Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 15:57:27 +0100
Subject: Re: MB: LIBERTSON



On the theme of closure in Libertson's Proximity.

>> 
>Libertson says on page 4 that 

"closure is a difference: a herteronomous intrication with exterior
elements, and with the radical exteriority of a communicational factor
which is irreducible to the proposition of closure. And closure is a
proximity: a pre-originary involvement and an uneliminable rapport with
this Other of closure which has collaborated in the latter's
constitution"
>
>So closure seems to be the relation to the other which is established in
>communication. 


The distinction heteronomy/autonomy as Libertson describes is thoroughly
"Bataillean" or "Blanchotian" because it does not so much set apart two
distinct dimensions as describe the manner in which the second term is a
reduction of the first. "Closure", as Libertson describes it, refers to
a movement towards an autonomy; and yet, at the same time, this movement
is a reduction of a greater movement. Why "movement"? - Because
heteronomy and autonomy refer for Bataille to tendencies, to "desires".
The movement towards closure is an attempt to achieve an autonomous and
closed "system." This movement, however, is only a moment within a
"greater" movement - that towards heteronomy. Integrity, in this sense,
is a moment within dispersal, identity a moment within difference. 

This is a familiar structure from Nietzsche (Apollo/Dionysus), Freud
(the Death Drive) ... the opposition takes place on a matrix almost as
old as philosophy. 

>
>For Bataille communication seems to be a relation between an opposition
>which is estahblished on a certain level, let's say an existential one;
>that means betwenn two existential heteronomous "terms". However, is
>there something like a methodological instrument to constitute this
>relation? How do  know these oppositions which communicate? Obviously it
>makes no sense to take any opposition and analyse their communicational
>relation. So, how can I establish the "existential level", on which
>communication takes place?


I'm not quite sure what you want here. Who is the "I" here? What,
precisely, is an "existential level"? Why is a methodology at stake
here, and what form would it take? 

Clearly enough, the opposition between the various dichotomies in
Bataille and Blanchot is framed by a communication between the terms of
these dichotomies at a "higher" or "lower" level. Not a metaphysics,
then, but an attempt to think an immanence, an abysmal milieu. A
"kataphysics"??? - no, only joking. This immanence is described as a
communication. The terms contaminate one another. The homogeneous is
always a moment of heterogeneity; expenditure is a moment of
conservation; consciousness is a moment of unconsciousness ... integral,
homogeneous bodies of whatever kind are folds, scleroses,
hypostatisations, interruptions. In Blanchot, the Book is a moment of
writing, concrete physical writing a moment of "tyrannical prehension"
etc.. 

please write more ...

-- 
Lars Iyer