Spivak's piss-poor preface

 

Is it undesirable for non-native speakers of a language to teach it? Not necessarily. The non-native may be smart. She may have mastered the language. At the least, she may be diligent and check and double check everything she writes.

Consider the following from Spivak’s Translator’s preface (which is 80 times as long as the author’s) to Derrida’s ‘Of Grammatology’-

It is clear that, as it is commonly understood, the preface harbors a lie. "Prae-fatio" is "a saying before-hand" ( Oxford English Dictionary-OED ).

In the old days, authors would read out their new book to their patrons or ecclesiastic superiors. They would utter some remarks, by way of preface, before getting down to business. A prologue, however, is something written before the rest of the text.

Yet it is accepted as natural by Hyppolite, as indeed by all of us, that "Hegel reflected retrospectively on his philosophic enterprise and wrote his 'Preface'."

This is because this was the natural order of things. The scholar composed his text and then uttered it with a suitable preface just as a lecturer makes some initial remarks before reading out her composition.

We may see this as no more than the tacit acceptance of a fiction.

Spivak does not understand that a prologue is not the same thing as a preface.

We think of the Preface, however, not as a literary, but as an expository exercise.

No we don’t. The preface may tell us about how the book came to be written. All the exposition will be in the book itself.

 

It "involves a norm of truth," although it might well be the insertion of an obvious fiction into an ostensibly "true" discourse. ( Of course, when the preface is being written by someone other than the author, the situation is yet further complicated . A pretense at writing before a text that one must have read before the preface can be written.

Spivak’s first language is Bengali. She does not know that a preface is not a prologue and that if somebody else introduces a book they do so through a ‘Foreword’, not a ‘Preface’.

Perhaps she was only shit at English- though that was the subject in which she had credentials. Maybe she understood Hegel.

Hegel's own objection to the Preface seems grave.

It isn’t. It is foolish.

Hegel says- For whatever might appropriately be said about philosophy in a preface – say a historical statement of the main drift and the point of view, the general content and results, a string of random assertions and assurances about truth – none of this can be accepted as the way in which to expound philosophical truth.

A preface does need to expound shit. Hegel obviously disagreed with himself because he then went on to write 40 pages of turgid shite which didn’t expound truth anymore than the text it prefaced.

Still, some Professors get paid to know what Hegel was getting at. Does Spivak?

The contrast between abstract generality and the self-moving activity of cognition appears to be structured like the contrast between preface and text.

There is no contrast between ‘abstract generality’ and ‘self-moving activity of cognition’ because the former could only be said to exist for the latter. The contrast between preface and text arises out of succession in time not being reflected by succession in space. The former comes before the latter, spatially speaking, though it was composed afterwards. Only after you have written a book can you write a preface about how it came to be written and what your intention was.

It is not the case that first there must be abstract generality and only then can cognition get moving. You have to think long and hard before you can get to ‘abstract generality’. Hegel may have been stupid, but he wasn’t Spivak level stupid. His point was quite different- viz. “In my view, which can be justified only by the exposition of the system itself, everything turns on grasping and expressing the true not only as substance but, equally, as subject.” In other words, the preface is not a ‘justification’. That’s cool. Prefaces are welcome to be anything they like.

Spivak now invents some crazy shit and ascribes it to Hegel.

 

The method of philosophy is the structure of knowing,

No. It is the structure of being. Logic is metaphysics. Knowing turns contingent existence into essential being.

an activity of consciousness that moves of itself;

That’s not Hegel. Consciousness can’t get far by itself. In Hegel’s system self-consciousness is only really conscious of itself once it recognises another self-consciousness and is recognised by it. It turns out that something collective- which Hegel relates to spirit- is the precondition for the self. Hegel asserts that his book will enable the reader to, by his own labor, trace ‘the self development of the notion’ and thus arrive at the truth which has successfully reached its own inherent native form. It is this universality which is capable of being the property of every self-conscious reason.

 

 this activity, the method of philosophical discourse, structures the philosophical text.

In which case all such texts would look pretty similar.

 The reader of the philosophical text will recognize this self-movement in his consciousness as he surrenders himself to and masters the text.

Because all philosophical texts are identical- right?

 

 Any prefatory gesture, abstracting so-called themes, robs philosophy of its self-moving structure.

No. It just won’t be philosophical exposition. No robbery is involved by being different from what follows. The cover of the book is different from the book itself. This doesn’t rob the text of any ‘self-moving’ or ‘self-loving’ structure.

 

 "In modern times," Hegel writes, "an individual finds the abstract form ready made."

Coz publishers want to sell a lot of books and so make them as easy as possible to digest- or just skim through.

 Further, let [modern man] read reviews of philosophical works, and even go to the length of reading the prefaces and first paragraphs of the works themselves; for the latter give the general principles on which everything turns, while the reviews along with the historical notice provide over and above the critical judgment and appreciation, which, being a judgment passed on the work, goes farther than the work that is judged . This common way a man can take in his dressing-gown . But spiritual elation in the eternal, the sacred, the infinite, moves along the high way of truth in the robes of the high priest.

This is very misleading. What Hegel said was ‘But spiritual elation in the eternal, the sacred, the infinite, moves along the highway of truth in the robes of the high priests road that, from the first, is itself immediate being in its innermost, the inspiration of profound and original ideas and flashes of elevated thought. All the same, those depths do not yet reveal the well-spring of inner reality; nor, again, are these sky-rockets the empyrean. True thoughts and scientific insight can only be won by the labour of the notion. Conceptions alone can produce universality in the knowing process. This universality is critically developed and completely finished knowledge. It is not the common indefiniteness and inadequacy of ordinary intelligence. Nor, again, is it that extraordinary kind of universality where the powers and potencies of reason are spoiled and ruined by genius through indolence and self-conceit. It is truth which has successfully reached its own inherent native form. It is this universality which is capable of being the property of every self-conscious reason.’

 

Yet, as Hyppolite points out, Hegel damns the preface in general even as he writes his own "Preface."

This is not true. Hegel’s preface elucidates his relationship with his public which isn’t as a savant peddling a cut and dried nostrum. He is saying- ‘listen, guys, this book requires some hard labor from you just as writing it required hard labor from me. But you and me are keen to be scientific and to play our part in what is happening around us. So, if you stick with this, you won’t have wasted your time.’

 

And Derrida suggests that a very significant part of Hegel's work was but a play of prefaces

while his own was but pulling faces like Jerry Lewis who was big in France.

 

Whereas Hegel's Translator's Preface impatience with prefaces is based on philosophical grounds, his excuse for continuing to write them seems commonsensical : "Having in mind that the general idea of what is to be done, if it precedes the attempt to carry it out, facilitates the comprehension of this process, it is worth while to indicate here some rough idea of it, with the intention of eliminating at the same time certain forms whose habitual presence is a hindrance to philosophical knowledge [in der Absicht zugleich, bei dieser Gelegenheit einige Formen zu entfernen, deren Gewohnheit ein Hindernis fur das philosophische Erkennen ist]."

Hegel is saying is ‘prefaces are useful. Why? It’s good to have a general idea of what is to be done before doing it’.

Hegel's objection to prefaces reflects the following structure: preface/text = abstract generality/self-moving activity.

No. Hegel said his preface can’t justify his text (coz it was heavy stuff) though the reader might want that convenience to save himself time. The structure is preface/text = envelope/letter.

 

His acceptance of prefaces reflects another structure : preface/text = signifier/signified.

The title on the cover is the signifier, not the preface. The preface is like the address on the envelope. You read it and then you know whether you should open it. Hegel uses his preface to address his readers and put them in the right frame of mind to peruse his text.

 

And the name of the "=" in this formula is the Hegelian Aufhebung.

Rubbish! There is no ‘sublation’ here. The fact is the preface (written after the book) and the Introduction (written before it) aren’t that different. Hegel is saying ‘there is no shortcut. You’ve got to do the work.’

 

Aufhebung is a relationship between two terms where the second at once annuls the first and lifts it up into a higher sphere of existence;

No. It is a relationship between concepts, not terms.

 it is a hierarchial concept generally translated "sublation" and now sometimes translated "sublimation."

It is a dialectical concept. Hierarchies are associated with Spirit.

 

 A successful preface is aufgehoben into the text it precedes,

In which case according to Spivak the preface to Phenomenology of Spirit was sublated into the title of that work. It should have been omitted to save paper!

 

 just as a word is aufgehoben into its meaning.

Not in poetry which ranks high in Hegel’s hierarchy of the Arts.

 

It is as if, to use one of Derrida's structural metaphors, the son or seed ( preface or word ) , caused or engendered by the father ( text or meaning) is recovered by the father and thus justified.

Coz a son not recovered by daddy is not justified- just like jizz which got away from a wanker.

But, within this structural metaphor, Derrida's cry is "dissemination," the seed that neither inseminates nor is recovered by the father, but is scattered abroad.

Derrida was crying coz jizz got in his eye. In his place I’d have yelled something more pungent than ‘dissemination’.

 And he makes room for the prefatory gesture in quite another way :

by killing his daddy

 

The preface is a necessary gesture of homage and parricide, for the book ( the father) makes a claim of authority or origin which is both true and false.

Did you know you had to pay homage to daddy if he says something true- e.g ‘you are a your mother’s son’- but have to kill him if he tells a lie?

 

 (As regards parricide, I speak theoretically.

Coz her dad died before she could kill him.

 The preface need make no overt claim-as this one does not-of destroying its pre-text. As a preface, it is already surrendered to that gesture . . . . )

Spivak was writing the preface to her translation of Derrida’s ‘Of Grammatology’. One way of destroying ‘pre-texts’ is by shitting on them copiously. The irony is Derrida may only be remembered as Spivak’s stepping stone to celebrity.