A faithfull reply

Ibitsu is right to point out that Heidegger’s call of conscience must not be confused with the ethical experience of Levinas or the il in Blanchot. Of course, as Ibitsu himself is aware, our intention with these posts is not to stick blindly to the writings of an individual philosopher, but to be faithful to them in the manner in which Blanchot conceives of fidelity when he writes of Levinas, - namely, that we must reappropriate their ideas in such a way that challenges their accuracy and allows us to develop a new and unique understanding of their ideas. Bearing this in mind, let us think the significance of Heidegger – a significance which he may not even have intended – further. As Ibitsu points out, in the Blanchotian experience of death, ‘the world is now and henceforth severed’. Why should this not be the case with Heidegger as well? After all, is this not precisely what ‘occurs’ during the mood of Anxiety, which is itself a prerequisite for the call of conscience to be heard? In this experience Dasein may be said to be horrified by death, i.e. by the lack of concrete foundation underlying one’s existence, and by the realisation that Dasein has thus far existed as the they-self. For Heidegger, it is this stripping away of the world as constituted by the they which allows Dasein to become acquainted with his ‘authentic Self’. But now let us re-elucidate this notion, in faithfulness to Heidegger, by using some of Blanchot’s ideas. If we accept that the “I” can really exist as meaningful only within a world, then we may say that this dissolution of the world is in fact an instant of the Self’s dissolution as well. But when Ibitsu says that at this instant ‘the world is now and henceforth severed’ we must ask ourselves: ‘”Now”? “Henceforth”? what do these words mean? By using the word “now” are we suggesting an intelligible beginning? And “henceforth”, what does that mean? Until when? the end of time, perhaps?’ For we mustn’t forget that this experience is, for Blanchot, one without beginning and without end. Ibitsu reminds: ‘one must heed the warning of the verb occur, for its temporal constitution leads us astray’. This being the case, and considering that the “I” does not even experience this instant of a time of time’s absence, we may conclude, as Thomas Wall himself states several times, that this experience cannot be registered in memory in the same way with which we usually record events and images. This would mean that one cannot escape the they-self, as the dissolution of the world and the “I” cannot themselves be remembered by the “I” which is itself constituted by the world. Once the experience is ‘over’, the “I” has missed any lesson that such an experience may have taught him, for in reality there was no tutor, no lesson to be taught, and most importantly, no pupil. In that case, we may assume that this experience cannot pertain to an overcoming of the they-self, but merely a temporary dissolution; an interruption, as Blanchot would have it, an experience of failure and eternally recurring failure at that. A failure to liquefy the they-self once and for all. These events of authenticity (as I would like to term them), are only authentic insofar as they consist of, and insist on, a kind of meaninglessness – it insists on our failing the world. And why is it that, as Ibitsu rightly states, ‘the meaning occurs in that there is no meaning’? Perhaps we can even say that these events are the only one’s with ‘meaning’ at all? For every other meaning in the world is forever dependent on something else for its meaning, everything holds meaning only insofar as it serves an end of some sort – which is to say, nothing holds any meaning at all. Rather, meaning is always deferred, much like in Blanchot’s understanding of language as relational. As such, we may say that this experience, this event, is the only ‘thing’ that holds any meaning at all, for it has no end, and so has only itself as any source of meaning; itself, which is to say – nothing at all…
Nothing, for there is no memory of this event, no “I” to experience it, just interruption, suspension. As the il takes over, the they-self may itself be said to be suspended; suspended, not merely as frozen and paralysed, but as the dissolution of the they-self (if we may return to thinking of Heidegger). The dissolution which not simply unearths a deeper more authentic Self, but the very vacuity of one’s existence. When the they-self is pulled apart, all that’s left is the bottomless chasm, a space empty of all matter, in which one can neither fall nor rise, but merely remain infinitely suspended.

Ibitsu also reference Thomas Wall (“this crepuscular event is the writer’s most quotidian milieu”) before going on to reference Bukowski as one who has no desire for the pain of writing. Writing fails Bukowski, for it is an experience of horror, yet one which nevertheless leaves the writer seeking it time and time again through methods and different concoctions for the inducement of creativity. Bukowski wrote in a poem:

‘And I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating the final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world had failed us
both’

One may ask, though, what right has Bukowski to accuse the world of failing him? What business does he have looking for writing in the world? Has he forgotton that in order for one to become a writer he must first fail the world? The writer is a traitor par excellence.