Pauperismo y explotación: realidades de la isla

Identity, however, now proves to be difference. Difference therefore does not emerge, as both Burbidge and Protevi contend,15 through its exclusion by identity. Identity, as Houlgate notes, is not yet ‘in relation’ to difference, but is purely self-relating.16 At this point, identity has no immediacy that could be placed over against difference, for it consists only in the relation of negation to itself, and at this point identity is all that

13

John W. Burbidge, On Hegel’s Logic: Fragments of a Commentary (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), p. 73.

14

This is precisely why the concept of ‘change’ does not apply in the logic of essence as it did in the logic of being.

15

Burbidge, p. 74; Protevi, pp. 333–4.

16 _{Stephen Houlgate, ‘Essence, Reflexion, and Immediacy in Hegel’s Science of Logic’, in A Companion To} Hegel (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), pp. 139–58 (p. 148).

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essence has proved to be. Yet within this process of self-relation a separation of negation from itself is necessary in order for negation not simply to collapse into simple immediacy in its self-coincidence. Difference thus initially ‘emerges’ because it is found to be constitutive of identity as identity. As Houlgate writes, identity ‘is nothing but difference because within itself it is nothing but reflexion and self-negating negation.’17

Difference, then, is always already internal to the unfolding of identity. This is made clear in Hegel’s remark on the principle of identity: A = A. Throughout this chapter of the

Logic Hegel is highly critical of the basic (onto)logical principles on which he remarks, but here this criticism only extends to the particular way in which he takes the principle of identity usually to be understood. Indeed, in the Encyclopaedia he calls this principle ‘true enough’ (Enc § 115), but objects to its usual interpretation which, in taking it to express simple, abstract identity with self, ignores its very structure. He contrasts this interpretation with the speculative understanding of the principle:

In the form of the proposition, therefore, in which identity is expressed, there lies

more than simple, abstract identity; in it, there lies this pure movement of reflection in which the other appears only as seeming, as an immediate vanishing; A is, is a beginning that hints at something different [Verschiedenes] to which an advance is to be made; but this different something is not reached; A is – A; the difference is only a vanishing; the movement returns into itself’ (SL 415-6/LW 32).

As the self-relation of negation, identity requires negation to differ from itself—to continually delay its coincidence with itself even, one might say, in the very process of coinciding. In this respect, then, identity turns out to be nothing other than difference. Its self-coincidence is equally a self-differing.

17

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Here it is important to stress that the difference that identity has proved to be is pure self-difference. Although in the process of reflection a relation to an other appears to arise, this is a mere appearance because negation differs only from itself. Indeed, it is from the notion of identity as a ‘differentiating by which nothing is differentiated,’ that Hegel directly arrives at absolute difference: ‘Here […] distinguishing is present as self- related negativity, as a non-being which is the non-being of itself, a non-being which has its non-being not in another but in its own self. What is present, therefore, is self-related, reflected difference, or pure absolute difference’ (SL 413/LW 28).

2.1.1 Absolute Difference = Absolute Identity

Hegel now claims that absolute difference, in turn, proves to be nothing other than identity. For Protevi, this movement of the dialectic responds to the exigency of rational thought. As he puts it, ‘To think difference as difference some identity must be implicated in difference, so that difference stands still long enough to be thought as difference.’18 On Protevi’s reading, this is a crucial dimension of the difference between Hegel and Derrida: ‘This giving of a meaningful identity to difference, this rendering difference meaningful via the implication of an identity is the first stage in which, in Derrida’s words, Hegel “determines difference as contradiction.”’19 Protevi’s claim, however, is problematic if it is to be taken as a reading of this particular section of the Logic. Even if one rejects the premise of the Logic that we noted in the previous chapter—namely the identity of thought and being—here would not be the point at which to show that a form of difference has emerged which might escape rational thought. Absolute difference in truth

18 _{Protevi, p. 334.} 19

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proves to be identity for a simple reason—one with which, as we shall see, Derrida largely concurs.

Absolute difference proves to be identity because it is only self-related difference. While it is self-relating negation, it is nonetheless the negation that relates only to itself, and so continually ‘goes together with itself.’ Like identity, then, it is a movement in which a difference appears, but since the latter is only a self-difference, it makes no difference and so is immediately annulled.

Difference, in its initial ‘absolute’ form, can then be seen as a rather ‘minimal’ form of difference. It is immediately ‘reabsorbed’ back into the movement of identity, because in truth it never really left this movement. In this way, it resembles the presupposition of positing reflection which does not trouble the self-determining capacity of reflection, for it is a ‘presupposition’ that immediately sublates itself and proves to have been ‘pre-posited.’ To this extent, we might say, with Miguel de Beistegui, that absolute difference is ‘nothing more than the unfolding of itself of the negativity within identity.’20

It is important to note that this does not mean that there is now, in truth, only identity. Difference remains necessary to the unfolding of identity, but the crucial point is that it does not disturb this process of self-determination. Difference is a moment in a process of

self-relation, as the difference between A as subject and A as predicate—a difference which vanishes in its very appearing. As Hegel writes, ‘Difference is the negativity which reflection has in it, the nothing which is said in enunciating identity, the essential moment of identity itself which, as the negativity of itself, determines itself and is distinguished from difference’ (SL 417/LW 33).

20

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At this point, Hegel is only unfolding what difference initially proves to be, and thereby showing that when difference takes the form of ‘absolute difference,’ it immediately collapses back into identity. This is a point to which Derrida acknowledges an ambiguous debt in an important footnote tohis ‘Violence and Metaphysics,’ which I shall come back to in the following chapter: ‘Pure difference is not absolutely different (from nondifference). Hegel’s critique of the concept of pure difference is for us here, the most uncircumventable theme. Hegel thought absolute difference, and showed that it can be pure only by being impure’ (WD 411, n. 91/227, n.1).21

Now if Hegel’s dialectic of identity and difference were to stop here, then it would indeed correspond to the manner in which de Boer reads the relationship between contrary categories within the Logic as a whole. As we shall see, however, difference now comes to take on a more radical form. This is noted by de Beistegui, who states that, in the next category to be examined—diversity—‘essence provide[s] itself with a determination that remain[s] indifferent to the process that generated it’22 Nevertheless, although de Beistegui gives a nuanced reading of this chapter of the Logic,23 he conceives

21

I am indebted to Johannes-Georg Schülein for drawing attention to this footnote in his paper at the 2012 Hegel-Kongress in Istanbul. The paper, ‘Hegel und die Stimme der Metaphysik. Zu Derridas Hegel- Lektüre in Der Schacht und die Pyramide’ is forthcoming in the Hegel Jahrbuch, Hegel gegen Hegel, ed. By A. Arndt, M. Gerhard, and J.Zovko (Akademie-Verlag: Berlin).

22

Beistegui, p. 93.

23

More than many post-Derridean commentators on Hegel, de Beistegui acknowledges and emphasises that, for Hegel, difference lies at the heart of identity. Indeed, he sees the fundamental shift that takes place with German Idealism, and that is exemplified by Hegel, to be the freeing of difference from its determination as contrariety in Aristotelian metaphysics. As he writes, the Logic ‘enacts a transgression in relation to the classical concept of difference […] to the extent that, refusing to subordinate

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its subsequent development in terms that are sometimes reminiscent of de Boer’s. For he also states that difference

comprises various strata, various dialectically generated phases, which all stem from the self-repelling of identity. The various determinations of this process of differentiation are diversity (die Verschiedenheit), opposition (der Gegensatz), and contradiction (der Widerspruch). From the outset, then, not only opposition […] but also contradiction itself is included within the process of differentiation, and so [is] internal—and indeed essential—to the constitution of identity.24

In the following, however, I shall claim that difference as it now emerges, and in the forms it subsequently takes, cannot be thought as simply internal to the constitution of identity; it is rather that which disrupts, and cannot be contained by, identity as a process of self-determination.

2.1.2 From Absolute Difference to Diversity

This new form of difference emerges in a similar way to the presupposition of external reflection that we considered in the previous chapter. It too is reached through the unfolding of all that is implicit in the concept of difference as self-relating negativity. This unfolding goes as follows. On the one hand, as we have seen, difference is the self-

territory of contradiction’ (Beistegui, p. 80). For de Beistegui, the logic of identity and difference is pivotal in that it expresses in undeveloped form the truth of the concept, which ‘is self-identical only to the extent that it opens itself to that which is wholly other than it. Its capacity to be is only a function of its capacity to be other, its capacity to open itself to contradiction’ (Beistegui, p. 89).

24

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relation of the negative. Yet because this relation is only a self-relation, the negative continually ‘goes together with itself’ and collapses back into identity. It thereby proves to be a ‘moment’ that is in truth contained within identity; identity is thereby the whole of the reflective movement in which both identity and difference are moments. On the other hand, however, the very fact that the negative only goes together with itself also

gives it a certain self-sufficiency as the negative or as different that precisely allows it to resist its collapse into identity. It is, as Hegel puts it, ‘reflected into itself’ as difference by containing within itself a moment of identity. From this perspective, then, difference is also the whole of the reflective movement in which both difference and identity are moments.

At this point, we can see that identity has come up against a presupposition that is not simply its own position and that it does not simply precede. For identity now proves to be as much a posited moment of difference as difference is a posited moment of identity. In truth, then, neither identity nor difference is logically prior to the other, but each only will have been prior to the other, after the fact. To this extent, the two determinations can be described as ‘equiprimordial.’

The transition to diversity can now be understood on the basis of this equality or equiprimordiality of identity and difference. Each, as a different ‘side’ of reflection or with a different emphasis, is determinately different to the other. Yet because each contains the other, each is also the whole of reflection. As Hegel writes, difference, ‘possesses both moments, identity and difference; both are thus a positedness, a determinacy. But in this positedness each is relation to itself. One of the two, identity, is itself immediately the moment of reflection-into-self; but equally, the other, difference, is difference in itself, reflected difference’ (SL 418/LW 35). Each then contains within itself both its ‘other’ and its difference from that other, or, as Houlgate writes, difference ‘includes

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identity as that which it is not,’ as does identity difference.25 This, as we shall see a little later, will ultimately drive difference to take the form of contradiction, but it initially has a very different result.