Necrogenealogy of sense: Hegel, Heidegger, Blanchot. Part 2

The specific exteriority of the corpse, which allows Maurice Blanchot to withdraw the discourse of death beyondthe limits of existential possibilities, appears to be also the image of the ownmost, and its specific experience will be analogousto that of the image itself. And this compromising analogy is just the point that determines mainly the perspective of the necrogenealogyof sense. It is possible to distinguish between the two ways of being of the image - as an image of something (such is the image-sign),and as an image of itself (such is, in fact, the platonic eidos). However, in every image of something one can discern the image of itself,and the independence of this inimitable paradigm is just the basis of possibility of dependent and functional use of the image as a sign.But the image itself, the sovereign image as such, is the manifestation of absence. This absence in the depths of the thing is nothing butits being, or the ontological element, which is enclosed in it. On that ground the image itself is no longer a representation, but the directself-annunciation of the fact of existence. And this ontological element of the imaginary also appears to be the friableness ofashes, because corpse or remains is also the manifestation of absence in its way. Ashes are such a thing, which is its own image at thesame time. A dead person becomes totally self-resembling. But this self-resemblance is no longer the resemblance with the live, and it isno longer possible to identify this anaphoric likeness somehow. Corpse belongs not to the being-onto-death, which is making death possible,but to the eternally returning irreality of death, to the incessantness of existence - to the fundamental-ontological element of thenaked being. And such is also the abode of the sovereign image. The image precedes the sign. In its elemental crudity the imagedoes not make sense. The sign displaces it in order for the sense to become possible, but it remains nonetheless - as the sense-less traceof its own displacement. But this trace is the ashes, the sovereign cadaverous analogue. So, cadaver is inscribed in any icon, imageand likeness, and the cadaveric decay - in the very heart of mimesis. Corpse resides duplication, iteration, the same, the common and thecommon places, for the cadaverous is here, the displacement or the place as such. Corpse, this obscene and senseless outcome of existence,turns out to be the heterogeneous source of sense, annunciating us that the human culture, finally, is nothing but polymorphousnecrophilia. Despite its seeming irrelevance, necrogenealogy of sense forms a sort of topos of modern genealogy in general, being aconcentrated expression of the an-archic genealogy of the primordial shift. And the negativity of ressentiment, this driving force ofmany genealogical critics, finds its unexpected denouement in this topos of some peculiar black humour. However, this denouement isneither Hegelian totality nor Heideggerian authenticity for more, but their image if so.

Keywords

Authors

References