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1. Introduction

There is a real risk that, starting out from Derrida’s work on metaphysics, the metaphysical machine will be understood as a metaphysical text. At times Derrida’s work hazardously reduces the machine to text.186 _{At different}

moments in his argument he refers to the metaphysical machine as the metaphysical text as if those words and their subsequent clusters of mean- ing could be used interchangeably. In the light of Derrida’s intensive cri- tique of semiotics and his attempt to establish a grammatology that over- comes the classical concept of text in order to open it up to the grammē

and trace, this lapse is comprehensible. Nevertheless, it remains problem- atic for a conceptualization of technics and the machine. This ambiguity has led Mark B. Hansen to reproach Derrida for reducing the machine to text

186 _{This is also the theme of a fascinating study on deconstruction by} François Laruelle, Machines textuelles: Déconstruction et libido d’écriture (Seuil: Paris 1976). Laruelle’s interpretation of Derrida’s ‘metaphysical text’ brings him to understand the text as a machine of reproduction. What becomes increasingly clear toward the end of his study is that Laruelle not only understands the text as a reproductive machine, he also understands machines from the vantage point of the text.

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and thus understanding everything to function as a text, technology in- cluded:

Derrida is compelled to localize the operation of technol- ogy exclusively within the domain of the text. Technology is thus restricted to the “machine”, to the “programmatic”, and, ultimately, the “grammatical” aspect of thinking (the mechanisms of language).187

Hansen mistakenly believes that the text is what defines and determines the potential of Derrida’s work for developing a concept of technics. In the previous chapter, I argued that a more viable point of departure that opens up wider possibilities is différance. The interweaving of forces that is done by différance cannot be captured by any sort of immanent textualism. In- stead, the interweaving play of forces constructs multiple poles of attrac- tion to which the text itself is bound.188 _{Derrida’s work is not in line with a}

textualism understood as the ‘mechanics of language’ that determines technics.189

While an urgent task is to develop a concept of technics starting out from différance as I have done in the previous chapter, technics also needs to be distinguished from the machine. Although the two concepts rely upon each other and operate by grafting themselves onto each other, they are not the same. In Derrida’s work the machine is most often used in relation to metaphysics. It does not designate something that Derrida deems positive.190 _{Quite the contrary, it is the machine that Derrida wants}

187 _{Mark B. Hansen, Embodying Technesis: Technology Beyond Writing,} 129.

188 _{This is why Derrida can refute both attempts at literal, strictly textual} readings and readings that try to abstract the meaning of a word from its form. See Derrida, Dissemination, 112.

189 _{Another difficulty in Hansen’s critique is that it does not clearly} distinguish between technology, the machine, and the program. Derrida himself, however, does make a distinction between these concepts. 190 _{Sometimes Derrida also speaks of machines when referring to tele-} technologies. This is perhaps another signal that the concept of the machine, albeit important, remains underdeveloped in Derrida’s work.

91 to deconstruct – the metaphysical machine. This chapter deploys an analy- sis that rigorously scrutinizes Derrida’s reading of metaphysics with refer- ence to the machine. This enables me to uncover what could be called the

machinic functioning of metaphysics. The properties of this machinic func- tioning can be derived from Derrida’s analysis of metaphysics. In particular, Derrida’s reading of metaphysics as the construction of a teleo- eschatological history, and his distinction between the end of metaphysics and the closure of metaphysics, play an important role in this chapter. By abstracting these issues from their strictly metaphysical context, I show that they can serve as a starting point for conceptualizing the machine. At that moment it also becomes possible to digress from Derrida’s analysis in order to investigate the concept of the machine as a conceptualization of the po- litical.

At various moments this chapter zooms in on a discussion between Derrida and Heidegger while developing a thinking of the machine in the interstices of every paragraph and every turn of the tongue. I only deal with elements of this longstanding discussion; they are brought in as far as they are relevant for a conceptualization of the machine. But the elements that I select are presented in full to give a clear view of the matter at stake before derailing it. This is a painstaking activity that takes time, but that is neces- sary to explore the full potential of the deconstruction of metaphysics for conceptualizing the machine. In the first section, I explore how and how far the analysis of metaphysics has implication for Derrida’s formulation of a deconstructive practice. Metaphysics captures thought in a closure from which it cannot free itself. At the same time, it strives toward its own end. This argument only becomes comprehensible when it is clear that meta- physics has a hold on our notions of time, history, and epoch. These meta- physical concepts, which hold us in their closure, are appropriated in a de- constructive reading (in a first move) only to subvert them later on again (in a second move). Tracing the moves that are made in a deconstructive read- ing of the ‘tradition,’ ‘history,’ or ‘epoch’ of metaphysics puts us right at the heart of the discussion on time that unfolds in Derrida’s essay, “Ousia et grammē.” At this point in the chapter, I look into the problem of time, not only as a metaphysical and a machinic problem, but also as a problem for deconstruction itself. Différance is what makes time possible, I argue, but it is the machine that actualizes time. So time only comes into existence at the moment that the machine is grafted onto différance. The concluding argu-

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mentative step in this chapter contends that the grafting of the machine onto différance introduces time at the heart of the political functions of the machine. This brings into focus the implications of the teleo-eschatology that can be detected in the machine. It also refers back to the ontopological functioning and disrupting of the political by différance and technics that was analyzed in the first chapter. In returning to the problem of time (as a metaphysical one), I return to the metaphysical concepts of history and ep- och with which I begin the argument, and so consequently the beginning returns in the end.

2. The Metaphysical Machine, Reading History

Derrida’s reading of metaphysics – or, as I prefer to call it, the metaphysical machine - unfolds itself as a reading of a specific history. In so far as this his- tory is presented as an organic unity, with the ‘conceptual crisis of lan- guage’ as its guiding thread, Derrida’s project does indeed seem to hinge on the classical ways of writing history as a unity. This has vast implications for Derrida’s reading of metaphysics: it would signal that Derrida himself remains captured in metaphysics in that he adopts the metaphysical pre- supposition that history can be read as a unity with a guiding principle. Studying metaphysics and the concepts employed therein, Derrida is caught up in the use of metaphysical concepts such as ‘history,’ ‘unity,’ ‘ep- och,’ ‘presence.’ The fact that he adopts these terms in a first move does not mean that he remains caught up in metaphysics. His use of these concepts is strategic: he adopts them in a first move only to overturn their use and meaning in a second move. The same double move that I traced in the first chapter with regard to the concepts of technique, technology, and technics is at work in Derrida’s reading of metaphysics as a history. It is the way in which Derrida uses these terms that allows him to (de)construct the meta- physical era and reveal its crucial traits.

In many respects Derrida’s analysis of the metaphysical machine is preoccupied with history, with situating deconstruction in (metaphysical) history. In the preface to Of Grammatology, Derrida underlines his ambition to create a theoretical matrix that should subsequently provide some marks and points of contact for further historical inquiry into the history of writing

93 ics cannot be accounted for by any of the existing classical modes of read- ing. In order to bring out the essential traits of the history of metaphysics it is necessary to transgress the boundaries and restrictions laid out by these classical modes of reading and writing history. For this reason, Derrida claims that it was absolutely necessary that his reading

should free itself, at least in its axis, from classical cate- gories of history – not only from the categories of the history of ideas and the history of literature but also, and perhaps above all, from the categories of the history of philosophy.191

Immediately following this, Derrida argues that in writing the history of metaphysics he also had to respect the norms that are inherent to that tra- dition and which cannot simply be undone. The concept of the axis plays a critical role in explaining this paradox. Whilst Derrida claims that in its axis his reading of metaphysics has to move away from the classical concepts of writing history, it is now suggested that around this axis his reading needs to conform to some of the most impeding concepts and rules of metaphys- ics. Around this axis he has to ‘respect them [i.e., the classical categories of writing history].’192 _{Derrida consciously moves back and forth between a}

new approach to writing history, on the one hand, and a classical approach to writing history, on the other. The question is how these two approaches are related. They are intricately interwoven, and whilst the new approach to writing history defines the axis of Derrida’s reading, the classical approach lies around this axis. In other words: the new approach should form the ma- trix even if the classical form is still present.

This rather abstract issue becomes clearer by looking at some con- cepts that function as prerequisites to Derrida’s writing of the history of metaphysics, concepts such as ‘history,’ ‘epoch,’ or ‘era.’ All these concepts are impregnated by metaphysics. This implies that even the idea of writing a history of metaphysics will remain captured within metaphysics. The metaphysical machine overdetermines the relation to the past in such a way that a unifying grid can be laid over it so as to conjure up a ‘history.’