Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism

Jean-Michel Rabaté

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781501371318
• eBook ISBN: 9781501331879
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: French Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume makes a significant contribution to both the study of Derrida and of modernist studies. The contributors argue, first, that deconstruction is not "modern"; neither is it "postmodern" nor simply "modernist." They also posit that deconstruction is intimately connected with literature, not because deconstruction would be a literary way of doing philosophy, but because literature stands out as a "modern" notion. The contributors investigate the nature and depth of Derrida's affinities with writers such as Joyce, Kafka, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, Paul Celan, Maurice Blanchot, Theodor Adorno, Samuel Beckett, and Walter Benjamin, among others. With its strong connection between philosophy and literary modernism, this highly original volume advances modernist literary study and the relationship of literature and philosophy.

PART ONE

Rethinking the main concepts of modernism

1

Trickster economy:

Derrida’s Baudelaire, and the role of money, counterfeits, and alms in the modern city

Marit Grøtta

In 1991 Jacques Derrida published a book that is often referred to as his Baudelaire book: Given Time 1. Counterfeit Money.¹ There he deals at length with a prose poem by Baudelaire, delving into nineteenth-century modernity. A splendid example of the fruitful connections between literature and philosophy, the book demonstrates Derrida’s shrewdness and sensitivity as a reader of literature. The title of Baudelaire’s piece discussed by Derrida, “Counterfeit Money,” seems full of promise for a deconstructionist reading, for money and counterfeits have to do with the circulation of signs, and Baudelaire’s approach to these phenomena at the onset of modernism cannot fail to offer valuable insight.

What is perhaps most surprising about Derrida’s Baudelaire book is that he does not start out with money, as many critical Baudelaire readers do, nor does he end there. His main concern is the gift and how Baudelaire in this short piece depicts the paradoxes related to the act of giving. Through his reading of Baudelaire, Derrida shows that giving is always bound up in temporal structures that involve speculation, credit, and debt. The question he raises is whether it is possible to break the circle of indebtedness. What are the possibilities of a true gift? Ethical questions thus come to the fore in Derrida’s reading of Baudelaire; moreover, they prove to be intimately connected with the advent of capitalism, the birth of modernity, and the possibility of literature.²

Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) was a prime witness of modernity, depicting phenomena that are today seen as staple motifs of modernist literature: crowds swarming the streets, vehicles in motion, gas lights, cafés, city renovation, and an overflow of signs. Moreover, he portrayed a number of marginal beings at odds with modernity, but also complicit with it, such as beggars, prostitutes, gamblers, and, not least, poets. However, Baudelaire was not merely concerned with introducing modern motifs into literature; he also registered more subtle changes operating on a perceptual and societal level, affecting human relations and putting their core values at stake. This is what concerns Derrida in his response to Baudelaire. He is interested in Baudelaire as a writer of modernity and uncovers his profound insight into the role of money, counterfeits, and alms in modern life. In many respects, Given Time proves Derrida’s claim that he sees himself as an historian.³ He does so by making us appreciate Baudelaire not only as a poet who offers a series of tableaux from the city, but also as a poet who has a deep understanding of the forces at play in modernity, capable of asking: How does money work? What characterizes the relations between people in a modern city? What happens to giving and forgiveness in a capitalist society?

Reading Baudelaire with Derrida is a rewarding experience because our situation today, in many respects, still resembles Baudelaire’s. The inflation of signs, the impact of economic structures, the corruption of society, and the precarious situation of marginal and disenfranchised people in big cities: these are phenomena that still crop up daily, even if they have been transformed since the nineteenth century. Our time is marked by the Internet, by fake news, by swift money transfers, by globalization, immigration, humanitarian aid, and the crisis of most democratic states. Derrida’s reading of Baudelaire disentangles the paradoxes of the modernity in which we still live today. When he describes Baudelaire’s piece as a “scene of modernity,” the reader may recognize this as an early scene in a drama still going on.

My aim here is first to show to what degree Baudelaire’s poetic universe is suited for a reflection on the gift. Perceptive to the forces at play in modern life and the ways in which they affected economic as well as moral and literary matters, Baudelaire orchestrated a “trickster’s economy” in his writings, thus subverting the dominant tendencies of his day. This trickster’s economy is Derrida’s playground, his laboratory when he addresses the question of the gift. Secondly, I seek to shed light on Derrida as a reader of Baudelaire, stressing that he was not merely interested in the play of the signifiers, but dedicated to ethical questions and concerned with social realities underpinning Baudelaire’s modernity. The issues he addresses in Given Time are extremely important and still resonate in contemporary critical thought.

“Counterfeit Money”

What kind of literary text is “Counterfeit Money”?⁴ Even though it is one of Baudelaire’s prose poems, Derrida always refers to it as a narrative and never mentions the hybrid genre that Baudelaire is seen as having invented. The novelty of the prose poem was that it introduced prose into the domain of poetry, which shattered the boundaries and hierarchies between existing genre. Moreover, Baudelaire’s prose poems were indebted to journalistic pieces of prose that filled the newspapers of his day, such as le fait divers and le tableau de Paris.⁵ Indeed, Paul Claudel was right when he described Baudelaire’s writings as a mixture of Racine’s style and the journalistic style of his time.⁶ Playing with journalistic genre conventions, Baudelaire created a new literary form that accommodated meditations upon curiosities and odd events in the city. Even if Baudelaire defended “pure poetry” and expressed his hatred of vulgar newspapers, he was poetically indebted to them, which is why his prose poems respect neither existing genre divisions nor distinctions between high and low. Derrida thus singled out a literary text that is utterly modern.

Just as many other prose poems by Baudelaire, “Counterfeit Money” takes place in the streets of Paris. The narrator recounts a curious incident that happened as he and his friend were walking in the city, and the thoughts and emotions it prompted. If the occurrence seems rather banal or insignificant, the prose poem multiplies signals of its importance for the poet. Here is precisely what characterizes Baudelaire’s most prose poems; on the face of it, they are casual reports from the city, but they are experienced or witnessed by a sensitive subject and narrated in a cunning manner. They pass themselves off as mere anecdotes, while at the same time indicating that they can be read allegorically, whereas neither anecdotal nor allegorical readings prove to be fully satisfactory.⁷

The prose poem begins with the narrator and his friend leaving a tobacco shop, and the narrator observing his friend meticulously sort his change. The pair then encounter a beggar in the street and spare him some money, but upon noticing that his friend’s donation had been far greater, the narrator comments, “You are right; next to the pleasure of feeling surprise, there is none greater than to cause a surprise.” His friend then replies offhand that what he gave was in fact a counterfeit coin. This piece of information sparks off a series of speculations in the narrator’s mind, who thinks to himself that “such conduct on my friend’s part was excusable only by the desire to create an event in this poor devil’s life, perhaps even to learn the varied consequences, disastrous or otherwise, that a counterfeit coin in the hands of a beggar might engender.” Ultimately, the narrator is appalled when it dawns upon him, observing his friend’s demeanor, that his aim had been “to do a good deed while at the same time making a good deal; to earn forty cents and the heart of God; to win paradise economically; in short, to pick up gratis the certificate of the charitable man.” The text ends with the narrator’s harsh but silent verdict on his friend’s behavior:

I could have almost forgiven him the desire for the criminal enjoyment of which a moment before I assumed him capable; I would have found something bizarre, singular in his amusing himself by compromising the poor; but I will never forgive him the ineptitude of his calculation. To be mean is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that one is; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil out of stupidity.

Baudelaire’s story is not easy to interpret and typically puzzles the reader. As Derrida states, it deals with money, tobacco, and alms, and also, more profoundly, with giving and forgiveness, as well as narration and secrets. Money, tobacco, and alms today can look like insignificant tokens of everyday life; however, when they come to the fore in modernist literature, they become tokens of a new regime. Taking his cue from Baudelaire, Derrida explores the nature of money (the ultimate signs), the uses of tobacco (a product of luxury and expenditure), and the offering of alms (a profane kind of sacrifice). Given Time brings out the many convergences between Derrida and Baudelaire, both of whom not only shared ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Series Preface
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Derrida’s modernity and our modernism
• PART ONE Rethinking the main concepts of modernism
• PART TWO Engaging with the poetics of canonical modernism
• PART THREE Différance as performance: Pushing modernism beyond its borders
• PART FOUR Glossary
• Index
• Copyright