Wynter Ceremony Must Be Found After Humanism

The Ceremony Must be Found: After Humanism
Author(s): Sylvia Wynter

Source: boundary 2, Vol. 12/13, Vol. 12, no. 3 - Vol. 13, no. 1, On Humanism and the University
I: The Discourse of Humanism (Spring - Autumn, 1984), pp. 19-70
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/302808
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The CeremonyMust Be Found:

AfterHumanism
Sylvia Wynter
The ceremonymustbe found
thatwillwed Desdemona to the huge Moor..
O, it is notenough
thattheyshould meet naked,at dead of night
in a small innon a darkcanal ...
The ceremonymustbe found
Traditional,withall its symbols
ancientas the metaphorsin dreams;
strangewithneverbeforeheard music,continuous
untilthe torchesdeaden at the bedroomdoor.
JohnPeale Bishop,"Speaking of Poetry"
It would be the fact of the ceremonythat Henry
would balk at: Bon knew this. It. . . would be the
ceremony,a ceremonyenteredinto,to be sure,witha
negro,yetstilla ceremony.
WilliamFaulkner,Absalom,Absalom
These doctors of philosophy never concede the
19
moonto be less polishedthan a mirror;

theywant it
to be moreso ifthatcan be imagined,fortheydeem
that only perfectshapes can suit perfectbodies.
Hence the sphericityof the heavenlyglobes mustbe
absolute.
Galileo, Dialogues
The establishmentof a royalcult (the Bakama) was
an economicallydemandingdevelopment.None the
less the political advantages accruing ... appear to
be substantial.This when added to the otherritual

oppositions... neutralizedthe Bacwezi as a politicoreligiousforce.... The (new) fundamentalrelationSafety,
ship can be reducedto: Bakama: Purity/and
Culture.Bacwezi: Putrid/and
Danger,Nature.
PeterSchmidt,HistoricalArchaeology:A Structural
Approachto AfricanCulture
As a result of rallies we got courses in 'black
literature'and 'black history'and a special black
adviser for black students and a black cultural
center.., a rottingwhite washed house on the
netheredge of campus.., reachable.., bywayof a
scramble up a muddybank.... And all those new
courses did was exemptthe departmentsfromthe
unsettlingnecessity of alteringexisting ones, so
they could go righton advertisinga course in
"American Fiction" that explicitly includes
"Hawthorne,Clemens,James,Wharton,Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, and implicitly excludes Chesnutt,
Hurston,RichardWrightand Ralph Ellison."
David Bradley,"Black and American,1982"
I. The Studia Humanitatis:FromHeresyto Orthodoxy
The crisis of irrelevanceand of growingstudentdefectionto
the vocational areas of education is partof an overallcrisis of the
of knowledge that was put in place, as
episteme/organization
Foucault shows, in the nineteenthcentury(Foucault, 1973). This
episteme,based on the triad,biology,economics and philology/LiteraryStudies, found what Vandamme calls-in the frame of his
concept of the efficiencytheoryof truth-its efficiencycriterion
(Vandamme,1983), in the contextof the rise and expansion of the
IndustrialAge. Andthe crisisof ourtimesis preciselythatofthe selfdissolutionof this Age.
Sir StaffordBeer summed up the extentof this crisis in his
introduction
to a book bytheChileanbiologists,Maturanaand Varela.
20
He argued that contemporary

scholarship is trapped in its present
organizationof knowledgein which,whilea man "who can lay claim
to knowledgeabout some categorizedbitof the world,howevertiny,
whichis greaterthananyoneelse's knowledgeof thatbit,is safe for
life," and in which, while papers increase exponentially,and
of the world
our understanding
knowledgegrowsby"infinitesimals,"
"actually recedes." And, because our world is "an interacting
system"in dynamicchange,our systemof scholarship"rootedin its
own sanctifiedcategories,is, in a large part,unavailingto the needs
of mankind."If,he concludes,we are to "understanda newerand still
evolvingworld;ifwe are to educate people to livein thatworld;ifwe
thatbelongto a vanished
are to abandon categories and institutions
worldas it is well nighdesperate thatwe should .. thenknowledge
mustbe rewritten."'1
The main hypothesisof the argumentis that it was such a
of knowledgethat constitutedthe foundingheresyof the
rewriting
originalStudia Humanitatis,seen in theirbroadersense as human
knowledge of its sociohuman world, the heresy that laid the
foundationsof our modernrationalworld,whose orderingdiscourses
were no longerto be interwoven
withthe mythosand the theologos
(Habermas,1979).
The term"heresy" is used here in the contextin whichit is
used bythe Polish philosopher,Kolakowski.He argues thatall realms
of culture,philosophy,as much as art and customs, exemplifya
fundamentalantagonism,wherebyeverything
that is new growsout
of the permanentneed to question all existingabsolutes, withevery
currentof thoughtthat triesto break away from"existingfinalities
coming in turnto establish otherones of its own," so that though
"every rebellion is thereforemetamorphosedinto a conservative
state," nevertheless"each of these movementsmakes roomforthe
next phase where its own absolutes will,in return,be the targetof
criticism.9"2
This movementcan therefore
be definedas a dynamicone
in which the Jester's role in the pursuitof human knowledgealternateswiththe Priest'srole-transforming
heresies intoneworthodoxies, the contingentintomodes of the Absolute.
Hans Blumenbergillustratesthis dynamic,arguingthat the
movementof secularizationthat we know as the phenomenonof
humanism,togetherwithits "teachingoffice"(Heidegger,1977),the
Studia,can onlybe understoodinthecontextof thecrisisofthe Late
MiddleAges. Thatage was one ofthose epochs inhumanhistorythat
a phase in whichevents
mightbe called a "phase of objectification,"
and theirfunctioning
and
spin out ofthe controlof humanmotivation
is needed to bring
purpose.Atall such times,a greatcounter-exertion
these eventsback to servingthe logic of humanpurposes ratherthan
the reverse.
to the
Blumenbergpointsto the signs of this objectification,
theologicalAbsolutismof late Scholastic thoughtwithits positingof
the Maximal God-as the AristotelianFinal Cause (Reidl/Kaspar,
1984),ratherthan the image of the Caring Father-and thereforeto
the downgradingof human existence representedas almost the
21
incidentalby-product
of a God who created forthe sake of his own
Glory.This was the hegemonicsystemof theologyagainst whichthe
discourse of Humanism and the institutionalizedsystem of lay
force,as the Jester,
learningcame into being as a counter-exerting
pullingthe"highseriousness" and theself-justifying
pathos(Bakhtin,
1981) of heresies staled into orthodoxAbsolutes, down to earth
(Blumenberg,1983). Blumenbergalso makes a key comparisonbetweenthe phase of objectificationembodiedinthetheologicalAbsolutismof the late Middle Ages and the parallel phase of our own
times, one dominated by the Absolute of the Technological
which,increasinglydirectedto the purposes of its own
rationality,
goal-seekingratherthan by humanpurposes,determineEventsthat
are once moreout of the controlof humanmotivation(Blumenberg,
1983).
Whileit is the absolutismof thistechnologicalrationality
that
is leavingthe humanities"naked inthe marketplace,"'3thisrationality
is itselfonly the culminatingformor Summa of the new ordering
(ordonnance)system of knowledgeinitiatedby the Studia, in the
overall context of the secularization of the human Subject-one
whose mode of being would be no longerguaranteedbythe "higher
system"of the divinelysanctionedmythosand theologos.Whilethis
firstsecular formof the Subject has been transumed(Bloom, 1982)
into differingvariants-from man defined as "natural Man," the
genericpossessor of Reason, to man as definedsince the nineteenth
centuryas a "natural being" on the analogy of a livingorganism
(Foucault, 1973)-it is this firstformof the definitionof the human
being,its related "rationalworldview" (Reidl/Kaspar,1984),and its
orderingbodyof knowledge,that is now in crisis.As a result,the reof knowledgeforwhichStaffordBeercalls, and towardswhich
writing
our own growingirrelevancecompels us, mustnecessarilyentailthe
of our presentnormativedefiningof the secular mode of
un/writing
because the latterdoes
the Subject. Defining,ratherthandefinition,
not exist as a realityexcept byand throughour collectivesystemof
behaviors,systems which are themselvesorientedby the ordering
modes of knowingor epistemes of each human system. And the
orderingepistemes are themselvesreciprocally"verified"by those
collectivesystemsof behaviorswhichDerridadefinesas "writing"in
the broadersense, that is, byour puttingintoplaythe classificatory
or systemiccode about which
principleof Sameness and Difference,
each human system-ensemble,as a trans-subject'sentity,effects
whatMaturanaand Varela call the autopoesis throughwhichall that
livesrealizes itsmodeof being(Maturana& Varela,1980).' Foritis our
puttinginto play the classifyingprinciplethat bonds us as such a
Group-Subjectthatwe defineourselvesas such a normativemode of
itself
auto-institutes
the Subject,about whicheach system-ensemble
into
thatspecificnormative
templateof identity
bringing
reciprocally,
livingbeing.
ofour modes of
Because of thedynamicreciprocalinteraction
the de-structuring
of the principleof Sameness and
being/knowing,
whichontologizesus as specificmodes ofthe I/We-inour
Difference
22
case the I/We as "natural beings"-necessarily entails the dealso of the ratiomorphic
apparatusor rationalworldview,
structuring
throughwhichthe mode of the Subject or templateof humanautospeciation,5likethespeciatingtemplateofall thingsliving,knowsthe
worldin relationto the telos of its realizationas a dynamicliving
inthecall fora
thatis implied,therefore,
entity.Itis thisdestructuring
thatwas
of knowledge,thesame destructuring/restructuring
rewriting
effected by the great mutation embodied in the discourse of
humanismand, dynamically,
in the practiceof the Studia.
For the Jester'sheresyof the Studia, as indeedof the one to
whichwe are now challenged,should be seen in the widercontextof
the evolutionof the cognitivemechanismsof livingorganisms,of a
process as old as Lifeitself(Riedl/Kaspar,
1984),as wellas inthecontextof a process unique to the human.That is, it should be understood withinthe contextofthe process of humanevolutionary
epistein whichthe rupturewiththe higher
of self-troping,
mology/modes
systemof the theologos implicitin the practiceof the Studia was a
mutationat the levelofthecognitivemechanismsthroughwhicheach
humanGroup-Subjectknowstheworld,as do biologicalorganisms,in
relationto the securingof the conditionsof the realization/actualization of theirmode of being(Reidl/Kaspar,
1984):geneticallyconstiin
tuted in the case of biological organisms,rhetorico-symbolically
the case of humans.
As Lanham points out, with the cultural revolutionof the
Renaissance, "rhetoricalman," who had been proscribedat the
margins by the canonical dogmas of theologies, at last left the
was, theremargins.The delightsoftheoriginalhumanistsin rhetoric
fore,somethingthatwentbeyondthatofa merefad.Forthehumanist
had glimpsed here that,contraryto Plato, man was indeed double;
thathe inventedforhimselfa second selfand thenacted to verify
this
self, acting "fromrole sustaining motives in a dramatic reality"
(Lanham,1976).
In his analysis ofthe roleplayedbythedisciplineof rhetoricin
the cultural revolutioneffectedby the humanists,Ernesto Grassi
traces the hereticalrolethattheirinvolvement
withrhetoric,
theirturn
to the model of Cicero and to his insistenceon the complementary
nature of rhetoricand philosophy(since their common original
functionconsisted in recognizingand "analysing the meaning of
language in the historical process")6 played. This emphasis on
rhetoricwas to serve,then,likeKolakowski'sJester,as a questioning
of thetemporalabsolutes of medievalphilosophy,above all revaluing
the historicity
of the humancommunity-humanitasas contrastedto
divinitas-and of the knowledgeto be gained fromstudyingthis
historicity,
against its negativestigmatization
bythethenrulingorder
of knowledge.
"NaturalMan" and his works,as pertainingto the categoryof
the post-AdamicFallen Flesh (only redeemable by the rebirthin
ChristianBaptism)was therebybeingrevaluedand broughtintobeing
as the firstsecular definition
of Lanham'srhetoricalman,constituted
no longerbythe DivineName, Christ,but bythe VerbalSymbolMan
23
(Whyte,1950).Since, as O.D. Creutzfeldpointsout, it is the mode of

which functionsas the externalloop
symbolic self-representation
that linksup withthe neurophysiologicalmachineryof the brainto
create our "worldsof mind"or modes of consciousness, the world
viewsthroughwhichwe knowSelf/World
and orientour behavior,the
shiftfromthe DivineName to the VerbalSymbolMan-as in 1917,
fromMan to the VerbalSymbol,Proletarian7-was a shiftto the first
secular mode of humanconsciousness.
This self-imaged,
Self nowcame to functionas the
self-troping
cause whichdeterminedbehaviorforthe human,as the
Final/Formal
mode of genetic speciation had determinedbehaviorsforotherbiopsychogenyreplaced
logical organisms.8Forthehominid-into-human,
of its cognitivemechanismsor ratiophilogenyas the determinant
morphicapparatuses. Andthe relatedinheritableprogramswouldbe
stored in the systems of figuration,encoded in the body of
thatwouldbe called "culture."9Therewas one
traditions/knowledges
that
centralcontinuity,
however,to whichwe have alreadyreferred:
the cognitivemechanismsof humangroupsrespondto a law thatis
applicable to those of all biologicalorganisms.Theythereforemust
know the world, too, in response to the telos of securing the
conditions of the subject's realizing its system-specificmode of
Andthis law
being,as imaginedin its governingtemplateof identity.
applies whetherone was an IronAge Bahaya, now definedthrough
the royal, ratherthan the local Bacwezi template of identity;or
linear
Galileo's Aristotelianantagonistswho insistedon the if/then
abductive inference of the founding structuralopposition (the
on
perfectionof the lunarrealms,the degradationof the terrestrial)
which the Christian medieval template had been based; or the
naturallynoble monarchicalSubject,Othello;or the PuritanSouthern
man" (Foucault, 1973) that
slave-owning"empirico-transcendental
was Faulkner'sHenry.And theywould thereforeeach act upon the
worldin the mode of the template'scategorical imperative,
obeying
its related proscriptionsand prescriptions,so as to fulfillthe rolesustainingmotivesof the mode of the self in a "dramaticreality."
Paolo Valesio has pointedout, in the contextof his proposal
thatall humanordersare
forthe disciplinarymatrixof a new rhetoric,
held together by specific macro-organizingtopoi which are the
necessary conditionsof our shared and common human nature(s)
(Valesio, 1980).10And since meaningpreexistedthe utteranceof the
first word/speech,we must recognize the complex relation of
biologicalprocesses. The argumenthereis
language to pre-linguistic
is the shiftfromgenetic to
that the linkof continuity/discontinuity
systemsof groupbonding,withthe lattercarryrhetorical-figurative
ing affectiveloadings fromthe formerand the inheritableprograms
which determined cognition/behaviors
being transferredto the
Foritwas thissystem
called
of
religion.
systems
figuration
governing
of its
of figurationwhich now took the place of the environment
sanctionsystems,replacingitwiththe sanction
rewards/punishment
systemsof the gods and thenof the Single God.
First Whyte and later Habermas pointed to a formative
24
tendencyor evolutionary
process at workwhichcorrelatesthe evolution of human cognitivemechanisms withthe evolutionof human
modes of co-identification,
fromthe relatively
closed aestheticorders
of the particularisticPaleolithicgroups to the increasinglymoreinclusive ones. Monotheism,Whiteargues, markeda highpointin the
evolutionof human cognitivemechanisms. Once a Singie Divine
Name had been postulated,the humancould now come to knowthe
worldin relationto a single universalcorrelator;the concept of universalitycould then itselfcome intobeing. But because the varying
monotheismshad come into being amongstdifferent
peoples in reneeds, theiruniversalitiesremainedfinallypartisponse to different
cularistic. What was needed was a single definingimpersonal
principlewhichwould take the place of the DivineNames; of their
ofthe absolutizationapparatusof
specificconceptionsof Life/Death;
the highersanction systemof the mythos(the Logos of Paleolithic
and of the theologos:thatof creedal systemsof
systemsof identity)
identity.
What we referto as the foundingJesterheresyof humanism
and the Studia Humanitatisis sited here. For as Riedl/Kasparpoint
out,once humanshad brokenwithgeneticallysanctionedinheritable
programsand cognitivemechanisms,a riskfactorhad now entered
the evolutionary
processes of life.This was due to the factthat"our
conscious cognitivepowers," because they were the most recent
superstructuresin a continuumof cognitiveprocesses contemporaneous withthe emergenceof life(withhuman reason, as a latecomer,beingthe least refinedand tested against the real world),the
of humanworld
potentialforself-deceptionand the dysfunctionality
views could spell disaster in the context of humans' increasing
masteryoverthe environment.
The sanction system of religion had, therefore,been isomorphicwiththe hominization
process ofthe humanitself.Itenabled
this new mode of being,the bearerof self-consciousness,to win its
and
wayfrommoreclosed to moreopen programsof co-identification
of cognition,handingdown what it had won,as Gowlettnotes,as a
human cultural heritage in the long perspective of the
processes-many terribleand idiotic as Nietzsche notes, yet constitutingthat"moralityof mores" bywhichthe humanmade himself
calculable-of the human's collective self-making(Gowlett,1984).
The heresyof the Studia was, therefore,
to lie in its breakwiththe
and withits absolutized
highersystemof divinelysanctionedidentity
worldviewsor ratiomorphic
apparatus;inits release ofrhetoricalman
fromthe margins,orientinghis behaviorsby a new orderingsecular
Logos, the NaturalLogos of Humanismwhichtook the place of the
ChristianTheologos.
A co-Christianitywas made possible by the central
Figure/Imageof a new baptismal birthin which Christianswere
rebornin the spirit,leavingbehindthe "naturalman" of the Flesh,
itselfdegraded by the OriginalSin, inheritedby all mankindfrom
Adam's Fall. This bondingtopos of the medieval ChristianGroup
Subject was sanctioned by "the authoritative light of the
25
suprasensory" (Heidegger, 1977). So, too, was the "inheritable

based on the interpretation
of the
program"of storedpre-judgments
Bible and on canonical dogma as well as on the overallsystemof
knowledgeof Christianmedievalsociety.
The normativeorderof knowledge,which was embodied in
theology,expressed the foundingstructuralopposition generated
fromthe bonding topos of the order:the opposition between the
categoryof the "Spirit"(the new "life" to whichone attained,pari
passu, with Christian baptism) and the "Flesh" (the life of
unregenerate"natural" man before rebirth,a life that was now
"death"). Accordingto the inferentiallogic of its system of figuration-Bateson's abduction schema, Sperber's symbolicmode of
knowledge,a mode largelyexpressed throughthe righthemispheric
of the brain1'-the Spirit/Flesh
orderof value was also
functioning
expressed in a parallel order of value: between theology-as
knowledge of things Divine, celestial, of the category of the
Spirit-and lay knowledge,the knowledgecarriedby the laity-as
knowledgeofthecategoryFlesh,i.e.,ofthesocio-humanworldwhose
WorksweretheWorksof naturalunregenerateman,knowledge,then,
of all
that was marginal,secondaryand partakingof the inferiority
thingsterrestrial.
For the Christianprincipleof spiritualSameness and fleshly
Difference-inthesame wayas traditionalNeolithicordershad made
use of what Levi-Strausscalls the "totemicoperator"of the stable
systemof differencesof the animalspecies to at once conceptualize
(Levi-Strauss,1960) and absolutize the principleof Sameness/Difference encoded in their bonding topoi-here made use of the
to at once conrepresentedplanetarysystemofSameness/Difference
ceptualize and absolutize itself.12Verifiedin ChristianPtolemaic
astronomy,this planetarygrid,as a representedphysico-ontological
difference
of substance betweenthe degraded fallencategoryof the
of materialgeneration,change and
earth,subject to the corruptibility
decay (as contrasted to the incorruptibleperfect lunar world)
expressed a Divinelycaused principleof ChristianSameness (the
realmof the perfectionof the Spirit),and of Difference(that realm
This
whichmarkedthe Negationthatwas Naturalman,unregenerate).
structuraloppositionthencame to functionas the orderingprinciple
of the status-organizingprocesses of medieval societies. It deorderof value, also expressed in the repreterminedthe Clergy/Laity
of substance betweenNoble Blood and non-noble,
sented difference
the systemof castes/ordersof the feudalsystem;
whichunderpinned
just as, at the same time,the Christianmedievaltemplateof identity
withthe Feudal mode ofthe
whichhad become fusedand interwoven
Subject-its aristocraticconceptionof Life/Death-psychogeneticalapparatus of the order.
lydeterminedthe ratiomorphic
PeterWinchpoints out that all humangroups institutetheir
social ordersabout specificconceptionsof "Life/Death"whichtake
the place of theirbiological life,orientingtheirbehaviors.These conoppoceptionsinall humanordersare encoded infoundingstructural
of ansitions,definedby Uspenskijet al, as the inclusion/exclusion
26
tithesis,by and throughwhichalone humanordersare enabled to

definethemselvesintobeing,each typeof culturehavingto create its
"corresponding"typeof "chaos" which"represents"just as activea
"creation" as that of the order itself (Uspenskij et al, 1978). All
foundingoppositions,such as that of the Bakama/Bacwezicults of
the Bahaya peoples of IronAge East Africaorofthe lunar/sublunar
of
Galileo's antagonists, express the fact that human as organized
ordersnotonlystruggleagainst theopposing"chaos," buthave need
of it as well, not only destroyingbut also continuallycreatingit
(Uspenskij et al, 1978). For it is the specific "type of non-culture"
which enables its self-definition
as that specific type of culture.3
Hence the oppositions,seen frominside culturesas culture/nature,
done/undone,raw/cooked,or, as in our case, Spirit/Fleshor
are oppositions throughwhich the order/chaos,
Civilized/primitive,
seen froma pointof viewexternalto the domainof
entropy/ectropy,
the cultures,are enabled to functionas the order-informing
systemic
code or replicatorunit(Dawkins,1983).
Others,like HaydenWhite,have followedupon Levi-Strauss's
analysis of these oppositions,which in all cases express the conception of Life/Death.Peter Schmidt,in his studyof the corpus of
mythswhichreach back to IronAge East Africa,has shownhowthe
of the mode of organizationof a new royaldynastyoverthat
triumph
of the local indigenouspeoples organizedabout the spirit-medium
cults of the Bacwezi,the canonizersof the local templateof identity,
only fullysucceeded when,as the narrativerepresentationsof the
myths reveal, it had managed to transformthe conceptions of
withits newlycreated Bakama cult coming
Life/Death,
Order/Chaos,
to signifyCulture/Safety
and the Bacwezi comingto be figuredas a
"dangerous uncivilizedforce"against whichthe royalorderneeds to
confirmits legitimacyas the bearerof "Life" to Bacwezi "death." In
the shift,the local templateof identity
has been made intothe Deilos
to the new Agathos of a royallymediatedidentity
(Schmidt,1978).'14
The titleof this paper,borrowedfromthe multi-level
meanings
of Bishop's finepoem, here refersto the factthatonce these structural oppositions have been put in place, theymust then function
accordingto laws applicable to all humansystems,fromthatof the
royaldynastyof IronAge East Africato that of Christianmedieval
Europe or to that of our own. By markingthe mode of Desire-the
desireof Lifeand ofAversionto Death-these structural
oppositional
codes functionto orientthe parametersof motivations/behaviors
of
theorder.Theyare thustheveryconditionofthe collectivebehaviors
throughwhicheach humansystemrealizes itselfas such a system.
The basic law oftheirfunctioning
musttherefore
be theinterdiction
of
anyceremonywhichmightyoketheantitheticalsignifiersand breach
the dynamicsof order/Chaos,throughwhichthe orderbringsitself
into livingbeing; a dynamicswhich functionslike the code of the
presence/absenceof butyricacid forthe tick,forexample, to prescribe the seeking/avoidingbehavior throughwhich one realizes
oneself as one or the otherformof the self-troping
rhetoricalhuman.
The ceremoniesthereforecannot be foundforthe doctorsof
27
philosophyto wed the Earth to the Moon, for Othello to remain

wedded to Desdemona, forBon to marrya "negro,"since the group
Subjects to whichtheybelongare bondedbya systemof meaningor
semantic charter(Maranda,1980) whichdeterminesthe meaningof
theirmeaning1on thebasis ofthese oppositions(Derrida,1976).Forit
is these behavior-orienting
oppositionswhich,throughthe mediation
of theirconnotativesystemof good/evil,induce stable and shared
in the brain
desiring/aversive endogenous waveshapes
(Thatcher/John,
1977),and constitutethe morphogeneticfantasyor
mode of the culturalimaginationthroughwhichthe groupSubjects
are led to imaginethemselves'16as such a GroupSubject: one which,
mediatedbythese structuraloppositionsand theirrelated
internally
system,is definedby the fact that its members
imagery/figuration
participatein the same mode of mimeticdesire (Girard,1965) and of
aversion(Fanon, 1964).
ofa physico-ontological
The order/chaos
principleof
figuration
Sameness and Differencewas the axiom about whichthe mode of
thestatus-organizing
culturalimagination,
process,theaestheticand
the conceptual orderingrationalworldview of ChristianMedieval
world,was foundedand representedas divinelycaused/ordered.The
layknowledgeof NaturalManofthe humanhistoricalworldbelonged
to the categoryof "chaos" whichdefinedthe orderas such an order.
The heresyofthediscourseof Humanismand oftheStudia lay
in theirdeconstructionof this principleor systemic code, by the
Studia's verycomingintobeing as an alternativesystemof learning
was no longerthatof Christiantheology.
whose referential
authority
as Kristellerpointsout. Many,like
The heresywas not anti-christian
Erasmus,onlywanted to get back to a readingof the originaltext,
back to the
uncontaminatedby some of the later interpretations,
simplepietyoftheearlyfatherand to theoriginalGreektextsbelieved
to be able to elucidate pristinemeanings. Yet it was here that a
mutationoccurredin thata reversalhad takenplace. Insteadof subordinatingthe lay activityof learningto the authorityof theology,
of the lay activity
theologywas now beingsubmittedto the authority
of textualand philologicalscrutinyin the name of the accuracy of
historicalmeaning.The categoryofthecelestial was beingsubmitted
to the activityof the humanista,bearers of the inferiormode of
knowledge,a mode whichhad nowbegunto constituteitselfas a new
ordo or studium.
Even more,a new highersanction system,one based on the
self-correctingprocesses of human knowledge was here being
proposed and put in place, in the contextof a normativeknowledge
whose axiom, as Waterstonpoints out, had been that God had
orderedthe worldaccording to certain principles,and the role of
fallen man was merelyto decipher these principlesand abide by
them,butnotseek to questionand have knowledgeofthingscelestial
which, unaided, his corrupted human knowledge could not
encompass. Indeed, accordingto this axiom, fallen man could not
hope to know the laws by which God had ordered his Creation.'7
Neithercould the Worksof Man as a creatureof the degraded Earth
28
be of efficacyto the truetelos of the Christian,thatof the original

humanistslay in theiruse of the Back-to-Rome/Greece
movementin
orderto revindicatethis NaturalMan, using the auctoritasof their
non-Christian
legacy of the Graeco-Romantraditionof thoughtand
literatureto projectan alternativemode of lifeand being. And the
revindicationof the mode of learningof fallen NaturalMan, of his
of figuration,in which,
Works,was effectedby a counter-system
throughthe great writingsof the ancients, one underwenta new
a renaissance,inwhichone nowbecame notChristian,
Counter-Birth,
but more humane/rational,
the
shifting,in this central re-figuring,
conception of Order/Chaos,bringingin the firstformof a secular
imagingof Life/Death.
The returnto the ancient models, the foundingbasis of the
oftheterm,Studia Humanitatis,
fromthe
Studia,eventheirborrowing
Romans (who had used itwiththe same valorizingintention),
was, at
the levelof figuration,
a return
which,so to speak, gave to thesecularizing European man his Scripturesand "patristic"literatures,as a
counter-exertion
whichenabled the projectionof MaximalMan over
of a lay
against thatof the MaximalGod. Heretheveryimplementing
systemof knowledge,the knowledgeof Naturalman,and of his arts
of rhetoric,
as a valorizingactivityinits
philosophy,profaneliterature,
own right,constituted,beforeCopernicus,a breach of the physicoIt was also a breach
ontological principleof Sameness/Difference.
withthe principleof DivineCausalitywhichthis latterprinciplehad
encoded, and by this, a rupturewith all other human cognitive
mechanisms hithertosanctioned by the "authoritativelightof the
suprasensory."
The wordhumanistacoined on the modelof legista (since the
studyof law based on the revisedJustiniancodes had been the first
orderof knowledgeto begin to claim autonomyfromthe referential
authorityof theology)was thereforeitselfthe expression of this
hereticalviolationof the earlierorderof value,in whichknowledgeof
theWorksof NaturalunregenerateMan was, relatively,
the"chaos" to
the trueknowledgeor the knowledgeof the Divine.
The rewriting
of knowledgeof the Studia was thereforea
to the order of knowledgeof the clergy,the new
counter-writing
knowledge in whose context a new template of Identity,that of
NaturalMan, was being broughtintoexistence in the new narrative
representationsof Renaissance Europe.In whateverforms,whether
humanistor platonic,the commonthrustwas directedtowardsthe
valorizationof the new emergingsense of self,of thatwhichdefined
itselfno longeras Spiritbut as NaturalReason carefullycultivated.
Hence the motifof the "dignityof Man" as a counterto the motifof
fallen man;'8and the valorizationby the originalhumanistsof the
practiceof rhetoricsand of theirworshipof style,the stylebywhich
the new secular mode was writingitselfintobeing(Lanham,1976).
WalterUllmanlinkstheoriginsof humanismand oftheStudia
to the politicalhumanismofthe MiddleAges,whichaccompaniedthe
rise of a new socio-historicalforce,thatof the new men of the City
States, inthe contextofthe beginningUrbanCommercialRevolution.
29
These new men, havingno legitimateplace in the feudal Christian

orderof things,wantingto be citizenswithpoliticalrights,struggled
fora revaluationof NaturalMan in politicalterms.Neithernoblyborn
norpeasant,these freemen,
withouta lord,came to definethemselves
bythe VerbalSymbol"man"-in oppositionto "noble"-universalizdefinition
of
ingit,inoppositionto Christian,as thefirstnon-religious
the human that was ostensibly universallyapplicable. Since the
ChristianWordwas interwoven
withthe Feudal categorystructureor
representationalsystem,theirvalorizationof NaturalMan logically
movedoutsidetheChristianschema, bothinpoliticaland commercial
terms,as the newsociallymobileand rapidlyenrichingnew menalso
began to detach allegiance, in key aspects of theirlives, fromthe
schema (Ullman,1977).Inotherwords,there
orderingreligio-Christian
was a conjuncturein whichan overallchallengewas being mounted
to the foundingstructuraloppositionof the order,absolutizedbythe
analogy(Bateson, 1979) of a divinelydeterminedphysicoinstituting
insubstance between
a difference
ontologicalprincipleof Difference,
ofthe
the degradedmatterof the earthand the crystallineperfection
lunarand supra-lunarrealms.
Hereone mightspeak ofthefigurative
impactoftheStudia,its
of ManthroughprofaneWorks,
schema,ofa rebirth
counter-figurative
thatofhumanreason,and of
one thatspoke of a newkindoffreedom,
its powerto gain knowledgeofall thingsincludingthingscelestial.As
Hubnerpointsout,the epistemologicalbreakof Copernicuscan only
be understoodinthiswideremancipatorycontextofthe newordering
discourse of humanism"whichaims at bringingman closer to God,"
"Ptolemaicastronomyforwhichthe earth
thus at once contradicting
is coincidentalwiththe place of a status corruptions,"
contradicting,
then, an "astronomy tied to the theology of its times." That
Copernicuswas himselfa bearerof this new discourse and its telos
can be seen inthefactthatwhenfaced withhavingto eliminatea contradiction-thatbetween"the humanismof his timeand the existing
astronomy"-he sought to resolve the contradictionin a way
with
even ifhe had to do thiswithdifficulty,
favorableto humanism,"'8
new problemsarisingfromhis resolution.
moveAs Hans Jonas has pointedout,the reallyrevolutionary
mentof the Copernicanbreakwas his revelationthat Natureoffered
no empiricalsupportfortherepresentedphysico-ontological
principle
of Differencethat,in fact,as Galileo's telescope was to verifyand
theearthwas a star,and
Newton'sequallyapplicable laws to confirm,
the stars were earths.'9Humanismand the Studia's projectionof
as Hubnernotes,
NaturalMan withhis NaturalLogos was, therefore,
partof a comprehensivethrustin which"the entireworldhad begun
itself"paripassu withthe "discoveryof new continents
to transform
and new seas," whichwas to bringinchanges thatshook thehitherto
entrenched"sacred" structuresof society,as the secularizationof
the State and the printing
presses and the rise of the middleclasses
destroyedthe "old hierarchiesand privilegedclasses."'20 Out of this
trainof events,a mutationof the humancognitivemechanismswas
set in motion,one in whichthe idea rose "thatthe DivineCreation,
30
like the constructionof a great cosmic machine had to be

understandablebyand throughhumanreason" (Hubner,1983).Itwas
in the contextof this special and overall mutationof the cultural
imagination of the human, that the discontinuitythat would
constitutethe new orderof the naturalsciences had begun,and that
the latertechnologyof Galileo's telescope had its origins.
Centralto the comprehensiveattemptto bringmen nearerto
God, to breach the interdictionof ceremonies between the
was to
Agathos/Deiloscategories of the celestial and the terrestrial,
be theriseofthevernacularnarrative
paripassu with
representations,
the Studia's turnto theancientmodels and itsvalorizationof profane
lettersand the auctoritas of theirdeployment-theirvalorization,
then,oftheworksofthehumanimaginationvisa vistheScripturesas
DivineRevelation.
Even thoughthe earlyhumanistswould mainlywritein Latin,
the valorizationof profaneletterswas to contributeto the breaching
of anotherorderof value,that betweenLatinas the language of the
Churchand the vernacular.AlreadywithDante the vernacularhad
been canonized poetically. But with the Renaissance, the earlier
foundingworksbegan to be drawntogether,as a mutationnowtook
place. This was to be the shiftout of the religio-aesthetic
orderingof
the modes ofthe humanimaginationto the purelyaestheticordering,
withthe riseto centrality
ofthenewprofanenarrative
representations
thatwe have come to call "literature"-a secular figurative
orderthat
would no longerfunctionas an adjunctand contestatorytwinto the
theological system of figurationbut would gradually become
hegemonic,takingits place.
Hans Blumenberghas pointedout thatthe counter-exertion
to
bringmen nearerto God had alreadybegun inthe fourteenth
century
withNicholas of Cusa, whowentas faras was possible to re-form
the
mode of thinkingwithinthe traditionalschema, to re-translateits
internallogic.21 His projectionof the dialogue figureof the layman
wiser than the theologian,withinthe antitheticalconcept of wise
inthesystems
ignorance,was paralleledbyongoingtransformations
of figurationof the narrativediscourses, by the projection of
carnivalesqueupside down figures.
Bakhtinpointsto theexistenceinthese modes ofa dialecticof
and rupture,beginningin the MiddleAges withthe corigidification
development of "forms of high literature"together with the
contestationof "low folkloricand semi-folkloric
forms"thattended
towards satire and parody,withthe latter,risingfromthe dregs of
society and givingrise to the projectionof subversive"prominent
types" such as the rogue,the clown and the fool.These types,while
they were to be central to the later developmentof European
were also types whose "images go back even further...
literature,
intothe depthsof a folklore"emergingfromthe represented"chaos"
against whichthe verticalmedievalorderinstituteditselfas such an
order.
ForwhatHabermassees as thecoexistenceofan evolutionary
process based on Piaget's analogyoftheontogenesisofthechild-in
31
whichthe human,as it moves into more widelyinclusiveaesthetic

structures,begins to divest itselfof the centricitiesof the cognitive
mechanismsof the closed aesthetic ordersof morelocal modes of
being-was quite clearlyhere at workin the evolutionof precisely
these aesthetic-affective
orders which programthe limits of coor
identification
(Habermas,1979),bymeans of systemsof figuration
maintainingimagerysystems.
group-boundary
These newlyprojectedfiguresserved here as the subversive
detonating force that began the destructuringof the boundarybythe Christianmaintainingsystemas itwas imagined/experienced
ofthe
Andtheyinitiatedthattransformation
medievalGroup-Subject.
"imagerysystem"ofthegoverningreligiousorderofthe imagination,
replacing it at the public level withthe "figurationWork"of that
orderingof the now secular imaginationthatcan be describedas the
functionof "literature"
onlyifwe describethe"imaginingSubject" as
a functionof thatordering.
The psycho-aesthetic structures that sustained the
orderof thingswas the target
increasinglyossified Christian-feudal
of these parodicanti-typeseruptingfromthe "chaos" of the margins
withtheirludic weapon of laughter.Theirformof the Jesterheresy
lay,Bakhtinargues,inthe new rightthattheyclaimedto be "other"in
thefeudalworld,and "notmakecommoncause withanysingleone of
theexistingcategories,"since "none ofthese categoriessuits them."
the social
Theirparodic laughterand stance of "not understanding"
logic/illogicof the existingstructures,begins to make visable the
that deformedhuman life in the decaying
"vulgarconventionality"
order
a structurewhichcanonized its own rigidified
feudalstructure,
in whichbothits epistemicand
in the contextof a new environment
The resulting
aestheticorderswereanachronisticand dysfunctional.
falsehood and duplicityof the governingmode of the cultural
imaginationled to a situation in which real life,denied creative
imaginativedirectives,became "crude and bestial" (Bakhtin,1981).
Againstthisfalsehoodthathad "come to saturateall humanrelationships," fabliauxand Schwanke satiricverses, parodic cycles in the
folktraditions,began to clear the ground,as new formssuch as the
novel,withthe antitypesof rogues,clowns, and fools as the major
protagonists,carryingover the original carnivalesque inversion
theverticalstructuring
breachedthe interdictions,
principle,
function,
discourse.
by parodyingthe "highseriousness" of its self-justifying
The theologicalabsolutismofthe Late MiddleAges,whichhad
taken the "simple executivesolution"of repressingany awareness
that"causes come to us frommanysides" and thathumanslivein a
causal world" (Riedl with Kaspar,
"multi-linear,
multi-reinforcing
1984),had opted forthe solutionof a singleoriginalCause, made into
the FinalCause, ofwhichthe MaximalGod was theexemplar.This led
to an orienting"practico-theoretic
logic" of extremeidealism which
bothofthetemporalmaterialworldand
negatedtheexistence/validity
ofthecomplementary
nature,along withthe"spiritual,"a negationof
theircausal inputs(RiedlwithKaspar, 1984).Overagainst the "overvalue of this representation"(Ricoeur,1979), the projectionof the
32
now paved the way foran inversion,for

figuresof clown/rogue/Fool
ofthat"spatio-temporal
the novel'sappropriation
world,"theworldof
"NaturalMan,"the worldin which,consequent withthis mutationin
the figurationof Self and World,as Hubnerwrites,"Americawas
being discovered,a sea routeto India opened up, new fieldsof the
naturalsciences and mathematicswere being established. And the
new wayof seeing."'22Itwas to
way was beingpreparedforan utterly
be an utterlynew way of feeling,of imaginingSelf and World,and a
mode of imaginationthat would no longerfindits referential
figurative auctoritas in the great religious schemas and symbols,but
ratherin a new referential
auctoritas,thatof the fictional
figurative
schemas of the phenomenonwe call "literature."
poetic/dramatic
Literature
in its newrole/ordering
and theStudia were,therefunction,
fore,to be twinformsof each other,formsthroughwhose internal
mediation,the human,who had hithertoimaginedits mode of being
schemas, would now come to
throughmythic/theological
figurative
imagineitself-and to act upon the worldin the mode of thatimagand conination-throughthe great poetic schemas whichrefigured
figuredthe firstformof the secularlycharteredhuman being: the
worldof its orderof things.For it is not,as Marxthought,the Earthly
Familythatholds the secretofthe projectionofthe HolyFamily.Itis,
rather,the reverse.
The cap and bells of Bakhtin'sparodic figureswas to transformthe modes of projection/figuration
of Self/Group
self and, therethe entropicChaos to the orderof
fore,of the mode of Not-The-Self,
the dominant model of Being. They were, then, to refigurethe
aesthetic order,expandingthe limitsof the boundary-maintaining
systemof the We, and its new spatial extracultural
space (Uspenskij
et al, 1978). In this they were performing
an aesthetic function
analogous to that of the originalhumanists,who, in turningto the
auctoritasof theirpagan legacyto legitimatethe heresyof the study
of profane letterswhich no longer found its sanction system in
theology,but ratherin whatthe Spanish humanist,Sepuilveda,called
the purely"literary,"were to transform
the mode of functioning
of
humancognitivemechanism:our aesthetemes,to coin a phrase,and
our epistemes.
Once the authoritative
lightof the suprasensoryhad been displaced, something,as Heideggerpointsout, had to take the empty
place of its vanished authority.Here the authorityof Reason,23 the
Reason coded by the Natural Logos of humanismbased on the
explanatoryprincipleof a NaturalCausality verifiedby the truthof
And
empiricalreality,movedintothe place of thevanishedauthority.
the configuredmacro-conceptof Natural Causality now took the
place of Divine Causality as the OriginalCause, the extra-human
source ofthe new principleofSameness and Difference,
expressed in
a new structuralopposition,thatof Reason and its Lack-state.
A centralrhetoricalstrategy(analyzed by Valesio in another
contextas thatofthe topos of iconicity,
a topos whichis able to yoke
a memberof a class withthe class of classes, to configurethepartof
the whole)24
now projectedthe image of the new menas the imageof
33
Italso projectedthe ratiomorphic

apparatusor mode
man-in-general.
of reason,whichfunctionedto orienttheautopoesis ofthisnew mode
with the
of human being, as isomorphicwith reason-in-general,
reason of Nature herself: nature "as life. . burstingforthwith
existence" (Valesio, 1980).Itwas a reason ostensiblyattachedto the
figuresof the mercantileupperbourgeoisieand newlylandedgentry.
of Natural
Infact,itwas themodeofreasonofthetemplateof identity
of the secular human,one which
Man, the firstself-representation
would absolutize itselfno longerthroughthe auctoritasof the gods
but throughthat of a Mono-Logos/Reason,which stigmatizedany
alternativemode of the Logos/Reasonas the Lack-stateof its reason
of Reason-in-general.
and, therefore,
A shiftnow took place. Since physicalnature,knowledgeof
which had been freed from serving a verifyingfunctionin the
order/chaosdynamics of the system-ensemble,another mode of
nature,humannature,would now be installedin its place. The repreof degrees of reason besentationof a naturallyordereddistribution
humangroupsenables whatmightbe called a homotweendifferent
figuredas a by/nature
ontologicalprincipleof Sameness/Difference,
between groups,and could now
differenceof superiority/inferiority
ontofunctiontautologicallyas theverifying
proofofan infrasensorily
logized,25 naturallycaused status-organizingprinciple,a principle
endowmentof Reason (ratherthan of Noble
based on differential
Blood) and verifieddynamicallyin the empiricalrealityof the order.
was now
The figurationof this reason, as reason-in-general,
effectedbya series of greatinternments
(Foucault,1971). First,that
ofthe NewWorldpeoples inencomiendasystems.Herebegan thatreenactmentof Ptolemaic astronomywhich Foucault analyzes in his
of the Mad in seventeenth-century
book dealing withthe internment
France:thatof a new orderof discourse whose functionwas now to
and
encode the homo-ontologicalprincipleof Sameness/Difference
the basic structuralopposition of order/chaos.For if,as Foucault
argues, a society's self-imagingor identityrests (as Said explains
further)
upon its detachmentfromwhatwas not itself,the "rational"
discourse of everyordermustfunction"lawfully,"in response to the
governingsystemof figurationgeneratedfromthe structuralopposition of the imagingof Self and Other,to domesticate the reprealone enables the
sentationsof the Other,whose mode of difference
mode ofSameness, expressed inthebondingtopos oftheorder,to be
as a mode of conspecificsameness. In other
imagined/experienced
words, the representationof the Other must functionin a ruleto theexigencies
governedmannerto domesticateitsfiguration-Work
of the orderingmade of discourse whichchartersthe mode of the
Self.
Self/Group
Hence the humanistGin6s de Suptilvedawas the firstto reenact in humanistratherthan in theologicalterms,26the functionof
of the New World
Ptolemaicastronomy,and to fitthe representation
peoples to the exigencies of a discourse whose functionwas to
difon the basis of a projectedby/nature
legitimatetheirinternment,
ferencewhichhad ordainedthattheyshould be "naturalslaves." His
34
"proofs"of this were takenfromthe empiricalrealityof the cultural

differences
oftwovastlydifferent
modes of life,a difference
whichhe
definedas a hierarchy,
coding his symbolicmode of logic in a series
of rhetoricalantitheses. The New World peoples were homunculi
(littlemen)whencomparedto the man,the magnanimousSpaniards;
as womento men/children
to parents/monkeys
to men.The proofof
this was that they lacked Lettersand writtenmonumentsto their
The factthattheyofferedhumansas a sacrificeto theirgods
history.
provedthattheyLacked NaturalReason.27
Uspenskijet al pointout thatthe expansion of any sphereof
cultural organizationleads to the expansion of a sphere of nonorganization.Ifthe "narrowworldof Helleniccivilization"had its correspondingnarrowsphere of encircling"barbarians,"the spatial
civilizationwas accompaniedbythe
growthof ancientMediterranean
growthof the "extraculturalworld."Withthe shiftof Mediterranean
man into a planetarydimension,the Greek Barbarianswould be redefined not by theirlack of the
figuredas the homunculi-natives,
Greek mode of order,but by theirLack-stateof the firstformof
secular humanreason,projectedas isomorphicwithNaturalReason:
as the irrationalChaos, then,to the naturallyrationalorderof the
human.
The internment
ofthe NewWorldpeoples wouldbe followedby
that of the Africanlineage groups, homogenizedunder the commercialtradename of "negro."This objectification
ofthehumanwas
justifiedat firstin religioustermsas divinelycaused by the Curse
placed on Ham. Soon the shiftwould be made to the humanistcondetermineddifferenceof
cept of NaturalCausality,of a by/nature
reason, in whichthe Africanmode of culturalreason was seen as a
in the plantationsystem as slave
non-reason;and his internment
as
him/her
labor,as beingcarriedout forthe purposeof rationalizing
an inferior
mode of being in need of rationalhumanbaptism.
The great internmentsof the encomienda/plantation
archipelago was followedin Europe itself,withinthe internallogic of the
same orderingdiscourse,withthatof the Mad as theopposed icon of
that Defect of Natural Reason, which mnenomicallyequated the
secular humanistmode of reason withreason-in-general.28
Interned
withthemad werealso thejobless and thepoor.The threecategories,
the homunculi/native/negro,
the Mad, the poor and the jobless,
functionedto express what might be called a ratio-ontological
principleof Sameness and Difference:to express, and empirically
verifythe rhetoricalmacro-Figureof a NaturalCausality whichdifferentiatedhumangroupsalong a continuumof different
degrees of
which was part of a universallaw of
rationality,a differentiation
Naturebeyondhumancontrol.29
NaturalReason and the degrees of its possession-and this
was verifiedby one's position in the social structure-functioned,
therefore,as Noble Blood had done, as the criterionforthe status
of the order.In this orderof figuration
the "negro,"alstratigraphy
thoughequated withthe missing linkbetween Man and Ape, was
made, in the Linneaansystem,the NegativeOrderon the basis of his
35
lack of Reason. While his Lack of Reason excluded him from

governinghimself,as the Europeancould,he was neverthelessincorporatedintothe same table of being,the schema ofthestructural
opand of the discourses genepositionbetweenReason/Lack-of-reason
ratedfromits relatedClassical episteme.30
A mutationwould occur, however,withthe transumption31of
the principleofSameness/Difference
to a newbio-ontologicalform.In
thisnewformthatwouldunderlietheexpansionofthe IndustrialAge,
thefigureofChaos wouldno longerfunctionas the Iconofa Defectof
NaturalReason, since withthe riseof purelymiddleclass culture,the
Defector Lack-stateofthe Fullnessof beingwas nowto be thatofthe
Lack of a mode of human being, the Indo-European,now made
isomorphicwithBeing humanitself.
As Mosse shows, in his bookon the Nazi holocaust and on the
enablingdiscourses thatmade the holocaust possible, the Figureof
the Semite and the "Negro" now in the context of this shift,
functionedas the Chaos to the new Normof the human; as the
negativeantitypesto the "aesthetic criteria"of the Greeks,whose
classical sculpture was now made isomorphic,phylogenetically
speaking, with being human. And an entire range of the
based on the equation made bythe pseudoscience
heroes/heroines,
and moralinof phrenologybetweenthe Ideal externalphysiognomy
nocence and moralevil,fromIvanhoeto StarWars,was nowbeingput
in place. Intheoverallrangeofthisbio-aestheticsystemoffiguration,
wouldnow come to be experienced
the Negro/Semite's
physiognomy
as equated withmoralevil (Mousse, 1978) and, therefore,
lynchable,
exterminable.32
For withthe rise and expansion of the IndustrialAge and the

riseto hegemonyofthe groupswho spearheadedthe IndustrialRevoof humanism's"naturalMan" took place. The
lution,a transumption
new template of identitywas based on the imaginingof the
on the analogy of a livingorganism.As the State
Self/Group-Self
became a service functionof the new regulatoryactivityof the
on the
economic life-the expressionof the conceptionof Life/Death
analogy of a biological organism,impelledby the refleximpulseof
hunger and of self-preservation-33-the former Reasons-of-State
political Logos now gave way to a new Reasons-of-the-organiccommunity
Logos whose structuraloppositionsgovernedthe organizationof knowledgein the new epistemeor ratiomorphic
apparatus.
Itwas a Logos inwhichthe Indo-Europeanmode of humanbeingwas
canonized throughthe discourse of philogistsand literary
scholars,
such as Schlegel and his pupilLassen,34 as theexpressionofthemost
perfect"organic"realizationofthatbiogeneticelan vitalthatwas the
being of its peoples. This was incarnatedin the great
superior/will
language familythatwas as unique to theirbeingas
Aryan/Sanskrit
was the epic literaturewhichdistinguisheditselfand themfromthe
Semite Other.35At this level
morerootless egoistic, non-epic-owning
of Othernessthe "negro"was noteven considered,since he was not
imaginedeven to have languages worthstudying,norto partakein
culture,so total was his mode of NiggerChaos.
36
this topos of iconicity

The social behaviorsthatwereto verify
which yoked the Indo-Europeanmode of being to human being in
to theexemplary
general,and the new middleclass modelof identity
Normof this new "empirico-transcendental
doublet,"man (Foucault,
as ifa "naturalbeing"),wouldbe carried
1984)(imagined/experienced
out bythe complementary
non-discursive
practicesof a new wave of
of nativelabors in new plantationsorders(native
great internments
wage labor), and by the massacres of the colonial era36-leading
logically to their Summa in the Auchwitz/Belsenand in the
Gulag/Cambodiaarchipelagoes.
formsof segregatingthe Ultimate
Throughall this,different
Chaos that was the Black-from the apartheidtof the South to the
ofthevote,and
lynchingsinbothNorthand South,to theirdeprivation
in an inferior
confinement
secondaryeducationalsphere,to the logic
of the jobless/ghetto/drugs/crime/prison
archipelagoesof today-ensuredthat,as Uspenskijet al note,the"activecreation"ofthetypeof
Chaos, whichthedominantmodelneeds forthe replicationof itsown
system, would continue. It thus averted any effortto find the
ceremonieswhichcould wed thestructural
the
oppositions,liberating
Black fromhis Chaos function,
since thisfunctionwas the keyto the
dynamicsof its own orderof being.As Las Casas had arguedagainst
Sepilveda-when refutingthe latter'shumanisttheorythat human
sacrificecarriedout bythe New Worldpeoples was proofof the fact
oftheirLack of NaturalReason and,therefore,
thatitwas justto make
waragainst themto protectthe innocentswhoweresacrificedand to
take overtheirterritory-"tosacrificeinnocentsforthe good of the
commonwealthis not opposed to naturalreason, is not something
abominableand contrary
to nature,butis an errorthathas itsoriginin
natural reason itself."37 It is an error, then, not in the
speaking/behavingsubjects, but in the ratiomorphicapparatus
generic to the human,the cognitivemechanismthat is the "most
recentsuperstructure
ina continuumofcognitiveprocesses as old as
lifeon thisplanet,"and,as such,"the least testedand refinedagainst
the real world"(Riedl/Kaspar,1984). And it is onlywithscience, as
Riedland Kaspar (quotingRomanSexl) observe,thatthereis everany
true "victoryover the ratiomorphicapparatus"-such as that of
Galileo's and his telescope over the abductive logic of the if/then
sequence of inference dictated behind the backs of their
consciousness to the Aristoteliandoctors of philosophyas the
speakingsubjects of the Christian-medieval
systemensemble.
II. Re-enactingHeresy:The NewStudies and theStudia as a Science
of HumanSystems
The mainproposalhereis thatthe calls made inthe 1960s and
1970s for new areas/programsof studies, was, although nonconsciously so at the time,calls whichre-enactedin the contextof
ourtimesa parallelcounter-exertion,
a parallelJester'sheresyto that
of the Studia's. But because of our non-consciousnessof the real
37
dimensionsof whatwe wereabout,we asked at firstonlyto be incorporated into the normativeorder of the present organizationof
knowledgeas add-ons, so to speak. We became entrapped,as a
result,in Bantustanenclaves labelled "ethnic"and "gender"and/or
studies."These enclaves thenfunctioned,
as David Bradley
"minority
notes,interalia, to exemptEnglishDepartmentsfromhavingto alter
theirexistingdefinition
of Americanliterature.Even more,these enclaves functionedto exempt the callers forthe new studies from
us, withrespectto
takingcognizance of the anomalythatconfronted
a definitionof American literaturewhich lawlikelyfunctionedto
exclude not only Blacks, but all the other groups whose "diverse
modalitiesof protest"(Detienne,1979) in the 1960s and 1970s had
fueledthe call fornew studies.
Thomas Kuhnpointsout thatthe recognitionof anomalies is
the firststep whichleads to changes in the paradigmsof the natural
sciences38And inthesame contextthe linguisticscholarWhatmough
has arguedthathumanobserversare partsofthe cosmos whichthey
observe, that since all the knowledgethat orders our behavioris
gained fromthese humanobservers,such knowledgemusteitherbe
This knowledge
solipsisticor reducemanto a partofhis environment.
is, therefore,not to be trustedunless the observerin his role as
knower finds the means to convert himself into an "external
observer."Amongthe means whichhe proposes is the takingof the
"all pervadingregularity
notedin language,"ratherthanthe speaking
Andthese regularitiesappear
subject,as the object of investigation.
of language,fromeveryday
"all along the road throughthe heirarchy
chit chat throughlaw, and religions,liturgyand homily,poetry,
'literature,'science and philosophyto logic and mathematics."39
he goes on, willenable the knowerto make use of
These regularities,
to treat
whathe calls themathematiketechne,whichenables her/him
forexample,accordingto theirgrammars
languages like chemistry,
of regularities,as if man, i.e. the speaking/thinking/representing
subject,"did notexistat all." One problemremained,however:thatof
theperceptionofthese regularities.For,because the regularitiesare,
so to speak, "builtin"to thediscourses,theusers ofthese discourses
cannot normally isolate the existence of these regularities
(Whatmough,1967). And, as Foucault remindsus, this problemis
applicable notonlyforthe boundarymaintaining"truediscourse" of
the positivisminheritedfromthe nineteenth-century
episteme, but
also forthe eschatologyof positivism'scounter-discourse,
Marxism,
bothgeneratedfromthesame ground(Foucault,1973)ofa materialist
metaphysics,and each dialecticallythe conditionof the post-atomic
dysfunctionalsovereigntyof the "grammarof regularities"of the
other.
The anthropologist,Legesse, has pointed to the extent to
whichwe are trappedin the ordering"categories and prescriptions"
of ourepistemicorders.He notes,however,thatthe liminalgroupsof
any order are the ones most able to "free us" fromthese preexperiencethe "injustice
scriptions,since itis theywho existentially
inherentin structure"(Legesse, 1973),that is, in the veryorderingof
38
the orderwhichdictatesthe "grammarof regularities"throughwhich

the systemicsubjects perceivetheirmode of realityas isomorphic
withrealityin general. The normativecategories of any order-for
example the aristocratic category of European feudalism-are
normativepreciselybecause the structureoftheirlivedexperienceis
thattheordergives itselfof itself.
isomorphicwiththe representation
The liminalcategorieslikethose ofthe bourgeoisieinthefeudalorder
ofthings,on theotherhand,experiencea structuralcontradiction
between their lived experience and the grammarof representations
whichgeneratethe mode of realityby prescribingthe parametersof
collectivebehaviorsthat dynamicallybringthat"reality"intobeing.
The liminalframeof reference,therefore,unlikethe normative,can
providewhat Uspesnkijet al call the "outerview,"fromwhichperspective the grammarsof regularitiesof boundaryand structuremaintainingdiscourses are perceivable,and Whatmough's"external
observer'sposition"made possible.
What the calls forNew Studies at firstoverlooked,however,
was preciselythe regularitieswhichemergedintoviewinthe wake of
the "diverse modalities of protest" whose non-coordinatedyet
spontaneous eruptionnow broughtintounconcealedness-not only
natureof the exclusion of the diverseprothe lawlikerule-governed
as group-subjectsfromany access to the
testinggroups/categories
means of representation,
butalso the regularitiesof the exclusionof
their frames of reference and historical/cultural
past from the
normative
an exclusionso consistentas to be clearlyalso
curriculum,
This consistencywas reinforcedbythe emergenceof
rule-governed.
the equation betweenthe group/categories
excluded fromthe means
of representationand the ratios of theirdegrees of socio-economic
in the worldoutside.
empowerment/disempowerment
The dynamicpresenceof rule-governed
correlationswhichdeterminedrulesof in/exclusion,
was, however,onlyperceivablebythe
calls forNew Studies,calls like"thediversemodalnon-orchestrated
itiesof protest"inthe Greekcitystates analysed byDetienne,which,
by breachingparallel dietaryand other rules, not only called the
orderof the city-stateintoquestion,
ontologyof the religio-political
but made perceivable,throughwhat they protested against, the
the
foundingOrder/Chaos
oppositionalcategorieswhichunderpinned
boundary/structure
maintainingdynamics of the polis (Detienne,
1979).
These regularitiespointedto a fundamental
questionwhich,at
the time,remainedunasked. It had to do withthe anomalous implicationthattheyweredeterminedbyruleswhichtranscendedtheconscious intentionof the academics who enacted the decision-making
processes as to whatto in/exclude,
just as the rules of inferenceof
Galileo's doctors of philosophywere dictated by the ratiomorphic
apparatus or rationalworldview based on the a prioriof an orderof
value betweenthe imperfect
terrestrial
and the crystallineperfection
of the lunar realm: the Order/Chaosopposition of the autopoetic
ensemble. What,in this
dynamicsof the Christianmedieval-system
case, then, determinedthe rules which determinedthe decision39
withintegrity
makingprocesses bywhichindividualscholars,working
and according to the criteriaof objective standards, in/excluded?
Whatdeterminedwhatshouldand should notbe definedas American
Fiction,and the mode of measure of the "objective" standards of
individualscholars?
The questionwas notto be asked, however,untiltheafterside
of the experienceof disillusionwhichthe callers all underwentand
which David Bradleytraces in his article,"Black and Americanin
1982." For itwas to be a recognition,
made byus all on theotherside
of that experience, of the existence of objective limits to the
of Blacks intothe normativeorderof being/knowing
of
incorporation
the presentorder,that would lead to our further
recognitionof the
need foran epistemologicalbreak.
Bradleywas one of a group of Blacks forwhomAffirmative
bias" of the dynamics
Action,by counteringthe "inbuiltdistribution
of the order,had worked.The interference
of Affirmative
Actionwith
the normativefunctioningof the order with respect to the distribution-atthegroupcategorylevel-of unequal ratiosof access to
educational empowerment,had enabled Bradley,togetherwith a
to breachtherule-governed
nature
groupofyoungBlacks likehimself,
of the proscription
whichconfinedBlacks-as-a-group
to a secondary
educational orbit,relativeto theirWhitepeers-as-a-group.
Bradleyat
the time,observinghis father'sgreatjoy,had determinedto do everythingto provehis father'sand his own privatehope true.His father's
hope was thatat long last Blacks wereto be allowed to breakout of
the secondaryorbitto whichtheirlives and dreams had been confined,and ifthishope wouldnotbe realizedintimeforhis own lifeto
be graced bythe change, it would in timeat least be realizedforhis
son's. Bradley'sown hope had been thatonce Blacks wereincludedin
vast numbers in the highest levels of highereducation, and had
workedhardand provedthemselves,theywould be so numerous,so
no longerthe tokenexception,thattheywouldeventuallyhave to be
ofskin."However,
distinguishedbycriteriaotherthanby"the uniform
he experiencedon the campus both the overtand covertformsof
thatthe
anathematizationwhichmetthebreachingofthe interdiction
black presence-as-a-group
implied(since what Hofstadtercalls the
categorystructureof the "representationalsystem" "America"'40is
based on the dynamics of the contradictionbetween individual
equality and group heirarchy).These experiences slowly stripped
away the illusionof any fundamentalchange inthe orderingof group
relations.The shouts of "Nigger!Nigger!"in the citadel of reason in
the heartof the non-redneck
campus, the phoned bombthreats,the
fragiledefenselessness of the Black studentsin the face of a mindthe ineffective
less hostility,
wringingof hands of concernedLiberal
Whites, were paralleled by the more discreet acts of partition
of
whose proscription
administrators,
(Detienne,1979) by university
the financiallystarvedBlack CultureCenter,always a whitewashed
rottinghouse to be reached bya scrambleup a muddybank,mainly
always on the netheredge of campus, once again gave the ruleof the game away.
governedregularity
40
Blacks would be allowed on the campus as a group,admitted

to have even a culture,as long as this "culture" and its related
enclave studies could be made to functionas theextra-cultural
space,
in relation,no longerto a Wasp, but now moreinclusivelyto a White
space; as the
American,normativelyEuroamericanintra-cultural
mode of Chaos imperativeto the latter'snew self-ordering.
(The readapted WesterncultureCore Curriculumis the non-consciousexpression of this more "democratizing"shiftfromWasp to Euro.)
had been effected,theorderofvalue
Indeedonce thismarginalization
terms,withthe categoryhomeostasis returning
recycledin different
to its "built in normalcy,"the abuse and the bomb threatsceased.
Order and Chaos were once more in theirrelationalinterdefining
places, stablyexpressingthe bio-ontologicalprincipleof Sameness
and Difference
ofthe presentorder,as the rule-governed
discourseof
Galileo's doctors of philosophyfunctionedto verifythe physicoon whichtheChristian
ontologicalmode of Sameness and Difference
medievalorderrested beforethe Studia and Copernicus,beforethe
had pulled the
Jester's heresy of the figuresof rogue/clown/fool,
down to
self-representation
"high seriousness" of its self-justifying
earth.
Bradleynow recognizedthat he had been wrongto hope that
Black lives,fromhis father'sto his own,had to "runalong the same
line.., one that rises and falls like a sine wave," one that is "a
graphedfunctionnot of a mathematicalrelationbetweensides and
angles but of a social relationshipbetween Blacks and American
society itself."Sometimesthe line could be "on the positiveside of
the base line,"at othertimeson the negativeside. Iftheeffectswere
the functionhad always to remainthe same. Thus his hope
different,
forthe nextgenerationof Blacks, in this case forhis younggodson,
would have to be cut downto realisticsize. His hope could onlynow
be that bythe timehis godson came of age, the "graphof black will
once again be on the upswing,"givinghim,as Bradleyhimselfhad
some knowledge,some color
had,"a littletimeto gain some strength,
to hold inside himself."For thatwould/couldbe, "all the hope there
is."
Yet the beginningof hope also lay here.The recognition
of the
regularitiespointedoutside the "functionalrhetoric"of the Liberal
creed to the existence of objective limitsand, therefore,
of laws of
functioningwhich, beyond the conscious intentionalitiesof their
subjects-White or Black-determined the limits to the order's
normativeincorporation
of those whose lives in a "free"countryhad
to be made to serveas the "graphedfunction"of the boundarymaintainingsystem,as its markersof Chaos, the Not-Us.
The Spanish historianAmericoCastro had notedtheexistence
of this systemicfunctionof Blacks in the comparisonhe made between theirfunctionand that of Jew and Moor in sixteenth-century
Spain. AlthoughconvertedChristiansand, therefore,"accordingto
the gospel and the sacramentsof the Church,"forming
a partof the
"mysticalBodyof Christand His Church,"these categorieshad been
stigmatizedas beingof unclean blood and hereticaldescent (i.e.,not
41
Theirproscribedlives-they were excluded from

Spanish-Christian).
jobs; many were burnt at the stake by the Inquisition for
"heresy"-enabled themto functionas the mode of Differencefrom
whichthe new secularizingbondingprincipleoflimpieza,whichcame
to constitutethe "boundarymaintainingsystem"of the Statal Group
Subject of monarchicalSpain, could be generatedas an ontologized
principleof Sameness. HereAm6ricoCastro pointedto the regularity
of the parallelbywhichthe subordinationofthe livesofthe categorybearers of differenceto their"grasped function"is repeated in the
lives of presentday AmericanBlacks, who are todayre-enactingand
"livinga drama similarto that of the Spanish moriscos and Jews,"
even though according to the Constitutionthey formpart of the
AmericanWe (AmericoCastro,1977) or group-Subject.
did the by
Onlywiththeircompletestrategicmarginalization
theirfunction:to
now bantustanizedenclave studies beginto rethink
grasp a connectionwiththatof the LiminaloutsiderJester'srole of
the originalStudia,a roleto whichtheywereheir.This became clear
as theybegan to take as theirparallel objects of inquirythe representationswhichhad been made of theirgroups bythe orderof discourse of mainstreamscholarship;as theybegan to findthatthese
representations,too, functionedaccording to across the board,
objectiverules.
What was here revealed,when taken all together,were the
ofan Otherexcludedseries,withthedisregularitiesofthe "figuring"
to constitutethemas a "humanspecies" totemic
course functioning
operator which paralleled that of the "animal species" totemic
operatoroftraditionalNeolithicsocieties as wellas theplanetarygrid
of the Christianmedieval order.This discourse, then,operated to
function
of Ptolemaicastronomyinthe
servethesame extra-cognitive
MiddleAges. Itre-enactedthecelestial/terrestrial
physico-ontological
principleof Differencein new terms:this time in terms of a bioexpressed, not in the
ontological principleof Sameness/Difference,
orderof value of the Christian-medieval
order,but in the
Spirit/Flesh
mode of Order/Chaosof our own.
rational/irrational
Whateverthe group-women, natives,niggers-whateverthe
category-the Orient,Africa,the tropics-the orderingprincipleof
of an ontologicalorderof
the discourse was the same: the figuration
value between the groups who were markersof "rationality"and
those whowerethemarkersof its Lack-State.Andtheanalyses which
had begun to perceivethe lawlikeregularitiesof these orderingdiscourses went fromVirginiaWoolf's observationof the compulsive
of
insistence by "angrymale professors"on the mental inferiority
women,throughCarterG. Woodson's diagnosis (1935)of the lawlike
inAmericanschools distortedhistory
mannerinwhichthecurriculum
so as to representthe Whites as everythingand the Blacks as
nothing,to Aime Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism,which again
diagnosed the regularitieswithwhichthe colonizersrewrotethe past
and the colonized
to show themselves as havingdone everything
Said's dissection
nothing,and, morerecentlyAbdel Malek's/Edward
of the phenomenonof Orientalism.41What began to come clear was
42
of rules of figuration,
the realityof the reflexautomaticfunctioning
parallel to those of Galileo's doctors of philosophy,which went
of the objectivelyrationalscholar, rules
beyond the intentionality
was thatof the ratiomorphic
whichthenrevealedthatthe objectivity
apparatus or cognitivemechanism of our presentorganizationof
knowledge,one bywhichwe are all, includingthe liminalOthers,nonconsciouslygoverned.
A parallel suspicion of something automatic functioning
beyond the conscious control of the human had impelled the
exchange of lettersbetween Einsteinand Freud,which was to be
published underthe title, WhyWar?. In the early decades of the
centuryEinsteinhad writtenFreud,asking ifhis newdisciplinecould
provide some hope with respect to, and in the context of, the
wars. Freudhad reaccelerationof the phenomenonof inter-human
sponded thattherewas his theoryof the instinctsbutthatas yethe
had no overallanswer. Psychologyas a discipline,however,was to
confrontthe question by focussingon the connectionbetweenthe
phenomenonof nationalismand the processes of socializationwhich
causal factor.Andin
exacerbatednationalistallegiances as a primary
his HistoryofSexuality,MichelFoucaultsuggestedthatwiththeshift
fromthe monarchicalorderofthingsto thebourgeoisorderinits pure
state-the transpositionfroma governingfigurative"symbolicof
inwhich
blood" to whatmightbe called a "metaphoricsof naturality"
the bourgeoisie comes to image its boundary-maintaining
GroupSubject systemon the analogy of a livingorganism-the imperative
oftheself-preservation
ofthe"naturalcommunity"
race,
(nation-Volk,
culture)metaphorically
ontologizedas a "biological" Body,had led to
the accelerationof wars betweenmen who were now led to imagine
as "naturalbeings."'42
themselves,forthe firsttimein humanhistory,
RecentlyLewis Thomas,the biologist,has again focussed on
the connection between nationalism-which he sees as an
blindalleyforthehumanas a species-and thethreatof
evolutionary
nuclear extinction.Like Einsteinearlier,Thomas has glimpsedthat
hope, if it is to exist, would have to be found in a new orderof
knowledge.Andhe suggests thatthedisciplinesthatwereconcerned
withthe problemsof humanbehavior,althoughstillin a gropinguncertainstage, are the onlyones capable of providingan answer to
mankind'squest forsocial hope; that one day therewould emerge
fromthese uncertainattempts,a "solid" discipline as "hard" as
physics,plagued "as physicsstill is withambiguities"yetwithnew
rules "and new ways of gettingthingsdone, such as forinstance
gettingrid of patrioticrhetoricand thermonuclearwarfareall at
once."43
The proposal I am makingis that such a disciplinecan only
of knowledge,as the re-enactingof
emergewithan overallrewriting
the originalheresyof a Studia, reinventedas a science of human
systems,fromthe liminalperspectiveofthe"base" (Dewey,1950)new
ofthemselves
Studies,whose revelatory
heresylies intheirdefinition
away fromthe Chaos roles in whichtheyhad been defined-Black
from Negro, Chicano from Mexican-American,Feminists from
43
Women,etc. Forthese have revealedtheconnectionbetweentheway

we identify
ourselves and the way we act upon/know
the world.They
have made clear thatwe are governedinthewaywe knowtheworldby
the templatesof identityor modes of self-troping
speciation,about
which each human system auto-institutesitself, effectingthe
of stable reproduction
dynamicsof an autopoetics,whose imperative
has hitherto
transcendedthe imperativesof the humansubjects who
collectivelyput it intodynamicplay.The proposedscience of human
decentersthe systemicsubject. Instead,ittakes
systems,therefore,
as the object of its inquirythe modes of symbolicself-representation
(Creutzfeld,1979), about whicheach human systemauto-institutes
itself,the modes of self-troping
rhetoricity
throughwhichthe Subject
actualizes its modeof beingas a livingentity.In
(individual/collective)
addition,it takes the ratiomorphicapparatus or episteme, which
exists as the enablingrationalworldviewof the self-troping
mode of
beingas an object of inquiryinthe comparativecontextin whichit is
definable as one of the cognitivemechanisms determinedby the
"psychogeny"of the humanratherthan by the phylogenyof purely
biologicalorganisms.
Takingthe connectionthatThomas makes between"patriotic
rhetoric"and "thermo-nuclear
warfare"as a keylinkage,a science of
humansystemswilltake mostcruciallyas an object of its inquiry
the
modes of cultural imagination of human systems-Jerison's
"imagerysystems"-together with the laws of functioningof the
rhetoricallycoded mode of figuration,which, with its internal
mediationof the mimesis of Desire (Girard,1965) and of Aversion
(Fanon, 1967), orients the normative seeking/avoiding/knowing
behaviorsof the systemicsubjects. For it is thisgoverningsystemof
whichintegrates
figuration
generatedfromthemodeofself-definition
withthe neurophysiological
of the brain,thatfunctionsas
machinery
the shared integrative
notonlythe mode of
mechanism,determining
consciousness or "worldof mind"oftheorder,butservingalso, at the
leveloftheorder,to stabilizethe responseto the
aesthetico-affective
of Desire forall thatis theSelf/Order
and ofAversionto
target-stimuli
all thatis the Chaos of the Self,the Death of its Life.It is bythereby
securing shared and predictably functioning endogenous
1977), of the normative
waveshapes in the brain (Thatcher/John,
sets limitsto that
Subject of the order,thatthe systemof figuration
to the
and,therefore,
Subject's mode of imaginingits Self/Group-Self
knowledgethat it can have of its world.
A science ofhumansystemswhichtakes the laws offiguration
of humansystems as its objects of inquirymust,therefore,
adopt a
syntheticratherthan categorizedapproachto its subject. In orderto
laws of functioning,
it must
study their rhetor-neurophysiological
the naturaland
above all breachthedistinctionbetweenbrain/minds,
the humansciences. Forone of its majorhypothesesis thatsystems
of figurationand theirgroup-speciatingFiguration-Work
essentially
constitutethe shared governingrhetor-neurophysiological
programs
or abductionschemas throughwhichhumanGroupSubjects realize
themselvesas boundarymaintainingsystems.
44
These governingrhetor-neurophysiological
programs-which
can often function as regressive defects of social fantasy
1977), as in the case of limpieza de sangre and of
(Thatcher/John
Aryaness, as well as of an ontologized "whiteness"-are the
coded
mechanisms which determinethe limitsof the figuratively
systems.Theythenfunction,as in the case
"boundary-maintaining"
of the Americanorder,to set objective limits(such as those to
Bradley'shopes) to the definitionof its fiction;and to the possible
ofthe Black CultureCenterat the netheredge ofthe
non-proscription
of
campus, as the physicalexpressionof the rhetoricalconfiguration
definitionof itself.
the mode of chaos to the order's self-troping
Hence the paradoxof the majorproposalthatwe make:thatit is the
literaryhumanitieswhichshould be the umbrellasite forthe transdisciplinaryrealizationof a science of humansystems.
The archaeologist McNeill argues that the representational
arts have played a centralrole in all humanorders,reachingfrom
ones, and
simpletribalsocieties to our morecomplexcontemporary
this role has been that of explainingthe world not in terms of
factualitybut of religious schemas fromsome mythology.These
schemas-the phenomenondefined by Bateson as the informing
morphogeneticfantasy,byWinchas the schemas whichencode the
order's conception of Life/Death-once in place, functionas the
"independentlyreal" (Winch, 1970) for that society, orienting
behaviors.McNeillfurther
argues that"literatureand the humanities
ingeneral,"as the modernformofthese representational
arts,should
be "studied objectivelyfromthe outside" just as ethnographers
wouldinvestigate"the parallelartsintribalsocieties" (McNeill,1981).
Ifthese propositionshave validity,
the majorparadoxwouldseem to
be thatthe literary
humanities,as theywereorganizedinthe context
of the nineteenth century's re-orderingof the episteme-a
framein whichthey still function-were
conceptual-organizational
set up preciselyto guardagainst anysuch hereticalco-identification.
It was a framethat posited the "civilized,"definedby its havinga
writtenliterature,
definedbyits Lack; human
against the "primitive,"
groups studiable fromthe externalobserver's position of Western
anthropologistsagainst the West's "nativemodelof reality"seeable
by its nativesubjects withinthe limitsof its governingepisteme as
isomorphicwithrealityitself(Legesse, 1974).A reality(and its literary
artifacts)then, withoutthe possibilityof an external observer's
position,withthe latterungraspableas a unique variantof the continuumof the representational
arts commonto all modes of humankind.
Since the 1960s,however,withthe adventof structuralism
and
of deconstruction,literarystudies have become the disciplinemost
aware oftheproblemofthe"externalobserver";ofhowto finda metalanguage whichcould enable the humanobserverto step outside the
"normativepathos" of the orderof discourse of the "figuraldomain"
(Norris,1982).The dimensionsof this breakmustbe seen in the contextofthe normative
orderagainstwhichittransgressed.As Foucault
points out, with the mutationof the episteme in the nineteenth
45
century,and the reorganizationof the systemof knowledgewhose

new function was to constitute "man" as an "empiricotranscendentaldoublet," literarystudies came to play a specific
in the overall schema of the new episteme (Foucault,
role/function
1973). For in the new systemof figurationand of its conceptionof
Life/Death-inwhichman was imaginedas a "naturalbeing"-"literature"came to functionas the transcendentalizedindex of the
degree of "Culture" which the biological heredityof the Group
Subject was imaginedto have led itto achieve. ForCulture,inthenew
episteme,nowtookthe place thatReason had playedintheClassical
episteme, as the index of the degree of that human being which
in the contextof the programof prejudgmentsof
"knew"Self/World
of the Groupthe new rationalworldview; as the index,therefore,
Subject's ratioof bio-ontologicalvalue,the value whichenables itto
transcend the mere physical materialityof less endowed human
GroupSubjects.
In this projected schema literaturewas the highest manifestation of langauge, as differinglanguages (e.g., Schlegel's
"organic"and noble Indo-Europeanlanguages versusthenon-organic
and egoistic Semitic)were now the indexof the superioror inferior
Willor elan vitalof differing
peoples, of "the fundamentalwillthat
keeps a wholepeople alive and gives itthepowerto speak a language
belongingsolelyto itself"(Foucault,1973).And"Literature"was the
veryincarnationof this defininglanguage,of the collectivedynamic
impulseof a people representedas incarnatedin its poetry,drama,
fiction,in a word in its "high" Culturewhichexpressed the unique
of a particularpeople.
self-transcendence
Further,as philology'ssubject, language became more and
more knowable;literatureas the Incarnationof transcendencewas
now representedas havingno otherlaw,except thatof "affirming
its
own precipitousexistence." Thus as the transcendentexpressionof
as such,
theGroupSelf,studiedin nationaldepartmentsof literature,
literaturebecame more and more impenetrableto knowledge.No
longerhavinganythingto do withvalues as inthe eighteenthcentury
its discourse became totallyunyokedfromthat of ideas (Foucault,
set apartfromall otherforms
1973).Andits narrative
representations,
of discourse, were now to be deciphered-ratherthan cognized as
taste and sensibility,withinwhatde Man
artifacts/powerfacts-with
definesas the "ethical coercion of theirnormativepathos" (Norris,
1982).
The humanist,Blackham,arguedthatwhileliteratureis comprisedofworksinwhichmanmakes an object of himself,thestudyof
these objects, unliketheobjects ofthe naturalsciences, can be of no
public utilitysince they can provide"no formulabletruthsabout
man,"that,rather,theirstudywas insteadintendedto "humanize"by
enablingthe "contemplationof Man in his Works."This formulation
precisely expresses the role in which literarystudies had been
"interned"intheknowledgeorderofthenineteenth-century
episteme.
thatithad
Andfromthiswouldgrowthe convictionof its irrelevance,
to the kindof knowledge"available to theneeds
nothingto contribute
of mankind."
46
of American
Here,too, can be seen the logic of the definition
Fiction, since the contemplationof Man in his Works was the
Group Subject in its works.
contemplationof the natural/national
Literaturenow functionedas the transcendentexpression of the
system which set itself
Group Subject as a boundary-maintaining
apart fromthat which was Not-the-Self,
demarcatingthe Group
Subject from the Chaos of the merely physical animality of
those-the rawto its cooked, the natureto its culture-who had not
attainedto such an expressionby reason of an innatelydetermined
biogeneticprincipleof difference.Thus those groups who were the
markersof its mode of Natureto its mode of Culturehad, figuratively
and logically,to be excluded fromany such co-definition.44
Here,too, a regularity
appears betweenthe exigencies of the
rules of definition/exclusion
and of the exigencies of the figuring
of
the Other(Said, 1975) in each humanorderof discourse. For ifthe
of the Other
exigencies of the lattermustdomesticatethe figuration
to the structuring
logic of the Order/Chaosmodalityof the specific
humansystem,the exigencyof the former,
thatis, to defineitselfby
detachingitselffromwhatit is not,is quite clearlycarriedout bythe
definition
of AmericanLiterature.
Hegel's "analysis" of the "negro," in his The Philosophyof
World History,as "the natural man in his completelywild and
untamed state," is to the point. Since "nothingharmoniouswith
humanity[was] to be found in his character,"so that even if the
Mohammedanreligionhad managed to bringhimwithinthe rangeof
culture,leftto himself,the "negro's lack of self control"made him
"impossibleof developmentor culture."As we noteinthisdiscourse,
Lack-of-Culture
has takenthe place of Lack-of-Reasonas the Chaos
state of the new order,as inthe royaldynasticorderof IronAge East
Africain which Lack-of-the-Bakama-cult
had taken the place of the
earliertemplateof identity,
as thenewfiguration
Lack-of-the-Bacwezi,
of the conception of Life/Death,the conception whose laws of
Order/Chaosfiguration
are universally
applicable to humansystems.
If the Hegelian discourse functionsto fitthe Black to the
exigencies of expressingthe a prioriof a bioontologicalprincipleof
Sameness and Difference,it is withinthe same governinglaws of
figurationand its internallogic that the Black CultureCenterwas
proscribedto existon the netheredge ofthecampus. Itfunctionedas
the targetstimuliof aversion,withrespectto the Euroamericanorder
at the centerof the campus, whichis thenenabled to functionas the
object stimuliof desire. The relation,functioning
duallyat empirical
and at valorizinglevels,ifstablykeptinphase, ensuresthestable production of the same shared endogenous waveshapes, in Black
studentsas wellas Whites-the same sharednormative
seeking/valubehaviors.Hence the paradox that,afterthe
ing,avoiding/devaluing
turbulenceof the 1960s and the 1970s the Black CultureCenters in
theirnether-edge-of-the-campus
place functionto enable the recycling(in culturalratherthanracial terms)of the Order/Chaosdynamics
ofthesystem-ensemble.
Ineffecttheyfunctioned/function
to returnit
to the in-phase coherence of a category-structure
in which Black
would remain to White, Afro-to Euro-,non-Westerncultures to
47
Western,as the Bacwezi to the Bakama ofthe IronAge royaldynasty.

Since the proscription
is effectedand keptin playbya governing mode of the cultural imaginationinduced by the rhetorical
of its abduction schema or
strategies of the Figuration-Work
morphogeneticfantasy(Bateson, 1979), it is only the disciplineof
literaryscholarship,whose normalizingrole is orderedby this very
schema, that possesses the rhetoricaltechne, inheritedfromthe
foundingheresyof the Studia as well as fromthe long practiceof
workingwiththe figurative
logicof poetryand fiction,notonlyto take
our governingmodes of figurationand their feats of "semantic
butalso to reengineering"(Maranda,1980)as the objects of inquiry,
veal the laws of human behavioras that behavior is ordered by
schemas: the laws of human systems,
projected verbal-rhetorical
whose structuring
Order/Chaos
oppositionsare the humanversionof
what Dawkins calls the universallyapplicable replicatorunits or
functionto absosystemiccodes (Dawkins,1983)45whicheverywhere
lutize the modes of our always rhetorical"natures"; the natures
whose bondingtopoi determinehow we thinkabout Self/World.
As Norrispointsout,this keyquestionof the metaphoricity
of
our thought,a proposal which at once re-enactsthe heresyof the
originalhumanists'equation of rhetoricand philosophy,had been
raised quitesome timeago byI.A.Richards.The latterhad pointedout
thatall thoughtwas metaphoric,proposingthatan attemptshouldbe
made to secure a "discussable science" which could develop the
implicationsof this withrespectto humanknowledge.The problem
thatRichardsoverlooked,however,Norrisargues,was thatof finding
a metalanguage by whichone "could step outside the limitsof the
figuraldomainand surveyits peculiarcontours"(Norris,1982).
Piaget pointsout thatthe child moves out of the stage of his
in whichhe reduces the object to his perbody-egobound centricity
betweenhow he sees
ceptionof it,onlywhenhe experiencesfriction
the object and how others see it. The proposal here is that the
positingof an "externalobserver"withrespect to the inside of the
"figuraldomain"ofeach humanordercan be effectedbyadoptingthe
bootstrapmodel offeredby some quantum physicists.This model
envisages the bringingtogetherof thatwhichis observedfrommany
different
observerpositions,enablingeach to extendand to cancel
out elementsof the other.In this contextit can be seen that it was
perspectivesof
onlywhenthe observationsmade fromthe differing
all those who called fornew areas of Studies werebroughttogether,
thateach groupwas able to escape its own formof solipsismand to
observeregularitiesand commonfeaturespointingto thefunctioning
of rules of discourse beyondthe conscious awareness of the discursiveSubject, rules whichwere "built in" and thereforenormally
invisible.
observerpositions yet all
These observations,fromdiffering
discourse generatedfromthe normative
pointingto a rule-governed
observer position of mainstreamscholarship,could now begin to
provideit-and in this sense, Said's Orientalism,althoughlimitedto
thatwouldenable
one aspect, was an Event-withthe kindof friction
48
it to become conscious of the relativity

of its own viewpointas the
viewpointof the ratiomorphicapparatus of a specific templateof
humanidentity.
The spearheadingof this thrusttowardsan externalobserver
positionwill be necessarilycarriedout by those Liminalcategories
who existentially
experiencethe mode of Chaos to the mode of order
of the governingsystemof figuration,
whose willto affirmation,
like
thatof the originalhumanists,depends on the unwriting/rewriting
of
the presentschema and orderof knowledge.
As Dewey pointsout,the insistenceon the knowability
of the
celestial laws of functioningof the Divine Creation by means of
"mechanical formulae"was necessarilyspearheaded by the "base"
artisanswho had to do withmechanics,or bythose nottoo distantin
the social sphere,all of whose willto affirmation
was confinedinthe
social parallelismof the conceptual schema accordingto whichthe
celestial creationwas unknowableby merelyhumancognition.Thus
whileknowingthe heavens bybase mechanicalformulaewouldseem
sacrilegious to the normativegroups of the order,it would be the
"base" fellowswho would have an interestin effectingthis knowability,sweeping away the orderof value betweenthe highest,the
"celestial," and the lowest,thesphereoftheearth,ofthemechanical
(Dewey,1950).
Equally,the New Studies, stigmatizedas "subjective"-with
the most stigmatizedof all sited in the Black Culturecenter-will
have every interestin challenging an order of figurationwhich
programstheirown negation,in sweeping away the distinctionof
withinthe generalquestion of the metaphoricity
objective/subjective
and relativity
of all humanmodes of knowledge.Itwillalso have every
interestin proposingthatwe come to knowthe sociohumanworldwe
inhabitaccording to laws of functioningmade graspable froman
externalobserver'sposition,itselfmade possible bythe application
of "rhetoricalformulae"to the regularitiesof representationwhose
authorityof referenceis the abductive schemas or morphogenetic
fantasythat functionto ontologize and absolutize the instituting
analogy-man as a naturalbeing-in relationto which,normatively,
we infertheworldaccordingto theanalogy'soppositionalconception
of Life/Death,
Order/Chaos,and to its necessarilymaterialistmetaphysics.
As Deweyalso pointsout,itwas the democratizingmovement
of social transformation
which emancipated human knowledgeof
Nature from its subordinationto metaphysical purposes. This
egalitarianmovementwas to be the conditionof possibilityforthe
rise of the naturalsciences and, withthe insightfromCopernicusto
Galileo to Newton,forthe conclusion thattherewas no ontological
orderof value betweenthe heavens and the Earth,since thereis a
"homogeneityof material processes everywherethroughoutthe
world."46
It is in this context,fromthe frameof referenceof the Black

CultureCenter-which refusesthe stigmatization
of so-called "primitive"culturesas the Lack-stateofthe civilized,and sees itselfas the
49
bearer, in Gowlett's terms, of the "long perspective" on the

human-that a re-definition
ofthe conceptoftheStudia Humanitatis
is proposed, one which reenacts in differentterms the founding
heresyof the Studia. For it proposes the long processes of the selfmaking(i.e., the hominizationof the humanand of its corpus of narrativerepresentations,
all functioning
accordingto equallyapplicable
of Iron Age East Africato that of
laws, fromthe figuration-work
Hegel's philosophy)as the propersphere of the humanitasnow conceived as isomorphicwiththe global humanratherthanwithmerely
its Indo-Europeanexpression.
But since the "negro" as a categoryof the humanwas only
constitutedand constitutableby the great rupturethattransformed
themythosand theologosintoa secular orderofthings,italso insists
on the uniqueness of those narrativesdefined as "literature"
preciselybecause of the new role that these orderingnarrativesof
secular man, whose mode of being would be imperatively
global,
would play.Herethe viewfromthe Black CultureCenterputsthe emphasis on the new functionof literature-in a world no longer
sustained by the auctoritasof the suprasensory-as itselfthe new
auctoritas forthe secular modes of the culturalimagination.The
absolutizationapparatus of such an imaginationwas no longerthe
higher system of the gods, but rather the powerfulrhetorical
whichimagedthe new secular
strategiesof the systemsof figuration
conceptions of Life/Deathby which the human would now orient
itself.Its mode of humanbeingwouldbe mediatednotbygods butby
insists,
metaphors.The viewfromthe Black CultureCentertherefore
heretically,that far from"literaturehaving no function,"as it is
assumed, it is we who are the function.It is as specific modes of
imagining subjects of the aesthetic orders which literature's
weaves in great feats of rhetoricalengineeringthat
figuration-Word
we come to imagine/experience
ourselves,our modes of being.
Since itis inthe narrativerepresentations
of literature
thatthe
data exists, it is herethat"formulabletruths"are to be made about
as well as
of humanmotivations/behaviors,
the laws of functioning
about the modes of culturalimaginationthroughwhichthe humanis
constituted as Subject. And this leads to a new conceptual
It is by takingas the object of our inquirythe mode of
synthesis.47
imaginationof each order as it is constitutedby the governing
systems generated fromthe bondingtopoi and
imagery/figuration
their related structuraloppositions-the integrativemechanisms
which, workingwith the neurological hyperneuronsof the brain,
produce the phenomenonwe know as mind or, rather,modes of
mind-that the psychogeneticrealityof the humancan be known.
are quite clearlyapplicable from
Whilethe laws of figuration
insecular societies wouldhave
mythto a presentday poem,literature
no longersustained bythegods. One mightsay
to playa role/function
it would have to take theirplace. For if,as Creutzfeldargues, our
brains functionby and throughthe modes of symbolical selfand iftheirconstitutionof worldis as real to us as is
representation,
throughwhich
physicalreality,thenthe mode of self-representation
50
the firstformof secular man auto-speciatedit/himself,

as wellas the
"real world" this new formconstitutes,would have now to be
canonized, no longer in religio-aesthetic,but in purelyaesthetic
terms. Hence, in secular society, literatureas well as the arts in
general would come to play a ritualcanonizingfunction.In place of
the religiousschemas, whose systems of figurationwould become
increasinglyprivatized,it would generate powerfulnew imaginary
schemas. And their conception of Life/Deathwould now orient
behaviors. At the same time, their rhetoricallypowerfulherofigures-in the same way as Christiansaints had functionedforthe
suprasensorily guaranteed medieval society-would incarnate
secular normativeideals/models of identitygenerated fromthe
emergingtopos underlyingthe more inclusiveorders of European
would thereby
post-feudalsociety.These new systemsof figuration
effectan ongoing evolutionaryshiftat the level of the aesthetic
whichwouldaccompanytheevolutionprocesses ofco-identification,
aryprocesses of humanepistemology.
Since these aestheticordersare coded byour narrativereprecriticstook,ina
sentations,withtheshiftto thesecular order,literary
sense, the place of the theologians in keepingthe new imaginative
schemas in phase and freefromaesthetic pollution,an ever present
Within
danger fromHitler'sGermanyto today's mass pornography.
the contextof a science of humansystems,however,literary
critics
would now have to function,
in Paolo Valesio's terms,as rhetoricians
ratherthan as rhetors,diagnosticiansratherthanas "grammarians"
(Legesse, 1973),outside whatde Man calls the"normativepathos" of
the figuraldomain that constituteseach order.Theywould have to
find the view of the external observer, using the
techne, which takes the Figurationrhetorical/neurophysiological
Work of the texts, whose projected schemas functionas the
auctoritasof the mode of self-imagining
of the scular humansubject,
as its domainof investigation.It wouldthenseek forthe regularities
of practicesbywhichold templatesof identity
are stabilizedand new
templatesand theirmodes of imaginingare broughtintobeingbythe
ruptureprecipitatedbygreatfeats of poetic semanticengineering.It
would,that is, seek forthe modes of imagining,knowledgeof which
would make human behaviorpredictable.For it is the mode of the
imaginingof Self/NotSelf thatconstitutesthe integrative
unthought
and rhetoricalstructuraloppositionencoded in the analogue system
of the brain's righthemisphere.And it is these that orient and
stabilize the mode of mimeticdesire (Girard,1966) and mimetic
aversion (Fanon, 1964): at once the human form of the
seeking/avoidingmechanisms of biological organisms and the
dynamic expression of the conception of Life/Death, of
the OriginalCause (Riedl/Kaspar,
Agathos/Deilos,thatis everywhere
1984) and telos-orienting
purpose whichmotivatesall modes of the
psychogeneticbehaviorswe defineas "human."
Forthefirsttimeinthe historyof humankindswe are nowconfrontedwitha commonenvironment.
As a post-atomicone, it challenges us withthe demand that we reinventour presentconflictive
51
modes of groupintegration.
This demand impliesthatwe must now
consciously alterour mode of self-troping,
togetherwiththe related
orientingdesire/aversion
machineryof our ordersof discourse and
the related semantic charter (Maranda, 1980) or rhetor-neurophysiologicalprogramthat constitutesour "worldof mind."This is
the price,in the face of the possibilityof our extinction,of our selfrealization as a species. Thus, re-readingthe texts from the
perspectiveof theirconfiguringfunctionin the rhetorico-symbolic
criticism
processes of humanauto-speciationconstitutesforliterary
its Copernicanepistemologicalbreak. It is this break,we propose,
thatwouldenable the literary
humanitiesto appropriatethe "external
observer's" multiple and polyglossic (Bakhtin, 1981) frame of
theframeinsertedbythe"base" newstudies,as wellas by
reference,
the Derrideanand de Maniande-figurationism,
the Girardianthesis of
human desire as always mimetic,and the Fanonian concept of
learnedself-aversion
(withall these givingnewturnsto Levi-Strauss's
foundingbinaryoppositions)withinthe overallcontextof Valesio's
proposed new disciplinarymatrixof a rhetorics.It is this break/turn
that would enable the literaryhumanitiesto re-enactthe original
heresyof theStudia and to recaptureits contestatory
dynamicwithin
the matrixof a science of humansystems.
Such an epistemologicalbreak would call forthe kindof rereadingof all texts and narrativerepresentationsof the past that
the feats/strategies
of poetic and semantic
could isolate and identify
engineering(Maranda,1980) by whichdiscontinuitieswere effected
fromone orderof discourse to theother;bywhichan earlierand more
particularistic conception of Life/Death and figuration of
was re-figured
Desire/Aversion
intoa newand moreinclusivemodeof
"human nature," as one aesthetic-affectiveorder based on an
and its related "world of
imagined mode of Sameness/Difference
into
mind" (Creutzfeld,1979) was configured,transumed/sublated
another.
There has been no other discontinuitymore dramatic and
discourse that
epoch-makingthanthe shifteffectedbythe figurative
was humanism,byits teachingoffice,theStudia,and bywhatDewey
was simplythe
called the "daringastronomers."This discontinuity
to the
shiftfromthe traditionally
religiousconceptionof Life/Death
firstformof a secular one. And the mutationat the level of the
aesthetic-affective-themost recalcitrantto transformation-was,
as Bakhtinremindsus, effectedbythecarnivalesqueprojectionofthe
parodicformsof the Clown,the Fool, the Rogue; formswhichpulled
Late MiddleAges downto
the highseriousness of the self-dissolving
the reearth (Bakhtin,1981), clearing the space forthe retroping,
imaginingof the Self/Group-Self.
However,afterthe medieval mode of imaginationhad been
underminedbysubversivelaughter,a new space, a neworderingdisAndthiswas to be
had to be re-constituted.
course and self-projection
the central functionof the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century
inEuropean dramaticgenre withits new range of heroes/villains,
oppositionsthatconfiguredand gave exprescarnatingthe structural
52
sion to the firstformsof the secular conceptionof Life/Death,

remodelling the post-theological logical mode of the human
imaginationin its firstdynamicform.Thus old interdictions
gave way
to new.
If in Golden Age Spain (sixteenth/seventeenth
centuries),
wherethe structuraloppositionshifted-in the contextof the riseof
the moreinclusiveorderwhichdisplaced thatof the medievalsystem
ensemble-from Noble/Non-Noble,
to LimpiolnonLimpio
Spirit/Flesh
(Clean/notclean, of descent and Christianfaith),and a real lifeBlack
and Professorof Latin,
figure,Juan Latino,a slave, Humanist/poet,
can wed his
projectedas a herofigurein a playof the same name,48
Desdemona, with the villain figures being Jew and Moor, in the
parallel case of Shakespeare's Othello the outcome is more
complexlyother.Iftheceremonyis foundwithinthe logicofthemetaphorics of the Spanish play, in Othello-the play whose postReformation
referential
lifeworld,England,is alreadycaughtup inthe
dynamicof a thorough-going
secularizinghistoricalprocess which
willdetermineits riseto worldsupremacyas Spain's empirebeginsto
decline-the ceremony,as Bishop finelyimages, is found only
clandestinely. It is then lost, and only "found" poetically with
Othello's "dyingupon a kiss." For the outcome of both plays is predeterminedby the differingbonding topoi fromwhich these are
generated.
The metaphoricsofthefirstplayis generatedfromthe specific
descent/
bonding topos of conlimpieza(we-who-are-the-same-clean
of the post-feudalSpanish monarchicalorder.Herethe
Faith-nature)
shiftfromthe Noble as Normto the LimpiomonarchicalSubject as
Norm(fromNoble Blood to Clean Blood as the metaphysicalmeasure
of Being)was sociallyemancipatory
forthenon-nobly-born
Spaniards,
vs. the Noble
especially the new letrado category(Men-of-Letters
who staffedthe Churchand State of the firstworld
Men-of-Arms)
empire;the categoryof whom,the "naturally"intelligent,
naturally
Juan Latino is the projection and "instrumental
loyal/orthodox
signifier."In Othello,the religio-seculartopos of the Spanish play is
displaced-although Othellois the earlierplay49-bythe fullysecular
topos of connaturality (we-who-are-of-the-same-naturally-noblenature),in this the firstof its manyto be transumedvariants.And if
Othello,inthecontextofthese variants,functionson theone handas
the projectionof a new risingsocial force,thatof the newlylanded
mercantilebourgeoisie-forwhomthecodes of"natural
gentry/upper
nobility"and of "naturalhonor"verifiedby honorablebehavior,as
against the moreexclusive nobilityof birth,blood and honoras the
ofdescent,was emancipatory-hefunctions,
on theother
prerogative
hand,in relationto lago as an other,marginalized,and yetprophetic
projection.
Inthe firstprojection,Othelloincarnatestheshifttakingplace
fromLanham's "centered Christianself" to "rhetoricalman," and
froma suprasensorilyorderedworldto a secular self-ordering
one. He
thereforeself-ordershis behavioraccordingto the firstsecular selfregulatingcode, thatof Honor,soi.e.,nihilmagis honore.1Inthiscode
53
orderof the
he is expected, if the configurednatural-metaphysical
monarchicalstate is to be sustained,and Chaos not come again, to
make use of his NaturalReason to orderand governbothhis household,his general's command,and the passions of his lower"nature."
Bydoingthishe acts as the NormSubject oftheorderto putintoplay
the "natural"ratio-ontological
principleof Sameness thatbonds the
caste of the gentryand of Differencethatseparates this caste from
the lowerorder.For it is this principleabout whichthe secularizing
new order auto-institutesitself,transumingthe earlierSpirit/Flesh
The "tragicflaw"
oppositionof the medievaltopos of co-Christianity.
of Othellois that,inallowingthe passion of his "unbookish"jealousy
to cloud his reason, he makes it possible for his judgment of
to be manipulatedby lago. Thus, believingin the
truth/non-truth
and intheabductivelogicof lago's
"ocular proof"ofthehandkerchief
He thereby
fabricatedsystemof "evidence,"he infers/judges
wrongly.
transforms
what,inthe internallogic ofthe playwas theobligationof
honorto execute a wifecaught in adultry,intoa murder,one which,
transgressingthe State's justice, "traduced"the State.
man of honor,Othello
As the apotheosis of the self-regulating
redeems himselfat the end of the play by this time judgingtruly,
sentencingand executinghimself-"that in Aleppo once, where a
malignant . . . Turk/.. . traduc'd the state/. .. I smote him,thus."5'2 As
the Othellomanipulatedby lago, on the otherhand,he functionsas

the inverse of this projection.In this dimension Othello is made
"egregiouslyan ass" by lago, a manof the middlingclasses aspiring
to be professionallymobilein a worldarrangedto privilegethe wellborn Cassio or giftednobly-born
strangerslike Othello,a man for
the honorcode, feigning
whomsuccess depends on his manipulating
"honesty,"his wordneverhis bond-"I am notwhatI am." For byhis
animalizingof Othello-"a black ram toppinga whiteewe"-lago,
excluded fromthe caste of the noble gentrybothallies himselfwith
the senatorBrabantioand the wealthyRodrigo,ensuringtheirhelp in
his attemptto secure the downfallof Othello,and bonds/classes
himselfwiththemon the basis of a new emergentcode, that of a
shared "naturalvalue" ratherthan "nobility."This code, whichanticipates the full-fledgedrealization of the bourgeois over the
monarchicalorder, makes possible a bio-ontologicalprincipleof
Sameness and Difference,one whose figurativefunctionis to
transumethe caste principleof Noble Blood intothe "race" principle
a mode of
of an innate biologicallydeterminedshared superiority,
Sameness made possible by the mode of Differenceof metaphysicallyexcluded Others.As a result,while in the Spanish play,
JuanLatino,the herofigure,the MetaphysicalOtherofJew/Moor
projected as villains,functionsas the Lack-stateof the naturally"clean"
Spanish-bornmonarchicalSubjects,thefigureofOthello,represented
in his animalized dimension(as contrastedwithhis apothesis and
as an Ideal manof honor)is projectedas theveryLack
self-execution
to the Venetians.He thus
inferior
of the human,as bio-ontologically
prefigures, however briefly,the degrading "internments" of
Undermen, under-classes, underpeoples, under-cultures,under54
creeds, that will be legitimatedand determinedby the abduction

schema whose instituting
analogywas to be thatof the humanas a
"naturalbeing" (Foucault,1973).
It is in the "figuraldomain" of this mode of self/grouplSelf
imagining,and of its mode of Sameness and Differencethat the
ceremony is still unfindable.Othello and Desdemona still meet
clandestinely,and Black culturecenters remainproscribedby the
laws of a Godeliantypeof internalconsistencyon the netheredge of
thecampuses; proscribedalong withthe revelatory
heresyoftheselfof all modes of
yetalways systemicrhetoricity
defining,self-troping,
humanbeing.And it is this definition,
made intoa priestlyAbsolute,
togetherwithits related bio-ontologicalprincipleof Sameness and
whichtraversesits speaking/imagining
Difference,
subjects and predeterminesthe rule of in- and of ex-clusionthat define American
fiction.It is a definition,
as Bradleynoted,that,therefore,
logically
exludes Ralph Ellison's InvisibleMan,a novelwhose ludicmomentof
conversion(Girard,1965) comes whenthe Narrator,
awakeningfrom
the mimeticdesire whichhad himchasing his "natural"and/orhis
breaksthroughall the inter"proletarian"and/orhis "black" identity,
dictionsand eats the proscribedSouthernbaked yam in the streets.
He thereby re-enacts the subversive laughter of all the
that ever broughtthe priestlyformsof "high
rogues/fools/clowns
seriousness" downto earth,quipping"I Yam what I yam!" The novel
hereparodicallypulls downto earththecanonical modelsof Identity:
the incest-dreaming
Mr.Norton,the glass-eye-wearing
BrotherJack,
and, with them, the "true discourses" of Liberal positivismand
Marxianeschatologism,laughingaway the self-justifying
pathos of
theirtwinand conjoinedheresies staled intoorthodoxy.
And ittakes
as the object of its irreverencethe verysystem of figuration(the
"innereyes withwhichthey look throughtheirveryphysical eyes
upon reality")whose rule-governed
principleof Sameness and Differenceexcluded it fromthe definition"AmericanFiction." In the
basement underworld
of the novel's counter-metaphorics,
the urban
marginsof Lanham's rhetoricalman,the sound of Louis Armstrong's
that"lyricalbeam of light,"and his gravellyvoice ("Myonly
trumpet,
sin is in myskin/What
did I do/Tobe so Black and blue?") re-enacts
Galileo's telescope, challenging ontologies with the subversive
sounds of the lumpen-poeticsof the Blues.
Boththe Bakama/Bacwezimythicnarrativesand the dramatic
plots of the two plays, Juan Latino and Othello, all too briefly
discussed here, reveal the "formulabletruth"that all changes in
human affairs-Bateson's mutationof abduction schemas when
"thought itself becomes impossible" (Bateson, 1979)-although
always broughtabout bya conjunctureof factors,are experiencedby
humans as primarily
transformations
of the governingsystems of
figurationand of the shared systems of meaning of each order's
semantic charter.The antitheticalprojectionof hero-figures
whose
external"begrimedvisages" contrast,intheone case, withthe innate
"naturallimpieza"revealedby limpio/loyal
behaviors,by a "natural"
intelligence"unharmedas to salutorydoctrine,"'53and intheother,of
55
an innatevillainyof an lago whose exterior"fairnessof visage" contradicts his "true" nature, effects an epochal shift from the
explanatoryhypothesisof Divine Causality to that of a Natural
Causality,the shiftwhichheraldedthe firstform,at the levelof the
Itis bymeans of such transhuman,ofthesecular "orderofthings."''54
formationsas that from the religio-feudalto the secularizing
monarchicalorderof figuration
effectedbythe poetic re-engineering
to that the
of the two seventeenth-century
European plays referred
which are
evolutionof more inclusivemodes of group integration,
themselves linked,as Whyteand Habermas note, to increasingly
generalizable concepts and evolutionaryadvances in the thrustof
human cognitive mechanisms towards what Gellner calls "the
of humancongition"(Gellner,1974),
autonomyand extra-territoriality
are achieved. Nevertheless,as Habermas also notes, once put in
and their related systemplace, systems of figuration/integration
preserving behaviors and "worlds of mind" or codes of
of imagination,can, even aftertheyhave lost their
knowledge/modes
validityin a now transformedenvironment,remain as powerful
barriersto the emancipationof the new humanenergies called for.
Thus we remainin our presentcrisis,enthralledand made captiveby
the secular abductiveschema55 of the nineteenth-century
epistemes,
codes of Natural/Labor
and the self-regulating
value,thecodes which
replacedthatof "naturalhonor"56just as Othellowas replaced inthe
by
systemof inferenceengineeredby lago untilhis disenthrallment,
what one critic aptly calls the exorcism of Emilia, who, dying,
deconstructsthe systemof inferenceand releases Othello and the
of lago. For in thatworld,as in
worldof the play fromthe wordcraft
ours, "truth"was no longerguaranteedby the highersystemof the
suprasensory.From here on it would be up to the self-correcting
processes of the cognitivemechanismsof the human.
Yet in a worldin whicheven the self-correcting
process of the
naturalsciences findsitselfthreatenedbythe increasinghegemony
ofa technosciencewhichseeks to manipulatethephysicalprocesses
of naturein orderto enhance the militaryand economic powerof
is called for
some human groups over others, a counter-exertion
must be
The
Studia
the
that
of
Studia's
to
heresy.
original
parallel
reinventedas a higherorderof humanknowledge,able to providean
"outer view" which takes the human ratherthan any one of its
as a science of human
variationsas Subject; must be re-formulated
systems,which makes use of multipleframesof referenceand of
Valesio's proposed rhetoricaltechne-the techne, perhaps of a
rhetor-neuroscience?-toattain to the position of an external
observer,at once insideloutsidethe figuraldomain of our order.As
such a new cognitivemechanismit must,as we have proposed,take
as its properspherewhatGowlettcalls the "long perspective"of the
as this is docuhominid-into-human
self-making/modelling/figuring,7
in artand ways of
mentedand enacted in narrativerepresentations,
of humanbehaviorswhichenable
life,and in the laws of functioning
the autopoesis of each mode of the human.It is only,we propose,
of such a new science that Bishop's
throughthe counter-exertion
56
ceremonies will be findable,that the hope sought by Bradley,

Einstein,Freud,and Lewis Thomas,willbe realizable,enablingus to
writeinourtraumatictimewithsomethingofthecertainty
withwhich
a Francis Bacon wrotein his:
And thereforeit is fitthat I set forththese conjectures of mine which make hope in this matter
reasonable; just as Columbus did before that
wonderful
voyageof his across theAtlantic,whenhe
gave the reasons forhis convictionthat new lands
and continentsmightbe discovered besides those
which were known before; which reasons though
rejected at first,were afterwardsmade good byexperience,and were the causes and beginningsof
great events." (Francis Bacon, Novum Organon,
1620)
StanfordUniversity
NOTES
1
See Sir StaffordBeer's Prefacein H.R. Maturanaand F.J.Varela,Autopoesis

and Cognition:TheRealizationof theLiving(Holland/Boston,
1980),pp. 65-66.
L. Kolakowski,Marxismand Beyond(London,1971),pp. 55-56.
The phrase was used by ProfessorChristopher

J. Lucas of the University
of
at an invitational
seminaron civiclearningand education
Missouri-Columbia,
oftheteachingprofession,
on November
hostedbytheHooverInstitution,
11th,
1984.Lucas pointedout that"withthewholesalevocationalismofhighereducation,predictablyhas come the loss of a constituencyforLiberalStudies
generallyand the humanitiesin particular.
Theyhave been leftnaked in the
marketplace"See the StanfordUniversity
Campus Report,Nov.14, 1984.
Sir StaffordBeer explains the main underlying

concept of "autopoesis" put
forward
byMaturanaand Verela.Anautopoeticsystemis a homeostat,i.e.,"a
deviceforholdinga criticalsystemvariablewithinphysiologicallimits,"and in
the case of autopoetichomeostasisthe "criticalvariableis thesystem'sown
of thatorganizational
organization."Thus even ifevery"measurableproperty
structure
inthesystem'sprocess of continuing
changes utterly
adaptation"it
survives,i.e., the mode of organizationwhichis its identity.
Implicitin this
contextis thatthe living'simperative
is itsrealizationratherthanitsmereselfAs Maturanapointsout inhis introduction,
he and Varelawerein
preservation.
search ofa wordwhichcould formally
definethecentral"featureoftheorganizationof the livingwhichis autonomy."One day whilsttalkingwitha literary
criticwhodefinedDonQuixote'schoice as thatbetweenarms(praxis)orletters
(poesis),Maturanawas struckbythepoweroftheword"poesis" and "invented
thewordthatwe needed,autopoesis,"a wordthat"could directly
mean what
takes place in the dynamicsof the autonomyproperto livingsystems"
and
Varela,Autopoesis,p. xvii).
(Maturana
Theconceptofhumanautospeciationis developedon thebasis ofthebiologist

Mayr'sconceptofthose "isolatingmechanismsbymeansofwhichpotentially
inter-breeding
organisms separate themselves off, placing reproductive
barriersbetweenthemselves,withthese barriersdefiningtheirboundaries,"
i.e., speciatingthem.Analogously,human culturalsystems or systemsof
57
are seen as doingthesame thingforhumangroups,bondingthemin

figuration
shared systems of meaning,or "imagery systems" which place interbarriersbetweenthemselvesand otherhumangroups.See
communicating
Mayr, Evolution and the Diversity of Life: Selected Essays (Cambridge, MA.,
1976).
E. Grassi. Humanismo y Marxismo: Critica de la Independizaci6n de la Ciencia
(Madrid,1977),p. 79. Grassi's mainpointis thatHumanismin itsoriginalform

has been misreadand devaluedby rationalistand Idealistthought,
since the
maintargetof thisoriginalhumanismwhichtookCicero as its guide was its
attackon all formsofabstractphilosophy,
and aprioristic
on theirlack
thought,
of local and temporalreference.
See G. Haupt,"InWhatSense and To WhatDegreewas theRussianRevolution

a Proletarian
inReview,JournaloftheFerdinandBraudelStudyof
Revolution,"
Economics,HistoricalSystems and Civilizations,111, No. 1 (1979). Haupt
reveals the extentto whichthe Verbal Symbol "Proletarian,"used as the
forceswhichmade up theRevolution,
i.e.,
genericname forthemanydifferent
the peasants, the national minorities,and the relativelysmall force of
industrial
workersproper,
was thedecisivestrategicweaponthatLeninused to
of
organizesupportforthe consolidationof Bolshevikpower,to thedetriment
boththepeasants and thenationalminorities,
all ofwhomlackedthepowerful
as thebearersof
discoursebased on theconceptoftheproletariat
legitimating
"Laborvalue" made intoan ontologicalprinciple.Thisconceptmade degrees
of skilland educationthe new criterion
of status,leadingto the hegemonyof
the New Class, that is of the credentialratherthan capital-owning
middle
classes. The thrusttowardspopulardemocracyof the Soviets was thereby
stifledand displaced bythetotalitarian
regimeofthe Party,as the powerfact
of the credentialmiddleclasses.
IntheForeword
differentiate
theirpositionfromthat
to theirbook,Riedl/Kaspar
of philosophicalepistemology.Theirintentionis to "examine the basis of
reason not merelyfromits internalprinciples,but froma comparative
no
studyofall cognitiveprocesses." Whattheystudyis therefore
phylogenetic
longeridentical"withthe subject thatgathersknowledge"but lies outside,
whilsttheirmethod"remainsthatof a comparativenaturalscience, avoiding
thelimitations
arisingwhenreasonmustestablishitselfon itsown."See Riedl,
R. with Kaspar, R. Biology of Knowledge: The Evolutionary Basis of Reason
(Chichester,NewYork,1984).
9
insupportofhisargument
thattheemergenceofmindorconHaroldMorowitz,
inevolution,pointsout
sciousness withthehumanwas a radicaldiscontinuity
that the evolutionary
biologist,Lawrence B. Slobodkin,identifiedthe new
whichchangedthe
as a discontinuity
featureat theoriginofreflective
thought,
which
rules,as thatof an "introspective
self-image."Itwas thisnew property
made it impossibleto assign majorhistoricalevents to causes inherentin
laws. See Morowitz,
the Mind"in D.
H.,"Rediscovering
biologicalevolutionary
Hofstadter and C. Dennett, eds. The Mind's Eye: Fantasies and Reflections on
Self and Soul (New York, 1981).
10
Sartre'sattackon
Valesio developedthis pointin the course of contradicting
commonplacesas the enforcersof predictablebehaviors(i.e., "the valves
lick!"). Valesio's point here reinforcesthat of Lacan who argues that the
"subject is nota 'self' whichtakes languagefromsocietyas a tool since that
languagewhichgeneratesthesubjectalso constitutessocietyorculture"with
thesubjectalwayshavinghis language"in commonwithothersubjects."This
is the relationdefinedby Collingwoodas "collaboration,"Griceas the "co(Thislatterpointis made by
operativeprinciple"and Polyanias "conviviality."
The Illusionof the Individual
Loy D. Martin,in an article"LiteraryInvention:
Talent" in CriticalInquiry,No. 4 [Summer,19801.)See also P. Valesio, Nova
Antiqua: Rhetorics as a Contemporary Theory(Bloomington, Indiana, 1980).
11
Daniel Sperberuses the term"symbolicmode of knowledge"to make a dis-
58
tinctionbetweenthreemodes of humanknowing.The threeare the encyclopedic,the semanticand the symbolic.Whilstthe firstdeals withfactsabout
the worldand the second withfactsabout categories(a foxis an animal)the
thirddeals withfactsabout otherfacts,withconnotationssuch as, "cunning
like a fox."Such a termis an objectifiedconstruct,dependenton its being
takenwhole,withits logic beingassociational,functioning
withina systemof
inferenceshared by all the otherspeakers.This kindof logic,it is proposed
to therighthemisphereofthe
here,is relatedto thefunctionsbeingattributed
brainas researchon thismattercontinues.Thusas M. Moskovichpointsoutin
in Languagein
his paper,"Stages of Processingand HemisphericDifferences
the NormalSubject," in M. Studdert-Kennedy,
Psychobiologyof Language
MA.
(Cambridge, 1983),pp. 103-04:
"Apart frommemory,the domain in which the righthemisphere's
contributions
to verbalperformance
are mostevidentis notthatoftraditional
linguistics,such as phonology,syntaxand semantics,but ratherthe paraemotionaltone,context,
linguisticaspects of language such as intonation,
and connotation-inshortthose aspects of languagethatmaybe
inference,
included as part of pragmatics,the discourse functionof language..
Patientswithrighthemispheredamage . . . seem to have no difficulty
comindividual
a sentence
sentences;buttheydo havedifficulty
prehending
relating
to a largercontext,understanding
its emotionalconnotation,
and drawingthe
therighthemisphere,
properinferencesfromit(Wapneret al, inpress.)Without
initsbroadestsense, seems notto procedenormaly."
communication
See also
Daniel Sperber,Rethinking
Symbolism,trans.Morton(New York1977).
12
Levi-Strauss,in his explanationof the phenomenonknownas "totemism,"

pointsout thatthe reason whynaturalspecies are chosen has nothingto do
withthefactoftheirbeing"good to eat" and everything
to do withtheirbeing
'good to think."The proposal here is thatthe animal species gridand its
and similarities
are also chosen because theyare good
systemof differences
to absolutizewith,enablingthe humanlyinventedsocial divisionsand statusorganizingprocess to be representedas isomorphicwiththe divisionsdeterminedby physicalnature.See C. Levi-Strauss,
Totemism(Harmondsworth,
1969).
13
B.A. Uspenskij,V.V. Ivanov,V.N. Toporov,A.M. Pjatigorskij,

Ju. M. Lotman,
"Theses on the SemioticStudyof Cultures(as Appliedto Slavic Texts)"in J.
Van Der Eng and Mojmar Grygar,Structure of Texts and Semiotics of Culture
(The Hague, 1973),p. 2.

14
Schmidtbringsup herea keyquestionasked byGilsenan,as to whethermyth

itselfmightnot be an epiphenomenon,
manipulableby the "ideologues who
controloral tradition"
and pointsout thatthe assumptionof his own studyis
that"the pseudohistoricalgenealogical mythsof the Bahaya are interwoven
into the politicaland social fabricof Bahaya lifethroughtime,and thata
structuralanalysis will reveal unconscious representative
structurethrough
timewhichare tied to structural
change in politicallife."See P. R. Schmidt,
Historical Archaeology: A StructuralApproach in an AfricanCulture (Westport,
CT, 1978).
15
oftheMad
Derrida,in discussingFoucault'sFolie et Deraison,theinternment
and the CartesianCogito,pointsout thatin factthereis no real anxietyin
Descartes about the "subversionof insanity"since "if discourse and philoareto . . . conform
to theirvocationas discourse,they
sophicalcommunication
mustin factand in principle,
within
escape madness . . . mustcarrynormality
themselves."Forthisis "an essential and universalnecessityfromwhichno
discoursecan escape 'since' itbelongsto themeaningof meaning."Indeedit
is the"destinyofspeakingPhilosophy"to live"onlybyimprisoning
madness,"
withevery"new speech liberating
a previousmadness whileenclosingwithin
itself,in its presentexistence,the madmanof the day." All systemsof finite
thought-ofmodes ofhumanbeing,one mightadd-"can be establishedonly
on the basis of the moreor less disguised internment,
humiliation,
fettering
and mockery
ofthemadmanwithinus. .. whocan onlybe thefoolof a logos,
59
whichis father,
and Difference
trans.
master,and king."See J.Derrida,Writing
A. Bass (Chicago,Ill.,1978).
16
17
A phraseinventedbyAdreinneRich,i.e.,"howwe havebeen led to imagineouron thedeselves,"quotedbyElaineShowaiterinan article,was a keyinfluence

velopmentof the conceptof modes of culturalimagination.
See G.C. Waterston, Order and Counter-Order: Dualism in Western Culture
(New York,1966),p. 25. See also pp. 41 to 45 wherehe discusses the transformationin the twelfthcenturywhen,withthe establishmentof the universities,a new agency,the Studiumwas now added to the two othergreat
Withthis,the schools
agencies,thatof the Sacerdotiumand ofthe Imperium.
ina
formobility
of law and legal scholars-who werenowgivenopportunities
which
had
social order
grownalmost static-were the firstto beginto gain
of knowledge.Fortheircareersmade
autonomyfromthetheologicalordering
them "representatives of the constitutions of men ratherthan . . . delegates of
thecityof God." The humanistawas to borrowhis nameand findprecedence

ofthestudyoftheWorksofNaturalMan,fromthelegista
forhis revalorization
model.
18
19
20
21
See K. Hubner, Critique of Scientific Reason, trans. P.R. and H.M. Dixon
(Chicago,1983),p. 112.
Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creeds to Technological Man
1974).
(New York,Prentice-Hall,
See Hubner,Critique,p. 121.
See H. Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. R.M. Wallace
(Cambridge,MA,1983),pp. 483-547.Andsee especiallypp. 509-10,wherehe

Ptolemaic
ofthetraditional
pointsoutthat,whilstkeepingtheoverallstructure
schema,NicholasofCusa had replacedtheearthas centerwithGod,and had
proposedthatthe earthwas "a worldbodyof the same rankas the heavenly
was judgedto be heretical.
bodies." This formulation
22
See M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin,ed.
23
See Heidegger,Martin,The Wordof Nietzsche"in TheQuestionConcerning
24
ofValesio. He reveals
The toposof iconocityis one ofthecentralformulations
fromHeraclitusin
of thisfigurein his analysisof a fragment
the functioning
withthe
is
made
the
whicha specificmodeof life,relatedto
bow,
synonymous
made by
processof lifeitself.Thisstrategyshouldbe linkedto theformulation
thatexists betweena
Whiteheadand Russell withrespectto the difference
class of classes (i.e., "machinery")and a mere memberof the class (i.e.,
tractors,cranes, etc.). The topos of iconicityabsolutizes a mode of life,a
memberof theclass withtheclass of classes, humanlifein general,thereby
enablng,in Todorov'sterms,theconflationof species withgenus,genus with
M. Holquist,trans.C. Emerson,M. Holquist(Austin,Texas, 1981),p. 166.

Technology and other Essays, trans. W. Lovitt(New York, 1977), p. 64.
species. See in this respect, Paolo Valesio, Nova Antique: Rhetorics as Contemporary Theory (Bloomington, Indiana, 1980); and Todorov, Theories of the
Symbol,trans.C. Porter(Ithaca,New York,1982).

25
was
As withthesuprasensorybefore,knowledgeofthisontologizeddifference
ratherthanseen by
to be graspedbytheintellectualunderstanding
inferential,
difference
functionsin a parallel
the physicaleyes. The a prioriof a by/nature
foundsthe
manner.That is, whilethe principleof Sameness and Difference
order,it itselfis not a fact that is empiricallyknownbut only abductively
as the axiom whichmakes the orderof discourse of contemporary
inferred
societydiscursable.
26
See Anthony Padgen, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the
60
Originsof ComparativeEthnology(Cambridge,England,1982), pp. 109-18.

Pagden points out that a dialogue writtenby Sepulveda-Democrates
secundus sive de justis causis belli apud Indos, probablywrittenabout
1544-was used in thecentraldebate in 1551-1552at Valladolid,betweenLas
Casas and Septlveda withrespectto Spanishsovereignity
overtheIndies.The
latter was a monarchicalhumanist,and his dialogue put forwardthe
thesisthattheAmericanIndianswere"barbarians,"whoas such,
Aristotelian
were by nature slaves. In this argumentSeptlveda had moved outside
declarethe
theologicalarguments-Christian
theologycould notlegitimately
Indiansto be anotherkindofbeing-presentinghis dialogue,inas he himself
said, "literaryterms,"and puttingthe goal of the Indians"becomingmore
human"ratherthanmoreChristian,
as thecriterion
fortheirbeingtreated"with
greaterfreedomand liberty."
27
The claim by Sepulvedathatthe customsof the new worldpeoples revealed

themto be lackingin NaturalReason, interned
the NewWorldpeoples as the
Otherto the WesternLogos, longbeforethe Mad,as the Icon of thedefectof
Naturalreasonwas to be internedin France-and intheCartesiandiscourse.
28
Herethestrategy
ofIconicity
analysedbyValesio is at workalso. Byconflating
a firstmode of secular human reason with reason-in-general,
the postits modes of reason as
theologicalworldstabilized itselfby representing
eitheras the"naturalreason"ofLiberalism
orthe"scientific
reason-in-general,
truth"of Marxism-Leninism.
29
See Pagden,The Fall of NaturalMan,pp. 112-13.
30
See Linneaus,Systema Naturae(Uppsala, 1758), p. 22, wherethe Black is

placed at thebottomofthehumanscale as theone least able togovernhimself
since he governshimselfarbitrarily.
31
Harold Bloom puts forwardthe rhetoricalfigureof transumption

as the
Americananswerto the "importedmode of deconstruction."
He notes that
ormetalepsis"is thelegitimateand traditional
nameinrhetoric
"transumption
forwhat JohnHollandercalls the "figureof interpretative
allusion."Transinwhichthe
umptivechains pointtowardthe"diachronicconceptof rhetoric,
ironyof one age can become the ennobledsynecdocheof another."Whilst
chainsabound,certain"centrallinkages... vitalto tradition,
and
transumptive
the crossings over in and betweentraditionskeep the continuity
going by
means of its retroping
of earliertropes."See H. Bloom,The Breakingof the
Vessels (Chicago,1982).
32
G.L. Mosse's Towardthe Final Solution:A Historyof EuropeanRacism(New

ofthediscoursethatwouldmake
York,1978),traces indetailthedevelopment
the Holocaust thinkable.He makes the parallel point made by CarterG.
Woodson,the Black educator,in 1933,whenthe latterpointedout thatthere
inAmericansocietyifithad notbeen preparedforbythe
wouldbe no lynching
school curriculum
whichtaughtwhiteAmericansto see Blacksas inferior-as
legitimately
lynchable.
33
The functionplayed by the concept of self-preservation

adapted fromthe
mechanisticmaterialism
thatinformed
thenineteenth-century
epistemeinthe
modeofimagining/representing
theSelf/Group-Self,
as wellas inencodingthe
that underlaythe rise of
bio-ontologicalprincipleof Sameness/Difference
Liberalism(as a transumptionof the Lockean type
national/corporate
individualLiberalismwhichhad prevailedbefore,a transumption
whichaccompaniedtheriseand expansionofthe"mechanizing"Industrial
Age)has not
G.E. Allenhas howeveranalyzed
yetbeen the subject of a holistictreatment.
the role of mechanisticmaterialismin Darwinianbiology,revealingits coexistencein Darwinianthoughtwithparallelelementsfrombothholisticand
dialecticalmaterialism.He pointsout thatthe mechanisticoutlookof Darwin
involved"firstand foremost
his atomisticviewofthelivingworld,whichhe saw
as composed of individualorganisms,each actingin its own rightand forits
61
ownsurvival"witheach organismas an atomizedunitofevolutioninteracting

with each other "throughthe process of struggle for existence and
competition."Evenmore,Allenshows howthisoutlookwas modelledon the
paradigmof classical nineteenth-century
politicaleconomy,"a field itself
dominatedby mechanisticphilosophy,"and especially on its concept of
"divisionof labor,a notionthatatomizesthetotality
ofthelabourprocess into
separate componentparts."
Centralto thisphilosophywas the idea thattheorganismwas impelled
bythe Finalcause of its "hunger"as wellas its need to preserveits life,as in
politicaleconomytheworkerwas supposed to be coerced intoworking
bythe
impulse of hunger. Here Maturana/Varela'sconcept of the realizationof all thingslivingis an epistemologicalbreakwiththe axiom of
imperative
one which has political implications.For quite clearly,
self-preservation,
mechanisticmaterialismwas the epistemic correlateof the template of
of the Industrial
identity
Age,i.e.,thatof the middleclass modalityof human
withits emphasison theatomizedunit,individual
and corporate,and
identity,
as the causal motorof secular human
on its naturalimpulse/preference
society. See G.E. Allen, "The Several Faces of Darwin; Materialismin
Nineteenth-and
Evolutionary
Twentieth-Century
Theory,"in D.S. Bendall,ed.
EvolutionfromMolecules to Atom(Cambridge,England,1983).
34
See G.L. Mosse, TheFinalSolution:A Historyof EuropeanRacism(NewYork,

1978),pp. 40-41.
35
The "strategyset" at workin the discoursetracedby Mosse functionsat the

levelof theabductionschema or systemof figuration
to displace the Biblical
Genesis mythof originand whatmightbe called the figurative
hegemonyof
Hebrewand of the Jews as the bearers of this myth-and as its Chosen
as theChosen
People-with a newschema which"elects" the Indo-European
the Semite.The modeof knowingwas howeverto be no
people byOtherizing
longerthatof religiousrevelationbutostensiblythatofempirical,"scientific"
knowledge.Hence the paradox of the "blindnessand insight"that was to
accompany the new fieldof philology,leading to the developmentof the
pseudoscience of eugenics whichabstracts"gene pools" fromtheirspecific
interactingenvironmentin which alone they can be "judged." Hitlerian
was essentiallytheresultofthisdys-science.Andas Mosse shows,
Aryanism
thediscoursewhichordersthisdys-sciencecontinuesto ourday,and flowson
and willonlycease whenthe espistemeis deconstructedand
intothe future,
knowledgere-written.
36
The Holocaust in the heartof Europeand the Gulag Archipelagoare geneaoftheencomiendaand the
logicallyrelatedto thefirstlargescale internment
plantation,and to the massacres thataccompaniedtheirbeingput in place.
The massacre of the Hererosas "natives"bythe Germancolonizersin 1904,
one in whichout of a groupnumbering
80,000,onlysome 15,000survived,a
remnant
thatwas thendistributed
to thesettlersas slave labor,mustbe seen
"massacre Archipelago"bywhichnon-European
as partofthatextra-European
groupswere reducedto the status of nativelabor;and whichwouldserveto
whichhave marked
domesticatethe humanpsycheto the largescale horrors
ourcenturyas the undersideof menwalkingon the moon.
37
The argumentswithrespectto humansacrificewere firstdeveloped in the

Apologia which Las Casas presentedat the debate, held in 1551-1552at
overthe NewWorld
Valladolid,concerningthelegalityof Spain's sovereignity
lands and peoples. Las Casas's argumentsherewereto antedatebycenturies
ofall humansystemsof perceptionincludingour
theconceptofthe"relativity
own,"togetherwiththe conceptof necessaryareas of blindness,even if,for
Las Casas, Christianrevelationand the lightof Divinereasonstillprovideda
and Truth.See Wynter,
touchstoneof certainty
S., "New Seville and the ConversionExperienceof Bartolomede las Casas," in JamaicaJournal17,no. 2
(May 1984),26.
As Todorovalso pointsout, Las Casas's arguments-thatit was "the
limitationsof the lightof natureitself,"ratherthanthe lack of this lightof
62
Naturewhich"dictates and teaches those who do not have faith,grace or

doctrine"thattheyoughtto offer"to thefalse god whois thoughtto be true"
the "supremelypreciousthing"whichis the lifeof man,since "nothingin
natureis greateror morevaluable"-introduceda conceptuallydaringperherea kindof"religiousanthrospectivismintotheheartofreligion,
practicing
pology" which is "the firststep towards the abandonmentof religious
discourse itself."See T. Todorov,The Conquestof America:The Questionof
the Other,trans.R. Howard(New York,HarperBooks, 1984).
38
See T. Kuhn,The Essential Tension:Selected Studies in ScientificTradition

and Change(Chicago:Chicago Univ.Press,1977).
39
See JoshuaWhatmough,
"Orderin Languageand inOtherHumanBehavior"in
Paul G. Kuntz,The Conceptof Order(Seattle/London,
1968),p. 328.
40
Hofstadter
asks "Whatis it liketo be China,"and answersthata country
has
system.Bythis
thoughtsand beliefsinthesense thatithas a representational
he means "an active, self-updating
collection of structures,organizedto
mirror'
theworldas itevolves."As such "it is builton categories"and itsifts
or "symbols"
incomingdata intothese categorieswithits "representations"
interacting
among themselvesaccordingto theirown "internallogic." This
internal
as thereferential
ratherthantheexternal
logicthenfunctions
authority
and thefunction
ofthislogicis to createa "faithful
reality,
enoughmodelofthe
waythe worldworks";and to keep its symbolsin phase withthe world"they
Ineffect,the internallogic prescribesbehavior
are supposed to be mirroring."
so as to keep the worldview and its reality,in phase. See Hofstadterand
on Selfand Soul (NewYork,
Dennet,TheMind'sEye:Fantasiesand Reflections
1981).
41
See EdwardSaid, Orientalism

(New York,1978).He cites theearlierarticleby
AbdelMalekin whichthe phenomenonwas firstisolatedand identified.
42
See M. Foucault,TheOrderof Things:AnArchaeologyoftheHumanSciences

(New York,1973),p. 310.
43
See L. Thomas,"Alchemy,"in Late ThoughtsOn Listeningto Mahler'sNinth

(Toronto,New York,1984),pp. 33-34.
Symphony
44
This exclusion functionedas the "isolatingmechanism"or "remarkof betheboundariesofthe"nationalliterature"

defines
longing"which,in defining
the boundariesof the national/natural
self. The exclusionof Ellisonand the
othersis a keymechanismbywhichthe"genreness"ofthefigured
Group-Self
is putintoplay.Foras Derridapointsout,themostgeneralconceptofthelaw
of genrelinksitto genos whichcould just as well be equated withbirth,
and
"birthin turnwiththegenerousforceofengenderment
of generation-physics,
in fact-as withface,familialmembership,
classificatory
genealogyor class,
or social class." The negationofa co-definition
is thereage class (generation)
forepartoftheclassificatory
mechanism,and theexclusionis putin place by
human agents possessing the generic classificatorycompetence which
definesthemas subjects.See J. Derrida,"The Law ofGenre,"CriticalInquiry,
1980.
Autumn,
45
See R. Dawkins,"UniversalDarwinism,"in D.S. Bendall,ed. Evolutionfrom

Molecules to Men(Cambridge,London,1983),pp. 420-23.
46
See JohnDewey,Reconstruction
of Philosophy(New York,1950),p. 69.
47
Theconceptofa newconceptualsynthesisis,ofcourse,a reformulation

ofthe
one proposed by E.O. Wilson of sociobiologyfame. Here, the disciplinary
matrixof a science of humansystemsenables the insightsofsociobiologyto
be drawnintoa new framework,
of the humanwith
keepingthe continuity
biological organisms,but only in the contextof the psychogeneticdisthatthehumanrepresents,
ratherthan
i.e.,his rhetorical/behavioral
continuity
geneticmodes of speciation.
63
48
The playJuanLatinowas written

byDiego Ximenezde Enciso.The playwright
The most
died in 1634, but the play was not publisheduntilmid-century.
accessible editionis that of 1951, edited by Ecuardo Julia Martinez.(See
References.)
49
The date givenforOthello'scompositionis usually1603-1604.
50
who argues in ThePassions and theInterests:Political

See A.D. Hirschmann,
forCapitalismBeforeits Triumph
(Princeton:PrincetonU.P. 1977),
Arguments
code of
thatthe honorcode antedatedthe pursuitof profitas a regulatory
humanbehavior.
51
See the HispanistE. M. Wilson'sfinecomparativereadingof the play,one in

which his wide knowledgeof parallel "wife-murder"
plays in the Spanish
natureof the role of the
GoldenAge enabled himto grasp the fundamental
honorcode in theorganizingdynamicsof Othello.
52
See theeditionof OthellobyChristopher

Bentley(Sydney:SydneyUniv.Press,
1982),p. 158.
53
JuanLatinowas a real lifefigurewho livedin sixteenth-century

Granada,and
was a slave inthedual house ofSessa. He was a humanist,poet-he wrotea
Latinepic, The Ausriad,to celebratethe Spanish-Christian
victoryoverthe
Islamic Turks at Lepanto-and famous professorof Latin, marryinghis
his epitaphin
Desdemona,Dona Ana de Carlobal.He is said to have written
ofhisChristian-humanist
Latininwhichhe,interalia, testifiesto theorthodoxy
doctrine,i.e., Infansilaesus praeceptasalutis. See VelaurezB. Spratlin,Juan
Latino:Slave and Humanist(New York,1938).
54
with which a transcendentDivine Causality as the

The figuration-Work,
of the ChristianMedieval
explanatoryhypothesisof the status-ordering
ensemblewas replacedby whatmightbe called an immanenttranscendent
Causality,thatof "Nature,"wouldbe effectedby projectionsbeginningwith
those of Juan Latino and Othello-as the naturally,ratherthan primarily
monarchicalsubject,and as the naturally
orthodoxand normative
Christianly
"Noble Moor,"Othello.The latervariantof these wouldbe thatof the "Noble
since it
Savage," a projectioncentralto theFrenchand AmericanRevolutions,
canonized the new code of "Natural Value" that functionsas the selfcode of Liberalrepublicandemocracyinitspureform;thecode that
regulating
embodies the metaphysicsof the pursuitno longerof honor,but of profit
to
fromNobel prizesto sportsto warfare,
(capital)as well as thatof primacy,
the keepingup withthe Jones's ownershipof nuclearbombs. HaydenWhite
has noted the centralityof the projectionof the Noble Savage, and has
in
analysed what he defines as the "fetishisticnature"of its functioning
thought.He emphasizes the role whichits antithesisof
eighteenth-century
Noble/Savage played in deconstructing an order still dominated
psychosociallyby the "gentry."(See References.)Bateson's concept of
at
abductionis howevermoregeneralizable.Itenables us to grasptheprinciple
interior
workin all variantsof these antithetical,exteriorappearance/true
function.Thus the Nazi
naturestrategies,and of theirpolitico-metaphysical
and non-corrupt
Truenon-cosmopolitan
Aryan
projectionofthe Blood-and-Soil
inthehighlyurbanized
artificialurbanJew,was meaningful
vs. thecorrupting
it
was
to
able
and technologicalsocietyofGermany,
replacethe
onlybecause
system of figurationof the bourgeois code of "Natural Value" which
functionedto select the global middleclasses forhegemony,withthe new
needed by the sociallymobile,educated stratumof the
systemof figuration
Germanlower-middle
classes, if theywere to achieve hegemonyas a new
therefore
stratum.Aryanism
expresseda code, thatofthe biogeneticsuperior
thecode of"naturalValue."Stalin
valueofAryandescent,whichreformulated
withhis projectionofthePartymemberof"true
wouldeffectthesame strategy
Proletarianorigin" canonized by his Labor value (the criterionof skills,
of theownershipof
credentials)ratherthanbyhis naturalvalue (thecriterion
He therebyconflatedthe hypothesisof NaturalCausality
property/capital).
64
withthat of a historicalCausality in whichthe destined AryanVolk of a

Hitler-an extensionofthemanifestdestinyof Englandand theUnitedStates
and of the apartheidtof South Africa-was replaced withthe destinedofwas theVanguardParty.
class, whose highestmanifestation
Proletarian-origin
Hence the logic of the "internments"
of the Auchwitz-Belsen
and the Gulag
complexes, which like the "internment"of the global poor in their
archipelagoes of shanty-townrural poverty and mass starvation-a
verification
ofthe
to thefunctioning
phenomenongeneratedbyand imperative
code of "naturalvalue/non-value"-function
as the negationswhichverify
the
Absoluteof the biogeneticallyordainedsuperiorvalue of the TrueAryan,of
ordained"Labor"valueofthoseof
biogeneticcausality,and ofthehistorically
"true Proletarianorigin";functionthen to incarnatethe secluar ordering
of Natural/HistoricalCausality, repressing
representations/figuration
awareness of the rhetoricity
and systemicrelativity
of these figurations.
55
Bateson's concept of abductionschemas, or systems of inferenceas the

definingcharacteristicof cultural systems, is being borne out by new
discoveriesin the fieldof artificialintelligence,withrespectto the roles of
semanticnetworks,
framesetc., in modellingreasoningby analogy.See The
Economist,11-17thMay,1985,pp. 92-93.
56
The proposalhereis thattheconceptsof"labor"and "capital"function

dually
at empiricaland metaphysicallevels.Atthe latterleveltheyfunction
likethe
honorcode to regulatehumanbehaviorbyequatingdegreesofbothwithratios
ofhumanbeing,withinthenatural/material
definition
ofthehuman.Theythereforefunction
to use Wittgenstein's
accordingto theethic,impervious,
phrase,
to "philosophicaldiscourse."Fortheyare theparallelinhumansystemsofthe
codes
which
enable
the
of
all
forms
of the
integrating
dynamicautopoesis
of the functioning
of these codes will enable
living.The making-conscious
humansto determine
these self-regulating
codes ratherthanto be determined
bythem.This wouldbe the centralgoal of a science of humansystems.
57
See JohnGowlett.Ascentto Civilization:TheArchaeologyof EarlyMan (New

is
York,1984).Gowlettmakesclearthat,inspiteofhis title,whathe is studying
farmorecomprehensively
thegreatrupturesthatenabled thediscontinuity
at
the levelof lifeitself,of the processes of hominization
bywhichthehominid
transformed
itselfintothe human.
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moonto be less polishedthan a mirror;

be substantial.This when added to the otherritual

He argued that contemporary

(Whyte,1950).Since, as O.D. Creutzfeldpointsout, it is the mode of

suprasensory" (Heidegger, 1977). So, too, was the "inheritable

tithesis,by and throughwhichalone humanordersare enabled to

philosophyto wed the Earth to the Moon, for Othello to remain

be of efficacyto the truetelos of the Christian,thatof the original

These new men, havingno legitimateplace in the feudal Christian

like the constructionof a great cosmic machine had to be

whichthe human,as it moves into more widelyinclusiveaesthetic

now paved the way foran inversion,for

Italso projectedthe ratiomorphic

"proofs"of this were takenfromthe empiricalrealityof the cultural

lack of Reason. While his Lack of Reason excluded him from

For withthe rise and expansion of the IndustrialAge and the

this topos of iconicity

the orderwhichdictatesthe "grammarof regularities"throughwhich

Blacks would be allowed on the campus as a group,admitted

Theirproscribedlives-they were excluded from

Women,etc. Forthese have revealedtheconnectionbetweentheway

century,and the reorganizationof the systemof knowledgewhose

Western,as the Bacwezi to the Bakama ofthe IronAge royaldynasty.

it to become conscious of the relativity

It is in this context,fromthe frameof referenceof the Black

bearer, in Gowlett's terms, of the "long perspective" on the

the firstformof secular man auto-speciatedit/himself,

sion to the firstformsof the secular conceptionof Life/Death,

the Othellomanipulatedby lago, on the otherhand,he functionsas

creeds, that will be legitimatedand determinedby the abduction

ceremonies will be findable,that the hope sought by Bradley,

See Sir StaffordBeer's Prefacein H.R. Maturanaand F.J.Varela,Autopoesis

L. Kolakowski,Marxismand Beyond(London,1971),pp. 55-56.

The phrase was used by ProfessorChristopher

Sir StaffordBeer explains the main underlying

Theconceptofhumanautospeciationis developedon thebasis ofthebiologist

are seen as doingthesame thingforhumangroups,bondingthemin

E. Grassi. Humanismo y Marxismo: Critica de la Independizaci6n de la Ciencia

(Madrid,1977),p. 79. Grassi's mainpointis thatHumanismin itsoriginalform

See G. Haupt,"InWhatSense and To WhatDegreewas theRussianRevolution

Antiqua: Rhetorics as a Contemporary Theory(Bloomington, Indiana, 1980).

Daniel Sperberuses the term"symbolicmode of knowledge"to make a dis-

Levi-Strauss,in his explanationof the phenomenonknownas "totemism,"

B.A. Uspenskij,V.V. Ivanov,V.N. Toporov,A.M. Pjatigorskij,

(The Hague, 1973),p. 2.

Schmidtbringsup herea keyquestionasked byGilsenan,as to whethermyth

A phraseinventedbyAdreinneRich,i.e.,"howwe havebeen led to imagineouron thedeselves,"quotedbyElaineShowaiterinan article,was a keyinfluence

thecityof God." The humanistawas to borrowhis nameand findprecedence

Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creeds to Technological Man

(Cambridge,MA,1983),pp. 483-547.Andsee especiallypp. 509-10,wherehe

See Heidegger,Martin,The Wordof Nietzsche"in TheQuestionConcerning

M. Holquist,trans.C. Emerson,M. Holquist(Austin,Texas, 1981),p. 166.

Symbol,trans.C. Porter(Ithaca,New York,1982).

Originsof ComparativeEthnology(Cambridge,England,1982), pp. 109-18.

The claim by Sepulvedathatthe customsof the new worldpeoples revealed

See Pagden,The Fall of NaturalMan,pp. 112-13.

See Linneaus,Systema Naturae(Uppsala, 1758), p. 22, wherethe Black is

Harold Bloom puts forwardthe rhetoricalfigureof transumption

G.L. Mosse's Towardthe Final Solution:A Historyof EuropeanRacism(New

The functionplayed by the concept of self-preservation

ownsurvival"witheach organismas an atomizedunitofevolutioninteracting