8 - The act of union: being-in-the-world in La Règle du jeu

Summary

We have already reviewed earlier how La Règle du jeu moves from its opening nominalist celebrations to a sense of communication embodying an existentialist morality. This logic inevitably reflects the structure of autobiography itself, as Leiris comes to perceive and assess himself as a speaking and writing subject. The desire for pure presence is therefore intimately bound up with the possibility of pure communication, a possibility thwarted by the irreducible biffure within any expression of this ideality. It is paradoxical, then, that it is in recognizing the inevitable failure of the attempt to achieve the permanent presence of a pure intemporal expression and in resolving as a result to break the boundaries of introspection through action that Leiris appears successfully to sublate the biffure within interiority, most notably in Fourbis. For the resolution articulated in the second volume's desire to ‘transformer le verbe humain en un vivant trait d'union avec les auditeurs’ (F0 178) suffices in itself as an act of presencing. This presencing views the word as an outward-tending act of generosity, and so transcends all internal self-division. In addition, it represents, on the level of pure event, the goal of ideal self-presence, for it is an illocutionary act whose expression fulfils its own desire.