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The New French
Philosophy

lan James
Copyright © lan James 2012

The right of Ian James to b e identified a s A uthor of this W ork has been asserted
in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents A ct 1988.

First published in 2012 by Polity Press

Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press
350 M ain Street
M alden, M A 02148, U SA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose
of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transm itted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, w ithout the prior perm ission
of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4805-7
ISBN-13: 97S-0-7456~4S06-4(pb)

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Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Times Ten

by Toppan Best-set Prem edia Lim ited
Printed and bound in G reat Britain by M PG Books G roup Limited

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credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further inform ation on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com

Contents

Ac know led g eme n ts vi

Introduction: The Dem ands of Thought 1

1 Jean-Luc Marion: A ppearing and Givenness 17
2 Jean-Luc Nancy: The Infinity of Sense 39
3 B ernard Stiegler: The Time of Technics 61
4 Catherine M alabou: The Destiny of Form 83
5 Jacques Rancière: The Space of Equality 110
6 Alain Badiou: The Science of the R eal 133
7 François Laruelle: Beginning with the One 158
Conclusion: The Technique of Thought 181

Notes 189
Bibliography 200
Index 218
Acknowledgements

I would like to offer my warm thanks to all those who have helped
with the production of this work, in particular Sarah L am bert at
Polity Press. Special thanks are also due to John Thom pson, who
commissioned this project and to the three anonymous readers of the
m anuscript whose com m ents were of enorm ous help in the produc­
tion of the final draft. For the various ways in which they have helped,
supported or inspired, I would like to thank M artin Crowley, Barry
Everitt, Gail Ferguson, Alison Finch, P eter Hallward, Leslie Hill,
Michael Holland, Christina Howells, Jonathan Miles, G erald M oore,
John Mullarkey, H annes Opelz, D an Smith, Chris Watkin, James
Williams and Em m a Wilson. In particular, I would like to extend
special thanks to A ndrew Benjamin, A driana Cavarero, Griselda
Pollock, Max Silverman and Sam uel W eber for helping me to form u­
late some key issues at a decisive m om ent in the completion of this
work. I am also very grateful to the University of Cambridge and to
Downing College for the period of research leave which allowed me
to com plete this book. I would like to express my infinite gratitude
to R uth D eyerm ond, without whose support, both intellectual and
personal, it would not have been possible to research and com plete
this project. Lastly, I would like to dedicate this book to the mem ory
of A nn and A lan D eyerm ond, whose generosity, warm th and kind­
ness are greatly missed.
Introduction: The Demands
of Thought

To speak of the ‘New French Philosophy" is to m ake the claim that

thought may have decisively transform ed or renew ed itself. It affirms
a discontinuity or rupture, a break between a thinking which came
before and one which comes after. Such a claim immediately raises
a num ber of different questions which are themselves philosophical:
questions relating to the very possibility of novelty itself, to causality
and determinism , or to the nature of transform ation or change .1 It
also raises questions relating to the distinctiveness or identity of a
specifically French, rather than, say, a broader E uropean, philosophy
and to the possibility of aligning a diverse range of thinkers according
to a shared logic or paradigm of renewal.
To complicate m atters further the question of the ‘new ’ has also
been one of the central preoccupations of French philosophy itself
since at least the 1960s.2As the A m erican philosopher Dan Smith has
shown, the conditions or the production of the ‘new ’ is a key concern
of Gilles D eleuze’s philosophy of difference and, as Deleuze himself
suggested on a num ber of occasions, one of the fundam ental ques­
tions posed m ore generally by his contem poraries (Smith 2007; 1,19
n . 2). This is easily borne out with reference t o the other m ajor figures
of French philosophy who rose to prom inence in the 1960s and then
came to dom inate French thought in the decades which followed;
figures such as, for example, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques D errida
and M ichel Foucault.
Lyotard, for instance, conceived th e ‘event’ as that which contests
received modes of discourse and requires that existing ways of think­
ing be transform ed. His conception of the event has been described
as ‘the founding m om ent of any postm odernism ’ (Malpas 2003: 99).
Likewise, in one of Lyotard’s most im portant works, The Differend,
the ‘differend’ itself is understood as an instability of language and
discourse which, if we give it its due, will institute ‘new addressees,
new addressors, new significations and new. referents’ and will admit
into language ‘new phrase families and new genres of discourse’
(Lyotard 1988:13). Similarly, in D errid a’s Spectres o f Marx, the motifs
of the messianic, of the undecidable and of the incalculable are all
orientated tow ards the possibility of incorporating ‘in advance,
beyond any possible programming, new knowledge, new techniques,
new political givens’ (D errida 1994: 13). This m ajor late text of
D erridean philosophy dem onstrates clearly that one of the central
concerns of deconstruction is ‘to produce events, new effective forms
of action, practice’ (D errida 1994: 89). A t different times and in dif­
ferent works, Deleuze, Lyotard and D errida will all use the term
‘event’ in order to designate the emergence of the radically new into
the field of thought, practice or historical becoming. The ‘event’ is
also a term used by Foucault in his archaeology of knowledge and
his thinking of epistem ic breaks developed in The O rder o f Things
(Foucault 2002). For Foucault, the question of the new is posed in
term s of discontinuity, or the way in which ‘within the space of a few
years, a culture sometimes ceases to think as it had been thinking up
till then, and begins to think other things in a new way’ (Foucault
2002: 56). The key question he poses is that of ‘how is it that thought
has a place in the space of the world, that it has its origin there, and
that it never ceases to begin anew ?’ (Foucault 2002: 56).
Foucault’s question is one which fram es this book and th e specific
form ulation of its title, The New French Philosophy. It is also a ques­
tion that continues to be posed in an insistent and sometimes urgent
m anner by all the thinkers who are discussed here: Jean-Luc M arion,
Jean-Luc Nancy, B ernard Stiegler, Catherine M alabou, Jacques
Rancière, Alain Badiou and François Laruelle. In different ways, all
these philosophers continue to be preoccupied with the question of
how something new might enter the world. They are concerned with
questions of transform ation and change, with the em ergence of the
unexpected, the unforeseeable or the uncategorizable. They are con­
cerned with the possibility of contesting existing form s in the name
of invention and creation, of reform ation and renewal. Posing the
question of how thought may have its place and origin in the space
of the world, and yet nevertheless may never cease to begin anew,
Foucault suggests that the process of renew al ‘probably begins with
an erosion from the outside, from a space which is, for thought, on
the other side but in which it has never ceased to think from the very
beginning’ (Foucault 2002: 56). In their different ways, each of the
philosophers discussed here seek to rethink the relation of thought
both to worldly existence or appearance and to what might be term ed
‘the outside’. In each case, albeit it still in different ways, the em er­
gence of the ‘new ’ or the possibility of change or transform ation can
be understood as an ‘erosion from the outside’, as an exposure to an
instance of excess, an excess over the finite limits of conceptual or
categorial determ ination.
Insofar as all the philosophers discussed here can be seen to con­
tinue the preoccupation with the new which is so central to the work
of Deleuze, Lyotard, D errida and Foucault, the title of this book
could be considered som ething of a misnomer. The question of the
new and its advent is itself far from new. By the same token, five out
of the seven figures discussed here began to establish their careers
in the 1970s and are not ‘new ’ in the sense of being a young genera­
tion beginning to write in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Badiou and Laruelle were both born in 1937, Nancy and Rancière
in 1940, and M arion in 1946. A ll of these five are still alive and pub­
lishing works today but all of them are, to varying degrees, in the
latter part of their careers as philosophers (and mostly retired from
their university positions). Only Stiegler (b. 1952) and M alabou
(b. 1959) are of a younger generation and, although well established,
can be placed in ‘mid career’. Perhaps most im portantly for the pur­
poses of this book and its potential readership, all these figures have
become m ore widely known in the anglophone academic community
over the past ten to fifteen years and their work has, over the past
ten years, been m ore widely available in English translation.
D espite the strong sense of continuity with the generation of phi­
losophers that can be associated with the nam es Deleuze, Lyotard,
D errida and Foucault and, very broadly, with the problem atic labels
‘post-structuralism ’ and ‘postm odernism ’, all of the thinkers discussed
here can be viewed as a successor generation. This m ight not always
be the case in strict age terms; Badiou, after all, was born only seven
years after D errida. Nevertheless, even on these terms, Deleuze,
Foucault and Lyotard (born 1925,1926 and 1924 respectively) are far
m ore clearly of an earlier generation. W hat will becom e clear through­
out this study is that the five older philosophers - Marion, Nancy,
Rancière, Badiou and Laruelle - all begin to establish their distinctive
positions in the 1970s and begin publishing their m ajor works of
philosophy in the 1980s and 1990s (and continue to do so today). The
two younger philosophers, Stiegler and M alabou, begin publishing
their m ajor works in the 1990s and their philosophical projects are
still very m uch ongoing. How ever helpful these indications may
or may not be, it should be underlined that simple calculations of
generational difference and age cannot be enough, in themselves, to
establish a plausible argum ent about the renew al or transform ation
of French thought over the past three decades.
The argum ent of this book is that, beginning in the 1970s, the
French philosophers discussed all, in different but decisive ways,
making a break from the thought of the preceding generation. The
difficulty in making such an argum ent is that attention to the differ­
ence and specificity of each thinker m ust be balanced with what they
might, how ever loosely, share. The danger, of course, will be that quite
divergent developm ents of thought will be assimilated to a unified
paradigm which in fact blurs or m isrepresents the specificity of each
thinker. A very preliminary rehearsal of this boo k ’s argum ent might
run as follows: in different and sometim es directly opposing ways, and
beginning in the 1970s, the philosophers treated in this book explicitly
distance themselves from the linguistic paradigm which inform ed
much of what has gone under the nam e of structuralism and post­
structuralism and which can be associated with diverse terms: with
the order of signifiers, signifieds and of the symbolic, or with the
categories of discourse, text, and writing (or arche-writing). They do
so in the name of a systematic attem pt to radically rethink questions
of m ateriality and the concrete, together with questions of worldli­
ness, shared em bodied existence and sensible-intelligible experience.
They can all be said to rethink the status of the ‘real’, of worldly
appearance, or to re-engage in new and highly original ways with the
question of ontology.
Before pursuing a rehearsal of this argum ent in anything but the
cursory and prelim inary m anner just given, it may be useful to con­
sider some of the broad surveys of contem porary French philosophy
which have been published to date and some of the questions which
are raised by them. John M ullarkey’s Post-Continental Philosophy:
An Outline (M ullarkey 2006) is without doubt the most ambitious
and fully developed attem pt that has been made to date to argue for
a paradigm break within the developm ent of contem porary French
thought. Post-Continental Philosophy brings together four philoso­
phers, two of whom are also discussed in this book. They are Gilles
Deleuze, Michel H enry (1922-2002), Alain Badiou and François
Laruelle. As M ullarkey himself points out at the very beginning of
the introduction, his work does not address something that is, or
which has already occurred, but rather something that ‘is unfolding,
an event in the m aking’ (M ullarkey 2006: 1). M ore precisely, the
book takes as its prem ise the claim that a certain m om ent in
the ongoing developm ent of French thought might be accorded the
status of an ‘event’. The m om ent he identifies is 1988, a year which
sees the publication in French of im portant texts by each of the
philosophers he discusses: D eleuze’s The Fold (Deleuze 2006),
B adiou’s Being and Event (Badiou 1988; 2005b), H enry’s Voir
l’invisible [Seeing the Invisible] (H enry 2009), and an im portant dis­
cussion betw een Laruelle and D errida on the possibility of a science
of philosophy (M ullarkey 2006: 11). The event that he identifies is a
change in philosophical thought which is centred on the question
of immanence. M ore precisely this ‘event’ m arks an attem pt by
philosophy to articulate ‘an em brace of absolute immanence over
transcendence . . . to m ake imm anence supervene on transcendence’
(M ullarkey 2006: 1). Post-Continental Philosophy argues, both per­
suasively and powerfully, that this attem pted em brace of immanence
leads to a realignm ent of French thought with naturalism and
with the life sciences, with m athem atics and with the reaffirm ation
of ‘philosophy as a worldly and m aterialist thinking’ (M ullarkey
2006: 2 ).
As will become clear, this book broadly reaffirms M ullarkey’s argu­
m ents relating to the realignm ent of French thought with a non-
reductive naturalism and the life sciences, with m athem atics and with
a worldly and m aterialist thinking .3 Yet stark differences also present
them selves and these relate to the question of the ‘canon’ of philoso­
phers which have been chosen, to questions of periodization (i.e. the
identification of 1988 as a key date), as well as to the adoption of
im m anence as the sole principle governing the realignm ent of French
philosophy over the past thirty years. It certainly is true that nearly
(but not) all of the thinkers here can be seen to affirm what might be
called the imm anence of m aterial life and to this extent M ullarkey’s
argum ent is borne out well by many of the analyses offered h e re .4
W hether it be M arion’s thinking of givenness and the auto-affection
of the flesh, Nancy’s thinking of the ‘trans-im m anence’ of sense,
M alabou’s conception of a m aterial or m etam orphic ontology, or,
indeed, the different conceptions of immanence that can be found in
Badiou and Laruelle, the question of imm anence will be returned to
throughout this study .5
This book differs from M ullarkey insofar as it takes the idea of a
break from the linguistic, textual or discursive paradigm of (post-)
structuralism as its initial prem ise and locates the beginnings of this
break in the 1970s.6The broad shift towards a thinking of imm anence
is certainly a result of this, but not all the thinkers discussed here can
easily be said to be thinkers of radical or absolute immanence (at
least not to the sam e degree) and, as will become clear, a range of
other im portant philosophical shifts can be seen to follow on from
this break: a re-engagem ent with the question of ontology as has
already been m entioned, but also a sustained renew al with the ques­
tion of the subject and of subjectivity, with questions of community,
politics and political change, and with questions relating to the aes­
thetic and aesthetics. W ithin the logic of the break from structuralism
and/or post-structuralism, the thought of both D eleuze and H enry
arguably offer indispensable resources to some of the thinkers treated
here (e.g. the influence of D eleuze and H enry on Laruelle or of
H enry in particular on M arion ).7 To this extent, it could be argued
that they represent an im portant, and specifically French, trajectory
of thought which can be traced from Bergson which is of decisive
im portance for the generation of thinkers treated here but that they
do not belong to this generation (and have been excluded on these
grounds).
It should be clear that the question o f inclusion o r exclusion is
of central im portance w hen it comes to constructing an argum ent
relating to what may be contem porary or ‘new ’ within a body of
thought. A shorter account of this field has been given by Peter
H allw ard in his introduction to a special edition of the journal
Angelaki published in 2003 and entitled ‘The One and the Other:
French Philosophy Today’ (Hallward 2003b). A lthough shorter than
M ullarkey’s full-length work, H allw ard’s introduction is very inclu­
sive and wide-ranging and takes in thinkers from across the span of
the tw entieth century, including well-known figures such as Bergson,
Sartre, Deleuze, H enry and Levinas, and less well-known thinkers
such as H enry Corbin (1903-1978). It also includes a num ber of
thinkers who may be said to be of roughly the same generation as
those treated here but who do not feature in this study, e.g. Clément
Rosset (1939-), Christian Jam bet (1949-) and Guy Lardreau (1947-
2008). R ather than argue for a localized or specific ‘event’ within
recent French thought (as does M ullarkey) or for a break or discon­
tinuity with a preceding generation (as is the case here), Hallward
suggests that m uch philosophy in the tw entieth century is m arked by
an affirmation or privileging of the singular, of singularity, and of the
creative principle of singular individuation or becoming: ‘If anything
holds the field together, if anything (beyond the contingency of lan­
guages and institutions) allows us to speak here of a field . . . then it
is the continuous persistence of singularity as the strong polarizing
principle of the field as a whole" (Hallward 2003b: 5).
However, taking H enry’s thought as m ore or less paradigm atic of
this privileging of singularity and creativity, H allw ard goes on to
argue that this field has consistently affirmed ‘an im m ediate and non­
relational process of individuation’ and with that a ‘radical refusal of
m ediation or representation’ (Hallward 2003b: 9). This leads him to
conclude that: ‘Recent French philosophers came to em brace a sin­
gular conception of thought to the degree that they judged the world
incapable of redem ption’ (Hallward 2003b: 22). On this basis, he sug­
gests that French thought has developed a highly non-relational
m ode of thinking and has entirely lacked an account of worldly and
m ediated relationality. He therefore concludes that the task of those
wishing to continue the tradition of French thought today will be to
provide a ‘relational alternative’ (Hallward 2003b: 23). If there is to be
a break or an event within thought then, for Hallward at least, this is
one which thought m ust now anticipate and take up as a challenge in
order to re-engage with the world and its possible transform ation.
It is arguable that many, if not all, of the seven thinkers discussed
in this study have sought to take up this dem and of thought, that of
re-engaging with the world and with the question of relationality, and
have done so in various ways and at various key m om ents from the
1970s onwards .8 M ore importantly, though, what this brief survey of
M ullarkey’s and H allw ard’s accounts shows is the extent to which
any attem pt to characterize ‘French philosophy today’ and to articu­
late what is or is not ‘new ’ within this tradition is itself a philosophical
argum ent which entails philosophical decisions and judgements. As
was indicated at the beginning of this introduction, to speak of the
‘New French Philosophy’ is to raise questions which are themselves
philosophical. To do so is also implicitly to stake out a position and
m ake a series of philosophical arguments. As has been indicated, the
principal argum ent of this book is that, despite their obvious differ­
ences from each other and despite the fact that this remains a field
defined by m ajor lines of conflict, argum ent and polem ical opposi­
tion, all the thinkers treated have com e to reaffirm what one might
call the ‘m ateriality of the real’ in the wake of the preceding genera­
tion’s focus on language and signification.
Yet any attem pt to m ake such an argum ent or to characterize the
field of contem porary French philosophy m ore generally will, of
course, also define itself as much by those thinkers who have been
excluded as by those who have been included.This study,for example,
excludes a num ber of im portant philosophers who are all of the same,
or similar, generation as those who have been included. Rosset,
Jam bet and Lardreau have already been m entioned but one could
also offer a long list of other key figures,for example, E tienne Balibar
(1942-), Jacques Bouveresse (1940-), Pierre M acherey (1938-),
Michèle Ledoeff (1948-), Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940-2007) and
M onique D avid-M énard (1947-).9 Younger philosophers such as
Q uentin Meillassoux (1967-) who have m ore recently begun to
publish significant work might be m entioned .10 Im portant thinkers
who have for some time been associated with the philosophy of
science or with Science and Technology Studies are also key points
of reference here and have, to date, been accorded varying degrees
of recognition: B runo Latour (1947-) would feature m ost prom i­
nently in this regard, as would Dom inique Lecourt (1944-) and
M ichel Serres (1930-). W hat should be clear from such a long (and
far from complete) list of exclusions is that the present study makes
no attem pt whatsoever to be exhaustive in its overview of contem ­
porary French thought or, indeed, to give an account of the recent
developm ent of philosophy in France from an institutional or disci­
plinary perspective.u
W hat links all the thinkers who have been included here is a spe­
cific set of continuities and discontinuities with the work of the p re­
ceding generation of philosophers. It is on the basis of continuity
(marks of influence, continued concerns, instances of repetition) and
of discontinuity (specific gestures of critical distance, differentiation,
and ruptures or breaks) with the generation of Foucault, Deleuze,
D errida and Lyotard that this study identifies something which could
be called the ‘New French Philosophy’. In this context, the innova­
tions explored within this book can be assimilated to a broad and
shared paradigm of renew al and innovation rather than to an em er­
gence of radical novelty. By the same token, some of the thinkers
treated here (e.g. Badiou and Laruelle) do seek to proclaim their
radical novelty and these positions and their related claims are
explored critically rather than being taken at face value.
Throughout the first four chapters, the figure of D errida perhaps
looms largest. M arion’s engagem ent with, and distance from, D errida
is discussed at some length in chapter 1. Nancy, Stiegler and M alabou
were very closely associated with D errida, either as younger col­
leagues, collaborators or form er students (or, indeed, all three). The
relation of each to deconstruction is m arked in the discussions of
chapters 2, 3, and 4, as is their decisive self-distancing from key
m oments of D erridean thought. It is arguably on these key m om ents
of distancing or divergence that they all build their own highly dis­
tinctive philosophical positions and come to sharply differentiate
themselves from deconstructive or m ore broadly ‘post-structuralist’
concerns. In the final three chapters, a figure of great im portance that
has not yet been m entioned occupies a key position of influence. He
is the structuralist-M arxist philosopher Louis A lthusser (1918—
1990).12 Both R ancière and Badiou were closely associated with, and
heavily influenced by, A lthusser at the very beginning of their careers.
In different ways and to different degrees each m akes a break from
Althusserianism in the 1970s, a break which, as will becom e clear, can
also be fram ed as rejection of the linguistic paradigm that under-
pinned its structuralist orientation. Laruelle is a slightly m ore diffi­
cult figure to position in relation to the preceding generation. O n the
one hand, he is clearly m arked and form ed by philosophies of differ­
ence, and in particular by D eleuzian philosophy and D eleuze’s think­
ing of radical im m anence (but also, as m entioned earlier, by the
thought of Henry). A t the same time, he describes his thought as a
‘non-H eideggerian deconstruction 5 and, from the 1980s onwards,
develops his ‘non-philosophy’ as a radical break from the philoso­
phies of difference (e.g. Deleuze, D errida, Lyotard) of the preceding
generation and, of course, from philosophy m ore generally. Then
again, as is argued in chapter 7, L aruelle’s conception of a ‘science’
of philosophy and of science m ore generally can be aligned with an
A lthusserian structural conception of science or theory.
It should be clear, then, that the continuities and discontinuities
with which this study engages are bo th multiple and complex and,
within the context of seven short chapters being devoted to seven
individual philosophers, there is no claim to have given exhaustive
treatm ent of these. However, the key discontinuity that has been
already identified in preliminary fashion, that is to say, the break from
the linguistic paradigm of (post-)structuralism, is articulated in dif­
ferent, m ore or less explicit ways, by each of the philosophers dis­
cussed. The argum ent is m ade in a polemical m anner by Badiou in a
sem inar given originally in N ovem ber 1977 and published in French
in 1982 in The Theory o f the Subject (Badiou 1982; 2009e). He identi­
fies the anti-humanism of the 1960s generation (citing Foucault,
Lacan and Althusser) with their privileging of the category of dis­
course and their orientation according to a linguistic paradigm. He
clearly identifies the structuralist attem pt to think beyond the cate­
gory of the hum an with its claim that language is the condition of
possibility for the production of hum an subjectivity or experience per
se (i.e. with the argum ent that the hum an as a category is an ‘effect’
of discourse). It is this privileging of the paradigm of language and
discourse that Badiou directly and polemically challenges (Badiou
1982: 204; 2009e: 187-8). H e suggests that this paradigm is a form of
‘linguistic idealism ’ and states flatly: ‘the world is discourse: this argu­
m ent in contem porary philosophy would deserve to be rebaptized
ideaίm guisίely,,, (Bauiuu 1982:204,2009c. 188).The linguistic ideal­
ism of structuralist conceptions of discourse is challenged by Badiou
in the name of m aterialism and the dem and that thought re-engage
with the m aterial world: ‘it is m aterialism that we must found anew
with the renovated arsenal of our m ental pow ers’ (Badiou 1982:198;
2009e: 182).13 Arguably B adiou’s m athem atical turn, discussed in
detail in chapter 6 , is precisely the ‘renovated arsenal’ which he calls
for in this 1977 seminar which so polemically dem ands a renewed
m aterialism and a break from the linguistic idealism of structuralist
discourse.
This break from the structuralist paradigm , effected in the name
of a renew ed m aterialist thought, is also an inaugural m om ent of
R ancière’s philosophy and is discussed at length in chapter 5 (in rela­
tion to his decisive rupture with A lthusser). R ancière’s b reak from
A lthusser and the A lthusserian conception of ideology is, very much
like B adiou’s criticism of 1960s anti-humanists, fram ed in terms of a
specific rejection of the category of discourse. This is m ade explicit in
his 1974 work Althusser's Lesson: Ideology is not simply a collection
of discourses or a system of representation’ (Rancière 1974: 252-3;
2011c: 142). As chapter 5 argues, R ancière’s subsequent conceptions
of the ‘distribution of the sensible’, of historical and political agency
or community, and his thinking about art and the aesthetic, all can be
seen to follow on from this decisive break with A lthusser and with
the structuralist-linguistic paradigm.
Such a break can also be seen in key works of the 1970s written by
Nancy and Laruelle, albeit with very different outcomes. In, for
instance, Ego Sum (Nancy 1979), Nancy criticizes the return to a
dom inant position of the category of the subject and identifi
most prom inently with the privileged status enjoyed in this period
by Lacanian psychoanalysis .14 However, this return of the subject is
also identified m ore broadly with the structuralist paradigm, specifi­
cally with the instances of ‘Structure, Text, or Process’ (Nancy 1979:
11). It is identified also with the adoption by philosophy of the
notion of the symbolic and its alignment with disciplines (anthropo­
logical, sociological) exterior to philosophy (Foucault is cited in this
point; see Nancy 1979: 12 n. 2). E go Sum has as its task the attem pt
to uncover beneath the ‘anthropological profusion’ of symbolic,
textual, or structural subjects an instance that would be ‘not a subject,
nor the Subject, we will not nam e it, but this book would like it to
nam e itself: ego’ (Nancy 1979:13).The instance that Nancy identifies
in Ego Sum via a reading of D escartes’s cogito is a singular and
bodily site of enunciation and existence which is prior to, or in excess
of, the symbolic order, and in excess of any possibility of theoriza­
tion by (psychoanalytic) discourse (see James 2006: 58-62). Nancy's
philosophical argum ents relating to this bodily and ungrounded
site of exteriority, excess or exposure open the way for all his later
form ulations around questions of community, em bodim ent, shared
existence and his ontology of the singular plural (discussed in
chapter 2 ).
 By the same token a break from a linguistic or textualist paradigm
is m arked in the very title of Laruelle’s 1977 work Le Déclin de
récriture [The Decline o f Writing] (Laruelle 1977b). Laruelle, like
Badiou and Rancière, explicitly articulates the theoretical and philo­
sophical aspiration of his work around a dem and for a m aterialism
(Laruelle 1977b: 8 ). Specifically, he aligns the m otif of the ‘decline of
writing’ with ‘a m aterialist critique of textual and linguistic codes’
(Laruelle 1977b: 14). The work as a whole could be characterized as
a full-frontal attack on the very category of ‘tex t’ and th e structural-
ist paradigm which privileges such a category. This is borne out in
polem ical statem ents such as: ‘text must be stripped of the ontico-
ontological prim acy with which structuralist ideology and the m ajor­
ity of “textual” ideologues comfort them selves’ (Laruelle 1977b:
222). From this dem and, Laruelle takes as his task the attem pt to
think m ateriality as being in excess of theoretical or transcendent
criteria, and therefore as ‘m aterial im m anence’, and as an exteriority
or heteronom y ‘m ore radical than that of the symbolic chain’
(Laruelle 1977b: 43, 76). Le Déclin de l ’écriture is still heavily m arked
by L aruelle’s attachm ent to 1970s’ libidinal philosophy and a
machinic conception of desiring production (clearly dem onstrating
the influence of D eleuzian philosophy). His break from the philoso­
phies of difference in the 1980s, his shift into the register of non­
philosophy and his championing of the absolute immanence of the
O ne is, however, clearly shaped by the anti-structuralism and anti-
textualism of 1970s’ works such as Le Déclin de récriture (as dis­
cussed in chapter 7).
The three other thinkers discussed here can also very clearly be
seen to take a distance from the organizing paradigm of text or
writing which form th e objects of th e 1970s’ polemics of Badiou,
Rancière, Nancy and Laruelle. This is m ost clearly m arked in the title
of a recent work by M alabou, Plasticity at the D usk o f Writing
(M alabou 2005a; 2010b). Strongly echoing L aruelle’s form ulation
relating to the ‘decline’ of writing, M alabou’s book gives an overview
of the developm ent of her concept of plasticity from the 1990s
onw ards.The wider contem porary significance of the concept of plas­
ticity, M alabou suggests, lies in the fact that ‘writing’ is no longer the
key paradigm of our tim e (M alabou 2005a: 36; 2010b: 15). The figure
of writing, she goes on to argue, found its legitimation in structural­
ism, but also m ore generally in the linguistics, cybernetics and genet­
ics of the m id-tw entieth century (M alabou 2005a: 108; 2010b: 58).The
thinking of plasticity which is developed by M alabou is, once again,
placed in the service of the dem and to think a ‘new m aterialism ’
(Malabou 2005a: 112; 2010b: 61) (as discussed in chapter 4 ).This sense
of a shift away from the paradigm of text or writing is explored again
in the work of both M arion and Stiegler. In chapter 1, it is located
clearly in M arion’s insistence that givenness is anterior to any
economy of writing or difference (conceived in D erridean term s as
différance and as an economy of arche-writing or the inscription of
the trace ) . 15 In chapter 3, it is located in Stiegler’s argum ent that
technics and the specific m em ory traces em bodied in tools and tech­
nical prosthetics m ore generally is a ‘putting into actual play’ of
différance or of the D erridean trace (Stiegler 1994: 240; 1998: 234).
In very different ways, therefore, M alabou’s plasticity, M arion’s
unconditional givenness (in the auto-affection of flesh), and Stiegler’s
conception of the technological rooting of tem poral experience all
represent attem pts to think a fundam ental m ateriality of hum an life
which is prior to or in excess of any economy of discourse, text,
writing or of the symbolic.
The fact that an affirmation of m aterialism can be identified across
all the thinkers discussed here and aligned in each instance with an
unambiguous break with or distancing from a linguistic, structuralist,
textualist or discursive paradigm is striking. W hat might be even m ore
striking in relation to the polemics of Badiou, Rancière, Nancy and
Laruelle in the 1970s is that the questions of m aterialism and m ate­
riality were, of course, already central to the (post-)structuralism they
sought to repudiate. W hether it be the m ateriality of the signifier as
cham pioned by the Tel Q uel group (see ffrench 1995: 110,122,138),
the m ateriality of the word or of discourse posited by Lacan (Lacan
1988) or the m aterial practices of ideology thought by A lthusser
(Sharm a and G upta 2006: 103), it cannot be said that the bodies of
thought that can be associated with structuralism lacked a concern
with the ‘m aterial’. Yet, as these indications clearly show, the concern
for m ateriality in this context was often a concern for the m ateriality
of discourse, of language and of the symbolic which might then form
or inform m aterial practices. Such a linguistic m aterialism is per­
ceived by all the thinkers here to be unable to account for a m ore
fundam ental materiality: of givenness in the auto-affection of the
flesh (M arion), of sense of and em bodied existence (Nancy), of tech­
nical prosthetics and their constitution of a tem poral world (Stiegler),
of plasticity (M alabou), of the sensible and its distribution (Rancière),
of im m anent inconsistent multiplicity (Badiou) and, finally, of the
absolute im m anence of the One (Laruelle).
The call for a new m aterialism articulated in the thought of the
seven philosophers treated in this book is developed in different ways
by each. It leads to highly original attem pts to rethink the question
of ontology or of being (Nancy, Stiegler, M alabou, Badiou). It leads
to the rethinking of the status of the im m anent real as an instance
which is in excess of ontology or any horizon of being whatsoever
(M arion, Laruelle).T he dem and for a m aterial worldly thinking also
leads many of these philosophers to re-engage with the question of
political relationality and community and to rethink these instances
in new and original ways, w hether it be Nancy’s thinking of com m u­
nity and his ontology of the singular plural, R ancière’s conception of
sensible community, or B adiou’s m ore recent thinking of the logic of
worldly appearance (to name but three exam ples),The concern with
the new, with transform ation and change, is also, as was indicated at
the beginning of this introduction, a key aspect of all the thinkers
discussed here. Such a concern is most often expressed in term s of
political change and an attem pt, in the work of philosophy itself, to
think the conditions of political transform ation and to affirm, facili­
tate or bring about political change itself (this is true for all the
philosophers discussed here with the exception, perhaps, of M arion
and L aruelle ).16
Linking many of these philosophical innovations is also a sustained
attem pt to re-engage with the question of the subject and to resituate
something which might still be called subjectivity within a pre-
symbolic/linguistic and m aterial dimension. All of these philosophers
can be said to engage in diverse ways with the question posed by
Jean-Luc Nancy namely, ‘Who comes after the subject?’ (Nancy
1991f). A fter the destruction, deconstruction or dissolution of the
traditional subject of metaphysics that has been the task of so m uch
philosophy unfolding in the wake of Nietzsche, H eidegger and struc­
turalism, how is thought to reconceptualize the reality of hum an
agency and subjective consciousness? TTiis question is posed in rela­
tion to the them es of em bodim ent and bodily existence (in M arion,
Nancy, M alabou, Rancière, and in the later Badiou). It is posed also
in relation to problem s of political subjectivity or ‘subjectivation’, and
to politically inflected argum ents relating to individuation (in Stiegler,
M alabou, Rancière and Badiou). Indeed, the question of the subject,
rethought as an embodied, ‘fleshy’ instance, or as a m aterial process
of collective identification or differentiation, is posed in a m anner
which is inseparable from the wider dem and for a m aterial worldly
thought to which these philosophers in their different ways respond.
From this, it can also be argued that the philosophers discussed
here under the rubric of the ‘New French Philosophy’ are a long way
from renouncing the political radicalism which is often associated
with the 1960s generation of thinkers that preceded them .17 Indeed,
the re-engagem ent with the m aterial and with the worldly can most
often be fram ed within the context of a response to the situation of
the contem porary world in the final decades of the twentieth century
and first decade of the twenty-first. This is born out arguably in
Nancy’s thinking of community and of the political, Stiegier’s
critique of hyper-industrial society, M alabou’s questioning of the
'neuronal’ organization of contem porary capitalist culture, and
both R ancière’s and B adiou’s quite similar conceptions of political
subjectivation.
It could be argued that these philosophers do not just simply reject
the ideological orthodoxies of what might m ore or less convention­
ally be called contem porary 'neo-liberal’ capitalism and its accom pa­
nying political forms. They also reject the political ontology implicit
in these orthodoxies. They reject, of course, the conception of the
subject as an autonom ous self-grounding instance (the subject of
metaphysics so repeatedly deconstructed in the tw entieth century).
Such a conception of subjectivity could arguably be said to persist
and to inform contem porary liberal thinking about rational agency,
about ‘choice’, and about the exercise of economic and individual
freedom. They reject also the ontological assumptions regarding
worldly relationality implicit in any conception of the hum an as hom o
economicus. It is not, it should be stressed, that these philosophers
are anti-democratic. If they address the question of democracy they
m ost often argue that what we need is better or m ore fully evolved
democratic thinking and dem ocratic agency or forms (see, for
example, Nancy 2008a; 2010c; Rancière 2005a; 2006b). It may be that,
in their different ways, these thinkers understand that the ideological
orthodoxies and implicit ontology of liberal capitalism are simply not
philosophically sufficient or even plausible means to describe what
fundamentally, really and actually, unfolds in hum an agency and
shared relational existence .18 It may also be that if, in the wake of the
Cold War, the orthodoxies of liberal capitalism have enjoyed a sig­
nificant degree of global hegemony, then our future crises (political,
economic, environm ental) are likely to be crises of these ideological
and philosophical orthodoxies as well as of the political forms they
represent.
In light of this, it could be said that the task of philosophical
renewal taken up by the seven thinkers presented here is as much
orientated towards the future as it is predicated on a logic of continu­
ity and discontinuity with the past. Tiiey might all be united by a
shared sense that the destruction or deconstruction of metaphysics,
subjectivity, or traditional notions of being, truth and knowledge, is a
necessary (and unfinished) but certainly not sufficient gesture to m eet
the demands of contem porary thinking. Instead, subjectivity, ontol­
ogy, truth, epistemology, as well as questions of universality, ethics
and politics, all must be thought anew in an affirmative and construc­
tive, rather than deconstructive, m anner.
Yet, in spite of all that these thinkers might arguably be said to
share, their respective bodies of w ork are clearly m arked by strong
divergences, by incompatibilities, and by at times highly polem ical
forms of opposition. This is m ost clearly evident in the break that
Badiou and those broadly aligned with him (such as Zizek,M eillassoux,
Hallw ard) proclaim with respect to the legacy of phenom enology and
philosophies of difference or finitude. It also manifests itself in
Laruelle’s attem pt to identify an invariant structure of philosophy
per se, to assimilate all forms of (post-)phenom enology or philoso­
phies of difference to that structure, and to oppose to these his own
conception of ‘non-philosophy’.While this book accords a high degree
of innovation and originality to all of the thinkers it discusses, such
affirmations of radical novelty need to be treated with some caution
and even with a degree of critical distance or philosophical scepti­
cism. In the case of Badiou, this is because, by his own admission, his
m athem atical turn and its accompanying formalism can be placed
within a continuous trajectory of French thought that w ould take in
such figures as Jean Cavaillès, Jean-Toussaint D esanti and, m ore
immediately, Lacan and A lthusser (see chapter 6 ; in particular,
Lacan’s dem and for a m athem atical approach to the real as affirmed
in his sem inar of the 2 D ecem ber 1971 is in direct continuity with
B adiou’s approach). A t the same time, his claims relating to the
em ergence of radical novelty in contem porary philosophy need to be
understood in the context of his thinking about the need to ‘split’ any
given situation into two (again, see chapter 6 ), It is also true that
many of B adiou’s key concerns with, for instance, multiplicity, unde­
cidability, excess and the advent or the ‘event’ of the radically new
are also central preoccupations of the preceding generation of post­
structuralist thinkers he ostensibly opposes. By the same token, his
stark difference from, and polemical opposition to, a contem porary
thinker such as Jean-Luc Nancy belies key similarities between the
two philosophers: again a concern with multiplicity, but also an (albeit
very differently inflected) return to the discourse of ontology and to
the categories of, for instance, truth and universality (see Nancy
1990a: 13; 2003c: 5; 1993a: 25; 1997e: 12; 2002a: 69, 75; 2007c: 60, 62).
Similar objections could be raised in relation to Laruelle’s attem pt
to decisively oppose his non-philosophy to the work of his contem ­
poraries and their im m ediate predecessors.
It should nevertheless become clear that each of these thinkers
m eets the dem ands of contem porary thought in very different ways.
They are therefore treated separately in individual chapters and are
presented broadly speaking on their own terms. The aim of each
chapter is to give a critical-philosophical overview and interpretation
of each on the basis of close reading of texts. In each case, the pre­
sentation will aim to highlight the strengths of each philosopher, the
significance of their achievements and, in particular, their originality
and the distinctiveness of their respective philosophical innovations.
The discussion will also, however, indicate some of the problems or
limitations associated with the distinctive positions of each thinker.
The presentation aims to be accessible but, at the same time, to do
some justice to the complexity of the thought under discussion.
As Peter Hallw ard has rem arked, contem porary French philoso­
phy has all too often been associated with an excess of unnecessary
complexity, with ‘a daunting if not arcane difficulty and sophistication
which restricts access to insiders only’ (Hallward 2003b: 1). What
should become clear as these discussions unfold is that these philoso­
phers seek to renew the way in which they think, to transform the
m anner in which they come to write philosophy itself. This attem pt
to renew the style, techniques and procedures of philosophical writing
is itself intimately connected to the renewal and transform ation of
thought that each thinker pursues.The French philosophies presented
here are highly am bitious in their attem pt to renew the claims, pos­
sibilities and transform ative power of philosophical thinking. The
renewal of philosophical thinking, however, can only be achieved in
the transform ation of the techniques of thought itself.
Jean-Luc Marion: Appearing
and Givenness

Jean-Luc M arion’s philosophy of givennness stands as perhaps one

of the m ost im portant recent and contem porary contributions to
phenom enology in France. Along with the thought of M ichel H enry
(1922-2002), M arion’s work has radicalized key aspects of Husserlian
and post-Husserlian philosophy. It has also opened up new and
original, albeit highly disputed, possibilities for phenom enology
in the wake of structuralist and post-structuralist critiques of phe­
nom enological thought. His publications since the 1970s can be
divided into three separate but closely interrelated areas: besides the
phenom enological work already m entioned, he is an im portant, and
in France widely recognized, D escartes scholar, and he is also
the author of a num ber of works of theology. In 2008, he was elected
to a chair at the Académ ie Française. Outside of France, however,
it was as a theologian that M arion first becam e widely know n .1
U ntil recently, his work on Descartes has been less recognized in the
anglophone academic world and he has been best known as an
im portant figure working at the intersection of phenom enology and
theology.
Yet, as Christina G schw andtner has persuasively argued, M arion’s
work on Descartes is of great im portance for b o th his theological and
phenom enological writing and shapes the concerns of both in deci­
sive ways .2 In this context, the overall scope of his philosophical
output needs to be assessed in term s of his position both within a
specifically French scholarly and philosophical tradition as well as
within a broader French appropriation and transform ation of G erm an
thought. M arion was schooled in philosophy under Jean Beaufret at
the Lycée C ondorcet ,3 he studied at the École N orm ale Supérieure,
and then at Paris IV-Paris-Sorbonne under Ferdinand Alquié (1906-
1985). Alquié was an im portant philosophical com m entator on
D escartes as well as a thinker who engaged with a wide range of
m odern philosophy. M arion’s writings on Descartes are clearly influ­
enced by Alquié, as they are by Etienne Gilson (1884-1978), another
key French scholar of Descartes and of m edieval and early m odern
thought m ore generally. A t the same time, M arion’s thinking emerges
from within the context and milieu of French engagem ents with
Nietzsche and H eidegger in the 1970s and, decisively, from his sus­
tained engagem ent with Husserl.
M uch of the m ore negative criticism of M arion’s work to date has
com e either from theologians unhappy with the way in which his
theology deviates from more orthodox strands of the discipline -
deviations which arise largely from his philosophical engagem ents -
or from phenom enologists who perceive his work in this area to be
too contam inated by his theological concerns. D errida also responded,
directly but m ore indirectly as well, to aspects of M arion’s theological
and phenom enological w riting .4 M ost prominently, M arion was one
of a num ber of figures (including, amongst others, Michel Henry, Paul
R icoeur and E m m anuel Lévinas) accused by D om inique Janicaud of
aligning phenom enology too closely with theology in a ‘theological
tu rn ’ which, Janicaud polemically asserted, threatened to underm ine
the true m ethod and scope of phenom enological thought.^
While what follows will seek to relate the core of M arion’s philo­
sophical concerns to both his com m entaries on Descartes and his
theological writing, it will focus first and forem ost on his phenom eno­
logical thought such as it emerges in three key works: Reduction and
Givenness (M arion 1989; 1998), Being Given (M arion 1997; 2002c),
and In Excess (M arion 2001; 2002a). It will argue that M arion’s
achievement and the originality of his transform ation of phenom e­
nology lie in the specific ways in which he assimilates the diverse
anti-foundationalist critiques levelled at phenom enological thought
by structuralism and post-structuralism. The critique of presence, of
the phenom enological reduction and of the transcendental ego, for
instance, are all accepted by M arion, but in rereading Husserlian
thought as a thought of givenness, he aims to move phenomenology
beyond its metaphysical foundations while at the same time widening
the scope of what might be considered as a phenom enon per se. In
redefining the scope of phenom enality itself, and in assimilating the
aim of an ‘overcom ing’ of metaphysics, M arion has in many ways
helped redefine the term s of philosophical debate in France in the
wake of deconstruction and the ‘death of the subject’.
The overcoming of metaphysics

M arion’s concern to situate his thought within what one might broadly
term a post-Heideggerian and post-Nietzschean overcoming of m eta­
physics can be traced back to his earliest publications of the 1970s,
most notably his first m ajor com m entary on Descartes, Sur l’ontologie
grise de Descartes [On Descartes's Grey Ontology] (M arion 1975),
and his first im portant work of theology, The Idol and Distance
(M arion 1977; 2001b).
H eidegger’s conception of metaphysics as a history of ontotheol-
ogy and Nietzsche’s framing of the philosophical tradition as a history
of Christian-Platonism are of decisive im portance for M arion in this
period. In each case, what is at stake is the tendency of the tradition
of metaphysics to think first and forem ost of being in general in
term s of the totality of beings, and then to view those beings in term s
of foundations, grounding, or causal principles (timeless essences or
identities, notions of foundational substance, of a grounding subject
of knowledge, a priori conditions of possibility, or, perhaps most
im portantly for M arion, the idea of G od as the Supreme Being who
would act as the first cause and creator of all beings).
In the earlier text, M arion uncovers, with considerable patience
and scholarly attention, D escartes’s debt to, and close engagem ent
with, the philosophy of A ristotle in the Regulations for the Direction
o f the Mind. W hat he discovers is that the seemingly epistemological
concerns of Cartesian thought conceal an ontology. Descartes appears
to reject the A ristotelian category of substance (thought as an o nto­
logical ground, or as the being of beings) in favour of the ego that
knows things through the criteria of evidence and certainty. This
epistemological gesture in fact dissimulates an ontology, since the
being of beings now finds itself grounded in that ego, and, in a rather
equivocal gesture, the solidity and identity of that ego also finds itself
grounded, according to M arion’s reading of Descartes, in the exis­
tence of God. D escartes’s ontology is therefore ‘grey’, because con­
cealed, and ambivalent or equivocal because it relies on a twofold
metaphysical foundation of the ego and of the traditional notion of
G od as C reator and Suprem e Being (M arion 1971:186-90).
This concern with ontology and metaphysical grounding is deve­
loped further in M arion’s slightly later theological text. The Idol and
Distance argues that when we think of God in term s of a fixed iden­
tity or presence or as an entity or Suprem e Being, then we are caught
up within a metaphysical m ode of thinking par excellence, and firmly
inscribe ourselves within an ontotheological fram ew ork (as described
by Heidegger). Indeed, viewing God in this way, we only view an
all-too-human image; we create an idol of God, refuse the distance
and withdrawal of the divine, and fall into- idolatry or, indeed, blas­
phemy .6 The work then stages an opposition betw een a metaphysical
notion of God as Being, substance or presence, and a notion of G od
as infinite distance, separation and withdrawal from, or excess over,
Being. The form er m om ent is fram ed in our gaze upon G od con­
ceived as an idol, which fixes divine presence, the latter in our con­
tem plation of what M arion term s the ‘icon’. The icon, for M arion, is
an image which internalizes within itself the separation, absolute
distance and non-being of the divine (M arion 1977:25; 2001b: 8 ). Not
surprisingly, The Idol and Distance contains a detailed engagem ent
with the tradition of negative theology (in the figure of Pseudo-
Dionysius the A reopagite whose works were w ritten in the late fifth
and early sixth century c e ). Perhaps m ore unexpectedly for a work
of theology, it also contains a sustained reading of the Nietzschean
m otif of the D eath of God. Here, M arion argues that Nietzsche
announces only the death of the God of metaphysics (the God of
being, substance, etc.), and that the N ietzschean twilight and demise
of idols leaves open a space of absence which, in its very absence
and withdrawal, can all the m ore properly be called divine. This
persistence of the divine in Nietzschean thought is m arked most
clearly, according to M arion, in the way in which it is haunted by
Christ and Christ-like figures: the A nti-Christ, Dionysus, Z arathustra
and so on.
Both these early works open up philosophical concerns and lines
of argum ent which will prove to be decisive for M arion’s later phe­
nomenology of givenness. His critique of D escartes allows him to
delineate very clearly an understanding of metaphysics and ontothe-
ology as a logic of the foundation of beings and their grounding in
causal principles. His theology of distance allows him to pose the
question of a conception of the divine which would situate itself
beyond any horizon of being (M arion 1977: 294; 2001b: 233). In this
respect, his thinking at this point quite closely aligns itself with the
philosophical concerns of both Jacques D errida and E m m anuel
Lévinas (M arion 1977: 286, 226; 2001b: 298, 237). Perhaps most sig­
nificantly, The Idol and Distance allows M arion, like D errida and
Lévinas, to pose the problem of exactly how thought might extricate
itself from, or think beyond, the horizon of being, to think in excess
of ontotheology, or otherwise than being. M arion suggests the follow­
ing: T h e re rem ains therefore only one path: to travel through
ontotheology itself all along its limits, its marches. . . . To take onto-
theology tangentially, from the angle o f its lines o f defence, and thus
to expose oneself to what already no longer belongs to it’ (M arion
1977: 37-8; 2001b: 19). This way or path of thought arguably defines
the philosophical strategy that informs M arion’s reading of Husserl
and Heidegger in his later m ore strictly phenom enological work.

Phenomenology and givenness

Reduction and Givenness begins, perhaps surprisingly, by aligning

the beginnings of Husserlian phenom enology with the final accom­
plishments of Nietzsche’s philosophical thought. In late 1887, just as
H usserl gives his inaugural lecture at the University of Halle (‘The
Goals and Tasks of M etaphysics’), so Nietzsche em barks on the final
period of his writing, m arked by works such as On the Genealogy o f
M orals, Twilight o f the Idols, and Ecce H om o. As Nietzsche dies
after a decade of paralysis in 1900, so Husserl publishes the first
volume of the Logical Investigations (M arion 1989: 7; 1998:1). W hat
the two share, M arion claims, is a question posed in relation to p he­
nom enal appearance and the possibility of thinking the presence of
phenom ena in the absence of any hidden supra-reality of essences
or grounding principles: ‘Can the givenness in presence of each thing
be realized without any condition or restriction? This question m arks
Nietzsche’s last advance and H usserl’s first point of arrival’ (M arion
1989: 7; 1998: 1). N ietzsche’s affirmation in The Gay Science that
there is appearance only and ‘nothing m ore’ could be cited in this
regard, as could his assertion in Twilight o f the Idols that the opposi­
tion between the Platonic ‘tru e’ world of ideal essences and the
world of ‘false’ appearances has been abolished (Nietzsche 1974:
116; 1990: 51). Husserlian phenomenology, for its part, is concerned
to describe the character of consciousness in the most clear and
systematic way and addresses that which appears to consciousness
in lived experience alone. The existence of a supra-phenom enal
realm of ‘real’ entities existing independently of our consciousness
of them is not posed, nor, indeed, is it thought to be a viable philo­
sophical question. In each case and in different ways, M arion under­
lines, both Nietzsche and Husserl seek to liberate thought from
metaphysical prejudices by affirming a field of appearance which is
to be thought outside of any reference to a hidden or higher realm
of reality
This alignment of H usserl with Nietzsche, however surprising it
may be, is decisive for the way in which the argum ents of Reduction
and Givenness unfold. According to M arion the philosophical break­
through m ade by Husserlian phenom enology lies in its reduction of
lived experience to that which manifests itself in the im m anent realm
of consciousness alone. It is only that which is given immanently in
sensible intuition or perception that will be described by the phe-
nomenologist, with all else being ‘bracketed off’. As M arion puts it:
‘the phenom enological breakthrough is accomplished by leading
back to intuition everything that claims to be constituted as a phe~
nom enon’ (M arion 1989: 17; 1998: 8 ). In describing the character of
phenom enal appearance as given to consciousness, the phenom enol-
ogist refers, first and foremost, not to any form of a priori category,
nor to any notion of sensible experience or reality which would tran­
scend that which is given im m anently in intuition, nor, indeed, to any
other form of presupposition of any kind. Nor, M arion insists still
further, can intuition itself be seen in this context as a founding prin­
ciple: ‘Intuition itself cannot be understood as a last presupposition,
since it is neither presupposed nor posited, nor given, but originally
giving’ (M arion 1989: 19; 1998: 9). In what will becom e a central
prem ise of all of M arion’s phenom enology after Reduction and
Givenness, he insists on the primacy of givenness over all the other
key instances which underpin H usserlian phenom enological thought.
The intentional directedness of consciousness towards the perceived
phenom enon, the act of sense constitution, the phenom enological or
transcendental ego, and even the im m anent intuitions and percep­
tions of consciousness itself all, without exception, are posterior to,
or result from, an originary giving. If intuition is ‘originally giving’, if
it gives the world of phenom ena to us, that is only because something
is given, in and to intuition: ‘Intuition results from givenness without
exception’ (M arion 1989: 27; 1998:15).
It is this anteriority of givenness or giving which allows M arion to
read Husserl as liberating phenom enal presence from any anterior
condition or grounding principle. This is because the givenness or the
giving of phenom ena to the im m anence of sensory intuition does not
found or ground anything; it simply makes manifest that which is
given and does so in the absence of any prior principle. It is this asser­
tion of the absolute unconditionality of phenom enological givenness
that allows M arion to claim that H usserl’s wider project can and m ust
be viewed as a post-Nietzschean liberation from the tradition of
metaphysics. Indeed, this is the key point with which Reduction and
Givenness begins and which is pursued throughout the work as a
whole: ‘In undertaking to free presence from any condition or p re­
condition for receiving what gives itself as it gives itself, phenom enol­
ogy therefore seeks to complete metaphysics and, indissolubly, to
bring it to an end’ (M arion 1989: 8 ; 1998:1). A nd yet, as will become
clear, M arion’s position relies on a very specific reading of Husserl,
a reading which is perhaps as disputable as it is both forceful and
original.
As the title of Reduction and Givenness plainly suggests, it is, for
M arion, the phenom enological reduction itself which plays a key role
in the unfolding of his argum ent. For the phenom enologist, the
‘bracketing off’ of the empirical referent (and the concomitant isola­
tion of the phenom enon in the immanence of consciousness alone)
allows for its appearance to be rigorously described and circum­
scribed according to the key instances alluded to above: the presen­
tation of the phenom enon in sensible intuition, the directedness of
intentional consciousness towards it, and, as a result of both intuition
and intention, the constitution of the meaningfulness or signification
of the phenom enon. In this context, M arion’s argum ent unfolds as a
radicalization of H usserl’s thought in the most proper sense, that is
to say, as a return to what is perceived to be the root or most fun­
dam ental m om ent of phenomenology: givenness itself. M arion radi­
calizes the H usserlian reduction by showing that all the instances
which inform its operation except givenness alone can them selves be
reduced or bracketed off. C entral to this argum ent is a double
m eaning of the term ‘givenness’ (donation in French): the term refers
to the fact that something is given and to the act of giving and there­
fore has both a substantive and verbal meaning. In relation to
phenom enal appearance, donation articulates a strict correlation or
identity betw een th e giving (appearing) and th e given (that which
appears). Husserl is directly cited on this point: that which is given
is so in an act of appearing which gives the given (M arion 1989: 52;
1998: 32). TTiis correlation betw een the appearing and th at which
appears, betw een the giving and the given, confirms for M arion the
primacy of givenness over the categories of sensible intuition, inten-
tionality, and signification or sense constitution. The breakthrough of
Husserlian phenom enology lies in the way in which it insists that
givenness precedes, and is not conditioned by, all other instances
(M arion 1989,53; 1998:32). W ithout the giving of that which is given,
none of the other instances would function as such: intuition would
be em pty of content, intentionality would have nothing to direct
itself towards and there would be no apparent or sensible form for
which sense could be constituted as such. It is from this anteriority
of giving and givenness over all other instances which are engaged
in the operation of the phenom enological reduction that M arion
derives the axiom with which his argum ent concludes: ‘so much
reduction, so much givenness’ (M arion 1989: 303; 1998: 203). The
m ore one reduces or brackets off, the m ore one isolates that which
is given and the giving of the given as irreducible, unconditional and
absolute: ‘Givenness alone is absolute, free and without condition,
precisely because it gives’ (M arion 1989: 53-4; 1998: 33).
It is at this point that the Cartesian dimension of M arion’s thought
perhaps makes itself most clearly felt and that his radicalization of
Husserl appears more as a radicalization of that which is most
Cartesian in Husserl (Husserl 1999). Givenness, like the Cartesian
cogito, emerges here as that which resists all possibility of negation
or doubt, as that which will necessarily be affirmed as a certainty or
evidence when all else can be dismissed as illusion (for even an illu­
sion, falsity, absence, or void must be given in order to be perceived
as such ).7 It is because of its absolute irreducibility, unconditionality
and indubitability that givenness both precedes and succeeds any
other instance or operation of thought. It is also this irreducibility
and unconditionality that leads M arion to argue that Husserl, and in
his wake Heidegger also, fail to properly pursue the radicality of
givenness in their respective phenom enological projects. In each case,
M arion argues, both Husserl and H eidegger stop short of fully
embracing the full implications of the giving of appearing, the form er
by inscribing phenom enality within the horizon of objects or ‘objec-
tality’, the latter by inscribing it within the horizon of being, th at is
to say, of Dasein and its worldly, t em poralizing disclosure of beings.
M uch of the main body of Reduction and Givenness is taken up with
close readings of Husserl and H eidegger in order to show that given­
ness is not only anterior to and not conditioned by the instances of
intuition, intention and signification, but is prior also to the horizons
of objectality and being.
It is here that the radical nature of M arion’s phenom enology of
givenness really asserts itself. This is radicality understood now, not
just as a return to the root or originary m om ent of phenomenology,
but rather as a thoroughgoing and fundam ental transform ation of its
scope and possibilities. The argum ents of Reduction and Givenness
culminate with an identification of what M arion dubs the ‘third reduc-
tion’. Husserlian phenomenology carries out a first reduction accord­
ing to which phenom ena are reduced in the last instance to their
being as objects constituted by the transcendental ego. H eideggerian
existential phenom enology carries out the second reduction accord­
ing to which phenom ena are reduced to their disclosure as beings in
the ecstatic tem porality of Dasein. Carrying the reduction still further
to a third degree, M arion discovers that, in its non-negatability,
unconditionality and therefore absolute anteriority, the givenness of
phenom ena cannot be subsumed into any form al ontology or any
horizon of being. As he puts it: Ί η the realm of reduction it is no
longer a question of Being. . . . Because being never intervenes in
o rd er to perm it the aboslute givenness in which it plays not the slight­
est ro le ’ (M arion 1989: 69; 1998: 43). In this light, givenness would,
for M arion, be prior to and not conditioned by any form of category
or relation of any kind whatsoever including, it should be noted, the
category of presence. M arion’s third reduction, it will become clear,
has enorm ous implications both for the way in which he assimilates
key anti-foundationalist critiques of phenomenology, such as D erri-
dean deconstruction, and for the way in which the scope of phenom -
enality itself is widened to include what he will come to call ‘saturated
phenom ena’. It is this widening of the scope of phenem onality which,
in turn, allows his thought to open onto, but (M arion would insist)
rem ain distinct from, theological concerns and the discourse of theol­
ogy m ore generally.

Objections and responses: Being Given and saturated

phenomena

Being Given was published eight years after the appearance of

Reduction and Givenness and its opening pages, entitled ‘Preliminary
R esponses’, indicate the extent to which the work is, at least in part,
intended to respond to the debate which was provoked by the earlier
work. In this context, Being Given can be seen as a re-engagem ent
with, or repetition of, some of the key concerns of Reduction and
Givenness, as a response to some of the m ore or less polemical objec­
tions raised to it, and as an attem pt to develop further the radicality
of its insights. M arion begins by claiming for the earlier work a rather
m odest ambition: ‘A t that time, I thought only to proceed with a
simple historical exam ination of the developm ent of the phenom eno­
logical m ethod’ (M arion 1997:7; 2002c: 2). Readers familiar with the
technical detail and scope of H usserlian and Heideggerian thought
may find such a protest unconvincing, given the objections which can
and, as will becom e clear, were raised in relation to his reading of
Husserl in particular.
Yet, as has been indicated, ii would be wrong to suggest that Being
Given is a purely reactive text. In particular, M arion explores m ore
fully the implications of the third reduction and does so in relation
to the question of being. H e begins by reiterating a num ber of key
points: that the third reduction has led to a new definition of the
phenom enon, ‘no longer as object or being, but as given’ (M arion
1997: 8 ; 2002c: 3), that it returns phenom ena to their "pure given
status, according to radically non-m etaphysical determ inations’
(M arion 1997: 8-9; 2002c: 3), and that the pure givenness of the phe­
nom enon is freed from ‘the limits of every other authority including
those of intuition’ (M arion 1997: 28; 2002c: 17). These reiterations
lead to a more pointed reform ulation of the question of being in
relation to givenness. Marion underlines, for instance, that the pure
givenness of phenom enal appearance abolishes the traditional oppo­
sition betw een existence and essence (since that which appears does
so in the absence of any preceding essence) (M arion 1997: 35; 2002c:
22). He also emphasizes that, if all that appears m ust nevertheless in
some sense be said ‘to b e ’, this is only because it is given: ‘A ppearing
itself is, in the end, equivalent to being, but being presupposes given
being’ (M arion 1997: 40; 2002c: 26; translation modified). Nothing is
unless it is first given as being in the giving of its appearance and
therefore once again being is necessarily posed as conditioned by an
anterior instance of giving, itself absolute, irreducible and uncondi­
tioned. In this context, Heideggerian ontological difference - that is,
the difference betw een beings and the horizon of being - emerges
secondarily from givenness: ‘Being, insofar as it differs from beings,
appears imm ediately in terms of givenness’ (M arion 1997: 53; 2002c:
34). Being is, then, always and only an event of being given and
nothing can appear, affect us, or be accomplished other than by its
being given (M arion 1997: 79; 2002c: 53).
These instances of reiteration and further elaboration of givenness
in relation to the question of being are worth highlighting because
they are developed in various ways throughout Being Given and, in
particular, prepare the way for one of its most im portant philosophi­
cal engagements, that is, M arion’s critical reading of D errida, and of
D errida’s thinking of the gift as elaborated in Given Time (D errida
1991; 1992). D espite the specificity of this reading, it should not be
viewed in narrow term s since the relation of M arion’s thought to
deconstruction m ore generally is certainly at stake, as is the status of
givenness within phenom enology as a whole.
Given Time, published in 1991, had its origin in a seminar given by
D errida betw een 1977 and 1978. As such, it preceded M arion's
Reduction and Givennness by over a decade and cannot be read as
an explicit response to it, although D errida does respond to M arion
directly in one specific and rather dense footnote added at the tim e
of publication (D errida 1991: 72; 1992: 50-2, n. 10). Nevertheless, his
argum ents relating to the impossibility of ‘pure giving’ or of an abso­
lutely pure gift cannot but directly call into question the fundam ental
term s of M arion’s broader innovation within phenomenology. For
both, the exact status of the gift and the possibility or otherwise of
its purity and unconditionality are decisive for the possibility of phe­
nom enology itself. D errida’s argum ent is well known: if an act
of giving is to be pure, then there m ust be no return to the giver, no
debt of recognition may occur in relation to the giver, nothing may
be accrued as a result, either in the short term or through some
process of deferral. Otherwise, the gift is not a gift but functions as a
m ode of exchange (D errida 1991:18-19; 1992:7). The presence of the
pure gift is withdrawn as it is subsumed into an economy of deferral,
a wider circle of exchange and recognition in which no gift is ever
purely given. Of course, D errida argues that a gift can only ever
present itself in such an economy of exchange and that: ‘the gift is
annulled . . . as soon as it appears as gift or as soon as it signifies itself
as gift, there is no longer any “logic of the gift’” (D errida 1991: 39;
1992:24). If this argum ent is followed through in relation to the giving
of appearance or phenomenality, then it becomes clear th at M arion
is profoundly m istaken to claim that ‘givenness’ can be irreducible or
unconditional. The appearing or m anifestation of phenom ena would
always be conditioned by some kind of economy or process of
exchange. D errida’s argum ent in relation to the gift here is, of course,
consistent w ith his deconstruction of phenom enal presence according
to the logic of différance, whereby presence only manifests itself as
such insofar as it is produced in relation to, and m arked or divided
by, the trace of an im m em orial past (D errida 1976: 65-73). The tem ­
poral economy of différance always precedes, conditions and p ro ­
duces presence; therefore presence is always deferred, contam inated
by its other and by alterity in general: the gift of appearing is never
pure.
Not surprisingly, M arion takes considerable pains to reject any
D erridean inspired objections to his phenom enology of giving based
on the argum ents of Given Time. Indeed, the greater p art of the
second book of Being Given is devoted to showing that D errida’s
analysis of the impossible gift cannot apply to phenom enological
givenness. D errida’s key mistake, he argues, is to conflate phenom ­
enal giving or appearing with a m odel of giving derived from anthro­
pology and sociology .8 The latter, of course, cannot but function
according to an economy of recognition, whereby to give is to receive
within a broader system of exchange. Yet, for M arion, phenom enal
giving is in no way economic, since the gift is given according to a
fundam ental asymmetry or paradoxical logic which he describes in
the following terms: ‘the given, issued from the process of givenness,
appears but leaves concealed givenness itself, which becomes enig­
m atic’ (M arion 1997:100; 2002c: 6 8 ).This perhaps rather Heideggerian
form ulation describes a mode of giving which would be extracted
from any economy of exchange or recognition because the giving
itself is absolutely anonymous and without identifiable origin. It may
be received and may even incur a sense of debt, but without any
identifiable giver the circle of exchange which is so decisive for
D errida is broken. In order to dem onstrate that phenom enal giving
is different from an economy of giving in this crucial regard, M arion
takes each term of the gift in economic exchange, the ‘giver’, the
‘receiver’ and the ‘exchanged object’, and shows that each can be
bracketed off o r suspended when it is a question of appearance or
appearing. His response to D errida hinges essentially on the possibil­
ity of carrying out further operations of the reduction, ‘a triple
epokhë of the transcendental conditions of economic exchange’
(M arion 1997:122; 2002c: 84), in order to show that the phenom enal
gift can be coherently thought in the absence of each of the three
term s (M arion 1997: 124-60; 2002c: 85-113). Once again, the pure
givenness of phenom enal appearance emerges as that which cannot
be reduced after all else has been suspended or bracketed off. Once
again, the gift is shown to be absolute and unconditioned by any
other instance, in this case economic.'This leads M arion to conclude
decisively against D errida that: ‘the g i f t . . . gets its “given” character
from givenness, that is to say, from itself. The gift gives itself intrinsi­
cally from a self giving’ (M arion 1997: 161; 2002c: 113). If the p he­
nom enological gift is viewed properly and phenomenologically
according to the operations of the reduction, then it will become
clear that it ‘owes nothing to any anthropological or sociological
m odel’ (M arion 1997:161; 2002c: 113).
The ambition and daring of M arion’s argum ents in Being Given
are very striking, for they underline what has been m ore or less
implicit from the opening chapters of Reduction and Givenness:
namely, that all of D errid a’s patient and careful readings of Husserl,
including his earliest readings of 4rThe Origin of G eom etry’ and of
voice,sign and signification in Speech and Phenom ena (D errida 1996)
- indeed, the entire deconstruction of presence throughout the
D erridean corpus - none of this can deconstruct phenom enal given­
ness, the irreducible, absolute and unconditional giving of appear­
ance. In response to the D erridean challenge to a phenom enology of
givenness, M arion simply develops the scope and the force of the
third reduction even further. Yet, despite the ambition and daring of
these arguments, what emerges perhaps most strongly from this
encounter betw een M arion and D errida is the extent to which their
difference from each other hinges on the divergence of their respec­
tive readings of Husserl. M arion situates the giving of appearance as
prim ary and unconditioned in his radicalized reading of Husserlian
Gegebenheit. D errida argues that phenom enality is produced via the
tem poral and tem poralizing econom y of différance. M arion would
accuse D errida of a metaphysical gesture insofar as he understands
appearance to be conditioned by this prior tem poral economy (since
appearance is referred to an anterior instance). D errida would accuse
Marion of the same insofar as givenness is endowed with an immediacy,
a proximity and continuity with the immanence of the consciousness
to which it is given (therefore reproducing a logic of presence despite
itself ).9 The question perhaps comes down to a question of tem pora­
lity. In a perhaps rather cursory and underdeveloped m om ent of
Being Given, M arion suggests that tem porality can only be produced
from the event of phenom enal appearance, or from the rhythm ic
succession of such events. D errida, of course, would suggest the oppo­
site: that it is an econom y of spatializing and tem poralizing inscrip­
tion of the trace that gives appearance and, m oreover, that such an
economy cannot be reduced to a metaphysical grounding principle
since it exceeds all ontological disclosure or possibility of reduction,
and therefore all logic of foundation or ground. The question then
would be: does the giving of appearance give tem porality (M arion)
or does tem porality give appearance (D errida)?
It is arguable that the lim itations of M arion’s phenom enology can
begin to be discerned here. His affirmation of givenness as an instance
prior to any economy (of the trace, of différance) perhaps relies too
heavily on an overly formalistic radicalization of the Husserlian p h e ­
nom enological reduction and in so doing fails to satisfactorily pose
the question of the genesis or production of presence, intuition, sig­
nification, conceptuality, etc. The m anner in which this question of
genesis or origin is posed by D errida is arguably one of the m ost
singular and im portant achievem ents of deconstruction in relation to
the H usserlian legacy and M arion’s work is, by contrast, lim ited by
its insistence on an originary anonymity of the giver and of giving
and the absolute and unconditioned givenness of the given (and this,
as will become clear, is also what opens his thought most directly
onto theology and allows for a problem atic blurring of the lines
which separate phenom enological and theological discourse).
Nevertheless, what is im portant to note at this stage in the argum ent
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as a m eans of developing and radicalizing his thought further. The

third reduction is tested against the deconstruction of the gift and
strengthens further M arion’s claim that phenom enality m ust be
viewed as pure unconditioned giving prior to any other horizon,
economic, ontological or otherwise. W hat is true for M arion’s
response to D errida is true also for his response to Dom inique
Janicaud whose objection to the phenom enology of givenness M arion
addresses directly over a num ber of pages just before he comes to
his m ore extended discussion of Given Time (M arion 1997: 104-8;
2002c: 71-4).
The objection of The Theological Turn to M arion’s work is, as
M arion himself presents it, twofold: firstly Janicaud accuses the p he­
nomenology of givenness of being too em pty and abstract in its
understanding of the phenom enon itself.The phenom enon is stripped
down to a thin or minimal given and is so to th e point th a t M arion’s
thinking as a whole emerges as a ‘negative’ phenom enology (M arion
1997: 104; 2002c: 72). Secondly, this minimalism works in favour of,
and prepares the way for, a m ore maximalist or excessive investm ent
in an overall schema of m eaning which allows phenom enality to be
invested with theological motifs and concerns (M arion 1997: 104;
2002c: 72). In short, M arion’s phenom enology is, as Christina
G schw andtner puts it in sum m ary of Janicaud’s position ‘a m ere
negative propaedeutic for his theology’ (G schw andtner 2007: xiv).
In a later work which responds to the debate provoked by The
Theological Turn, Janicaud himself summarizes the criticisms of the
earlier book, suggesting that his broader target was the ‘m ethodolo­
gical displacements or even m ethodological drifting’ of certain con­
tem porary phenomenologists, a drifting which allowed theological
transcendence to enter into phenomenology, thereby betraying it and
decisively deviating from its legitim ate concerns (Janicaud 2005:14).
Thus, while these so-called phenom enologists ‘believe they have
founded the phenom enon and to have enriched phenomenality, they
either overload or bar access to it’ (Janicaud 2005: 15). The essence
of Janicaud’s criticism throughout his debate with M arion is that the
latter grossly misreads and m isrepresents Husserlian thought .10
M arion’s response to Janicaud in Being Given takes the form of a
robust and localized rebuttal of the specific points m entioned above,
but arguably also manifests itself in his wider re-elaboration of the
phenom enology of givenness. On the specific point relating to the
supposed ‘thinness’ or abstraction of the ‘given’ phenom enon, he
notes pointedly that the given can neither be overly abstract nor ‘thin’
since it ‘gives all that is and appears’ (M arion 1997: 104; 2002c: 72).
There is no attem pt here to reduce the richness or density of phe­
nom enality since, if such richness is given, it will necessarily be
accounted for in the operation of the third reduction. On the question
of theology somehow being smuggled into the phenom enology of
givenness, M arion is no less firm: ‘the notion of givenness’, he asserts,
‘has no need, since Husserl, of a theological weight to intervene in
phenom enology’ (M arion 1997:105; 2002c: 72). In each case, he m ain­
tains, his argum ents are grounded in a dem onstrable fidelity to
Husserl rather than in a deviation or ‘m ethodological drifting’ from
him.
Throughout both Reduction and Givenness and Being Given,
M arion takes great pains both to underline this fidelity to Husserlian
phenomenology and to m aintain a clear line of distinction betw een
his phenom enological and theological concerns. Yet, arguably, the
broader argum ents of Being Given relating to ‘saturated’ phenom e-
nality do quite unequivocally both deviate from key aspects of
Husserlian thought and, in part at least, align themselves with theo­
logical motifs.
If the discovery of the third reduction represents the climax of
Reduction and Givenness then the identification and detailed speci­
fication of saturated phenom ena certainly provide the key focus for
the final chapters of Being Given. T he central im portance M arion
comes to confer upon saturated phenom ena and the m anner in which
they come to be characterized is entirely consistent with his radical-
ization of givenness more generally. It will be recalled that in
Reduction and Givenness M arion identified intuition as ‘originally
giving’ and, of course, the giving of appearing as that which gives
intuition its content prior to all other phenomenologically identifi­
able instances such as intentionality or signification. In Being Given,
M arion describes the m ajority of phenom ena as being separable into
two distinct categories: those ‘poor’ in intuition and those said to be
‘common-law’ phenom ena. The form er are found, for example, in
phenom ena such as m athem atical form ulae or abstract ideas and are
constituted according to an excess of concept or signifying intention
over sensible intuition (which is either minimal or absent). Common-
law phenom ena are found, for instance, in technical or m anufactured
objects and are constituted according to a form alized lack of equiva­
lence or inadéquation betw een intuition and intention: the idea or
abstract design of a technical object (intention) will always precede,
and lack exact correspondence with, its m anufacture or presentation
(in sensible intuition). TTie fact that, according to the third reduction,
givenness can be shown to be anterior to intention, signification and
any kind of category or concept whatsoever m eans, for M arion, that
one can think of a third type of phenom enon which would be consti­
tuted in the reverse m anner according to an excess of purely intuitive
givenness over any horizon of intentionality or concept. Indeed,
M arion wants to argue for the necessary ‘possibility of a phenom e­
non where intuition would give m ore, indeed immeasurably m ore,
than intention would ever have aimed at or foreseen’ (M arion 1997:
277; 2002c: 197). Being absolutely unconditioned and prior to inten­
tion or signification, it is entirely possible that the intuitive givenness
of a phenom enon could give itself in excess of these m om ents and in
an unlim ited saturation of intuition. If this is possible, then the phe-
nom enologist has every duty to describe such a phenom enon since,
as M arion writes elsewhere, ‘in phenom enology the least possibility
is binding’ (M arion 2005: 57; 2008b: 34).
The principal characteristic of saturated phenom ena according to
M arion is one of surprise, unexpectedness or unpredictability: ‘First,
the saturated phenom enon cannot be aim ed at [ne peut se viser]. This
impossibility stems from its essentially unforeseeable character’
(M arion 1997: 280; 2002c: 199). A saturated phenom enon is not
something that can appear according to the intentional directedness
of consciousness nor within the horizon of any anticipation or
purposiveness. It is not something that can be adequately described
or prescribed according to categories, concepts or fixed signifying
forms, and certainly it is not something that gives itself up for m ea­
surem ent, verifiable experim entation or scientific determ ination.
Indeed, M arion comes to characterize the saturated phenom enon as
an absolute givenness to and of intuition in excess of all determ inate
or delimiting horizon whatsoever. The saturated phenom enon gives
itself, as it were, absolutely and free from any conditioning by or
analogy with already understood, lived experience. It does not
depend on any existing horizon and is thus an entirely unconditioned
phenom enon (M arion 1997: 296; 2002c: 212). Much of the detailed
phenom enological description of the saturated phenom enon in Being
Given aims at a dem onstration of this excessive character of absolute
givenness. M arion shows, for instance, how such phenom ena would
appear or give themselves outside of K antian categories of under­
standing (of quality, quantity, relation and analogy) (M arion 1997:
280-95; 2002c: 199-212).11 In excess of any horizon or phenom eno­
logical condition of possibility, the saturated phenom enon is p a ra ­
doxical in the sense of being both impossible and possible at the
same time. It is also endowed with a certain ipseity or selfhood: it
gives itself autonom ously as itself and by itself. Giving itself as and
by itself, it is not limited or delim ited eith er by a phenom enological
horizon nor by the limits of an I. It is, as it were, self-constituting
(M arion 1997: 305; 2002c: 219). The characterization of the saturated
phenom enon in these terms is, as has been indicated, entirely consis­
tent with M arion’s account of the anteriority and unconditionality of
givenness and with his discovery of the third reduction .12 Indeed,
such a characterization confers upon the saturated phenom enon an
exemplary and privileged status insofar as it is the autonom ous self­
giving givenness of the phenom enon which is foregrounded above
any other instance. This is phenom enality par excellence, or, as
Marion puts it: ‘The saturated phenom enon in the end establishes the
truth of all phenom enality because it marks, m ore than any other
phenom enon, the givenness from which it comes’ (M arion 1997: 317;
2 0 0 2 c: 227).
Yet in strict H usserlian term s M arion’s form ulations here are
at best unorthodox and at worst un- or supra-phenomenological.
As Janicaud rightly points out, endowing the phenom enon with
an ipseity or selfhood is against both the letter and the spirit of
the Husserlian text (Janicaud 2005: 36-7). Perhaps m ore im por­
tantly, the notion of horizon and the dependency of phenom enal
appearing upon a horizon are indispensable for H usserl’s thinking
and for phenom enology m ore generally. For a phenom enon to
appear and be constituted as such, it must do so and against the
backdrop of a horizon of referential implications that are drawn
in its wake. W ithout horizonality, one could argue, there is no
phenom enality .13
M arion’s attem pt to unbind the saturated phenom enon from its
dependence upon any delimiting horizon and his conferral upon it of
an ipseity or selfhood appear then to give som e reasonable grounds
for the charge of ‘m ethodological displacem ent’ or drift levelled by
Janicaud in relation to phenom enological orthodoxy. Certainly, his
assertions of fidelity to H usserl’s text need to be viewed critically and
not taken at face value.The question arises here as to w hether objects
or phenom ena are still constituted by pure or transcendental con­
sciousness, as the post-K antian inflection of Husserlian phenom enol­
ogy would insist, or whether, in a surprising reversal of the spirit and
letter of H usserl’s text, it is now the case that givenness itself is con­
stitutive.The implication of M arion’s argum ents is that it is conscious­
ness that is now constituted in and by the ipseity and unconditioned
givenness of the given. This is arguably a reversal or inversion of the
post-K antian emphasis on the constitutive natu re of the subject, of
consciousness, or of the transcendental ego. D espite the prim ary
emphasis here on the originary or sensible intuition, there is som e­
thing in this reversal of the constitutive and the constituted which
resem bles or echoes the anti-Kantianism of Badiou and Laruelle
discussed in chapters 6 and 7. The implicatioris of this will be assessed
m ore fully in the conclusion.
In light of this, it is arguable that the persuasiveness of Janicaud’s
objections is less apparent when the critical question posed to M arion
relates less to phenom enological fidelity and m ore to the innovative
force of his overall transform ation of Husserlian thought. R ather
than objecting to M arion’s lack of fidelity to Husserl, his phenom e­
nology of givenness should perhaps best be judged in term s of the
originality of what it allows him to think.

Saturation and the self

Saturated phenom ena in M arion are divided into four distinct m odal­
ities: the event, the idol, flesh, and the icon. D espite this apparently
categorizing gesture, M arion argues that what characterizes each of
the moments phenomenologically speaking is an excess of appearing
or givenness over all intentional directedness and categorial determ i­
nation. Each of the four modalities is schematically characterized in
the following terms:

1 In the case of the event, something occurs which is not limited to

or determ inable by a specific instant or place, n o r limited to the
experience of any one individual. The event here is the historic
event, one whose impact will be felt by an entire population and
whose meaning cannot be grasped with the scope of any one
interpretative gesture. Indeed, it is the very ongoing and non-
finite process of deciding upon or interpreting an event which
constitutes historical community as such. The event imposes itself
upon a collectivity of individuals in excess of any singular inten­
tional directedness or horizon of expectation (M arion 1997:
318-19; 2002c: 228-9).
2 M arion gives the work of art, and m ore specifically painting, as
the privileged exam ple of an idol. A painting gives a sensible
intuition or sensory perception which is in excess of any determ i­
nate meaning, concept, category or classification. We might bring
categories or concepts to the painting but, as with the historical
event, no such category will be able definitively to account for the
surfeit of sensible (visual) intuition the painting makes manifest
(M arion 2005: 158; 2008b: 128); any such definitive accounting of
m eaning is deferred or rendered non-identical with the excess of
phenom enal appearance for which it seeks to account (subject to
a logic of différance).
3 Prior to any intentional directedness of consciousness to an object,
the experience of flesh is one of auto-affection or originary sense
impression. Pain, suffering, joy, pleasure, indeed sensation of any
kind are all auto-affections of the flesh. In this context, flesh needs
 to be understood as the fundam ental medium of givenness itself:
only in the auto-affection of flesh, in excess of all intention and
signification, is any intuition given at all, and perhaps most im por­
tantly, the flesh gives the self to itself: 4flesh shows itself only in
giving itself - and, in this first “self,” it gives me to m yself (M arion
1997: 323; 2002c: 232).
4 M arion describes the icon as that which offers nothing to the gaze
and which, inaccessible to the gaze of a spectator, nevertheless
imposes its own gaze upon the spectator. The icon is the gaze of
the other upon the self: 4it resides precisely in the black holes of
two pupils, in the sole and minuscule space where, on the surface
of the bodies of others, there is nothing to see . .. in the gaze
facing me. The gaze that others cast and make weigh on me th e re ­
fore does not give itself to my gaze’ (M arion 1997: 323-4; 2002c:
232). The icon then is the face of the other; it is not constituted
by intentional consciousness but rather imposes itself upon it in
and of itself.

Readers familiar with the broader field of recent French thought

will no doubt recognize echoes of other thinkers in each of these
characterizations. The description of the event may recall Paul
R icoeur’s collective herm eneutics of history (R icoeur 1992; 2006) or
even A lain B adiou’s conception of the event (discussed in chapter 6 ).
The description of painting by which M arion characterizes the idol
strongly resonates with a D erridean thinking of différance and
perhaps m ore specifically with Nancy’s account of the artw ork in
texts such as The Muses and The G round o f the Im age. M arion’s
characterization of flesh recalls M erleau-Ponty’s thinking in The
Visible and the Invisible and, much m ore directly and specifically,
Michel H enry’s phenom enology of auto-affective im m anent life
(M erleau-Ponty 1968; H enry 1973). Likewise, the description of the
icon clearly repeats the Lévinassian m otif of the face of the O ther.
D espite these resonances, echoes or repetitions, it would be w rong to
dismiss M arion’s thinking of saturated phenom ena as m erely deriva­
tive. R ather, what he can be said to have achieved is m ore of an
original synthesis of a num ber of the key advances in recent French
phenomenological and post-phenom enological thought: herm eneu-
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auto-affection (H enry), and the gaze of the other (Lévinas). The

scope of the phenom enon has been extended by th e thought of given­
ness and saturation in order to incorporate the otherwise elusive and
excessive phenomenality of these m om ents or, as M arion puts it, 4Far
from underestim ating the most recent advances in phenom enol­
ogy . . . I am only trying to confirm them by assigning each a precise
site within givenness’ (M arion 1997: 441; 2002c: 321-2).
With th e exception of the idol which manifests a surfeit of visible
intuition, M arion’s thinking of saturation allows for the incorpora·*
tion (within the phenom enological scope of the third reduction) of
phenom ena which cannot appear as visible objects, entities or beings,
but which nevertheless dem onstrably do make themselves m anifest
and therefore do require to be thought phenomenologically. None of
the four modalities of saturation - event, idol, flesh and icon - can
be reduced to a horizon of objectality or beingness (étantité); there­
fore, all four require M arion’s broadened notion of the phenom enon
as first and forem ost that which is given in order to be thought.
It is here that the phenom enology of givenness edges m ost proxi-
mally towards theological concerns. Having outlined the different
modalities of saturation, the text of Being Given immediately moves
on to what M arion calls the phenom enon of ‘revelation’. Since the
space of phenom enality has now been extended to encompass experi­
ences of the invisible and the objectively unpresentable, it is perhaps
only logical that revelation should be welcomed into the fold of
legitim ate phenom enological concerns. With all due probity, M arion
insists that phenom enology cannot be the arbiter of w hether the
experience of revelation can, has or will occur; it can only circum­
scribe or describe the phenom enality of such an occurrence in term s
of how it would occur were it so to do. Yet despite such care, it could
be asked, as Janicaud repeatedly does, w hether M arion’s phenom eno­
logical thought does not too neatly prepare the way for Christian,
and specifically R om an Catholic, modes of religious experience
or theological form. It is true that, when M arion does stray into
direct religious references of any kind in his phenom enological
writing, they are all without exception references to the Christian
Bible and the Christian theological tradition .14 O ne m ight therefore
question the extent to which his descriptions of saturated phenom ena
such as revelation are compatible with non-Christian and/or non-
m onotheistic religious experience. Alternatively, and given the im por­
tance of these issues for the entirety of M arion’s phenom enological
and theological output, one might w onder how far he is able to
account for the fact that what is perhaps most strikingly given 111
religious experience is its cultural specificity and its conditioning or
shaping by contingent cultural and historical horizons or forms. Once
again, the question of the production or genesis of the gift needs to
be posed, together with the specifically D erridean question of w hether
absolute unconditionality is at all possible and whether the gift is not
always an economized (and therefore spatio-tem porally contingent
and conditioned) instance.
Yet if one decides to be generous and to give M arion the benefit
of the doubt here, then his attem pt in Being Given to rigorously
dem arcate and keep separate phenomenological and theological con­
cerns needs to be taken seriously. W hat then emerges as perhaps most
interesting and original in the phenom enology of givenness is not its
opening onto theological concerns or religious experience, but rather
the account M arion gives of the ‘self’ of givenness.
It is here that the phenom enon of flesh, rather than that of revela­
tion, comes into greater prominence. Flesh, it was noted earlier, is the
originary medium of auto-affection and ‘gives me to m yself (M arion
1997: 323; 2002c: 232). Yet M arion argues that the self of givenness,
that to which giving is given, is no form of grounding or foundational
‘subject’ (such as emerges in the Cartesian cogito for example). Nor
is it a transcendental unity of apperception (Kant), nor still a
Husserlian transcendental ego or Heideggerian Dasein. Since giving
is given in excess of objectality and being and in the absence of all
metaphysical ground, the self to which it is given in the auto-affection
of the flesh is itself also ungrounded and irreducible to any logic of
causation or foundation. Across the pages of both Reduction and
Givenness and Being Given, this self which is given to itself only in
and through the receipt of givenness is nam ed in a num ber of differ­
ent ways: as the interloqué, as the ‘receiver’ (Γ attributaire) (M arion
1997: 343; 2002c: 249), and also finally as the ‘gifted’ (l’adonné)
(M arion 1997: 369; 2002c: 268). M arion repeatedly and explicitly
returns to the question posed by Jean-Luc Nancy, namely ‘Who comes
after the subject ? ’15 A fter the subject, he repeatedly answers, comes
the self that receives givenness and is constituted by its reception
of, or ‘devotion’ to, givenness. The radicalization of Husserlian
Gegebenheit allows for the broadening of phenom enality and the
rigorous description of a range of invisible, excessive or resolutely
paradoxical phenom ena but, M arion insists: ‘A t the centre stands no
“subject”, but a gifted, he whose function consists in receiving what
is imm easurably given to him, and whose privilege is confined to the
fact that he is him self received from what he receives’ (M arion 1997:
442; 2002c: 322).
A s was indicated in a preliminary fashion earlier, the ipseity of the
given phenom enon, the fact that it gives itself by and of itself, m eans
that a crucial reversal in the constitution of phenom enality has
occurred. To repeat, whereas in H usserl consciousness or the tra n ­
scendental ego is constitutive, in the auto-affection of the flesh which
gives the self to itself in its receipt of the self-giving phenom enon, the
self is now constituted (M arion 1997: 369; 2002c: 268). Flesh gives the
self to itself but only insofar as something is given in and to the flesh.
Once again, one can begin to discern a wider reversal in the direction
of constitution which is m arked in different ways in all the thinkers
discussed in this book. Badiou and Laruelle have already been m en­
tioned, but a similar case can also be m ade for other thinkers dis­
cussed here, such as Stiegler and M alabou.
In the context of M arion’s thinking of saturated phenomenality, of
flesh and of self, a num ber of conclusions can be drawn with regard
to the originality or im portance of his formulations. Firstly, in his
attem pt to integrate an overcom ing of metaphysics with a philosophy
of the unconditional given, M arion, like Michel H enry before him,
has created a phenomenology of m ateriality or of m aterial im m a­
nence. For all the alignment of his thinking with theological questions,
his thought, and all possibilities of thinking for which it allows, remains
rooted in the m ateriality of the flesh, in affect and in ungrounded
auto-affection. Secondly, M arion has at the very same time developed
a phenom enological account of finite existence which nevertheless
thinks of finitude as constituted only in and through a de-lim itation
of the finite. The saturated phenom enon, that which ‘establishes the
truth of all phenom enality’ (M arion 1997: 317; 2002c: 227), appears
unconditionally and in excess of any dependence upon a finite horizon
or upon any bounded condition of possibility. Finitude, here, can only
be thought in terms of the infinitization of finite existence (and in this
respect M arion can interestingly be com pared to Nancy’s thinking of
‘infinitude’ as discussed in the next chapter). Thirdly, M arion devel­
ops a notion of the self to whom givenness is given which transform s
traditional metaphysical notions of subjectivity viewed as a founda­
tion or ground of knowledge, as well as post-K antian and phenom ­
enological notions of consciousness as constitutive.
These motifs of materiality, infinity, and of an ungrounded self
will be repeated and transform ed in diverse ways in the thinking of
the other philosophers treated by this study. W hether one embraces
or refuses the alignment with theology that M arion’s philosophy
offers, his thinking of givenness, of saturation, of flesh and of self
undoubtedly articulates an original post-deconstructive and post­
metaphysical reform ulation of phenom enology and a powerful rein-
vigoration of the phenomenological method.
JeanLu Nancy: The infinity
of Sense

Jean-Luc Nancy has published over sixty books and over four hundred
articles in a career which has spanned just over four decades. Although
he was initially best known in the anglophone academic world for his
work on community published in the 1980s, since the late 1990s there
has been a burgeoning interest in his philosophy as a whole and he
has emerged as the most prominent and influential French philosopher
working in the wake of D erridean deconstruction .1Yet, while Nancy’s
philosophy is certainly a deconstructive or post-deconstructive think­
ing, it also, and from a very early stage, decisively diverges from
D errida. Nancy’s ‘singular-plural’ ontology, his thinking of finitude, of
shared finite existence, sense and world, uses philosophical term s and
figures which would be placed under erasure or arouse a high degree
of suspicion when seen from a deconstructive perspective: terms such
as ‘being’, ‘presence’, ‘experience’, ‘existence’, ‘tru th ’, ‘touch’ and
even, m ore recently, theological term s such as ‘incarnation’ and the
‘divine’.
Nancy has sometimes b e e n characterized as a thinker of finitude
whose philosophy is m ost indebted to Heideggerian thought .2 Yet
such a characterization does not do justice to the diversity and
breadth of his thinking. O n the one hand, it is m ore true to say that,
like D errida’s thought, Nancy’s philosophy grows out of phenom e­
nology in general and could more properly be characterized as post-
phenomenological. On the other hand, reducing Nancy simply to a
thinker of ‘finitude’ in the H eideggerian mould does not take into
account the extent to which he is also, and at the same tim e, a thinker
of infinity, or what one m ight call the ‘infinitude’ of finitude. Taken in
this light, Nancy should be aligned far m ore with figures such as
M aurice Blanchot or even Em m anuel Levinas rather than solely or
straightforwardly with Heidegger. The diversity of his thought is
reflected in its successive periods of developm ent. In the 1970s, Nancy
(often with his friend and colleague the late Philippe Lacoue-
Labarthe) publishes what are principally philosophical com m entar­
ies, on, for instance, Lacan, Hegel, K ant and Descartes. In the 1980s,
he begins to develop his im portant thinking around the question of
the political and of comm unity (again with Lacoue-L abarthe ).3 This
decade also begins to see the em ergence of a m ore ambitious philo­
sophical thinking in m ajor works such as The Experience o f Freedom
(Nancy 1988a; 1993c). In the 1990s, Nancy publishes the principal
works upon which his status as an im portant philosopher of the late
tw entieth and early twenty-first century rests. 'These include a major
work of ontology, Being Singular Plural (Nancy 1996a; 2000c) and
also works which engage am bitiously with the question of thought
itself, and with questions of em bodim ent, world disclosure and sense
constitution (A Finite Thinking (Nancy 1990a; 2003c), Corpus (Nancy
1992a; 2008b), and The Sense o f the World (Nancy 1993a; 1997e)).
From th e middle of the 1990s through to the first decade of this
century, Nancy develops a sustained engagem ent with the question
of art and with aesthetics. Finally, from the late 1990s onwards, he has
also pursued what he calls a ‘deconstruction of C hristianity’, a project
which has continued right up to the time of writing this study with
the publication of the second of two volumes in early 2010 (Nancy
2005a; 2008c; 2010b). Throughout all these successive stages of his
career, Nancy has returned to and rew orked elem ents of his previous
work such that, taken as a whole, his philosophy emerges as a complex
and sustained engagem ent with a num ber of fundam ental concerns.
'These concerns could be characterized, albeit rather broadly and
schematically, as follows. Nancy’s philosophy aims to develop an
ontology, to think being as coexistence and as a singular plural ‘being-
w ith\ It engages in a sustained m anner with the interrelated ques­
tions of comm unity and of the political It aims to pose the question
of the subject and of a post-deconstructive subjectivity and does so
in relation to the questions of em bodim ent, shared worldly existence,
sense perception and sense itself, understood broadly speaking as the
pre-symbolic meaningfulness of a shared bodily exposure to the
world. It engages with what one might call the Uechnicity’ of worldly
existence and sensory experience and on this basis develops a sus­
tained m editation on the status of the arts. Finally, it aims to think
the spacing, sharing and coming to presence of the world in terms of
an exposure to/of an infinite excess of sense. There is something in
this exposure of worldly existence to, or as, infinite excess that Nancy
will come to call divine and to think in his deconstruction of
Christianity. W hat follows here will seek to explore these interrelated
concerns further and show that, despite the diversity of Nancy’s phil­
osophical corpus, it nevertheless does form a corpus, albeit one which
insists on its own fragm entary status, on its status as philosophy which
is itself exposed to infinite excess.

Infinitude

Finite thought em bodim ent and sense

Finitude could perhaps be m ost easily understood in term s of limits,

that is, as the state of being finite, bounded or limited. The task of a
finite thinking, then, would be to think thought itself as that which,
without renouncing the values of truth or universality, can only think
within and at its own limit, touching at its limit and at its own singu­
larity of thought (Nancy 1990a: 13; 2003c: 5). Towards the beginning
of A Finite Thinking, Nancy argues that this task is inseparable from
the question of ‘sense’ and of the finitude of sense: ‘it could be a
question of sense’s essential finitude - something that would, in turn,
dem and an essential finitude of thinking’ (Nancy 1990a: 13; 2003c: 4).
The use of the term ‘sense’ here is by no means straightforward and,
arguably, the entirety of Nancy’s philosophy from th e beginning
of the 1990s onwards can, in one way or another, be viewed as an
attem pt to elaborate upon its complex status and meaning. N ever­
theless, A Finite Thinking does begin within an attem pt to give an
initial definition of this difficult term: ‘By “sense” I mean sense in the
singular sense taken absolutely: the sense of life, of Man, of the world,
the sense of existence; the sense of existence which is or which m akes
sense, which without sense would not exist’ (Nancy 1990a: 10-11;
2003c: 3). W hat is clear from the outset is that sense, here, has an
ontological or existential status. If a world or anything in it can be
said to be or to exist, if it can be perceived, taken as an object of
thought or simply experienced as such, then that is because it in some
way always already makes sense, and does so before or prior to con­
ceptual determ ination, and prior to our giving it a fixed signification,
or attributing to it predicates or characteristics. The implications of
the ontological status of sense will be explored further as this discus­
sion progresses.
W hat is worth underlining at this stage is that finitude, for Nancy,
is not conceived as a kind of enclosure of thought within its own
limits. He is not trying to argue that finite thinking is some kind of
prison house which would deprive thought of any access to truth, or
condem n it to be rooted in determ inable specificities of historical
context or situation. Nancy’s finite thinking is not a relativism or
perspectivism where one point of view has exactly the same value as
any other. Nor is finitude here a lim itation of thought which would
imply an existence, beyond the limit, of a limitlessness or of an infi­
nite (and therefore theological) transcendence. A lready in A Finite
Thinking Nancy understands finitude in term s of a lim itation which
is always, one might say always already, delimited or exposed to a
certain limitlessness of actual and m aterial worldly existence. Finite
thinking is ‘not a thinking of limitation, which implies the unlimited«
ness of a beyond, but a thinking of the limit as that on which, infi­
nitely finite, existence arises [s'enlève] and to which it is exposed
[s'expose]* (Nancy 1990a: 48-9; 2003c: 27). A ny understanding of
Nancy as a thinker of finitude needs to engage with the difficult logic
of the limit which is being articulated here and, in particular, needs
to engage with the force and implications of the form ulation ‘infi­
nitely finite’ {infiniment finie). Such a form ulation is no doubt highly
indebted to the thought and writing of Blanchot in texts such as The
Infinite Conversation (Blanchot 1993) and clearly signals that Nancy’s
thinking of finitude is in no way reducible to the thought of an exis­
tence which would simply be enclosed within finite limits (e.g. those
of contingency, mortality, language). A t the same time, Nancy’s use
of French reflexive verb form s such as s ’enlever and s'exposer can
appear to be rather opaque, particularly to those unfamiliar with his
thought.
The best way to tease out what might be at stake in these perhaps
elliptical form ulations is to turn to Nancy’s thinking of sense and
em bodim ent such as it is developed in texts such as Corpus, The
Sense o f the World and elsewhere. As has already been indicated,
sense, for Nancy, has an ontological status: sense is always the sense
of an existence which in some way always already m akes sense. Yet,
as the sense o/existence, sense here is always engaged with a certain
kind of m ateriality or concreteness. This m ateriality is, first and fore­
most, that of sensing bodies which perceive a world through the
senses and through sensory experience m ore generally. Nancy is
interested m the way that the spatiality of worldly existence is dis­
closed to us through situated and em bodied being. In this context,
his ontology of sense is also and at the same tim e an ontology of
bodies. Sense and bodies are co-articulated in a fundam ental way
which discloses the world to us as existing. In Corpus, Nancy speaks
of an O ntology of the body’ and argues that ‘bodies are existence,
the very act of ex-istence, being" (Nancy 1992a: 20; 2008b: 19). A t the
same time, he also speaks of the body as a ‘body of sense' (Nancy
1992a: 24; 2008b: 25) and argues that "The body is the architectonics
o f sense' (Nancy 1992a: 25; 2008b: 25). Being, then, is disclosed in an
organization or structure in which sense and bodies are engaged to
form the elem ent in which the existence of a spatial, m aterial world
can be experienced as such.
These points are developed further in The Sense o f the World
where Nancy argues that this co-articulation of sense and bodies
needs to be understood as ‘being-toward-the-world’. The original
French term etre-au-monde can translate both as being-in-the-world
and as being-toward-the-world, depending on what kind of inflection
one gives to the preposition à which can have many meanings, includ­
ing ‘a t y t o y with’ and ‘in’. Nancy is trying to think sense as a horizon
of shared meaningfulness to which bodies are exposed in their appre­
hension or perception of a world and in the interaction of bodies
with the world and each other: their touching, their contact, their
m utual spacing and crossing. In this context the co-articulation of
sense and bodies is always a ‘tow ard’ rather than simply an ‘in ’,
insofar as the meaningfulness of the world is experienced always in
a projection of bodily sensory experience tow ards the w orld and
others or, in Nancy’s preferred term, its ‘exposure’ to them. It should
be underlined that sense, here, is not yet signification in any fixed or
determ inable form; it is not articulated in a relation of signifier to
signified or in a symbolic order in the structuralist/Lacanian sense:
‘“being-toward-the-world”, if it takes place (and it does take place),
is caught up in sense well before all signification. It makes, demands
or proposes sense this side of or beyond all signification . . . Thus,
world is not m erely the correlative of sense; it is structured as sense,
and reciprocally, sense is structured as world' (Nancy 1993a: 17-18;
1997e: 7-8). Understanding the way in which sense, for Nancy, is a
horizon of meaningfulness ‘well before all signification’ is central to
understanding his philosophy as a whole .4 Proposing the sense of the
world as an instance which is prior or anterior to any symbolic order
or signifying process is also to confer upon it a certain m ateriality or
concreteness, a m ateriality which is of a different order than any
‘m ateriality of the signifier’ or of discourse as m aterial practice.
Nancy is trying to think about the way our embodied sense percep­
tion and bodily engagem ents with a world are always caught up in
sense such that something always already m akes sense in the very
m om ent that it is sensed or perceived. He articulates this engage­
m ent of the senses with sense using the figure of ‘touch’: ‘It is not
a m atter of signification, but of the sense of the world as its very
concreteness, that on which our existence touches and by which it is
touched, in all possible senses 5 (Nancy 1993a: 22; 1997e: 10). As is
often the case, Nancy is using an apparently straightforw ard every­
day term in a way which is in fact very complex and which resonates
with a philosophical register which has a long history within the
canon of E uropean philosophy .5
It is impossible, within the context of this short discussion, to do
full justice to the richness and complexity of Nancy’s use of the figure
of touch. Nevertheless, some insight can be gleaned from an impor­
tant passage in The Muses, Nancy’s first m ajor book on art published
in 1994: ‘Touch is nothing other than the touch of sense altogether
and of all the senses. It is their sensuality as such . . . touch presents
the proper m om ent of sensible exteriority, it presents it as such and
as sensible’ (Nancy 1994: 35; 1996b: 17). ‘Touch form s one body with
sensing, or it m akes of sensing a body, it is simply the corpus of the
senses’ (Nancy 1994: 35-6; 1996b: 17). It is the figure of touch here
which acts as the hinge or point of articulation betw een sense under­
stood as a horizon of meaningfulness and the senses understood in
term s of the different forms of bodily sense perception (hearing,
seeing, touch, taste, etc.). Touch at once becomes the privileged sense
of all the five senses insofar as all five could be said to be a kind of
contact or proximity in distance with a sensible exteriority. A t the
same time, touch becomes the figure by which the always already
meaningful dim ension of sensible experience can be thought: when
we perceive or sense something, we ‘touch on’ or ‘a t’ its sense in a
way which is not yet a determ ined or determ inable signification. O ne
can perhaps begin to see here the way in which Nancy uses the term
‘touch’ to describe, one might say post-phenomenologically, the sense
of the world, the sense which the world is insofar as it is both m ean­
ingful and at the same time embodied, m aterial or concrete. In the
figure of touch, Nancy is decisively shifting away from the figures of
seeing, viewing and other optical m etaphors which ru n through p h e ­
nom enological discourse: ‘world invites us to no longer think on the
level of the phenom enon (as surging forth, appearing, becoming
visible, brilliance, occurrence, event), but on the level, let us say for
the m oment, of disposition (spacing, touching, contact, crossing)’
(Nancy 1993a: 34, n. 19; 1997e: 176). The figure of touch, then, reor­
ganizes ilie phenomenological discourse of world disclosure and
sense constitution around a language of spacing and the m utual
contact of bodies in a shared m aterial world. In this manner, the
question of phenom enality gives way to the question of shared m ate­
rial existence.
Being singular plural

If this thinking of sense and bodies represents a decisive shift away

from a phenom enological discourse, it does not, as has already been
emphasized, attem pt to break with ontology, as would, in different
ways, Levinas, Blanchot and D errida. Again, though, care needs to be
taken to understand the way in which Nancy uses the language of
being, since, as before, his ontology of finitude is inseparable from a
thinking of the infinite. If, for Levinas, ontology and finitude rep re ­
sent a gesture of enclosure (of existence) and, indeed, of violent
foreclosure (of the ethical m om ent), this is decisively not the case for
Nancy .6 This is m ade very clear in a text such as Being Singular Plural
where, as the title suggests, ontology occupies a central position.
Building upon previous works and, in particular, upon A Finite
Thinking and The Sense o f the World, Nancy reiterates the ontologi­
cal status conferred on sense: ‘Being itself is given to us as sense’
(Nancy 1996a: 20; 2000c: 2; translation modified). The language of
being is used here without inverted commas and without being sub­
jected to any irony or erasure. Yet being is thought in Being Singular
Plural strictly and rigorously in term s of the infinite and irreducible
excess of being over itself. The language Nancy uses to describe this
excess of being over itself is that of being-with, coexistence, and the
singular plurality of origins deployed within the logic of thinking at
the limit of thought discussed above. Despite the lines of polemical
opposition that separate the two philosophers, there is much that is
shared here with A lain B adiou’s ontology of inconsistent multiplicity
elaborated in chapter 6 . Nancy’s thinking of em bodim ent and sense
is clearly unequivocally and diametrically opposed to B adiou’s sub­
tractive approach to ontology and to his affirmation of a certain
Platonism. However, N äncean singular plurality and B adiou’s incon­
sistent m ultiplicity both affirm the actual infinity of being, its irreduc­
ible excess over itself, and its irreducibility to any horizon of unity, or
any mode of substance or ground. G ranted, Badiou would say that
the N ancean discourse of thinking at the limit is not an adequate
means to think the infinite excess of being over itself (this is reserved
for the discourse of m athematics alone) but this should not detract
from the similarity of their respective positions in this regard.
Nancy’s argum ents run broadly as follows: if being is given to us
as sense, this is so only insofar as a fundam ental privilege is accorded
to the ‘us’ or the ‘we’ of this donation and only insofar as sense is
always and only an elem ent which is shared. As Nancy himself puts
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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"Yes," was the reply; "and the payment is by direct taxation. Every person
who takes a jar of water is expected to leave a handful of corn in payment.
This corn goes for the support of the boy and the animal, and to judge by the
condition of the beast, the lion's share of the tax is taken by the boy."
The conversation about the curious wells of Yucatan came to an end with
several stories concerning them. One was that in the town of Tabi there is a
large cenoté which shows down in the depths of the water when the sun is at
the meridian the perfect figure of a palm-tree, trunk, leaves, and all being
fully delineated. In another town there is a cenoté where, according to the
early chroniclers, any one dies instantly who enters the water without holding
his breath. It is needless to say that bathing there is not at all popular. Other
subterranean pools contain poisonous lizards which cause violent and even
fatal headaches by merely biting the shadow of any person who passes them.
Another lizard, when wounded, is said to throw its tail at its assailant; it
detaches and throws it a distance of several yards, and if it strikes the flesh
will cause death. Many of the cenotés are reputed to be the haunts of demons
and fairies, the bad spirits being much more numerous than the good ones.
In the cool hours of the afternoon our friends started on their return to
Merida, and late in the evening drew up in front of the hotel. Their host urged
them to remain a week or two at the hacienda; with the politeness customary
to the country, he told them that the place and everything about it were theirs
—a declaration which was certainly in earnest, so far as a prolonged visit was
concerned. But they were anxious to continue their investigations of Yucatan,
and having already arranged to go to Uxmal with an American gentleman
residing at Merida, were unable to remain longer with Mr. Honradez.
 AT HOME IN MERIDA.
The second morning after their return they started for the ruins of Uxmal,
which are about sixty miles from Merida. Doctor Bronson and Mr. Burbank, his
American friend, rode in one volan coché, and Frank and Fred in another. A
cart with the needed supply of provisions and cooking utensils had left on the
previous day, and was to meet them at Uxmal, which contains no hotel or
other accommodation for travellers. Lodgings are taken in some of the
deserted and ruined buildings; and with a suitable equipment and a supply of
food, one can get along very comfortably.
The road presented the same scenes as the one they had taken a few days
before, and therefore does not need special description. At the first village on
the road the vehicles halted to allow the panting mules to take breath and
water, and our friends descended from their cramped positions to stretch their
limbs. Mr. Burbank spoke a few words to some of the natives that gathered
around them, and then asked the strangers to go with them to see a
heetzmek.
 SCENE OF THE HEETZMEK.
Wondering what a heetzmek was, they followed to a house a few yards away,
where a woman was walking around the dwelling carrying a very young child
astride her hip. Having completed the circuit, she repeated it again and again,
till she had walked five times around the dwelling, carrying the child as
before.
"This is a ceremony which corresponds to the christening of infants in other
countries," said the gentleman. "The woman that you see is the baby's
godmother; the position in which the Yucateos carry their children astride the
hip is like that of India and some other Asiatic countries. The heetzmek is
performed when the infant is about four months old.
"The natives believe in the magic of the number five. You have seen the
woman walk five times around the house as she carries the child. Five eggs
have been buried in hot ashes, and as they break they will rouse the five
senses of the infant; if they fail to open, it will be of only ordinary intelligence,
but their breaking will insure extraordinary mental ability."
"Probably," remarked Frank, "they take good care to have the ashes hot
enough to make sure that the eggs will burst."
"If they are as intelligent as they want the child to be, they certainly will,"
replied Mr. Burbank. "In addition to the egg test there is a further ceremony of
putting into the infant's hands the implements it will use when matured. The
godmother is held in great respect by the whole family, and especially by the
child for whom she has stood sponsor."
The heetzmek over, the journey was continued, the mules having rested
sufficiently.
It was nine o'clock in the forenoon, and about twenty-five miles of the journey
had been made when the walls of the hacienda of Uayalké came in sight. The
appetites of the youths were on a keen edge, and Frank remarked to Fred
that he could breakfast off the hind-leg of a donkey, if only that ordinarily
unattractive viand were presented.
"I think I scent breakfast," responded Fred. "They are famed for their
hospitality in Yucatan, and we'll probably find what we want at this hacienda."
His prediction was verified, for hardly had he ceased speaking when the
foremost carriage turned towards the yard of the hacienda, followed very
naturally by the other. The drivers unhitched their mules beneath a wide-
spreading tree in front of the residence of the manager, and proceeded to
make themselves at home. The mayordomo came out and welcomed the
strangers, and without waiting for a suggestion from Mr. Burbank, whom he
knew, he sent a servant to order breakfast. In a very short time it was ready,
and the travellers sat down; tortillas, frijoles, stewed chicken, eggs, and fruit,
disappeared in due course, and the keen appetites were keen no longer.
"How about the posterior limb of the equus asinus now?" whispered Fred to
Frank, as they left the table.
"Non possumus," was the only answer that occurred to Frank. His views on
the subject of edible things had materially changed in the last hour.
The youths made note of the fact that the hacienda of Uayalké was a large
and evidently a very prosperous one. The manager told them that they had
several thousand acres of land in henequin, and there were more than 1200
men and women employed about the establishment and in the fields. The
engines and machinery were more ponderous and powerful than at the
hacienda already described; and the buildings of the establishment, together
with the huts of the laborers, formed quite a settlement. There was a deep
cenoté, from which a troop of women were drawing water, by means of a
wheel, with buckets on an endless rope; as fast as their jars were filled they
carried them away in the direction of the garden, where the water was used
for keeping bright the orange and other trees that cannot live without water.
 GARDEN OF THE HACIENDA.
The garden, thus invigorated, was like a spot of green in a desert, and
reminded the youths of some of the oases they had visited in their Oriental
journeyings. Frank compared it to Biskra, in the Great Sahara, and Fred
declared that he saw a striking resemblance to some of the gardens at the
edge of the Libyan Desert. Beyond the garden in every direction was the dry
and repellent land covered with the hardy henequin, which needs no water, or
but the merest trifle of it.
They did not see an idler about the place, every one from the manager down
seeming to be fully occupied. Mr. Burbank said that no hacienda in the whole
country was better managed than this, and there was none where the
laborers were better satisfied with their employer and employment. He added
that here, as everywhere else in Yucatan, the laborers were constantly in debt
to the establishment, and therefore were unable to quit work suddenly or "go
on strike." A laborer who is in debt cannot change employers, unless the new
one assumes the responsibility of the obligation to the old; and to bring this
about requires considerable negotiation.
After a stay of two hours and more at the hacienda, the journey was
continued. Six or seven miles farther on the travellers reached the cenoté of
Mucuyché, and made a brief halt to examine it. The cavern is about forty feet
deep, and the entrance is surrounded by a garden kept green by the water
drawn from the never-failing source. Our friends descended by means of steps
cut in the rock. These steps were overhung by stalactites, which furnished
convenient holding-ground for nests of swallows and hornets in great
numbers. What particularly pleased the youths was that they found here an
abundance of the blind fishes that they sought in vain in their first exploration
of underground Yucatan. There was the same abundance and variety of
lizards and other creeping things as before; some of them were of goodly
size, and Fred learned that they were iguanas, and that they often appeared
at table.
"I suppose you drive them away as soon as possible," he replied. "They are
not pleasant things to look at when one is eating."
"On the contrary," Mr. Burbank answered, "the iguana is a delicacy of which I
have often partaken. He appears at table, not in his live state, but after
passing through the hands of the cook."

NATIVE VILLAGE NEAR UXMAL.

Fred thought he did not want any iguana then or at any other time, and his
mind was firmly made up on the subject. His views changed two or three days
later when, after eating heartily of a delicious stew, which secured the praises
of both Frank and himself, he learned that the stew aforesaid was nothing less
than the despised iguana. He quietly remarked that great allowance must be
made for prejudice, and then dismissed the subject.
Two hours before sunset they reached a hacienda, where they received the
same cordial reception as at Uayalké. It had been intended to complete the
journey to Uxmal that day, but as the hour was late and darkness would
certainly overtake them before their destination could be reached, Mr.
Burbank decided to accept the pressing invitation of the mayordomo to spend
the night there.
 HUNTING THE IGUANA.
The mules were unharnessed and led away to the stables, where they were
bountifully fed on fresh grass cut and brought by the peons. There was a fine
garden here filled with all sorts of tropical trees; and not the least interesting
sight in the place was a large number of beehives of a very primitive
character. They were nothing else than sections of a hollow log cut off with a
saw, and the ends closed with dried mud, or with boards fitted in, like the
head of a barrel.
Frank and Fred stood at a respectful distance as they looked at the beehives.
They were mindful of the proverb which refers to the prudence of the burnt
child; and having been stung by the honey insects on several occasions, they
did not wish a repetition of the experience. Mr. Burbank walked fearlessly up
to the hives and called to the youths to follow him.
"Please excuse us," replied Frank; "the bees may recognize you, as you've
been here before, but they don't know us."
"Never mind them," the gentleman answered, with a laugh. "The bees in this
country are stingless, and you run no risk in making their acquaintance."
Thus assured, the youths advanced and
found themselves unharmed. The bees
circled about them in great numbers, but
"left no sting behind." Mr. Burbank told them
that the hives were emptied every six or
eight weeks, and thus the bees were kept
busy the year round. Why they collect honey
in a country where flowers are perpetually in
bloom he could not understand. "It speaks
well for the industry of the insect," he
remarked; "he has no occasion to work, and
only does so from the force of ancestral
habit. He has some imitators among the
human race, but by no means so generally
as many of us might wish."
While discussing the subject of bee-keeping WHAT PERFUMES THE
in Yucatan they were called to supper, which HONEY.
was an excellent one, of purely Mexican
character. Turtle soup, chile con carne, frijoles, tortillas, and other national
dishes were served in abundance, and the meal ended with honey from the
beehives which they had investigated. Frank and Fred had observed a
delicious fragrance as they entered the room where supper was served, and
were unable at first to discover its origin. All the scent of the finest flowers of
Yucatan seemed to be gathered there. They looked around for floral baskets
or bouquets, but none were visible. When the honey was served they found
that this it was which furnished the fragrance, and they asked Mr. Burbank
about it.
"You are quite right," he answered; "it is the perfume of the honey that fills
your nostrils. In some seasons of the year it is much greater than now; it
spreads over the whole house, and is as powerful as musk or any other
famous perfume of the Old World."
 THE SIERRA FROM THE GARDEN OF THE
HACIENDA.
Just as they rose from the supper-table the bell of the chapel rang for oracion,
or evening prayer, which was attended by our friends and all the laborers and
everybody else about the establishment. When the service was ended each of
the worshippers said "Buenos noches, señor" (good-night, sir) to each of the
strangers. Everybody went early to bed, and by nine o'clock the whole place
was in the deepest silence. This remark will not apply to all seasons of the
year; during the periods of fiestas, or festivals, late hours are generally kept,
and early rising is not assiduously practised.
The hammocks of the travellers were slung in a corridor, and the free
circulation of air and the coolness of night, together with the fatigues of a
long ride over rough roads, insured sound sleep. In the morning chocolate
was served before six o'clock, and a little after that hour the carriages were
on their way. No direct payment for the hospitality of the hacienda was in
order, but indirect compensation was made in the shape of fees to the
mayordomo and the servants who had waited upon the strangers.
Soon after leaving the hacienda the road ascended, and Frank ascertained
from the driver, who spoke Spanish fairly, that they were climbing the sierra, a
hilly ridge hardly worthy the name of mountain, though called so by courtesy.
It is the highest ground of Yucatan, and therefore the inhabitants are to be
excused for calling it a mountain, as they would otherwise be without one.
From the top of the ridge they looked over a considerable area of country
covered with the scrub forest for which the country is noted, and dotted here
and there with the ruins of cities, which indicate the existence of a numerous
population in previous centuries. Down the other side of the ridge they went
at breakneck pace, the cochés being tossed from side to side with such
violence that the youths were compelled to hang on with both hands to
prevent being thrown out and left by the road-side. Several times the vehicle
narrowly escaped overturning; and this, too, close to chasms where an upset
would have sent them almost perpendicularly down a hundred feet or so, and
reduced vehicle, mules, passengers, and baggage to an average value of fifty
cents a bushel. And the curious thing about the whole business was that on
reaching level ground the driver reined in his team and proceeded at a more
dignified pace.

SIDE OF ANCIENT ALTAR.

 CHAPTER XXXII.
A ROMANTIC LEGEND.—HOW THE KING WAS
OVERCOME BY THE WITCH.—VISITING THE
DWARF'S HOUSE; ITS POSITION AND
PECULIARITIES.—HOUSE OF THE NUNS; ITS EXTENT
AND CONSTRUCTION.—CASA DEL GOBERNADOR.—
DESTRUCTIVE AGENCIES AT WORK.—AT HOME IN A
ROYAL PALACE.—MAYA ARCHES.—TROPICAL TREES
AND PLANTS.—DOUBLE-HEADED DOG OF UXMAL.—
GARAPATAS AND THE ANNOYANCE THEY CAUSED.—
INSECT PESTS OF YUCATAN.—DR. LE PLONGEON
AND THE STATUE OF CHAC-MOOL.—GHOSTS AND
GHOST STORIES.—BIRDS OF YUCATAN.—AN
ANCIENT WATERING-PLACE.
 ARCHWAY OF LAS MONJAS,
UXMAL.
At nine o'clock they reached the hacienda of Uxmal, where they were invited
to breakfast. The invitation was accepted, and immediately after the
conclusion of the meal the party continued to the ruins, which were about a
mile farther on. The mayordomo invited them to make the place their home
as long as they were in the neighborhood. Mr. Burbank gave an evasive
answer to the invitation, at the same time earnestly thanking their host for his
courtesy. To decline absolutely might seem a rudeness, and to accept would
not accord with their arrangement to live at the ruins of the ancient city.

HACIENDA OF UXMAL.
On reaching the ruins the party halted to consider what should first be
investigated. Doctor Bronson asked the youths if they had any suggestions to
make, whereupon Frank intimated that he desired above everything else to
visit the Dwarf's House.
"Why so?" queried the Doctor.
"On account of the very pretty legend connected with it," replied Frank. "It is
given by Stephens, Charnay, and others who have been here, but the best
form of it is by Mrs. Le Plongeon."
Then he read the following from "New and Old in Yucatan:"
"'During the reign of a certain Maya king there lived a woman who was both
feared and respected, for she was a wonderful sorceress. A son was born to
her, and he became a great favorite, for he was good and clever, though very
small—in fact, a dwarf. Finally he became so popular—probably the people
fawned on him to please the formidable witch—that the King grew jealous,
and sought his destruction by giving him difficult tasks, so that, failing, he
might be accused of disobedience. But, thanks to his mother, the boy always
succeeded.
"'One day the King, out of patience, ordered the boy to build in one night a
high mound and a house on the top. The youth was at his wits' end, but
went, as usual, to seek maternal aid. "Oh, mother, mother! I shall surely die,
for the King has ordered me to do more than I can possibly accomplish;" and
he told her his trouble.
"'"Never mind, my child, don't be alarmed. In the morning the house will be
there."
"'It was, and from that day to this has been called the Dwarf's House. The
King was enraged. He sent for the dwarf. "I am greatly pleased with the
house. Now I want to break six cocoyoles" (small and very hard cocoanuts
about the size of a walnut) "on your head, and then I will give you my
daughter in marriage."
"'The dwarf declined to accept the offer on these conditions. The monarch
insisted. "I want you to marry my daughter, and you must accept my
conditions."
"'Again the poor dwarf sought his mother in despair. "There is no hope for me
now."
"Oh yes, there is," replied the clever witch. "You go back to his Majesty and
tell him that you accede to his request provided he afterwards allows you to
break six cocoyoles on his own head."
"'And to this the King publicly agreed, because he was determined to kill the
dwarf with the first cocoyol.
"'Then the sorceress rubbed her son's head with something that made it so
hard nothing could possibly hurt it.
"'The King arrived, and the dwarf, in the presence of all the people, laid his
head on a stone. With another the King broke the cocoyol on the head of his
intended victim—broke all six of them—but the dwarf rose unhurt.
"'Then it was the turn of the monarch to lay his proud head down, and as his
scalp was not prepared, the dwarf broke his skull, and thus got rid of his
enemy. The agreement had been faithfully carried out, so the public had
nothing to say. The dwarf then married the princess and became king.'"
Of course the marriage of the dwarf to the princess was the end of the story,
and Frank so intimated. As the Dwarf's House was visible from where they
stood—in fact it is the most prominent object as the ruins are approached—
the party went to it at once.
"It stands on an artificial mound about 100 feet high," wrote Fred, in
describing the visit, "and therefore was quite a task for the dwarf to
accomplish in a single night. Do you doubt the truth of the story? Well, here is
the mound with the house upon it, and anywhere around here you may
gather cocoyoles in whatever number you like. Could there be any further
proof needed than these facts?

DWARF'S HOUSE AND EAST WING OF THE CASA

DE LAS MONJAS.
"We climbed to the top by a broad staircase of stone, and it was by no means
an easy climb. The steps are narrow and some of them have become
displaced, so that we were all tired enough to sit down when we reached the
house. The tradition is that when the priests threw the bodies of the victims
of sacrifice from the altars they rolled to the bottom of the steps without
stopping. The staircase is very wide, sixty or seventy feet; and this great
width, combined with the narrow steps, makes it a dangerous one to ascend.
A single misstep would send one rolling downward, like the sacrificial victims.
"The house was evidently a place of worship, and in this respect corresponds
to the teocallis of the Mexicans, which we have already described. Although
generally known as the Dwarf's House, it is frequently called the House of the
Prophet; and there is a tradition that prophecies were issued from it, as from
the temples of ancient Greece and Rome.
"It is seventy feet long and twelve wide, and is covered with sculpture, some
of it greatly injured by time, while the rest is well preserved. There are many
hieroglyphics that form an interesting study for the archæologist. Several
travellers have given translations of them, and I believe that each one is able
to demonstrate that his predecessors were all wrong. We will not attempt to
decipher them, as we do not wish to run the risk of our work being
overturned by the next comer.
"The building has three rooms; Doctor Bronson says that some of the
sculptures on the walls of these rooms are masonic symbols, and he wonders
if the race that erected the building were acquainted with the mystic rite. Who
can tell?
"Lower down is a sanctuary of two small but very high-ceiled rooms, and
having some fine sculpture on the outside. Over the entrance of the sanctuary
is the carved head of a mastodon, showing that the people were acquainted
with that animal, or at all events had his correct likeness. There are masonic
emblems on a cornice that extends around the sanctuary, and on the lower
part of the cornice are rings cut in stone, from which curtains were suspended
during the ceremonies that were performed inside the building.
"We spent an hour or more inspecting the building and its sculptures, and
then gave quite a little time to the magnificent panorama that was revealed
from the top of the mound; indeed we had considerable enjoyment of it while
resting from the fatigue of the ascent.
"The pyramid rises from a plain, and at the elevation where we stood or sat
we embraced with our eyes a wide area. All the principal buildings of Uxmal
were at our feet, and we looked and listened attentively while Mr. Burbank
pointed them out.
"Nearest and to the west is the Casa de las Monjas, or 'House of the Nuns,'
but whether it was really a nunnery or is only called so for convenience we
are unable to say. On a broad and high terrace to the south is the Casa del
Gobernador, or 'House of the Governor,' and there is a building close by called
the 'House of the Turtles.' Turtles did not live there, but figures of them are on
the sculptures that adorn the building. There were several other heaps of
ruins, of which I noted the names of only two, the 'House of the Old Woman,'
and the 'House of the Pigeons.'
"When we had finished our inspection of the Dwarf's House we descended the
steeply sloping pyramid, picking our way very carefully to avoid accidents.
Except where the stones are so thick as to afford no clinging ground for
vegetation, the sides of the mound are covered with bushes, which are
occasionally cut away by the proprietor of Uxmal.

FAÇADE OF WEST WING OF CASA DE

LAS MONJAS.
"We went first to the House of the Nuns, which is a building about 280 feet
square, with a large court-yard in the centre. There is a high gate-way on the
south side by which we entered the house; the house has eighty-eight rooms
or apartments opening into the court-yard, but no doors opening to the
outside. As we entered the court our attention was drawn to the sculptures on
the interior façades of the building; on one side there is a representation of
two enormous serpents, so immense in size that they run the whole length of
the edifice, their exact measurement being 173 feet. Their bodies are twisted
together, and in the spaces between the folds are many strange hieroglyphics.
We seemed to be once more in India, or some other Eastern country, where
serpent worship once prevailed and is by no means unknown at the present
day.
 GROUND-PLAN OF LAS MONJAS.
"Mr. Burbank told us that the ruins have suffered a good deal in recent years,
and at the rate they are being destroyed there will be little more than a few
heaps of rubbish remaining here when the next century begins. Nearly every
visitor to them thinks he must carry away something, and most people are not
at all particular about defacing the hieroglyphics or other sculptures. A large
quantity of stone has been taken from the ruins for building purposes at the
Uxmal hacienda; and the Indians do not seem to have any reverence, or but
very little, for the homes of their by-gone ancestors. There are the usual
traditions about buried treasures in the buildings, and every little while
somebody tries to find them. Nothing of value has ever been discovered, but
the digging that forms a necessary part of every search is a serious injury to
the sculptures and walls.
"The hand of man is ably aided in the work of destruction by the tropical
vegetation; around the building it is so thick that all access would soon be cut
off if the rapidly growing mass were not occasionally cut away in places where
paths are desired. The roof is overgrown with yuccas and other plants, that
convert it into a sort of hanging garden; their roots, swelling in the crevices
between the stones, are rapidly breaking down the walls and converting the
whole into a shapeless mass of ruins."
 CASA DEL GOBERNADOR.
The next spot of interest was the Casa del Gobernador, which has been
alluded to in Fred's account of the view from the top of the pyramid. Our
friends went there and found not only an extensive ruin, but what was of
practical importance, the servants that had been sent on in advance from
Merida with the cart and camping equipments. They had already taken
possession of the best rooms in the house, and were clearing them out for
occupation.
One room served for kitchen and servants' quarters, and the other for parlor,
dining-saloon, dormitory, salon de conversacion, reception-room, library, café,
art-gallery, and wardrobe. A flat stone made a very fair table, and other
stones served in place of chairs; hammocks were slung by means of ropes
from one wall to another, and altogether the place was comfortable enough
for a temporary home.
The kitchen apparatus was not extensive, but it sufficed for the preparation of
satisfactory meals, doubtless rendered appetizing by the exercise which the
strangers were getting in the open air. In the middle of the day it was too hot
to wander about a great deal; the time was passed in writing, reading, or
possibly in the siesta, for which all tropical and semi-tropical countries are
more or less famed.
 GROUND-PLAN OF CASA DEL
GOBERNADOR.
It fell to Frank to speak of the Governor's House, which he did as follows:
"The Governor's House, or Royal Palace, as it is also called, is on the
uppermost of three terraces (it could not well be on either of the lower ones),
and is 322 feet long by 39 in depth. The building is about 25 feet high, and
had a flat roof. Some of the ceilings were supported by triangular arches, and
others by beams; the beams have rotted away and disappeared, but the stone
arches remain intact. The roof was originally covered with cement. The
ancient Mayas seem to have possessed a very good quality of cement; but it
was hardly equal to that of some of the Eastern nations.
"The top of the building is overgrown with yuccas and other plants, just like
the House of the Nuns, and from the top of each of the three towers small
trees shoot high into the air. There is not much ornament on the lower part of
the walls, but the upper portion is profusely decorated; it is thought that the
walls, as high as the cornice, about ten feet from the base, were covered with
stucco or cement; and this has been removed by the climate, or possibly torn
off during the wars that may have prevailed here.
"The cornice runs around the building just above the three door-ways that
give entrance to the place. Above this cornice the whole wall is covered with
sculpture, and I can best describe it by copying what was written by Stephens
nearly fifty years ago: 'There is no rudeness or barbarity in the design or
proportions; on the contrary, the whole wears an air of architectural symmetry
and grandeur; and as the stranger ascends the steps and casts a bewildered
eye along its open and desolate doors, it is hard to believe that he sees before
him the work of a face in whose epitaph, as written by historians, they are
called ignorant of art, and said to have perished in the rudeness of savage
life. If it stood at this day on its grand artificial terrace in Hyde Park, or the
Garden of the Tuileries, it would form a new order, I do not say equalling, but
not unworthy to stand side by side with, the remains of Egyptian, Grecian,
and Roman art.'
"One of the interesting features of the Governor's House and other buildings
of Uxmal is the 'Maya Arch,' which is formed without a key-stone. The sides
are built up with stones projecting one beyond the other, and a flat stone is
laid across the top. In spite of its violation of the principles on which builders
say the arch is based, the work of the Mayas has withstood the ravages of
time to a remarkable degree. Specimens of this arch are found here in the
Governor's House, and in other parts of Uxmal; in fact they can be seen at
Palenque, Chichen-Itza, and other historic places in Yucatan and neighboring
countries. The archway of Las Monjas is an admirable specimen of this work,
and we send you a photograph of it so that you may judge for yourself.

STATUE OF DOUBLE-HEADED
DOG, UXMAL.
"There was formerly a stone figure here representing a double-headed dog,
but it has been carried away. It was found in a mound of earth at the corner
of the second terrace, and not far from the House of the Turtles. While we
were walking about the terrace Mr. Burbank cautioned us not to fall into one
of the ancient reservoirs, or storehouses, which are much easier to enter than
to leave. They are a sort of stone jug on a colossal scale—vaults or cisterns
ten or twelve feet square and as many deep, with an opening two feet across
at the top.
"A friend of his fell into one of these jugs while incautiously walking about. He
was stout in figure, and slipped into the hole, with no surrounding space to
spare. When they came to get him out it was necessary for him to remove the
greater part of his clothing in order that he could be hoisted from his prison;
and even then the work was not accomplished until the sides of the opening
had been greased. At any rate, that's the story Mr. Burbank told us.
"We have mentioned the House of the
Turtles, which is so called on account of a
row of turtles ornamenting its façade. It is
on the corner of the second terrace, and is
supposed to have been the kitchen of the
Palace. Fred thinks that if it was really a
kitchen the ornamentation will go far to
prove that the governor, whoever he was,
had a fondness for turtle soup, like a good
many governors of modern times. Wouldn't
it be funny if turtle soup should prove to
have had its origin in Yucatan? Doctor
Bronson says that though the Yucateos may
have had the article, they did not invent it,
as turtle soup was known to the ancient
Romans many centuries ago."
Frank and Fred found that a residence in a
DECORATIONS OVER royal palace had its drawbacks, especially
DOOR-WAY OF CASA DEL when night came and the bats appeared in
GOBERNADOR. large numbers. Furthermore, there were
lizards and other creeping things in great
abundance, and some of them were
especially repulsive.
One of the worst annoyances of their visit to Uxmal was that whenever they
moved about they became covered with garapatas. The garapata is a tick so
small that it is hardly perceptible to the naked eye, but it is capable of making
a bite or sting like that of a red ant or a hot needle. Frank and Fred were
reminded of their troubles in Ceylon, when they became covered with land-
leeches in their journey to Adam's Peak. Mr. Burbank told them that the best
antidote to the garapatas was to rub one's body with petroleum before
venturing where the insects abounded, and that they should change their
clothing every time they came in from a walk.
Here is Frank's note concerning these pests of Yucatan:
"They cause a frightful itching, and whenever the fangs of the insect break off
in the skin, and they do so very often, the wound is liable to fester and be
some time in healing. Their attentions are not confined to humanity; they
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