Representation After Modernity: From Heidegger’s “Other Beginning” to Derrida’s “Sending”

The article deals with the relevance of the concept of representation for rethinking the project of modernity and its possible alternatives by Heidegger and Derrida. It is pointed out that the concept of representation is closely connected with the universalism of modernity as it is reputedly provided by metaphysics, since Heidegger’s concept of ontological difference, e.g., the difference between Being and being that has become the token of metaphysics, proves to be an elementary model of representation. This makes it possible, in turn, to correlate representation as the substitution of one entity for another with mediation. In the issue, Heidegger’s concept of the history of Being turns out to be the description of the sequence of its representations that depend on the respective type of mediation. The analysis proceeds from Heidegger’s concepts of “clearing” (Lichtung) and “appropriating event” (Ereignis) that designate man’s everyday coping with people and things based on habitual skills. It is these everyday practices that reveal people and things in “clearing” and render the understanding of Being possible. Therefore, the “appropriating event”, implying a paradigm or style of revealing Being, elucidates Heidegger’s idea of the other beginning of thinking. The first beginning, having given birth to representation, destined metaphysics as the pattern of going from the particular to the general for modeling universalism. However, according to Heidegger, the first beginning makes possible the other beginning that does not assume representation and mediation. In Derrida, the connection of modernity with representation is exposed in his critique of the “metaphysics of presence” which resulted in specifying representation as a “sending” (envoi). Derrida holds the opinion that it is not the difference of the origin of a system from the secondary entities, but its difference from itself is primordial. It implies that mediation and thereby representation prove to be primordial, whereas the immediacy of the origin seems impossible. Eventually the limitations of the type of universality that is inherent in modernity come into sight, and the binary “logic of identity” which was reputedly universal is opposed by the “logic of supplementarity”. Thus, the comparative analysis juxtaposes Derrida’s and Heidegger’s modeling of representation, whereas their stances on representation and universalism after modernity turn out to be antithetical.

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