The following essay is from
TRANSCENDENT TOPOLOGIES: Structuralism and Visual Writing by Tom Hibbard
(Luna Bisonte Prods, 2018)
VISUAL WRITING, DERRIDA
AND THE UNREADABLE BEING
OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
“That
day, the great trumpet will be sounded,
and
those lost in the land of Assyria will come,
and
those exiled in the land of Egypt...”
-Isaiah, 27, 13-15
I've said before that "visual
writing" gives the completed logos.
Textual writing, on the other hand, gives something else. Textual writing gives the completed logos
but as it’s seen from an impossible vantage. Textual writing is said to be
subjective, but the logos so continually brings subjectivity into
question that it's difficult to keep in mind what subjectivity is. Is it simply infinity? Is it incompleteness? I think there’s much more that subjectivity
is able to tell us about language.
Jacques Derrida himself, in the
epilogue to his tract on monolingualism, expresses the annoyance of feeling his
words continually turning into a gesture or logos. Having just referred to the "unreadability" of the "highways of...ongoing
globalization," Derrida writes:
What then are the chances of the
readability of such a discourse against its unreadability? For I do not know whether what you have just
heard me say will be intelligible.
Either where, when or to whom. Or
to what extent. Perhaps I have just
made a "demonstration"; it is not certain, but I no longer know
in what language to understand that word.
Without an accent, a demonstration is not a logical argumentation
that imposes a conclusion; it is first of all, a political event, a
demonstration in the street....a march, an act, an appeal, a demand. (emphasis added) (1)
It is interesting to think of society
evolving toward an atomic "trace," an “act gratuit,” a wisp of
smoke, a letter of a Phoenician alphabet, an archeological artifact, “the God
particle,” perhaps a Latin verb, without syntax, intent, meaning or, as Derrida
says, conclusion. It seems society is
attracted to a nexus of associations, a verbal mirror of itself. In my opinion, the words
"monolanguage" and "metalanguage" are too consistent with
totalitarian impulses for use. We are
not talking—ultimately—about correctness in a proscriptive sense. I have no quarrel with elementary grammatical
rules, but sophisticated artistic levels of writing are no place for facile
dogmatism, censorship, capricious formalism, superficial rectitude
("circumcision"), hollowness.
In discussing language characteristics from an historic perspective, I
prefer to look for effectiveness in some wide sense, something more substantive
and imaginative that I would not want to define too specifically—a “deep
structure.”
Though I very much endorse
typographical artworks, poems representing forms of consciousness—“visual
poetry”—the visual prose that emanates from terminology, political
propaganda, religious debates, ideology,
“empty rhetoric,” some of which we have seen in American politics in recent
decades (in the intimidating use of words such as "socialism" for
example or “regulatory state” but even in more ordinary words such as
"taxes"), verbal iconography that corrupts and menaces origins—these
are warning signs of a "demonstration" of something different: not a limitless impressionistic
well-considered street-level lodestar of Mankind but a groundless deceptive
banner of brutality that constitutes Mankind’s self-betrayal. In his article on his mentor Foucault,
Derrida warns, "The reason and [the] madness of the classical age had a
common root....which is [the] logos."
Thus the question presents itself
whether Derrida’s self-confessed “‘unreadability,” his philosophical word use
is tending toward reason or madness.
Does this type of writing create a formal authoritarian category of
non-meaning, linguistic status-symbols that undermine substantiveness and well-established
social practices? More importantly, are
the writings of Derrida important in terms of what is taking place in modern
society today? American Noam Chomsky, in
his early writings, criticized Derrida’s style on just these grounds. Many writers, since, have criticized
Postmodernism in this way, calling it a “dead language” and “a new kind of
superficiality,”
…a ready-formed dictionary, its words
only explainable through other words, and so on indefinitely. (2)
In the end of Between Past and Future, Hannah Arendt expresses concern that
Modernism and modern science, in search of “true reality,” may have lost the
ability to be objective and, in a common-sense manner, realistic at all.
Under these circumstances, speech and
everyday language would indeed be no longer a meaningful utterance that transcends
behavior even if it …expresses it, and it would much better be replaced by the
extreme and in itself meaningless formalism of mathematical signs. (3)
Does Derrida’s Structuralist language
divorce itself from reality and open inquiry and put in their place a
provisional type of “communication” that secretly mechanically censors thoughts
and reality? The discussion hearkens
back to Lenin’s distinction between “idealism” and “materialism,” though
history informs us that the discourses of Soviet Communism were, in fact,
idealistic and eminently subject to “decay.”
All language is. Only “free
speech,” that provides no “disconnect” of false credibility, no border lines of
inconsequence, offers a language whose sole egalitarian function is to establish
truth and avoid dishonesty.
* *
In Werner Heisenberg’s Physics and
Philosophy is a chapter titled "Language and Reality in Modern
Physics." Heisenberg is the
inventor of the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle," which asserts
that it is impossible to know the speed of an object and its location at the
same time. But this is a recurrent theme
in Modern Physics, similar to conclusions by other physicists from the same
era, such as Max Planck's writing that the ability to observe atomic particles
depends on the distance from them and that the closer an observer gets to the
particles the less reliable is the information about them.
Predictably, Heisenberg says that this
uncertainty affects language. Heisenberg
says that the language "has already adjusted itself" to the presence
of an ambiguity that contradicts classical notions of logic and
substantiveness. Borrowing Aristotle's
term "potentia," Heisenberg says that concepts have been defined in a
new way that cannot be called “objective.”
He says that their descriptions "retain a certain vagueness."
...quantum theory has encouraged the
physicists to use an ambiguous rather than an unambiguous language, to use the
classical concepts in a somewhat vague manner in conformity with the principle
of uncertainty, to apply alternatively different classical concepts which would
lead to contradictions if used simultaneously.
In this way one speaks about electronic orbits, about matter waves and
charge density,... (4)
Heisenberg equates this ambiguous,
contradictory imagistic language to ordinary in the sense of non-rigorous
language. He also compares it to
"poetry."
...it is not a precise language in
which one could use the normal logical patterns; it is a language that produces
pictures in our mind, but together with them the notion that the pictures have
only a vague connection with reality, that they represent only a tendency
toward reality. (5)
Heisenberg emphasizes that experiments
with atomic events are not in themselves exceptional or fantastical; they have
to do with "phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily
life."
But the atoms or the elementary
particles themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or
possibilities rather than one of things or facts. (6)
The point is that, in the hundred
years since they were made, the radical breakthroughs of quantum physics and
relativity have infused language use "to an extent" and in a way that
the academic use of terms from various intellectual disciplines no longer
achieves or goes in the direction of achieving an objective status of
"things and facts." Because
scientific rigor itself is shown to produce fundamental contradictions, the
most erudite and complicated writing is reduced to being
"ordinary." Derrida quotes
Artaud as saying, "poetry and science must henceforth be
identical."
Thus, in his style of writing, Derrida
may be creating a linguistic high place by systematizing ideas, deriving a
persuasive value from beyond his own words.
Perhaps he goes so far as to be exclusive. Yet in many ways he shows that he has no
intention of inventing a text that is intimidating or authoritarian. He rejects strict formal logic and grammar and,
in casualness and impressionism, shows little interest in conclusiveness
(drawing strict conclusions from his writings).
He shares attachment to many types of verbal offenses and failures and
is ostentatiously playful and systematically poetic. Perhaps most importantly, he is not
pretentious in the sense that is detached from realistic conceptualities in
some demonstrable sense. It seems clear
that Derrida is merely employing language in the multiple creative styles that have evolved from
twentieth century scientific and cultural discoveries. In other words, he is using language in the
rigorous manner prescribed in order to bring out the very ambiguity,
unusualness, creativity and "unreadability" that will save his
writing from the crimes that he is well aware he might be accused of and that
he himself detests.
* *
The question seems to remain however
in what sort of hierarchical position do we place a writing that is not
unreadable in this sense, that is not essentially a picture; that does reach
a conclusion; that uses the imperative mode; that is practical,
unselfconsciously pointed, definite, direct.
Chomsky emphasizes the physiological
aspect of language, the fact that the human species has developed a culture
based extensively on language, writing, communication and scholarship. To Chomsky, the powers of linguistic
expression shown by the human brain (and brains of other living animals) are
remarkable to the extent that they appear unfettered by physical or natural
limits. Language is autonomous, outside
judgment. In speaking in particular
about humans, Chomsky writes,
The fact surely is, however, that the
number of sentences in one's native language that one will immediately
understand with no feeling of difficulty or strangeness is astronomical; and
that the number of patterns underlying our normal use of language and
corresponding to meaningful and easily comprehensive sentences in our language
is orders of magnitude greater than the number of seconds in a life time. (7)
What subjectivity is, then, is
freedom, the straightforward capacity to make up one's own mind in the most
far-reaching situations, to approach the role of creator via the problem of
ambiguity, to choose and decide for oneself, without any inherent
predisposition. Subjectivity is our
(response)ability to be readable, to make sense in so far as we are able to do
so—outside of the context of language’s inherent infinities. Subjectivity is a depth of Being, without any
frame of reference; the loneliness of Being, absurdity. In this way it becomes “objective.” Subjectivity becomes “presence,” a
demonstration.
* * * *
The current exhibit at the Milwaukee
Public Museum, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible, is an extensive
international endeavor. It includes many
scrolls and fragments of scrolls from the well-known 1940s discovery, a more
recently discovered Jeselsohn Stone (inscribed with "Gabriel's
Revelation"), a hand-sewn photocopied replica of the 24-foot "Great
Isaiah Scroll" (one of the complete scrolls in the original discovery),
fragments from the earliest codex of the New Testament, pages from rare
Medieval Bibles, Native-American Bibles in the native languages, part of the
earliest known Old Testament manuscript, a page from a Guttenberg Bible, a
scroll fragment that has never previously left Paris and similar pieces from
the country of Jordan. About half of the
exhibit consists of artifacts from the time to which the writing of the scrolls
is dated (the first century B.C.E.), supplied by the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem.
As one waits to enter the exhibit,
there is the sound of ancient music and blowing desert winds. On a partition that ushers in the viewers is
a large reproduction of uniform columns of ancient scroll writing. Upon entering the exhibit, one sees a
Byzantine mosaic of Alexander the Great, small limestone coffins excavated from
sites in Israel, an architectural model of ancient Jerusalem, a Bedouin tent
and table, a brass oil lamp, a menorah, maps, coins, photos of the area around
the Dead or Salt Sea, news photos from modern-day Israel, photos of some of the
people involved in discovering and preserving the scrolls.
There are many, many Dead Sea
Scrolls. The original discovery was made
in 1946 or -7 in a cave on the west side of the Dead Sea on the far eastern
boarder of Israel. Others made
subsequent discoveries in different caves and at other sites. The first discovery occurred near the ancient
settlement of Qumran Khirbet with its ruins of what is considered the location
of a religious sect called the Essenes.
The Essenes are mentioned in the writings of the Roman Jewish historian Flavius
Josephus. Other scrolls appeared in a
near-by ruins of a fortified city called Masada. Although aerial photos apparently do not
indicate a path from the ruins to the caves, it is believed that the Essenes
were a religious sect of scribes like the Pharisees that mainly made copies of
books of the Old Testament and that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the
Essenes. It is believed that part of the
ruins near Qumran is a scriptorium for scroll copying and that possibly an
impending Roman military attack caused the Essenes to hide the scrolls in the
caves before fleeing their settlement.
The exhibit contains only a fraction
of the scrolls, about fifty of them, not counting the replica of the Great
Isaiah Scroll. Most of those exhibited
are fragmentary, in some cases so much so that there’s hardly anything to
view. In my opinion, the best of the
scrolls are copies of well-known books of the Old Testament. The Essenes possibly made scrolls, copied
them, rather than being writers of original material, although many of the
scrolls purport to be original. The
sometimes mysterious prophetic scrolls not from the Old Testament have a
content that has captivated some scholars, but fragmentary tales about “the
Teacher of Righteousness,” “the Man of the Lie,” “the Wicked Priest” and the
“Children of Light” seem to me apocryphal and unskilled compared to Old
Testament symbolic writings found in books such as Ezekiel, Daniel and (later)
Revelations, which contain far more insightful and conventional surrealist
images than most of those discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The long "Temple Scroll" seems to
be a cosmetically aged, recycled Old-Testament-imitation tentatively offered as
a "new Deuteronomy." Most of
the interestingly titled scrolls, such as “Israel and the Holy Land” or
"The Book of Giants" are so fragmentary that they indicate nothing
conclusive one way or the other.
* *
Yet, in my view, if the writing in the
scrolls is not divinely inspired, the appearance of the scrolls themselves
is. Hidden predictions and puzzling
symbolism are not what is of interest here.
It‘s important to remind ourselves that the scrolls are illegible
essentially to everyone attending the exhibit, first, because they are written
(in various no-longer-used scripts) in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek languages and,
second, because they are so fragmentary.
The tiniest fragments seem to be offered in this vein. Less is more.
With the Dead Sea Scrolls "the medium is the message.“ Nowhere is Marshall McLuhan's dictum so
hopefully given free reign than with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The fact that the writings cannot be read for
what is written in them only leads to a different sort of imaginative reading
of what is on view—as Derrida says, “For where, when and to whom.” We discover and we read a more prophetic
language of rock, lamp, paper, tool, wind and bone. The scrolls are unreadable in the same way
that Derrida's modern rigorous scientific style is unreadable--in a way that
introduces us to the ontology of language, Mankind and God. In sum, is language important as a tool of
communication or as sacred presence?
The literal unreadability of the
scrolls forces us to assemble in our minds these artifacts into a Scroll of
Man. Amidst the shrouded significance of
what is here, we search for clues about the meaning of life, about axiomatic
cosmological directions. We search for
grand threads of humanity’s unrepeatable journey of civilization, indications
of what events might be ahead, what fate awaits us. We sense an overriding synthesis, an
overriding set of rules or quality of character. In every part of the dimly lit exhibit (in
which subjectivity is lost but, also, in which we are lost in
subjectivity)—from the broken off rocks to the inscribed coffins, to the nose
shape of Alexander the Great, to the handles of the Great Isaiah Scroll, to the
sad downward directions of the cursive Hebrew script markings written on goat
skins and papyrus, to the geographic features of a small reedy section of
desolate land powdered with salt—we search for unifying insights, a
metaphysical pesher (commentary); we search for humanity's beginnings
and ends, for sympathetic emotional connections concerning the tribes from
which we may have indirectly descended and through whom (by adoption) we gain
equality and common traits.
Civilization is structure. At the end of his life, Antonin Artaud said
that humanity had not yet begun to exist.
The scroll fragments in the exhibit confirm this. In the land of words, language remains a
picture of Laws. Nothing is revealed. Everything is missing. Where people are absent we sense Being. With electron microscopes, we are able to
bring into focus several individual beings:
Emmanuel Tov, Professor John Strugwell.
But we haven't graduated beyond the pictures, the evidence. We haven't attained autonomy,
resistance. We are still endlessly
wandering in the indeterminate labyrinth of useless possibility. In speaking of "the Being that is
announced within the illegible," Derrida claims that "illegibility is
therefore the very possibility of the book." Yet we continue to wait; we remain wrinkled,
blind paleographers, wondering if we will ever see.
* *
Upon leaving the exhibit, there’s
nowhere to go. Though barely able to
afford the price of admission, we dutifully purchase gift shop mementos. We bump into people as though they are
furniture, the black lady at the parking booth talking on a cell phone. If we asked her the time of day, she would
run for the security guard. We greet
butterflies, Mastodons from our youth.
We push through a strange little-used door, back into the parking
garage, to a precarious concrete sky.
The Parking Garage Scroll. The Street
Signs Scroll. Everything has this same
illegibility that we feel we might begin to read. In the streets, consolation is still
illegible but perhaps slightly audible.
Our problems only get worse. We
struggle with memory, slam the door of our falling-apart jalopy lives. We search the horizon. We feel the need to invoke Derrida and rigor:
"Freedom is granted to the nonpagan Land only if it is separated from
freedom by the Desert of the Promise."
Didn't I tell you? We aren’t free
unless we perceive the promise of freedom being denied us. So, now, you too are a ghost.
It isn't so much a question of
discovering that there are "limits of freedom." What we discover in the Dead Sea Scrolls is
much more substantive, the way that freedom is complicated, not by lack of
knowledge but by knowledge itself, not by weakness but by strength. The logos of Man or the logos
of God--it‘s up to you. The general
concept of a monolanguage (metalanguage) that we put to the test in actuality
but is neglected in our understanding and conceptualizing is more than a set of
rules or an outline of certain objectives, a holistic or global vision. It is hardly a vision at all. It is the ashes of truth mixed with the sands
of lies. It is a living body that is
lovingly presented to us, without pretense and without intimidation, as
contradictory, tenuous, plural and mysterious.
It is an incoherent vision. Not a
Dead Sea vision but a Sea of Death vision.
What we read in it is never an explicit, easily transcribed clear
message of instruction. Rather we read
the traces of human lives, tragedies, endings, falls, stubbornness, oblivions. We read a Being to whom all humanity is
alive. It is a vision of unquestionable authenticity
because it is created out of a concerted attempt to disprove it.
The message of the Dead Sea Scrolls is
a message of substance but a substance that is ambiguous, a message of
knowledge but also of mystery. We are
presented with a text whose recognizability is so intimate to us that it walks
and talks, that it is part of ourselves and in many ways is ourselves. It is a text symmetrical but heterogeneous. It is a text our own bodies threaten to alter
and destroy. There are no codes but only
axioms. We value it even though it may
be false. It is a text not of the
importance of political power but of its vanity. It is a text that we have read again and
again and that continually leads us in hope back to our everyday lives. Yet it is an irrelevant and marginal text
that most people ignore. It is a text
that in its nebulousness, its gentle sturdiness and consolation, its
everlasting persistence and fertility, its most overriding quality is the
fascinating meaning of its unreadability.
Derrida: "Categories must be
missing for the Other not to be overlooked."
Somewhat like...an uninhabited or
deserted city, reduced to its skeleton by some catastrophe of nature or
art. A city no longer inhabited, not
simply left behind, but haunted by meaning and culture. This state of being haunted, which keeps the
city from returning to nature, is perhaps the general mode of the presence or
absence of the thing itself in pure language. (8)
The message of the Dead Sea Scrolls is
a message that reconciles us with the possibilities of existence, of
Being.
Notes:
1.
Monolingualism of the Other, Jacques
Derrida, Stanford, 1998, p. 72.
2.
Modern Criticism, David Lodge and
Nigel Wood, eds., “Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes, p. 315.
3. Between Past and Future, Hannah Arendt, London, 1977, p. 274
4. Physics and Philosophy, Werner Heisenberg, New York, 1958, p. 179.
5. Ibid., p. 181.
6. Ibid., p. 186.
7. On Language, Noam Chomsky, New York, 1977.
8. Writing and Difference, Jacques Derrida, Chicago, 1978, p. 5.
Artwork: random internet sample of text from Dead Sea Scrolls.
