S/Z - A Reading of Being Singular Plural

This piece is a joint reading of the first section of Jean-Luc Nancy's essay "Of Being Singular Plural", titled "We Are Meaning." Our 'reading' of the text encompasses a variety of explanatory, discursive, illustrative and expanding gestures, movements, notes, recitals, and drawings.

Of Being Singular Plural

It is good to rely upon others. For no one can bear this life alone.
-Hôlderlin

Since human nature is the true community of men, those who produce thereby affirm their nature, human community, and social being which, rather than an abstract, general power in opposition to the isolated individual, is the being ofeach individual, his own activity, his own life, his own joy, his own richness. To say that a man is alienated from himself is to say that the society of this alienated man is the caricature of his real community.
-Marx

We Are Meaning
It is often said today that we have lost meaning, that we lack it and, as a result, are in need of and waiting for it. The "one" who speaks in this way forgets that the very propagation of this discourse is itself meaningful. Regretting the absence of meaning itself has meaning. But such regret does not have meaning only in this negative mode; denying the presence of meaning affirms that one knows what meaning would be, were it there, and keeps the mastery and truth of meaning in place (which is the pretension of the humanist discourses that propose to "rediscover" meaning.) Whether it is aware of it or not, the contemporary discourse on meaning goes much further and in a completely different direction: it brings to light the fact that "meaning," used in this absolute way, has become the bared [dénudé] name ofour being-with-one- another. We do not "have" meaning anymore, because we ourselves are meaning--entirely, without reserve, infinitely, with no meaning other than "us."

This does not mean that we are the content of meaning, nor are we its fulfillment or its result, as if to say that humans were the meaning (end, substance, or value) of Being, nature, or history. The meaning of this meaning--that is, the signification to which a state of affairs corresponds and compares--is precisely what we say we have lost. But we are meaning in the sense that we are the element in which significations can be produced and circulate. The least signification just as much as the most elevated (the meaning of "nail" as well as the meaning of "God") has no meaning in itself and, as a result, is what it is and does what it does only insofar as it is communicated, even where this communication takes place only between "me" and "myself." Meaning is its own communication or its own circulation. The "meaning of Being" is not some property that will come to qualify, fill in, or finalize the brute givenness of "Being" pure and simple.' Instead, it is the fact that there is no "brute givenness" of Being, that there is no desperately poor there is presented when one says that "there is a nail catching. . . . " But the givenness of Being, the givenness inherent to the very fact that we understand something when we say "to be" (whatever it may be and however confused it might be), along with the (same) givenness that is given with this fact--cosubstantial with the givenness of Being and the understanding of Being, that we understand one another (however confusedly) when we say it, is a gift that can be summarized as follows: Being itself is given to us as meaning. Being does not have meaning. Being itself, the phenomenon of Being, is meaning that is, in turn, its own circulation--and we are this circulation.

INTERJECTION 1
Z: I'm feeling kind of unfcomfortable with the transition between "The Dance of 'The Nail Catching...'" and the balancing.

S: I think maybe only I should do "The Dance of 'The Nail Catching ...'," and then we do the balancing together right after. I feel really confused about these 'Interjections' - it doesn't really make sense to me how they are working or will work.

Z: How do ... what the hell are we doing?

S: We are going to talk about "a reading."

Z: Oh - we are?

S: Yeah, I thought that it was like a really important part!

Z: Right - how to talk about this as a reading in a way that engages with what we're thinking about right now.

S: When I'm speaking, I'm anticipating an audience - I'm thinking about these things that I'm saying as being things that I am going to say to people, not just you - in th future.

Z: I feel complicated about this. Is it fair? These interjections into the performance? Or are we just not taking responsibility for the fact that we are actually DOING this performance.

S: Fair / Transparent / Democratic

Z: It appears that the notes here weren't that thorough. Are we interested in doing a reading of Being Singular Plural or of the script we just wrote of our reading of it? Is this a reading of a reading? Because our script is a whole new second text.

S: Are you saying that when we read the Nancy text it is not a part of our script?

Z: Oh great it's our script and now so are all these other things -

S: Let's make a script for the interjectiosn which we read verbatim. But can we also have a rule that we can speak extemporaneously if we have a revelation?

There is no meaning if meaning is not shared, ...

Z: Oh my god this is so silly [laughs].

S: Oh should we do it actually in the script? Let's do it with you laughing here - do you think you can laugh actually?

Z: Oh probably because it's so retarded.

S: Wait we can't say retarded, that's so not PC.

Z: Whatever - It happened. Sometimes you just gotta "stab that bitch." Write that down.

There is no meaning if meaning is not shared, and not because there would be an ultimate or first signification that all beings have incommon, but because meaning is itself the sharing of Being. Meaning begins where presence is not pure presence but where presence comes apart [se disjoint] in order to be itself as such. This "as" presupposes the distancing, spacing, and division ofpresence. Only the concept of "presence" contains the necessity of this division. Pure unshared presence--presence to nothing, ofnothing, for nothing— is neither present nor absent. It is the simple implosion of a being that could never have been--an implosion without any trace.

This is why what is called "the creation of the world" is not the production of a pure something from nothing--which would not, at the same time, implode into the nothing out of which it could never have come--but is the explosion of presence in the original multiplicity of its division. It is the explosion of nothing, in fact, it is the spacing of meaning, spacing as meaning and circulation. The nihil of creation is the truth of meaning, but meaning is the ...

INTERJECTION 2

Z: Sarah?

[Sarah stops reading - get's dictionary - goes to TALL MIC.]

S: Yes?

Z: What does "nehil" mean?

S: Oh well, this dictionary doesn't have it, uh but it has "nihilism" and "nil." [Sarah reads definition of "nihilism"]

S: and "nil," spelled N-I-L

[S reads definition of "nil"]

S: But maybe we should try another dictionary for this part. One that has "nehil".

The nihil of creation is the truth of meaning, but meaning is theoriginary sharing of this truth. It could be expressed in the following way: Being cannot be anything but being-with-one-another, circulating in the with and as the with of this singularly plural coexistence.

If one can put it like this, there is no other meaning than the meaning of circulation. But this circulation goes in all directions at once, in all the directions ofall the space-times [les espace-temps] opened by presence to presence: all things, all beings, all entities,

everything past and future, alive, dead, inanimate, stones, plants, nails, gods—and "humans," that is, those who expose sharing and circulation as such by saying "we," by saying we to themselves in all possible senses of that expression, and by saying we for the totality of all being.

INTERJECTION 3
S: Wait, we have notes.

Z: This performance may be nauseating, and we may never want to do it again.

S: How does that relate to the song?

Z: Well, what I've said in the past here is that I feel like I'm confused about the way that different parts of our performance are functioning as 'entertainment'.

S: What do you mean?

Z: Do you want me to write stuff down?

S: Yeah, maybe you're better at it.

Z: What have you said in the past?

S: I think that it's potentially really interesting that The Smith's song could expose how our performance is possibly not entertaining. The Smith's song has ... its own world ... I don't know though.

Z: I guess we're saying the same thing - but we have different opinions.

S: I'm interested in The Smith's posibly functioning in a way to destabilize out performance - to question whether it actually is interesting.

Z: And I suppose an obvious response to that would be: "Are we wasting people's time?"

S: Right - by making something that is potentially uninteresting or unimportant. But it's nice now that we're talking about it I don't knwo what reading the Chris Frantz / Talking Heads thing is about ...

Z: Yeah!

S: Oh what do you think?

Z: This isn't a response to what you just said but these elements that we're useing are possibly valid mathods for reading - or producing a reading, and of a "philosophical" text.

S: Right so ... I think we need to get back to ... doing things ... over there.

(Let us say we for all being, that is, for every being, for all beings one by one, each time in the singular of their essential plural. Lan- guage speaks for all and of all: for all, in their place, in their name, including those who may not have a name. Language says what there is of the world, nature, history and humanity, and it also speaks for them as well as in view of them, in order to lead the one who speaks, the one through whom language comes to be and happens ("man"), to all of being, which does not speak but which is nevertheles--stone, fish, fiber, dough, crack, block, and breath. The speaker speaks for the world, which means the speaker speaks to it, on behalf of it, in order to make it a "world. "As such, the speaker is "in its place" and "according to its measure"; the speaker occurs as its representative but also, at the same time (and this has all the values of pro in Latin), in anticipation of it, before it, exposed to it as to its own most intimate consideration. Language says the world; that is, it loses itself in it and exposes how "in itself" it is a question of losing oneself in order to be of it, with it, to be its meaning--which is all meaning)

Circulation goes in all directions: this is the Nietzschean thought of the "eternal return," the affirmation of meaning as the repetition of the instant, nothing but this repetition, and as a result, nothing (since it is a matter of the repetition of what essentially does not return). But it is a repetition already comprised in the affirmation of the instant, in this affirmation/request [re-petitid] seized in the letting go of the instant, affirming the passing of presence and itself passing with it, affirmation abandoned in its very movement. It is an impossible thought, a thinking that does not hold itself back from the circulation it thinks, a thinking of meaning right at [à même] meaning, where its eternity occurs as the truth of its passing. (For instance, at the moment at which I am writing, a brown-and-white cat is crossing the garden, slipping mockingly away, taking my thoughts with it.)

INTERJECTION 4
S: Okay - Why did you stop reading?

Z: Because you thought it was a good idea before.

S: Oh yeah okay -- so the reason I thought it was a good ides was that I was feeling really overwhelmed before - by everything we were doing on top pf or next to or inside the text. But that was this morning before we had done anything and so I don't know how it feels now - but I had been thinking that we should just stop there and just read. Because I wasn't sure if what we were doing was really ... uh ... clarifying or maybe not clarifying but explaining what's going on in the textif it was really communicating anything in meaningful relation to the text.

Z: Oh yeah but you of anyone should see how that's problematic - whether something is or isn't clarified for someone else. And who's job is it to clarify? Who's job is it - if anyone's to explain a text? And is that what we're interested in doing?

S: Right - then I guess you get into this trap - where on one hand proposing that something could not be meaningful or clear to someone is really presumptuous - but proposing that something is or should be meaningful to someone else is just as presumptuous ... But I guess that's not actually what was going on for me when I was thinking we should stop and just read - I was just feeling overwelmed by the idea that we had to come up with things to do for the last two paragraphs. And then I was thinking if it's just about "coming up with things" how meaningful is that really?

Z: Yeah - well thinking about the "we" that Nancy is talking about - and taking responsibility for our role in that ... This performance is possibly an opportunity for us--you and I--to to not rely on the role as formulators of the model through which we allow ourselves to respond to a 'text' as we dd with 'S & G Dances' and other projects in the past.

S: Oh right, you're saying that Nancy is suggesting a model for reading the text (through the text) which is open or possibly inconsistent.

Z: Oh yeah that's not what I was saying but it's important to bring up - that this text (Being Singular Plural by Jean-Luc Nancy) in many ways suggests that the way in which it or any text could be meaningful cannot depend on a "the one" model.

S: Right great.

It is in this way that the thinking of the eternal return is the inaugural thought of our contemporary history, a thinking we must repeat (even if it means calling it something else). We must reappropriate what already made us who "we" are today, here and now, the "we" of a world who no longer struggle to have meaning but to be meaning itself. This is we as the beginning and end of the world, inexhaustible in the circumscription that nothing circumscribes, that "the" nothing circumscribes. We make sense [nous faisons sens], not by setting a price or value, but by exposing the absolute value that the world is by itself. "World" does not mean anything other than this "nothing" that no one can "mean" [vouloir dire], but that is said in every saying: in other words, Being itself as the absolute value in itself of all that is, but this absolute value as the being-with of all that is itself bare and impossible to evaluate. It is neither meaning [vouloir-dire] nor the giving of value [dire-valoir], but value as such, that is, "meaning" which is the meaning of Being only because it is Being itself, its existence, its truth. Existence is with: otherwise nothing exists.

Circulation--or eternity--goes in all directions, but it moves only insofar as it goes from one point to another; spacing is its ab- solute condition. From place to place, and from moment to moment, without any progression or linear path, bit by bit and case by case, essentially accidental, it is singular and plural in its very principle. It does not have a final fulfillment any more than it has a point of origin. It is the originary plurality of origins and the cre- ation of the world in each singularity, creation continued in the discontinuity of its discrete occurrences. From now on, we, we others are charged with this truth--it is more ours than ever--the truth of this paradoxical "first-person plural" which makes sense of the world as the spacing and intertwining of so many worlds (earths, skies, histories) that there is a taking place of meaning, or the crossing- through [passages] of presence. "We" says (and "we say") the unique event whose uniqueness and unity consist in multiplicity.

Z: Should we bow or hug or shake hands?