The Myth of Otherness: Goethe on Presence

Summary

Western culture is dominated by representation—however, in 1993 in a series of essays, Jean-Luc Nancy counters this paradigm of all signification processes from a culturally critical perspective with a new paradigm, and proclaims “the birth to presence.” In the course of this paradigm shift from representation to presence and as a consequence of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's work, contemporary literary criticism has also taken an interest in “what meaning cannot convey.” Yet, to speak of a “new” paradigm implies a kind of mastery, since presence basically represents an outdated paradigm in two respects. In the hermeneutic tradition, whose roots are deeply grounded in the philosophical aesthetic of the nineteenth century, the concept was, first, used for the direct experience of meaning, most importantly in the realm of art. Second, as understood by poststructuralist thinkers—especially in the field of deconstruction—hermeneutics was then seen to be motivated by a disproportionate or even false desire for presence. Since the 1960s, in the wake of these investigation into representation, the paradigm fell into oblivion or even disrepute. Hermeneutics seemed to be a mode of engaging with texts that sought to secure the full presence of signification, a pleroma of meaning. In contrast, the emphasis among poststructuralists was on the dark stain of the signifier, the operation of the trope, the play of textual signs deferring any arrival at a fullness of meaning.