[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.To this theme is connected anotheraccording to which all manifest discourse is secretly based on an 'already-said'; and that this 'already-said' is not merely aphrase that has already been spoken, or a text that has already been written, but a 'never-said', an incorporeal discourse, avoice as silent as a breath, a writing that is((28))merely the hollow of its own mark.It is supposed therefore that every-thing that is formulated in discourse was alreadyarticulated in that semi-silence that precedes it, which continues to run obstinately beneath it, but which it covers andsilences.The manifest discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this'not-said' is a hollow that undermines from within all that is said.The first theme sees the historical analysis of discourseas the quest for and the repetition of an origin that eludes all historical determination; the second sees it as the'hearing'interpretation of of an 'already-said' that is at the same time a 'not-said'.We must renounce all those themeswhose function is to ensure the infinite continuity of discourse and its secret presence to itself in the interplay of aconstantly recurring absence.We must be ready to receive every moment of discourse in its sudden irruption; in thatpunctuality in which it appears, and in that temporal dispersion that enables it to be repeated, known, forgotten,transformed, utterly erased, and hidden, far from all view, in the dust of books.Discourse must not be referred to thedistant presence of the origin, but treated as and when it occurs.These pre-existing forms of continuity, all these syntheses that are accepted without question, must remain insuspense.They must not be rejected definitively of course, but the tranquillity with which they are accepted must bedisturbed; we must show that they do not come about of themselves, but are always the result of a construction the rulesof which must be known, and the justifications of which must be scrutinized: we must define in what conditions and inview of which analyses certain of them are legitimate; and we must indicate which of them can never be accepted in anycircumstances.It may be, for example, that the notions of 'influence' or 'evolution' belong to a criticism that puts them for the foreseeable future  out of use.But need we dispense for ever with the 'oeuvre', the 'book', or even such unities as'science' or 'literature'? Should we regard them as illusions, illegitimate constructions, or ill-acquired results? Should wenever make use of them, even as a temporary support, and never provide them with a definition? What we must do, infact, is to tear away from them their virtual self-evidence, and to free the problems that they pose; to recognize that theyare not the tranquil locus on the((29))basis of which other questions (concerning their structure, coherence, systematicity, transformations) may be posed, butthat they themselves pose a whole cluster of questions (What are they? How can they be defined or limited? What distincttypes of laws can they obey? What articulation are they capable of? What sub-groups can they give rise to? What specificphenomena do they reveal in the field of discourse?) We must recognize that they may not, in the last resort, be what theyseem at first sight.In short, that they require a theory, and that this theory can-not be constructed unless the field of thefacts of discourse on the basis of which those facts are built up appears in its non-synthetic purity.And I, in turn, will do no more than this: of course, I shall take as my starting-point whatever unities are already given(such as psycho-pathology, medicine, or political economy) ; but I shall not place myself inside these dubious unities inorder to study their internal configuration or their secret contradictions [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]