The Little Crystalline Seed : The Ontological Significance of Mise En Abyme in Post-Heideggerian Thought

Mise en abyme is a term developed from literary theory denoting a work that doubles itself within itself—a story placed within a story or a play within a play. The term flourished in experimental fiction in midcentury France, having not only a strong impact on contemporary literary theory but also on post-structuralist philosophy. The Little Crystalline Seed focuses on how thinkers invoke the concept of mise en abyme in order to establish ontologies that deviate from that of Heidegger. Iddo Dickmann demonstrates how the concept served in modeling Jacques Derrida's logic of supplementarity; Maurice Blanchot's mechanism of désouvrement ; Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of repetition; Emmanuel Levinas's concept of "proximity," and in further circuit: the philosophies of Bergson, Kant, Leibniz, Heidegger himself, and more. Exploring the interpretative and generative potential of the mise en abyme for continental thought, Dickmann reveals new points of resonance between various philosophical topics including, aesthetics, ethics, time, logic, mirroring, play, and signification. Contents 8 Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 14 1. The Literary Theory of Mise en abyme and its Philosophical Meaning 24 Mise en abyme and mirroring 24 The double-bind of the mise en abyme 29 Strata and undercurrents in the typology of the mise en abyme 36 Mise en abyme in the new New Novel: Reversing mimetologism “in one fell swoop” 43 Mise en abyme in reader-response criticism 49 Mise en abyme in analytic and possible-worlds semantics 55 2. Jacques Derrida: Mise en abyme and the logic of supplementarity 70 Mise en abyme and the infrastructural difference 70 Derrida’s denouncement of mise en abyme 77 Iterability and the “lacunal” conception of mise en abyme 79 Misconception of the mise en abyme and its consequences 83 On second thoughts: Intentionality and the “invagination” of text 86 3. Maurice Blanchot: Heading Toward Death as Mise en abyme 96 Death and “ambiguity” 96 Mise en abyme and the “night itself ” 98 “Worklessness” and Gide’s mechanism of retroaction 104 Worklessness and Iser’s “acts of fictionalization” 108 Mise en abyme and the “fatality of the day” 112 4. Gilles Deleuze: Repetition and Time as Mise en abyme 118 Mise en abyme and the ground of difference 118 Mise en abyme and the philosophy of affirmation 127 The prospective mise en abyme and the synthesis of the present 135 The retro-prospective mise en abyme and the synthesis of the past 137 Mise en abyme and “schema” in Kant and Bergson 143 The Klein-bottle and the synthesis of the future 147 5. Mise en abyme as a Paradigm Shift I: From Mirror to “Labyrinth of Mirrors” 154 The “mirror of nature” and the principle of adequatio 154 Three paradigms of imagination 157 Deleuze on Bergson: Crystallines, convex mirrors and double mirrors 160 Gasché on Derrida: The tain of the mirror 169 Borges and the “monstrosity of mirrors” 173 6. Mise en abyme as a Paradigm Shift II: From Play to “Divine Play” 178 The play of the world and the play of Being 178 Gadamer: Play and the hermeneutic circle 181 Eugen Fink: Play as the “symbol of world” 182 Caillois and Levinas: Play and the other-than-Being 185 Deleuze: The divine game and the ethics of becoming 187 7. The Rhizomatic Book and the Centrifugal Mise en abyme 200 “Minor literature” and the semiotics of “expression” 200 The rhizomatic book and its reader 203 The rhizomatic book as mise en abyme 207 An empirical example: The Jewish scripture as a rhizomatic book 211 “Diagrammatical” reality and the “sheaf ” of transcodation 218 Conclusion 224 Notes 232 Bibliography 258 Index 268 "Mise en abyme is a term from literary theory denoting a work that doubles itself within itself, for example a story placed within a story or a play within a play. Proliferating in experimental fiction in midcentury France, this technique had a strong impact on contemporary literary theory, but also, as this book project argues, on post-Heideggerian and post-structuralist philosophy. The Little Crystalline Seed focuses on how three of these thinkers invoke the concept of mise en abyme in order to establish ontologies that deviate from that of Heidegger. Iddo Dickmann demonstrates how the concept served in modeling Derrida's logic of supplementarity, Blanchot's philosophy of "ambiguity" and mechanism of Désouvrement, and Deleuze's philosophy of difference, time and repetition. Exploring the interpretative and generative potential of the mise en abyme for continental thought, Dickmann illustrates points of resonance between various philosophical topics such as aesthetics, ethics, time, logic, mirroring, play, and signification"-- Provided by publisher