Beyond the Law

Abstract

There is a kind of question, let us still call historical, whose conception, formation, gestation, and labor we are only catching a glimpse of today. I employ these words, I admit, with a glance toward operations of childbearing--but also with a glance toward those who, in a society from which I do not exclude myself, turn their eyes away when faced by as yet unnameable which is itself and which can do so, as is necessary whenever a birth is in offing, only under species of in formless, mute, infant, and terrifying form of monstrosity. J. Derrida A Birth is in Offing Derrida writes above, almost apocalyptic words at conclusion of his essay on Levi-Strauss, Structure, Sign, and Play in Discourse of Human Sciences. In that essay he interrogates meaning of by examining its operations at work in establishing any system of organized meaning. In particular, he interrogates supposed foundation or fixed of social organization, what Levi-Strauss designates as structures of those of exogamy and incest taboo. Since exogamy requires that one marry outside one's own, that proper couple of man and wife be composed of members of families extrinsic to one another, inaugurates or becomes condition of a certain social bond, even a contract. This lawful sexuality functions according to incest taboo that regulates Oedipal Complex, forbidding inappropriate sexual relations and inappropriate (we might say, natural) births. The elementary structures of kinship hence govern a certain economy of proper or a proper economy, rules for establishing a home. These structures thereby challenge (while admittedly they also recapitulate) very distinction between nature and culture insofar as they are both universal and normative (Derrida 1978, 283). As Derrida writes of Levi-Strauss's encounter with of incest prohibition, the incest prohibition is universal; in this sense one could call natural. But is also a prohibition, a system of norms and interdicts; in this sense one could call cultural (283). But even while this scandal undermines nature/culture opposition, simultaneously reiterates by differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate births, thereby placing legal institution of paternity at crux of entry into human society. Illegitimate births, births that do not occur under legal name of father,1 are not only outlaw, but as such are relegated to domain of natural, inhuman. What then is question being born, according to Derrida? Derrida himself only gestures toward it, offering conditions for its formation but stopping short of giving voice. The question itself remains mute, unspoken. He raises idea of question in last few sentence of essay, indicating that arises as a response to that which has come before. It is, I therefore believe, question of kinship, question of whether there can be said to be such a thing as structures of kinship. The birth of this question is itself an historical event, born through a future whose infant existence appears monstrous from perspective of this Oedipalized society from which Derrida does not exclude himself. This monstrous birth, a birth that apparently cannot be called human, proclaiming itself under species of nonspecies, might have an origin that does not not lie in incest prohibition.2 The kinship structures that are for Levi-Strauss at origin of and condition for a distinctly human society,3 might themselves not be originary. In his essay on entitled Freud and Scene of Writing, Derrida writes that it is a non-origin which is originary (Derrida 1978, 203). Derrida makes this claim in context of discussing a repression which threatens to return, and he means to indicate that is non-origin, absence, lack of an structure that is being repressed for sake of a desire for origin. …