Glasnostalgia

Abstract

On the first page of Glas Derrida writes in the left column that “This” is a legend, not a fable. “This” could be that or this pronoun. It could be Hegel's signature, Sa signature referred to a few lines earlier, Hegel's corpus, also referred to earlier, what Derrida is in the course of writing, and much else. Not Hegel's whole corpus, however, but two passages: the religion of flowers and the phallic column of India. On each page there are two columns. The right column has to do especially with Jean Genet, especially with Genet's writing about flowers, especially the flower of the broom, genêt; but genêt is also a common noun for a kind of Spanish horse. In other words, the religion of flowers and its role as an introduction to the religion of animals are in play also in the right column. And just as the right column plays on the possibilities of taking a mark as a proper and a common name, so too does the left column, for example on the chances of hearing the name of the eagle in the name of the philosopher when these names are pronounced à la française. So pronunciation has an important part in this. But reading has an important part in pronunciation, legein in logos. The fable thought of as pure thought without mark, immaculate conception, is at stake in Glas. “Glas” means the voice that speaks, as “fable” is from fari, to speak. So is the reader about to discover in Glas something that sticks in the throat of the Hegelian system, resisting digestion there, a materialism of the idea that resists Aufhebung to absolute knowledge? Or is Derrida lifted thither in the eagle's talons? For does not the dialectic thrive on resistance? Would it not be a bad reading of Hegel's text that failed to comprehend this? ButWhat would it mean not to comprehend (Hegel) the text Sa ? If it is a matter of a finite failure, the failure is in advance included, comprehended in the text. If it is a matter of an infinite fault or lack, one would have to say that Sa does not think itself, does not say itself, does not write itself, does not read itself, does not know itself, which no longer means anything, by definition. Sa always ends by being full, heavy, pregnant with itself.