Rene Girard "Tiresia and Critic"

In 1966, the French philosopher Rene Girard made a speech at a scientific conference, which marked a turn in his academic career from literary criticism to philosophical anthropology. On the anniversary of the death of the Great Culturalologist, Discourse, for the first time publishes a translation of this turning point into Russian.

Rene Girard (1923-2015) is a member of the French Academy, a philosopher and literary critic, known for the ambitious project of “fundamental anthropology”. This concept that is most important for the world philosophy of the 20th century claims that a person differs from the animal by the presence of a mimetical or imitative desire, in many cases leading to wars and violence. In his main work, “violence and the sacred” fat explains the origin of religion and human culture, connecting them with violence and comparing them with ancient Greek myths. The courage and scope of the theory made the philosopher world -famous, and the concepts of “constituent violence” and “replacement victims” introduced by him became part of the general dictionary of the humanities.

In 1966, Girard, together with the Litigate-based colleagues, organized at John Hopkins University in Baltimore Kolkovum “Languages ​​of Criticism and Science of Man” to introduce American researchers with French structuralism and establish contacts between academic communities.

Kolkovum united many scientists - Jacques Lacan, Rolan Bart, Jean Hippolytus, Jacques Derrida, Tsvetan Todorov. It is here that Derrida first performs with the report “Structure, sign and game in the discourse of the humanities”, subsequently published as the head of the famous work “Letter and difference” ‌.

Rene Girard makes the speech “Tiresia and the critic” (Tiresias and the Critic). In it, he sets out his own position regarding the provision of modern humanitarian science, interdisciplinary dialogue and general vice of the researchers.

To illustrate this situation, Girard offers a capacious metaphor - the plot from the tragedy of Sophocles “King Oedipus”. The heroes of the tragedy - the blind in the soothsayer Tiresia and King Edip, are two ways to achieve truth. Edip is alien to the prophecy of the oracle, he is doing a real investigation, naively believing that the ominous secret of the past has nothing to do with him. Tiresia is trying to inspire the king that Edip himself is the culprit of the epidemic. Subsequently, the intuitive hypothesis of the Tiresia is confirmed experimentally - many years ago, Oedipus really entered the city of trouble, committing two terrible crimes - edemature and incest. The Girard chooses this plot by chance: for the example of Oedipus, he demonstrates that the Scyentist ‌ idea of ​​detached, impartial observation is irrelevant when it comes to the humanities, where the researcher (subject) and the subject of research (object) exist in the general cultural field, exerting influence on each other.

The polemic between Tiresia and Oedipus seems to be barren - each of its participants is a certain style of scientific work - Oedipus is alienated from the subject of research, and Tiresia believes that it is broadcast by the universal and infallible truth, which has a divine nature. It is noteworthy that in the Essay System of Bred, published shortly before this event, the Girard focuses on the fact that it is the polemic between Oedipus and Tirezeria that turns the first in the scapegoat ‌. Tiresia acts as a catalyst for the natural mechanism of persecution, launching the process of concentration of collective anxiety and aggression at one subject. These concepts will further take the central place in the Girarovsky interpretation of political and social processes.

The materials of the seminar were published in 1970, John Hopkins ‌, and the article “Tiresia and Critic” became one of the first publications for the Giracle as a cultural philosopher ‌- it is during this period of time that the researcher moves further from the field of literature and history and moves to philosophical anthropology.

Tiresia and critic

Translation from English. M. Proparokova with the participation of T. Batdalova

One American writer called our time the era of critics. For many of us, this is rather an era of symposia.

Looking around this room, I feel reverence - I have contributed, although modest, to the presence of such an outstanding and large company, which was assembled from different distant ends of the world, both in the intellectual and geographical sense. I am comforted by the idea that only a few groups of like-minded people have ever had so many important and urgent reasons to gather.

Representatives of different disciplines are present here. Both the philosophical traditions that we attribute to the methodology we use are varying. We do not speak the same language, or, worse, we use the same words, putting different meaning in them. However, we are in solidarity in one thing: we are unpleasant for the remoteness and indifference to each other, we do not like that we still have to perceive the “knowledge” in the singular, as if it was a homogeneous one. ‌

As we all know, in some areas of knowledge and academic institutions, especially in the Paris School of High Arts, this centrifugal tendency was interrupted and even turned back. Les Sciences de l'Homme, The Science of Man ‌ - this is how the new area of ​​convergence is called today, or at least a dialogue. The sciences of a person are contrary to the tradition of separating humanitarian and social sciences. The very idea of ​​Sciences de l'Homme is a direct challenge to this separation. To begin a fruitful dialogue, we should understand the assumptions underlying this dichotomy. As long as we speak in the terms “overcoming the gap” between the “two” cultures of knowledge, we will remain hostages of this dualism. From the point of view of Sciences de L'Homme, no gap exists. In the sciences of a person, most likely, in the first place, the distinction between the subject (researcher) and the object (subject of research) , which we inherited from the 19th century, was in doubt. Abstractions should be avoided in the formulation of such an important methodological and philosophical transformation, because abstractions are important only for those who are already confident in their significance. I will try to describe the change in an experimental format - through a myth and a metaphor.

If we believe (contrary to the point of view that I am trying to describe) that the figure of the observer does not affect knowledge of the research object, we refuse to go-whether we give ourselves to this report or not-from an imaginary superhumanizer, from the height of which the whole truth, transparent and easily accessible from spatial-temporary restrictions, appearing at our feet. I found the analogy of this almost indestructible illusion in the myth, more precisely, at the beginning of the tragedy of Sophocles “King Oedipus”.

King Oedipus thinks himself separately from the city that he rules; A stranger in relation to his dark past, which he intends to study. Oedipus, the first Western hero of knowledge and a real researcher, does not neglect a single order and a warning of a religious and scientific ritual. If, as Tiresia does it, we will hint our researcher that he is connected by the object of research a little more intricate and close to him than he thinks, Oedipus, I'm afraid he will not listen to these words. Most likely he will question our own devotion to knowledge. He will reproach us that we prefer ethics and metaphysics to the detriment of intelligence. He will suspect us of a tendency to irrationality and will find in this a hidden desire to bring the so -called “subjective element” to objectivity, to which he refers with murderous seriousness. However, it does not require either an appeal to his “I”, abstract and unpretentious due to his simplified understanding of objectivity, nor that verbal debauchery, which is sometimes called existential introspection, nor the introduction (Oedipus, as we know, is her passionate fan, but does anything clarify with its help?). What is really necessary for Edip is to end the categories of “I” and “other” - equally imaginary - through removal from their barren interaction in the constantly changing structure of relations: first with barking, then with Creon, and then with sore thyreshery.

One has only to try to draw the attention of Oedipus to ambiguous signs that can clarify the scheme of this structure, as he will certainly accuse us of a pathological tendency to mysterious and esoteric to the detriment of purity and accuracy. He will accuse us of neglect of the facts patiently gathered by him during the study, not understanding that they are not quite useless, then inconspicuous in a particular situation due to his false assumption of their own absolute autonomy, which is in accordance with which the decorations of all accessible to knowledge of reality are built.

That description of the Oedipus, which is given by a soreness, is, in reality, a response to the description, first given to Tirezia by Edip. To answer Edip a suitable way, Tiresia cannot just say "you are such and such." Oedipus has already moved this description outside of himself, saying that from now on it has nothing to do with it. Tiresia should indicate the contrast of who the Oedipus is actually and the view of Oedipus about himself. Oedipus, according to Tirezia, is a man who was always not who he considers himself, but to those who he does not consider himself. Tiresia should do more than just reveal this contradiction, he must put it in the center of his interpretation. This means that Oedipus’s words are not at all forgotten, but they are re -recovered in such a way that in the new context they mean the exact opposite of what was invested in them by Edip. Knowledge of a person - that is, knowledge of others - in this case becomes a demiication or, better to say, a demification . Let me notice that the myth of Edip is the only one that it suggests is mythically, but from that no less convincing - your own destruction as a myth.

Tiresia is seen by a strikingly symbolic character for the changes that have taken place in our disciplines in recent decades. It can be an allegory of the interpretations that we will consider at our future seminars, a cipher more mysterious and less unambiguous than it seems now.

The similarity between the approach of the Tiresia and the approach of such modern disciplines as psychoanalysis and sociology - insisting that the language is wider and even more obvious intentions of the speaker, is really remarkable. At the other end of the epistemological ladder, there are neopositivists ‌ - refusing to enter the linguistic maze, as if created by the endless bickering of Oedipus with Tiresia. And although we regret their retreat, we are well understanding their fears.

A deep interpretation leads sociologists to conviction of the leading role of socioeconomic reasons, psychoanalysts prompts to look for the source of problems in sexuality. However, in the general flow of modern research, this difference looks less significant than the device of the interpretation structure itself. Such a structure is characteristic of Sciences de l'Homme, and it is very accurately defined by Michel Foucault in words and things. When I turn to Tiresia as a symbol of this approach, I fully realize that the meanings of my statement are very different from what Michelle Foucault had in mind.

Sciences de l'Homme is a doubling of interpretation of yourself. Due to the constant new interpretation of the subject, its first and spontaneous interpretation, closest to the initial phenomenon, is denied. Claude Levy-Strauss claims that the real structure of the cultural phenomenon cannot coincide with the spontaneous assessment given to it by subjects. The use of structural linguistics ‌ to the phenomena of extra-linguistic inevitably devalues ​​and devastates them, pulling them out of the original context. So, today we have the opportunity to observe a critical tradition that seeks to determine the work not as the integrity consciously designed by the author or at least acceptable to them, but as a structure in which the author’s intentions and interpretation of his audience are considered as equal elements of a complete picture that can always be rejoicing. The author’s plan is no longer regarded as an insurmountable barrier, which is not entitled to step over the interpreter.

Humanists should be wary of this place, although perhaps they have been worried for a long time. Do these interpretations not ruin faith in the great creations of our humanistic past? Are they in no hurry the coming of nihilism, which is our duty to fight? Before answering this question, we must make sure: do we put an equal sign between words and reality? Solemn speeches should not mislead us that we can freely fight nihilism, since it affects only other people, and not on us. So, considering himself free from the ailments that struck the city, Edip freely offers his help to the townspeople to the townspeople, but soon he will be freed from his errors. Perhaps the only way to stop the spread of nihilism is to recognize its presence in ourselves. If we are afraid that the great achievements of Western civilization are at risk, because we are subjected to strict and merciless analytical method, we involuntarily reveal the depth of our own nihilism.

This fear - now we are ready to understand this - is unfounded. If some position should take shape from the expressed and somewhat confused remarks, this point of view is certainly not mine: it belongs to the myth, and it belongs to Sophocles. I don’t know if humanism is presented in the myth, I don’t know if it is presented at Sophocles, but I feel the presence of something important for the existence and maintenance of Western civilization. When I try to manipulate Oedipus with my metaphor, and when she manipulates me, I am aware of my inability to cover the diversity of the prospects that this metaphor reveals before us. Instead of undermining the relevance of both the myth and the Greek tragedy - that Freud himself, with all his genius, still did, introducing the concept of a dream (and Freud saw in Oedipus more incredibly than all rationalists, starting from Aristotle), the real direction of research confirms the strength of the myth and the relevance of early Greek thought in relation to our own experience. ‌

You can see more in the myth than just a coordinated structure, a diachronic matrix, whose intensity as a metaphor of our individual and collective worries, or was it worth saying “structural models”? - Almost limitless.

I am convinced that the truly great works of art, literature and philosophy occur-as well as the rejection of the past by the Oedipus itself-from the ability of a genius to initiate and perform a reinterpretation of their own intellectual and spiritual schemes, destroying them. Unlike less outstanding works, masterpieces may be tested with the most radical structural interpretations, because they are part of an essence that plays a big role than our most thorough analysis.

If the myth and tragedy of Sophocles can complement and illustrate the current changes in the interpretation styles, if the myth still understands what is happening to us just as well and even better than Freud understood, then we have not deviated from the main path of Western thought - we only advanced forward one or two inches. The Apollo Oracle is still disposed of our fate. The real dangers of modernity are different, and it is to the myth, I emphasize that you should turn to understand their nature.

It seems that our allegory Tiresia resolves the issue of "truth." Truth on the side of the Tiresia and the interpretation that has an advantage over the previous interpretation. The truth of Tiresia, according to Oedipus, is a stillborn child, an unclaimed letter that cannot be delivered to the hero or anyone else. The invisible Prophet is proud that he exposed the illusions of his fellow citizens, the exposure can be so fascinated by his demiication that in the end he himself will fall into the illusion, an almost identical illusion of his opponent. At this stage, everything that Oedipus says to Tirezia is true as a description given by the defendant of Edip. And here we observe what can always observe in the myth - mutual mirroring of each other's rivals.

Tiresia loses its sight that no deity, in fact, tells him lips; He forgets that the “truth” translated by him, partial and limited, grows from the present past: hot human disputes and confrontations, intricate weaving of human passions. Tiresia will continue to consider himself the bearer of “truth” and will lose itself in the prophecies. He will also believe that all riddles are allowed, that all the trap in the past. Потому Тиресий может быть бестолковым — читая и понимая в некоторой степени чужие знамения, он пренебрегает своими собственными, теми, что неудержимо и безрассудно манят его больше, чем когда-либо.

В этом был провал Тиресия — а может и наш собственный. Он тянет Тиресия в тягостные, бесплодные, бесконечные препирательства с Эдипом. И нам, конечно, не стоит придерживаться этой модели в грядущих дискуссиях. Может и не к месту было упоминать столь прискорбный прецедент. Но в делах интеллектуальных, так же, как и в финансовых, риск и выигрыш всегда идут рука об руку, и чем очевиднее возможность выигрыша, тем с большей вероятностью мы ожидаем риска. Мы идём на этот риск, принимая интеллектуальный вызов, ведь это радость, объединяющая нас.