In this interplay between the denigrated minority status of Christians and the surprising twists, excesses and harmonies that Néarque and Polyeucte are able to produce, this drama seems to echo Deleuze’s rallying cry that I cited in the introduction: “Theater will surge forward as something representing nothing but what presents and creates a minority consciousness as a universal-becoming. It forges alliances here and there according to the circumstances, following the lines of transformation that exceed theater and take on another form, or else that transform themselves back into theater for another leap” (255-256). And in lieu of a conclusion to this chapter, I will risk a digression by taking Deleuze seriously and following a line of
transformation with a flying leap. Just as Néarque and Polyeucte are able to make the pre- existing language of identity and nomenclature stutter (“en un mot…. Un chrétien,” Stratonice sums up weakly), I am interested in highlighting the fundaments and sexual overtones of their radical break to consider how what Deleuze would call their “foreignness” is able to make the
language of sexuality and sexual difference stutter.
The paronomasia of sex and sects are not only related sonically, but also somewhat etymologically, as Derrida mentions, in his text “Fourmis” where he takes up the unlikely figure of an ant to conceptualize sexual difference. Pausing for a moment over Derrida’s “Fourmis” is not a mere digression; in fact, it gets to the heart of the sexual economy that drives Polyeucte as well as many other Corneille plays. Greenberg, among others, have noticed the particular sexual dynamics that animate this play, significant even among the Cornelian canon insofar as the play begins with the marriage already having taken place: “Polyeucte is a play about “the already- there of marriage, the already-there of sexual union, whose realization in the other plays had only been ad istant, flickering mirage” (CS 128).83
Sexual difference, in this play, is not only the structuring force of a hierarchy in which wives and daughters submit to fathers and husbands, but rather it is a sexual economy that is used and remarked upon openly, even used by certain
characters to achieve one end or another.
In Derrida's analysis, the symbolic cut between the sexes is impossible, since one depends on the other, they are just as linked as they are distinctly separated—he illustrates this using the figure of the ring: that which physically serves to sever and separate, but also link, literally at the joint between the different bulbs of the ant's body. And this word, “fourmi” or “ant” is one that enters into his writing dreamily, or at least via a dream:
Fourmi est un mot tout neuf pour moi. Il me vient d’un rêve d’Hélène, un rêve qu’elle a fait et qu’elle m’a donc raconté ces jours-ci sans savoir jusqu’à cet instant comment ce “fourmi” cheminerait en moi… puisqu’il y eut épiphanie d’un fourmi dans le rêve, que d’une fourmi il est bien difficile de voir, sinon de savoir,
83 In a sense, Le Cid could be thought of as an inversion of Polyeucte. In Polyeucte, the marriage has already taken
place and the father (in law) kills the son; and the pathos derives from the layering of dual and contradictory relationships: wife and widow, father-in-law and executioner. In Le Cid, the marriage is yet-to-take place and the son is made to kill the father (in law). The specific temporality of the marriage (to happen, and already taken place) is one that Corneille manipulates skillfully in order to increase a certain sublimity.
la différence sexuelle, et non seulement parce qu’elle est imperceptiblement noire, mais parce que le mot fourmi, dès lors que dans un rêve, par exemple, celui d’Hélène, il se masculinise, nous le voyons à la fois soustrait au voir, voué au noir de l’aveuglement mais promis par là même à la lecture (71-72).
By punning on “elle,” which refers to either “la différence sexuelle” or the ant (la fourmi), Derrida points out that it (both the ant and sexual difference) is difficult to see. But how can sexual difference be invisible? What we “see” when we look at sexual difference is not the difference itself, but the already-condensed by-products: sexes, sorted into male and female. In a sense, Derrida is asking a similar question to Butler’s: How to read for that movement of
disappearing by which an “inside” and an “outside” are constituted?
The forced rendering-legible of this always-differed, always differentially located sexual difference is noted through a torsion of grammatical regularity, by introducing “le” fourmi-- an imposition of the masculine article on the (presumably natural/normal) feminine une fourmi. He writes:
(entre parenthèses, tous les mots sont des fourmis, et par là des insectes, il faudra en tirer toutes les conséquences pour la différence sexuelle: dès qu'ils sont partie prenant de la différence sexuelle, il y a des mots ou plutôt des traces à lire. Elle commence par là. Il peut y avoir de la trace sans différence sexuelle, par exemple pour du vivant asexué, mais il ne peut y avoir de différence sexuelle sans trace, et cela ne vaut pas seulement pour 'nous', pour le vivant que nous appelons humain. Mais, dès lors, la différence sexuelle reste à interpréter, à déchiffer, à
désencrypter, à lire et non à voir. Lisible, donc invisible, objet de témoignage et non de preuve-- et du même coup problématique, mobile, non assurée, elle passe,
elle est de passage, elle passe de l'un à l'autre, par l'un et l'autre, de l'une à l'autre comme une fourmi, un fourmi de rêve) (74-75).84
With “entre parentheses,” he imposes a cut already on the text, but points to the punctuation marks by textually writing it out: “entre parenthèses.” The redoubled superfluity indicates the parentheses' doubled status as both supplement and excess. If all words are fourmis, or insectes, it is because all words already are marked and cut, sectioned like the “sect” of the insect, but also because they instantiate a cut, a difference (legibility) which produces meaning, or what we consider to be meaning. The parenthesis also effect a passage: one could pass over such a text, or one could think of the parenthetical half moons as effectuating an insertion: “Elle passe, elle est de passage.” Such passages, or insertions echo vaginal connotations as well as a
transportational metaphor, with “passage.” At the end of the text, with the oscillation of “une fourmi” to “un fourmi de rêve” indicates that both it stems from the dream but also that it is only dreamt, it cannot exist. The magical immediate transformation from “elle” (referring to “la différence sexuelle” but possibly also to femininity at large) is effectuated by the simplest cut, taking off the tiniest ant-sized letter “e” to make it from “l'un à l'autre” to “l'une à l'autre.” And yet this smallest, most impossible cut makes the greatest difference. For what is this “autre” that sexuated “un” and “une” can become? Is there any “other” besides male/female, un/une? And how can we dream of this “other”?
The fixed nature of sexual difference itself and its concomitant ideologies and structures of legibility drive much of the early scenes in the play. There is a certain uncontestible
84 “(In parenthesis, all words are ants, and consequently [par là] insects, one must assume all of the consequences for sexual difference: as soon as there is participation in sexual difference, there are words or rather traces to be
read. It begins there [par là]. There can be traces without sexual difference, for example for unsexed living
things, but there can be no sexual difference without traces, and this goes not only for 'us,' the living thing we call human. But, thenceforth, sexual difference remains to be interpreted, deciphered, decrypted, to be read and not seen. Legible, and therefore invisible, object of testimony and not of proof-- and in the same way,
problematic, mobile, unfixed, it [elle] passes by, it serves as passage, it passes from one to the other, by one and the other, from one [l'une] t o the other like une fourmi, un fourmi of a dream)” (Prenowitz, 21, with some of my amendations).
fossilization of gender polarities that the characters draw upon to justify their actions earlier on in the text. Polyeucte telles Néarque “Mais vous ne savez pas ce que c’est qu’une femme/ Vous ignorez quels droits elle a sur toute l’âme” (I, 1, 9-10) as he explains why he still feels obligated toward his wife. Similarly, Pauline says “Mon père, je suis femme, et je sais ma faiblesse” (I, 4, 341) as a means of gesturing towards incontestible gender universals that allow her to shirk her daughterly duties.
It is the turn away from such normativizing gender ideologies that the play enacts, in Polyeucte and Néarque’s revolutionary turn.
For Polyeucte, the cut that “négliger, pour lui plaire” insists on, the cut that divides him from the generating structures of family and rank, must act like the separating cut of the insect-- it divides, yet joins together. (Re)production is not wrought from heterosexual liaisons (the two of the male/female) but rather, produced from the unified ephemerality of speed that is made possible when unhinged (cut) from the temporal unity. There is something generative in the rushed attunement between himself and Néarque, a production which lies outside of queer memes or straight genes, wrought from the division that he insists on, in the difference that he performs in his affective/elective identity. So in this sense, the phrase “Négliger, pour lui plaire, et femme…” indicates Néarque and Polyeucte’s rejection not only of his wife, but also, more radically, womanhood, and the categories of gender and sexual difference that the previous political hierarchy was founded upon.85
The figure of the ring ties together sexuality and sociality in several important ways. Derrida also notes that the ring links, in specifically social and sexuated ways, through the
85 This relationship between sameness and difference and the ways that unique difference (the either/or of the sex
binary, for example) can be reconscripted by power is addressed by Badiou: “Thought becomes universal only by addressing itself to all others, and it effectuates itself as power through this address. But the moment all, including the solitary militant, are counted according to the universal, it follows that what takes places is the subsumption of the Other by the Same. Paul demonstrates in detail how a universal thought, proceeding on the basis of the worldly proliferation of alterities (the Jew, the Greek, women, men, slaves, free men, and so on),
produces a Sameness and an Equality (there is no longer either Jew, or Greek, and so on). The production of the
matrimonial ring and the circumcisive cut:
Au fond la fourmi mérite le titre d'insecte: c'est un animal à anneaux. Son corps est marqué, scandé stricturé par une multiplicité annulaire de rings, qui viennent couper sans le couper...voilà de quoi on aimerait parler: du séparé/ non sépare du coupé/ non coupé – et du mot 'sexe', de la différence sexuelle dans son rapport au coupé (et) (mais) non coupé, au coupé qui ne s'oppose plus au non-coupé, entre le 'séparé' et le 'réparer'(76).86
Stratonice, as we noticed before, emphasizes the paradox in this ring-bound link, the inherent tenuousness of the together-separation elicited by the arbitrary bonds of marriage: “Et la loi de l'hymen qui vous tient assemblés / N'ordonne pas qu'il tremble, alors que vous tremblez” (I, 3, 148-149). Derrida, elsewhere, also uses “anneau de peau” to refer to the circumcisive act, which is yet another cut that joins (a community), a binding cut that does not cut. The ring's status, in both cases, is a supplementative: without such a (bodily/ accessorial) marker of the ring, one's status as cut from or included in the social group is ambiguous, and yet the ceremonial
(performative) bestowing of the ringly cut that links is the founding of this sexual-social identity. In both cases, whether in the temporality of marriage or the generational time of circumcision, the “ring” marks a socio-sexual time that is founded upon clear male and female differences. And just as Lupton argues that Paul’s radical break with the Law installs a fallenness in the rite of circumcision, that is to say, the act becomes mere symbol instead of critical passage, here the transformation (perhaps, the radical transformation) that Polyeucte is advancing is a fallenness of sexual difference, for such foundational (fundamental) binaries to become “merely” symbolic.
Derrida brings together la fourmi and le fourmi-- the ant-as-animal and the fourmi as
86“Fundamentally, the ant deserves the name of “insect”: it's a ringed animal. Its body is marked, divided, strictured by a ringed multiplicity(annulaire = ring finger), which cut without cutting it... look at what one would like to speak about : of separated/ non-separated, of cut/ uncut-- and of the word « sex » of sexual difference in its relation to the cut/ted (and) (but) not cut, of the cut/ted which opposes to the uncut/ted, between the « separated » and « repaired »” (34)
formed word, but puts them together in the “ring”, a term which he leaves in English for two reasons: one, in French, “ring” refers to the boxing ring, and therefore he hopes to allude to some struggle, or some impossibly constructed dichotomy between the “reality” of sexual difference and its figuration. Secondly, however, Derrida begins darting between English and French in his text here, as sparring partners in a match, while staging the impossibilities wrought by the
spoken against the written:
Il y a là en vérité deux mots, deux adjectifs qualificatifs : l'un veut dire 'coupé', l'autre 'non coupé'. Le premier vient de inseco, il signifie 'coupé' ; l'autre est privatif ou négatif-- in-sectus, a, um-- il signifie 'non coupé'. Et c'est le ring de la fourmi et du fourmi quasiment circoncis : coupé-non-coupé, strictement,
stricturellement resserré(e) par des anneaux parenthétiques. Ceux-ci compriment
sans interrompre, ils interrompent sans interrompre (ce que j'appelle la différance avec un a : interruption ininterrompue, continuum et délai de l'hétérogène) (93).87 In the unified pronouncement of “insect” we cannot hear the two other mutually exclusive words that comprise it and feed into its meaning etymologically. The inseco from which insect derives, also acts like the harmonic insofar as the plucked string is subdivided, cut into higher
frequencies, and yet continues in its perfected integrality, to generate and produce: the
fundamental appears yet again as the base and basis for generation. Derrida requires this French- English confusion and interplay to introduce his biggest pun, “tous les deux” which is also his most important commentary on the legibility of sexual difference, a paronomasia between English and French (or between the aural and the written). Derrida begins by elaborating on the verb inseco, describing how both of the roots of the word related to the insect are related to
87“There are two words here in truth, two qualifying adjectives: one means ‘cut’, the other ‘not cut’ The first comes from inseco, meaning ‘cut’; the other is privative or negative—in-sectus, a, um— meaning ‘not cut’. And it is the
ring of la fourmi and of le fourmi practically circumcised: cut-un-cut, strictly, stricturally choked by parenthetical
annulations. These compress without interrupting, they interrupt without interrupting (what I call différance with an
production, historical time, and legibility:
L'une, inseco (secui, sectum, secare), signifie donc couper, sectionner, déchirer, tailler... l'autre inseco (insequo), sequis, plus archaïque, qui veut dire non pas écrire mais dire, raconter, enchaîner, poursuivre à la trace dans un récit ou dans une phrase. On a donc à la fois l'histoire et l'interruption, l'enchaînement, narratif et la coupure, la réparation et la séparation dans le rapport, entre eux deux, de ces deux verbes qui signifie justement la coupure et l'enchaînement, l'interruption et le récit : “tous les deux”(93).88
Here, “tous les deux” first appears to be a generic enough term to indicate the pair, both of them. But at second glance, the “tous” easily transforms aurally into “two,” its English paranomastic double, just as Derrida transforms the “fourmis” into “for/me”, dividing the word in two to make four, and also to make a “for”—a doubling and a splitting into a term has a perfectly
understandable sense in English, but a nonsense meaning in French. Thus “tous les deux”, la fourmi and du fourmi, and four/me itself produce meaning through only a willful mishearing, or a misheard will and pointing to the frictive slippages between languages, between the twos, between difference and sexual difference. All of these twos, the paired languages, the sound and its written double, the ant and the fourmi, the two sexes-- all are embedded in and produce sequence (and perhaps, thus, temporality and history) are always already doomed to be unraveled. Paradoxically, however, this separation which does not separate (the coupé/ non- coupé), as différance, is actually a deeply productive and seminal tool ; in other words, instead of straining for the illusion of unity, they grasp for the generative division of différance.
Corneille’s re-imagining of the original history/myth eliminates the fact that Polyeucte
88 One, inseco (secui, sectum, secare), means to cut, to sever, to tear, to carve… the other, inseco, (insequo), sequis, is more archaic and means not to write but to say, to recount, to link up, to pursue traces in a narrative or in a sentence. So we have at once the story and the interruption, the narrative linking up and the cutting, the reparation and the separation in the relations, between the two of them, of these two verbs that signify precisely the cut and the link, the interruption and the narrative, « tous les deux » (34)
had children; instead, Stratonice, Pauline’s confidente, says of Polyeucte, we recall; “Néarque l’a séduit : / De leur vieille amitié c’est là l’indigne fruit” (III, ii, 807-808). These fruits of
seduction and reproduction deviate from normative teleologies, eschewing reproduction, sequence and succession in favor of temporal, queer swerving. But because there are two, “tous les deux” both of them, there has been, and can be, a “fruit” of seduction. Because they are two, they become, tous les deux, a figure for “tous les deux” – all of the twos, the pairs, the intimate relations which fail to figure properly, but still lingering, however metaleptically erased or preposterously reversed, in a strategic failure which could écorcher (flay) the norms of a fundament or a Ring which would restrict, constrain—or even link together.
In the middle of “Fourmis,” Derrida slides in a parenthetical and cryptic comment about gender, one that he does not explain fully, but rather embeds it secretly and silently in the rest of his text. He writes about the feminine behind our image of God:
Je risquerai entre parenthèses une sorte de confidence naïve. La lecture de la différence sexuelle, cela commence avec Dieu. Je suis toujours à nouveau surpris quand […] j'apprends ou je me vois rappelle que, dans la tradition juive, la
schekina, à savoir la manifestation de la présence divine, garde les trait d'un
visage féminin, et qu'il penser une certaine féminité du Dieu juif-- d'autre part