pointwhereBeing Singular Plural

BEINGSINGULAR PLURAL

ME R I DI A NCrossing AestheticsWerner Harnacher& David E.Wellbery

Editors

BEING SINGULAR PLURAL

andAnne E. O'Byrne

Stanford

University

Press

Stanford

California

2000

Contents

Stanford University Press PrefaceStanford, Cal ifornia

© 2000 by the Board ofTrustees § OfBeing Singular Plural 1of the Leland Stanford Junior Universiry

© 1996, Éditions Galilée § Eulogy for theMêlée 145Assistance for the translationwas provided by the French Ministry ofCulturePrinted in the United States ofAmerica on acid-free, archival-quality paper

LibrarNanc

[Etre singular pluriel English]

Being singuland Anne E O'Byrnep cm — (Meridian, crossing aesthetics)

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN 0-8047-3974-9 (a 'k- paper)—ISBN 0-8047-3975-7 (pbk : alk paper)

I . Ontology 2 Philosophical anthropology I Title II Meridan

(Stanford, Calif )

B2430N363 E8713 2000

194—dc2i 00-057326

Original printing 2000

Last figure belowindicates year of this printing:

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Lead, as I do, the flown-away virtue back to earth—yes, back to body and life; that it may give the earth itsmeaning, ahuman meaning!Mayyour spirit andyourvirtue serve the meaning of the earth. . . .Man andman's earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered.

—Nietzsche

This epigraph is chosen quite deliberately. I run the risk of itsseeming to lenditselfto a certain Christian, idealist, andhumanisttone, a tone in which it is easy to recognize those well-meaningvirtues and values that have loosed upon the world all the thingsthat have driven the humanity ofour century to despair over itself,where these values are both blind to and complicit in this lettingloose. In his own way,Nietzsche himselfwould have undoubtedlyparticipated in this dubious,moralizingpiety.At anyrate, theword"meaning" rarely appears in his work, and still more rarely in anypositive sense. One would do well, therefore, not to give any hastyinterpretations of it here. The above excerpt appeals to a "humanmeaning," but it does so by affirming that the human [l'homme]remains to be discovered. 1 In order for the human to be discovered,and in order for the phrase "human meaning" to acquire somemeaning, everything thathas ever laid claim to the truth about thenature, essence, or end of"man"must be undone. In otherwords,nothing must remain ofwhat, under the title of meaning, relatedthe earth [la terre] and the human to a specifiable horizon.Again, itis Nietzschewho said thatwe are now"on the horizon ofthe infinite"; that is,we are at that pointwhere "there is no more 'land, '"andwhere "there is nothing more terrible than the infinite."2

Are we finally going to learn this lesson?Are we perhaps finallyable to hear it, or is it now impossible for us to learn anything

Xll Xlllelse? Canwe thinkan earth and ahuman such that theywould be "ethnic," or "historical";whether they are legitimate or not—notonly what they are—nothing but earth and human—and such to mention the question aboutwhich lawwould provide such lethat they would be none of the various horizons often harbored gitimation;whether theyare real,mythical, or imaginary;whetherunder these names, none ofthe "perspectives" or "views" in view they are independent or "instrumentalized" by other groups whoofwhich we have disfigured humans [les hommes] and driven them wieldpolitical, economic, andideologicalpower. . . .to despair? This is the "earth"we are supposed to "inhabit" today, the earth

"The horizon of the infinite" is no longer the horizon ofthe for which the name Sarajevo will become the martyr-name, thewhole, but the "whole" (all that is) as put on hold everywhere, testimonial-name: this is us,we who are supposed to say we as ifpushedto theoutsidejustasmuchasit ispushedbackinside the we know what we are saying and who we are talking about. This"self." It is no longer a line that is drawn, or a line that will be earth is anything but a sharing ofhumanity. It is aworld thatdoesdrawn,which orients or gathers the meaning ofa course ofprogress not even manage to constitute a world; it is a world lacking inornavigation. It is the opening [labrèche] ordistancing [lecarte- world, and lacking in the meaning ofworld. It is an enumerationment] of horizon itself, and in the opening: us.We happen as the that brings to light the sheer number and proliferation ofthesevaropening itself, the dangerous fault line ofa rupture. ious poles of attraction and repulsion. It is an endless list, andeverything happens in such a way that one is reduced to keepingaccounts but never taking the final toll. It is a litany, a prayer of

I want to emphasize the date on which I am writing this. It is pure sorrow and pure loss, the plea that falls from the lips ofmilthe summer of 1995, and as far as specifying the situation of the lions of refugees every day: whether they be deportees, people beearth and humans is concerned, nothing is more pressing (how sieged, those who are mutilated, peoplewho starve,who are raped,could it really be avoided?) than a list of proper names such as ostracized, excluded, exiled, expelled.these, presented here in no particular order: Bosnia-Herzogovina, What I am talking abouthere is compassion, but not compassionChechnya, Rwanda, Bosnian Serbs,Tutsis, Hutus, TamilTigers, as a pity that feels sorry for itselfand feeds on itself. Com-passionKrajina Serbs, Casamance, Chiapas, IslamicJihad, Bangladesh, the is the contagion, the contact ofbeingwith one another in this turSecretArmy for the Liberation ofArmenia, Hamas, Kazakhstan, moil. Compassion is not altruism, nor is it identification; it is theKhmersRouges,ETAmilitia,Kurds (UPK/PDK) ,Montataire, the disturbance ofviolent relatedness.

Movement for Self-determination, Somalia, Chicanos, Shiites,

FNLC-Canal Historique, Liberia, GivatHagadan,Nigeria, the

League oftheNorth,Afghanistan, Indonesia, Sikhs, Haiti , Roma What does the above-named proliferation require ofus, this progypsies ofSlovenia,Taiwan, Burma, PLO, Iraq, Islamic Front Sal liferation that seems to have no other meaning than the indetermivation, Shining Path,Vaulx-en-Velins,Neuhof. . . . Ofcourse, it nate multiplication ofcentripetal meanings,meanings closed in onwould be difficult to bring this list to an end ifthe aim was to in themselves and supersaturated with significance—that is,meaningsclude all the places, groups, or authorities that constitute the the that are no longer meaningful because they have come to refer onlyater ofbloodyconflicts among identities, aswell aswhat is at stake to their own closure, to their horizon of appropriation, and havein these conflicts. These days it is not always possible to saywith begun to spread nothingbut destruction, hatred, and the denial ofany assurance whether these identities are intranational, infrana- existence?tional, or transnational;whether they are "cultural," "religious," What if this autistic multiplicity,which tears open and is torn

XIVopen, lets us know thatwe have not even begun to discover what itis to be many

What if it lets us know that it is itself the first laying bare [miseànu] ofaworld that is only theworld, butwhich is theworld absolutely and unreservedly,with no meaning beyond this very Being oftheworld: singularlyplural andplurallysingular?

The first and principal essayofthis book,which gives it its title,was not composed in an altogether sequential manner, but ratherin a discontinuous way, repeatedly taking up several themes. To acertain extent, then, the sections can be read in any order, sincethere are repetitions here and there. But this is the result of a fundamental difficulty. This text does not disguise its ambition of redoing the whole of "first philosophy" by giving the "singularplural" ofBeing1 as its foundation.This, however, is not myambition, but rather the necessity of the thing itself and of our history.At the very least, I hope to make this necessity felt.At the sametime, apart from the fact that I do not have the strength to deliverthe treatise "of the singular plural essence of Being," the form ofthe ontological treatise ceases to be appropriate as soon as the singular of Being itself, and therefore also of ontology, is in question.This is nothing new.At least since Nietzsche, and for all sorts ofreasons that no doubt come together in the reason I invoke, philosophyis at oddswith its "form," that is,with its "style,"which isto say, finally,with its address.How does thinking address itselftoitself, to thinking (which also means: how does thinking addressitselfto everyone,without its being a matter ofa "comprehension"or "understanding" that might be called "common")? How isthinking addressed? (The philosophical treatise, and "philosophy"as such, is the neutralization ofaddress, the subjectless discourse of