Observing Neutrality, circa 1800

Abstract

Heis mich nicht reden, heis mich schweigen-Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (MA 5:357)FOR HIS SEMINAR held at College de France during spring semester of 1978, Roland Barthes offered his students a series of fragments collected under title Figures of Neutral.1 What he wanted to provide was a dictionary, of definitions but of twinklings (scintillations) (Barthes 10). It was to be a loose collection, reflecting fact appears in a number of widely differing contexts and also embodies a particular kind of resistance with regard to choice or paradigmatic structures-a resistance could, he writes, also be understood as the refusal to dogmatize (Barthes 10). The twenty-three seminar sessions were devoted to topics whose connection to is at times relatively obvious (the androgyne, tact, etc.) and at times less so (the adjective, affirmation, etc.). Barthes's selection frees from any thematic rigidity and allows it to twinkle in unexpected places. By making neutrality an open and prolonged topic of discussion, he also opens door ironic play with one of neutrality's main taboos: production of speech itself. Such discussions might, at best, strive impartiality, but as we will see with regard to neutrality, once first word has been uttered, one can no longer hope to remain where is concerned.The discussion of neutrality in following pages will take its cues from Barthes, who has an approach to neutrality moves lightly between different disciplinary contexts-Barthes mentions in his lecture notes he takes word for a series of walks along a certain number of readings-and is committed to a certain structural definition of as that which outplays paradigm (Barthes 6). In present article, as well, there is an attempt to balance between discursive mobility and structural contour. Here, focus is narrower: both as regards historical parameters, lingering in decades around 1800, and in terms of choosing case studies where problem of is directly addressed in terms of human relations and in scientific contexts. On one hand, neutrality is used to indicate a certain mode of being around others, one defined by a kind of absence, as will be shown in more detail below. On other hand, concept of neutrality also plays an important role in developing science of chemistry, where term neutral salt was (and still is) used to describe a product emerges from certain combinations of acids and bases-a product that, however, has qualities of neither an acid nor a base. I will begin by considering theoretical positions associated with these two modes of neutrality, with reference to examples drawn from scientific, literary, and philosophical sources and with an eye unexpected affinities between them. In each case, we will see neutrality is accompanied by formal expectations; is, it carries with it certain transferrable structural features. Rather than resist this rigidity, as nimbleness of Barthes's approach might tempt us to do, I will instead attempt to navigate a middle (though certainly not neutral) position, such a close attention to particular features of each kind of neutrality-one based on human and other on chemical interactions-will, in fact, allow a kind of mutual illumination. With goal in mind, general discussion of neutrality in first part of article will, in second part, be complemented by three case studies where these two modes of neutrality appear in unexpected proximity to one another. We will see how they rely upon each other in surprising ways, and we will also witness their limits, as shown through emergence and decline of chemical neutrality as a metaphor and figure of thought beyond field of chemistry.Defining NeutralityThe word comes from Latin neutrum, which is itself a composite of ne + utrum, or either: essence of is to negate. …