Remember that the metalanguage of literacy I have extracted from David Olson’s work aims at constructing a simulated scene upon which the writer and readers stand, observing whatever is represented by the writer. The scene of classical prose is, then, readerly rather than writerly—it avoids drawing attention to the scene of writing itself, which is really a sketch of a succession of scenes upon which given signs are iterated in different ways. Classic prose solves a problem that the invention of writing creates, but which is really just the expansion of a field upon which a problem constitutive of language itself is displayed and played out. On the originary scene, the most urgent problem as the scene takes shape, is for all, or “enough,” participants to be able to ascertain, or know, simply, that they are all in fact issuing the newly discovered and invented sign. This is a process in which the participants transition from attention (giving and receiving it in uncertain oscillation) to intention (finding means for identifying and controlling the attention of others). As the primary problem on the originary scene, this is therefore also the primary problem of the human. To put it bluntly, we are always doing nothing other than trying to determine whether “we” are in fact issuing the same sign. This is a real problem which can never be solved once and for all because, of course, it never is the same sign—to some degree, every repetition of a sign modifies its meaning, or its range of possible uses, in some way. So, the problem is establishing sameness in the midst of difference. A disciplinary space is where we make this attempt.
Metalanguage is a way of solving this problem, and it’s not surprising that the masters of writing would have found this solution to be an appropriate one to the problem of potentially infinite dissemination. Metalanguage establishes rules for the proper use of signs. The metalanguage of literacy, as I pointed out earlier, defines words, which is to say, abstracts from the mass of language use those specific ways in which one is allowed to use particular words; it establishes rules of grammar and logic, which essentially function to keep the declarative order at a sufficient distance from the ostensive-imperative world so as to avoid contamination; and it establishes broader disciplinary rules, and rules of genre and style aimed at guaranteeing the transparency of discourse for those inhabiting the metalanguage of literacy, or those fluent in the prevailing literate idioms. If we’ve established rules for using words, for grammar, for genre and style, and, indeed, for checking and updating these rules and adjudicating specific cases, we can examine the differences of specific texts in a contained way. What, though, if each time we read a text, the proper use of words, grammatical rules, logic, generic and stylistic norms, were all up for grabs at each point along the way of the reading practice, and in shared inquiries into texts? In that case, the sameness of identity of a particular sign could only be affirmed on a particular scene of inquiry, in which one participant is able to say something like “if we take these words to be usable in this way, and accept the possibility that this other mode of grammar and logic might “work,” and entertain the possibility that genre and stylistic norms are being used here in order to produce effects beyond the consideration of those responsible for maintaining those norms, then the text here would be doing X”; and another participant would be able to follow up on that with another possible articulation of definitional, grammatical, logical, generic and stylistic practices in this text, but also, now, in the “critical” practice of inquiry that can use this practice of
textuality as a model. The starting point of such an inquiry would still be the metalanguage of literacy and the narrower metalanguages of specific disciplinary practices, but now, in applying those terms, either inappropriately, or to an object one shows (or helps) to resist appropriate application, the application of those terms, along with the modifications effected through passing them through the prism of the constructed object, is now to the space of inquiry itself. What we have in that case is a kind of transdisciplinary infralanguage, in which the identity of the sign must be “authenticated” on each scene of inquiry (even the signs marking a scene of inquiry must be authenticated on a scene of inquiry, both within and outside of the scene of inquiry to be marked). This takes us to the end of metaphysics by retrieving the origin and vocation of the declarative sentence prior to its hypostatization by the metalanguage of literacy, of which metaphysics is merely an occluded version. That vocation is to determine the precise distance at which we need to hold the ostensive-imperative world so as to prioritize the many imperatives coming our way so that we represent to each other the way their originating center would like us to obey them.
Scriptural declarative orders involve narratives that take us from the violent convergence of attention, or violent centralization, to the conversion of that convergence into shared attention directed at the mimetic crisis, or the unresolved mistakenness of the ostensive-imperative world, that led to the convergence in the first place. Scriptural narratives effect this conversion through the hearing and heeding of what Philip Rieff called an “absolute imperative.” Here, the absolute imperative is the imperative to devote yourself to the signifying center by interposing yourself between the convergent attention and the potential sacrifice. Let’s take this one step further and say that the absolute imperative is to name the potential sacrifice, which is to say surround it ostensively so as to render it immune to sacrificial intentions. Naming something in the world as a moral act is the most originary of signifying gestures. Historically, scriptural narratives have displaced sacrificial and mythical ones by constructing an “emperor” that necessarily transcends all world emperors, actual or possible, because He has created the world and everything in it. A point by point “refutation,” or really, satirical subversion, beyond anything we would probably be able to reconstruct at this point, of all previous ritual, mythological and imperial orders was required to accomplish this. We looked before at the impasse at which scripture eventually arrives: its implicit anti-imperialism dispossesses it of any means of resisting incorporation as a “super-sovereignty” that provides the resources for endless denunciations of “tyranny” in the name of some inviolable internal center. We could say this process is, in fact “history”—history, that is, is the record of the replacement of one empire after another in anticipation of the establishment of the final, true empire, that would be direct subordination to God, but then, also, to some version of the authentically unpolluted human. History, then, has exhausted itself in the antinomic agencies of contemporary liberalism, where the genuinely stripped bare human that can be the only source of legitimacy is nothing but sheer opposition to whatever norms make social functioning possible.
But the imperative to redeem scripture can be obeyed at least as well as that to redeem the propositional order created by metaphysics. What we retrieve from scripture is what we can call “listening to the center,” which is to say developing disciplinary spaces for discerning the most
pertinent forms taken by the absolute imperative. Like scripture, this requires narrative far more than propositional forms. Let’s start with the appearance of mistakenness in what we can call the “in-ordering” of an imperative (the effort to create the order extending from the imperative, to act within the order). Any crisis begins with a command, a demand, a request, an injunction, a prohibition, an insistence, etc., that is going unfulfilled. The “size” of the crisis will depend on the agencies involved, their relative power, the urgency and scope of the imperative, and so on— even if not necessarily in any obvious way. But at any size, the crisis begins by being placed in some declarative, narrative form: person or people X did something/are doing something. An event is represented, and an event “behind” that event: what’s happening is shadowed by what is “really” happening. The narrative rewires the ostensive and imperative circuitry: you’re looking here, but the signs you are looking at really point there; you are finding it incumbent to act in one way, but the situation requires that you act another way. The surface is bubbling with ostensives and imperatives—simply knowing what to look at and from what angle, and what the situation “demands,” itself “demands” one seek out a higher imperative that would supersede all of these. But this means that one is already following the imperative to seek out a higher imperative; which, further, depends on the ostensive assumption that that higher imperative is there to be found. And that ostensive assumption must be right—even finding oneself disappointed at the end, and renouncing the search for higher imperatives, would have one following the imperative to not seek out higher imperatives (and, a narrower imperative designating the precise imperative level at which one stops seeking higher).
So, when a narrative represents imperative mistakenness, we know a higher imperative will reorder the disordered imperative space. In the representations of the scene of imperative mistakenness, the participant can hear imperatives generated on that scene itself—imperatives that sustain and accelerate the scene of convergent, violent centralization by pointing out more confirmatory details and compelling each participant to take action that further locks him into the scene. “If you refuse to see what that means, that means you don’t belong here”—that is, you belong with the victim. These imperatives can be recognized by their paradoxical form, that of the vicious circle. In the aftermath of such a scene, effort will have to put into controlling all subsequent representations of it: everyone on the scene will have to have been acting directly pursuant and proportionately to some immediate provocation to which response could not be delayed. And one can see signs of this on the scene already. In any representation of such a scene, even the most inciteful one, any participant can also see signs that suggest that deceleration is possible. The very existence of such signs rebuts the incitement. “See if there are further like signs” is the absolute imperative here. If you listen to it, the imperative becomes both more precise, telling you where to look, and more expansive, telling you to show others these signs, or, really, showing others they have already seen them. Even on a scene where immediate action is in fact urgently necessary, there must be some margin of uncertainty with regard to which action is best, even in split-second decisions. So, even in a genuine emergency, the capacity to decelerate enhances response-ability. A narrative starting from the element of deceleration within an acceletory frame will uncover more signs suggesting deceleration, and subtler distinctions, for example, between signs that presented as deceletory but really served the purpose of incitement. Subsequent narratives would become further differentiated, to the point of
refusing to converge attention even upon those most unambiguously accelerating on the scene, preferring to explore what they might have taken to be deceleratory imperatives to be followed. If punitive action needs to be taken, and accounted for after the fact, it is taken, however severe, in such a way as to reveal, foreground and enhance deceletory or inhibitory means of institutional and individual detection. This is how one listens to the center: the absolute imperative always tells one to hear more of imperatives to which one is exposed and to make them more consistent with each other: to name practices that bring into view things that issue those imperatives.