Llaves

Clefs reads our most familiar noises —stereotypes, platitudes, clichés, tropisms, truisms— as philosophical theses. From stereotype to cliché is nothing but a jump. I gave it a try, with estrangement as my guide. What could be more familiar than political cant? What could be stranger than making of it one’s home, what could be simpler than putting one’s faith in it? Unlike Hayden White, for whom the novel is to be found in history, in any text I look for the essay. Here is the recipe. Take a novel, an article, a film, a commonplace, and torture them. They will end up yielding a thesis, argued in accordance with the rules of logic. Strip from the text whatever is not relevant to its own thesis—that which neither validates nor invalidates the latter—and the former will come out skinned, often losing its feathers in the process. Play both thesis against text and text against thesis, and question the social sciences in the light of this game of respect and betrayal. My training, my penchant, the human brain... all of them lean toward the figure, which is marked. Yet “there is no science but the science of what is general,” —therefore, the science of what is not marked? I will defend the opposite: not only that there is no human science but the science of what is particular, but that there is no science but the science of synecdoche—the only science that has a cognitive reality. Synecdoche is our brain’s lethal weapon. Only the part able to stand for the whole will manage to free X, be it a group or an individual, from its own marker. And yet the more atypical the part, the better its chances for imposing itself as the figure that represents the whole, as the Extraordinaire Représentatif (or, the Representative Extraordinaire) (ER). This lesson is valid also for geopolitical entities: Paris/France is the paradigmatic example. God is in the detail, yes, but not in just any detail —God is in the good detail. God is in the detail capable of driving everyone away; that which is not the good detail is nothing but human. Everything is in the nuance, but not in just any nuance —everything is in the nuance that makes the difference. The good detail is the tree that hides the forest. The good detail is the Extraordinaire Représentatif (ER). The good detail also aspires to become the Exterminating Synecdoche (SE). Every ER is a SE in the making; Paris is France. From “we” to “I” is nothing but a jump. I gave it a try, and the synecdoche was my bridge. Such is my arsenal: a state of mind —estrangement; a savoir faire —reading; a regulatory principle—synecdoche; the whole put in motion at the disposal of an idée fixe: going from what is complicated to what is simple. Here is my research program: truth grows at the side of commonplaces and beaten tracks. Here is the method: deductive improvisation (“le boeuf déductif”), a logical improvisation on the three standards at work in our language: Épicerie, Paranoia, Iceberg (ÉPI); or Paranoia, Iceberg, Grocery (PIG): Grocery: Standard: Fair’s fair. Dogma: It all holds together. Paranoia: Standard: Nothing human is alien to me. Dogma: Everything is marked. Iceberg: Standard: To read between the lines. Dogma: Everything is symptom. But it is not so much the discovery (there is no such thing) of the system, of that which is marked, of the depths, that would elevate the EPI to the status of conquering paradigm. Rather, the originality of the EPI, its raison d’être, lies in that which it declares impossible: 1) going off on one’s own; 2) unilaterality and gratuitousness; 3) indifference; 4) being pure surface. It was not until Clefs that the brain—and its lethal weapon, the synecdoche— established itself as the true protagonist of my research. As I see it, putting together the fragwürdig—what is worth being postulated—and the fraglich—what is able to be postulated—is not possible but on one condition: to put forward only what is compatible with what h