Reading Jacques Derrida’s “Khôra” #3

About that which stands before all beginnings

In this post I would like to conclude our reading of Jacques Derrida’s Khôra (1993). This is the third post in this series. You can read or reread the previous posts here: Derrida.

The ineffable is not a myth

The ineffability of khôra invites a “logic” whose formalization Derrida considers impossible (p. 38). Derrida then revisits Vernant’s call for a mode of logic that can account for myths. The question then becomes whether Khôra can be considered a myth.

Many philosophers have interpreted Plato’s elliptical Timaeus as a myth. However, Derrida reminds us of the long tradition, from Aristotle to Hegel, of subordinating myth to concept — philosophy being the work of the concept.

Such views are understandable for various reasons. One is that myths are expressed and transmitted through words, which ultimately determine their meaning. Referring to khôra as a myth fixes its meaning to some extent, overlooking its fundamental indeterminacy.

Such questioning enables Derrida to essentially omit the supposed mythical dimension of khôra from his analysis. His aim is not to offer philosophical insights into the nature of myths or to determine whether khôra can be understood as a myth. Rather, noting the similarities between his questioning and that of Vernant, he attempts to grasp an ineffable object — one that cannot be grasped through logos. He asks:

Here we can see the thread of our question: if khôra has no meaning or essence, if it is not a philosophem, and if it is neither the object nor the form of a mythical narrative, where does it fit into this scheme? (p. 43, my translation)

In other words, if khôra cannot be conceptualized and is not a myth in itself, even if it became one through the history of its questioning, where can the questioning about khôra be situated?

Derrida reminds us that the entire Timaeus is oriented toward its conclusion, which provides a “general ontology” that takes into account “all types of being” (p. 44). However, he questions:

And yet, halfway through the cycle, hasn’t the discourse on khôra opened up, between the sensible and the intelligible, belonging neither to one nor the other, and therefore neither to the cosmos as a sensible god nor to the intelligible god, an apparently empty space — although it is undoubtedly not empty? Has he not named a gaping opening, an abyss or a chasm? Is it not from this chasm, “in” it, that this division between the sensible and the intelligible, or even between the body and the soul, can take place and take position? (pp. 44–45, my translation)

Derrida also prevents us from viewing chaos as the impossible object he tries to grasp. According to him, khôra and chaos are distinct concepts. Chaos is characterized by anthropocentric worldviews that attempt to make sense of things. Chaos is what cannot be ordered and makes no sense. It is horrific. Khôra is not more what he sees on the other side of chaos: Gaia, the reassuring soil of nature.

Khôra is not a chaos, it is not Gaia, and it is not a political place. Those kinds of qualifications are superimpositions on what it really is. Yes, Plato talk about the city; yes it qualifies it as a mother, a nurse, but it is something else, something more essential.

Let’s make this clear from the outset. These formal analogies or refined, subtle (too subtle, some might say) placing into abyss are not, in the first instance, considered here as devices, bold moves or secrets of formal decomposition: the art of Plato the writer! This art interests us and should interest us even more, but what matters to us here, first and foremost, regardless of the supposed intentions of a composer, are the constraints that produce these analogies. Should we say that they constitute a program? A logic whose authority was imposed on Plato? Yes, but only to a certain extent, and this limit appears in the abyss itself: the programmatic nature of the program, its structure of pre-inscription and typographical prescription, forms the explicit theme of the discourse in abyss on khôra. (pp. 50–51, my translation)

And he pursues:

This is the place where everything in the world is engraved. Similarly, the logical essence of logic, its essential logos, whether true, likely, or mythical, forms the explicit topic of the Timaeus (…). (p. 51, my translation)

Have you ever wondered where logic comes from? Does it stem from language, discourse, or linguistic games? And if so, are you sure? Is there nothing more fundamental on which logic is based?

The Timaeus is a discourse. It discusses the “logical essence of logic” and the “place where everything in the world is engraved.” In terms of his training, methodology and perspective, Derrida is a phenomenologist. This led him to question khôra as well as the way it appears.

In philosophical discourse, khôra appears to us in a specific way through metaphors, analogies and inefficient qualifications. Yet it is precisely through this appearance that the very logic of khôra may reveal itself to us.

The beginning before any beginning

The logic of khôra is foundational. It is the logic of a receptacle. But what does it mean to be a receptacle? A receptacle for what? And what is it made of?

But if khôra is a receptacle, if it gives place to all the stories, ontological or mythical, that can be told about what it receives and even about what it resembles but which in fact takes place within it, khôra itself, if one may say so, does not become the subject of any narrative, whether true or fabulous. (pp. 75–76, my translation)

And he pursues:

Khôra marks a place apart, the space that maintains an asymmetrical relationship with everything that, “within it,” beside it, or in addition to it, seems to form a pair with it. (p. 92, my translation)

He describes it as ‘pre-originary’, existing before and outside of any generation. It exists outside of any temporal dimension. It is neither a thing nor a being; it is a place that is not a place. He writes:

Pre-originary, before and outside of any generation, it no longer even has the meaning of a past, of a past present. Before does not imply any temporal anteriority. The relationship of independence, of non-relationship, is more like that of an interval or a space with regard to what is contained within it. (p. 92, my translation)

Khôra exists outside of and before any generation. Searching for it will not lead to an endless discussion. Rather, it leads to a conversion of gaze. The quest for this object will eventually lead to a transformation. Our understanding of everything is at stake.

The audacity here consists in going back beyond the origin, or even beyond birth, to a necessity that is neither generative nor generated and that carries philosophy, “precedes” (before passing time or eternal time before history) and “receives” the effect, here the image of oppositions (intelligible and sensible): philosophy. (p. 95, my translation)

Thinking about khôra necessitates returning to “a beginning older than the beginning, the birth of the cosmos” (p. 96). What supports philosophy here is nothing other than this mysterious beginning.

Incidentally, Derrida suggests a common ground between the cosmos and philosophy. They both started with khôra. At a fundamental level, what philosophy is about may have to do with the very receptacle of our universe.

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We have finished reading this Derrida’s text. I will come back to him in due time!