Table Of ContentPHILOSOPHY AND
POST-STRUCTURALIST THEORY
PHILOSOPHY AND
POST-STRUCTURALIST THEORY
From Kant to Deleuze
65
Claire Colebrook
EDINBURGH
University Press
© Claire Colebrook,1999,2005
Published in hardback as Ethics and Representation:
From Kant to Poststructuralismin 1999 by
Edinburgh University Press
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square,Edinburgh
Typeset in Palatino Light
by Pioneer Associates,Perthshire,and
printed and bound in Spain by
GraphyCems
ACIPrecord for this book is available from the
British Library
ISBN0 7486 2227 6 (paperback)
The right of Claire Colebrook to be identified as
author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright,Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
CONTENTS
65
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Kant and Enlightenment Recognition 25
2 Heidegger:Proximity and Dispersion 55
3 Derrida:Responsibility without Autonomy 93
4 Irigaray: The Specula(ra)tive Ec(h)onomy 129
5 Foucault: Anti-Representationalism
and Logophobia 162
Conclusion: The Risk of Anthropomorphism 202
List of References 257
Index 266
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
65
Despite the fact that this book was written after my departure from the
inspiring environment of Murdoch University’s school of Humanities,
my motivation for thinking about these issues arose from my interac-
tion with both the students and staff of the school.In particular I need
to thank Horst Ruthrof, whose support and enthusiasm encouraged
me to begin this and many other projects, as well as Wendy Parkins,
Robyn Barnacle,Monika Kilian and Abigail Bray.I have been extremely
fortunate to have finished this book at Monash University where I
have benefited from the lively and stimulating postgraduate commu-
nity. I owe special thanks to Jacinta Kerin,Valerie Hazel, Experience
Bryon and Terri Bird.David Neil provided his typically meticulous and
intelligent feedback on the final chapter.Lee Spinks was kind enough
to work through and correct the Derrida and Foucault chapters. I am
also grateful to Elizabeth Grosz who has provided me with valuable
advice,support,and comments on the Irigaray chapter.The friendship
of Alexander Garcia Duttmann made my first year at Monash truly
worthwhile; his scholarship, integrity and wit have inspired whatever
is of value in this book.Finally,and most importantly,I need to thank
Lubica Ucnik,for her inspiration and energy.
vii
INTRODUCTION
65
REPRESENTATION AS THE THRESHOLD OF MODERNITY
Within the self-understanding of the history of ideas representation is
seen to constitute the threshold of modernity: and this sense of the
threshold is deployed in two senses. On the one hand, modernity is
inaugurated by representation: the demand that one’s law no longer
be given from without but that law should emerge through self-
representation.1 Representation, in this sense, is intertwined with
democracy,autonomy,rights,enlightenment and identity.The passage
to self-representation is the passage to modernity. Modernity, at least
as an idea or telos, opens with this demand for representation, a
demand given in both Kant’s definition of enlightenment (Kant [1785]
1959: 185) as well as in liberal theories of representative democracy
(Rawls 1996: 47–88).
On the other hand,the threshold of representation not only marks
modernity off from its darker past (when law was imposed from with-
out); the threshold of representation scars modernity itself, occurring
as a limit within the possibility of modernity. Turning against the
speculative reflections on substance and essence, modern philosophy
situates itself within the representational limits of the subject. Repre-
sentation is a condition of finitude. Because knowledge is received
from without it must be taken up and re-presented. What can be
known is therefore determined and delimited by the representational
powers of the subject.This idea of representation as an internal limit
is most clearly articulated in Kant’s‘Copernican turn’.If what is known
is experienced or given, then the conditions of experience mark the
1
2 PHILOSOPHY AND POST-STRUCTURALIST THEORY
object of knowledge.There can be no knowledge of things in them-
selves. To be known or experienced a thing must be other than the
knower; it must be given to the knower.As known, things are only as
they are re-presented to a subject.2Modernity occurs with this ‘turn’to
the subject and the recognition of knowledge’s position,limit,point of
view and,most importantly,its separation.There can be no immediate
knowledge, for knowledge is, by definition, received or given, and
therefore mediated.
If representation in the first (political) sense occurs with a demand
for identity, recognition, autonomy and self-determination, represen-
tation in the second (epistemological) sense is intertwined with
mediation,finitude,anti-foundationalism and separation.On the one
hand the subject is instituted through representation,and demands a
continuity or identity with political representation.On the other hand,
the subject is separate from any represented thing, for the subject is
the process of objectification.In both senses we deal with a threshold.
The demand for democratic representation is a demand that modernity
break free from its heteronomous past, that it emerge freely into a
domain or space of non-interference,communication,recognition and
inclusion. On the other hand, and in tension with this demand for
representation as self-recognition,is the recognition of representation
as a threshold that limits thought. Representation marks a limit, a
point beyond which knowledge cannot go: a recognition of the point
of view of knowledge.For knowledge’s very possibility lies in perspec-
tive,point of view,position and finitude: the necessary consequence of
the fact that if thought is to know some thing then it must be placed in
a position in relation to that thing.Because knowledge relates to what
is other than itself,it is situated in a relation,such that what it knows
is not immediately present but must be re-presented.This recognition
of the threshold of representation separates knowledge, reduces its
claims and precludes any ec-static knowledge (knowledge that would
step outside itself and be at one with what is known).Knowledge can
no longer rest its claims on the pure revelation or participation with an
outside. It is in this separation that knowledge becomes responsible.
Because there are now (representational) limits to the knowable,there
can no longer be appeals to some absolute or infinite ground that
would justify human law. What is known is given only through the
human subject’s conditions of knowing, and so human law must
Introduction 3
become self-grounding – aware that its ground is nothing other than
its self. In this regard, the representational condition or threshold
separates the subject from the world, in a conditioned position of
finitude.
On the other hand,the modern democratic demand that the subject
be represented and become self-determining also means that the sub-
ject should accept no external threshold as simply given.The demand
of representative democracy and enlightenment is precisely this: that
any putatively ‘given’external law be recognised as internal to human
representation.What appears as divine law,ancient right,tradition or
heavenly fiat is actually a human intention that has forgotten its status
as human.To recognise external law as human representation,to inter-
nalise all those spectral illusions that have haunted man is the first step
to enlightenment,and is at one with the striving for democracy.
REPRESENTATION AND DEMOCRACY
Central to the demands of liberal theory is the capacity and duty to
represent oneself. According to Louis Dumont (1977), the specific
feature of modern ideology is the rejection of any external, transcen-
dent or hierarchical form of order.Order is not imposed from without.
Rather,order is generated from the interaction among social units–the
social units in liberal democracies being individuals. It is this secular
and non-hierarchical principle of immanence which, according to
Dumont, defines modern man as ‘homo economicus’; and this also
defines modern societies as economical.Economy is used here in both
a literal and a figurative sense.At the literal level, the rejection of an
external mode of legitimation or hierarchy is at one with capitalist
modes of production.Only if value is determined by the free exchange
of a uniformly quantifiable material can order be immanent: generated
from the relation between units rather than imposed as a transcendent
principle or law. Human individuals emerge as independent social
units only in this ‘equalitarian’3 relation to capital; it is the capacity to
sell one’s labour that both defines one’s social position and determines
the social as such (Dumont 1977: 84). The resulting principles – of
protection of property, non-interference and individual rights –
assume that social order results from the interaction of rational and
labouring individuals.
