nothingness derrida

A Diffrance of NothingSartre, Derrida and the Problem

of Negative Theology

JOSH TOTH

In Platonic fashion, I went from knowledge to its subject. I found morereality in the idea than in the thing From that came the idealism whichtook me thirty years to shake off.

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words

As Christina Howells notes in Sartre and Negative Theology, it iseasily assumed that Sartre was a God-haunted or Spirit-hauntedatheist, one haunted if not by the god of Christianity then at least bythe god of idealism.1 Sartre himself, as the above epigraph suggests,was all too aware of the spectre of idealism that hauntedor better,taintedhis early philosophical endeavours. This taint, which is oftentranslated by commentators of Sartres early work as a hypostatisa-tion of nothingness, is difficult (if not impossible) to reconcile withSartres larger existential project. For this reason, and as a number ofcritics have recently noted, texts like Being and Nothingness have beenlargely dismissed, or simply ignored, in poststructural discourse.2This dismissal begins most notably with Derridas claim that the enscausa sui as the lacked (BN 789) remains as the metaphysicalunity of man and God, the relation of man to God, the project ofbecoming God as the project constituting human reality.3 In otherwords, Sartres negation of being ultimately privileges, in placingbeyond scrutiny, the essential project of human reality (EM 116).4This essential project is perhaps best understood as the fulfilmentthat is, the suturing of the space of nothingness that separates the for-itself from the in-itselfof being as presence. In Derridas view, thisunderstanding of nothingness as the lack that haunts the for-itselfslips into the virtually inescapable logic of the aufhebung; nothingness,the (dis)jointure that eternally frustrates the possibility of syntheticfusion (i.e. the ens causa sui), is nothing other than the negativeSartre Studies International Volume 13, Issue 1, 2007: 1634doi:10.3167/ssi.2007.130103 ISSN 1357-1559 (Print), ISSN 1558-5476 (Online)

representation of that impossible synthesis. In French Hegel, BruceBaugh puts it like this: however explicit Sartres denials of totalityand synthesis, he implicitly affirms them in his very use of dialecticalmethods.5 Hegel-like, then (or so it would seem), Sartre is inter-ested only in synthesis and totalisation.6

Accordingly, any discussion of Sartres nothingness necessarilyentails a close look at the problems associated with negative theology.As Howells has astutely pointed out, The parallels between the mys-tical conception of God and the transcendent nant of Sartrean con-sciousness are striking (NT 550). And, if the accusations thatDerrida levels at Sartre have any weight it is in this particular regard;Sartres discussion of nothingness, like the philosophical rhetoric ofnegative theology, is a sophistical reaffirmation of being parading asnegation (DK 176). While struggling to escape, or move beyond,the Hegelian model, Sartre becomes entangled in recuperative dialec-tics; as the negated synthesis of the for-itself and the in-itself, Sartresnothingness seemingly takes on a metaphysical position akin to God,whose negation in negative theology ultimately functions as a type ofunquestionable affirmation. However, as Howells also notes, Sartre ishardly ignorant of the metaphysical trap that threatens his project.Indeed, the sophistry of negative theology, along with the inescapableenclosure of recuperative dialectics, bears what both Sartre and Der-rida recognize to be an uncannybut strongly resistedresemblanceto their own versions of paradoxical logic (DK 176). Perhaps notsurprisingly, then, it is along the lines of Derridas critique that wecan begin to recover the distinctly poststructural elements of Sartresdiscussion of nothingness. What Derrida sees as recuperative is infact founded in Sartres struggle to resist, or eternally subvert, themetaphysical pitfalls of recuperative dialectics and negative theology.Whether successful or not, then, Sartres discussion of nothingness,like Derridas deconstructive project, confronts, and is threatened by,the overweening Truth claims of the totalising dialectic (DK 178).

With this in mind, I would like to focus the following discussionon the way in which Sartres conception of nothingness can be (atleast partially) recuperated by reading portions of Being and Nothing-ness through, what we might term, a Derridean filter. I do not intendto (re)position Sartre as an unrecognised, or purposely ignored, pre-cursor of deconstruction and the Derridean project; I will leave thattask (viable, or not) to scholars like Howells and Nik Farrell Fox.7Rather, I am interested in employing the work of Derridain particu-lar his conception of the parergon, diffrance and playas a way ofunderstanding the theoretical impulses implicit in Sartres anguished,

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A Diffrance of Nothing

and often confusing, discussion of nothingness. Sartres idealismdoes seem to prompt slips into recuperative dialectics and manifestitself in moments of negative theology; upon final inspection,though, Sartres understanding of nothingness can be recovered as aconcerted struggle to evade the metaphysics of presence. By concen-trating specifically (although not exclusively) on Part One of Beingand Nothingness and Derridas early essay, Differance,8 I will thusexplore the possibility that Sartres nothingness functions as a liminalspace that permits movement toward, and the possibility of, meaning(or presence), while confounding the teleological enterprise of suchmovement through its perpetual, and inexhaustible, evasion of clo-sure. That said, I am not interested in performing the type of readingthat Steve Martinot has recently warned against; what follows is notan attempt to existentialize Derrida or transmute Sartre into a post-structuralist discourse.9 At the same time, though, we need to exam-ine Sartrean nothingness in retrospect, and with the apparentadvances of poststructuralism in mind, if we wish to apprehendwhat Sartre was ultimately struggling to accomplish. This is not tosuggest that Sartre never slips and that all his detractors (and evensome of his defenders) have been mistaken in suggesting that he wasdriven by a certain desire for totalisation. Sartre was not (in any rig-orous sense of the term) a poststructuralist. However, if we look atSartrean nothingness in the light of concepts like Derridean diffr-ance, we can begin to see that Sartres ability to negotiate certainmetaphysical traps is often comparable to that of his most famouspoststructuralist successor.

I

As it contains Derridas first (and, perhaps, most damaging) discus-sion of Sartre, I will begin with a more detailed look at DerridasThe Ends of Man.10 In this seminal essay, Derrida carefully distanceshis own deconstructive project from the apparent humanism ofSartrean existentialism:

Not only is existentialism a humanism, but the ground and horizon ofwhat Sartre then called his phenomenological ontology remains theunity of human reality Whatever the breaks marked by this Hegelian-Husserlian-Heideggerian anthropology as concerns classical anthropolo-gies, there is an uninterrupted metaphysical familiarity with that which,so naturally, links the we of the philosopher to we men, to the we in thehorizon of humanity. (EM 116)

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Refusing to acknowledge a marked break separating Sartre from hismetaphysical predecessors, Derrida accuses Sartre of unifying manby announcing the common goal of the ens causa sui. While Sartreadamantly refuses the actual possibility of the ens causa sui, its privi-leged position as lack is (according to Derrida) a reification of thatwhich ultimately signals the essential project of human-reality(ibid.): This synthetic unity is determined as lack: lack of totality inbeings, lack of God that is soon transformed into a lack in God.Human-reality is a failed God (ibid). As this lackwhat we mightunderstand as the space of nothingness that ensures the failure ofunityis in fact the unifying attribute of human-reality, The exam-ple of the Sartrean project remarkably verifies Heideggers proposi-tion according to which every humanism remains metaphysical,metaphysics being the other name of ontotheology (ibid.). And, inemploying a term like ontotheology, Derrida neatly thrusts Sartresproject into the realm of negative theology.

In Derridas opinion, Sartres valorisation of failurehis insistenceon the impossibility of God (i.e. the ens causa sui)can be read assymptomatic of a larger humanistic enterprise that reifies non-beingas the surrogate of being beyond re(/ap)proach. Sartres insistencethat man will always fail to achieve, yet be driven toward, the realgoal of his pursuit, which is being as a synthetic fusion of the in-itselfand the for-itself (BN 797) functions in two distinct ontotheologi-cal ways: on the one hand, it maintains the undifferentiated we ofhumanity by placing human-reality under the rubric of a single goal;on the other, the impossibility, or negation, of that goalas exempli-fied in the nothingness that allows the synthetic fusion of being tobe simultaneously in and out of reachultimately attributes to theens causa sui a higher being. Simply, and in a manner that recalls thetype of theological negations embraced by someone like Eckhart,Sartres nothingness becomes, through a strange inverse of what wemight expect, the very thing that Sartre appears (on the surface, atleast) desperate to refute: nothingness comes to be an originary andessential absolute.

At this point, it is perhaps important to stress the connectionbetween the recuperative tactics of Hegelianism and negative theol-ogy. After all, one of the primary thrusts of Derridas attack is thatSartre fails to distance his project suitably from a distinctly Hegelian-Husserlian-Heideggerian anthropology. Of course (on the surface,at least), Sartre insists that Being and Nothingness is primarily a refuta-tion of the Hegelian dialectic11a claim that can be interpreted as anattempt to deny a complicit engagement with theological rhetoric. As

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Howells points out, the connexion between Hegel and negative the-ology is of course no accident: Sartre objects ultimately to what hesees as the surreptitious recuperative aim of such theology, and ofthose mysticisms which place absolute reality in an undifferentiatedunity beyond contradiction (NT 553). But, as Derrida suggests (andas we have seen), Sartres apparent objection is quite possibly hollow,especially if we recall that, by the end of Being and Nothingness, Sartrehimself has seemingly place[d] absolute reality in an undifferentiatedunity [i.e. the ens causa sui] beyond contradiction. Consequently,Howells assurance that Sartre (like Derrida) sees negative theologyas a primitive version of an unacceptable dialectic positing an idealsynthesis beyond the tragic contradictions of human experience(ibid.) does little to absolve Sartre of the accusations laid against him.Nevertheless, Howells has made remarkable progress in terms ofdrawing the Sartrean project into poststructuralist discourse. For thisreason, and before considering the possibility of recovering nothing-ness, we might do well to take a cursive look at Howells variousattempts to save Sartre from what basically amounts to more thanthirty years of disregard.

While critics like Fox, Martinot and Baugh have made more recentcontributions to the discussion of Sartres connection to Derrida,Howells earlier work on the subject is of particular interest here. Forthe most part, this is because Howells consistently focuses on theissue of negative theologyan issue, I am suggesting, that is at theheart of the Sartre/Derrida problem. For instance, in Sartre andNegative Theology, Howells attempts to counter claims made byJacques Salvan in The Scandalous Ghost: Sartres Existentialism asRelated to Vitalism, Humanism, Mysticism, Marxism. Along the samelines as Derrida, Salvan strives to interpret Sartres careful rejectionof unity as a desire for unity, and by extension as a belief in the unitydesired (NT 549). For Salvan, as for most critics of Sartres project,suggests Howells, nothingness ultimately seems to be little morethan another, more clever, word for being. Referring to Sartreannant, Salvan asks whether this pure Non-Being, which is the sourceof our liberty is very different from Heideggers Being, or for thatmatter, from the superessential Being of Plotonius, or from Brahma,defined by William James as a Non-Being charged with all the possi-bilities (NT 550).12 Howells goes on to point out that these formsof mysticism, whether they speak of Absolute Being or AbsoluteNon-Being, all refer to an originating undifferentiated unity, sourceof truth for all things, which Plotonius refers to as the One (NT550). And, as I noted above, even Howells must admit that the tran-

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scendental privileges that Sartre seemingly attributes to his nant arehard to deny. Still, Howells does her best, arguing that while Sartreplaces consciousness, as nant beyond the reach of objectiveknowledge he nevertheless manages to protect human consciousness from dissolution by idealist synthesis (NT 554). In this way,Howells appears to agree with Sartres own belief that his version ofsalvation through failure is incomparable to religious patterns ofthought as it is based in a resolutely non-recuperative ontology (NT555). Because the synthetic union of the for-itself and in-itself wouldbe an tre not a nant (NT 551) and because he consistently deniesthe possibility of such a union, Howells suggests that Sartre escapesthe recuperative tactics that are the defining characteristic of negativetheology. As Howells is aware, this argument is weak; it does little (ifanything) to counter Salvans (or Derridas) claim that the very fail-ure of synthetic fusion in Sartrean philosophy is itself presented asthe essential unifying characteristic of human-reality. Concludingwith an almost audible sigh, Howells concedes that Sartre is ulti-mately curiously disinclined to acknowledge within theology itselfphilosophical intuitions which come remarkably close to his ownview of the creative potential of negation (NT 555).

In two later articles,13 thoughDerrida and Sartre: Hegels DeathKnell and Sartre and Derrida: Qui Perd GagneHowells returns(with more success) to the problem of recuperative dialectics andnegative theology in Sartres work. In these articles, Howells exam-ines Derridas motivation in criticising Sartre. She thus necessarilyapproaches the work of Sartre as it is mediated for us by poststruc-turalism.14 For the most part, then, both articles function as refuta-tions of Derridas claims concerning Sartres persistent identificationof being and presence (QPG 148). What is of particular interest,though, is Howells various attempts to draw comparisons betweenDerridas own project and that of Sartres. Although, as Philip R.Wood suggests,15 Howells attempt to cast Sartre as poststructuralistprecursor is quite possibly mistaken, there is significant weight inher claim that the critique of Sartre in The Ends of Man is sympto-matic of Derridas desire to deny the theological aspects of his ownwork.16 As Howells notes, The vehemence of his rejection of Sartreis perhaps explicable in terms of a similarly close but resisted parallelbetween his own attempt to undermine Being and that of existentialnihilism (DK 177).17 By first locating in Sartre and Derrida thesame unceasing desire to avoid slipping into Hegelian synthesis,Howells demonstrates that Derridas desire to avoid recuperativedialecticswhich he (mis)perceives in the work of Sartreis equiva-

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lent to Sartres own attitude toward negative theology. That is, thenature of Derridas critique, with its emphasis on the theologicallogic of Being (re)affirmed as negation, functions to highlight thesimilarities between Derrida and Sartres consistent attempts to sub-vert, and therefore escape, the metaphysics of presence. For this rea-son, Howells has been particularly adamant in stating that Derridasnotion of diffrance, while being radically impersonal and intended asa means of deconstructing consciousnessthat cornerstone ofhumanismis in fact clearly related to consciousness in the Sartreansense (QPG 150). And, as Howells herself has pointed out,18 anydiscussion of Sartrean consciousness is, necessarily, a discussion ofSartrean nothingness. Consequently, with Howells suggestion thatDerridas diffrance is analogous to Sartrean consciousness as a pointof departure, we can begin to re-appraise the possibility of savingnothingness as a concept that successfully and radically evades reifica-tion.

II

In Differance, Derrida is well aware of, and careful to deny, theapparent similarities between his description of diffrance and thesophistical tactics of negative theology:

Thus, the detours, phrases, and syntax that I shall often have to resort towill resemblewill sometimes be practically indiscernible fromthose ofnegative theology And yet what is thus denoted as differance is nottheological, not even in the most negative order of negative theology Not only is differance irreducible to every ontological or theologicalonto-theologicalreappropriation, but it opens up the very space inwhich onto-theologyphilosophyproduces its system and its history.(D 134)

Derrida is, of course, walking a fine line. While clearly admitting thatdiffrance somehow encompasses and irrevocably surpasses onto-the-ology or philosophy (D 135, my emphasis), Derrida struggles todeny simultaneously the apparent fact that diffrance is synonymouswith a superessential reality beyond the finite categories ofessence and existence and, therefore, a superior, inconceivable, andineffable mode of being (D 134). Immediately (in this pre-emptivedefence of diffrance), we begin to hear echoes of the accusationsDerrida lays against Sartre. After all, he accuses Sartre of participat-ing in the very theology that he seriously fears will be (mistakenly)identified with diffrance. With this in mind, Howells claims begin

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to resonate with particular significance. If diffrance, as Derridainsists, is a successful evasion of what has previously been a virtuallyinescapable tradition of onto-theology, and if Sartres nothingness canbe attacked for the same reasons that diffrance seemingly needs to bedefended, then we must concede the possibility that the projects ofSartre and Derrida are far less removed than Derrida (even in thefiftieth anniversary of Les Temps modernes) would like us to believe.

We are, in fact, faced with two distinct possibilities: on the onehand, the paradoxical logic of nothingness, like that of diffrance,only (and necessarily) appears to be onto-theological; on the other,diffrance, like nothingness, is19 ultimately a hypostasised negation ofthat which it attempts to deny.20 If the former is true, then a carefulcomparison of the work of Sartre and Derrida should provide uswith the tools to counter the accusations laid against Sartres noth-ingnessin particular, the virtually irrefutable claim that nothing-ness, as lack, as the eternal impossibility of synthetic fusion, functionsas the essential and originary foundation that unifies human-reality.However, such a comparison threatens, also and instead, to confirmthe latter possibility. We should thus proceed tentatively. For the timebeing, though, I will maintain my initial assumption that Sartresnothingness can be recovered if we highlight the largely ignoredfeatures that it shares with several of Derridas basic deconstructiveconcepts.

In Part One of Being and Nothingness, The Origin of Negation,Sartre attempts to establish the connection between the for-itselfand the in-itselfthe two regions of being (BN 33) that he discov-ered in the introduction. From the very start, then, Sartres discus-sion of nothingness is a discussion of relations, of liminal spaces.Although he is quick to admit that Descartes found himself facedwith an analogous problem when he had to deal with the relationbetween soul and body (ibid.), Sartre immediately distances himselffrom what he perceives as the futility of Cartesian philosophy: whatwe can retain is the reminder that it is not profitable first to separatetwo terms of a relation in order to try to join them together againlater (ibid.). Sartre is not interested in a relation that is, ultimately, asynthesis; the relation he wishes to posit is, in fact, a (non)relation, arelation without relation. Struggling toward a description of this(non)relation, Sartre examines the notions of distance and limitsterms that denote factors that condition the disintegration of oneform in favour of, or so as to realise, another: Exactly as in percep-tion we constitute a particular object as a figure by rejecting anotherso as to make it a ground, and conversely. In both instances we find

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the same quantity of negation which at one time passes into thenotion of limits and at another into the notion of distance, but whichin each case is suppressed (BN 54). As each is effaced, or sup-pressed in the moment of its appearance, neither the distancebetween, nor the limits of, these forms exist as things in the world.They are (in the most extreme sense of the word) nothing. As func-tions of negation, both can be understood as secondary structure[s]of the object (ibid.). Or, put another way, the possibility of appre-hension, of distinction and thus identity, can be attributed to the factthat concepts like distance (what Sartre terms ngatits21) are inhab-ited by negation (BN 55). As regards the specific concept of dis-tance, then, negation thus defines precisely the immediate relationwhich connects two points and which presents them to intuitionas the indissoluble unity of the distance (ibid.).

Extended to the realm of being in general, negation can be under-stood as that which permits apprehension while simultaneously pre-venting dissolution; in this way, it allows the totality of being toorder itself around us as instruments to parcel itself into differenti-ated complexes which refer one to another and which can be used(BN 59). Of course, as Sartre points out, The origin and foundation(BN 56) of this relation that is negation is nothingness. Of particularimportance, then, is the fact that Nothingness can be conceivedneither outside of being, nor as a complementary, abstract notion, noras an infinite milieu where being is suspended (ibid.). Rather, noth-ingness must be thought of as lying coiled in the heart of being(ibid.). And, as it is the for-itself (i.e. human consciousness) that,through a process of nihilation, causes Nothingness to arise in theworld (BN 59), Sartre will ultimately conclude, as we have seen, thatthe for-itself is determined as lack. Why Sartre feels compelled tolocate the origin and, therefore, the agent of nothingness is a ques-tion that lies beyond the particular scope of this paper. Suffice it tosay that, in first determining the for-itself as the agent and origin ofnothingness, Sartre seemingly begins the line of argument that willeventually make his project vulnerable to attack. However, we mustnot lose sight of the fact that nothingness is, upon final analysis, thevery possibility of non-synthetic relation. In this regard, it must beunderstood as neither being nor non-being, but rather as the veryself-effacing condition through which we are able to apprehend theworld and ourselves. As we have begun to see, Sartre repeatedly sug-gests that the experience of nothingness is the experience of a type ofnegativity, or framethat is, the neutral state between being andnon-being (BN 55), between the thing perceived and the ground

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against which it is perceived, between that which I will be (or was)and that which I am not. As the very condition of consciousness,nothingness is the impossibility of presence, a non-existent injunctionthat is neither before nor after, inside nor outside: If our analysis hasnot lead us astray, there ought to exist for the human being, in so faras he is conscious of being, a certain mode of standing opposite hispast and his future, as being both his past and his future and as notbeing them (BN 65). And here, with this certain mode of standing,we come remarkably close to Derridas own discussion of the frame,or parergon.

In The Truth in Painting, Derrida discusses the paradox of theframe. Focusing on Kants definition of the frame as parergon, Der-rida emphasises the inherent difficulty of attempting to distinguishthe frame from the framed and that which lies beyond, or outside,the frame:

The parergon stands out [se dtache] both from the ergon (the work) andfrom the milieu, it stands out first of all like a figure on a ground butwith respect to each of these two grounds, it merges [se fond] into theother. With respect to the work which can serve as a ground for it, itmerges into the wall, and then, gradually, into the general text. Withrespect to the background which the general text is, it merges into thework which stands against the general background. There is always aform on a ground, but the parergon is a form which has its traditionaldetermination not that it stands out but that it disappears, buries itself,effaces itself, melts away at the moment it deploys its greatest energy.22

Because the frames function entails its own effacement, Derridaasserts that There is frame, but the frame does not exist (TP 81). Vir-tually synonymous with what Sartre understands as a ngatit, theparergon produces a relation without relation, a liminal (non)spacethat defines (i.e. frames) both ground and figure but which in eachcase is suppressed. As Jonathan Culler points out, the consequenceof this relation between frame and what it frames is a certainrepeated dislocation.23 This consequence of dislocation is expressedsuccinctly by Sartre: If being is present to itself, it is because it is notwholly itself. Presence is an immediate deterioration of coincidence,for it supposes separation (BN 124). In other words, presence isalways (dis)located, or differed (in both senses of the word), in the(non)space occupied by the parergon/ngatit. For this reason, thisrelation must be understood as lack that effaces itself as lackwhatSartre terms nothingness and (we might now venture to posit) Der-rida calls diffrance:

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the self-protection-of-the-work, of energeia which becomes ergon only as(from) parergon: not against free and full and pure and unfettered energy(pure act and total presence of energeia, the Aristotelian prime mover) butagainst what is lacking in it; not against the lack as a posable or opposablenegative, a substantial emptiness, a determinable and bordered absence(still verifiable essence and presence) but against the impossibility ofarresting diffrance in its contour, or arraigning the heterogeneous (dif-france) in pose, of localising, even in a meta-empirical way, what meta-physics calls, as we have seen, lack, of making it come back, equal orsimilar to itself (adaequatio-homoiosis), according to a proper trajectory,preferably circular (castration as truth). (TP 80).

In a somewhat oblique manner, Derrida here returns to the threat ofnegative theology, further distancing its sophistical discourse from hisown project of deconstruction. Given the above discussion, though,Derridas separation of the lacking that is the impossibility of arrest-ing diffrance in its contour and the metaphysical lack that is (via dis-tinctly theological logic) recuperated as presence is, also, a separationof Sartres nothingness from the recuperative discourse of ontotheol-ogy.

Derridas claim that the parergon, as that which is lacking in theergon, is in no way a metaphysical lackthat is, a determinable andbordered absence (still verifiable essence and presence)is whollyanalogous to Sartres various attempts to deny even the seeminglynegative aspects of nothingness: Furthermore this nothing would byno means be negative. Nothingness is the ground of negationbecause it conceals the negation within itself, because it is negation asbeing (BN 64). This is in fact a struggle that Sartre repeatedlyundergoes throughout Being and Nothingness. Sartre clearly under-stands that he is constantly in danger of establishing Nothingness asa transcendent (BN 57) and, thus, takes great pains to assure us that,if we speak of [Nothingness], it is only because it possesses anappearance of being, a borrowed being (ibid.). While it is obviouslynot as dazzlingly circumlocutious as Derridas, Sartres avoidance ofmetaphysical recuperation is nonetheless apparent. In other words,Sartre struggles to assure us that nothingness, as lack, as the definingcharacteristic of consciousness and the for-itself, effaces itself in thevery moment it asserts itself; an eternal (dis)location, the (non)rela-tion that nothingness makes possible (or rather, sustains) is the veryimpossibility of arresting diffrance in its contour, or arraigning theheterogeneous (diffrance) in pose, of localising, even in a meta-empirical way, what metaphysics calls, as we have seen, lack.

What we are beginning to seeor, at least, what I have beenattempting to demonstrateis that, like diffrance, Sartres nothing-

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ness is lack only insofar as it is the perpetual deferral of presence.Like diffrance, nothingness denotes the interval of a spacing and tem-poralisation that puts off until later what is presently denied, thepossible that is presently impossible (D 129). Just as Differences are produceddifferedby differance (D 145), so too does nothing-ness make difference, and the world (as apprehensible), possible:The for-itself is always in suspense because its being is a perpetualreprieve.24 If it could ever join with its being, then the othernesswould by the same stroke disappear and along with it possibles,knowledge, the world (BN 787). In other words, the for-itself, asnothing, is only ever the trace of being as presence; the being for-itself is always occupied in a certain mode of standing opposite hispast and his future, as being both his past and his future and as notbeing them (BN 65). With this in mind, the difference separatingdiffrance and nothingness becomes (for lack of a better word) noth-ing. After all, Differance is what makes the movement of significa-tion possible only if each element that is said to be present,appearing on the stage of presence, is related to something otherthan itself but retains the mark of a past element and already lets itselfbe hollowed out by the mark of its relation to a future element (D142). This play of traces (D 146) can be, at least partially, alignedwith Sartres understanding of freedom. Indeed, the eternal play ofdiffrance that is a trace that no longer belongs to the horizon ofbeing but one whose sense of Being is borne and bound by this play(D 154) is remarkably similar to the Sartrean freedom that is charac-terized by a constantly renewed obligation to remake the Self (BN72). Freedom, then, can beand, perhaps, should beunderstood asthe play permitted (or rather, necessitated) by nothingness. That thisfreedom is manifested in states of anguish, and resisted in momentsof bad faith, is thus succinctly explained by the fact that There is nosupport to be found and no depth to be had for this bottomlesschessboard where being is set in play (D 154). We might in factsummarise the impulse toward bad faith by stating that the Sartrean(non)relation of being to itselfwhat we might in fact understand asan attempt to define that which Derrida calls diffranceis, like dif-france, threatening and necessarily dreaded by everything in us thatdesires a realm, the past or future presence of a realm (D 153). WhatI am suggesting is that Sartres discussion of nothingness is a con-certed (while not always successful) attempt to define a spacing andtemporalising, a play of traces (D 146)that is, to define the para-dox that Derrida terms diffrance.

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III

According to Howells, Sartrean consciousness is comparable to dif-france in three distinct ways: firstly as a deferring and a non-coinci-dence; secondly as differentiation; and thirdly as a producer ofdifferences and ultimately meaning (QPG 150). Such a comparisonhas been given further credence by critics like Fox and Baugh. FromFoxs perspective, Sartrean consciousness, like Derridean diffrance, isconstituted by the temporal and temporalising mediation of a detourthat suspends the accomplishment of fulfillment of a desire orwill (NS 41). Likewise, Baugh points out that, like the Derrideansign, Sartrean consciousness differs from itself, and precisely througha temporal movement of deferral, whereby the present can be whatit is only through a mediation of the future (HG 62). We might say,in fact, and while following Baugh, that Sartrean consciousness andDerridean difference are ultimately very similar reformulations ofHegels unhappy consciousness.25 In both cases, consciousness isdefined by the totality it lacks (HG 67). While I certainly (andobviously) agree with these critics, I have attempted to focus specifi-cally on the term nothingness rather than the term consciousness.Although consciousness and the for-itself are ultimately defined bySartre as nothing, I would argue that, as terms, they are more likelyto betray Sartres underlying desire to attribute agency and purposeto nothingness. In asking where does nothingness come from? (BN56)and then answering with the for-itselfSartre (momentarily)idealises nothingness as a subject that drives and, therefore, unites thewe of humanity. As concerns his own project, Derrida is adamantthat such a question (and answer) is extremely dangerous: For if weaccepted the form of the question in its own sense and syntax(What?, What is?, Who is?), we would have to admit that differ-ance is derived, supervenient, controlled, and ordered from the start-ing point of a being-present, one capable of being something, a force,a state, or power in the world (D 145). Not surprisingly, then, it isbecause of Sartres concluding remarks about the for-itself that, as wehave seen, Derrida finds cause to attack the entire project of Beingand Nothingness. However, as I have attempted to demonstrate, thedescription of the for-itself as lack is best understood if we viewSartres discussion of nothingness as a struggle to posit a liminal(non)space that is a perpetual deferral of presence (and absence).Simply, the lack that is the for-itself should be understood as lackonly insofar as Derridas own conception of diffrance can be consid-ered a conception of lack.

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What we have yet to determine, though, is whether this aligningof Sartre and Derrida is a recovery of nothingness or a condemnationof diffrance. Does the above discussion prove that nothingness suc-cessfully evades hypostatisation, or does it show, contrarily, that dif-france, too, slips into the rhetorical strategies of negative theology?According to Arthur Bradley, The difference between diffrance andnegative theology is the difference between a restricted and a generalnegativity.26 While negative theology is a form of dialectic or what Derrida calls a restricted economy, diffrance is an unreservednegativity (ibid.). That is, Bradley seems to suggest, diffrance is theimpossibility of ever recuperating the metaphysics of presence.Unlike the theologian Dionysus, who refuses all categories of exis-tence and essence because the God whom he addresses is not anessential being but a superessential one Derrida refuses all thesecategories because the diffrance he addresses is not even a super-essential being: diffrance is not (TO 60). But if simply (re)affirm-ing Derridas own claimsthat diffrance is not, that it is only asitself differed and deferredexcuses diffrance for seeming to be sus-piciously like negative theology, then the above discussion (alongwith a number of others) must certainly excuse Sartre also. Yet, ifboth Derrida and Sartre engage in discourses that, at every moment,threaten to reify the very thing they are struggling to deconstruct,what about Sartres project makes it particularly prone to attack? AsBradley admits, Derridas project is undeniably structured like nega-tive theology, yet Derrida (for the most part) seems to successfullyevade accusations of hypostatisation and recuperation. Why? Accord-ing to Bradley, Derrida is able to admit his indebtness to negativetheology because [he] recognizes the impossibility of writing adiscourse that does not negotiate the transcendental (TO 71). Per-haps, then, it is Sartres lack of unrelenting self-reflexivitywhatHowells calls his disinclination to acknowledge within theology itselfphilosophical intuitions which come remarkably close to his ownview of the creative potential of negationthat is the cause of thestumbles that occur throughout Being and Nothingness.

In the end, then, it would seem that we are still faced with Sartresidealism, an idealism that seems to function in a twofold manner: theseemingly idealist refusal to recognise the necessarily theologicalaspects of his own discourse and, as a result, the subsequent tendencyto hypostatise nothingness as an originary and unifying lack, or nega-tive. This idealism is, perhaps, most notably echoed in the passagesthat dwell on anguish and nausea, on the lamentable and despairingexperience of nothingness. There is never, in Being and Nothingness, a

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moment of pure Nietzschian affirmation. This unrelenting focus ondespair, I would argue, causes Sartres discourse to be susceptible topositivismthat is, it tends (in, we might say, bad faith) to escapethe anguish of nothingness by finding in it the purpose, or unity, ofhuman-reality. After all, if both Derrida and Sartre are engaged incomparable reformulations of Hegels unhappy consciousness, wemust admit that Derridas unhappy consciousness is far less unhappythan Sartres. This is not to suggest that Sartres project is, as Derridawould have it, a metaphysical humanism. As we have seen, Sartresnothingness is, frequently, an obvious attempt to espouse the samediffering and deferring (non)relation that is diffrance. Rather, I amsuggesting that Being and Nothingness needs to be, ultimately, recov-ered and (re)read through Derrida because Sartre often has difficultyin conceiving of nothingness/diffrance without nostalgia (D 159).Although Sartres most damaging critic, Derrida allows us to affirmNothingness, and to approach it (again) with a certain laughter andwith a certain dance (D 159).

JOSH TOTH is currently Assistant Professor in the Department ofRhetoric, Writing and Communications at the University of Winnipeg.His recent publications include The Mourning After: Attending theWake of Postmodernism (co-edited with Neil Brooks), as well as articleson Derrida and Hemingway.

Notes

1. Christina Howells, Sartre and Negative Theology, The Modern Language Review,1981, 76(3): [henceforth NT] 548.

2. References are to Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes(New York: Washington Square Press, 1956) [henceforth BN].

3. Jacques Derrida, The Ends of Man, in The Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass(Chicago: The University Press of Chicago, 1982) [henceforth EM], p. 116.

4. In his To Be and Not to Be: An Analysis of Jean-Paul Sartres Ontology (Detroit:Wayne State University Press, 1962), Jacques Salvan echoes Derridas concern:Does not this fundamental human project confer a nature on man, and definehis essence in such a way as to limit his liberty? If there is only one end to allhuman activities, will it not become possible to tell what any man will do in agiven situation? (p. 126). Unlike Derrida, though, Salvan (in this particularbook, at least) seems willing to accept Sartres response to this particular objec-tion: Sartres answer to this question is that if there is such an essence of man, it

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is merely an abstraction which does not precede and determine his existence, butmerely gives the truth, or the meaning of individual liberty (p. 126). Of course,the primary motivation of this paper is to determine whether or not such aresponse is a valid defence of Sartres project.

5. Bruce Baugh, French Hegel: From Surrealism to Postmodernism (New York:Routledge, 2003), p. 94. Of course, Baugh goes on to argue that Sartre actuallymanages to negotiate this apparent contradiction successfully: rather than thephilosopher of dialectical totality his critics and defenders have taken him for,Sartre is a philosopher of irreconcilable tension (p. 94). To a certain extent, Iagree with Baugh. However, I would like to suggest that it is only possible toview Sartre as a philosopher of irreconcilable tensions if we read him through atype of poststructuralist filter and, in so doing, bracket some of his more totalis-ing tendencies. While Sartre clearly struggles to avoid slipping into the Hegelianmodel (and, for the most part, does), he often falls somewhat short. It is for thisreason, as I suggest below, that he is particularly open for attack.

6. Christina Howells, Hegels Death Knell, in Hugh J. Silverman (ed.), Derridaand Deconstruction (New York: Routledge, 1989) [henceforth DK], p. 175.

7. Foxs The New Sartre: Explorations in Postmodernism (New York: Continuum,2003) [henceforth NS] is the most recent (and, perhaps, the most extended)attempt to reposition Sartre as a precursor of poststructuralism, if not (simply) aproto-poststructuralist. In a manner that echoes Howells, Fox suggests thatSartres idea of a contingent, non-essential subject (which he argues for consis-tently throughout his work) has much in common with, and indeed prefigures,the decentred subject theorized by post-structuralists and postmodernists (NS 7).

8. Jacques Derrida, Differance, in Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on HusserlsTheory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,1973) [henceforth D]. As the translation of this article maintains an English ver-sion of the term diffrance (i.e. without an accent), I will maintain that translationwhen quoting.

9. Steve Martinot, Forms in the Abyss: A Philosophical Bridge between Sartre andDerrida (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), p. 24.

10. Of course, there are a number of direct (and indirect) references to Sartrethroughout Derridas oeuvre. For instance: in Glas, Derrida refers to Sartre as theonto-phenomenologist of signification (p. 28); in an interview entitled Unseal-ing (the old new language), Derrida identifies Sartre as a major influence butthen asks What must a society such as ours be if a man, who, in his own way,rejected or mis-understood so many theoretical and literary events of his time lets say, to go quickly, psychoanalysis, Marxism, structuralism, Joyce, Artaud,Bataille, Blanchot who accumulated and disseminated incredible misreadings ofHeidegger, sometimes of Husserl, could come to dominate the cultural scene tothe point of becoming a great popular figure? (p. 122); and (more recently), inhis contribution to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Les Temps modernes (i.e. thejournal founded by Sartre), Derrida finally and surprisingly acknowledges the factthat Sartres project is quite close to his own while simultaneously re-stressing acertain distance, reminding us that he was for and with Les Temps modernes, butnot of it (as quoted in Bruce Baugh, Hello, Goodbye. Derrida and Sartreslegacy, Sartre Studies International, 1999, 5(2): [henceforth HG] 70.

11. I am thinking here, particularly, of Sartres claim that we must recall here againstHegel that being is and that nothingness is not (BN 48).

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12. In his Sartre: Theology of the Absurd (New York: Newman Press, 1967) RegisJolivet makes a similar argument: Sartre, indeed, insists that nothingness does notexist and causes nothing. But it is by it that everything exists. Without nothingnessthere is nothing but the in-itself. Though the latter is, heedlessly and grotesquely,unable to stop itself from being, it does not exist. To explain existence, nothing-ness has finally taken the place of God. Sartrian existentialism is truly the theologyof the absurd (p. 31).

13. Christina Howells, Sartre and Derrida: Qui perd gagne, in Sartre: An Investigationof Some Major Themes (Aldershot: Avebury, 1987) [henceforth QPG]. For HegelsDeath Knell, see note 6 above. We might also include here Howells conclusionto The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, Sartre and the Deconstruction of the Sub-ject. However, this article is basically a synopsis (amongst other things) of How-ells previous work; consequently, it repeats many of the arguments we find in thetwo articles mentioned above.

14. Philip R. Wood, Derrida Engag and Poststructuralist Sartre: A Redefinition ofShifts in Recent French Philosophy, MLN 4 (1989), p. 861. I quote Woods arti-cle for two reasons. First, I think it is important to make some (however oblique)reference to Woods astute claim that on Sartres own Hegelian terms, only whathe called a regressive analysis of the object in question (Sartre) at its most highlydeveloped stage (currently Sartre as mediated for us by poststructuralism) can dojustice to the object (861). Second, it is only by analysing Sartre though a post-structural filter that, it would seem, Howells is able to make any progress in termsof recovering, or saving, Sartres project. That the portions of Sartre worth sal-vaging are only made apparent with the aid of poststructural discourse will, ofcourse, have obvious implications for the development of my own discussion ofnothingness.

15. In Derrida Engag, Wood also attempts to read Sartre through poststructuralism,and more specifically, through the work of Derrida. However, unlike Howells(and in a fashion that is outside the scope of my current discussion), Wood con-centrates initially, at least on the misunderstood (or rather, misrepresented)concept of totalisation in Sartres earlier work. Wood argues that, like decon-struction, the activity of totalising does not consist of homogenising the elementsof the practical field (p. 869). Rather, both activities maintain, what Woodseems to describe as, an unrelenting process of bricolage. That is, every act oftotalisation is, itself, an act of detotalisation. After describing these similarities,though, Wood proceeds to argue that, unlike diffrance, Sartrean totalisation isultimately inadequate for the purposes of describing historical process from aMarxist perspective (p. 871). Woods willingness to judge a theory based on itsability to explain the difference between the exchange value and the use value ofthe same thing (p. 871) is undoubtedly problematic particularly since it blindlypresumes the validity of Marxist analysis. However, following this somewhattroubling argument, Wood concludes by citing Sartres last major work, TheFamily Idiot, as a successful and noteworthy example of a poststructuralist decen-tring of the subject.

16. In Hello, Goodbye, Baugh echoes Howells claim: If Derridas exorcisms ofSartre result from a too close proximity of Sartres thought and his own, it seemsthat Derrida (in his own words) himself pursues relentlessly someone whoalmost resembles him to the point where we could mistake the one for the other;a brother, a double, thus a diabolical image (p. 69). Baughs use of a passagefrom Derridas Specters of Marx (trans. 1994) is particularly clever. Indeed, certain

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Specters of Sartre certainly seem to haunt Derrida. That is, Derrida often appearsto be haunted by both Sartres legacy and Sartres own metaphysical ghosts. Inreading Sartre through Derrida, we might in fact ask (while again employing Der-ridas own phrasing from Specters) how to distinguish between the analysis thatdenounces magic and the counter-magic that it still risks being (Specters 47).Moreover, it seems quite likely that many of Derridas exorcisms of Sartre are theeffect of a certain hostility toward ghosts, a terrified hostility that sometimesfends off terror with a burst of laughter (Specters 47).

17. Howells rephrases this argument in her more recent Derrida: Deconstruction fromPhenomenology to Ethics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998): What is clear from Der-ridas tussle with Hegel and negative theology is that he is all too keenly aware ofthe precariousness of his own position. Just as Husserl found it impossible to pre-serve full self-presence, even in the intimacy of interior monologue, so, conversely,Derrida finds it hard to maintain the negativity and absence for which he is argu-ing, uncontaminated by presence, plenitude and identity (p. 134).

18. In Negative Theology, Howells counters Hazel Barnes argument that Sartre dis-sociates his nant from consciousness: the evidence of Ltre et le nant is againsther. Sartre states explicitly that the nant of consciousness is more than a mereprinciple of negation and nihilisation, it has ontological status: this is the essentialof the section lOrigine du nant (p. 552).

19. I italicise is so as to stress that fact that if diffrance is susceptible to the accusa-tions that Derrida lays against Sartre, then (contrary to Derridas various claims),diffrance is. As Derrida insists, though, if diffrance is (I also cross out is) whatmakes the presentation of being-present possible, it never presents itself as such(D 134).

20. We see this particular argument played out in the work of Richard Rorty partic-ularly in this various responses to Christopher Norris. According to Rorty, Derri-das early work especially his use of concepts like Trace, diffrance andsupplement is symptomatic of an inability to wholly disregard a need for certainreified conditions of possibility. Take, for instance, Rortys assertion that all thatsupposedly deep stuff about the primordiality of the trace in Derridas earlierwork looks like a young philosophy professor, still a bit unsure of himself, makingquasi-professional noises (Response to Simon Critchley, in Chantal Mouffe[ed.], Deconstruction and Pragmatism [London: Routledge, 1996] p. 41). Ofcourse, Rorty celebrates Derridas later work because it refuses to make any par-ticular argument; it is, in other words, entirely private (or outside public appre-hension). See, specifically, Rortys chapter on Derrida in Contingency, Irony andSolidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

21. Apart from distance, Sartre suggests that there are an infinite number of realitieswhich are not only objects of judgement, but which are experienced, opposed,feared, etc., by the human being and which in their inner structure are inhabitedby negation, as by the necessary condition of their existence (BN 55). As exam-ples of these realities, Sartre points to absence, change, otherness, repulsion,regret, distraction, etc. (ibid.).

22. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod(Chicago: The University Press of Chicago, 1987) [henceforth TP], p. 61.

23. Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 196.

24. In Sartre and the Deconstruction of the Subject, her conclusion to The Cam-bridge Companion to Sartre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),

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Howells translates this in a much more telling way: the pour soi is always inabeyance, because its being is a perpetual deferring (p. 333).

25. Baugh provides a much more extended discussion of this claim in his more recentFrench Hegel: From Surrealism to Postmodernism. As he does in Hello, Goodbye,Baugh suggests in French Hegel that What is distinctive about Sartres unhappyconsciousness is that it is based on an ontology and theory of time that also lies atthe heart of Derridas diffrance: a temporality that fragments and divides anywould-be unity (consciousness, meaning). It is this theory of being and timethat explains Sartres ambivalence towards Hegel, and connects him to ourcurrent concerns (p. 94).

26. Arthur Bradley, Thinking the Outside: Foucault, Derrida and NegativeTheology, Textual Practice, 2002, 16(1): [henceforth TO] 59.

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