essay on the theme of Faust,de Man writesthata genuinely thematicreadingmust"pass
from myth to idea, and from idea to formaltheme, before being able to become history"
[CW88].1 More often, the tone is closer to thatof the closing phraseof "The Dead-End
of FormalistCriticism,"as it invokes "the sorrowfultime of patience, i.e., history"[BI
245]. The existentialidiom of these early texts, theirthematizationof historyin termsof
a non-naturalistic,death-directedtemporality,clearlyfavorsbutdoes not entirelyexplain
the recurrenceof such a tone in essays so frequentlymarkedby a refusal of pathetic
language.2 The question is of interestbecause de Man's penchantfor grantingthe word
"history"rhetoricalchargedoes not disappearas his attentionshifts to rhetoric. His most
famous,or infamous,aphorismon historyis memorablepartlybecause it is-and has the
ring of-a closing sentence: "thebases for historicalknowledge are not empiricalfacts
but writtentexts, even if these texts masqueradein the guise of wars or revolutions"[BI
165]. An essay devoted to themesof political action in Rousseauends with the dramatic
propositionthat"textualallegorieson thislevel of rhetoricalcomplexitygeneratehistory"
[AR277]. And in the lateessays thatprincipallyconcernus here,de Man'sprosewill often
acquire extraordinaryintensity at the very moment when he is repudiatingthe pathos
madeavailableby notionsof historicaltime. In "ShelleyDisfigured,"an essay thatbears
on the historicityof an aesthetic object "thathas been unearthed,edited, reconstructed,
andmuchdiscussed"[RR93], de Man's tone,grimlyelegiac throughout,rises memorably
1. The closing cadence is slightly less portentousin the original French: "avantdepouvoir
devenir une histoire" ["La critique thematique"404].
2. The refusal ofpathetic language, of course, hardlyimpedes,and if anythingencourages,
the recurrenceof a pathetic tone. I am drawing attentionhere to one thematicregularityamong
several in a general rhetoricof mourningthat one encountersthroughoutde Man's work. For a
study of the rhetoric of sacrifice in de Man, see Mizumura. For a particularly rich thematization
of the temporalpathos of history,see de Man's 1967 lecture "Timeand History in Wordsworth,"
whichhas recentlybeen recoveredforthe archive in a special issue ofdiacritics[17.4]. The lecture
holds special interest for critics interested in de Man's shift from existential to rhetorical
terminologies,since hegave thelectureagain in 1972, modifiedin waysthatthediacriticstextrecords
in footnotes.

diacritics / fall 1990

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51

as he concludes the essay with a resurrectionof Shelley's dead body-and finally, with
a reintroductionof the chargedword "history": "Readingas disfiguration,to the very
extent thatit resistshistoricism,turnsout to be historicallymorereliablethantheproducts
of historicalarcheology" [RR 123]. But perhapsthe most dramaticinstance of such a
deliberately pathetic renunciationof pathos occurs in the last sentence of "AnthropomorphismandTrope,"where the workof "true'mourning'"unrollsas a bleakly sublime
list of deprivations:"Themostit can do is enumeratenon-anthropomorphic,
non-elegiac,
non-celebratory,non-lyrical,non-poetic,thatis to say, prosaic,orbetter,historicalmodes
of languagepower"[RR262, de Man'semphasis]. The textperformswhatit denies, going

to some length,in fact, to delivera certainversionof the elegiac satisfactionit is

renouncing.
History is of course not by any means always, in de Man's work, the object of
sibylline utteranceor the cynosure of a concluding sentence. Essays such as "Literary
History and LiteraryModernity,"which thematizehistoryat length, are for thatreason,
in fact, more ratherthanless representativeof an oeuvre thatcould with some justice be
describedas obsessed by the task of thinkingRomanticism,and literaturein general,as
historical events. But when the question of "distinguish(ing) rigorously between
metaphoricaland historicallanguage,"between a mystifiedand an authenticperception
of the historical,appearswith its full force [BI 164], de Man writesmoreelliptically, and

at a significantlyhigherpitch,thanis usuallythecase. Naiveas it wouldbe to imagine

thatde Man is "repressing"some entity called history,we should also not hasten to call
such rhetoricalperformancesself-reflexive. Certainlyone of their-quite seductivefunctions in the late essays is to exemplify the difficulty of rendering"truemourning";
but the persistence with which the word "history"has attractedrhetoricalenergy in de
Man's writing over threedecades suggests the pressureof a patternirreducibleto what
we ordinarilycall theself-consciousnessof anauthoror text. To interpretthisdisturbance
in the de Maniantext withinthe termsof the de Maniantext-which is to say, within the
logic of an interrogationthat disqualifies for closure the "withinness"of logic or selfconsciousness-is a compelling and perhapsimpossible task.
For variouspragmaticreasons,in muchof whatfollows I shallbe centeringattention
on de Man's late essays on Kantand Schiller. With Kant,the aestheticdefinitivelyenters
the institution of philosophical discourse, and, according to de Man, the question of
Kant's reception composes not just the philosophicalpossibility of aestheticjudgment,
but the political burdenof criticalthought. "Forit is as a political force thatthe aesthetic
still concerns us as one of the most powerfulideological drives to act upon the realityof
history"[RR264]. The late essays on Germanpre-RomanticandRomanticauthors-on
Kant,Schiller, Kleist, and Hegel-take as theirtargetan understandingof Romanticism
deriving from Hegel, which situates Schiller's Aesthetic Educationof Man ("the wellspringof romanticcriticism,"as RendWellek claims) on a path leading from subjective
to objectiveidealism,fromtheCritiqueofJudgmentto theLecturesonAesthetics[Wellek
255].3De Manrefiguresthisteleologicalcommonplaceintoaneconomyof demystification
and regression in which the name "Schiller"operatesas a personificationof aesthetic
ideology.4Producedby andyet incommensuratewith the"historical"event figuredin the
Critique of Judgment, the "reception"of Kant takes its coordinates from Schiller's
treatise,which in its turnfiguresthe most disastrousof politicalpossibilities: we are told
3. For Hegel's famous claim that Schiller brokethrough "Kantianabstractionand subjectivityof thinking,"see Hegel 61. For an incisive critiqueof Schiller's contributionto nineteenthcenturynotions of "culture,"see Lloyd.
4. Schiller'sname appearswithsomeregularityin deMan's work,usuallysignifyinga certain
misreadingofRousseau [see RR20-26passim andAR 137,176,208]. However,Schillerbecomes
afigure of emblematicstatureonlywhende Manbegins to writeexplicitlyon thereceptionofKant's
Critiqueof Judgment.

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121

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at the end of de Man's late lecturedraft"Kantand Schiller"thatGoebbels's misreading

of Schiller in his 1929 novel Michael "does not differ essentially"from Schiller's misreading of Kant.s In less dramaticbut perhaps equally significant ways, "Kant and
Schiller" and "Kant's Materialism"also yield what are pretty much the only explicit
reflections in the de Maniancorpuson gender politics.
In negotiatingde Man's invocationof Schiller, therefore,we engage the questionof
political criticism as a questionof reception. That questionreturnsupon itself as one of
our reception of de Man, and of "de Man's" reception of "himself." The genial but
genuine tone of accusationde Man adopts in "Kantand Schiller"as he reiteratesone of
themorevenerablecommonplacesof Schillercriticism-that Schillerlacksphilosophical
rigor,has misunderstoodKant,and so on-is not simply a pedagogicaldevice designed
to animatea semi-improvisedlecture.6This personificationis substitutingfor the dense
pathos of essays like those on Kleist, Baudelaire,or Shelley and is ironicallyrehearsing
the closure of reception: if Schiller anthropomorphizesthe aesthetic, de Man anthropomorphizesthe sourceof its error.The seductivepromisesof a certainmonumentalselfreflexivity arein place, as arethose of even morebanalscenariosof namingandblaming.
One will have no trouble imagining de Man exorcising his own Schillerian wartime
journalism;and readerswilling to repeatin full the Schilleriangesture will find in that
image of humanself-interrogationrelief from otherquestions.

5. "KantandSchiller"wasdeliveredas deMan'spenultimate
MessengerlectureatCornell
inMarch1983. Thislectureandanotherunpublished
talktowhichI shallbereferring,
University
arescheduledforpublication
inAestheticIdeology,ed.Andrzej
"Kant'sMaterialism,"
Warminski,
forthcoming
fromtheUniversity
ofMinnesotaPress. Sincepagereferencescannotbe hadat this
time,mypracticein whatfollowshas beento restrictquotationas muchas possibleto relatively
long,easilylocatableexcerpts.WheredeMan'soraldeliveryoccasioneduninteresting
solecisms,
I haveeditedthemout. I thankWilliamJewettandMichaelShaeforprovidingmewithtypescripts
of theseessays.
6. Schiller,the vulgarizerof Kant,the overpragmatic
dramatistor overidealisticpoet
inGermanliteraryhistoryfrom
incapableofgenuinephilosophical
cogitation,is a stockcharacter
Schiller'sowntimeonward.Schiller'spatron,theDukeofAugustenburg,
wroteaproposof an
version
the
Aesthetic
Education:
"Our
Schiller
is
not
cut
out
early
of
good
for a philosopher;he
needsa translatorto elaboratehisfinephraseswithphilosophicprecision,andto transposehim
andWilloughby
intheir
fromthepoeticintothephilosophicmode"[Schulz153,qtd.byWilkinson
totheirtranslation
introduction
the
main
lines
Schiller's
ofSchiller,cxxxviii].Fora summary
of
of
seeWilkinson
andWilloughby
twentieth-century
reception,andaglowingdefenseoftheEducation,
xlii-lxvii.

FindingfaultwithSchilleris also a gesturewitha morespecifichistory.Adorno'sremarks

onSchillerinAestheticTheoryarereminiscent
of deMan'sandmightconstitutea usefulpointof
entryfor a studyof thecomplexpresenceofAdornoin de Man'swritings.
Schiller was potentiallythe firstKantianto have been openly inimicalto worksof art,for
he considersthe humanbeing behindthemmore essentialthanthe worksthemselves. In
Schiller's concept of genius, modelled as it is on the person of Goethe, idealistichubris
transfersthe idea of creationfrom the transcendentalto the empiricalsubject, i.e., the
productive artist. This is in harmony with vulgar bourgeois consciousness for two
reasons: one, it glorifies purecreationby thehumanbeing withoutregardto purposeand
thus feeds into the bourgeois work ethic; and, two, it relieves the viewer of the task of
understnadingthe artistic object before him, giving him instead a surrogate-the
personalityof the artistor, worse, trashybiographiesof him. [Adorno215]

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1
One tends to speak easily of the essential or radical figurativeness of language. The
assumption often seems to be that this insight is easily borne, or even fundamentally
inconsequent. Having renouncedall metaphysicaland representationalnaivet6, including, of course, the naivet6 of believing thatwe could ever utterlyrenouncerepresentational logic, metaphorsof grounding,notions of truthand lie, and so on, we would, it
seems, be in a position to forsakelinguisticfor other,morepracticalor obviously political
topics.Versionsof thispragmaticassurancesurfacerepeatedlyin contemporarycriticism.
And yet, if the radicalfigurativenessof languageis granted,or suspected,all else in the
de Maniannarrativefollows.
It follows, first,thatthe paradigmaticconditionof readingis a conditionof suspense
between a literal and a figurative meaning. Since any literal meaning is vulnerableto
being read as a figure for anothermeaning, itself a figure, and so on, language as trope
must be understood as a process of circulation devoid of external support. Since,
however, a meaning, in orderto be read, must be takenin isolation from the possibility
of tropologicaldisplacement,the conditionof readingis structuredby a double possibility: thatof figurationand thatof proprietyor reference. This difference-the difference
between the figural and the proper-is itself that of figure. No external principle can
regulate this difference a priori, since no referentcan definitively ground tropological
displacement. This is why de Man writes at the beginningof Allegories of Reading that
"thegrammaticalmodel of the questionbecomes rhetoricalnot when we have, on the one
hand,a literalmeaning,andon the otherhanda figuralmeaning,but when it is impossible
to decide by grammaticalor otherlinguistic devices which of the two meanings(thatcan
be entirely incompatible)prevails"[AR 10]. The figure thataccounts for and describes
thepossibility of the differencebetween literalandfigurativemeaningis the figureof this
difference's undecidability. Radical figuration implies the radical undecidability of
figure. This undecidabilitydefines, finally, the "text"[AR 10], because there is no linguistic vantagepoint externalto it. Undecidabilityis what is given to us to read, though

by definitionit cannotnecessarilybe read.Whatis given to us to readis the possible

impossibility of reading. This aporetic imperative generates the plot of de Man's

theoreticaltext.
One consequenceof rhetoric'sradicalsuspensionof meaningis thatlanguagecan no
longer be understood primarily as an intentional structure. The popular idea that
deconstruction"makesno difference"because prejudicesare irreducibleand one has to
makedecisions anyway,etc., forwardsthe kindof complacencythatmightbe underwritten by substitutingfor rhetoricalundecidabilitya phenomenologicalnotion of "suspension" (Aufhebung),in which the referentis bracketedthroughan intentionalact [Husserl
97]. But intentiondirects itself towardmeaning;and if all meaning is implicated in an
undecidability of meaning arising from a process of semantic substitution, then this
process of substitutionis possibly indifferentto meaning and intention. Language as
figurationcannotbe reducedto a play of intentions,because language's formalprinciple
of articulation(or figuration)cannotbe determinatelymotivated. We shall returnto this
problem in a moment, but consider first anotherimplication of radical figuration: the
narrativeor cognitive dimension of its error.
In order to be read, a figure must figure forth an aberrantlyliteral meaning.
Rousseau's primitive man, on his way to language, sees another primitive man and
experiences fear: out of fear he exaggerates the other's size and invents a primitive
metaphor,"giant." Since this metaphorhas a proper meaning-fear-it is a proper
metaphor,for all its referentialinaccuracy. But fear is not actually a propermeaning,
being "theresult of a possible discrepancybetween the outerand the innerpropertiesof
diacritics / fall 1990

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55

entities"[AR150]. Metaphor,in comingintolegibility,imposesmeaningon undecidability

(for "it remainsan open question, for whoever is neithera paranoiacnor a fool, whether
one can trustone's fellow man"): the metaphor"giant""freezeshypothesis, or fiction,
into fact andmakesfear,itself a figuralstateof suspendedmeaning,into a definite,proper
meaningdevoid of alternatives"[AR 151]. This dense parable,which sets the stage for
de Man's long and passionate engagement with Rousseau in Allegories of Reading,
initiates figural narrative,the allegory of the (im)possibility of figure. An a priori
conditionof uncertaintyhas generatedmetaphor("giant"),a readingself (by virtueof the
internalizedproprietyof fear),andthepossibilityof referentialdenomination(the"giant"
will be domesticated as a conceptual metaphor,"man"). Figuration betrays itself,
obliteratingits own radicalfigurativeness. Put slightly differently,the consequence of
referential indeterminationis insistent referentiality. Language, de Man insists, must
refer. Like Marcel driven away from his books and out into the garden by his
grandmother,like the critics who at the beginningof Allegories of Reading "cryout for
the fresh air of referentialmeaning"[AR4], language turnsaway from its own figurativeness to produce literal meanings always marked in advance by the process of
figurationthathas producedthem. Referencecannotbe "avoided,bracketed,or reduced
to beingjust one contingentpropertyamongothers"[AR207]. WernerHamacherhasthus
been led to organizea powerfulaccountof the de Maniansystem aroundthe notionof an
impossible and categorical referential imperative. "Language is imperative. It is
imperativebecause its referentialfunction gives the directions for possible reference,
even if no referentialmeaning answers to it and though it correspondsto no referent"
["LECTIO"185]. One could supplementthe imperative"Referencemustoccur"with a
variant characterization: "Intentionalitymust occur." And the correlate of such
imperativesis that"Readingmustoccur." The sameprincipleof errorthatproducesthese
effects of referenceand intentionalityalso marksthem with the necessarypossibility of
being readas merefigures.Referentialindeterminacy"generatesthe illusion of a subject,
a narrator,and a reader,"and "the metaphorof temporality"[AR162]. But since these
illusions arefiguresof a figure,theybearwithinthemtheirown critique.In thissense they
are self-deconstructive;but since the deconstructioncannot halt or avoid repeatingthe
error it reads, "it engenders, in its turn, a supplementaryfigural superpositionwhich
narratesthe unreadabilityof thepriornarration"[AR205]. This second-degreenarrative
is what de Man calls allegory. Of such narrativesand their allegories "one should
rememberthat they are the unfoldingand not the resolutionof the chaotic uncertainty
which Rousseau calls fear" [AR 162].
Consequently,it is possible to thinkof criticalphilosophyas the thematicequivalent
of allegory: of a critiqueof tropethatis enabledby the same spiralof errorthatproduces
referentialillusion. The more rigorouslythe critiqueis pursued,the more surely it will
reveal, unwittinglyandto no epistemologicalprofitto itself, the tropologicalprocess that
enables it. And in the process,a certainlimit to the notionof tropewill appear.As de Man
recapitulatesin "Kantand Schiller":
[T]he passagefrom tropetoperformative... occurs always, and can only occur,
by way of an epistemological critiqueof trope. The trope, the epistemologyof
tropes, allows for the critical discourse, transcendentalcritical discourse, to
emerge, which will push the notionof tropeto an extreme,tryingto saturatethe
wholefield of language, but then certain linguistic elementswill remainwhich
the concept of trope cannot reach....
The notion of the "performative"returnsus to the topic we broachedearlier: the possible
indifference of substitutivepatter to semantic determination.Transcendentalcritical
discourse is the critiqueof the possibility of trope: that is, of the figural structurethat
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generates the epistemological field of truthand falsity as the task of judging literal and
figuralmeaning. Thisnarrativediscoversundecidabilityas theconditionof its possibility.
Semanticundecidabilityimplies the potentialirrelevanceof the principleof articulation
to the meaningsit articulates.Since "figure"namesthe conjunctionof significationwith
a principle of substitution,the notion of figure must now be revised to signify "the
alignment of a signification with any principle of linguistic articulationwhatsoever,
sensory or not.... The iconic, sensory, or, if one wishes, the aesthetic moment is not
constitutiveof figuration."Thus"theparticularseductionof the figure is not necessarily
that it creates an illusion of sensory pleasure,but that it creates an illusion of meaning"
[RR 115]. Since the principleof articulationis possibly arbitrary,it becomes necessary
to consider the role of a performativeimposition of meaning on randomdifference. A
catachreticprosopopeiamust "give face" to structuraldifferences thatcan then be read
as signs.7 Figure must be figured. Such a collusion between figurationand positional
power is not cognitively masterable,for it is radicallyinconsistent: "languageposits and
language means (since it articulates)but language cannot posit meaning; it can only
reiterate (or reflect) it in its reconfirmedfalsehood. Nor does the knowledge of this
impossibility make it less possible" [RR117-18]. The critiqueof tropefinds its limit in
its passage to a notion of language as performance. Twinned with that impossible
performance,as we have seen, is thepossible randomnessof the articulativepatternsthat
will be yoked to meanings. This randomnessof articulativepatternis whatde Man,in his
late texts, calls "materiality."
De Man's most elaboratelyshowcasedparableof the materialityof languageis worth
examining in some detail, since it organizes his readings of Kant and, indirectly, his
readingof Schiller. It is far beyond my means here to reproducethe dense argumentof
de Man's readingof the CritiqueofJudgmentin "PhenomenalityandMaterialityin Kant"
and in the shorter,unpublishedlecture "Kant'sMaterialism." For our purposes it will
suffice to note a few guiding themes;and "Kant'sMaterialism"holds particularinterest
for us, since in this text de Man sets out to correct a misreading of the role of the
"empirical"in Kant by reevaluating the Kantian notion of affect. Kant does indeed
attemptto resolve the divergencebetween formand contentin the sublimeby way of the
affectivity of the subject. Thus, as Kant'srigoroustranscendentalcritiqueof tropeforces
the emergenceof a languageof power (in his text's abruptshift to a "dynamic"sublime),
affective judgments take the place of rationaljudgments and we appearto reenter an
empirical world of "assault, battle, and fright"-for in the dynamic sublime, mental
facultiesmuststrugglewith nature,andan emotionsuchas admirationmustdo battlewith
anotheremotion, such as fear. However, this strategyis not entirely the "returnof the
empirical"it might seem. De Man claims that Kantiantypologies of affect tend to take
their organizingprinciple from the "dictionary"ratherthan from "experience"and that
Kant is "often guided by externalresemblancesbetween words ratherthanby the inner
resonances of emotion." The Third Critique's elaborate contrast beween surprise
(Verwunderung)andadmiration(Bewunderung),for instance,mightwell be underwritten
by no better organizing principle than the accidental similarities and differences of
signifiers. The dynamic sublime's concatenationof power and affect thus figures, as de
Man reads it, language's performanceof meaning.
The most sublimeaffect, Kanttells us, is in facttheabsenceof affect (Affektlosigkeit),
a noble a-pathylinked in turnto the grandeurof architecture.This conclusion surfaces
in the midst of a set of dictionarydiscriminationsbetween sublime, active, male affects
and beautiful, languorous,female ones; and de Man remarks:

7. For a rigorous and extendedtreatmentof thispredicament,see Chase, "Givinga Face to

a Name."

diacritics / fall 1990

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57

theinterpretationof thearchitectonicas aprincipleof masculinevirility,aspure

machoof the Germanvariety(whateverthewordmaybe), seemsinevitable. But
to quoteDerrida: "Whenerection is at stake, one should never be too muchin
a hurry-one shouldlet thingstaketheircourse(il fautlaisserla chose se faire).".
.. If erection is indeed "la chose," thenit is likely to be anythingbut what one,
or should I say men, think(s)it to be.
Eventually I shall be returningto these comments, but consider for now their ultimate
object: an extraordinaryparagraphin which Kant illustrates a general principle of
aesthetic judgment: natural objects capable of producing sublime effects must be
considered from a radicallynonteleological viewpoint. Kantprovides as examples two
landscapesand a humanbody:
If, then, we call the sight of the starry heavensublime,we mustnot place at the
basis of our judgment concepts of worlds inhabited by rational beings and
regard the brightpoints, with which we see the space above usfilled, as their
suns moving in circles purposivelyfixed with reference to them; but we must
regard it,just as we see it [wie man ihn sieht], as a distant,all-embracingvault
[ein weites Gew(lbe]. Only under such a representationcan we range that
sublimitywhicha pure aestheticaljudgmentascribes to this object. In the same
way, if we are to call the sight of the ocean sublime, we must not thinkof it as
we ordinarilydo, as implyingall kindsof knowledge(thatare not containedin
immediateintuition).... To call the ocean sublime we must regard it as poets
do, merelyby what the eye reveals [was der Augenscheinzeigt]-if it is at rest,
as a clear mirrorof wateronlyboundedby the heaven;if it is restless,as an abyss
threateningto overwhelmeverything. The like is to be said of the sublime and
beautifulin the humanfigure. Wemustnot regard as the determininggrounds
of ourjudgmentthe concepts of thepurposes which all our limbs serve [wozu
alle seine Gliedmassenda sind].... [Kant 196-97]
If one takes this passage at its word, following its (impossible) injunction to see
nonteleologically, then "theonly wordthatcomes to mind"to describeit, de Man writes,
"is thatof a materialvision" ["PMK"135]. The passageresemblesbutdiffers decisively
fromRomanticpairingsof mindand nature:"No mind is involved in the Kantianvision
of oceanandheaven. To theextentthatany mind,anyjudgment,intervenes,it is in errorfor it is notthe case thatheavenis a vaultorthatthe horizonboundstheocean like thewalls
of a building." The eye sees only what the eye sees, as the tautology of Augenschein
indicates: this Schein is thus neither illusory nor real, and consequentlyKant's architectonic figures, readaesthetically,are not figures: "Heavenand ocean as building are a
priori,previousto any understanding,to any exchange or anthropomorphism.... Kant's
vision can thereforehardlybe called literal,which would imply its possible figuralization
or symbolizationby an act of judgment"["PMK"135]. "Itis in no way possible to think
of this stony gaze as an addressor an apostrophe,"de Manadds in "Kant'sMaterialism."
"The dynamics of the sublime mark the moment when the infinite is frozen into the
materialityof stone, when no pathos,anxiety or sympathyis conceivable;it is indeed the
moment of a-pathosor apathy,as the complete loss of the symbolic."
Aligning this materialitywiththescene's opticalandarchitectonicthematics,de Man
therebycoordinatesthe"material"withthecategoryit traditionallyopposes,the "formal".
A nonteleologicalconsiderationof thearchitectonicwouldnotimplyits totaldisintegration:
"sea and heaven, as the poets see them, are more thanever buildings." However, "it is
no longercertainthatthey are articulated(gegliedert)"["PMK"142]. Whatis lost is not
all definition,as would be the case in a classical postulateof matterwithoutform, matter
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as pure potentiality; rather, what is lost is the possibility of establishing an internal

necessity for the patterns of relations that allow signs to function as signs. The
concatenationof matterand form in "aestheticvision" produces, within the context of
organic structurethat informs Kant's critical enterprise,a narrativeof dismemberment
thatceases at minimalunits of form: the vault of the heavens;the limbs (Glieder) of the
body; the letters of a word. "To the dismembermentof the body corresponds a
dismembermentof language, as meaning-producingtropes are replaced by the fragmentation of sentences and propositions into discrete words, or the fragmentationof
wordsinto syllablesorfinally letters"["PMK"144]. To view a "letter"nonteleologically,
of course, would not be to view it as partof an alphabet,or as the instrumentof a sign.
Kant's eye thus sees at the heartof the aesthetic "theabsolute randomnessof language,
priorto any figurationor meaning"[AR299]. If we grafton anotherof de Man's terms,
we can say that this eye is seeing history.
2
No word in the de Manianlexicon returnsto us more alteredand chargedthanthe word
"history."EarlierI had occasion to note the salience of the term's rhetoricalcareerin de
Man's oeuvre;andat thispointwe can appreciatewhatis at stakewhen, in two of his very
last essays, he offers to align history with the "errancyof language":
As such, history is not human, because it pertains strictly to the order of
language; it is notnatural,forthesame reason; it is notphenomenal,in thesense
thatno cognition,no knowledgeaboutman,can be derivedfroma historywhich
as such is purely a linguistic complication;and it is not really temporaleither,
because the structure that animates it is not a temporal structure. Those
disjunctionsin language do get expressedin temporalmetaphors,but they are
only metaphors. [RT92]
In "Kantand Schiller"de Man defines the historicalas the passage to performativeand
materialnotions of languagethat markedthe exhaustionof figural,cognitive narration:
[H]istory is not thoughtof[here] as aprogression or a regression,butis thought
of as an event, as an occurrence. Thereis historyfrom the momentthat words
such as "power"and "battle"and so on emerge on the scene; at thatmoment
things happen, there is occurrence, there is event. History is therefore not
temporal,it has nothingto do with temporality,but[rather it has to do with] the
emergence of a language of power out of a language of cognition.
A far more exhaustive studyof de Man's texts thanI have been able to furnishwould be
necessary before any definitive interpretationof de Man's notion of history could be
attempted.WhatI propose to offer here,more modestly,is an argumentfor readingsuch
definitions patiently.
Even in its most conventionalsense, a "historicalevent"does notpossess or produce
a "meaning"in the same way that a sign does. However, a historical event must
nonetheless standin a certainrelationto an ensemble of meaning-effects: thatis, a text.
It is a banalbut easily forgottentruththatdeathor pain or catastrophe"in themselves"do
not possess the slightest historicity. One way to characterizethe peculiarqualityof what
we call a "historical"event would be to say thatit disruptsa text, in additionto helping
constituteit. The event, as event, standsin a relationto the text thatthe text itself cannot
control;only retrospectivelywill it acquirefull statusas a narrativeevent. Usually this
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59

historicalcharacteristicis renderedin referentiallanguageas the irruptionor "resistance"

of the real. De Man employs termsthatsound deceptively close to referentiallanguage:
in "Kantand Schiller"he speaks of the "occurrence"as that which "has the materiality
of somethingthatactuallyoccurs,"that"leavesa traceon the world,thatdoes something
to the worldas such." This notionof occurrence"is not in any sense opposedto the notion
of writing." A specifically inscriptive violence is inseparablefrom historicity, as is a
certainblank undeniability: "by the fact that [the event] occurs it has truth,truthvalue,
it is true." There must be a sense in which historicityresists figuration,which is one
ground for de Man's notorious resistance to periodizationsand genetic historicisms:
"Sucha narrativecan be only metaphorical,and historyis not fiction"[BI 163]. To resist
figurationis to resist substitutivepatternsof presenceandabsencethatarticulatewhatwe
call the phenomenal-and human-world.
This ascetic, "material"notion of historymay be difficult to accept.8 But thereis a
political thrustto de Man's thoughtthatwe are now ready to negotiate. The "political"
is defined in "Hegel on the Sublime"as the prosaic"discourseof the slave," the "undoer
of usurpedauthority"["HS" 153]-that is, as the enumerationof material,"historical
modes of langugepower."The politicalin this sense takesas its objectaestheticideology.
Mystified,totalizinginstantiationsof aestheticideology makepossible themostdamaging
of political consequences. De Man's paradigmaticcase is, as mentioned earlier, the
"reception"of Kant by Schiller, whose work "condenses the complex ideology of the
aestheticin a suggestive concatenationof concepts,"9andtherebyreveals the aestheticas
what it "primarily"is: "a social and political model" [RR264].
"Reception,"in de Man's late texts, names the phenomenalizationof "history"by
way of aesthetic syntheses. Schiller, rewritingthe Kantiansublime in his early essay
"VomErhabenen,"andsubsequentlyelaboratingthe aestheticintoa full-fledgedpolitical
system in On the AestheticEducationof Man, domesticatesand naturalizesthe Kantian
critiqueby reproducingit as idealist empiricism.10I shall be attemptinga close reading
of Schiller's text in the final section of this essay, and at this point wish only to recall the
mainlines of de Man's semi-improvisedandrelativelysketchycritique.The paradoxthat
de Man addresses, and accounts for, is thatan allegiance to the pragmaticor empirical
makes possible the most thoroughgoingidealism. A pragmaticdeflation of linguistic
issues leads to ever morecoercive linguisticstructuration.The aestheticrenderslanguage

8. For an informedandcarefulaccountof de Man'snotionof history,see Newmark.

9. De Man'sphraseis actuallydescribingtheachievement
andWilloughby's
of Wilkinson
editionof Schiller'sAestheticEducation.Thisfine bilingualedition,withits two-hundred-page
introduction
andextensivecommentary,
constitutesoneof themostmonumental-and
monumenin
canonization
recent
the
Aesthetic
in
Education
talizing-gesturesof
scholarship.Quotesfrom
whatfollowsarefromthiseditionandare indicatedbyletterandparagraphnumber.
andwho intendto workthroughde Man'sessay in
10. Readerswhoare notGermanists,
a
sense
the
detail,
greater
maybenefitfrom
of datesandoccasionsof theSchillertexts. Schiller
beganto readKant'sCritiqueof Judgment
intenselyinthespringof 1791andwrotetherelatively
obscureessay "VomErhabenen"
in thespringof 1793. Alsoin 1793,Schillercomposed
for the
DukeofAugustenburg
thelettersthat,massivelytransformed
andelaborated,
becametheAesthetic
Education
andrepublished
of 1795. In1801Schillerdiscardedthefirsthalfof "VomErhabenen"
itssecondhalfunderthetitle "UberdasPathetische"in KleinereprosaischeSchriften:theusual
Schillerfoundtheessay'sfirst halftoo
scholarlyguessis that,eightyearsafterits composition,
onKant.SchillerrevisedtheAestheticEducationfor
inKleinereprosaische
dependent
republication
Schriftenin 1801, but the changeswere relativelyminor: the significanttransformations
in
Schiller'saesthetictheoryhad occurredbetween1793 and1795. De Manwill speakof "Vom
Erhabenen"
as "earlySchiller"for thisreason.Toavoidconfusion,it shouldalso be notedthat
in 1795 Schillerpublishedanotheressayon the sublime,"Uberdas Erhabene,"whichde Man
mentionsbutdoesnotdiscuss.
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a propertyof the world;and in doing so, it gives the world over to the indifferentcruelty
of tropologicalstructuresfundamentallyalien to the universeof meaningthey articulate.
Schiller's strategy,which is thatof aestheticideology, is twofold. On the one hand,
he groundsfiguralpatternin thephenomenalworldby understandingchiasmicoppositions
and transfersas the expressionof drives(Triebe). On the otherhand,he polarizesKant's
argument, recoding Kant's troubled passage from a "mathematical"to a "dynamic"
sublime, for instance, as a binaryopposition between a "theoretical"and a "practical"
sublime-an oppositionthatin Schiller's maturetext, theAestheticEducation,becomes
an oppositionbetween a Formtrieb,allied with reason,law, and othertotalizingimperatives, and a sinnlicher Trieb or Stofftrieb,which pursues the sensuous appeal of the
moment. The Formtrieb and the Stofftriebfind a peculiar mode of synthesis in what
Schiller calls Wechselwirkung,"reciprocalaction": a chiasmus that, given its purely
formal nature,lacks internalnecessity and is forced to derive its necessity from what
Schillertakesto be theincontrovertibleempiricalfacticityof thehuman.Languageis thus
groundedin the "human"with exemplaryforce;and out of this synthesis Schiller derives
the most humanisticof drives, at once the sign, the cause, andthe effect of the human,the
play-drive or Spieltrieb,directedat the appearance,Schein."
In short,Schiller's text producesandpolices a representationalconcept of language.
The phenomenalworldof "reality"appearsto directthe mimeticexchange-even though
binaryoppositions such as thatbetween "language"and "reality"are sheerly linguistic.
This is to say that mimesis is a trope, and that the formal patterns that permit the
polarizationandvalorizationof termssuch as empiricalandideal, particularandgeneral,
and the like, are not natural(that is, self-evident and self-identical) but cognitive or
tropological (that is, linguistic). A discourse that uncritically naturalizes linguistic
structureswill thus shuttlebetween opposites thatimply each other. The initialprivilege
grantedthe phenomenalworld can be-and is-revoked by chiasmic inversion: from a
valorization of the empirical, one passes with ease to a celebration of the spiritual.
Language,initiallydomesticatedas a reflectionof empiricaldrivesor intentions,can now
receive inverse valuation as a prefigurationof the ideal. Thus the aesthetic is both
domesticatedandgrantedexemplarity-in Schiller'scase to thepointof makingaesthetic
harmonythe telos of individualand collective pedagogy, and a model for the State. The
synecdochic power of tropeguaranteesthe passage fromindividualto nation,artworkto
culture,pedagogy to politics; and the logical end to the system is the aesthetic state, the
Staat des schonen Scheins, which is for Schilleran ideal, realizedonly in a beautifulsoul
or within a circle of friends [27.12], but which is in its turn vulnerableto tropological
reinforcementand empiricization. It is thus that de Man can claim that Goebbels's
vulgarizationof Schillerrepeats,howevercrudely,theessentialgestureof Schiller's own
text:
Thestatesmanis an artist too. For himthepeople are neithermorenor less than
what stone isfor the sculptor.... Politics are theplastic art of the State,just as
painting is theplastic artof color. Thisis whypolitics withoutthepeople,or even
against thepeople, is sheer nonsense. To shape a People out of the masses, and
11. As I hope to show later-and as de Man would doubtless be thefirst to acknowledgeSchiller's text is more strained and complex than de Man's comments(which I am more or less
retailing here) immediatelysuggest. But it is certainly true that "the human"functions as a
pragmatic, conceptuallyarbitraryprinciple of closure in the Aesthetic Education. Whencomplications grow troublesomeSchiller is given to saying things like, "Butenough! Self-consciousness
is there" [19.11]; and at a crucial point in the treatise, not far removedfrom the passages that
concernus, we are toldthatReasonmustposithumanityand beauty-i.e., theWechselwirkungthat
defines the beautifuland the human-because Reason is Reason. "Buthow there can be beauty,
and how humanityis possible, neither reason nor experience can tell us" [15.4].

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a State out of the People, this has always been the deepest intentionofpolitics
in the true sense. [Goebbels21]12
The continuity between statesmanand artist, life and art, human being and aesthetic
object, so ferocious as to expunge any overt recognition of violence (there can be no
politics "againstthe people" in a structureof such symmetry),violates every cautious,
humanisticgesture to be found in the Aesthetic Education. But it does not violate the
treatise's deepest logic. The "human"names an effacementof violence, not least, as de
Man remarks in closing "Kant and Schiller," when the "human"itself discovers the
necessity of derivingits closure frombinaryvalorizations:"Justas the sensorybecomes
withouttensionthe metaphorforreason,in Schiller,womanbecomes withoutoppression
a metaphorfor man."The cost of aestheticideology in realviolence andactualoppression
can be as enormous or as modest, as literal or as symbolic, as any particularcontext
happens to permit. The tropologicalpatternsthat make such distributionsof meaning
possible areessentially indifferentto thenotionof the humanthey enable. It is the specter
of such indifferencethathumanismseeks to exorcise by appropriatingand naturalizing
linguistic structures:a gesturethatsustainsitself only in the mode of violent repetition,
since the principleof its success is also thatof its disarticulation.A threatis being taken
as a solution,andthe meaningandthe performanceof such a constitutiveact of expulsion
must thus ultimatelybe at odds.'3
3
The affect properto the irruptionof "historicalmodes of languagepower"is more often
than not, in the de Manian corpus, terror. Confronted with the possibility of the
"uncontrollablepower of the letteras inscription,"Saussureproceedswith a cautionthat
"supportsthe assumptionof a terrorglimpsed" [RT37]. The vision of sea and heavens
is "a terrifyingmoment in a sense-terrifying for Kant, since the entire enterpriseof
philosophy is involved in it"-though de Man hastens to discredit the idea of Kant
"shudderingin his mind"as he scribbled: "Any literalismtherewould not be called for.
It is terrifyingin a way we don't know ...." ["Kantand Schiller"]. However, "literal"
affect does have its place in thede Manianallegoryof reading:it derives,as we have seen,
from the effacement of undecidabilitythatproduces the possibility of literal meaning,
which is to say the possibilityof trope. A rhetoricalcritiqueof languagethematizesaffect
as a dimension of language's resistance to the randomviolence of its own inscription.
Affect resists history, insofar as it manifests itself as a dimension of a referential
imperativein flight from its own impossibility. Rousseau's parableof primitive man,
experiencingfear in the face of language'sevent, is indeed a paradigmatictext for the de
Manian narrative.Fear is a privileged affect in a discourse about resistance. As an
"empirical"affect, fearis an illusoryeffect of metaphor'sneedfor a propermeaning. And
priorto becoming properlyaffective, we recall, fear was an impersonalepistemological
suspension of semantic determination[AR 150-51]: an allegorical personificationof
12. Cited by Wilkinsonand Willoughbycxlii. For an instructive account of Schiller's
importancefor the Nazi culture industry,see Ruppelt.
13. This essay was writtenbeforeI had the chance to consultCynthiaChase's extraordinary
essay "Trappingsof an Education,"which,withinthepurviewsof de Man's immediatereception,
constitutesto my knowledgethe most illuminatingstudy of these issues to date. But it is perhaps
worth emphasizingthat thepolitical ramificationsof aesthetic ideology occupythe attentionof all
rigorously "deconstructive"thought. Recentwritingon Heidegger affordsa usefullytopical, and
in no way atypical, set of examples: of Derrida's numeroustexts on this theme, see in particular
De l'esprit; see also Lacoue-Labartheand,for a recent, strongly stated assessment,Ronell.

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readingper se, and thus perhapsanotherfigure for the "truemourning"or nonempirical

"terror"that history occasions.
It is thusperhapsalso no accidentthatthis figureof "fear,"so crucialto the narrative
of Allegories ofReading, shouldprovidethe axis for one of the most densely intertextual
negotiationsin de Man's oeuvre.14 A few years earlier,in "TheRhetoricof Blindness,"
de Man had taken issue with Derrida'sreading of the covert proprietyof Rousseau's
originary"giant"metaphor-which professes nonreferentialitybut actually denotes a
properand internalizedmeaning,fear. "Rousseau'stext has no blind spots,"de Man had
claimed: Rousseau's text knows the truthof radicalfiguration,and if the spontaneous
metaphor"giant"finds its propermeaning in fear, this is simply because Rousseau has
made a "mistake"in selecting fear to exemplify metaphor."The choice of the wrong
example to illustratemetaphor(fear insteadof pity) is a mistake, not a blind spot" [BI
139n]. WhenAllegories ofReading recodes fearas the exemplaryaffect, structuredlike
a trope that defaces its own figurativeness, de Man recodes the "mistake" as the
undecidability between "mistake"and "error": the metaphor must deface itself to
compose itself-though its instantiationmay also be a random mistake. De Man's
readingof fear as mistake,by implication,was a mistakingof errorspurredby an error
of mistaking. "If 'mistake' is randomand contingent... and 'error'is systematic and
compulsive... then I have stated,in a varietyof terminologies,the impossibilityof ever
coming to rest on one or the otherside of this distinction,"de Man remarksin a late text,
recalling his "rashassertion"in "TheRhetoricof Blindness"as an example of mistaking
errorfor mistake ["A Letter"509-10].15 The (allegorical) nexus is fear, or at least the
wishful possibility of fear. And the stakes of mistakeare, of course, ethico-politicalas
well as epistemological.
Ideology, "the confusion of linguistic with naturalreality, of reference with phenomenalism"[RT 11], is the mistakenerrorbuilt into language: "Itis truethattropesare
the producersof ideologies thatare no longer true"[RR242]. "No degree of knowledge
can ever stop this madness,for it is the madnessof words"[RR122]. We have no choice
but to apostrophizethe dead,monumentalizethe text,phenomenalizethe sign. And to the
extent that the erroris an error,its undoing is equally inevitable: an epistemological
critiqueof trope is "in no one's power to evade" [RT69], even though the critiquewill
discover nothing more than the possible mistakennessof its error. Since we as reading
subjects are the products of this language machine, the exigent contingency of its
operationis replayedon the level of ethics. We cannot,de Mantells us, haltthe madness
of prosopopeia;however, we do not have to delude ourselves into taking this process as
a source of value: such a belief "leadsto a misreadingthatcan and shouldbe discarded,
unlike the coercive 'forgetting' that Shelley's poem analytically thematizes."But the
discardablemisreadingthenbecomesdifficultorimpossibleto discard:the"aesthetification
of texts" describes also "theiruse, as in this essay, for the assertion of methodological
14. This essay leaves aside, but wishes to recall and evoke, the Heideggerian subtext
constantlylegibleindeMan'swork,andespeciallyprominentin thischapterofAllegoriesof Reading.
Thoughde Man's terms are dictated by the task of interpretingRousseau's text, it is not entirely
coincidental that the operative, disputed term should be the inauthentic (that is, im-proper:
uneigentlich)affect "fear"ratherthan the authenticAngst of a Dasein turningawayfrom its own
potentiality. De Man's interventionhere should be read in tandemwith his gesture to replace the
Heideggerian (and Kantian) "consciousnessin itself' with "rhetoricity"[see AR 175 and note]
and would ultimatelyhave to be thought in relation to the occurrence or Ereignis to history as
Geschichte, as that which occurs, as in the line of Hilderlin's that encapsulates de Man's
invocationand displacementofHeidegger: "Esereignetsich aber das Wahre." For Heidegger's
classic discussion of Angst, see Being andTime 228-35.
15. For a rigorous study of de Man's shift in position with regard to Rousseau's "giant"
metaphor,see Frey.

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63

claims madeall the morepious by theirdenialof piety" [RR122]. And so it goes: a spiral
of errorthatdrawswithin it our ethical selves and the consciousness in which we cannot
help but believe; as the "product"of language'serror,we have no choice but to continue
to choose. The ethical tonalityof de Man's writingreiteratesthe mistakentruthof error.
The rigor with which de Man stages this predicamentis what makes his work so
difficult to read. It is easy to make the mistake of not reading at all, as when Frank
Lentricchia claims that de Man teaches political quietism by projecting "all those
paralytic feelings of the literaryonto the terrainof society and history" [50]. A more
attentive reading discovers, with J. Hillis Miller, that under the terms of de Manian
thought,the reader"musttakeresponsibilityfor (thereading)and for its consequencesin
the personal,social, and political worlds"[Miller 59]. To adaptKafka's phrase: in the
de Manianuniverse thereis an infinity of "paralysis"-but not for us. We cannotdwell
within undecidability;readingmust take place, and to read is to judge: Miller is correct
to extend the consequences of this model to the world of practicalreason.16Such is, for
that matter, the entire burdenof aesthetic judgment: a burdenproduced, ratherthan
negated,by the contradictoryimperativeof language. We must take responsibility,but
responsibility is not ours to be taken. We must act ethically, but we should not delude
ourselves into thinkingthatsuch action can be genuinely said to have value.
The intense, bleak pathosof de Man's work,particularlyof his late work, responds
to the tenacity with which he pursuesthe impossible necessity of the ethical. In its full
elaboration,the de Maniansystem-and in its inevitableerror,it is a system, teachable
and generalizable,"the universaltheory of the impossibilityof theory"[RT 19]-is so
thoroughlyin controlof the impossibilityof ever being in control,thatthe critique's,and
the critic's, ethical imperative,recognized and named as an impossible imperativeof
language, necessarilyrewritesits intentionalityin the mode of the pathetic. The system
has accountedfor this gesturelong ago: such pathosrepeatsthe illusory hypostatization
of "the deconstructivepassion of a subject"[AR 199]. And the subject whose passion
could animatesuch a system would be a "giant"indeed: "as farbeyondpleasureandpain
as he is beyond good and evil, or, for that matter,beyond strengthand weakness. His
consciousness is neitherhappynor unhappy,nordoes he possess any power. He remains
however a center of authorityto the extent that the very destructivenessof his ascetic
reading testifies to the validity of his interpretation"[AR 173-74]. He would incarnate
the pathosof a-pathy,the sublimeAffektlosigkeitof a subjectivitythatrecuperatesphallic
interiorityin the mode of invulnerableimpotence. He would derive castrationout of
disarticulation,achieving therebythe funerealgrandeurof an architectonicerection.
Thus to the pathos deriving from the power of de Man's thoughtcorrespondsthe
monumentalizationof de Man as teacher,thinker,and text. From a certainperspective
it makes little differencewhetherthis monumentalizationoccurs in the mode of celebration or defiance: whetherde Man's text is fetishized and imitated,as in this essay, or
whether it is castigated and ritually sacrificed. From a certain perspective it is also
relativelyindifferentwhetherone speaksof institutionaleffect or libidinalinvestment:of
theprofessionalizationof de Maniantheory,or thecoercionof de Maniancharisma.Both
these modes of recuperationappear united with exemplary force in the grotesque,
funereallymonumentalissue of YaleFrench Studies dedicatedto de Man, and an essay
in thatissue by CarolJacobsprovidesan exemplarytropefor the paradoxesthatcontrol
his reception."(De Man) may offer us a mirrorof sorts, but his writings... are an aegis
to which the head of the Medusa is affixed and which we contemplateat our own risk"
[166]. Jacobs is analyzing representationsof the Medusa, and her remarkis motivated
16. Miller's accountofthe ethical indeMan, however,isinmy view occasionallyproblematic.
I developmy understandingofthe ethical andmyreservationsregardingcertainaspects ofMiller's
argumentin "Humanizingde Man."
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andinspiredby its context;butas is often the case with figures,this figureof decapitation
cuts many ways. It freezes de Man's visage into stone, evading, monumentalizing,and
genderinghis text at a stroke. A similargesturecanbe foundin Schiller. Withinthe terms
of a de Manianproblematic,the Medusa's head is in essence a figure of reception.17
4
De Man's interpretationof Schiller, as we have seen, centers on Schiller's uncritical
deploymentof tropologicalstructureas a defense againsttrope. Imposingrigidpolarities
that stabilize and naturalizedifferences, Schiller's text evades the perils of aesthetic
Schein by relegating language to a mimetic role:
[Kant's Augenscheinis] certainlynot in oppositionto reality,butwas precisely
what we see and as such more real thananythingelse, thoughit is realitywhich
exists on the level of vision.... And [in the case of both Kant and Hegel] there
is a road that goesfrom this notion of Schein to the notion of materiality. Such
a road cannotbefound in Schiller,and thatis whyfor Schiller the conceptof art,
which at that momentis mentionedand is stressed, will always and without
reservationbe a conceptof art as imitation,as nachahmendeKunst ["Kantand
Schiller"]
That last claim, while correct, is vulnerable to the charge of not being sufficiently
nuanced. Schiller's notion of Schein appearsin the treatise'spenultimateletter as the
outwardsign (Phanomen)of thepsyche's aestheticmode. As such, the objectof the playdrive,aestheticScheinis in one sense radicallyantimimetic:while Being (Dasein, Wesen)
proceeds from nature, Schein proceeds from man. Any appearancethat pretends to
(natural)being or (referential)truth is not aesthetic Schein, or is not being perceived
aesthetically: in this sense, Scheinis nonreferential,thoughin anothersense it is the most
referentialof signs, since it refersto the Human.Obeying the classic maneuversof what
JacquesDerridahas called "economimesis,"Schiller's text thusrecuperatesmimesis by
way of an analogicalchain leading fromSchein to Man to what Schiller sometimes calls
"Nature"andsometimes"AbsoluteBeing"or "theGodhead."This covertimitativechain
incites the return of the very language of mimesis that the text denies. The binary
opposition between Schein and Wesen,appearanceand reality, is maintainedwith such
enthusiasmin Schiller's text thatthe oppositeof therealdriftsimplacablyinto its classical
role of being an imageof thereal,andthuswith no apparentsense of contradictionSchiller
can indeed write that the Spieltrieb is followed by the "shaping spirit of imitation"
(nachahmendeBildungstrieb) [26.7]. De Man is not wrong, but the maneuvers of
Schiller's idealist empiricismare more complex than"Kantand Schiller"allows for. If
no road leads to the "material"in Schiller, what signs mark,at least, the road's closure?
One way to pursuethe trackof Schein would be to examine the origins of the drive
proper to it, the Spieltrieb, which makes its appearancenear the middle of Schiller's
treatiseundercurious conditions. Schiller has just identifiedthe principleof chiasmus,
Wechselwirkung,with the principleof the human,andhe is now moving fromhis version
of transcendentalcritique to more empirical considerations. A pure Wechselwirkung
17. In pursuing such a connection between de Manian andfeminist concerns, we rejoin the
work of CynthiaChase and Neil Hertz: see especially Chase's "TheWittyButcher's Wife" and
Hertz's chapter "Medusa'sHead" and afterwordin his The End of the Line. For a sustained
reading of what I have been calling de Man's "reception"of himself in terms offigurations of
gender, see Hertz, "LuridFigures," and the companionpiece to that essay in the present issue of
diacritics.

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65

between man's formaldriveand his sensorydriveexists only as an ideal, as "theIdea of

HumanNature"[14.2]; in the empiricalworld we can approachthis ideal only asymptotically, through time. Schiller is then faced with the question of what enables the
asymptoticapproach. And thoughat otherpoints in the treatiseoriginaryquestions are
dismissed as precriticaldistractions,here Schiller proposes a curiously empirical and
ambiguousontological fable. Its telling involves Schiller in his most extendedrecourse,
in this text, to the subjunctivemood:
So long as man only feels, his Person, or his absolute existence, remains a
mystery to him; and so long as he only thinks, his existence in time, or his
Condition,does likewise. Should there be cases, however [Gitbees aberFSle]
in which he were to have this twofold experience simultaneously... then he
would in such cases, and in such cases only, have a complete intuitionof his
humannature, and the object [Gegenstand]which afforded him this intuition
would becomefor him a symbol [wiirdeihm zu einem Symbol] of his accomplished destiny, and, in consequence (since this is only to be attained in the
totality of time), serve him as a manifestationof the Infinite.
Assuming that cases of this sort could actually occur in experience
[Vorausgesetzt,dass Falle dieser Art in der Erfahrungvorkommenkbnnen],
they would awaken in him a new drive, which,precisely because the other two
drives co-operate within it, would be opposed to each of them considered
separately and couldjustifiably count as a new drive. [14.2-3]
The subjunctive,I think,is takingup thestrainfelt by a passage thatdoes not entirelywant
to be whatit is-the accountof a revelation.Of Schiller'sseveral,andoften contradictory,
accounts of the relationbetween ideal and real, this version, offered at a crucialpoint in
the treatise, is coming close to proposing a Schein that precedes and incites the drive
properto it. Before mancanbecome manhe mustexperiencean intuitionof man,andsuch
an intuitioncan only be had in the presence of a schonemSchein thatby the same token
does not yet properlyexist. Schiller's essentiallytheocentricsystem would counterhere
with the claim that the "human"exists always alreadyin potentia, as a promise or prefiguration(Anlage)at the "origin"of humanity[4.2]; thatis the sense in which the "case"
postulatedin letter 14 would merely "awaken"ratherthan "create"the Spieltrieb. For
though the transformationof a mere Gegenstand into the specular, and spectacular,
promise of a Symbolsuggests a dramaticpositionalact on man's part,here as elsewhere
Schiller's Fichtean gestures are actually being controlled by a more classic model of
prefigurationand fulfillment. But the subjunctivemood of the passage is respondingto
the proximity of a threat. Either the prefigurationof the human is vulnerable,at the
moment of its instantiation,to chance, or the "object"is alreadySchein, a Schein before
Schein that would control the etiology of man's aesthetic education at the price of
imagining a Schein, an instance of beauty, stripped at the outset of the "symbolic"
character that defines it. Schiller's text is naturallydedicated to closing off either
possibility, but enough de Manian-or, according to de Man, Kantian-burdens are
borneby this "case"or "Fall"to requirea ceremonyof exorcism, which takesplace in the
treatise's next letter.
For if it can only be postulatedthat"casesof this sort"occurin experience,Schiller's
text can at least offer a certaintyon the level of its own engagementwith the Fall of the
aesthetic. In the wake of a long discussionof the beautiful,Schiller invokes the example
of the Greeks,a people whose only errorin the realmof the aestheticwas to "transferto
Olympuswhat was meantto be realizedon earth"[15.9]. In Olympus,at least, they gave
face to beauty itself, and Schiller's lettercloses with a vision thatoperatesrhetorically,
and to some extent thematically,as a "symbolof man's accomplisheddestiny":
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Inspired by this spirit, the Greeks effaced from the features of their ideal
physiognomy, together with inclination, every trace of volition too; or rather
they made both indiscernible,for they knew how to fuse them in the most
intimateunion. It is not Grace, nor is it yet Dignity, which speaks to usfrom the
superb countenance of a Juno Ludovisi; it is neither the one nor the other
because it is both at once. While the woman-goddemandsour veneration,the
god-like womankindles our love; but even as we abandon ourselves in ecstasy
to her heavenly grace, her celestial self-sufficiencymakes us recoil in terror.
The whole figure reposes and dwells in itself, a creation completely selfcontained,and, as if existing beyondspace, neitheryielding nor resisting; here
is noforce to contend withforce, nofrailty where temporalitymight break in.
Irresistibly moved and drawn by thoseformer qualities, kept at a distance by
these latter, wefind ourselves at one and the same timein a state of utterrepose
and supremeagitation,and thereresults thatwonderousstirringof the heartfor
which the understandinghas no concept nor speech any name. [15.9]
Schiller's treatisehas never strayedfurtherfrom Kant's dry, abstractpostulationof the
"idealof beauty"as a "humanfigure"capableof summingup "thevisible expression of
moralideas": "Thecorrectnessof suchan ideal of beauty,"Kantcontinues,"is shown by
its permittingno sensible charm[Sinnenreiz]to mingle with the satisfactionof the object,
and yet allowing us to take a great interest therein"[72]. The Reiz of Schiller's Juno,
meanwhile, is similarto thatof the "humanfigure"thatFreudin his turnwas to conjure
up as an ideal of narcissism: the woman whose "self-contented"aesthetic closure
produces her "great charm,"which finds its "reverse side" in her "enigmatic being"
[Freud89].18 Frozeninto monumentalstone, schiner Schein achieves its most radically
formalfigurationin theAestheticEducationandcould notbe moreproximateto or distant
from the "material"vision in Kant's Analytic of the Sublime. Schiller's figure of
affectless indifference substitutes its gendered countenance for Kant's architectonic
erectionof sea and sky, and its fetishisticrhythmsof empirical"terror"and "ecstasy"for
the terrorof a disarticulationwithoutmeaning. The Medusa'sheadof aestheticideology
promises the consolationsof pathos: it marksthe assertionof an act of identificationthat
would forget its figurativeness,and a dreamof castrationthat would discover its own
deludedpossibility by mourningthehypotheticalformerexistence of an erectionthatwas
not Kant's. At the considerablepolitical cost of groundingfigurationin the symmetrical
asymmetryof genderdifference,Schiller's text achieves the illusion of a desire safe from
language.
For in naming the Juno Ludovisi, Schiller, miming and appropriatingGoethe's
desire, domesticates a less naturalizablechain of substitutions through a gesture of
Oedipal rivalry.19Throughoutthe Aesthetic Education, classical statuaryhas borne a
18. Fora relevantinterpretation
of thispassage,see Kofman50-52. Freud,of course,was
to rewritetheSpieltriebas therepetitioncompulsion
inBeyondthePleasurePrinciple-atextthat,
andcritique
fromourpresentperspective,
mightbedescribedas themostextravagant
refiguration
thatSchiller'streatiseeverreceived.
19. Goethe'sfascinationwiththeJunoLudovisidatesfromhisRomansojourn;he installed
a castofthecolossalbust("myfirstsweetheartinRome")inhisroomsin1787andtalkedoftaking
it backwithhimto Weimar,butwas eventually
forcedto leaveit behind.In 1823,eighteenyears
in
afterSchiller'sdeath,Goetheobtainedanotherreplica,whichdominatesthe "Juno-Zimmer"
whatis nowtheGoetheMuseuminWeimar.Schiller'sinvocationof thestatueis tantamount
to an
explicitactofhomageandwouldofcoursetakeitsplaceinthenarrativeof idealization,
insecurity,
andenvythatconstituted
Schiller'ssideofoneofWesternliterature's
moreponderously
canonized
friendships.
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67

heavy figurativeburden,representingthe intersectionof form and matter,meaningand

medium, or, most generally, reason and phenomenality, the articulation of which
composes the text's philosophicalandpolitical task. The fact thatthe nobility of the past
can be preserved"in meaningfulstone" [9.4], "stampedin silent stone" [9.6], means for
Schiller not only thatatemporalForm,phenomenalizedin art,can intersectthe temporal
world, but that the aesthetic can underwriteand direct political history. The aesthetic
support(Stiitze),which will ensuretheendurance(Fortdauer)of thepolitical worldas we
know it while laboring (eterally) at its transformationinto the Aesthetic State [3.4],
supportsitself upon figures that evoke and evade the inscription: the randomevent of
meaning in "silent"stone. As a historicalforce the aesthetic may work all too well but,
at least in this text by Schiller,not quiteto the point of effacing "theviolence thatmakes
it possible" [RR289]. The evasion of aestheticjudgment,as de Man theorizes it, occurs
as the impositionof thecoercive fascinationsof a languageof fearanddesire,naturalized
by way of thebinarypolarizationsof gender.20Such scenariosreconfirmnot only thatthe
tax levied by aestheticideology is thoroughly"empirical,"butthatit is empiricalbecause
it is figurative,ratherthanvice versa. To identify such a momentas a defense againstthe
event of languageis thusone way to begin to assess the violence characterizingthehistory
of reception.
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